Exploring New Frontiers

After five trips to Southern Thailand and three trips to Northern Thailand, it turns out I have barely scratched the surface of the Land of Smiles. This year, our Thai cooking teacher and friend Kasma Loha-Unchit will guide us through a part of the country seldom visited by Western tourists, where the the Buddhist temples, museums, parks, fresh food and craft markets, hill tribe villages, and Thai cuisine have a distinctive local flavor. Off the well-trodden tourist trail, we can expect to have our limited knowledge of the Thai language, and our facility with squat toilets, tested in new ways. We’ll miss the beach, but look forward to new adventures.

These maps show the different routes of Kasma’s longstanding Northern trip and her new Northern Frontiers trip:

Naturally, there are many details to be filled in over the next three weeks.

Braving Bangkok On My Own

I will be arriving in Thailand 48 hours early, to ease the time change and hopefully catch up with friends. And to eat as much Thai street food as physically possible during my brief time in Bangkok. But first, the journey.

The shuttle service will not pick up passengers for international flights less than four hours before departure. I could have lied about my flight time, but since I have a pass to the United lounge, I might as well sit in a big chair and use the wi-fi rather than sitting around the house. The airport was a bit busy, but weigh-in went smoothly and the security line moved reasonably well. I discovered that EVA Airways had staked out a section of the United Club where you could get not just bananas and crackers, but sushi, chicken wings, and dan dan mein (a bit like spaghetti with a light coating of sesame butter, a touch of heat, and a sprig of cilantro). None of which were spectacular, but considering that my dinner had been a slice of toast with peanut butter, it was all very welcome.

One immediate complication is a recent case of tennis elbow in my right arm. It hurts when I lift as little as a two pound mug of tea, or when I straighten my arm out to grab a pen from my backpack, so I’m having to learn to do many things left-handed. I may also resort to the oldest anesthetic in the world, but they say you shouldn’t drink on airplanes because it dehydrates you. (For some people, it also leads to an interaction with the air marshall, but I don’t plan to go that far.) This cold also isn’t helping. But I can look forward to many bowls of spicy hot soup to clear my head and chest.

Across the International Date Line

Aboard the 777 in EVA’s premium economy (Elite) class, my seatmate at the window conveniently decided to join a friend in another row, providing lots of space next to me to pile things up. This is helpful because the seats were remodeled with smaller and tighter seatback pockets, and no center cubby (the center armrest now holds the tray tables). It is harder than before to use a laptop because the seats recline much more into your space. About the only noticeable improvement with these new seats is the much larger video screen. (I watched “The Intern”; very cute, and more family friendly than was I saw Amy Schumer doing and saying on the very visible screens in the front row of the cabin. Ahem.) Fortunately, I was able to sleep a bit despite the distractions.

When flying EVA, I always order the Chinese food. The braised chicken and black mushrooms, seasoned with soy sauce and plenty of garlic, made for a ho hum dinner. The morning set of rice porridge with mixed seafood and mushrooms, and various smoked and pickled side dishes, was much more interesting. A package of “fish floss” is included. This is not an oddly flavored product for maintaining good oral hygiene, but a powdery condiment of salty, sweet, and slightly spicy dried fish, ground to a rough powder, which you can use to liven up your congee. I suspect the tradition developed as a way to add a little protein and flavor to a high carb diet.

Speaking of food, I was carefully studying a book my sister thoughtfully sent me for Christmas, “Thailand’s Best Street Food.” Most of it sounds very enticing. If I eat 7 times a day, I can really make a dent in the list. But thorough planning would have to wait.

Coming into Taipei, I had the usual priorities: a shower and at least one order of juicy pork dumplings (xiao long bao). The traveler’s hotel had mysteriously vanished, but there was a salon nearby offering a shampoo and blow-dry for about $10, so that would have to do. I made an appointment and stopped for breakfast. No dumplings in this particular food court, but there was a sweet potato rice porridge with an intriguing set of nine side dishes. Among these were pickles, a surprisingly salty preserved egg, two different preparations of bamboo shoots, marinated tofu skins, a chunk of fatty pork, and strips of deep fried wheat gluten (?) in a sweet sauce. The really unusual item was a chunk of off-white cheesy material that could not have been anything but “stinky tofu”; I had to eat a lot of porridge and other side dishes to cleanse my palate after indulging. But, for the sake of science, I did sample it repeatedly until fully consumed.

