Boots in the Oven

On foot in HCMC

Here's a day on our own in HCMC!  This one comes with my pledge to make it snappy, already, since the last post was a bit of a slog!

Start the day off the Viet way, with pho.  This one, pho tai from pho 24, was very very very good.  Perhaps the best we've had.  We added an egg to ours, because we have a long history of liking things with raw eggs added to them.  Pho tai is made with thinly sliced raw beef - don't worry, the beef cooks in the soup, deliciously.

Not pictured - our fried egg rolls, also superb but sort of come across looking a lot like egg rolls. 

Full and happy, we set out to walk the short distance past Ben Thanh market to the Reunification Palace.  Walking in HCMC takes perseverance - not because of the oppressive heat, or the stifling humidity, or the air pollution - no, it's because every two and a half feet you have to dodge cyclo drivers or motorcycle taxis wanting to drive you wherever you need to go.  Even if it's around the corner.

I just couldn't bring myself to barter for what our book styles the "quintessential mode of Vietnamese transport" - mostly because I was afraid I'd look like this:

A big white belly in a wheelbarrow.

We did arrive eventually at the Reunification Palace, a bevy of cyclo drivers shadowing us on the street (seriously, I think there were four at one point), but it wasn't quite open yet.  So we passed the time with this coconut, bought from one of several vendors in front of the closed gates.

You'd think this would be delicious - a cold young coconut hacked open for our thirst-quenching pleasure - but it wasn't.  It tasted sort of like thick, sweetish cruciferous water.  We weren't big fans.

When the gates of the palace opened, we pushed our way through with a large Korean tour group.  The Reunification Palace was built in 1966 where the French Norodom Palace stood prior to a 1962 assassination attempt on then-President Diem.  (Diem was killed in a military coup in 1963, so he never lived in this building.)  The Norodom Palace was damaged heavily in the attempt, so the building was torn down and rebuilt.

It looks like a college library.  Definitely a product of late 1960s - early 1970s architecture.

Your entrance fee to the Reunification Palace includes a guided tour.  The building is sort of hilarious inside.  I mean no disrespect, but it reminds me strongly of Graceland.  The guides are proud to point out the "lavish" decorations - the murals, the mother of pearl, the elephant foot trash cans...

No, really.

The whole building is like a time warp back to 1974.  Shag carpeting, low-slung couches, wood paneling, and all.

There were even two bars, though we couldn't help but think the government of South Vietnam probably should have had other things on their minds between 1966 and 1975? 

The views from the building are quite nice, though.  The palace does have the feeling of being somewhat removed from the craziness and bustle outside.

There are reminders of which half of the country eventually came out on top.  The most celebratory, perhaps, is the gilded bust of Ho Chi Minh that greets you in the briefing room near the start of the tour.

And from the rooftop bar and dance floor, where you can buy pop and bottled water, there's a view of the helicopter pad and markers showing where two North Vietnamese bombs blew holes in the building in April of 1975, just before the fall of Saigon.

The tour ends after a walk through the frankly creepy command center in the basement.  We spent some time watching another propaganda film and wandered through a room containing lots of memorabilia - pictures of modern Vietnamese leaders with heads of state from around the world.

On the way out, almost all the way to the street, there's a tank.  We were told that this is the tank that broke down the gates of the Palace on April 30, 1975.

There are a couple of problems here.  First - another of these tanks sits in Hanoi.  Second - this tank is actually the one that re-staged the breaking down of the walls for the TV cameras, not the one that did the actual breaking.  Mediated reality at its best.

We left the Reunification Palace feeling not particularly wiser.  We were hungry for a snack, though, so another stop was made for a banh mi.  Not a very good one, but a banh mi nonetheless.

I think it was just because we were getting on towards midafternoon, but the bread wasn't so great and the stuffing selection was lacking at this little place down the block from the War Remnants Museum.

The War Remnants museum itself is hard to describe.  It's HCMC's biggest tourist attraction.  It's very hard to visit, but not something that should be passed up.

It brought me very close to tears.  There were eyewitness accounts of the massacre at My Lai; pictures of people horribly burned by napalm and deformed by Agent Orange; life-size recreations of the horrific conditions at the French prisons of Con Son Island; and, perhaps most surreally, preserved fetuses with birth defects caused by dioxin.

Awful.

Obviously, war is never pretty, or desirable.  But it's doubly hard to see the horrors of the Vietnam war documented so starkly, especially when we're at war again right now. 

There is of course no mention of any atrocities directed towards Americans in Vietnam; the Hanoi Hilton is made out to be a place of relaxation, where captured POW's were treated well and fairly.  This is the way the Vietnamese government glosses over their participation in the war.

We stayed at the museum until we were thrown out at closing time.  I was dazed on the walk home.  Husbear had to help me with street crossing even more than usual.

The conventional wisdom is that the Vietnamese are over what happened in their country just over thirty years ago.  The majority of the population was born post-1975.  But we still saw people - more than a few - with deformities likely caused by dioxin.

