One of the great things about Bangkok is the abundance of great good cheap food! We have eaten out loads since we've been here as well as ordering food up to the apartment when feeling particularly lazy. This weekend just gone we ate at three places, each totally different .

Let's start with Friday. At one end of the soi that we live on is an eight-lane motorway variously known as Chong Nonsi or Naradhiwas Rajanakarindra, and about twenty metres along are two restaurants collectively known as 'The Shack'. If this name is not self-evident let me describe them - the roofs are canvas, there aren't any doors or windows, the floor is uneven concrete, the tables are wonky, the chairs are plastic, the kitchens are very visible and I haven't risked the toilets yet! We went to the first one and ordered lots of food from the fairly small menu, including lots of vegetarian stuff for Jacob and I, a barbecued fish and chicken for Lisa and Isabel, and some steamed and sticky rice. And of course beer! When you eat Thai you soon get used to the fact that each dish arrives as soon as it is prepared, but usually everyone digs in and shares what is on the table, and the rice always comes first. The only downside is having to put up with the hawkers that come round selling cheap toys or bananas to feed to an elephant. The bill, including beer, came to 495 Baht which is about 7 - 8 pounds.

On Saturday evening Lisa and I ventured out to a night-market in Chinatown. However, the taxi driver dropped us off in the wrong part of Chinatown, nowhere near the night-market, and so once we got our bearings we took a tuk-tuk to the market. Unfortunately they were still setting things up! Radical action was required and we decided to travel across the city to Sukhumvit to a restaurant that Lisa had already been to called 'Cabbages and Condoms'. As we approached Sukhumvit via Soi three, and having been out for an hour and a half, I saw an Indian restaurant called 'Akbars' offering vagetarian (not my spelling mistake) food in bright neon signs and we jumped out of the taxi. Once again the food was excellent and a million miles away from the last indian meal I had back in the UK, which left me feeling quite nauseous! And the decor was probably the most OTT I had ever seen.

The Sunday Lunch buffet is extremely popular at hotels around Bangkok. They are reasonably priced and often have activities for children. This Sunday we went with a couple of other families to the Amari Atrium hotel for lunch. Now this place is very plush, at the other end of the scale from The Shack, and yet the bill wasn't much more because the kids ate for free. For food you can start with cereal, move on to salad, sushi, fish, soup, Indian, Thai, traditional British roast, and finish off with pancakes, gateaux, ice cream and coffee. Whilst we went up to the buffet again and again, course after course, Jacob and Isabel happily sat and painted pots, decorated sponge cakes and played with Lego.

All this great food and I'm still losing weight - honest!

Posted on 25 September 2003.

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