The Street Food Capital Of The World Just Banned Street Food

Flickr/mattmangum

If you’ve been itching to get to Thailand to try some authentic street food, you don’t have much time.

The government of Thailand’s capital voted to ban street food in Bangkok, the world’s street food Mecca, and we are sobbing.

Time reports that in an effort to keep the city clean and safe, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) intends to eliminate the city’s streets of vendors by the end of 2017. The Bangkok governor’s chief adviser said, “The street vendors have seized the pavement space for too long and we already provide them with space to sell food and other products legally in the market.”

According to the BBC, nearly 15,000 vendors have been booted this year.

Flickr/J Aaron Farr

Here’s how CNN previously described Bangkok’s street food scene: “It’s impossible to avoid street food in Bangkok, where sidewalk vendors in different parts of the city operate on a fixed rotation. … Some take care of the breakfast crowd with sweet soymilk and bean curd, others dish up fragrant rice and poached chicken for lunch. …The late-night crowd offers everything from phad thai noodles to grilled satay.”

Needless to say, this is a big deal.

We’d be lying if we said we weren’t devastated. But this just means anyone who has been wanting to go to Thailand and has been putting it off now has a very good reason to go this year. So just do it.