Thai Street Food: Top 5 Places to Visit in Bangkok

One of the good things about Thailand is the availability of the best food in the world right on the street. Its affordable and unpretentious. And for the more adventurous and trusting of us, it can bring on a world of discovery. It is through street food that I was able to hone the difference between numerous incarnations of papaya salads and pad thai. Locals who brought me to their favorite hawker stalls often quizzed me about whose food was better, and this revealed a lot about local Thai tastes. Competition among street food vendors can get very competitive and they say that any bad food vendor is forced out of business quickly if what he offers can't compete.

In any case, street food is meant to be shared and enjoyed festively. When in Bangkok, it's a sin not to take anyone with you to share the food with so you can enjoy more flavors and at the same time have a helping hand in carrying everything!

Some favorite places in Bangkok where one can go to enjoy the street food:

1. Suan Lum Night Bazaar. There's two big groups of open-air food stalls. One has a stage with performers singing. More expensive in general but has more selections to offer. You purchase coupons from a stall (200 baht per person is good enough for hefty meals), and use these coupons to purchase food. You can exchange the coupons again in the end for money. Another set of open-air food stalls is right in front of the bazaar, it's more quiet, cheaper and doesn't make use of fuzzy coupons. Generally, the food here is much better cooked and goes out of the way to avoid cliches about Thai food.

2. Silom Road, in front of the Montien Hotel. While the rest of Silom is famed for its nightlife and street food action, the collection of hawker stalls in front of the Montien is collectively the best in the area and offers everything from savoury rice meals to sweet rice cakes and fresh fruits like durian.


3. Soi Thonglor off Sukhumvit Soi 55. While most street food in bangkok come alive at night, Thonglor's street food fare is 24 hours and is best enjoyed during breakfast as numerous hawker stalls offer a rich selection of rice noodles in soup and congee. There are also a bunch of stalls that offer some of the best selection of rice cakes and local desserts like the preserved fruits below.


4. Khao San Road. Some of the best Pad Thai can be found here. You can see two hawkers and their carts going head-to-head against each other to show the tourist who produces the best meal in the fastest time possible. It's all in the spirit of good competition. You can have breaks in-between and go visit numerous markets and vendors for shopping, or pack with you a bag of deep-fried crickets to eat as you go along.


5. Yaowarat Road in Chinatown. It's the best of both oriental worlds: traditional Thai food meets traditional Chinese cooking. Here you get more than just the ocassional pad thai. Consider grilled vegetables that seems charred and burned from the outside only to reveal a succulent and fleshy inside steeped in lime juice and fish sauce. There's also martabak made with spices from as far as India. Bangkok has long attracted migrants from everywere in Asia and the food in Yaowarat is a testament to that.