I looked more closely at people on the street on the walk home.  I guess I was surprised that nobody tried to punch us on our trip, but everyone was welcoming, smiling...

We walked through a sculpture garden filled with families out for a late afternoon stroll.

By the time we got close to our hotel, we were starting to get pretty hungry.  Hai, our wonderfully friendly guide from the previous day, had invited us out to eat a little later on, but snacks were in order since our meeting was still several hours down the road.

Luckily, as we turned the corner onto D De Tham, we spotted this woman making banh mi at a furious pace.

We bought two and brought them up to our room along with a couple of beers purchased at the Hong Hoa's grocery room.

These were quite good - good bread, good meats, great pickles, and a lot of spicy peppers just like Husbear likes them.

We also munched on our big bag o' fruits from the previous day's Ben Thanh trip.  Some of these fruits were really difficult to get into without a knife!  There we are, all hacking away, trying to poke our thumbs in so we can peel a milkfruit...

Would you like to compete in a quick "match the fruit" game?  In this picture, find the following fruit:

Guava

Custard Apple

Rambutan

Milkfruit

Mangosteen

Jackfruit

I'll even give you a head start!  Here's what a rambutan looks like on the inside.  (No, not in jail.  The interior of the fruit.)

I know this is sort of sacrilegious, but honestly, neither of us were huge fans of any of these fruits.  They were interesting, particularly to look at, but their flavors were overall too subtle for us.  Perhaps trying them a few more times will lead to the rambutan DT's so many people seem to have? (Whoa, whoa, whoa there missy.  Speak for yourself.  Personally, I was a huge fan of the custard apple - the ripe one at least, and I could pop little rambutans all day.  Also, the mangosteen makes a strong case for itself -L. Pants).

Of course, we are experiencing strong physical withdrawal symptoms for certain other Vietnamese foods.  Some of these are the ones Hai sought out for us later that night.

We met at the Rex Hotel, where the foreign press corps were briefed by the American military during the war.  Now it has a beautiful rooftop bar and several restaurants.  We weren't going to be eating anything that fancy, though - Hai was taking us for banh xeo.

It's an insanely delicious, crispy yet soft crepe filled with your choice of ingredients.  Most traditional is pork and shrimp and bean sprouts.

There's a street called Dinh Cong Trang that's the epicenter of these crepes in Saigon.  We ordered three, which was probably overkill, and tucked in.

You take a chunk of pancake, wrap it in lettuce with some herbs (a basily one and a minty one) and dip in fish sauce.  There's an interplay of textures and flavors and temperature... oh, jeebus, writing about this is making me SO HUNGRY. 

The women cooking the banh xeo sit out streetside, because making these crepes takes an extremely hot skillet and is overall a meltingly hot business.

Off to a great start, we walked out of the restaurant and down the street.  Husbear was telling Hai that what he really wanted to try was hot vit lon, otherwise known as balut. 

This is a culinary item that most Westerners have a lot of trouble with.  It's actually made an appearance on Fear Factor, and, apparently, on Survivor.  It is a duck egg, containing a duck embryo just days from hatching.  In Vietnam, the Philippines, and Cambodia they're considered delicacies, and people walk the streets pushing carts filled with them.

So, here goes.  Hai was rather surprised that we wanted to try them!  I think he thought we were cute.

They're steamed and kept hot in a basket lined with corn husks.  You eat them with rau ram, a strong-flavored herb, and perhaps a little salt.  (And don't worry - if you really want to try them, they can be bought right here in the States!)

You crack the top with a spoon and suck out the warm broth on top.  The juice itself tastes a lot like duck confit.  It's the texture that really got me - that and the fact that I pulled a tiny, featherless duck out of my egg with my spoon.  Eesh.

You may want to skip this picture of Husbear's hot vit lon.

It wasn't bad!  I was floored.  The texture, while a little difficult, didn't disgust me like I feared.  I would eat another one of these, though perhaps not anytime soon. (I thought it was totally yummy and I notice girlie failed to mention that I had to finish her egg for her... -L. Pants).

Next... a drink to wash that duck egg down!  How about nuoc mia da?

This is a refreshing sugarcane drink sold all over Vietnam.  It's wonderful freshly pressed - a little sweet, lightly vegetably, and totally refreshing.  These are good.  We can buy nuoc mia in cans here in Austin, but I imagine it's not going to be the same thing at all.

Husbear thinks this next item will be a real crowd-pleaser... I'm not so sure.  We walked down the street to Huong Rung 2, the second outpost of the restaurant where we'd eaten field mouse and eel the previous day.  Husbear wanted...

Palm worms.  Duong chen bo, I guess.  These were probably the size of my thumb, and we ordered two.  I'm not sure why we ordered two, as I was 80 percent certain I wouldn't be trying them.  When they arrived at the table, they erased my last little bit of doubt.  No freaking WAY was I putting that thing in my mouth.

Their appearance didn't stop Husbear.  No siree.

