Another hole in the wall

Posted by Art man on November 26th, 2007 filed in Bangkok

Back in the Thai version of the city of angels again, not finding it so angelic really, but under the grime and the smog, there are always some redeeming qualities to be found.

Bangkok hasn’t changed much since I was here last year but that’s just groovy with me. That meant that my favourite restaurant in the world was still there and I ate there daily with no regrets or feeling like I was missing anything else. Even for the fact that it’s the scummiest hole in the wall I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying a lot as you fellow South-East Asian devotees can attest to), yet it is simply the best Thai food I’ve ever had. Nothing else in Bangkok comes close for my 50 baht (Anyone heading to the Kok should contact me for directions).

It’s a typical little concrete box run by frumpish yet friendly old ladies in hairnets and furnished with the third world staples of plastic gingham tablecloths pegged to the Fisher-Price style garden furniture adorned with cheap aluminum cutlery; inveterate photos of the Who’s who in Monasticism leering hackneyed, stoic eyes at you while you slurp your noodles in infidel guilt. That blasted white porcelain cat on the ledge, ever-present, spring-loaded and pawing at the air in hopes its eternal requests may flutter some baht bills in from the street.

You sit down in the place and you run the neural script expected of you by cracking a pint to alleviate the thirst you’ve worked up and to distract your sensory faculty from the acrid tingling of grime on your cheeks; and after you’ve told your appetite who’s king of the mountain, by fervently slurping the very last drops of coconut milk from your bowl of curry, you realize craving and desire have won out in the end – yet again!! – as you wobble out of there pregnant with a lemongrass and Singha bastard spawn in your belly ready for a full trimester of evening, night and mornings gestation before it chooses to go towards the light (read: the porcelain reflected in the toilet water) at the end of the tunnel (tee hee), thus being ushered back into the sewer to be recycled again in mother nature’s downward projection of the microcosmic manifestation of the karmic cycle of regeneration.

As above so below, and with Thailand’s culinary offerings, any belly conditions are but a minor grievance in the face of the palettal joy on gets from the multi-layered flavours of Siam.