Our friend Jackson is in town from San Francisco, his first time back since late 2006.  The other evening we took him for dinner to Sukhumvit Soi 38, a side street near the Thong Lo BTS station known for its nighttime eateries.

Both sides of this Bangkok soi are lined with food shops that spill onto the streets, offering nearly every type of Thai food you can imagine.  The food is very fresh, very cheap and very authentic.  Because of the location - lots of expats live nearby - some concessions have been made to non-Thais for everyone's convenience.  For example, it is increasingly common to find laminated menus that have some of the more popular items with both English and Japanese names.  If you want some of the more obscure items, though, you have to read and speak Thai.

Regardless of your Thai literacy, no corners are cut when it comes to preparing the food!  This is the real deal.

Fatty pork (roasted then fried in oil for an extra-crispy skin) served over rice with a Hoisin-type sauce.

A "red soup" with various pork parts including cubes of boiled blood.

Borrowed from Malaysia and Singapore: chicken and oily rice.

Wide rice noodles stir fried with egg and shrimp - kind of like pad thai but without the tamarind sauce.

Everyone's favorite - and also a Malaysian import - chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce.

One of the nice features of Soi 38 is that if you are sitting in one vendor's building, you can still order form other vendors elsewhere on the soi.  They will deliver the food to you, collecting the money and then returning for the utensils and plates later on.  Each vendor uses a different type of plate, so it is easier to identify what belongs to whom.

Here's a little video:

While eating, the rain started to pour outside.  After several hot days with no rain, we seem to be back into the typical rainy season cycle.  Building humidity and clouds throughout the day, giving way to intense storms for thirty minutes or an hour in the late afternoon or early evening. 

Above, Jackson dodges the rain.

Since there was nowhere to go and no way to get home without getting soaked, we stopped in at a massage parlor around the corner for a 90-minute foot massage.  This was a very "old school" parlor, Chinese owned with the menthol smell of balm thick in the air.  My masseuse was a blind man who was surprisingly in tune with the knots in my feet and lower legs.  What the parlor lacked in ambience, the masseuse more than made up for with skill.