Savouring every mouthful of Thai food

By Sharon Chew

Food in Bangkok and Buriram has been awesome and trust me, you will not have enough of it (or maybe it is just me). Since the day we arrived, I have been eating non-stop and officially, I can add Thai food onto the list of food that I love. Penang is where I came from. They have a lot of good food there and I will go for Thai food at least once a week, but of course, it cannot be compared to the authentic Thai food I have been savouring these few days. Not to mention, the food sold at the convenience store is yummylicious too!

Thai national cuisine is a blend of several Southeast Asian elements and is known for its spiciness. Thai food is rich in colour and flavour.  It is also known for its balance of three to four fundamental taste senses in each dish or the overall meal: sour, sweet, salty and bitter. Basically, when the food is served, the look of the food opens up your appetite and the moment you taste it, your tastebuds come alive.

During our stay here, we have tried foods from the convenience store to restaurants; from street food to home cooked food. The difference in terms of food in Bangkok and Buriram is their ingredients. In Buriram, we saw that the hosts have their own farm for the mushrooms and vegetables that were served to us which gives you the feeling of freshness, and you also taste the sweat and hardwork of the villagers. Although in Bangkok, we do not see the farms, the ingredients are still fresh and they taste really crunchy and juicy, especially for the vegetables. Besides that, in their markets, you can see a big piece of pork hanging. 

Before I go on to the authentic Thai food, I just want to mention the tastiness of the food from 7-Eleven which to some of us, is actually the best food to have. The main reason is that it is just a 2-minute walk from our hotel and the service there is wonderful because they heat up or defrost the food that we want (which is a service that we cannot find in Malaysia). When asked the opinion of a local, he said that 7-Eleven would be his last choice. He also mentioned that tomyam is not their national dish – most of the days, I thought tomyam was the national dish of the Thai people. He mentioned that it is just one of the many famous dishes they have. Other dishes that are known internationally are fried chicken basil, green curry, clear tomyam soup and not to forget the famous fried noodles – pad thai.

Throughout the three days when we were in Buriram, we were served tomyam for almost every meal by the hosts. Not to forget their sincerity and their kindness – they were extremely humble and generous too. We were really spoilt at that time. The tomyam here is different from the one I had in Malaysia whereby it is filled with all kinds of other ingredients like, chicken, fish, prawns and squid with mushrooms. Besides that, the taste of their tomyam was a balance between spicy and sour which is difficult to get right. 

Other than this, one of my favourite local food is their boat noodles. It comes in four flavours and three sizes. They are beef, pork, tomyam and one pink soup (whose name I am not sure of) and they can be made small, medium or big. If you are a big eater, I would suggest you go for the medium or big one or another alternative is to order many small sizes of different flavours (just a heads up, the small one is only one mouthful and that is all). The pink one tasted a little weird but we saw some people from other tables started mixing the noodles. So we tried and when the pink one is mixed with the tomyam, it tasted less weird and more flavourful. 

We also tried this soup noodle near our hotel and were shocked that the locals actually put sugar into their soup. One of the student tried adding sugar and chili flakes and the taste turned out to be really great. It has a little spiciness and a taste of sweetness which is a lot different from many dishes we have back home. Other than that, when we were having our meals outside, the locals usually serve the noodles with other added ingredients by the side and they include, peanuts, chili flakes, sugar and green chili. 

The street food here is awesome, especially the pork steak which we purposely went around Chatuchak weekend market to buy before we were satisfied to leave for the mall for more shopping. 

It does make one wonder how Thai people stay so thin when they eat so much sugar and it is rarely heard that they have any diabetic problems. Malaysia, where food is also another tourist attraction, should really learn. 

Sharon Chew, 23 is a mediocre student who loves food but always forgets to take photos. Loves to daydream but never remembers them

Diary Entry Day One - The Start of Our Short Adventure

By Sharon Chew
Photos by Esther Chung and Amanda Sangeetha Thomas

Waiting excitedly to go on board!

At approximately, 12.05pm, Thailand time (which is an hour earlier of Malaysia time), we reached the Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Everyone was tired and hungry due to the long traveling time and not to mention that we were definitely not morning people. Neither did the long queue at the immigrations counters nor the food advertisements playing on the TVs help our rumbling tummies.

Waiting patiently in line while waiting to go through immigration.

 Met with some issues regarding Visas of our fellow travellers, we finally sought out to fill our tummies before embarking on our journey.

The first train ride from the airport are pretty comfortable with plenty of empty seats, which gave us a chance to mingle around, however, what proved to be the challenge was the transit to Phelon Chit, where our hotel was located.

Reaching Paya Thai, we had to transit to a different line and this required us to purchase Rabbit Cards, which either came with both stored value or day trip passes which would allow us to get around during our 9 day trip. 

Counting the tickets for the students.

The train upon its arrival was full and we had to squeeze our way in to the tiny spaces and carrying our huge luggage along did not aid the situation, causing some of us to take the next train.

After squeezing in with our luggage for four stops, we finally reached Phleon Chit stop, where we got off and started lugging our luggage down flights of staircases. After dragging our luggage along the roadsides, across a railway track, we finally turned in to a little alley, where our hotel was located. Walking along the streets of Bangkok on our way to our hotel, we got a little whiff of Bangkok, with the tiny massage centres and laundry shops, which got us all excited to explore Bangkok.

After much lugging and heaving, we finally reached Golden Palace Hotel. A simple and nice, 2-storey hotel, it proved to be a clean and spacious hotel with a nice little pool.

Thai Restaurant that showcases authenticity of Thai cuisine.

Upon checking in, we rested our worn out bodies and got ready for our first session about LGBT issues. We headed to Asok via the Sky Train, which proved to be a challenge again as travelling in a huge crowd in the same train was simply impossible due to the crowd. After finally uniting with the rest at Asok, we headed to a Thai restaurant called Baan Thai Suk to meet our representative. The walk from Asok train station to the restaurant caused many of the shutter bugs amongst our travellers to gape in awe as they paused to take snaps of the beautiful sunset across the skyscrapers and billboard advertisements. As we continued on to Baan Thai Suk, although situated in a dark alley, it turned out to be really authentic with their rather classy ambience and lighting. We were given a private room, where we met our LGBT representative who went on to discuss about the issues facing the LGBT community in Thailand, which turned out to be a rather eye opening talk as we learnt about issues that we never knew about. The Q& A session, followed by the presentation, allowed our eager travellers to satisfy their quench for knowledge about Thailand and its LGBT community. While some of us stayed on to have dinner in the restaurant, others headed out to explore the streets of Bangkok. After all the lugging of the bags and exploring, we are finally back in our hotel rooms, tired, dirty and grumpy but definitely more enlightened and happier. 

Sharon Chew, 23 is a mediocre student who loves food but always forgets to take the food photos. Loves to daydream but never remembers them.