The report?  They tasted to him mostly of the garlic and butter they were fried in.  He said the heads weren't bad - they were crunchy, while the innards were sort of goopy and not particularly desirable.

I barely managed not to throw up on the table.

From here, we went and ate a couple more normal things - some banh cuon (rice paper wrappers filled with pork) and che, a sweet icy dessert with mung beans and brightly colored tapioca bits.  But, because I love you guys, I'm just going to leave you with this last picture of Husbear about to eat a palm worm.

Hai, thanks for showing us a great night on the town!  We are in your debt.

Tomorrow (chronologically) - we take an early morning boat into the Mekong Delta, where we see coconut candy manufacturing among other things. 

Perhaps the most insane day of our entire vacation?

I uploaded these pictures to Flickr several days ago, and I've just been sitting on them.  This was a long day, but a wonderful one, and it's going to take a little time to synthesize properly!

So - here goes.  If I don't dive right in, I'm going to miss my self-imposed August 13th deadline by a mile, aren't I?

Husbear's friend Fiona gave us the contact information for a tour guide she and her friends hired when they went to Vietnam last year or so.  We started talking with him in Italy and eventually set up a full day tour for the day after we arrived.  It was expensive, but we had a tour guide (and car!) all to ourselves.  Hai would be coming to the hotel to pick us up early for a full day of touring HCMC/Sai Gon and environs.

We had to have breakfast first, though...

I greatly prefer Vietnamese noodle soup breakfast to the Thai rice soup breakfast.  Husbear ordered pho (beef noodle soup) while I stuck to pork.  These particular soups we bought through our hotel, and they were more expensive and blander than noodle soups we had elsewhere (check back later).

Noodle soup in this hot climate really makes sense, when you think about it.  The slightly salty broth replaces electrolytes and rehydrates you, and it's a great way to stretch a small amount of meat.

Hai picked us up at the appointed time, and we met our driver and our extremely pimp ride. 

Hai was a great guide.  Anyone planning a trip to HCMC, write us at bootsintheoven@gmail.com for his contact information.  We told him that we didn't know too much about the sights to be seen around HCMC, but that we were fairly mobile on our own and wanted to see things it would be tough to see without a car.

His company usually gives tours to older Americans in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, and when he saw us he blurted "You're so YOUNG!"  His English was great, and he wanted to ask us questions about idiomatic expressions (why do you pitch a script?).  He knew lots of Carson and Henny Youngman jokes (like I said, the majority of his customers are quite a bit older than us!).

We all got into the car and were driving out of Saigon (the people that live there seem to go back and forth between calling the city "Saigon" and "Ho Chi Minh City", so I figure I don't have to choose either) when we passed a large memorial on the side of the road.

We pulled over, and Husbear and I crossed the street to get a closer look.  This takes a little more dexterity than in the States - many crossings don't have traffic lights, and even the ones that do have people doing death-defying left and right turns.  It's Naples cubed.

The memorial is to Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated at this busy Saigon intersection in 1963 to protest then-president Diem's treatment of Buddhists.  My generation might know him best as the guy on the cover of that Rage album.

We only took a couple of minutes there, but it's obvious that he's still revered by Vietnamese Buddhists. 

Our first stop was to have been at a school on the outskirts of HCMC, where we could meet the kids.  Unfortunately, it turned out that summer break had begun only the day before, so we had to scratch that visit.  That was fine with me, as I wasn't sure how I felt about being show-and-tell anyway, but to my chagrin we were destined to be show-and-tell at our next stop.

We pulled into a dusty driveway with several small thatched buildings around a central courtyard.  Hai told us that this family makes rice paper wrappers and they'd be happy to show us how.  We piled out and were suddenly surrounded by oh my gawd the most adorable chilluns.

"She will be a humdinger!" Hai exclaimed.

The family wanted a group shot, too.  I felt a little strange about all of this attention, but I think they were just as interested in us as we were in them.  I would like to draw your eye to the universal older/younger brother dynamic on display in the center left of the picture.

We also met the family chickens, most of whom were in better shape than this guy.

There's no avoiding live poultry in Southeast Asia, unless you stay in your hotel the whole time.  Even then, it better be a Western style hotel!

We did get a demonstration of how the family makes their rice paper wrappers.  The woman showing us made it look so easy, of course... just spread out some rice water on the top of a steamer, put the top back on the steamer for a moment, then transfer the finished wrapper to a waiting mat where they'd dry.

Then we got to try.  I went first.

The first one I made was the best - from there, they became progressively more mangled.

Husbear, of course, got better and better from his initial try.  The family was impressed, especially that he was able to do this left-handed!

After trying our hands at rice-paper-wrapper making, we got back in the car and went to a rubber farm.  These are very common in the area around HCMC.  I was interested to learn that they work very much like maple syrup farms; the trees have a slash cut in the side each morning, during the coolest part of the day, and they drip sap into a shallow bowl for the next few hours.  This sap is then taken to a nearby factory where it's processed into blocks of rubber for sale.