Still needing my dumpling fix and having 20 minutes before my hair wash, I headed across the building to another food court where I picked up a set of eight XLBs. Or should I say, while I was standing in line with my buzzer buzzing, another customer cut in and took my dumplings. When another round was finally ready, I was in such a rush that I splashed black vinegar on the lap area of my off-white pants (I think the official name for the color of these Dockers is “stone” although it is strikingly similar to the color of stinky tofu). After inhaling my dumplings, I rushed back to the salon.

The “shampoo” was really a 20 minute scalp massage involving pressure from the fingertips and knuckles, lubricated by shampoo. After the second wash and rinse, my barber (?) applied something which quickly made my head feel strangely cold. When I asked whether it was menthol, she simply said “hair spa” and applied hot cloths. After a thorough rinsing, she blow dried my hair. I never blow dry my hair, and even a professional couldn’t instill much shape to it. I think the end result resembled Harrison Ford on a bad hair day.

So after three breakfasts and a little freshening up, it was time to continue my journey. For the Taipei to Bangkok leg, we had an older version of the 777 with the seats I remembered. They seemed considerably narrower than the newer seats. Either that or my own “seat” got significantly wider after my gluttonous layover. No matter: it’s less than four hours, which is manageable even with a toddler buzzing around one seat over. Most of my neighbors and I had the Western-style fish fillet lunch; I’ll have enough meat-gravy-rice dishes this month to skip one now.

There were no raised eyebrows at passport control, my checked bags appeared undamaged, the ATM dispensed cash as requested, and I got a surprisingly well-priced mobile plan for my phone. I bypassed the taxi line and headed downstairs to the Airport Rail Link station. Down (and occasionally up) a series of ramps and the occasional elevator, I was able to balance a large duffel bag atop my roller bag, wear my backpack and juggle my camera bag through various modes of public transportation. Order descended into chaos when I discovered that I had to hike everything down a tall staircase on the far end of an elevated walkway, and then roll down a very uneven cobblestone sidewalk, constantly losing the duffel. By the time I got to the hotel, I decided that I’m a bit too out of shape for this and next time a taxi will do just fine. But being a cheapskate, I might change my mind.

Seeing Bangkok Again for the First Time

After minimal unburying of packed items and a quick shower, I headed out into the heat of the day for an afternoon massage. When I arrived back in the old neighborhood (Shukhumvit below the Thonglor BTS Skytrain station), everything looked different. My old 7-11 appears to have been transformed into a Subway sandwich shop, and my regular massage joint was closed. There were helpful signs for those who can read Thai or Japanese, but none in English. I wandered the streets looking at the mixture of closed shops and their ritzy replacements; the neighborhood definitely is losing its character — and probably a lot of its characters. My old mini-supermarket was still there, but sold out of large power strips, so this adventure was a complete miss so far.

Around the corner on Thonglor is a much nicer massage place called the Asia Herb Association. Here they offer not just the usual pressing, poking, stretching, and pounding, but also a variety of aroma therapy-based services. Even at twice the “usual” price, it’s not a bad deal. The trick is to get there across six lanes of ungovernable madness. I headed for the crosswalk near the Salil hotel, and it was much further up than I remembered. Using it also seemed to me to fall somewhere between completely impossible and merely absurdly dangerous. As I looked up and down the street, I spied a sign for the old massage joint I didn’t find in its usual location. It seems the business now trades as Prangtip Massage, just up from the Thonglor Dental Hospital. As in the old location, for a traditional Thai massage you put on thin children’s sized cotton pajamas and lay on a mat in a room with up to three other customers, separated by sheets that hang between the mats. I actually had a room to myself this time, where my grunts of pain could be between my masseuse and me, and there wasn’t any giggling from other masseuses. I had forgotten how painful this can be: everything that hurts when you press it or stretch it is pressed and stretched into submission. On the other hand, I actually dozed off a few times. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t believe it’s all for the best, but a few times a year is enough.

