Exploring Thai Summer Foods (and Bangkok's Old City) on One of Thailand's Hottest Days Ever

parts of Southeast Asia are in the midst of a widespread heat wave in Thailand the Mercury surpassed 45 degrees Celsius 45.4 degrees Celsius a new high even for a country accustomed to hot weather it's the hardest week ever on record in Thailand capping off a month so intense that the heat index here in Bangkok has surged past 50 degrees Celsius or 122 Fahrenheit we've been laying low at least as much as we can but today we're stepping out into the sweltering Bangkok sun because while it might be unusually brutal outside Thailand does have a couple hundred years of practice figuring out how to stay cool there are dishes and snacks drinks and desserts developed through the years for just this type of weather and we wanted to find out what those were so we're throwing ourselves into the fire almost literally to take a walk across bangkok's old city and see what we might find we're looking for anything that'll keep us going the hot weather foods that sustained Bangkok on the very worst days of the hot season foreign [Music] in the morning we've been here since about 8 45 but we have to set up the gear um it is 32 degrees outside with a heat index of 40 right now at 907 32 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit is 90 and a heat index of 40 means right now it feels like 104 degrees outside and it's nine o'clock in the morning um Jasper give me the camera for a second I'm going to show you how Jasper's doing at this point [Music] Jasper and I met to start our kehotic Quest at Nong Loom Market with a dish called cow Che which is probably the oldest hot weather dish on record here in Thailand we met here because nangloong is basically at the northern edge of the old city and our plan was to walk the four kilometers to where the palace meets the river but it didn't hurt that this route started with this a dish made of rice soaked in chilled Jasmine water with sides like fried balls of shrimp paste and candied turnips something specifically known as a meal eaten to stay cool now the idea of food meant for hot weather is actually not an unusual concept things like Lebanese tabbouleh and Italian Caprese salad those were meant to be refreshing in the warmest months same thing with cold soups like gazpacho and chilled Forest and here in Southeast Asia there are things like Vietnamese spring rolls meant for Well Spring which is actually the hot season before the summer rains arrive since the earliest days of recorded history cultures in the tropics have been creating ways to stay cool and with miles to go in record Heat we'd need every bit of whatever we might find here to keep us going uh we didn't really need to go the wrong direction but I wanted to at least start authentically at the border of the old city so across that Canal is sort of what's considered to be modern Bangkok I'm going to check the temperature real quick because right now after leaving nanglung it is 9 33 in the morning the sun's out that's not good it's 33 degrees which in Fahrenheit is 91.4 so that's our temperature right now not including heat index heat index is already over 106. and it is uh it's 9 30 in the morning all right there's going to be plenty of time as we walk to talk about the heat but first let me explain where we are and why we chose this route we're going to be walking through three unique areas all separated by canals these three sections together make up what's called bangkok's Old City it starts here where we are at a canal dug in 1851 to accommodate the spillover from the original walled City today this area is mostly residential a collection of still intact neighborhoods dating back 100 years or more although if we followed this outer Canal to the South we'd find ourselves in the famous Chinatown if all goes well after a couple kilometers we'll make it to a second canal and then the man-made island called britannicosa this was Rama the First's walled City and it'll bring us to ancient temples old restaurants and The Backpacker party spot known as khaosan Road and finally there's the last canal and the first palace of the modern Kingdom than the river and hopefully for us somewhere with air conditioning because just a few blocks into our walk the heat was already getting real [Music] it does not matter what 7-Eleven sells they could literally sell anything the secret to their business in Thailand is that they keep the temperature like see Celsius like 12 degrees Fahrenheit it's like just above freezing always doesn't matter when you walk in and oh my God [Music] foreign [Music] as it was getting closer to lunchtime and we'd been walking and sweating for more than an hour we were finding ourselves getting hungry when you think about what you should eat on a scorching hot day the obvious answer is something cold right I mean today you just grab a fruit smoothie or something like that but if you go back more than a generation or two at least in Asia it's a lot more complicated if you believe in Taoist philosophy something