The area surrounding this street, also known as ari, is one of Bangkok's food hotspots. It's located near lots of very tall office buildings, which means during lunch there are lots of very hungry office workers. The general atmosphere of most of the restaurants is decidedly basic. No, perhaps assertively basic. No air-conditioning, grumpy staff, predominately plastic furniture and not the cleanest restaurants in the world. The food is cheap, however, and most of it looked pretty good.
Here's a bird's eye view of the street:
Once you enter the street, then take the first side street to the left (the one the green and yellow taxi is turning into). I can't recall the name, but this is where most of the action is. It was here that I saw all of these people were queing up to buy mangoes and guavas:
Normally mangoes and guavas aren't the source of this sort of frenzy. Howeve on closeer inspection I noticed they were peeled, which means they were probably chae buay, meaning that they have been soaked in sweetened plum water, and are really, really tasty.
Here's a well-stocked fruit stand:
And a well-stocked som tam (papaya salad) vendor:
And a Chinese pork vendor counting his profits:
This lady blocked my shot a chicken rice restaurant, making it somehow much more interesting:
All this was making me hungry so I stopped by a curry shop for lunch. I choose three things from the approximately 20 already prepared curries, fried dishes and soups, and got this:
I don't think my dish has ever been piled to this extent in Thailand. At 9 0'clock you have pumpkin fried with egg, at 12 o'clock phat phet plaa duk, catfish fried with fresh herbs, and at 3 o'clock fish fried with onions, chilies and copious crushed black pepper. Somewhere under all of that there's some rice as well, if memory doesn't fail me.