RARE Thai River Food Crawl! 😳

This school for the blind and the official name is a school of the blind for people with multiple disabilities, right? That's correct. Tastes like super Hong Kong. This reminds me of food that I actually had in Cambodia. For $1.50, it's probably the best cheap. To truly understand Bangkok, you have to picture the city before all the highways and skyscrapers, when canals and rivers were the main arteries of daily life. So we start this trip on the water, taking the boat from Masok to Pratunam, eating in one of Bangkok's oldest trading neighborhoods. Then we are going to head to Nakhon Nayok, where the river-based Thailand still feels alive. Plus, we are going to be visiting a school for the blind. All right, you guys, we are on the most traditional form of Bangkok transportation on the canal water taxis. Check it out, guys. This is a part of some people's everyday just movement of bodies to work, to school. And for other people, it's a tourist attraction. As you can see, the water's still moving, so you got to be athletic. We're going to be checking out a lot of foods by the canal. You're going to see people serving boat noodles, which originally were served on boats and things like that. But stay tuned for the second part of this video, where we go to Nakhon Nayok. Pratunam is not just shopping. It's actually an old canal hub where Chinese Thai trade grew up around water. Some of these foods might not even be popular anymore, but I'm going to recognize them. And this is like, yeah, we're at a Chinese Thai spot right now. Man, this is good, honestly. Tastes like super Hong Kong, because if you guys know about Hong Kong, there's a lot of Diageo people in Hong Kong too. I'm going to give this one, honestly, straight up, for what I was expecting, blood cubes and all, I'm going to give this a five out of five. This is just a bitter melon, sort of very Diageo, very Canto soup. Not that bitter though. The Thai's didn't cook it too bitter. Honestly, this is one of the bitter melon soups I've had. I'm going to give this a 4.5 out of five. I actually had this dish a ton in Malaysia, and I actually had this dish in Taiwan. This is my very first time having this super old-school dish in Thailand. And this is actually a, like a mai fun with fish balls in it. Looks super good. As you can see, you got this type of fish ball. You got the fried fish skin. You got this ball. You got this big piece of taro right here, or like rutabaga. Here we go. This tastes like Bangkok, circa 1920. Khao mung gai, chicken rice. Oh my goodness. Here we go. A five out of five. They eat a ton of duck. This is just a kai mo koo tong in Canto, but instead of kai, it's using op, which is duck. Super excited to try this. I'll be about chicken mushroom poke. Anything that flies with mushroom, fire. Solid four out of five. A lot of Chinatown foods went from Yaowarat to Prachinam to Ekamai, but this is, it tastes better out here and it's cheaper. We with the, uh, Teochew Thais out here in Prachinam, and what I'm ordering is a, uh, cha siu, wonton, mien tong, but it's, uh, dry. I want to say it's more Canto, but Teochews eat a lot of this wonton stuff too. We got wontons, we got cha siu, we got the korn, wonton, mien tong. That's good. For $1.15, it's probably the best cheap. If Prachinam shows canal life, Nakhon Nayok shows where the water actually comes from, feeding rivers and life back into Bangkok. Plus we are going to be visiting a school for the blind. What's going on guys. Welcome to a very special provincial Southeast Asian episode of Fun Bros Food. Um, right now we're about two hours out of Bangkok in a place called Nakhon Nayok, and we're going to be visiting a school of the blind today. As you can see here, they're having lunch right now. And this is one of the main things that you can sponsor. Uh, you know, breakfast is going to be 2000 baht, which is like $60. Um, $120 to $150 could help you sponsor lunch or dinner here. So I'm going to have links, going to have some QR codes and some line codes. If you guys want to donate, like I said, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you could do it for your birthday, for a special event in the name of somebody else, you know, just do something good for the world. All right, you guys, the whole reason that, uh, we came to Nakhon Nayok today is to visit this school of the blind. So, uh, why don't you tell us about it? So this is called, uh, Ban Ruensuk. So if it's a direct translation, it would be, um, happy home. It's based in Ban Na, Nakhon Nayok. So about 90 minutes, uh, away from, let's say the city center of Bangkok. So about 90 kilometers. And the official name is, uh, school of the blind for people with multiple disabilities, right? That's correct. And, uh, what, this was founded by a, by a Christian lady? The, uh, original organization was founded by a Christian lady and a, and a blind gentleman. You did a great thing. And, uh, I'm super excited to check out this school for the blind. As you guys can see here, uh, here's Suket and then here's