Sunday, September 5

Over the weekend, Bangkok continued to slowly open up a little.

On Saturday morning, I made us a breakfast of morning glory sauteed in duck fat, a fried duck egg, buttered olive toast from Maison Jean Phillippe, watermelon, and persimmon.

After playing around on my new laptop (yay!), we headed to Sathorn, our old stomping grounds. We walked to Suan Phlu, a little neighborhood full of fruit and vegetable stands, small shops, and street food.

We had pad Thai for lunch (we tried to order it with crispy pork but it came with tofu).

Is this...what we ordered?

We also picked up some jackfruit from a guy selling that and durian (both of which are out of season and hard to find).

And we went to Mercado, a fancy grocer mostly selling French breads and imported French pantry items. We got a loaf of bread, two kinds of cheese, and duck liver mouse, and ogled the eclairs, heirloom tomatoes, and foie gras.

And then we made our way back home, walking through Suan Phlu park and the back streets along the way.

It’s a weird thing, but sometimes when you’re hot and tired and getting slightly irritated, a cold chocolate milk is the best thing in the world. If you can get the goddamn thing open.

Struggling...

Success!

For dinner, I pan-fried the rest of the morning glory with garlic and duck fat, and made us little plates with the very good bread from Mercado, a piece of duck liver pate, a piece of French goat cheese, some slices of aged gouda, and some of the jackfruit. Served with honey and jam.

And, man, was it good. A storm blew in while I was putting together our meal, and it was the perfect rainy Saturday night in Paris...Bangkok?...kind of dinner.

On Sunday, I made us a tropicaly French toast for breakfast...baguette soaked in a coconut milk-egg custard, served with caramelized pineapple and toasted coconut.

Then we headed out to Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen, a temple that was founded in 1610, and is known for having a 226-foot high golden Buddha statue (it was built recently, not in 1610). It's in a part of Bangkok called Phasi Charoen, and we rode the metro for about twenty minutes, and then stepped into a neighborhood that felt very far removed from the city. The streets to the temple were small and quiet, lined with a mix of very old wooden Thai houses and newer buildings. Few people were out walking, and the locals looked at us in curiosity, as did the neighborhood cats.

The temple grounds were actually quite pretty and relaxed—we took off our shoes and wandered amongst small groups of Thais, including many monks, who were praying and making offerings. There were several small temples, a little turtle pond, covered gardens, and a large stupa.

There was also—my favorite—a place where you could buy little buckets of fish food and loaves of bread, and feed the giant catfish that hang out at the river, awaiting your offerings. I assume it's a way of making merit and it supports the temple, but really, I just like feeding fish.

The golden Buddha itself was...very large. It's hard to really get a good view of it from the ground, especially because you can't get that much distance to really take it all in.

It's really more striking from afar.

Or in this video Roman took from the metro:

Still, the temple was lovely, and the visit was a nice change of pace from the busy city center.

When we left the temple, I realized I was starving, and we stopped at a little street food cart that was set up across from the MRT stop. We ordered bowls of soup, then sat at one of the outside tables, and ate lunch! One of the great pleasure of living in Bangkok is being able to find a good, cheap meal almost anywhere in the city, and I really missed being able to do this.

And on our way back home, we picked up a couple of our favorite treats—coconuts shakes—which we enjoyed while watching a video of Anthony Bourdain visiting the Mekong Delta.