Street Food Heaven

We (and by we, I mean Brandon) did some more research on our Hyatt Regency Manila City of Dreams where we have stayed for both our nights in Manila and figured out the reason for all the security. Apparently in 2017 some gambler got pissed off in a different hotel/casino after losing money and opened fire, killing 36 people. The hotel owner also owns the Hyatt and made the decision to put drastic security measures into place at all his properties to ensure it didn’t happen again. This morning’s bomb sniffing dog who cleared our taxi before it could approach the door to pick us up was a chocolate lab. I really wish I had taken a picture of the security guard with his high capacity shotgun stationed by the hotel entrance but I didn’t know if there were rules about taking pictures of them. In Cuba, for example, it’s against the law to photograph any law enforcement.

I took a sleeping pill last night to make sure I stayed asleep and it worked wonders. As we packed to leave this morning I reflected on, despite being annoying to pack, how glad I was I decided to bring my own pillow. Not only does it alleviate the stress of worrying about feather pillows, it’s so much more comfortable than any hotel pillow. Though I am still ashamed by how much luggage we have with us!

With a 9:30am flight to Bangkok, we had no time to spare getting ready and out the door this morning. Philippine Airlines has the entire terminal 2 at the Bangkok airport and was quite efficient. Again, the airline personnel focused on Brandon for getting business done. I think he’s really enjoying this cultural norm of getting treated as the dominant half! I had hoped for more food options in the terminal since it is THE airline of the Philippines but they were pretty mundane. Though the concessions aren’t overly impressive, they are crazy affordable. Two bottles of water only set us back 60 Philippine pesos, the equivalent of $1.18 USD. Why can’t American airports jump on this affordability bandwagon?! At least for bottled water! Our flight was scheduled to board at 8:50am. The boarding time and gate were clearly printed on our boarding pass. We weren’t sitting super close to the boarding area so at 8:48am, we decided to get ourselves together to move closer and prepare to board. But wait, our flight was no longer listed at that gate! Sure enough, our flight had been moved to a different gate and was almost entirely boarded already!

The plane was modern and clean. But the seating situation confused me greatly. When we checked in last night and I looked to see if we wanted to adjust our seats there were only four, out of the 33 seats, in the extra leg-room section available. And yet, 21 of the seats remained empty throughout our flight. I recalled a memory of a medieval philosophy professor I had, many many years ago as an undergrad, discussing her agreement with the theory that children are born evil as a child screamed her head off two rows ahead of us. Throughout the entire three hour flight her parents would do something stupid and wake up this hell-child whenever she fell asleep and the screaming would once again ensue. A decent lunch was served consisting of roasted chicken with vegetables and rice, pasta salad, a roll, dried mango, and avocado ice cream. The chicken dish was actually quite good, and obviously quite fresh with little ends of chicken quills still visible in the skin. The avocado ice cream was decadent, made with fresh buffalo milk. The dense smog around Bangkok looked like it could rival Los Angeles as we came in for a landing.

Customs was a breeze and, after getting screwed over converting both U.S. dollars and our remaining Philippine pesos to Thai baht, we got our rental car (with ALL the insurance they would sell us of course) and loaded up to find our AirBnB.

Brandon has never driven from the opposite side of the car or on the opposite side of the road before. I have spent a good deal of time doing so in my previous travels but didn’t really want to deal with Bangkok traffic so I was happy to let him take the wheel. And let me tell you, if you want a true test of a relationship, this is a great scenario for it! I tried to hide my cringes as he adjusted to this new driving paradigm and our car drifted over the line to my left. A couple times I maybe even closed my eyes. I had pulled up directions to the AirBnB directly from the app but had a hunch they were not right, I’ve had this issue before where the AirBnB linked map isn’t accurate. I wanted to cross-reference the location with other address coordinates that were listed but Brandon insisted that we should not mess around and just get to where it was taking us, it should be close and then we could figure it out. I knew that was a bad plan and that the directions we had pulled up did not jive with the other map and coordinates from our host but he was the driver and his stress levels were rising as he tried to follow the directions in the bumper-to-bumper Bangkok traffic. As I tried to clarify turns for him, he exclaimed that for the sake of our relationship we needed to find a phone dock for the car so he could manage the gps himself while driving.