with an ancient history in Asia lunch on a day like this needs to be something cooling not necessarily something cool and that's because of the importance of bringing one's body into balance otherwise known as the concept of Yin and Yang foreign this is a symbol that if you've lived your whole life in the west you definitely recognize but might not understand how much it guides everyday principles across much of the Asian continent the idea is one of two forces one dark called yin and one light called Yang these two are the organization or manifestation of everything in the universe everything must have an opposite pole for white there is black for man there is woman for eggplant there's avocado all right wait we'll get to the food side in a minute but anyway yeah the classic example is to picture a rock dropped into a pond for every Ripple that rises there's a trough of equal depth right behind it and the high and the low recede in unison until a pond returns to a still flat surface now this is of course a gross oversimplification but basically to maintain the best possible Health you need to bring these forces into balance that applies to medicine and exercise and also to what you eat the Taoist take on food classifies items as containing properties that heat or cool the body properties that should be brought into balance not just with each other to form a proper meal but in relation to other factors things like the health of the consumer as illnesses and disorders are also according to Taoist teachings belonging to the categories of hot or cold and on days with extreme weather one should bring the body into balance by choosing the right Foods according to the yin and the to chill my inner Chi when my outer everything is starting to boil I should be seeking out things like crab and tofu celery and pineapple what I really need is to find an old Chinese restaurant that understands these kinds of principles and here in the shop house district of the old city well we didn't have to look hard to find one is foreign [Music] thank you this is a place I've been meaning to try for a long time and I've never actually been here it's called and so it's the food of Southern Coastal Thailand Hua but the family that opened this place 70 years ago is hainanese Chinese and so there was a high 90s community in Hua part of that family came back to Bangkok and opened this restaurant so it's a really unique style of food that has a ton of History this menu hasn't changed in 70 years this is beef tongue one of my all-time favorite ingredients it's quite a famous Thai hainanese Dish and it's stewed with what I think is a tomato sauce peanuts and given with a side of Worcestershire sauce which I've never seen before in Thailand and then we have pork liver another of my favorite ingredients now this oh there's the cold noodle salad amazing I see squid see Fish Ma we're going to work our way through that at the moment and then this one is Pat satellite which has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I still can't walk past Pat satello without ordering it all right well we're surviving to this point and now let's get some lunch [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] she added a little bit of sugar to that good it's cold let's look around 12 15 in the afternoon about three hours after we started walking across the Bangla Canal to enter ratanicosin proper the historic district of just 2.3 square kilometers that connects the outer old city where we just came from with the innermost section that includes the Imperial Palace here the roads are wider and you feel like you're in a national capital it's a place like nowhere else a district that combines stately government buildings with gleaming ancient temples and a ton of old restaurants and preserve neighborhoods [Music] it is crazy sometimes to realize that we live here walking around realizing that like we've you know we're not that far from home we just went to Nang long one of our favorite spots had a little walk down here and now we're surrounded by a part of the city that I really don't go to that often because it is kind of the touristy part of Bangkok it's still pretty cool I mean even though we're here because it's a hot day and we wanted to to take a stupid walk it's pretty cool to be here actually I enjoy this stuff you what sure and what talk about anything yeah yeah I would have come here I would have been probably in this spot completely overwhelmed not knowing anything about anything my first time in Bangkok which was now 13 12 years ago I had a backpack on that day too it wasn't this kind of backpack [Music] some unexpected Street Food ice cream no ice cream ah no ice cream stir fry oh that's delicious I don't really want a deep fried hard-boiled egg right now but it's delicious that's all right let's keep going [Music] but yeah this is democracy Monument we're gonna walk right past methodology actually just next to us I don't think we've been there on this channel I've been there quite a few times oh man the rare elephant pants elephant shirt