Shopping centre food

Other good places to get casual Thai food are the food courts in shopping centres. These have attractive aspects: you are in a cool environment, especially during the day, the hygiene is better, and the crowds less imposing.

Central Airport Plaza has two food courts, one on the top level, where you buy credit to be put on a stored value card and hand it to the stall to deduct. On leaving you can cash out the remainder. The one in the basement which was patronised more by the Thais had more local dishes and slightly cheaper prices.

I started off with green papaya salad with blue crab. Even though I allowed one chilli pepper, it still had a bite, though bearable. Those tiny chillies are fiery.

Next I had some Thai pork balls with dipping sauce.

And I finished off with a dessert of sweet beans and jellies in iced coconut milk.

On a subsequent visit I tried the basement food court and ordered a plate of oyster (actually mussel) omelette.

I had bought a couple of durian seeds from a fruit market and ate them in the food court, since I could not take them into the hotel. Very tasty and I was fortunate to have picked seeds that had small cores. The plastic cutlery was mine, I usually carry a pair on trips.

This isn't a food court dessert but Korean injeolmi (인절미) bingsu (ice dessert) from a Korean dessert shop in the old city. The orange stuff is bean powder sprinkled on small rice cake cubes. I was just curious about this flavour, which I had not heard of before.

At the foodcourt of Central Festival Plaza, using stored value cards also, and operated by the same group as the Airport Plaza, I had this bowl of fish balls with rice noodles.

This was followed by pork satay. Quite close to what is served in Malaysia, even down to the onions, only rice cake is missing.

That's the good thing about small portions, you can sample more dishes.

Later that afternoon I had upmarket ice cream in a Swensen's, a chain with many SE Asian parlours. This cost about half what it would at home.

You can also get pastries for dessert from supermarkets in shopping centre. This is a sweet puff with one ginko nut inside. I tried to discern the taste but it was too subtle. I may need to try some ginko nut snacks in Japan.

This one was called a toddy pie. Presumably the sweet jelly was made from the toddy palm.