Celebrating the Chinese(-Thai-American) New Year in Bangkok

Happy Year of the Ox!

Because I cannot say no to a travel opportunity, I jetted out to Bangkok the same Sunday my visitors from NYC left. ‘Twas the night before the Lunar New Year festivities kicked off in Chinese communities worldwide – including, we realized as we arrived in Yaowarat, the Thai capitol’s own Chinatown. Armed with  little more than our Luxe guide and our hunger for delicious Thai food, Libby and I took the city by storm.

Traditional Thai

Grand Palace, or, say it with me now – Phra Borom Maha Ratcha Wang-  is a gleaming, sprawling complex of temples and jewelrybox mini-palaces, home to countless Rama kings for over two hundred years. It’s also a place of pretty serious worship – hence the required saris for such scantilly-clad ladies.

Wat Pho – the Temple of the Reclining Buddha – was blinding in its sheer size and goldenness. A really colorful buddhist playground, if you ask me.

Streetfood – “Like rock bands, the best noodle slingers attract groupies,” gushes the NYT’s Joshua Kurlantzick about the noodles at Raan Jay Fai, and a groupie I would gladly become. Hot, perfectly seasoned, and packed with fresh vegetables and meat, these were like no pad thai I have had in the States. They really hit the spot late-night. (Treat yourself to the full text of his homage to Bangkok streetfood here.)

 

(NYT photo of noodles at Raan Jay Fai).

Despite the creepy mystery surrounding the disappearance of Thailand’s premeir silk entrepreneur Jim Thompson, his drool-inducing traditional Thai teak house set in a lush compound of flora and fauna still draws hoards.

For drinks with a view, the Vertigo Sky Bar at the top of the State Tower was great… but I especially loved the Mandarin Oriental’s backyard-glam vibe, with its receding riverfront terrace and its thaijito, a blend of rum, Thai limes, lemongrass and fresh ginger.

Yaowarat: Bangkok’s Chinatown

The streets were literally teeming with decorations, food stalls, and all sorts of the cheap colorful paraphenalia that you come to expect from any good Chinatown festivity- especially one in the heart of S.E. Asia’s more vibrant cities on the first days of the Lunar New Year.

Not to mention the many live performances of dancers, both dragons and Thai, we encountered along the way…

Special Guests

But the biggest CNY party was definitely going down chez nous. It was truly seredipitous that we happened to pick Chinatown’s most colorful boutique hotel, the Shanghai Mansion, for our Chinese New Year getaway. We became chummy with our hotel’s young and ever-smiling staff from the moment we arrived. Just how much they liked us, however, didn’t become clear until our last night, when, after returning from a full day of sight-seeing and bargain hunting, Libby and I were essentially ensnared by the concierge staff, physically squeezed into flashy Shanghaiese cheongsams, and thrust out into a crowd of hundreds on Yaowarat, the heart of Bangkok’s Chinatown. Unbeknowst to us, we had been kidnapped to to “M.C.” their New Year’s launch party, and in the matter of minutes became legitimate local celebreties.

Voila their much hyped ”special American guests”…

… and the crowd that loved us.

Oh, and then we had a photo shoot inside the hotel.

Overwhelming yet entirely worth the memories… not to mention the free night at the hotel plus a free t-shirt! Double bonus!