combination thank you [Music] I've gone from being a food historian City Justin just another dude with the camera here here in Backpacker Central [Music] my depth food looks good though all right let's continue to the place that we're going starting to get high starting to get hot it's 114 degrees [Music] just air conditioning [Music] it's a little bit like being in a sauna where you just like I wanted to find this and look at that too we got the uh shaved ice and this is like a secret sort of favorite of me of I'm starting to not be able to make words this is one of my favorite things it's a Coke slushie do you want one too Jasper uh two so let's let's see this the way the way this works is it literally is like it's just Coke it spins it in ice to freeze it not quite Frozen but whatever it's cold coked [Music] thank you Britannic Kosen Island might sound like a Tropical Paradise like Phuket or Koh Samui but it's not really an island it's just a part of Bangkok set apart by a canal the one we crossed a little while ago this is where in 1782 King Rama the first established a new kingdom and named this territory krung rattanakosan in ayutya lengthened just a bit in the early 1900s to the current official name which is thankfully more commonly known as Bangkok anyway there's nowhere else quite like britannicos in today this is where in tight proximity you'll find the party bars of khaosan Road the narrow alleys of the old Chinatown venerated temples and glorious palaces and lots of stuff that we've shown you on the channel before like massaman Curry at the chakra bong mosque and the oldest Sriracha shop and even our favorite American fried rice but what you won't find here are any restaurants that date Back to Before the 1900s and that's because other than the Palaces and the temples and a few surviving structures pretty much everything here was rebuilt when roads replaced canals in the years of King Rama V now obviously the food today is gonna look quite different than it did back then and most of what we consider summer dishes either weren't accessible without Refrigeration or hadn't yet filtered out from the palace kitchens but we do know one thing that was eaten in hot weather since the earliest days of the city and that is a dish with thousands of years of History a plate of fresh condom Jean noodles served with herbs and garnishes that all just happen to be according to the principles of Yin and Yang among the most cooling Foods in existence what really cools me down is a plated I got the fresh herbs the the holy basil they use water Morning Glory here which looks like it's blanched which is amazing addition that you don't always see with hananjin cabbage pickled mustard greens bitter melon and mung bean sprouts so tell me about these two what do we have yes and [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] I can see why people take a siesta after lunch just lying down for a nap because that's all I want to do right now is just sleep I'm glad we came here though this is really good [Music] [Music] for thousands of years humans have found ways to store ice to stay cool in the hot summer but it always meant harvesting ice in the winter which meant having a winter the story of how ice first arrived in the tropics begins a lot more recently in 1806 a New England businessman named Frederick Tudor built a warehouse for harvested blocks of ice then loaded up a ship using sawdust as insulation and sailed it to the West Indies in transit on the water the ice survived the journey but then melted as soon as it was unloaded because there were no ice houses in the West Indies so he tried again the next year this time after building a storage facility in Cuba there he began selling ice and keeping enough in the cargo hold to preserve fresh fruit on the Journey Back North tutors trade expanded in the decades that followed and in 1833 he successfully transported a shipment of ice to India kicking off trade that would see shipments fan out across southern Asia it was most likely sometime around 1840 when the first ice boat would have arrived in Siam by the 1880s technology had emerged first in Australia reliably producing ice from a machine and this man-made ice finally made it possible to produce it not just import it in warm climates Thailand received shipments from Australia than Singapore when a factory opened there and finally around the same time the country modernized in the 1910s it was made right here in Thailand and almost immediately in one of the hottest countries on Earth the local people here fell in love with a brand new delicacy a frozen dessert made from fresh coconut milk one of the world's most refreshing treats and something still produced by hand in a 1905 shop house in the heart of bangkok's Old City our next stop was the idea that launched this whole video if it wasn't for this next stop this video wouldn't have happened the idea came from coming here I've been walking for five minutes I'm dead thank you this is a this is a masterpiece every bowl of this and then good man it's just