This is our second trip to Bangkok, and what we really enjoy is eating local food with the locals. So when we get the chance to, we ‘dive in’.

The markets, and even the pavements, are teeming with stalls selling both fresh and cooked food. The locals love them – and during our few days we saw the business owners doing very busy trades in take-away food.

We are staying in a fancy hotel where they provide an amazing buffet breakfast with just about anything you could wish for. Our room rate includes the breakfast, and after we spend some time tasting new foods on offer, we are usually not feeling hungry until quite late in the afternoon. But when we do feel hungry, we don’t have to go far.

About 300m from the hotel’s front door there are a number of street food stalls, and we tried a few of them, including this one.

Usually there are some tables and chairs close by (often on the side of the road) where customers can sit for awhile to enjoy the freshly cooked meal. Beer is sold at most of them as well.

The food is cheap. Two courses can cost less than 200 baht (AUD$10), but sometimes it is hard to know exactly what you are eating. The more ‘local’ the stall, the less likely there is to be a menu in English.

During this trip though, we also found a very good Japanese restaurant that was always full – we were lucky to get a table on both occasions we went there. The staff was very friendly and they put on a show around 8pm – all service stopped and they sang and chanted and just looked like they were having fun.

The food was not as cheap as street food (of course), but it was very good value.

The most expensive items in Bangkok are definitely alcoholic beverages. There must be a very high tax on alcohol, wines in particular. We remember during our last trip that a bottle of (an average) Australian red wine cost the equivalent of AUD$35+ (while back in Australia it would cost less than AUD$10). Tourists (therefore) appear to mostly drink the local beers which are served icy cold.

The hotel we are staying in has an Executive Club Level – and those clients staying on that level have access to a bar each evening from 5.30pm-7.30pm.

And it is here that the drinks and canapés are complimentary.

So no surprises Mick and I visited here each night of our stay.

The red and white wines on offer were pretty terrible, (at 12% ABV for each of them), but Mick and I were surprised to learn they were Thai wines – made in the northern part of Thailand. We joked that by drinking these we would appreciate Australian wines all the better when we return. We had been worried we could not cope with Australian wines after 14 months of drinking French wines.

Last night, we tried another of the street stalls nearby to our hotel where the customers were all locals. Mick had spotted whole tilapia being grilled on an open fire – the fish had been coated in salt and we knew not to eat the skin. But when it was delivered, the ‘chef’ had already skinned it for us.

The price for the fish depended of course on the size. We also ordered a clay pot with pork and vegetables, and we cooked for ourselves at our table.

And of course, we had an icy cold beer to go with it. This time it was a Leo – a popular budget lager (ABV 5%) in Thailand.  The total cost for our experience including a tip was 560 baht ( AUD$28).

We very much enjoyed our stay in Bangkok, designed to help us get our body clocks close to Australian time. And, we think that worked.

Our flight back to Brisbane departs from here at a terrible hour (midnight), but we selected it because we both should sleep during the flight and therefore land well rested and ready for the next part of our adventure.