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Tham Jiak: Bangkok Food Post: A-Roi
Tham Jiak means in some way "love to eat" in Hokkien. I am a Malaysian Hokkien and truly love to eat.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Bangkok Food Post: A-Roi

How long since I have abandon this blog? I guess we better skip the I’m-so-sorry part and get right down to business. Yes I’ve been to Bangkok once again, if any of you have guess with me missing in action, and work life has just been busy. So I have to be short here. No matter how much I love to write, sometimes I do agree to some degree that picture speaks louder than words.

I have been contemplating for a long time on how to present all the wondrous food of Bangkok that I had in my long-stay two times trip here. There is just so much to talk about from fresh fruits to som-tum to porks (which seems like the main meat here in contrast to Malaysia, where it is the universal white meat – chicken). Nonetheless, chicken will be featured here too of course, albeit in dimmer limelight, but still not forgotten.

Here I go again, launching into ranting when I have just said I want to let pictures do the talking. I can’t resist it. I am a writer at heart squeezing in beside my tham-jiaknes. Anyway, for the Bangkok foods, I have tried searching around for proper info in the food I ate, its name and how it was made, but nonetheless, it was too many and much cannot be found on the web. Appreciate if any of you out there knows about it, would drop some comments for all of us to share.

Now I would kick-off my Bangkok food posts with street-snacks:

As I found out soon, all snacks in Thailand are of 10 baht, equivalent to RM1 in Malaysia. Everything is 10 baht, from fried stuff to ice cream to peanuts and to fruits and to even my favourite coconut. We find it cheap as the portion are usually very generous.

First up is my favourite snack from the street side vendor. It is called Kanom Kai Noak Garta, which are actually fried sweet potato balls. Crunchy and sweet at the same time, very moreish.



Then we have the Kanom Krok, which is actually coconut pancake, cooked in special pan. It is sweet, for the plain ones, and slightly savoury with the addition of the green onions. I welcome the taste of the spring onions as it brings this tiny little morsels into another level, weighing between sweet and savoury.




As I walk along the street after my lunch, I came across a stall grilling bananas. I just had to give it a try as all this while, this lovely fruit appear only as eaten plain, along with my ice creams, or mashed up into my muffins or banana cakes and also hidden in my pancakes sometimes plus sliced finely into my bowl of cereals. But never was it ever grilled and eaten before. We ordered a pack (10 baht of course) to go, and the lady gave a generous douse of palm sugar syrup onto it before handing it to us.





The Gluay Ping turn out to be chewier and stickier than I liked. It could get stuck in your teeth and also a bit rough edged (I don’t know how else to explain it). Maybe this stall did not give justice to these Gluay Pings as later, in my next trip, I had a tried on grilled sliced bananas on a stick which was much better, crispy on the outside with sweet and soft interior..

So many sweets, now its time for savoury snacks. This fried puffed fishballs are certainly one of the best fishballs I’ve ever tasted. I called it puffed, as it is really fluffy with fishy taste. Hard to describe but just one word, good!




Then its back to sweet again. This stall is right outside the street near my hotel, where this lady sells fried sweet bread. It is something of a sight to behold, which is how it attracted me and my colleague one day while we were strolling by. So we went there one fine Sunday morning, just to get it. We bought a stick each, haul it back to our hotel restaurants, like two little girls with a good find of sweets.



It was really good, soft and sweet cake-like bread, with a surprise in the middle, of all things a sausage ball. Surprisingly, this salty addition was really complementing, and it helped us gobbled up the rest of this gigantic ball. It was that good, my colleague and I bought it again on our second trip, like little girls going back for their treats.

Next up is mini donuts on stick that I stumble upon in one of the many myriad of stalls in Jatujak (certainly a shopping paradise but not one to speak about in a foodblog) and of course with wondrous foods (more to come). These mini donuts are really good, soft and ‘juicy’. The brownie ones are just-enough-chocolatey with chocolate candy bits while the strawberries ones are sweetly-fragrant with bits of strawberry-jam candy here and there. Ah, lovely!

With all that heaty yet addictive snacks, I have to wash it all down with my all time favourite Ma Praao. The mini coconuts here area extremely sweet (then again, everything is sweet here, more on that later) and really refreshing. Now I’m missing it already. Here is the guy who’s stall is right outside my office. He’s my source of Ma Praao and various fruits daily!


17 comments:

Lengx2 said...

Great posts. Really enjoyed looking at all the yummy snack pics!

Coketai said...

Yummy! Yummy, next time visit to Bangkok must gather all the nice snak and food location, gonna one by one!!!

Thanks for your wonderful and informative food information!

Anonymous said...

The street snacks look so good. The only street food you find in Vancouver is hotdog. Sigh :-(.

rokh said...

leng2, thanks!

coketai, my pleasure :)

suanne, maybe that's why you're so good at making your own snacks ;)

Mahek said...

hi
you have a lovely blog and i am going to read it thoroughly .
i came on a vacation to malaysia in may but that little time is not enough for me to know your culture and food so your blog will be a boon and i will know so much more about malaysian food and culture.

Xiu Long Bao said...

hei u r back. I hav been checkin' out ur blog for quite some time n i tot dat u gav up on blogging ^_^

teckiee said...

This is way too good...i'll be going to bkk soon too muahaha ...i tried the kuih in the 4th pic in Cambodia before... but yours looks much nicer.

jeepeng said...

i belive one day some publisher will see this blog and will think abt publishing books for you, u r seriously making my saliva drop and starving.

Audrey Cooks said...

Hey Rachel, r u interested in joining us for a Malaysian Food Bloggers get together? If u r e-mail me at audrey@audreycooks.com by this Wednesday?

jeepeng said...

http://www.friedchillies.com/fc/

this is where ppl discuss abt m'sian foods

Unknown said...

whoa.i will die of obese over there..the snacks look so good and it was cheap!

boo_licious said...

the snacks look so good. Thxs so much for sharing, now my tummy is rumbling.

Gong Xi Fa Cai to you and yr family. Hope the Year of the Boar brings lots of prosperity for you. Drive safely home to Taiping.

Babe_KL said...

Wishing you and your family a happy and prosperous Chinese New Year. Oink Oink!

Anonymous said...

Waah, Rokh! I can't see any of the pictures at all! Tried clicking but nothing's happening. Any idea why? My browser's Firefox....

Hungry Hamster said...

Your trip to Bangkok sounds delish!!! I can't wait to go back there either!

Wandernut said...

hi! your blog's been so quiet lately! :)

i just came back from bangkok not too long ago. also have lots of foodie adventures...

here's the link to my BKK posts:

food only: http://wandernut-eats.blogspot.com/2007/05/food-hunting-in-bangkok.html#comments

full post:
http://wandernut.blogspot.com/2007/05/nut-itchy-in-bangkok.html

Anonymous said...

hi

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