Not Your Average Garden Party

Having previously watched the Saphan Phra Ram VIII bridge building documentary, naturally I gravitated toward the towering spire to see the Bangkok Superbridge in all it’s suspended glory.

Shortly after finishing my blood soup, I took a left off Th. Samsen and headed east down a small street neatly lined with Tuk Tuks. If the homing pigeon in me was correct (figuratively speaking, that is – although I never did figure what the meaty bits were in that soup), this would take me out to the main river, the Mae Nam Chao Phraya. From there, I hoped to catch a good view of the new bridge.

Despite wandering for less 2 minutes down this quiet side road, it felt like I’d just walked right out of the heart of Bangkok and into a sleepy suburb. Gone were the fume belching busses, the ubiquitous horn honkers and the pavements more akin to an urban obstacle course than a pedestrian thoroughfare. No longer did I need that spare pair of eyes up my behind watching out for speeding mopeds, potholes and lastminute.com telegraph poles; instead, I could now fully appreciate the unfolding scenery as I sauntered along.

Bordering the street were high, whitewashed walls. I had little choice but to continue along the street and hope that it spat me out on the riverbank. Rising up behind the wall, I noticed a cluster of ornate orange roofs denoting another of the many temples in the area. Further along, four young monks appeared, spanners and screwdrivers in hand, and busily set about righting one of the many rusted flagpoles bolted to the wall. Fighting the urge to whip out my camera and get a photo that I would later imaginatively title ‘Monks fixing Flagpole’, I continued along the backstreet, sweating in the midday sun like a hippy at a job interview and darting like a vampire from pavement to pavement wherever the patchy shade seemed thickest. 

I heard the end of the street before I saw it. Dogs barking, kids yelling and excitable shouts peppered with sporadic hoots of laughter. I became curious as to the commotion. The retaining walls gave way to various low level buildings and narrow offshoots. Predictably, shop fronts and eateries appeared as if by magic, taking full advantage of these few square feet of ever precious Bangkok real estate. Beyond the shop fronts, the street terminated in a full blanket of shade afforded by a canopy of broad leafed trees. Beneath the trees lay the source off all the commotion.

Just ahead, to the right, I spotted a large white marquee - of which the contents remained obscured. Clearly visible, though, were a collection of tables and chairs on its periphery, mostly occupied with Thais who, on the whole, were stripped to the waist and gathered round several bottles of liquor in varying stages of completion.

I seriously considered turning around at that point and casually wandering back from whence I came. In any other situation I probably would have, since there’s nothing quite as unpredictable as a drunk, or worse, a group of drunks. This time, however, I was reluctant to do an about turn. Although I could have really done  without any hassle, I really, really did want to see what was that tent – and check out the bridge.

I decided to continue onward, my reason being twofold:  for one, on such an empty street I must have stood out like a turd in a punchbowl and, despite the drunken fervour, I’m sure that I’d already been noticed (to turn around now probably wouldn’t have done me any favours) and, secondly, I really did want to see what was in that tent.

The open side of the tent didn’t come into view until I’d walked among the tables and the partying Thais. Much to my delight, many of the guys were too busy with the whisky to even acknowledge the arrival of a nosy foreigner – and those that did glance over didn’t seem in the least bit offended that I’d wandered into the party zone. So long as the shouting and laughing continued, I’d feel comfortable about making my way to the water’s edge to see the bridge, although now I had a more pressing engagement with a tent.

The tent, as it turned out, was a rudimentary Muay Thai Boxing Academy. To the far right hung row upon row of tatty, taped up gloves – I must have counted at least 50 pairs – below which lay a small changing area. The middle section formed the gym. Around a makeshift weights bench (knocked up from what looked like several scraps of angle iron) lay dumbbells and barbells – some of which took the form of steel bars set in buckets of concrete. I paused for a moment to salute such ingenuity and thrift. The remainder of the garden party-sized marquee housed the main Thai boxing ring, sitting proudly on a 3ft platform and bound with adequate rope to stop the loser from escaping too early. I don’t know if the ring happened to be full size or not, but it did looked pretty big – even from my current, relatively safe distance.

