Detour: Bangkok

RIVER BLEND The stilt village of Bang Yai, 12 km to the northwest of Bangkok, may seem like a long way to travel for coffee but Poon, my taxi-boat driver, promised me it was worth the trip when I stepped into his boat nursing a cup of Starbucks, of which he clearly disapproved. That's how my erstwhile tour of the old klongs of Bangkok was transformed into a quest for authentic kafae thung, or Thai bag coffee. We took off from Nonthaburi, a small town just north of Bangkok. As we quietly chugged through the network of canals in Poon's...