Bangkok Food Tour!

Ready to fill our tummies, we scheduled a 5-hour food tour as a way to explore a bit of the city and lay a foundation for our eating throughout our three weeks in Thailand. The girls continued to be food champs, not hesitating to enthusiastically try anything put in front of them.

Tuk Tuk Ride

Our tour guide Chin arrived at our hotel with two tuk tuks to shuttle us around to various spots in the city. The girls were excited to ride with Chin; much cooler than their 24/7 omnipresent parents during this year of travel.

Ready to eat.

Mahanak Fruit Market

Our first stop was the Mahanak Fruit Market. Chin whisked us from vendor to vendor where we tried all sorts of fruits and vegetables. This was a nice stop because it was very much a live market for Thai chefs and families doing their daily shopping rounds. Jack fruit, coconuts and more...

Jack fruit was a hit. We bought from this group, who was busy picking one apart.

Squid Jerky

On the outskirts of the fruit market, everyone particularly enjoyed stopping to try what is best described as squid jerky. First the dried squid is warmed up over a small coal grill and then run through a contraption that flattens it, like a pasta-making hand crank. And all of this happened on the back of the vendor's bicycle!

The big "Thai Smile" from the squid salesman, it's everywhere!

Prepared Food Market

Next, we jumped in the tuk tuks and zipped to a market with prepared food and kept on eating...

Savory Thai food is almost always served with various chili pastes and fish sauce combinations.

This vendor was making a fried lotus flower that was semi-sweet.

Mango sticky rice was a huge hit. A delicious Thai dessert.

ส. ราดหน้า Noodle Shop

Next stop was ส. ราดหน้า. It's a multi generation family-run noodle shop. Chin explained that they still cook with coal in the traditional Thai way, pre-gas stoves. It was nice to sit down after being on our feet for a couple of hours and we had a good time watching the chefs do their thing.

Coffee & Tea Break

We ducked into Floral Cafe for a drink. The Thai teas are tasty...but way tooooo sweet!

Next we took a break from eating and instead fed some local turtles in a park.

Festival

When it got dark, we headed to a weekend festival where they had food, bands and kid activities. What made it really spectacular were the paper lanterns throughout all the streets.

Paige and Sadie really enjoyed spending time at the art stations, something they don't get much of while we're traveling...it's usually just a blank piece of computer paper and some colored pens/pencils.

Wat Arun

Our food eating was done, but Chin had one final stop for us. She took us to Wat Arun, where the famous reclining Buddha is located. The interior (where the Buddha is) was closed, but the grounds are left open and we practically had the place to ourselves. The temples lit up at night felt like being at Disneyland in a way.

There were cats around the grounds and snapped this cool pic.

Overall, we tried a ton of food and got to numerous areas of the city. We were hoping to get more on the food history & understanding of regional food differences, but in the end Chin was really just shuttling us from food to food...all good, but we'll be seeking further food knowledge during the rest of our trip in Thailand.