It's possible to see the old slashes in the trunk of this tree.

Here's where the day became significantly less comfortable.  Our next stop was a Viet Cong cemetery.

The graves are mostly those of people who died in the nearby Cu Chi tunnels, which we'd be visiting shortly.  Each is inscribed with the date of enlistment and the date of "martyrdom", some of which were months or just days apart.

The cemetery was empty of visitors except for us.  We looked at the murals outside and felt significantly unbalanced and strange.  These people were killed by the American military in a long miasma of a war, and as an American I felt guilty.  Obviously, I understand that it was kill or be killed, but that understanding doesn't change the basic fact that these graves hold people killed by Americans.  We've spent our lives hearing the American viewpoint on what the Vietnamese call the American war, and it was time to see things from the Vietnamese perspective.

The next stop was the Cu Chi tunnels themselves.  Each group must have a military guide in the tunnels, portions of which have been widened out to allow tourists to fit.  Some of the bunkers and planning rooms have actually had the dirt roof removed and been covered by metal roofs, so you can see portions of the networks without going underground.

Before getting to the actual tunnels, you walk along paths through the trees, past dioramas of Viet Cong fighters.

It was wonderful being there with Hai.  He answered our questions without once rolling his eyes at how little we really knew of the conflict.  His father and uncle both fought in the war on the side of the South Vietnamese and were put in reeducation camps for years after the fall of Saigon.  His uncle has since emigrated to California.

We sat with a few other tourists and watched a propaganda film about the Cu Chi tunnels made during the war.  The tunnel inhabitants were portrayed as plucky villagers, out to defeat the American menace and huge firepower with just their wit and their small guns.  And their hideously effective-looking spiked booby traps.  We learned that Viet Cong fighters were given multiple awards for killing American soldiers - they were called American Killing Heroes.  (Here's another tourist's experience watching this film, with some more quotes.)

We saw some of the ways the Viet Cong disguised the entrances to the tunnels.  They built long tubes so cooking smoke would come out well away from the tunnels themselves, and they disguised tunnel entrances as termite mounds.

Then, we were taken outside to see one of the tunnel entrances.  Our military guide brushed back some leaves, displaying a very well-fitted wooden trap door.  He then hopped down into the entrance, replacing the top.  It was really hard to tell where the entrance was, even through we'd just seen him go down it... and then he popped up behind us and was looking at me expectantly. 

I really thought I might not fit. 

They wouldn't even let Husbear try.  After I wiggled down and came back up for air several yards away, the top was replaced and we were rushed off to a new entrance, a little wider and easier to see than the one I'd dropped down.

This one led, after some uncomfortable hunching and a barely-controlled fall down a small slope, to an underground planning room.  We were told that this was where parts of the Tet Offensive were planned, when Viet Cong soldiers burst from the tunnels and there was fighting in the streets of Saigon.

We were shown spiked, evil-looking booby traps by the sides of the door in this room, which were meant to catch American "tunnel rats" when they jumped to the side of the door attempting to clear a room.

Then our camera battery died.  We had the option of crawling underground for (if I remember correctly) 50, 120, or 300 meters.  Each level went deeper underground and became tighter.  I could only handle the 120 meter crouch before I had to get back up, but Husbear made it the full 300 meters.

300 meters is 984 feet.  Parts of the tunnel were so narrow Husbear had to go facefirst on his elbows.  He cut his hand on a rock and came up sweating like crazy, covered in mud.

And people lived in these tunnels for weeks at a time.

Then, we got to eat boiled taro root dipped in peanuts.  Not bad until we were told that's what the Viet Cong tunnel residents lived on while they were underground...

We skipped the area where you could pay to fire an AK-47 ($1 per round!).  Hai took us to a restaurant he likes that's nearby for lunch.

Yeah, I'm only up to the lunch portion of our day.

Ben Nay is very nice and has a beautiful setting on a river.  Many of the tables have their own little huts, for privacy.  We had almost the whole restaurant to ourselves.

Hai took care of the ordering, and taught us to eat each dish in the Vietnamese way.  We had fried fish, sliced pork, a brothy soup, rice, pineapple, spring rolls, shrimp crackers... a real feast.

The Vietnamese have a way of eating their sauteed greens that we immediately took to - they make a dip out of soy sauce and chilis and dip each bite.  Highly recommended.

Then, back to HCMC with a stop for a much-needed ca phe sua da - iced strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk.  We had a great time watching the traffic on the way back into town, while Hai tried to teach us the six tones of Vietnamese.  We didn't do very well.

Back in town, we stopped at the Cholon market.  This is HCMC's Chinatown, home to a large Chinese population.  First we made time for a little streetfood.

So, we didn't end up spending too much time at the Cholon market.

We got into the sweltering interior, with its narrow alleyways and towering displays, and Hai said, "You know... I think Ben Thanh market would be better."

Never let it be said that the Vietnamese don't have a sweet tooth.

