The Secret Entrance

It's that time again; time for the soul-crushing task that is extending my visa. But this time, I have a plan. After years of learning the ropes, I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, and this time, I was determined to be in and out of IT Square as quickly as I could.

In the past when I had a work visa, I had to go to the huge government building, Chaengwatthana Complex. I also spent a lot of time there during COVID for my emergency visa extensions. I'm in the process of finalizing my marriage visa, which will make life here so much easier, but for the time being I'm just in the country on a tourist exemption stamp. I entered on a 60-day stamp when I returned from Taipei and can extend it for an additional 30 days.

This morning, I woke up early (5:00 am) and took a taxi to IT Square, a fairly deserted old shopping center that for some reason is also the location for Immigration's "K Counter", which handles ASEAN laborers from neighboring countries as well as visa-exempt tourist extensions.

After a cup of hot coffee at Food Land, a 24-hour grocery store on site which also has a small restaurant and cafe, the sun was just starting to rise. The immigration office opens at 8:30, and the doors to the mall open at 8, but I've learned a few secrets.

Old pros know that you can climb the stairs in the parking garage to the 4th floor and get inside the mall before it actually opens. This is how the staff get inside early. I followed a little group up the stairs and in the open doors to the dark mall.

It sounds sketchy, but it's really not. It's totally allowed to enter this way. There are signs and everything, it's just not super heavily advertised.

While the other tourists were milling about outside and waiting around for the front doors to open, I was lined up in front of the Immigration office and ready to go at 7:00, a full hour earlier than most everyone else.

I had all of my paperwork in order and was queue ticket number 2! I paid the 1900-baht fee and received my passport back within ten minutes! I was home by 9:30! In the past, I have spent the entire day at Immigration, not getting home until 4 or 5 pm. This way, I still had the whole day ahead of me. Sure, I had to wake up early, but it's worth it not to waste a day just sitting around and standing in line.

I've got to do my next, and hopefully final, visa run next month. It's always nice to get away on a little trip, but I'm also looking forward to not having to worry so much about my visas going forward.

Jungle Getaway in the Green Lung

"What do you want to do this week?" I asked my wife over coffee. "I've got three days off."

Pinky's schedule is a little unusual. She works four very long days with three days off in the middle of the week. My schedule isn't as predictable. I try to take my days off when she has hers, but it isn't always possible. This week, I ended up with three full days off as well.

"We should go to Bang Krachao!", she suggested. She tasked me with finding a hotel as she left to head to work.

The next morning, we took a taxi to Wat Bang Na Nok Pier and were soon crossing the river to Bang Krachao.

Bang Krachao is also known as the "Green Lung of Bangkok" is a lush, man-made island formed by a sweeping bend in the Chao Phraya River and protected as a designated green conservation zone. Bang Krachao makes a fantastic day trip just a short ferry ride away from the chaos and bustle of Bangkok.

A few minutes later, we had arrived on the other side of the river at Wat Bang Nam Phueng Nok Pier. We had booked one night at one of the many small guest houses tucked away on the Green Lung's network of boardwalks and jungle paths. You can rent a bike from any number of shops in the little village surrounding the temple, but since our guesthouse was only five minutes away by foot, we decided to walk.

It's incredible how different just a short ferry ride can make you feel. Stepping off the boat was like stepping into the jungle. 

We were surrounded by greenery and quiet, save for the buzzing of insects, the songs of tropical birds all around us, and the gentle lapping of the river against the mangroves. After even just a few minutes in the Green Lung, I had started to feel my stress melting away.

I've said it so many times before: I love living in the big city, but at least once a month, it's important to get out. We've both been very busy lately, and a quiet night away (even though we were technically still in Bangkok) would do us good.

We hadn't eaten yet, so when we passed a very inviting restaurant with a sign advertising its Michelin awards, we decided it was time for lunch.

