Meet the sidewalk gourmets of Bangkok
Savour spirit of the city with fabulous fare at makeshift eateries
Twilight, and a golden sun hovers above a skyline of ornate skyscrapers and temple spires in Thailand's seductive capital, Bangkok. Down in the old part of the city a procession of saffron-robed monks slowly files past the gleaming architecture of the Grand Palace, while brightly coloured tuk tuks (three-wheeled motorcycle taxis or auto rickshaws) buzz about like angry bees, their eager drivers on the lookout for new customers.
Towards the end of one road near the Grand Palace, enterprising food vendors have set up a cluster of stalls, transforming the street corner into a food bazaar. Tantalizing aromas drift from sidewalk kitchens serving up sizzling Thai delights. Locals and travellers sit on colourful plastic stools at colourful plastic tables where the dining is a rowdy cheek-by-jowl affair. Outside one stall, a woman wields a wok of prawns and vegetables on her gas burner, creating a medley of smoke and flickering flames.
Another street vendor pushes his glass-fronted food cart bulging with spiky durian fruit into position next to someone busily arranging squid satays on a charcoal stove. A few metres away, a wizened old lady bends over a large stone mortar, pounding grated papaya, nuts and chilies to prepare a hot and tangy som tam (papaya salad).
At first glance the street looks more like a food fair than a thoroughfare, but it's a scene repeated throughout the city, where every alleyway wide enough to hold a wok or deep fryer is claimed as a makeshift restaurant. From Yaowarat Road in Chinatown, to Khao San Road in Banglamphu, the sidewalk eateries and mobile food carts speak the spirit of Bangkok in the same way as pubs do for Dublin, cafés for Paris or diners for New York.
STREET FOOD DELIGHTS
Standing at an important Asian crossroads for centuries, Thailand owes its rich cuisine to the culinary infusions of India, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. It has adapted cooking techniques and ingredients from each of these major influences and blended them with its own.
Street food is the lifeline of Asia, helping feed millions of people daily, and Bangkok is no exception. The first wave of travellers in the '70s discovered it was a cheap and delicious way to eat and initiated the process of popularizing Thai food as one of the world's great cuisines.