unbelievable how good this is I I would easily easily easily call this my favorite ice cream shop in the world and it's not close I don't have a number two like [Music] um foreign [Music] okay we're hot and it's been a long day but I want to give this the Justice it's due this is a place called not a porn coconut ice cream and in a tiny neighborhood jammed with famous old restaurants this might be the most iconic it's been open for more than 80 years and for about a dollar you can still get something made by hand without any additives exactly like it would have been when it first emerged in the capital like it's literally made by taking blocks of ice and salt putting a wooden bucket in the middle and then stirring coconut milk until the edges start to freeze and continuing to churn until it has the right consistency this Shop sells 12 flavors today but if you want the classic just get a scoop of coconut throw on some mung beans and maybe a bit of Sweet Sticky Rice and enjoy one of the best things you could possibly eat on a hot day is do they still make their ice cream here the traditional way ice cream let's do a quick weather check 37 humidity 67 feels like 47. so the actual temperature right now is 37 98.6 Fahrenheit and the heat index is 116.6 but thankfully where we're going is like one minute away [Music] now we were just talking about ice and how it first came to Thailand well one interesting note is that it was said that the first regular Imports came from Singapore around 1900 because King Rama V wanted to eat cow Che in the summer months that dish of rice with ice that we had way back at the start of our journey but that wasn't the version that he would have eaten at the palace his dish would have been something Fit For A King now we had about a mile left to go and we were about to cross the last canal and after that there would be no more food no more shade just a long walk through the hottest stretch on the wide streets around the palace fuel up for that final push it just happens that there's a restaurant here that serves the Royal version of cow Che the dish that's said to be the very best hot weather feast in Thailand part is hi foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] we have 1.2 kilometers left to walk that's about 25 of our mission for the day but it's the longest single stretch we have right now it's 3 50 p.m it is I don't know why we did this I really don't know why we did this that air conditioning was [Music] it was nice I already miss it [Music] so that's the Saran Ron Palace the old Imperial Palace is what you see over there in the distance Temple of the emerald Buddha is right around there a lot of the sites that you probably bookmarked to visit if you come to Bangkok are in in the next 10 minutes we're going to walk past them but yeah this is the canal that was essentially the moat around the palace uh standing on the bridge right now here in the heat it is sunlight is just beaming right down on us so let's keep walking [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] I feel like when we were driving through the namibian desert it's the only time I've ever experienced uh what do they call it the the you know the desert hallucinations when you think you see an oasis right when you're driving walking whatever but for us driving and the desert just on this Flat Road in the hot summer sun and uh and you think you see something you think the city is right up ahead you think something's right up ahead and it's not and it's just more of the same and it's a real thing you know these desert hallucinations I feel like the river's right up there it looks like the river's right up there it looks like we've reached the end of the road but have we [Music] I think I think that Temple we see it's actually on the other side of the river which means we are almost almost at our destination which would be something pretty cool it's after 4 pm we started today before 9 00 a.m and it's a full work day well okay I know some people work longer hours than that that's almost a full work day of just walking around in the intense heat of one of the hottest days on record in one of the hottest countries in the world [Music] I would say Thai Cuisine pass the test we survived had some pretty great stuff there's a lot a lot of hot weather food that we did not eat today we limited ourselves to the things that we found in the old city on the path that we took walking obviously there are dishes we didn't get to this is not a comprehensive story however [Music] I think we did it I think we did it let's see [Music] wouldn't that be ironic after surviving the heat I get run over by a bus watch your step Jasper good job made it [Music] um I'm gonna go find some air conditioning

Channel: OTR Food & History

Views: 106,146

Keywords: otr, OTR, thai food, Bangkok, old city, khao chae, ice cream, thai ice cream, coconut, pomelo, Bangkok old city tour, khanom jeen, hottest day in bangkok, hot weather thailand

Id: -pJDBat5npA

Length: 35min 22sec (2122 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023