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I only have 2 cautions about coming here:
Street Food and Traffic!
The issue with street food is worse than what is described below. The temperatures
here mean that food is out in the heat sometimes behind Plexiglas... forever
cooking at low temperatures. Some of the stuff is incredibly delicious but we
know where you can get food just as delicious for almost the same price, so
why chance it. If you must, after the seminar is more prudent.
From the Bangkok Post July 26th, 2005 POSTBag section
Street food can be dangerous for you
I have lived in Thailand for nearly 25 years and have never written to Postbag
or its equivalent in other newspapers in Thailand. However, George Layton's
July 23 letter titled "Street cuisine and cleanliness", struck a chord
with me and I feel compelled to add to his comments.
I live on Sathorn Soi 11, also known as Saint Louis 3, and work in Mahaesak-Silom
Area. Two events in the last year or so have convinced me that street food is
probably dangerous. On my street there are food stalls lining both sides of
the road from Sathorn to Chan road. Along the entire length of the road there
are precisely two public garbage cans placed right next to each other. They
are rarely full as the owners of restaurants prefer to throw their food waste
onto the ground or bag it up in 7-Eleven shopping bags and leave them on the
side of the road.
Every day these bags are piled up in spots all along Saint Louis 3, baking
the in sun. They stink and leak a putrid green liquid into the gutters. This
liquid pools up and gets smeared across the road, leaving a horrible smell even
after the bags have been carried away. The bags are all collected at night and
dumped in front of one of the many 7-Eleven stores in my area. The garbage is
then sorted and loaded into yellow trucks. After they leave there is residue
and spilled garbage strewn everywhere.
Amazingly, there is a food stall right next to where this takes place. Every
night I watch in amazement as people sit in and amongst the garbage and stench
while eating their food. Nobody seems to notice or care.
One morning I was walking down Saint Louis 3. a motorcycle was going down the
street between the curb and line of cars stuck in traffic. The bike ran straight
through one of the pools of green liquid. His rear tire kicked up a fine spry
and I saw this spray squirt upwards and fall back down settling onto the food
being prepared for waiting customers. Again, nobody seemed to notice or care.
Off Mahaesak road is a food stall that has operated for years and is a very
popular lunch spot for Thai office workers in the area. Every night for the
last several years the local garbage collectors pile up a huge amount of garbage
right next to this stall. The pile leans right onto the stall and I have seen
rats climbing through the garbage and all over this food stall, urinating here
and there. Repeated complaints by local shop owners to the city have fallen
on deaf ears. Hanging on this food stall is some sort of certificate. I have
not had a close look at it, but I sure hope it is not a certificate of approval
from the health department.
Eliot Cline
Traffic:
So you think the traffic here is bad? You don't know the half of it. The good
news is you can take one of the most modern and efficient subway systems in
the world to get around. The bad news is walking around and having motorcycles
whiz by you -- on the sidewalk!! And if you think the street is safer... well
it ain't. So far no one but me has been hit by a car truck or motorcycle but
that's because I really emphasize the danger. You don't looks both ways, you
look every which way and keep looking and you never ever under any circumstances
cross a busy street when you can walk across on the many elevated pedestrian
overpasses. When you do cross the street, you do so with Thais.
More on what you might expect:
from Pat...
What could be more interesting than living in a place that makes you say "Would
you look at that!" everyday. I never know what I'm apt to see when I walk
out the door and almost always without question I see some thing that makes
me stop and think. Somehow a carefully managed and overly manicured, predictable
environment, day after day doesn't do that for me. Although I find myself missing
a really good corned beef sandwich now and then I don't know if I could go back
to living in the US on a full time basis.
Take yesterday for example. I went to a high end shopping mall called the Emporium
where I sometimes shop for groceries. It's easy to get there by sky train and
not too far away. Walking from the sky train into the complex I noticed an extremely
tall cross dresser in front of me. I think I've seen him/her before. A European
man (?) and he was not wearing a dress this time. He was wearing extremely tight,
extremely short denim shorts, with decorative red patches on the rear pockets.
His long hairy legs went all the way up to his equally hair butt. It might have
looked okay to someone (?) if he shaved his butt I guess. Luckily I did not
catch the action on the front side of the shorts. I don't even want to know
what was up there. I hear that they do great operations for people who want
to cross to the other side here. Anyway, I don't know what possessed him/her
to wear those nasty looking cream colored knee socks with those dockers style
moccasins with that outfit anyway. Should have worn some strappy sandals so
that you could have seen his hairy toes with painted red nails of course...I
have to say that he managed to get the Thais laughing and pointing and that
I guarantee you is not an easy thing to accomplish.
On the way out of the store I saw a beautiful guy who looked like he stepped
off of the cover of a magazine. So you have to take the bad with the good.
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