Eating Chinatown and rounding off with Peking Opera

Eating Chinatown again, and this time I decided to do a full 24 hours in Yaowarat and Charoen Krung area so I booked myself into W22, a kitschy, partly Chinese-themed hotel apparently owned by a Harley-Davidsson lower. All the motorbikes were parked in the lobby!!

The hotel was worth 1050 baht, everything you need in a hotel room was there and the bed was very comfortable. It was just weird to have a rooftop area that you could not access and the toilet had this weird cement edge where you easily can slip or at least smash your toes into quite badly.

It took me an hour and around 400 baht for the cost from Suvarnabhumi airport to get there. The staff was also nice to let me check in already at noon. Then the exploring started.

Since, I didn’t have breakfast this day I was craving some more heavy stuff and Google read my mind Lahore restaurant popped up as an alternative. This Pakistani restaurant offered a decent Butter Chicken but the Nan bread left more to ask for. Soft, it felt like it was just microwaved. Lahore was located inside My Chinatown mall which had lots of promising small Taiwan and Hong Kong-themed restaurants though. And an impressive golden dragon hanging over the entrance.

I decided to check out the snack scene in the afternoon. I was quite impressed by the tea house Chaidim. Farang master tea blender and owner in Thai Chinatown. Went for black snake tea and the wonderfully and richly coffee-flavored opera cake. The assam black tea kept coming and tasted better for every cup. Personally, I am a coffee drinker, but hey when someone knows how to brew his tea I am not backing off .

I proceed to the “pudding paradise”, ba hao than my, which is rather hyped on Instagram and so. Places like that often disappoint me. However, in this case, it was sad that I had space only for one pudding. The black sesame was delectable. Next time maybe I go for the tapioca bubble tea pudding or the mango one.

While I was drinking my tea I had noticed an opera stage and since there were still 4-5 days left of the Lunar New Year I really wanted to see the Peking Opera. This is a fond memory since my days in Taiwan in the 1990s watching the opera in a street setting with old grandmas and grandmas eating their snacks loudly and babbling.

So while waiting for the opera to start at 7 pm, I had time to explore some stunning street food. I indulged in some crispy pork and then the largest portion of massaman curry I had ever seen for only 55 baht!!