With curiosity now satisfied, I chose to linger no longer. Concerned that some bright spark might have the brilliant, drunken idea of chivvying me into the ring with his mate called ‘Wan the Destroyer ‘ (who instead of being born had more likely been cast out of the same concrete as the barbells), I casually drifted further from the tent and more toward the riverbank.

There was no point in turning around now. Having come this far, I felt I owed it to The Big Kahuna to check out his new bridge.

The Big Kahuna and the Bangkok Super Bridge

After my fill of soup, I wandered further north on Thanon Samsen until one of the towering supports for the new Bangkok superbridge, Saphan Phra Ram VIII, loomed into view above the shops and the grubby residential blocks.

I don’t recall it being there on my last visit (and it’s not the kind of thing you’d forget in a hurry), but I do remember watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel about its build. Although I’ve long since forgotten the facts and figures (now filed under ‘U’ for ‘unnecessary information’, alongside how to knot a necktie and how to mow a lawn) I do remember one thing quite vividly: The man at the helm. An industrious European contractor in an even busier Hawaiian shirt. I’m not joking, you could almost hear this thing.

I remember Hawaiian shirt guy being under a constant barrage of sh*t from his superiors – albeit not for his dress sense, as one might think, but instead for a string of delays during the construction phase. You had to give this chap credit though, he stuck to his guns every time the clipboard brigade showed up and urged him to cut corners in an effort to meet their stringent deadlines. Well, they implied it but didn’t specifically say it in front of the camera, if you know what I mean.

But here’s the thing: Hawaii 5-0 preferred to finish a job a little later than scheduled if it meant having fewer construction workers sliced into pieces by rogue suspension cables.  In contrast, his bosses appeared keener to finish the bridge on time and sweep up the arms and legs later. Thankfully, Magnum P.I. generally got his own way and, time after time, averted sure-fire disaster and the inevitable human jigsaw puzzle 200 ft below the new bridge.

Mind you, at one point I was convinced that even Magnum was going to have to kow-tow or get fired (either way, it was destined to go pear shaped) but that just didn’t happen. Here was a man with sound principles. To cut corners or walk off site would have been to risk injury or death to his team members, and to do that would have been to commit both a moral and actual crime. And that, it seemed, just wasn’t the way he rolled. The only crime he was prepared to commit was an unforgiveable one against fashion.

But in the interests of better TV – and as long as no one lost any body parts as a result – the Shadenfreuder in me was  almost willing the Big Kahuna to walk, if just to see the evil pen pushing baddies (or possibly decent guys simply portrayed as evil pen pushing baddies by the documentary team) get their comeuppance.  Ooh, I do love a good drama.

“HA!” I’d holler at the baddies on the box.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO MAGNUM! EH?” I’d rant, with index finger jabbing the air for extra punctuation.

But alas, not this time. It all went like clockwork (apart from a few limb saving delays, that is.)

“Still, there may be a bit of Ski Jumping on the other channel” I’d grumble.

“That’s always good for crashes…”

Bangkok Street Food

Disappointingly, since touching down in Bangkok 2 days ago I’ve sported an appetite similar in size to that of your average Saharan Gerbil. I’ve grazed on the odd chicken heart here and a plate veggies and rice there, but even then only because I felt like I had to eat rather than because I actually wanted to.

For me, that’s pretty wierd. In the normal turn of events (and those that already know me will fully appreciate this), you’d have more chance of separating your kids from a Rottweiler than you would of parting me from a bowl of noodle soup. Without wanting to exaggerate here, I’d take life for lesser reason.

Maybe it’s been the heat, or possibly the radical change of surroundings, I don’t know – but today, thankfully, my appetite went back through the roof. When I awoke this morning, had I not shown a Ghandi-esque level restraint and self-control, as sure as eggs is eggs I’d have been gnawing chunks out of the bedside cabinet even before I’d lit my first cigarette.