Since I had not had a proper street food lunch, I grabbed two grilled pork sticks (moo ping) near the BTS Skytrain station. That and a bottle of unsweetened green tea would have to tide me over until dinner. Before returning to my room to regroup, I stopped at the immense shopping mall across busy Sukhumvit from my hotel. Terminal 21 is connected to the Asoke BTS Skytrain station on its “Paris” level. You descend past the “Rome” level to the “Caribbean” level to find the Gourmet Market, where I knew I could pick up particularly delicious candied ginger (called “Dried Ginger”) by the tenth of a kilo. In front of me in line was a small European family spending about $40 on imported foods. Yikes. I couldn’t help noticing that my sales clerk seemed to have slapped down a towel near the bagging area, where I saw an insect on its back struggling to right itself. I guess in the tropics, no matter how fancy your property, bugs will get in. Let’s all check our bags carefully.

Back at the hotel, I put together a light pack for my trip to Chinatown. I had planned to go completely on public transportation and on foot, but could not figure out how to cross from the last MRT (subway) station into Chinatown, so I hired a tuk tuk. I don’t know what fare is reasonable these days, but I accepted 60% of the original asking price because I felt a little desperate. We had a trouble finding the precise location of the street cart I was looking for because the GPS dot on Google Maps had a serious delay in updating. As a result, we drove two blocks further than needed and I backtracked on foot.

Lim Lao Ngo (as it is called in the Street Food book, but I didn’t see an English sign) was busy with patrons ordering fish ball noodle soup for takeaway, which is why the gentleman taking orders asked me if I wanted my food “packaged.” Which I just could not understand, because I’m definitely not there for packaged food. Fortunately, we were eventually able to understand one another and I sat down and waited, watching the team prepare bowl after bowl of noodles. The process was simple: the cart had water at the boil for quickly cooking fresh rice or wheat noodles, two kinds of fish cakes (one sliced on the bias, and another in whole balls the size of large jawbreakers), fried garlic for seasoning, and hot broth. The first guy prepared the bowl with the fried garlic and sliced fish cake and positioned it for the second guy, who quickly cooked each portion of noodles in an immersible basket on a long stick and added them to the bowl and passed it to the third guy, who added the broth. I didn’t see who added the fish balls. It wasn’t until I was slurping hot broth into my already overheated body that I remembered how strange it was that hot soups are so popular in such a hot country. But as promised, the broth was not at all fishy. In fact, it’s so clear you could be forgiven for thinking it was just hot water, but the “body” of the soup gives away that it definitely was cooked with some kind of protein. It’s a long way to go for fish ball noodle soup, which seems to be served on every other block in this city, but a high quality way to start exploring a new neighborhood.

I had my eye on a dessert stall several blocks away as my next stop. Chujit is said to be famed for a dish I have enjoyed (to a lesser or greater extent) in several other establishments in Thailand: black sesame-filled glutinous rice dumplings served in a bowl of hot ginger tea. The flaw in most places is that the texture of the filling is too dense; it needs to flow like a liquid to fully blend the flavors. I’m sure it’s easier being the critic than making it right. Unfortunately, after several trips up and down the street, consulting numerous maps, I could not find the stand. In fact, that alley was closed off and there were at least six other stands there. Whether this is a permanent change, I don’t know, but I still needed my sugar fix, so I headed all the way across town to the book’s recommended stand for mango sticky rice. (When switching between the MRT and the BTS systems, I used the men’s room on the “Rome” floor of the Terminal 21 mall. While it was decorated along what we might think of as a Tuscan theme, the “washlet” toilet seat was distinctly Asian in design. (Hmm, what’s this button? Surprise!)

Sukhumvit Soi 38, just outside the Thonglor BTS Skytrain station, is famous for its outdoor dining in the evenings. I can’t recall buying from this stand, “Raan Khao Niew Mamuang (Nhungnhing)”, despite its close proximity to where I’ve always stayed in Bangkok. One woman was quickly and efficiently assembling trays of sweet sticky rice with sliced mango, while another kept bringing out spotted (and I assume, therefore, very ripe) fruit from somewhere in the back. Each order comes with a bag of warm creamy coconut milk flavored with salt and sugar, and a bag of deep fried mung beans, which provide a nice crunchy contrast. What I forgot to request was a fork, so when I opened the package at the hotel I challenged myself to eat what has to be one of the world’s most slippery foods just with my fingers. It didn’t take long to finish every last grain of rice, but the glass top on the desk is going to need a little attention from housekeeping.

Although of course I knew better, it was at this point where I needed to lay down “just for a minute.” So begins the cycle of waking up at midnight or in the wee hours, fully clothed, lights blazing, in bad need of dental hygiene. I can do better. But will I? Tomorrow is another day.