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Urban Nomad on the Hunt

November 13th, 2008

Outside Lumpini Park

After college I moved straight from my dorm room on the upper west side to an apartment in Brooklyn and for six years, while friends switched neighborhoods, coasts, and countries many times over, I stayed in that same apartment on the same block in the same city. Here in Bangkok things are a bit different. I’ve led something of a nomadic existence moving apartment to apartment from highway-like Rama III and commercial Sukhumvit to residential Ari and lovely Lumpini park. If it was New York, it’d be couch surfing. Here there’s usually an extra room.

One of the nicest things about moving around is getting a resident’s feel for different areas of the city. Now near Lumpini park, I’ve been taking advantage of the lunchtime stalls that line the park gate. Streets stalls are often located in undesirable locations off screeching eight-lane roads, in wet narrow alleys or dark tarp-covered corners. The stalls along Sarasin, however, have green views, a pleasant breeze and an easy-paced, sunlit street. Office and construction workers alike stop by for lunch. There’s a range of offerings from star-anise-scented soups to greasy fish cakes and bamboo stir-fries to my personal favorite krapow muu, a spicy stir-fry of ground pork and basil sometimes accompanied by a crinkly fried egg and always over steamed rice. Of course, there are Bangkok’s ubiquitous fruit carts where you can get papaya, pineapple, green mango and jicama chopped into bite-sized pieces for 10 baht ($0.29) per bag and fresh food isn’t your style, you can buy packaged goods like pocky, chips and gum out of the back of truck. Not a bad perk for my new neighborhood.