Ask anyone who has been to Bangkok if eating well and on the street is an obsession and possibly a national pastime. It’s almost as if Thailand was built for foodies and lovers of street food. But last month a senior official caused a public outcry around the world, including from me after having spent two months in Thailand falling in love with street food. Vallop Suwandee, chair of an advisory board to the governor of Bangkok, was quoted saying that street vendors were to be removed from all 50 districts of the city.
SERIOUSLY!?
Just two months before this the city government was planning on holding a huge street-food festival, millions of bloggers and food critics deemed Bangkok and Thailand to be the best place in the world for street food culture. And then like Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, poof it is gone… What’s next, China announcing the Great Wall will be brought down or replaced by an electric fence???
Understandably, there was backlash around the world from travelers and foodies who frequent Thailand to enjoy the street food culture and try delicious foods in the thousands of stalls. There are YouTube videos that are nothing more than street food videos watching legends show their skills.
Now… Mr. Vallop is claiming he was misquoted: “Let me be clear, on behalf of the city of Bangkok. Street food will continue to be part of Bangkok life, on the condition that there will not be obstructions for pedestrians, and that the vendors observe sanitary rules in the interest of public health. “We will allow them to be in certain areas, under strict conditions.”
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is responsible for running the city and has imposed order and standards on the hundreds of thousands of food vendors operating on the streets in the past. In 1972, just after it was founded, it launched a campaign to force the vendors to operate in designated markets. The BMA recognizes that street food plays a vital role providing a source of income for many people in Bangkok as well as being a huge reason people from around the world travel to Thailand, boosting the overall economy.
To see an in depth history of some of the regulations and reforms of Bangkok’s street food history see page 8 of this article by Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO).
Sources say this time though the amount of officially approved locations for vendors has been cut dramatically. Thousands of vendors have been forced to move leaving downtown areas like Siam Square, Asok and Silom with few or no street-food stalls now visible during the day and night. The most recent area cleared was the wealthy neighborhood of Thonglor. City officials say vendors were offered alternative locations in smaller sois (side streets) further away.
Maybe the actual people being helped are the larger restaurants and vendors inside of huge malls in places like Terminal 21 in Asok, click here to see more of Terminal 21. To see my YouTube review of the food court at the top of the Terminal 21 mall here.
Street food is a staple of life in Bangkok and has been since the 19th Century when large numbers of Chinese immigrants cooked food along the roadsides to make a living, using simple stoves and iron woks. In fact, before the movement of Chinese settlers traditional Thai food never used woks or noodles to cook, think about that the next time you enjoy a delicious bowl of Pad Thai.
Many street food vendors are worried about the city government’s plans as they already make regular payments to local officials and the police. Now, the BMA is insisting vendors use proper dish-washing facilities although vendors say it is not clear how they can do that without access to running water. The BMA also claims its goal is to open up the sidewalks to make more room for pedestrians in the crowded Bangkok streets.
The Urban Design and Development Centre (UDDC) a city planning project started by the architecture faculty at Chulalongkorn University is campaigning to make walking better in Bangkok. Niramon Kulsirisombat its director states that food vendors are not considered the worst problem; “Bangkok’s narrow pavements are an obstacle course of electricity poles, hydrants, disused phone boxes and road signs and pedestrians usually walk in the road with or with food stalls… The reasons the BMA gives for moving the street food, blocking the pavements and hygiene, are not enough. Like Singapore 50 years ago, when Lee Kwan Yew began modernizing the city, they said we have to move all this street food chaos, that it is a symbol of a third world country. But actually, in Bangkok, you should see street food as a form of life support for so many people.”
I know from my own experience how dangerous some of the electrical poles and wires are as I witnessed an overheated wire light a tree branch on fire that it was in contact with (see video), as well as friends of mine in Thailand saying people have actually been electrocuted on rare occasions during bad storms.