Bangkok Blogger|Tales from Thailand

I love Thai food but can’t eat it 24/7. I probably ate Thai food for most meals when I first came out to Bangkok but after a year or so out here I eat more Western food alongside the Thai dishes. Back home I used to love cooking a Sunday roast for my friends or going down the pub for one. In Bangkok cooking a roast dinner is not really practical due to the expense and the hassle of finding all the required components.

But thankfully there are lots of places in Bangkok that offer a Sunday Lunch. Some do an all you can eat carvery and others do a standard meal.  Out of the many pubs in Bangkok that serve a Sunday Roast I’ve only been to two but both have been very good. The pubs I have been to that do a Roast Dinner are Molly Malone’s on soi Convent, just off Silom road near Sala Daeng BTS and the Londoner Brew Pub on Sukhumvit soi 33 near Phrom Pong BTS (opposite the Emporium mall).

Both pubs serve the main Sunday Roast staples which include:

• Meats: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb & Ham
• Potatoes: Roast & Mashed
• Veg: assorted veg including carrots, peas and cauliflower
• Cauliflower Cheese
• Yorkshire Puddings
• A full range of Sauces and Gravy
• Dessert
• Soup & Bread

As well as all this The Londoner also does a big range of  salad, fish and cheese and crackers for afters.

Although The Londoner does have a bigger selection including lots of dessert options my award of the best Roast Dinner in Bangkok goes to Molly Malone’s in Silom.  There meat is nicer and for me that is the corner stone of a good Sunday Lunch:  nice meat!

Although both pubs are mock Irish/Ye Olde English pubs the atmosphere in Molly’s is a bit better although if you can get a booth in The Londoner it is probaby more comfortable.

There is not much to separate these two Bangkok Sunday Lunches and they both cost between 400 and 500 baht so I recommend you try them both out and decide for yourself.

If you know of any other good pubs in Bangkok that do a Sunday Lunch please leave a comment and I will check them out!

Went to Indian Hut this weekend which is one of the most well-known Indian Restaurants in Bangkok.

It is located at the end on Thannon Surawong which is the road that runs parallel with Silom.  It’s not that far from the library and the British Club and there is also another good but smaller Indian restaurant a few doors along.

The food was really good and the portion size and service was good.  I think they delivery too via Food By Phone and ChefXP so if you are in Bangkok and fancy a nice Indian it is definitely worth checking out.

A lot of Chinese people have settled in Bangkok so the Chinatown here is pretty big. The best way to get there is to catch river boat from the Central Pier, Sapan Taskin stop on the Skyrain, and get a boat going north to the N5 or N6 stop. This trip costs about 15 baht (30p). From the boat stop it is a short walk to the main market of Chinatown which is a long thin pathway that has stalls on either side. Be careful as motorbikes drive down this pathway through the market so keep your wits about you! I’m not sure what I was expecting to be on sale at the market but what was there wasn’t it. The goods on sale in the market were mainly the kind of things you associate with being made in China: cheap plastic goods like the things you would find inside a cracker at Christmas. The market vendors were pretty chilled out and we didn’t get hassled to buy anything or look inside their shops. Once we had passed through the market we walked up to the main road which was lined with lots of places to eat but most of them were selling Sharks Fin soups so we didn’t go in them. We finally found a place that did not do Sharks fin soup and went inside. Unsurprisingly we were the only customers in there! The place was the restaurant of the Chinatown Hotel but the food was rank and it was pretty expensive coming in at about 600 baht (£12) for two people. As we left it was around 6.30pm and the food street stalls were out in force. Lots of creative ways of exhibiting dead ducks were on display but none of them looked that appetising. We walked back to the river and got a boat back to Sapan Taskin and then a taxi home.

It was worth taking a trip to Chinatown and I will probably head back for a bit more exploring but it’s not that special. Food-wise it was a bit disappointing too and I am still looking for some great food in Thailand to match the Thai food I have eaten back in London.

I’m sure you will be as pleased as I was to learn that McDonald’s can be found in Thailand, well in Bangkok at least.

The price is pretty much the same as in the UK but there are a few extra options on the menu that are worth writing home about.  The main one is the double Big Mac.  This burger has four burgers in it which is twice as many as the standard.  Although this sounds like a good idea, in practice it is quite hard to eat and my one ended up failing a part and being a big mess.  Perhaps some sturdier buns are needed!

There is also a double Fillet-o-Fish which looks lush and a Pork Samurai burger which sounds interesting.  There is no Quarter pounder unfortunately.

