Monk's Bowl Village (Ban Baat) and Old School Lunch in Bangkok

One of the off the beaten path things to do in Bangkok is visit Ban Baat (บ้านบาตร), what is known as the Monk’s Bowl Village or community in Bangkok. This attraction will be included in the updated version of my Bangkok eBook:
What’s in this Bangkok video vlog?
4:39 : Lunch at Racha Pochana
8:40 : Ban Baat - Monk’s bowl village in Bangkok
In this Bangkok travel video vlog, I first headed out on the BTS skytrain to Saphan Taksin station. Once there, I met up with a friend at the Saphan Taksin pier. We walked over to Bangrak along Charoen Krung, and across the street from the Robinson department store we went to True Coffee. True Coffee serves alright coffee, and it usually has quite good wifi as well. So if you’re looking for good wifi in Bangkok, True Coffee is usually quite good. After having coffee with Tom, I met up with my wife Ying back at Saphan Taksin, and we headed walked to Sathon Pier to take the boat up the Chao Phraya River.
There are a number of different boats to take, marked different according to the flag. The normal public boat in Bangkok is marked by an orange flag, and it costs 15 THB, and runs along the main river piers. The Chao Phraya river express boat is a great way to travel in Bangkok because you don’t have to worry about traffic, you get a nice cool breeze, and you can see some Bangkok attractions along the way on either side of the river - plus it’s just fun to ride a boat. We took the boat from Sathon Station to Tha Thien pier, which is the same boat station you’d get off if you want to visit Bangkok’s Wat Pho or the Grand Palace. From there we stopped for a bag of dried squid, which is Ying’s favorite snack, and then continued on walking towards the monk’s bowl community - Ban Baat.
On the way, we both got pretty hungry, and we decided to stop for lunch. We didn’t know where to eat, but just stopped at a restaurant that looked like it had character, that was called Racha Pochana, and it served a selection of old school Thai Chinese food. The Grandmother in charge of the restaurant said she cooked all the food herself. Everything was delicious, but out of everything we ordered, my favorite dish was the Chinese long beans stir fried with crispy pork belly and salt.
After an amazing lunch we headed over to Ban Baat, the Monk’s bowl village. On the corner of Boripat Road and Bamrung Muang there is an outdoor workshop which is sort of the introduction to the Ban Baat (บ้านบาตร) community. In this workshop you’ll see artisans creating Thai monk alms bowl by welding pieces of metal together, then pounding them out with a hammer, and then smoothing them, decoration them with lacquer and paint, and then they are available for sale or just to look at. The workshop at the beginning is cool to see, but keep on walking down the street, make a right on Soi Ban Baat, walk down the road for a bit, and you’ll get to the real Monk’s bowl community, the real old section of Ban Baat. This is a neighborhood that was set aside years ago to make monk alms bowls, and it’s one of the last remaining places in Bangkok where they still make the bowls by hand the way they are supposed to be. Buddhist monks that take their practice seriously in Bangkok will likely get a monk alms bowl from Ban Baat (บ้านบาตร). You can walk around the narrow walking lanes of the community neighborhood and observe the different steps it takes to make a monk alms bowl. This is definitely one of the off the beaten path things to do in Bangkok.
They are usually open from about 8 am - 5 pm daily - but some families might be open or shut just depending on the day.
บ้านบาตร
ที่อยู่ 124/1 สี่แยกเมรุปูน ภูเขาทอง ถนนบริพัตร เขตป้อมปราบศัตรูพ่าย กรุงเทพ
โทร. 086-1049639, 086-892-3660
เปิดทุกวัน 8.00 - 17.00 น.
Music in this video is from Audio Network
This travel food video was produced by Mark Wiens and Ying Wiens, check out our blogs: & &
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