Toh Daeng, meaning "Read Table", is a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant in Phuket serving upscale southern Thai home cooking. It turns out that they have recently opened a new branch in Bangkok and decided to build it in the Green Lung!

We ordered mee krob, a dish made from crispy fried vercelli noodles mixed with a sticky, sweet tamarind sauce and served with four big, juicy shrimp. The dish comes from the restaurant owner's family's 100-year-old recipe!

For the main course, we had moo hong and southern Thai-style roti. Moo hong is a southern Thai pork belly stew slow cooked over six hours in a blend of Thai herbs and Chinese five-spice. The pork was incredibly tender and the broth was delicious, especially when served with the soft, flaky flatbread.

It was time to check in to the hotel. We were staying at the Bangkok Treetops, an eco-resort surrounded by thick jungle. We had a refreshing butterfly pea tea welcome drink, and headed to our room, a narrow three-story structure with a rooftop sun deck.

We had a quiet evening at the hotel. My wife is studying for an upcoming exam, so she brought her textbooks and coursework with her. I carried my Kindle and spent some time catching up on my reading. I really needed the chance to unplug!

I was up before the dawn the next morning, and after making myself a cup of coffee, headed upstairs to the sundeck to watch the sunrise and look for birds. The jungle around me was alive with the chirps, songs, and calls of so many different tropical species. Shortly, Pinky joined me.

We didn't end up seeing anything that we hadn't seen before, but we did spot some birds that are very rare back in the city! I was especially excited to see a pair of teal and white Collared Kingfishers!

During breakfast at the hotel's cafe, we even spotted a Pink-Necked Green Pigeon in the trees! It was a tea-green female and really blended in with the foliage. It's funny how birding can make you feel excited even about spotting a pigeon.

After a late breakfast, we crossed the river back into Bangkok. It hadn't been an adventure... quite the opposite in fact. Our getaway to the Green Lung was just what we needed, though: a peaceful escape and chance to recharge surrounded by nature. Just what the doctor ordered.

A Taste of Ekkamai

I've been working on a video for The World of Street Food lately which has brought me to Bangkok's Ekkamai neighborhood to search for food at least once a week for several weeks.

Ekkamai is the area located in and around Soi Sukhumvit 63. It's a popular place to live, but more importantly, is home to some really great food.

The first restaurant I visited is one I've been wanting to try for years and years, ever since coming across an article about it on Atlas Obscura.

Wattana Panich is a small family-run restaurant that has been serving the same bowl of beef soup for over fifty years. And I do mean the same bowl of beef soup!

The restaurant's claim to fame is its huge cauldron of slow-simmered beef soup that has been kept at a continuous low boil for half a century.

Each day, the family adds fresh ingredients, new cuts of beef, and aromatic herbs to the pot, so that it is never fully emptied. Instead, it’s constantly replenished, creating a rich, intensely layered flavor built from decades of careful tending.

Since the soup is kept at a constant boil, it's perfectly safe to eat. In fact, this practice, known as "perpetual stew", dates back hundreds and hundreds of years as an early way of preserving food. At Wattana Panich, it's also a way to create a perfect soup that grows more and more flavorful by the year.

There is no recipe, the owner Nattapong Kaweenuntawong claims. Instead, he continuously tastes the soup, balancing its flavors with a secret blend of Chinese herbs to preserve the exact taste profile that his father created when he started the soup half a century ago.

 

I also visited Pralet Donuts, a Singaporean family-run cafe and bakery who recently opened a branch in Bangkok. Pralet is famous for their square-shaped sourdough donuts, each made using the family's signature 16-year-old sourdough starter which gives them their unique flavor and fluffy texture.

Pralet is known for their unique flavors, from their signature burnt butter honey donut to donuts flavored with coconut, matcha, and pistachio with raspberry.

The Bangkok branch also offers two unique Thai signature donuts; one topped with chicken floss and one with crispy fish. The combinations of savory toppings on sweet donuts sounds strange, but I was really curious and wanted to try one.