So, I thought, what better day than today to take myself off on a gastronomic tour of Bangkok’s avenues and alleyways. Armed with camera, compass, a fist full of Baht and a rumbling, cavernous belly to fill, I peeled left (or north, according to the compass) out of Thanon Rambutri and went in search of sustenance.

Stop 1: Breakfast.

The consummate power of nicotine never ceases to amaze and astound. Despite my rampant and unabated hunger pangs, I still opted for the usual breakfast: a big, black coffee and another 5 minutes ruthlessly shaved off my life. But rather than swing straight into one of the numerous cafe/restaurants in the immediate vicinity of Khao San Road, I wandered until I got to the first bridge outside the backpacker bubble (or, more accurately, until my affliction got the better of me.) 1 Small, grotty alleyway, 1 small, plumpish Thai lady and 3 big pots of net-filtered coffee. Jackpot.

When I set eyes on the heavily soiled, wire-rimmed mesh bags sat over the three battered aluminium pots, I knew I’d be in for a kick ass, don’t-let-me-sleep-till-sundown, proper cup of coffee. And I tell you what –I wasn’t wrong.

I ‘d never seen coffee made this way until a few years ago but, as far as I understand it, in many ways the mesh-and-pot setup is quite similar to the ‘normal’ kitchen worktop coffee machine (but without the hassle in Dixons when you go to buy it, the big shell of cash you lose when you pay for it, and, as an added bonus, this particular model comes with a fully manual, spoon orientated, strength control system fitted as standard.) Just fill up the mesh with ground coffee, pour boiling water through it, dunk it in the pot a few times and away you go. Now that’s what I call instant coffee.

And the best thing? It costs 10 Baht, approximately 30 cents, for a half pint glass full of some of the best coffee I’ve had in a long while. In your face, Starbucks.

Stop 2: Early Lunch

Breakfast today was late and lunch came quite early – the gap between the two being about 4 blocks (not that you really have uniform blocks here – either the town planner had missed out on his morning coffee or was too preoccupied with planning his early lunch to arrange streets with due diligence.)

Anyhow, with the coffee still working its way down and splashing on the base of my stomach lining, and my lungs still thanking the lord above that I didn’t opt for the longer, drawn out breakfast, I stumbled upon a strip of about 5 or six mobile noodle soup stalls. I knew I’d never make it past number six without pulling up a small, plastic stool at one of their street side tables so I checked each one out as I passed. I think I got to about stall number 4 before I started smiling scarily at one of the ladle swinging ladies and gleefully pointing at various strips of dead animal.

For me, at least, it usually comes down to potluck with the soups on street stalls. You see, with barbeques etc you can generally distinguish what the meat is by either its raw or cooked form as either one, or the other, or both are usually displayed either on or next to the pan or the coals. With soups, however, it’s always a little more difficult to tell – particularly when the chunky bits are half submerged in a steaming broth.
One great thing about eating in this way, though, is that you get to see your food being cooked right in front of you instead of it being done out of sight behind closed doors. You get to see your dish being constructed from scratch. No additional bogeys, or semen, just good, wholesome food. Paranoid? Me?

Anyway, back to today’s semen free soup. First, into the empty bowl went the noodles (from a choice of 4 or 5 different types ranging from threadlike glass noodles to approximately 1cm wide vermicelli-like ones), then some crunchy bits (I’ve no idea what they were, but welcome to my world), and finally a few teaspoons of this and half-ladles of that (all I know is that one of these came in at about 9.7 on the heat Richter scale.) As quick as that, the ‘dry part’ of the construction is complete.

I neglected to mention beforehand, but throughout the dry build we also have several different varieties of meat cooking up in the mother ship: the large, half dustbin sized pot of broth. These chunky bits were dropped into the bin at the very start of the build process. I couldn’t tell what they were before they went in – and neither could I when they emerged – but most were thin, quick cooking strips of meat with a few round balls tossed in for good measure. At least the balls were of the pre-processed variety, and thankfully not ‘au natural’. As for the taste and texture of the balls, imagine a full budget airline meal compressed into something the size of a marble and you won’t be a million miles off.