Before leaving Cholon behind, though, we stopped at a pagoda for a glimpse of the religious side of Cholon.

We shoulda sampled this woman's wares on the way, but we were still full from lunch.  Now I'd kill for whatever she's selling.  I'm very hungry.  Is it dinnertime yet?  Can we have some authentic Vietnamese food?  Check out the French bread in her basket, along with the grill she's carrying around. 

The pagoda.  I'm an idiot, because I didn't write down which one this was, and from the descriptions in our book it could be one of several.  Help, Hai?

Again, the incense packed a pretty serious wallop.  We learned from Hai that the cones overhead have prayers attached to them, and we figured sending up a prayer with incense would be a fitting thing to do on our three-year anniversary.  (Happy late anniversary to us!)

Next, a brief drive to Ben Thanh market.  When we were looking for places to stay in HCMC, I was pretty insistent that I wanted to stay near this market, partly because Noodlepie has a whole section about it on his blog that I'd been salivating over for years.

Ben Thanh is pretty overwhelming, at least for a first-time visitor.  About a quarter of the inside is given over to food stalls, which we planned to visit later.  The streets outside look normal during the day, but turn into a thriving night market later on.  A huge variety of goods are for sale inside - cloth for tailoring, ready-made clothing, shoes, purses, tourist shlock (mixed with some nice stuff, as always), and food.  Food food food.  This was what we wanted to see, and Hai led us through the teetering booths while being peppered with questions.

"What's that?"

"Dried shrimp."

"What's that?"

"Fermented fish paste and fish sauce with shrimp."

"What's that?"

"I... don't know."

At least we were all in good company.  (Turns out it's gac.  No, really.)

To Hai's credit, if he didn't know what something was, he's ask the person selling it.  Often the Vietnamese names didn't have a translation he'd know, and he'd offer to look up the Latin names for us.

For instance, most of the specimens in this pile of greens.

An insane number of treats were on display in that market.  We had a great time looking around, wanting to buy everything.  I think this is preserved shrimp with green papaya?  Or noodles?

We asked Hai to help us put together a small bag of fruits we'd been wanting to try - mangosteen, custard apple, jackfruit, things of that nature - and were a little surprised to learn that you haggle for food here, too!  In Italy, food is displayed with the prices and that's what you pay.  Not so in Vietnam.

Jackfruit is enormous, but most sellers will break it down and sell small packets of the flesh.

That was where we parted ways with Hai - he, to go to his ballroom dance class (he was learning the cha-cha) and us, back to our hotel with lots of pictures and a bag of fruit.

After a much-needed shower, we were back on the street looking for a restaurant recommended by Hai - the Huong Rung, where he promised we could sample some of Vietnam's more... exotic treats.

We'd heard that one of the ways Vietnam's growing middle class has embraced conspicuous consumption is by eating strange animals.  There are restaurants all over Vietnam that trade in such foods as dog, cat, snake, mouse, and songbird.

We'd already told ourselves that we wouldn't eat anything endangered... which is why bat was out.

This place had a huge menu.  Not only were there pages and pages of a la carte items, there were also ten or twelve full menus, like you see above.  Dove and cobra and bat and lizard and rat, if I recall.

We spent a long time perusing the menu with our Tiger beers, and eventually ordered more greens, which we set to like old pros - putting a bite at a time in our bowl of rice, and dipping each bite in our spicy soy dip.

We also ordered a whole grilled eel, which arrived coiled on the plate topped with herbs and with a side of peanut chili sauce.  I prefer the Japanese eel, with its sweet barbeque-type sauce.  The sauce here was outstanding, but the eel was a bit dry.

We had fun playing "recreate the eel!" with bits of skeleton.

But the pièce de résistance, which Husbear had to actually act out and then draw for them to believe we wanted it...

Field mice!  Pretty sure these little guys aren't endangered.  We ordered two, because who wants to share a field mouse?

They were... good?  Ish?  They tasted a lot like quail.  Sort of gamey.  And as you can probably imagine, there isn't a whole lot of meat on a mouse, with the exception of the hind legs.  We felt good about our ordering, not to mention really full, and waddled back to the hotel satisfied.

Like I warned you at the outset, it was quite a day.  But at least we ended it with a bang.

Have a great weekend!  We've rented a light kit to take pictures of my new haircut.  Overkill?  I think not.

We take the eating orgy on the road to Vietnam!

Early morning, breakfastless, tuk-tuk to Chiang Mai's airport.

The airport experience was rather confused, but we did check our bags and make it through security only to find that the eating options were limited to buns in plastic wrap.  Husbear bought one.  I turned my nose up and said "hrmph" and went to work on an internet terminal.

Air Asia didn't offer us food, but when you pay like three dollars for a flight, what do you expect?

Since we'd be switching from Air Asia to our old nemesis, Air France, for the Bangkok - Saigon flight, we had to pick up and recheck our luggage in BKK.  But we had four hours between flights, so checkin wasn't even close to open.  What are a couple of deliriously hungry people to do?