The best thing about McDonald’s in Thailand is that they run a 24 hour home delivery service.   The number to call for a home delivery McDonald’s in Bangkok is 1711.

For my visit to Siam Square I took the Skytrain to the Siam stop and then walked along the elevated walkway.  I thought Siam Square would be an actual square but it is in fact an indoor shopping mall of which there are many at Siam.  If Bangkok had a centre this would probably be it and it is definately the shopping centre of the city.

I arrived at about 9am but soon discovered that none of the malls open until 10am.  Once I had realised this I headed to the nearest Starbucks, of which there are many in this area, for a resbsite from the heat and humidity.  The air con in Starbucks always seems to be turned up to 11 which out here is always nice.  I had a Caramel Frapacino and a Tuna sandwich which cost about the same as back home.  There were a few other farang in the cofffee shop waiting for the malls to open and sheltering from the morning sun.  The Starbucks I was in was part of the same building as the Mah Boon Krong mall or MBK mall as it is more commonly known, and once it past 10am we could exit through the back of Starbucks directly into the mall.

After having a look around MBK I left and used the elevated walk way which connects most of the malls to have a look at the Siam Discovery Centre mall.  This was a much more smaller and modest mall with stalls and smaller shops.  I had a quick look around before heading back out in the morning heat.  Next up was the Siam Centre mall.  This one had lots of shops from western brands like FCUK, Nike, Levis, Boots and many other big names you would find back on the UK highstreets.  This was a much more modern and posher mall than the previous two and there was a good selection of restarunts on the top floor.  After a look around I left and crossed the courtyard that seperates this mall with its neighbour and heading into the massive Siam Paragon mall.  This mall looked like the biggest and grandest so far and according to my guide book is the biggest in South East Asia.  Siam Paragon is much more upmarket and on one of the lower floors has shops from all the major electronics brands like Sony and Samsung selling their top-line products.   There is also a massive department store inside this mall which is a bit like the Oxford Street branch of Selfridges.  There is a great bookshop on one of the upper floors which has lots of English language books and magazine and is where I got my Nancy Chandler maps (which I highly recommend).  Books in Bangkok tend to be the same price or a bit more than they do back in England.  On the other floors there were lots of sports shops selling amongst other things lots of golf clubs and there were also a few car showrooms from Audi, Lamorgini, Aston Martin and Lotus.  There was also a large branch of the California Wow gym chain and like most other malls a multi-screen cinema on the top floor showing films in English and Thai languages.

The food courts in the Siam Paragon mall are on the bottom floor and there are many places to eat down there including McDonalds and KFC.  If you want to eat from the main food hall you must buy credit which is loaded on to a plastic card which you hand the food vendor of which they then deduct the cost of you meal from.  Once you have finished return you card to where you got it and get a refund of any money not spent.  The cards only last for one day so you can’t put a load of credit on them and then reuse them which makes them seem a bit pointless.  The other food vendors in the food court do not take the card.  This means you must first look for what you want, then go and queue up to get a card, go and get your food and then queue up again to get the unspent credit on your card.  The food was pretty cheap coming in at about £2 per main course and the first meal I had was very nice.

After my lunch at Siam Paragon I headed back out into the midday heat and got on the Skytrain home.  There are a few other malls there such as the massive Central World and the Pratunam Centre which I will check out on a future visit.

The malls are definitely worth checking out as they are bigger and better than anything I have seen in the UK although if you are looking for a bargain you won’t find it here with prices the same or higher than in the UK (apart from the food).

Last night we went to Suam Lum Night Bazaar which is a large outdoor night market next to the Lumpini Stadium.  After a tortuous taxi journey in the notorious Friday night traffic we finally arrived at our destination.  The market has around 3700 stalls selling a mixture of Thai craft goods, fake designer gear, weapons and modern souvenirs.  The vendors seemed happy enough and were open to a bit of haggling but were not pushy at all and didn’t seem to mind if you left their stall without buying anything.  Around the edge of the market stall were lots of restaurants serving a mixture of Thai and Western foods.  We went to a Thai place and I had a lush fried beef with green pepper dish with a side of vegetable rice and a bottle of Chang beer which came to around £5.   By 9pm it was still really hot and after walking around the market for a while we decided to call it a night and find a taxi.  Apparently there is a large beer garden in the middle of the market but we never made it that far.  There are also reports that the market is due to be replaced by a mega mall in the not too distant future.   If you are looking for a hassle-free place to pick up some presents and souvenirs to take back home this place is definitely worth a visit.