You know, I'd like to say that the day began with our lunch of fried chicken and onion rings at Korea Town (shopping center) not too far down the road from 8 Sukhumvit where we were, but truth be told, our day actually began with a breakfast of refried minced duck meat, a few slices of toast pan-heated with butter, coffee, and tea.
Sure, it might sound simple a meal, but really, it isn't.
See, there's something special about preparing your meals in a kitchenette never mind if it be big or small, and as much as I wouldn't mind a full egg omelet or noodles or a small tub of yogurt, I don't mind whatever it is I get to eat in the mornings either.
A blessing it is to have breakfast with someone.
A blessing it is too to walk along the road from 8 Sukhumvit to Korea Town a couple of streets down.
I had wanted to visit this place for a few days now but hadn't had the time.
So, yes, delighted was I when told we'd be stopping by here for a lunch of Korean-style fried chicken before continuing on.
Korea Town, by the way, is in one of those places that look like they've been around since the 80s or 90s. Externally, aesthetically, the shopping center (I can't seem to call it a mall) sends out those vibes with their banisters, their corridors, the fountain in the courtyard, and their individual units.
But then there's a huge LG TV screen facing out onto the road, there're a couple of good K-BBQ restaurants, and there's this fried chicken place that doubles up as a dessert place offering bingsu.
The boneless chicken, served in a box like how they usually do for takeaways, was crunchy, well-fried and tasty.
The onion rings, we were delighted to find, were real onions fried in very thin batter, and even though the batter seemed to collapse by the time we ate to the bottom of the box, the onions were still firm and good.
Lunch over, we Grabbed over to Chatuchak.
And I couldn't have been happier, I tell you.
I hadn't been back to Chatuchak for more than a decade, and (besides the shopping, of course) I was keen to see how the place had changed.
The Grab dropped us at one of the gates (I don't know which one) and we made our way inside.
Almost immediately we started shopping; my friend got a tie-dye T-shirt, I got a beaded bracelet.
Sure, at 150Baht it was a bit more expensive than some of the other run-of-the-mill bracelets, but this was handmade, and this was what I was looking for.
After that we walked through some of the stalls, and then all of a sudden came upon out in the open a kiosk selling fresh coconut juice, coconut smoothies, mango smoothies, Thai milk teas and mango sticky rice, so we got a coconut juice each, followed by mango sticky rice (my second of the trip) and afterwards, a coconut smoothie to go.
Good thing we got the coconut smoothie.
It was a d*** hot day.
Heat or no heat, however, that didn't stop us wandering up and down the aisles looking at the stalls, buying things we wanted, contemplating others that caught our eye.
No easy task it was trying to meander around the stalls, I tell you.
Chatuchak is divided into sections, all of which, if you want a particular stall, you have to remember.
It's strategy shopping, I tell you.
And they're so complicated like a maze that you will go in one side, come out the other, and unless you make an about-turn and take the very same route you've just walked on, you'll find yourself in a whole new part of the market simply by making another turn right, left, or angled.
I've no idea honestly where we actually wandered to.
All I know is that we came upon a couple of stalls offering leather products of bags, wallets and so on.
Then there were stalls offering basket-style structured bags which were really summery looking and beautiful but at the moment they weren't my style.
I remember seeing stalls offering casual clothes of feminine design.
I remember seeing stalls offering clothes of tie-dye in pretty colors of pastel pink, pastel blue, pastel green, yellow and peach orange. The sleeveless sun dresses looked so comfortable I might have bought them had I been heading to the beach.
Wish I'd gotten a couple of tie-dye T-shirts though.
Or the elephant pants that are now trending in Thailand and which make for very comfortable wear, especially in this ridiculously hot climate.
Not that I came away empty handed though.
I found myself increasingly drawn to the stalls offering fragrances, room sprays, body mists, soaps, lotions and essential oils.
Eventually I settled on one stall which not only had a neat layout, but carried a combination product of body mist and room spray rolled into one.
A room spray and body mist fragrance was just the product I had been seeking for.
So, we got a bottle, and because there was a 2-for-1, we came away from the stall with 2.
Along the way my friend got a couple more T-shirts.
And then we decided to get a jar of lavender-scented muscle balm, which, unlike the usual lemongrass and citronella, was different, and interesting.
There wasn't much which we got afterwards.
There were some organic green curry pastes and massaman curry pastes.
There were some teas.
And that was it.
From Chatuchak we got into a tuk-tuk (finally) which sped through the streets and brought us to the nearest mall called Union Mall.
It's a youth-oriented type of mall this one, a bit different from Siam Paragon or EmSphere or Terminal 21, but they had a Starbucks, they had a Watson, there was a fast food somewhere, and they had a Sukiya that I call the egg rice bowl.
Took a bit of rest at the Starbucks (it really was a very warm day), went upstairs to see the shops a little, and then off it was to dinner at this place called Naam 1608 in the Yaowarat area.
You know something?
I'm never ever going to forget the ambience of Naam 1608, nor am I ever going to forget her food.
You won't feel it at first.
Especially since the place isn't located like what most restaurants are, along the road, with a frontage, or part of a district of shops.
To get to Naam 1608 you have to first pass by several shops- their shutters were closed when we were there- then right near the entrance, a (very, very) hardware, steel kind of place.
It's a completely different vibe once you're inside.
A two-storeyed (or three-storeyed) house with a mezzanine floor, you'll be asked to remove your shoes if you're going upstairs, and almost at once you'll feel like you've been invited to dinner at somebody's home.
It wasn't just the decor, the furniture, the place, or even the friendly hospitality of the staff.
It was the food.
I've had a lot of green curries in my life, thank God, but never in my life, I tell you, have I ever had a green curry this good.
It wasn't even just good.
It was life-changing.
I exaggerate not.
So good was it that I'll never be able to see green curry in the same light ever again.
Best part, what was the magic of it?
A duck egg.
A salted duck egg.
Yes, really.
That was it.
A single salted duck egg sitting on top of the green curry beef dish.
No hard to find spice, no hard to buy ingredient, just a hum dan that you find in any supermarket, any provision shop, any egg supplier and isn't extravagantly expensive.
To say I was blown away by my first taste of hum dan with green curry is quite an understatement.
It went so well with everything.
Whether it was with the gravy of the green curry, whether it was woth the swirls of their medium-thick white bee hoon, or with this dish of roasted pork belly that had the best skin crackling ever, this simple, organic addition to the food made it more perfect than what it already was.
I think I finished almost the entire salted egg.
There was a simplicity to the food here that I on that evening fell in love.
If I had thought that the green curry was good, the roast pork dish with cereal bites had (what I call) the gold standard of pork skin crackling. Never have I ever had a crackling this hot and this crisp salted and marinated to perfect taste.
So excellent was it that I gave my friend a good portion of the crackling whilst I settled for the hum dan with the meat.
I don't think I can ever forget my first taste of all the dishes we had that evening.
Not only did it completely alter the way I see Thai-Chinese food, it left a deep, deep impression on me.
So much so that I'll say this.
It's not easy to leave out the memory of the egg omelet done Chinese style.
It's also not easy to not think about the delicate yet rich almost-broth like taste of the clear duck and (cooling) Chinese pear soup.
The Cantonese me has never had a soup like this before, and I tell you, it was so tasty, so refreshing and yet so fulfilling all at the same time.
You could taste the distinctive taste of duck in every single spoonful.
It's been a while since I last had these dishes, but I'm very sure I'll go back to Naam 1608 every time I'm in Thailand.
I keep thinking of the hum dan.
And I keep thinking of the view.