Win over there in the corner, looking like a young WWE wrestler. That's a cool photo. That's a cool photo to have at your charity. All right. So if you guys want to donate to Ban Ruensuk school of the blind out here, um, it's really important because they don't receive any government assistance because it's actually deemed an institute instead of a school. And, uh, it's almost all privately funded. And you said that they have people of multiple ages here, right? And what, what is the three goals they want to achieve? The three goals is one, most of these, uh, these quote unquote, uh, students have are blind with multiple disabilities. So they virtually can't really take care of themselves. So that's one objective is taking care. The second objective is to also help them with their motor skills to at least partially be semi independent. And then, uh, the third step is if some of them can actually make money, you know, learn to a certain extent and be independent enough to generate income for themselves. So like we said, guys, you know, you're really teaching people, uh, skills and to have a monetizable skillset as well. Like this was made by the students here, um, you know, with some assistance here and there, but this was pretty much made 95% by the students. So this is really dope. I mean, like I said, it's like a lot of people that are born into a really tough situation in life, but they're trying to make the best of it. And you need organizations, obviously to, to help collaborate, to make that happen. Guys, this is where they're going to do the tie dye. And they're just like preparing everything, um, to go step-by-step for the students to learn how to do the tie dye shirts and the claws and the shawls basic step is to be able to pick up a spoon and eat and being able to walk back to their dormitory. So those are like just the two basic, uh, so the most important thing is the blind students are able to identify what room they're going to. So, you know, a room might be a banana, a pear, a peach, a pepper. And that's the best way because if they, you just have sirens and numbers, people can't even, uh, some people cannot hear it. When the people donate, we have, they have to identify now what particular foods can be accepted or not also. Oh, so their, their, um, their health is declining. So maybe not too high of a salt content or sugar cholesterol. So yeah, yeah, no, for sure. You All right. So they got this, uh, agricultural zone to the side of the school and, uh, people can learn a mixed fertilizer and in case some people, they're going to go back to their hometown. Some of the students, they're going to have, uh, skills that they can apply to a rural area, you know, taking care of these plants or these trees or just some skills that, uh, it's almost like a, it's pretty cool. It's like a training ground. All right, guys, we're looking at some out here that is very difficult to find in Bangkok. Not that you can't find it, but it would be in the older, I guess, river based communities. Yeah. Like this is a pretty, not so rare, but also rare at the same time. All right. What, what is this? Uh, this is so, uh, we opt out for the shrimp instead. Um, so there's basically, what do you call it? It's like bean sprouts, I guess. So what is this? Like a Tamarind curry? Yeah, very close to that. Obviously you got the corn in there. Um, pretty spicy. You got the medium, medium spice. Right. Right. Right. And you saw this, uh, plant right here that is very, very known in Southeast Asia. It's bitter, right? More like a Nakornayok kind of style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like we said, guys, Bangkok used to be based around rivers and canals, but that culture is like only remaining in a few, like more ancient, you know, a hundred year old communities. Uh, what about this? This one is Pla Ladpik. Pla means fish, Ladpik means, uh, spice, spicy sauce. So this is very Asian, man. Yeah. This almost reminds me of like a Hunan fish head, but like, uh, way more fried. And obviously the chilies are going to be different. They're not going to be Hunan chilies. They're going to be some Thai chilies right here. Oh my goodness. Yeah. That's crazy. Flip the fish. We can remove the bone, get some old school skills in there. Just, ah, what else? We got this. I haven't seen this in a while. This thing, you said you saw this in America, right? Me as a Thai, I've lived here for 20 years. I've never seen this before. Cause you want to crack this open real quick. See what's in there. Wow. Look at that. Mmm. Is that, is that like, uh, what's that called? Uh, it's not Bami, but it's like Winsen. Winsen. Winsen. It's a Chinese term, right? Winsen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Winsen in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's obviously there's no bone. So according to the lady that I spoke to, she said that they pretty much cracked everything out, took all the bones and put in all the pork and the Winsen inside. Mmm. It's cool to see that because you do see this, like, I don't know if