Thai drivers surprised us with their courteousness. They all seemed to actually use turn signals and, for the most part, were nice about letting us over when we needed to change lanes. Motorcycles were the biggest challenge as they would suddenly cut over diagonally in front of the car or appear heading towards us, pushing through against traffic. After almost 1 1/2 hours and 23ish miles in the frenetic traffic, we finally arrived at the destination in the GPS. Brandon was confused that the addresses weren’t even close to what we were trying to find, though it was exactly what I had expected and knew was happening. With the car stopped I finally was able to do the location cross-referencing I had wanted to do from the start and entered the correct address. We basically would be back-tracking over 4 miles and 20 minutes. Brandon challenged why I thought I had it right this time and I told him to just trust me and drive. As we eased back into the heavy traffic and made our way back in the general direction from which we had come, I was amused. I have done crazy international road trips enough to know that you can’t get mad, you just have to see it all as part of the adventure. I jovially exclaimed that we were on an adventure and Brandon turned to me lacking amusement, “I’m frustrated right now so don’t smile at me.” Of course that made me grin even bigger.

Just as I knew they would be, this revised set of directions was correct and we finally arrived at our adorable little traditional AirBnB. I had grand plans that we would arrive in time to go to a floating market and two temples this afternoon but it was close to 4pm, 3 1/2 hours after we landed, by the time we got to our place so there just would not be enough time.

Instead we scrapped the plans and decided to just walk around the local area market. I had dressed for the day intending to visit temples and was still wearing a long orange dress when we set out on foot. And I stuck out like a sore thumb. The street market was incredible. Flea market type shops dotted the sidewalks with so many street food vendors slinging delicious smelling meals for dirt-cheap. Right away I stopped for a green milk tea; I love Thai teas and have been waiting for this moment since we booked the trip! The young girl working the counter was very sweet and gestured to me that she would move out of the way when I went to snap a picture of the menu.

We approached one vendor that had paper trays of some sort of chip/cracker looking thing topped with something white and something orange. Not sharing the same language, she held one out to each of us to try, we ended up with a whole tray. I have no idea what they are but the chip-like part tastes like a flattened fortune cookie, still no clue what the toppings are, but damn they’re delicious. I really need to find a shawl still to cover my shoulders in the temples (since we all know my preferred mode of being is sleeveless) so we went into a market in a large warehouse that our AirBnB host had recommended. Putrid is the most accurate word I can conjure for the stench of the market. A quick scan showed that we would not be finding a shawl and we high-tailed it out of there, practically stumbling over a tub of live eels.

True to form for how I like to adventure, we are not staying in the touristy part of Bangkok. Not even remotely. This neighborhood is a legit locals area and it is obvious we don’t belong. In fact, we have not seen another foreigner since we left the airport. It is a total trip to be the minority, an absolute outsider, and to have no idea how to speak the language at all; not a single word. The only saving grace is that they write numbers the same as we do! As we walked along, Brandon kept commenting on all the stares I was getting as I was quite over-dressed for where we are, kind of ridiculously so.

We found a place selling beautiful shawl-like fabrics and found one with the perfect floral pattern to match my orange dress. One of the ladies working the stand actually spoke a little English and asked where we were from. When we said, California, United States, they all giggled with excitement repeating, “United States.” They were so sweet. Brandon found a pair of sandals at a little store-front before we headed back to our AirBnB so I could change. I had wanted sandals too but I tried on three different sizes, and they all fit the exact same; too small.

Dressed more casually in shorts and a tank-top after a super-quick change, we went right back down the street to the market. Many vendors were starting to shut down for the evening and we were hungry. One rule we are keeping in mind is to eat where you see a lot of locals eating. So that’s what we did. A street vendor had four little tables set-up by his stand and not only did his food smell delicious, his tables were filled. When we approached they knew right away that communication would be a challenge and one of them ran into a store front across from them and brought someone out who could speak some English. They were selling rice dishes with chicken, pork, we’re still not sure what else, and pickled eggs. I feel like the ‘I’m still not sure what else’ may have been something’s intestines at one point but I’d rather not know. It was delicious! The little plate came with a broth and sauce. They brought us cups of ice with straws (straws!) to help ourselves to a pitcher of cold green tea. It was absolutely divine. The chef noticed that we hadn’t poured the sauce on our meal and came over to show us that’s what we were supposed to do. We poured a little and he came back again a minute later, gesturing to us to pour it all. The best we could do was put our hands together and bow as a way to try to indicate “thank you” and when we did so they smiled and giggled, imitating the gesture back. We poured the sauce over as he was insisting and wished we had gotten two orders instead of splitting one. At the same time, the small rice dish was also surprisingly filling.

