Middle Feast.

Most Western capital cities have areas where immigrant ethnic minorities congregate. Whether it be ex-colonial peoples settling in the mother country, descendants of refugees fleeing communist upheavals in the turbulent cold war years, guest workers deciding to stay after completing their contracts, or simply people attracted by liberal immigration policies, metropolises from Sydney to Stockholm all have their own areas populated primarily with non-natives, making for a colourful urban fabric and a cosmopolitan atmosphere - not to mention a vastly improved culinary outlook. This phenomenon is not quite so common in Asia. No Little Saigon in Singapore; no Polishtown in Phnom Penh.

One interesting exception to this rule is the area around Bangkok’s Sukhumvit Soi 3.

Walk down the steps from Nana train station, run the gauntlet of cheap luggage sellers and bad Italian restaurants along the north side of Sukhumvit Road, and turn right into Soi 3/1. Walk a few metres into the soi, rub your eyes, blink a couple of times, then look around you.

Chances are there will be very few visual clues that you have not been magically whisked from the Thai capital and instantly transported to a destination thousands of miles from the Sukhumvit-Nana intersection.

Not a Thai to be seen; rather, the faces you see around you are all African or Middle Eastern. The smell of cooked lamb floats through the air while exotically wrapped women shimmer past you. Brightly lit signs advertise unheard-of products in Arabic and post-colonial North African French.

You have reached Bangkok’s Little Arabia; or Soi Arab, as the Thais call it.

I have spent many an evening on outdoor terraces eating excellent hummus and tabouleh at various eateries here while satellite TV broadcast live from Cairo or Dubai blares out across the sois. I have lingered over the aromatic smoke of a cinnamon or apple shisha, observing the comings and goings of the mysterious residents of this quarter.

Little laneways are crammed with tiny shops piled high with shoes and children’s clothes. Travel agents’ windows offer fares to Abidjan, Kinshasa and Beirut. The Syrian ambassador holds court in his glass-fronted embassy. Jittery American tourists, having clearly taken a wrong turn in their quest for the nearby Subway sandwich franchise, glance nervously about them before making quietly for the nearest exit as if slipping from a lion’s den.

What exactly goes on here is not something I can put my finger on. Why the place has developed at all is a question to which I have no answer. But it is certainly an interesting and very welcome addition to Bangkok’s already palatable cocktail.