Chapter 9: Food, Fruit and Random Stuff

Cool steak place that I want to try on my next trip

Demonstrating the value of beer bars, especially the are near Soi Diana and Pattaya 2nd Road.

Couple times I was up at 6am and noticed these people making Asian type donuts and you can order dipping sauces like condensed milk, orange marmalade, maple syrup and honey. Not my type of breakfast but this place was busy and had a constant stream of motorbikes picking up bags to go. Place was usually gone by 8am.

Breakfast at Irish Rovers. Watched UFC and NFL here on different days. Small bar and the patrons are nice enough to put on your game.

The 99baht breakfast is atrocious and I usually like having at least one English breakfast but this time I just had the toast, eggs and a bit of the pork. Coffee was great though. Blood sausage and breakfast sausage was dried out and tasted like wood. I cant eat fried bread but thats just my issue.

One of the new great street foods I noticed this trip was coconut ice cream in a coconut shell with coconut shavings. The guy also had vanilla ice cream that had specks of real vanilla bean in it. He basically uses natures bowl but using the virgin coconut and scraping out the coconut meat and putting the shavings back in the bowl as the base of the ice cream. Shit is good.

Issan style sausage homemade at the cart. You can see the hand cranked sausage make in one of the photos. They use a lot of garlic and spices for those with weak stomachs. Hard to find good Issan sausage in the USA so I ate here twice in a week.

You see the banana and mango pancake street carts all over bangkok and they have become the cheap street food for backpackers in Thailand. Its a bit oily for my taste and only ate some of it before tossing it. I tried the mango another day and told them to not oil the grill this time and it was very good. I just love watching vendors doing shit old school from scratch.

Mango sticky rice( Kao nio ma muang). This is the best spot I have seen in Pattaya. Located near the outdoor food court I talked about earlier. On Pattaya Central Road across from K-Bank west of Pattaya 2nd Road. They just put the right amount of coconut cream in the rice. Not good for you but they don't have it like this in the States.

Dragon fruit is sold in carts sliced up and its sometimes has white flesh and sometimes red flesh with seeds in side. I order smoothies when I can because its tough to find dragon fruit in the US.

Mangosteen is the greatest fruit in the world and I cannot describe the taste. Its like trying to describe the taste of a banana.

Durian is the spiky fruit. Taste is tough to describe also and has yellow pods inside. They sell the insides already prepared at many stalls and grocery stores. Smells horribl, tastes incredible.

There are different types of fruits with thin shells that have clear flesh inside that have different flavor

Longan is common in Thailand and a bit too sweet for me. Has a yellow shell surrounding a round fruit that is clear with a large seed inside. I prefer the Lan Sat which tastes like a grapefruit inside but looks exactly like Longan.

Rambutan is a looks like a red hairy Longon and has a similar flavor and look once you peel it.

There is another fruit that looks like a hairy/spiky strawberry and tastes a lot like a sweeter strawberry. Peel the outer layer and it is whitish/clear inside with a large seed also inside. It is pronounced Sah-Lah, with an accent on the L.

Noy Naong is a green trippy looking pear shaped fruit with black seeds and white flesh inside. Really delicious. It's also called Custard apple.

You also see a lot of rose apple and lychee but I don't care for either.

Had black pepper crab at a place called Green Bottle near soi Diana and Pattaya 2nd Road. Had excellent black pepper crab for 90 baht.

Different deserts that I have had before and delicious. They bake coconut custard in a sweet squash. They also make small fruits out of tapioca and coconut and they look cool and taste good.

Some signs of the new Arabic influence as tourists in Pattaya and some signs that some of the bars don't like it. Never saw an Arabic or Indian guy in any gogo bar except a British Indian guy at Whats Up who I helped get into the bar by saying that he was my close friend and doesnt smell(in Thai so he wouldn't know). By the way, the word in Thai for bad smell is "men" and good smell is "hom".

Favorite beer in the world at Supergirl a gogo

Fish that eat dead skin and a free beer

My favorite name of a bar.

The RT_Gooch influence is spreading....

I'd really like to know which of the various fruits pictured go with each description, as I'm not sure what to do with the unfamiliar items I see (eat raw or cook, for instance)--I only recognize a few from my adventures. Guess I'll have to find a Thai girl for a tasting tour of the fruit stands.

Thanks for an informative report, Blazers.

I miss the street food, especially in Bangkok although it looks like Pattaya's street food scene is improving, almost more than I miss the Thai pooying.

Will have to vehemently disagree about mangosteen. And still waiting for KM to return to his "roots."

RT here. That coconut shell Ice Cream looks awesome.

I stumbled across Rambutan in a store here in Ft. Lauderdale; I didn't go for it. I think I will next time.

(Thx, Hunterman)

Murasaki. I just persuaded Don Marco to join me in AC 3 weeks ago and look what happened. He is moving there permanently. Must be something attractive about AC.
Seems my roots have been permanently displaced.

BTW This is my current GF in AC . Another reason I am not leaving.

Sorry Blazers . Do not intend to hijack your thread.

Photo: Current GF

HM, all fruit can be eaten raw... Rinse, pick it up and eat. In the case of the durians, obviously crack those babies open and claw it out with your paws. Just don't do it in a public place as it smells. Better yet, pick up a few cuties and have them feed you by hand...

KM, I was pleasantly surprised at the uptick on street food in Pattaya last trip. Blazers did a nice job capturing it, albeit he found some high prices (I was paying 20b/mango in pattaya). Nowhere comes close to the food choices in LoS and quality - esp as a fruit eater!

I've always had a good time in AC, just a different experience from LoS as we know. I'm not ready to forget LoS at this point, BUT if AC rekindled the concept of bbbj bars staffed w/ cuties (and got rid of the concept of double ladies drinks), I probably would be close to saying that. On the food issue, I was able to drum up decent amount of fruit while in AC, but I was leading a pretty toxic lifestyle while in AC.

Your gf is a stunner, which doesn't come out in photos at times. In addition to her good looks, she has a great personality and presence about her. Great taste as always!

I must say quite an impressive fruit collection. Well done Blazers, a newbie can go to Pattaya and skip all the tourist trap fish and chips shops and eat real Thai food side by side with Thais. If I lived there, I think my health would improve greatly with all that fruit, and lean protein.

bigpoppa, there is no leaner protein than fruit ;)

Blazers Bourdain!