Day 18 – 20.10.2016
Today was my first exploration day of Bangkok. I had some lovely breakfast opposite the hotel – which I had to wait ages for but hey. Fried eggs (NOT sunnyside up!), Bacon, Potatoes, Tomatoes, some actual bread and actual orange juice with pulp.
I took a tuk tuk and headed to Jim Thompsons house. Jim Thompson was an American veteran, who decided to relocate to Thailand after having fallen in love here with the country and it’s people. He reintroduced the skill and craft of silk making and by showing these wonderfully made scarfs to VOGUE in New York, contributed to the revival of the spinning and weaving in all of Thailand to export internationally and for tourists flocking to Thailand.
It is possible to visit the traditional house he built for himself in the middle of Bangkok, consisting of several old buildings brought to this place to unite them to make one entity out of it. It really is quite an oasis in the bustling life of Bangkok and you can really see how this would appeal to Thai and foreigners the like.
Jim Thompson was also an art collector and collected everything Thai from statues, to wonderfully painted wall curtains to pottery.
This is a printing plate he adapted from the design you can see on the Chinese pottery below to print patterns onto sarong. Some of the elements of the plate are detachable as to be able to apply different colours to the print.
I also got to see the extraction process again, however I felt like the entire process was better explained at the Santuk Silk farm than here. I guess tourists only want to know the minimum and rather be happy with picturesque photo settings.
Differences between the colour of cocoons from different types of silk worms (the left are Japanese / Asian type that produce purely white cocoons perfect for dyeing) the centre cocoons are from Thai silk worms and I forget where the right bowl originates from. (Probably just a mixture of the two!)
Here is some pure dyed silk.
After Jim Thompsons house I rushed to make my spa appointment. The tour I had gone with through Jim Thompsons house took forever due to a very slow Belgium older couple. As the traffic was horrendous too, I chose to take the sky train. Very exciting experience, walking up to this public transportation method, only to realise when you are there, that it is practically like driving on the motorway that is also raised to be above the city to relieve the traffic below. I found my stop and still had to walk a little while until I found the spa Pañpuri Organic Spa in a shopping mall. It is a little weird going from really cheap massaging parlours to such an elegant one, but it really was worth it. I had a leg & foot de-stressing massage as well as a head & shoulder massage and a facial. Pure bliss!
I felt so relaxed afterwards and decided to roam the area a little that is packed with extremely large shopping centres. I just strolled through and felt a little overwhelmed, which is why I walked for quite a while to find the next tuk tuk that was avaiable outside of the crazy traffic jam to take me back to hotel. (I guess all this traffic stems from the memorial ceremonies at the royal palace, but it is really quite insane that it is pretty much rush hour all day long).
For dinner I decided to treat myself with a lovely dinner reservation at a restaurant called Nahm. Nahm is listed under the 50 best restaurants in Asia!
It has Thai food that is served family style to the table if you order a set menu. This is what I had:
Amuse Bouche: Minced pork on pineapple with crackling pork and nuts.
For my set menu I received an assortment of Nahms canapees (from left to right):
Pork and lobster with shredded ginger and thai citron.
Crab wafers with coconut, galangal and coriander.
Egg nets with prawns wild almonds and kaffir lime.
Steamed red curry of scallops with thai basil and coconut.
And the following all came at once:
Salad: Scallop Salad with coconut and lemongras
Soup: Squid, Pork and Prawn Soup
Relish: Chiang Mai grilled chilli relish with river prawns, crunchy pork crackling and steamed vegetables
Curry: Ponoeng curry of wagyu beef with peanuts, shallots and thai basil.
Stir-fried, steamed and grilled: Stir-fried cured pork with tomato and fiddlehead ferns
I thoroughly enjoyed the scallop salad (it somehow reminded me of a Thai ceviche). Some of the other dishes were extremely spicy and so tapered a bit with how much I could enjoy the other food without constantly trying to cool down my mouth against the burning sensation.
A tip from a waiter – when you are having problems with spicy food, have something sweet! For example this palm sugar. It does help relieve the spiciness in your mouth a little.
For desert I had apple custard in coconut milk with sesame crackers. Custard Apple is actually a fruit!
It had little jelly balls of it swimming in a chilled coconut milk soup. Exactly what I needed to cool down my mouth.
To finish it off some petit fours:
After such a nice evening I took a taxi back to the hotel and was excited for the next day in Bangkok.