With construction complete, or so I thought, I then foolishly expected soup to join noodles, noodles to join soup and for me to embark on a string of faux-pas involving chopsticks and condiments – but we still had one completely unexpected, eyebrow raising ingredient still to add. Blood. Fresh, uncooked, gag reflex testing blood . After scooping up enough of the stuff to give a devil worshipper a stiffy, she then dipped the half-full ladle into the once clearish broth, subsequently filling it to the brim. The result was a kind of bitty, brownish, gloopy murk the likes of which I’ve not seen since eating an undercooked kebab during my stint in Morocco. It didn’t look any better when unleashed on a bowl of noodles either (the soup, that is.)

In went another ladle of broth and the deed was done. Thanking the vendor, I clutched the steaming bowl of nosh and scuttled along the pavement to the nearest stool and chair. I’m not going to say I hesitated because of the blood – that would be untrue – I went to work on it immediately. I was too hungry to be dilly dallying. In fact, I only dawdled long enough to drop in some extra bean sprouts and other random foliage already at the table.

So, was the soup good? Without a word of a lie, it’s one of the best clear(ish) broth soups I’ve ever had the good fortune to find. It was super. It even made the airline balls taste good. I don’t know if it was that good just because of the blood, but if it was, I’m seriously going to have to consider joining a really dodgy cult. What a meal.

Right, somehow I’ve managed to write over 2 pages about drinking a cup of coffee and eating a bowl of soup. God knows how long it’s going to take to tell you about the afternoon since it involved some impromptu Thai boxing, inexplicably getting caught up in a Thai family knees up, a full on schoolgirl cat fight and, best of all, another cracking bowl of soup.

More on that stuff another day, though.

If you want to read future posts as they appear, click the little orange square in the side bar to subscribe to the blog for free. If, however, you found this abrasive, coarse, and unnecessarily graphic then you’ve probably already pressed the little red square at the top anyway (possibly around the bogey bit…). More soon.

Postcard from Bangkok

It’s funny how quickly things can change in the space of one week.

Sunday just gone I was sitting at home, catching up on the latest adventures of other folks by way of their travel journals with excitement but also (if I dare admit it) a little envy, too. In my eyes, vicarious travel is a kind of ‘psuedo travel fix’ – it’s a way of sharing an adventure when you’re just not in any position to create your own – for whatever reason.

But, curiously, ever the slave to my own impulsive nature I left the remaining posts in my Google Reader inbox and instead hopped on over to Momondo.com, a pretty nifty flight price aggregator, ‘just to check’ the current prices of long hauls.

Anyhow, long story short, after six rather hectic days I’m now laying on my pit in my new found abode on Khao San Road typing this out. It’s pretty safe to say that flights from London to Bangkok were dirt cheap last Sunday…
I haven’t really had time to figure out a plan from here yet, but I’d imagine something will take shape at some point. Isn’t that just the best feeling?

I love the scatterbrained thoughts that come during this time, the time just before you make the next set of travel plans. Shall I go back round the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos loop? Or maybe check out some bits of Indonesia I’ve yet to see. What about island hopping right through the Philippines, or Micronesia, for that matter? Who knows where I’ll end up?

My head and, to a greater extent, my heart rule my feet. The cerebral travel planning grasshopper is doing a shit load of overtime right now. Best he comes up with something soon, if not I’ll be forced to play a bit of backpacker roulette at the Train Station.

For now I’ll mull over the various options from behind a stick or two of BBQ’d chicken hearts and livers. Man, I just can’t get enough of those things.

As ever, I’ll keep you posted as events unfold.

TaTa For Now!

Ps. I’ll get some photos up in the new Asia Gallery soon and make that front page link live too!

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