Strap on the backpacks and compare menus at all of the eateries to be found in Bangkok's ultramodern Suvarnabhumi airport, of course.

We ended up at a place with an interesting-looking Thai menu, though let me tell you that that airport has all sorts of places that looked really great for eating.

We ordered lotsa stuff plus beer.

Tom Young Goong (otherwise known to me as tom yum - spicy sour shrimpy delicious soup we learned to make in our class):

This was a blander iteration to which we added lotsa chili flakes and fish sauce. However, the Sukhothai noodles (named after another of Thailand's historic capitols) were even blander-er, thought they had a good porky flavor and a tasty fried noodle topping.

The dish that actually brought us into the place was their crispy som tam.  It's the green papaya salad that was our obsession throughout our stay in Thailand, but here the papaya shreds were actually breaded and fried!

This was an outstanding idea, and adding in the textural variation to what was already a well-flavored som tam was a seriously yummy coup.  BUT.  The fried papaya shreds had been tossed in the fish-based som tam dressing before arriving at our table, and started to get pretty soggy midway through the meal.  I think dressing on the side, for dipping, would be in order here.

After eating, the checkin counter at Air France Sucks was open - we dropped off our bags and went exploring.

This airport, Suvarnabhumi, has been open less than a year.  It's spic and span and shiny and new and full of great shops and great restaurants and life-size dioramas of apparently well-known Buddhist stories that left this Jew and her Christian husband scratching their heads.

My one real beef with this airport is that once you're past the final level of security there's nothing to do but sit and wait for your plane.  Or pee, since luckily there are bathrooms.  For a girl like me, who likes getting to the gate an hour and a half before the flight but then gets bored and wants to wander and window-shop, this sucks.

But it is rather pretty, in its emptiness.

We were lucky to have brought books, so we just spent some quality time with those while waiting for our delayed flight to start boarding.

It turned out that we were getting on the second leg of a Paris - Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) flight, so when we finally were allowed to board a crowd of dead-eyed travelers stared dully at us.

We took off with no particular worries and were, well, "fed" a hideously strange stacked sandwichy thing, some sort of red bean and coconut jelly cake, and yogurt.  And airplane coffee.  We did get some free wine, though, so that helped - and we had full access to Air France's entertainment offerings.  Woot!

We landed in HCMC after filling out our immigration cards, on which we were told to use a black or green pen.

Our visas cost us $50 US and were waiting for us on arrival.  Currently, you have to arrange entry visas prior to arrival in Vietnam - we had a contact who'd be showing us around the next day who prepared our paperwork for us.

And a guy from our hotel, the hong hoa, picked us up at the airport!  When he dropped us off in front of a grocery store, though, we got a little worried. 

Turns out the hotel has its own grocery store.  Sweet.

What's the first thing we did after checking in?  Well, as most young married couples do, we played a game of...

Count the Currencies!

Seven!  It was fun to take a little memory trip through the last year.

Eventually, though, the novelty wore off, and it was time to recommence eating!  We walked down Pham Ngu Lao, keeping our eyes open for some streetfood.

First up?  Our first banh mi.  This Vietnamese sandwich was probably half the reason Husbear wanted to visit Vietnam. 

Here's banh mi 1-1.  Sold to us by a grouchy guy.  I guess the words for sandwich and bread are the same in Vietnamese (kind of like Italians call sandwiches and small rolls panini), and he thought we just wanted a roll... but we wanted it stuffed with things.  Pate and pickled daikon and carrot, delicacies of that nature.

This one was ok.  The bread was good and crisp, as were the pickled veggies, but the pate was not to my taste.

Of course we had to try another one.  Banh mi 1-2.  Better pickled vegetables, better pate, but the bread wasn't as good.

Eventually we came to a little enclave of streetfood stalls.  We had no idea what anything was, but we did have a leg up on Thailand since we could at least read the signs more successfully.  We looked at what the various stalls seemed to be offering and settled on banh bot chien and goi cuon.

What are those?

Goi cuon are an old favorite of mine - the spring rolls you see in the back.  These were stuffed with pork and lots of greens.  They might have been good, had we gotten them right when they were made, but these had been sitting out for a while and had dried out considerably.  Unfortunate.

As for the banh bot chien, that's what you see in the foreground.  It's stir-fried rice cakes with egg and onion, served with a salty (soy sauce based) sauce.  I agree with Noodlepie's assessment of this dish - it's greasy and has some good textures due to the frying, but it doesn't have much flavor.  Just grease. 

I was stuffed at this point, but Husbear really wanted to see if he could fit one more banh mi in his stomach.  We stopped at an impressive-looking banh mi store.  The other two places we'd stopped had been simple, just a cart set up out on the street, but this place was more permanent.  They had a lot more room to show off a larger range of foods.

We doscivered later that pork floss is extra tasty and completely delicious in a sandwich, but we didn't know that at the time and so Husbear ordered just a regular banh mi thit, again with the pate.  But lots of peppers this time!