I ordered the "OG Catfish", a sourdough donut topped with crispy dried catfish, shrimp flakes, kaffir lime, and shio kombu (salted kelp) aioli and flavored with nam prik, or Thai chili paste. The donut itself wasn't overly sweet, which helped keep the flavors balanced.

To be honest, I very much preferred the sweet donut to the fishy one, but that might just be due to my Western palate and sweet tooth.

Here Hai is another Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant in Ekkamai famous for their signature dish: "insane" crab fried rice served with lump meat from Thai blue swimmer crabs shipped in daily from Surat Thani Province in the south.

I ordered a small plate of fried rice, which was already huge! I can't imagine how big the XL sized portion would be. The rice itself was rich, savory, and smoky from being cooked in a wok over high heat, and the giant pieces of crab meat were tender, juicy, and sweet. The dish came with a side cup of Here Hai's special seafood sauce, a tangy, slightly spicy green sauce packed with flavor.

The rice was enough to fill me up, but I didn't want to come all the way out to Ekkamai without trying Here Hai's famous mantis shrimp as well.

Mantis shrimp are bizarre little sea creatures. They have the strongest striking power of any animal on Earth. Their punches can reach about 50 miles per hour, packing the power of roughly a .22 caliber bullet, and with 16 different color receptors in their eyes (as opposed to humans, who only have 3) they can see in a spectrum of colors invisible and unimaginable to humans.

It was my first time trying mantis shrimp. To me, they tasted more like lobster than any type of shrimp or prawn I've had before and had a more texture more like a slightly chewy fish. The meat was richer and sweeter than I expected, which was complemented really nicely by the garlic, pepper, and green onion the dish was prepared with.

Establish in 2019 by Bangkok-based food vlogger Mark Wiens, Phed Mark (a play on the phrase "phed maak", meaning "very spicy" in Thai, and on the name of the owner, Mark Wiens), serves just one dish: pad kaprao, or spicy basil stir fry.

Pad kaprao is easily my favorite Bangkok street food dish. It's a spicy, savory dish of minced meat (traditionally pork or chicken) stir fried in a smokey wok with hot Thai chilies and handfuls of peppery holy basil and served over rice.

The kaprao at Phed Mark isn't your typical street food fare. The restaurant uses high-quality ingredients cooked over high heat in an oiled wok to impart it with a unique wok hei smokiness that you won't typically find in other plates of kaprao, and each plate of kaprao is topped with duck eggs which have a richer yolky flavor than the traditional duck eggs.

I was tempted to try the Level 5 spicy pad paprao, but decided to go for Level 3. I'm glad I did. The medium-level spice was perfect for me. Mark Weins is known for his love of extremely spicy food (his catchphrase is "If it's not spicy, I'm not eating", so the level of spice here is definitely scaled up a little bit.

And speaking of Mark Weins, he's also recently opened a second restaurant nearby, this one a trendy shophouse-style restaurant specializing in Padthai.

Thep Padthai takes the famous Thai street food dish and bumps it up with big portions, juicy prawns, and lots of spice. Instead of the traditional flat noodles, the padthai here is served with thin noodles that really hold the flavors. The padthai was also served with tiny crispy dried shrimp for extra umami flavors, chili, lime, and green onion, and was topped with two fried eggs.

Padthai isn't my very favorite Thai dish, but I really enjoyed this one. It's a little expensive for what should be a street food lunch, but the portion was big, and the novelty of eating at a famous vlogger's restaurant made up for it.

Of course, this is just barely scratching the surface of everything that Ekkamai has to offer. Unlike many Bangkok-based expats, I rarely make my way to Sukhumvit Road. I find it too crowded, expensive, and too packed with foreigners for my liking. However, I have to admit, there's a lot to discover, and maybe I need to start being more open-minded about discovering a side of the city that I've really overlooked for the past decade.