Soi Arab: A Crossroads Of Two Cultures
Arabs are everywhere these days in Bangkok, so flush they are with oil cash and don’t know what to do with all that money. Have a medical checkup at one of Bangkok’s leading hospitals. Chances are you’ll be lonely farang surrounded by Arabs.
Here’s a recent article on Bangkok’s one and only Soi Arab, written by longtime Bangkok resident Jennifer Gampell. If one Bangkok expat lifestyle writer knows Bangkok, it’s Jennifer. She dishes up some Soi Arab insights even you weren’t aware of.
And agreed with Jennifer: Shahrazad‘s a must in the treasure called Soi Arab. You’ll want more of their nan bread that comes fresh from the stone oven and of the wonderfully creamy hummus and …
By Jennifer Gampell, International Herald Tribune
Mirrors, curlicue balustrades and hanging flat-panel TVs have become indispensable features on once-drab restaurant terraces on Sukhumvit 3/1, otherwise known as Soi Arab, the colorful pedestrian alleyway on the northern fringe of the Soi Nana nightlife area in Bangkok.
The popularity of Soi Arab, which is sandwiched between the Sukhumvit 3 and 5 roads, has seesawed ever since Saudi recruiters of cheap Thai labor first discovered it in the early 1980s. These days, flush with oil cash, more Arab tourists than ever are showing up on the tiny street.
In the spruced-up restaurants and shisha (water pipe) cafés they’re finding the ambience of their native countries with fewer of the cultural strictures. For non-Middle Easterners, the bustling quarter is an oasis of Arab exoticism in the heart of a bawdy Bangkok neighborhood.
One sign of the lucrative Arab market is the surge in new agarwood shops. The increasingly endangered Aquilaria tree is prized worldwide for its expensive resinous heartwood (called oud in Arabic). In Islamic cultures it’s burned as incense or distilled into musky nonalcoholic perfumes.
With prices for noncultivated agarwood rising to $10,000 a kilo, few local shopkeepers welcome mere browsers. However, visitors to Yusoof Shop (6/17) can gaze unimpeded at various grades of wood chips under glass as well as a large not-for-sale collection of ornate crystal perfume flasks and vials.
Bright lights reflecting off myriad metallic surfaces and shiny pseudo-Egyptian decorations turn night into day at Nasir al-Masri (4/6) and the adjacent Nefertiti (4/8). Bordered with potted plants and lamps, the lane’s two flashiest restaurants and outdoor shisha bars anchor the corner of a side alley.
Both people-watching places feature a similar range of pricey pan-Arabic cuisine? heavy on lamb? plus a smattering of Thai and Indian dishes. The older and friendlier Nasir opened in 1986. Each restaurant has a pair of gigantic TV screens blaring Egyptian pop divas and major international football events.
Though Shahrazad (6/8) offers neither terrace nor TV, its reliably well-executed dishes served by hijab-clad Thai waitresses make it the restaurant of choice for many resident Arab expats.
Open since 1983, the street’s oldest restaurant offers a tasty stuffed pigeon (320 baht) and succulent lamb tikka (170 baht) in quiet wood-paneled and mirrored surroundings.
Dishes at tiny Petra (75/4) don’t necessarily compare with similar fare at Shahrazad, though the hummus “bayroty” with chopped celery leaves is deliciously unusual (90 baht). But no other Soi Arab restaurant can match its neighborly ambience, which feels like an Arab version of “Cheers.”
Abu Dabah, the gregarious manager, chats volubly to his many regulars, jokes loudly with waitresses garbed in polyester hijab (they ignore him), and shuttles between the outdoor pita oven and the 10-table interior.
While Thailand’s political and economic problems have subdued other once vibrant parts of Bangkok, bustling Soi Arab teems with an energy that is more Middle Eastern than Thai.
Via IHT
Are they so rich? Really?
You forgot to mention the Bamboo Bar on Soi 3, in my opinion the best Arab food in town. Try the grilled chicken pieces and the hummus, its delicious.
Hey, that’s a familiar picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaroncaley/2212367088/
And it has been written about here:
http://dishaday.blogspot.com/2008/01/dish-day-2008-snack-22-shawarma.html
All you had to do was ask.
Aaron
Hey aaron, no ill intent meant.
I’ve seen my texts and images used at so many sites without proper references, so I usually give it a go with images available on the net.
But I’m more than happy to take the shot down and replace it with an own one.
I like though this shot’s combination of the two worlds.
Really appreciate your comment and “alert,” thanks for getting back to me on the matter.
BangkokDan
Dan
Thanks for your reply. This is a really interesting issue actually. I can understand the pull of doing things the way everyone else is doing things on the internet. I know that sometimes it is hard or impossible to site a proper source. But if you know where something came from, from someone in basically the same blog community, doesn’t it make sense to do what you can? Or did that photo just show up on a search, not linked to my flickr account? Maybe I’ve got this all wrong.
Aaron
… the images I use are either (mostly) my own or pop up in simple image searches. You most likely got this wrong.
I took your image down, respecting your concerns. But please be aware that everything uploaded to the internet becomes public domain. Not an ideal world, but one of the workings of the internet.
Why don’t you watermark your images.
BangkokDan
After our conversation, I really wasn’t concerned about the image anymore.
After you linked to my blog post about Kuppa months ago for use in your story about the Bangkok Sandwich Bible, I simply figured you were an occasional reader of my blog. Guess I got this wrong and I’m sorry about that!
What about the after hours club in the bottom of the Grace hotel, located under the ramp … I think …
It’s a dinner or fast food place that opens after 2 am … it had two juke boxes and used U.S.A. quarters for payment.
I was there drinking all night till 8 am …
This was May 2003.
Everything is closed early now and I find no reason to return to a dull locked city.
Restaraunt Petra in Soi Arab is an absolute gem. It only seats about 12 people downstairs and another 12 upstairs but it is so homely, the elderly Arab owner so entertaining in his interaction with his young staff and the food is the best Middle Eastern food i have ever tasted. The food and service is a a million miles away from the overpriced, poorly cooked crap that masquerades as London’s “Arab Street” of Edgeware Road.
Some 4 years back I’ve had dinner at Nefertiti Egyptian Restaurant and saw a girl/women (I can’t tell as I don’t know) and immediately fallen in love with her (one sided of course). During these four years or so I revisited the restaurant umpteen number of times, but couldn’t disclose my affection to her. She still works there and I still love her to the core of my heart. I being an outsider (not a Thai), older than her, and a little shy couldn’t do so. I don’t know even she knows I love her and I regularly visit the restaurant for having my dinners (put on some weight also). Would someone please please help me out arranging a private meeting with her. I shall be very very thankful to him/her for the rest of my life.
(BD: That’s something you have to do yourself dear, what if you can’t tell her later on what you like/don’t like.)