This one was just in a different league.  I managed to eat one bite of it, but don't worry - it didn't go to waste!  Their pate was better, their pickles had more crunch (and there were more of them, which made us very happy), and their bread was wonderful.

Tomorrow - maybe more banh mi, and we get our own pimp ride for exploring HCMC.

It's time for Watstravaganza 2007!

Chiang Mai, 28 May 2007

With one day left in Chiang Mai, it was time to hit the streets and see wat's to be seen in the second largest city in Thailand!

Had to start out with the one pun. 

Now, sadly, we know just about nothing about Buddhism, much less the variety called Theravada that's practiced in Thailand.  But we knew we wanted to see the Buddhist temples, or wats, that make up a good chunk of the city of Chiang Mai. 

There are over 300 wats to be seen in Chiang Mai, and they're not particularly close to each other.  What we elected to do, over a mediocre plate of noodles early in the morning, was charter a tuk-tuk and ask the driver to take us to a selection of the temples.

We found a likely guy who spoke a smattering of English and hired him for the sum of 50 baht per hour, or about $1.70.  He started us out at one of the most famous wats in town, the Wat Chiang Mun.  (Or Chiang Man.  It's all transliterated, baybee!)

Some of the wats were surprisingly old, including this one.  It dates to the period just after 1296, when the city of Chiang Mai was founded.

We went into the dark interior to see the very, very old images of Buddha contained inside - they're really small, and behind bars.  One is a stone Buddha believed to be 2500 years old.

On our way out, a woman squatting on the porch asked me if I would like to release a couple of birds for good luck.  We decided to go ahead - I mean, we were two days off of our third anniversary, and it seemed like it could be an auspicious start to our fourth year as a married couple.

Initially, they refused to leave the basket until I gave it a little shake.  Then the two birds took off across the rooftops.  Our driver saw us and said "Yes, yes - many good luck!"

Later on, I read that many of these birds have their wings clipped so they can be easily recollected for another tourist to release.  Aw, crap.  I hope that wasn't what was going on here, since like I said they did take off over the rooftops across the street.

Before visiting any of the wats, we read up on wat etiquette.  We didn't want to do anything to offend because we were unaware of the rules.  Honestly, when I read "women should not climb on chedis (stupas)", I blanched since I didn't know what those were.  What if I was just climbing around like some kind of monkeychild and accidentally jumped on the chedi?  I didn't know a chedi from an apartment block!

I shouldn't have worried.  It's pretty clear on seeing your first wat.

And even if there hadn't been signs, it becomes very clear very quickly what the chedis are.  They're usually pretty tall, bell-shaped towers holding relics.  And they have a sign on them that women should stay out.

It was already really hot outside, so we moved on to wat #2 - Wat Lok Molee.

Wat Lok Molee didn't impress too much from the outside - at least not compared to Wat Chiang Mun.  The gilded Buddhas inside were very nice, though, and you could actually see the smaller images here.  The large seated Buddha is in a meditative pose.

Outside, we saw a number of Buddha statues connected by string - we were unable to figure out what that meant, except that there was apparently some sort of festival coming up.  But we couldn't learn what sort of festival.

Moving on, we tuk-tuk'd over to Wat Pa Pao, another of the more famed wats.  It was built in the Burmese style 400 years ago, and continues to serve Chiang Mai's Shan community, who are originally from Burma.  (Chiang Mai itself was under Burmese control from 1556 to 1775, when the kingdom of Thailand was united.)

The glass mosaics were really striking in the hot, direct sunlight.

Some parts of the temple compound were showing their age. 

There were English classes going on in the back of the enclosed area - a sweating American was teaching 20 or so young boys in bright orange robes the days of the week.  "Today is?" "MONDAY!" "Tomorrow is?" "TUESDAY!"

Moving on, back in the tuk-tuk!  Our driver said there was a wat a little ways out of town that had an attached museum where we could learn more about wats, so we puttered our way over to Wat Gate Khar Rnam.  Yeah.

We took a route that went around the old city walls - most of them still stand and seem to be in pretty good repair, but there are parts that are more than atmospherically decaying.

By the time we got to Wat Gate Khar Rnam, the museum was closed for the midday break.  No matter the country, we are accomplished masters at locating and touring during the midday break.  The temple complex itself was nice to wander around, though, with lots of shade trees.

We wandered around the lot.  Husbear took some shots of various details, including this beastie who I think is rather appealing.  Maybe I like him because he looks so shifty-eyed?

I hadn't mentioned this, but there were packs of stray dogs at a lot of the wats we visited.  They didn't approach us, and we certainly didn't approach them.

By this point, I think our tuk-tuk driver was getting pretty irritated with us.  We'd shrugged off his offers to take us to the boat (and wait several hours until we returned - remember, we'd chartered him by the hour) and given him a very definite "no" when he wanted to take us to a silver shop where we figured he was getting a commission.

We asked him to take us to one more wat.  He did, and told us when he dropped us off that we were very close to our hotel.  Sure, we figured, not wanting to antagonize him, and we paid him with a nice tip.