it's, I don't want to call it like a gimmick dish, but you do see it in the U.S. All right. Lastly, this is, what's this called? This is Buron. So it's kind of like a curry paste, kind of like a, what is a, like a crab paste, right? Yeah, it's a crab paste. And this reminds me of food that I actually had in Cambodia. This is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess the traditional way, I don't know. You guys can correct me here. I'm not, I'm not calling a yolk guy. I'm a Bangkok kid, but it's basically, I think this is what you do. You pat this in and dude, this is really good. I'm not going to lie. When I saw this at first, I was like, where is this going to be? Like fermented, like some old fermented tofu. There's still the shell. The shell is still here. Look at that. Hey guys, we're by the river. Okay. Look, it's not catering to tourists. It's catering to Thai people. Very coconutty too. Very coconutty actually. Last but not least, what do we have here? This is what you call, this is kang som. So som means orange, kang means sour. Som, sour. And kang, kang is like a curry. So this is a sour omelet curry guys. I think the thing that really stands out to me right here are the omelet pieces on top. It's a sour curry. I have never seen an egg omelet inside of curry before. There's vegetables in the omelet too. All right, man. Whoa. Yeah. That was a whole new flavor. Some new flavors. Okay. All right, you guys, we're at Rim Suan. And you know what's really interesting about this spot is we're only nine hours and 24 minutes away from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Right. Literally, if we just take this dirt road outside. And that is pretty crazy because I've been to Cambodia. You said that the previous spot we were at, you said that the food tasted almost similar to Cambodian food, right? Yeah. So then I was wondering, is it because where we're at, Nakhon Nayok is like on the same road directly that leads to Cambodia, right? Right. So that might be the reason. We don't know. But first of all, we're going to look at this first dish right here. What is it? This is basically crab, but then it's a direct translation in Thai is Bunim, which is like soft crab. But obviously you can see that it's fried. So it's like soft crab fried. This is fried soft shell crab, almost done in a Karaage style, but with the Thai holy basil, the Kaprao on here and everything like that. Check it out. And you see they got like some fusion Western sauce right here too. Okay. Seafood sauce. Dude, I'm liking it. Seafood sauce. I am just glad to have some river foods because like you said, like in Bangkok, you can't find river foods, but sometimes it's like, you know, you got to go to the river fair or that old neighborhood, like, uh, you know, something by the river. I don't know. There's old neighborhoods by the river. This is similar to Khai Poo, which is like, uh, Poo Khai, which is like crab, but but as you can see, they added some curry inside as well. Nothing too super fancy in my opinion. Right. This is very popular in Bangkok as well. Right. All right. Let's get it. Let's just see. Just rip out this meat and then I'm gonna dip it in here. How much would you give it, Brady? Honestly, it is better than the ones in Bangkok because we're probably closer to the source of the river than they actually pulled this out of. What's this? Paduk Poo, fermented catfish. This is fermented catfish that is fried. I've never seen this before in my life. This is almost like a very wispy and airy. You can literally like it dissolves in your mouth almost. You got to add it with the sauce too. Papaya. I've never had that. And last but not least, what is this? Som Tam Hen. So instead of a traditional normal papaya salad, som tam, they added mushrooms in it. Oh, okay. So it's an interesting mix. Not something that I usually would eat, but I've never tried it, honestly. You've never had this before? Nope. Hey, like we said, guys, we're having duck kaprao out by the river, mushroom som tam, all types of new stuff. Some Nakornayok stuff. Interesting. Honestly, I can see vegetarians loving that because there's going to be more substance and like protein, you know, fungus vibe to that version of som tam. The sauce tastes similar to this sauce right here. I don't know what it is, but I've been noticing that everything that's by the river is a little bit more toned down and it's not as spicy as inland food, but that's like usually how the case is because it's more seafood-y, more like fresh, like sweet water vibes. Right, right, right. After a day like this, you can really start to see Thailand differently. From taking the canal boat through Bangkok, to eating in Pratunam, to ending up in Nakornayok, the thread through all of it is water. Long before modern roads and neighborhoods like Sukhumvit took over, rivers and canals shaped how people moved, ate, traded, and lived. And in a lot of ways, they still do. By the way, if you want to donate to the School of the Blind in Nakornayok, down below, I have all of the information.