There is a temple near that we thought we could at least walk by (I was no longer dressed appropriately to go in) but ultimately we decided that we’d rather just keep wondering the streets. We would need more food after all. Since places were closing up shop around us, I opened up GoogleMaps and found a Night Market listed; only about 1 1/3 miles away. Time for a walk! A beautiful fluffy pup was perched on one moped as we walked by and when we stopped to coo at it, the owner – working a food stand – took notice and we could tell was encouraging the pup to look at us. The folks here seem to really love their animals. Many people had dogs with little shirts or sweaters. Cats seem to be even more popular. They seemed to be everywhere, many with collars, and more than once people had cats on leashes with them.

Brandon was skeptical as we walked to the supposed Night Market that we knew nothing about and only knew existed because I saw the words listed when I zoomed in on the map and saw the words. Crossing the streets was like playing human frogger as there are no cross-walk signs and red lights here are clearly only a suggestion. We were parched and stopped at a little roadside stand for a bottle of water. The large bottle cost only 8 baht, the equivalent of only $0.26 USD and the girls in the market asked, “American?” – giggling when we confirmed. The walk was sketchy but not in a dangerous way, more in a “where the hell are we going” type of way. I was growing anxious. Who knew if this was actually going to pan out, and my pride REALLY needed it to since it was Brandon’s second time this afternoon not trusting my navigational skills.

Coming around a bend in the road, under a major highway, stalls started to come into focus! Boom! We had found a night market! I was so excited, so was my pride! But as we approached I grew very dizzy and my legs felt heavy. I never get dizzy. It was very disorienting and I had a hard time trying to focus. I mentioned I was feeling a little dizzy but didn’t let on how bad I felt as I chugged some water. The first few stalls we came to had pictures of their food. We took note, knowing we may have to resort to that since we have no clue to how to communicate here. This was another absolute locals spot only. We got many surprising glances as we walked through. One vendor had hot pots and the tables in his area were completely full as smiling Thai sat cooking heaping piles of meat and vegetables as they enjoyed each other’s company. The Night Market was almost entirely food but they had one vendor in the middle selling random goods. Including sandals! I really wanted a pair of sandals that I don’t have to worry about at the beach and 100 Thai baht later ($3.30 USD) I was the proud owner of silver sandals. Brandon had paid 270 Thai baht for his earlier, I’m pretty sure he got the “these people won’t know any better” price and I got the real price. But we didn’t mind. Not one bit. I get that we can haggle, I get that it’s recommended, and that people expect it. But so far, the locals have been so nice and kind to us it feels so much better knowing that an extra dollar here and there won’t mean anything to us but could mean quite a lot to them.

Pad Thai is one of my favorite dishes ever, it is my favorite Thai food (in the US at least, who knows what I’ll find on this trip) and I had my heart set on finding some. Since there were no tables at the hot pot area, we went back to the vendors with pictures to see if we could find any. A vendor came out to help and we managed, though no thanks to my apparently useless translator app, to communicate, ‘pad thai.’ This lady did not make any at her stand but instead gestured to us to follow her and led us down the market to someone who does. We cannot get over the kindness and helpfulness of the Thai people we encountered today. They understand that we don’t understand and I think are truly happy to help us. For a total of 180 baht ($6 USD) total we got two meals of shrimp pad Thai, a large bottle of beer, and a bottle of water. And yes, yes it was the best damn pad thai I have ever eaten! And I was no longer dizzy or feeling funny. Score!

We walked back, still feeling safe in the streets even though the sun was down, enjoying the occasional breeze in the perfect weather. I had been expecting humidity like we’d had in the Philippines but there is actually very little. A welcome change. We had passed a stand earlier making fresh coconut griddle cakes and I couldn’t keep them off my mind. In fact, in my very very very limited notes on things I wanted to make sure we did in Thailand, “eat coconut griddle cakes!” is one of them. A coconut griddle cake is a shallow dome about the circumference of a silver dollar. When you pop them in your mouth the texture is life a gooey half-cooked pancake. I have been dying to eat one since seeing them on a Thailand foodie vlog before our trip. They make them plain or they sprinkle bits of additives like corn, green onions, ham, etc into them. I grew giddy when I saw the stand and we walked away with a little tray of griddle cake deliciousness. All for only 40 baht ($1.32 USD). We were relatively full from our pad thai meals so we only ate a couple each and saved them for the morning. Except, well, while writing this I just now finished off the rest of the tray. So damn good.

Tomorrow we head about 3 1/2 hours east (maybe northeast) to stay the night at a resort that is floating on a river. Our tentative agenda includes getting ramen for breakfast at the closest floating market and then who knows what. We’ll see what we come across while driving!