Living in Bangkok

On Fridays we eat doughnuts…but when we headed down to the little alleyway under the freeway on Friday morning, our doughnut guy wasn’t there! There were a lot fewer carts out than usual, and we finally remembered Friday was a public holiday. We decided to try one of the other fried treats carts, and got some fried bananas, purple sweet potato balls, and sesame balls. There weren’t just-fried and hot, like our usual doughnuts, but they were still pretty good. Then in the late morning, I headed to the Big C near Ekkamai for some household odds and ends. Afterwards, I stopped for lunch at a little eatery and had dim sum for one…gai lan with oyster sauce ( too much oyster sauce! ) and shu mai: On the way home, maybe because lunch was not that good, I stopped at the crepe cart in front of our closest 7-Eleven, and got one of the stacks of coconut pancakes I’ve been eyeing for a while… On Saturday morning, we headed to Khlong Toei market, where I finally bought some of the rice cr

On Tuesday, we celebrated my birthday! Waiting for a cheeseburger...so patiently... We both had to teach, and I didn’t feel like planning a whole thing (plus, there’s not much going on anyway), so we had a pretty relaxing day that mostly involved eating my favorite things and answering sweet birthday wishes from friends & family. I wanted to have sushi for lunch, but my two top choices were either not delivering for lunch or else not delivering on Tuesdays at all so, instead of having mediocre-looking or super-expensive sushi, I decided to have papaya salad, which is one of my favorite things to eat anyway. Roman went down to the cart on our street, and ordered us a papaya salad, sticky rice, and a piece of grilled chicken. It came with some raw cabbage and green herbs. And the green herbs came with a cute little caterpillar! Man, I love papaya salad. In the afternoon, we taught our classes, and Roman ordered my birthday cake slices! I did a lot of research into a lo

On Saturday, we planned to take a water taxi to Wang Lang market, but when we got to Sathorn Pier, there were no other people waiting for the express boat. An empty pier is a bad sign... When we backtracked a little, we saw a sign stating that the express boats were temporarily not running on weekends and public holidays. We talked to a long boat operator who offered to take us to the Wang Lang pier for 700 baht (he eventually dropped it to 600), but since we’d been planning on a 15 baht express boat ride, not a leisurely long boat tourist cruise, we declined. We ditched our plans to head to Wang Lang, and decided to wander the neighborhood around the pier instead. The area, near the Saphan Taksin BTS stop, has a distinctive feel for Bangkok—narrow streets, older architecture that’s a mix of colonial-style buildings and skinny colorful houses, and people out picking up produce or Chinese medicines or meals to go. It feels local and relatively busy, with many fruit stalls, bakerie