So here’s the deal, over the coming week I’m going to try to talk about my trip to Bangkok on a daily basis, touching upon the memorable, the mundane and the surprising! Hopefully it shall be regular and fun!
Day 4: The Food!
The ‘work’ part of the trip continued and resulted in another early morning and late evening, but afterwards the day or the evening for that matter, brightened considerably! Good food and good company, friends who were passing through Bangkok for a day saw to that!
Onto one of the things that I wanted to write about, the food! Now the obvious option that people coming into Thailand like to have is authentic Thai food. If you walk through most of the roads in Bangkok you will find a number of food vendors making and selling street food, which apparently is really good. I say apparently because I haven’t tried it, essentially because I’m not a huge Thai food fan. So for me a visit to Bangkok becomes an adventure in trying to find out food I like having, or possibly as has been the case this time around, trying out food that I haven’t tried before or normally don’t like to have. Seafood is one thing which I normally don’t like, but is huge in Thailand, so one has to try some eventually.
I got a chance to try something new today when we went for an early supper to a quaint little bistro called Vin Jai T’aime (Wine, I love you) which was a very nicely done place located in a set of restaurants opposite the Big C in Bangkok. I tried a dish that had Chicken with Mango slices. It was quite an interesting concoction and was definitely something of a new taste for me. Among other things good here were the Fish and Chips, the Cheese Spinach and the fried Squid pieces for starters. Please pardon the fact that I’m bad at remembering the exact names of these dishes, but this bistro is certainly a nice place to visit.
If like me you want to have non local food, then there’s always the fast food chains at malls, or you could go to the area around the Nana BTS station where you will find a wide variety of international cuisine. Now the thing about Nana is that it is located in the central Sukhumvit Line, and is one of the places in Bangkok where restaurants and shops are open even after 11 pm when most of the city shuts down. 
You’ll find throngs of people moving around, even after midnight, and loads of street vendors selling everything from MP3 speakers to slippers. Move a little further towards the JW Marriott and you’ll find the Nana Plaza, which houses a number of fast food chains, including Burger King. If you move into the street, turning right from Nana Plaza, you will hit a patch that has a high concentration of Middle Eastern, Indian and assorted non Thai cuisine. If you want to try Indian/Pakistani food, Iranian/Iraqi or Ethiopian food, or just have Shisha, this patch is the place you need to be. 
The one place that I’d highly recommend is a little joint called Mahmood’s Shwarma, a 5-8 minute walk into the street opposite the Grace Hotel. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I have not had better shwarma than the one I have had here. You can never go wrong with this!
Bon apetit!
'mair 