Day 42: 12/30/23 - Jay Fai (and some other stuff)

Having built up to it with watching the documentary and watching her cook the previous night, the day had come for us to eat at the Michelin-star-awarded, street-food, single-chef, eponymous restaurant Jay Fai. We stumbled out of the hotel a little before 7, got in a line that already stretched the whole block (the earliest arrival was 4 am!), and waited for 90 minutes before writing our name down on the famous list: #48! 

The restaurant wouldn't go on to even open for another 30 minutes after we had our number in, so we decided to head up to Chatuchak weekend market. This 15,000-stall, 27-acre market is absolutely worth the visit. From 2 dollar "elephant pants" to high end home decor and jewelry, this market has it all. We managed to escape without anything else to fit in our bags, and rushed back towards Jay Fai a little after noon, worried our time might be approaching. They were only on #24. 

It's strange to have to run errands while traveling, our usual travels short enough to not need purchasing of more sunscreen or contact solution, but we made a trip of it by selecting a pharmacy in a neighborhood we hadn't seen yet, and returned to Jay Fai at around 2pm: #32.  

Over the next two hours, we busied ourselves with trip planning, reading, and beer drinking at the bar across the street while running over to check the place in the queue every 30 minutes. When our number was only two away, we hurriedly finished our beer and rushed over....only to wait the better part of an hour until we were seated. And even then it would be another 40 minutes until our food arrived! 

Not expecting to have a chance to return and having forgone lunch, we over-ordered a little.  The famous crab omelette: would you like some egg with your crab?, delicate but able to carry a delicious sweet/spicy sauce served on the side. Phad khee mao (drunken noodles): smoky noodles cooked to perfection topped with the two largest and best tasting shrimp we have enjoyed in a city of seafood. Thom yum soup (mild): a minefield of difficult (for us) to identify vegetables intermixed with not-to-be-consumed (we think?) ginger and lemongrass with a generous amount of fish. So intensely flavorful that it took until the 4th spoonful to realize our taste buds would be burned off by the end of the meal, the citrus, sweet, salty, and acidity blended perfectly (if not painfully) with bright red peppers. 

Reeling from our meal, we stumbled back to the room to follow up on some of the hotel and transit planning we started earlier, on our last night in Bangkok.