Nowhere Bangkok
I’ve walked this street in Bangkok a thousand times. Or so I thought. Or so it felt. The hard stone against the ubiquitous flip flop I trudged on with tired knees and hungover eyes begging for mercy.
What is this mysterious place? Try as I might the straightforward attitude and kindness of Bangkok only furthers my suspicion that there are secrets to hide. And yet, at every available moment that flame of suspicion flickers a little less boldly.
It turns out I have not walked this street a thousand times and I am royally lost. I’ve dragged three unwitting passengers into the Chinatown district of Bangkok in search of a crispy grilled suckling pig that seems to defy rules and logic.
The only thing more intense than the realization and loneliness of being adrift from a known route, is the heat. Bangkok does not hide it’s sweltering heat. Those stones on the street are now mirroring the sun and draining all four of us of our will. I keep walking due to being hard-headed, they keep walking because the taxis are limited in this area so they have little choice.
Have you ever thought about a food so much that you go somewhere “else” while searching for it? Somewhere in between where you’re conscious enough to keep taking steps forward but not conscious enough to know where you’ve been. Somewhere that becomes a lived-in daydream. That’s the only way to explain how we walked, and found, the restaurant. Through the knockoff sunglasses stands and stores selling nearly anything you can imagine we found ourselves in the outskirts of Chinatown, in Bangkok Thailand, staring back at a restaurant that by all reasonable assumptions could not live up to our expectations.
We enter, and the restaurant is surprisingly empty. I’m worried because not long ago I fell into a trap in Mexico City where a shoddy restaurant designed itself to exactly match a nearby famous locals spot and operated in the exact hours the real one was closed. I was duped. I was a mark. I fell for it. No, it sucked. We press on anyways and order two pigs for the table from a very unimpressed waiter. The hands of time stand still. Every minute that passes feels like the verifications that I have, once again, led the party astray.
Like the scene in the movie where the runaway spouse actually shows ups, like that rainy moment in The Notebook, the waiter manifests in the doorway with two pigs - their skin intact and golden fried. They cut and remove the cracklins and serve the pieces to us individually. As the entire journey coalesces into one bite few things can be as glorious. Soy, chilis, sugar, lemongrass, god only knows what else, and it’s all crisped and contained to perfection in this one bite.
But what’s this? The waiters are taking the pig and all of its meat away just as we’re finishing the skin and preparing ourselves for the main show, no explanation. There is a deep fear that something is wrong. Did we break a cultural norm? Do we smell like we walked too many miles in the Bangkok sun through Chinatown? The waitstaff has no answers and is in no rush to tell us. The secrets, I knew it!
Moments which feel like hours pass and the waiters return with one of the most ingenious techniques I’ve ever seen. If you’ve been to a pig roast you know the outside with the seasoning is the best. Everything else on the inside is usually…good. Be honest.
These hombres face facts, take the pork meat back, break it down, and refry it all in galangal, shallot, sauces, and lemongrass. Then they come server it to you freshly off the grill on a silver platter. It makes you tear up. It’s so good it makes you want to punch someone. By god, it makes you want to walk through Bangkok hungover.