A Quick One Before I Pho

Max Bonem
Bonem At Large
Published in
4 min readOct 30, 2015

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Walking down the street, the smells, sights, and sounds are unmistakable. You’ve heard them before, not recently, but much closer to the present than you think. The roasting of chicken thighs, the frying of bananas, the bright flashes of floral wreaths being sewn and purchased as offerings for the hindu temple across the road. You’re not somewhere new, but you’re somewhere that’s always changing, never stagnant. Once again you’ve found yourself following your nose down Silom Road. Once again, you’re in Bangkok.

Getting to Bangkok was a journey all in itself, but just like with any great voyage, the reward was sweet. Well, actually in this case it was savory. 24 hours after leaving the beaches of Sihanoukville on the coast of Cambodia, I found myself back in Bangkok where I started more than seven weeks ago. The trip back involved two tuk-tuks, two buses, a two hour border crossing, a minivan, and a cab ride, but the familiarity and, oddly enough, the calm I felt walking through the streets of Bangkok at the end of it all after being away for six weeks was truly surprising.

Strangely enough, during my first visit to this metropolis, I felt overwhelmed by the calamity and bustle of it all, struggling to keep pace with what was happening around me. And then I got some perspective.

Travel changes you, it’s an inescapable truth that affects each of us that choose to simply pack up and go. Bangkok was an arrival point for me, my first hit of Southeast Asia and it set a precedent for what was to come. However, after seeing other cities like Chiang Mai, Vientiane, Siem Reap, and especially Phnom Penh, Bangkok seems like a completely different world, providing a sense of organized normality while offering a sense of familiarity that you only find in an alien world that you’ve stepped foot in before.

After almost a month in Cambodia and Laos, both of which had their moments and charms, I was hungry for the good stuff. Both of these countries have great food, it’s definitely there and you can find it, but Thailand’s is so much more accessible and easy to come buy that more so than any other reason, I was coming back to Bangkok to eat. Bangkok also has the cheapest plane tickets in the region, but let’s just leave that as fine print.

Although Laos offered a number of great meals, once I stepped into Cambodia I felt like the locals were hiding the good stuff and only giving foreigners what they think we want: western food. Burgers, pizza, subs, pasta, sushi, and everything else you can imagine. It was all there, anytime you wanted it. Two of my favorite meals of the trip so far were consumed in Phnom Penh, but both were at restaurants specializing in Beijing and Hong Kong-style Chinese food respectfully, making me feel like I could’ve been anywhere and not necessarily in Cambodia’s capital.

One long journey later and I found myself back where it all started. I met up with a friend who I’d met during my last visit here and we went to the same market street we both ate at regularly in September. As soon as you sit down on a rickety plastic chair, seated at a cold steel table that’s accompanied by the carousel of condiments that you come to know and love in Thailand, it’s almost like being home. The next day he and I ventured to find the one dish that we’d both become obsessed with during our stint in Chiang Mai, khao soi.

By complete luck, we discovered that our favorite khao soi shop in Chiang Mai has a location in Bangkok, however, after some in-depth internet-ing, we realized that it’s all but inaccessible to foreigners, located too far north to feasibly reach. Instead, we opted for a well-regarded shop not far from our beloved hostel. The results led me to fall in love with the dish, and the experience of finding it, all over again.

The directions I found told us to go to the local hindu temple and just start looking around. Fair enough and luckily for us, Krua Arroy Arroy was hiding just behind the line of stalls threading flowers together for offerings at the temple across the street. We walked in and soon found ourselves in the presence of approximately zero foreigners. Good sign number one. We were escorted upstairs where we found the owner family’s three-legged pet cat walking around. Good sign number two. And then within five minutes of ordering, we were brought the two largest bowls of khao soi I’ve ever seen, both of which were absolutely showered in crispy noodles. Good sign number three.

The combination of curry, coconut milk, chile heat, and sweat all melded together to give me that same blast of perfection I’d experienced weeks earlier in Chiang Mai. It was like hitting the reset button on an internet router, the next thing you know all systems are go. We dug into our soups, tore through the chicken legs provided, and mowed down on pickled greens and two types of noodles, all while savoring the fact that we’d casually found something that most visitors walk by without the slightest of hesitations. I was one of those people, I’d walked by this very restaurant at least six times during my first stay. However, this trip to Bangkok wasn’t like the first one. There was no rush. No pressure. No calamity. No feeling of being overwhelmed. Just khao soi, an old friend, and preparation for the next journey ahead.

I’ll miss you again, Bangkok. But for now, let’s go to Vietnam.

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