Ratchawat Market

This might be cheating a bit, but rather than pick just one venue we're going to go out on a limb and recommend the entire area in front of Bangkok's Ratchawat Market as a goldmine for noodle lovers.

At one nameless shophouse, an old man has been serving the same style of steaming hot bowls of noodles for 50 years. Available in several styles of noodles, dry or with soup, they're topped with a few perfectly cooked pieces of liver, pork and fish balls.

Shophouse Guay Teow Tom Yum Khun Muay looks like it should be abandoned and boarded up, not teeming with slurp-happy customers bent over steaming bowls of spicy noodle soup.

And over at Ma Yodpak Radna Ratchawat there's fantastic pad see eiu (stir-fried wide rice noodles) and sen yai radna (wide rice noodles in brown gravy).

For beef noodle fans, head to Nua Wooah Rai Tiem Taan, a noodle stall surrounded by giant shade trees that steams up a sensational bowl of simple noodle soup topped with fresh lettuce, thick slices of marbled Kobe beef, fried garlic shavings and a robust beefy broth.