The last wat was Wat Bupparam, or Bupharam.  (Thai transliterations were more than a little tricky, especially the practice of using an h to create a hard consonant.  Thus, "Ph" is a hard "P' sound, not an "F", and "Th" is a hard "T", not a "th.")

The first thing we saw when we walked through the gate?

I have no idea why this would be.  And he wasn't the only cartoon character!  There were statues of all sorts of children's characters scattered around the complex, along with fiberglass chickens.  A group of real chickens and roosters scratched around in the dirt.

These figures on the doorframe are performing a "wai", a Thai mark of respect.  Newscasters on TV do it when they sign off, children do it to their elders, students to teachers, professionals to bosses.  There's an intricate code governing the wai, which luckily farang aren't expected to grasp immediately.

The most wonderful wai ever? Here.

Wat Bupparam had a very cool banister of naga, the serpents we saw at many of the wats. 

And a bouquet of dragons.  Don't bring this on a first date - she'll have to find a huge vase, and you'll be standing there on a doorstep awkwardly wondering, "do I come in, or should I wait to be invited?" and then she won't find a vase big enough and will have to lay the dragon heads down on the table where they'll wilt and four hours later she'll come home to a big pile of shriveled dragon heads and say, "dammit!"

Free advice, from me to you.

No big shock here, but as it turned out we were more than a mile from our hotel.  Of course, we'd been sitting in a tuk-tuk all day, so this wasn't a big deal - plus the walk was along one of the more interesting shopping streets in town.

After we made our way back through the walls, we figured we deserved a beer and a giant mug of fresh water, so we stopped at an inviting little bar populated by expats and Thai bargirls. 

They even had a full menu, of which we did not avail ourselves.  Yeesh.

When we got back to the hotel, we of course spent several more hours during the heat of the day out by the pool.  Then, we hopped a tuk-tuk over to the regular night market, which is so successful that Bangkok modeled theirs after it.

We shopped and shopped and shopped.  Husbear's a much better negotiator than I am - even I couldn't tell most of the time if he really wanted whatever he was bargaining for or if he was prepared to walk! 

Tomorrow in my chronology, we take two planes to Saigon, otherwise known as Ho Chi Minh City, and eat the first three of what's bound to be a metric ton of banh mi, an obsession we've had for quite some time.

A Thai cooking class and a self-directed Sunday Market tour

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 27 May 2007

We got up with plans, on another sweltering Sunday morning in Chiang Mai.  Curry and tom yum related plans. 

Based on another recommendation, we were going to be taking a one-day cooking course at the Thai Farm Cooking School.  They said they'd be at our guesthouse at 9 to pick us up.

Can't go to a cooking course without breakfast, right?  Let's go with a banana pancake.

This one was totally different than the one we had on the street in Bangkok - this was really just a plain, egg-heavy pancake wrapped around a banana.  Served with honey.  It was good, and I'd totally replicate it at home if I cooked.  We had just about finished when someone came to pick us up.

The guy didn't really speak any English, but he had our room number.  We asked the American girl who was already sitting in the van if she was going to the Thai Farm cooking course, and she looked at us blankly and said "No.  Huh?"

So we got out.  Meanwhile, other vans and trucks were coming by to pick people up at the hotel.  We were confused.

We saw the Thai cooking course, another van, a truck, and the A Lot of Thai cooking course.  At 9:30, we called our contact person at the Thai Farm cooking course, and he said "but we have you here!  We are already at the market!" 

That was obviously not true, since we were standing at the Top North Guest House and not enjoying a tour of a Thai market.  After a little back-and-forth, they sent a truck back to gather us. 

Hopefully, we didn't miss too much... it turned out that another couple staying at our hotel was also taking the course that day, and the driver only had instructions to pick up 2 people.

Oops.

The market we went to turned out to be a good way out of town, which was great.  Tommy, our teacher, gave us a quick tour.

He told us that Thais overwhelmingly eat two types of rice, jasmine and sticky.  They also sell red and brown, but these aren't nearly as popular.

We got to see a stand pressing fresh coconut cream.  Here's where I finally learned the difference between coconut cream and coconut milk - cream is the first pressing of the coconut, and then water is added for the second and third pressing, from which you get coconut milk.  Huh.

After showing us some sauces and a row of freshly pounded curry pastes, Tommy left us to our own devices for fifteen minutes or so.

We examined the chickens, noting how much smaller they are than roly-poly butterball-style American birds.

We saw bags of eggs for sale, marked with their prices.  Question - how do you get these eggs home without smashing them all to hell? 

There were stacks of fried fish, ready to be added to stews or eaten with rice,

as well as bags of pre-prepared curries and soups.  This was something we saw all over Thailand and Vietnam - to-go things were always packed in bags tied with an intricate rubber-band knot at the top.  It makes a lot of sense as a packaging saver, plus it looks really cool...

In the brief amount of time we got to explore the market, the most radical departure from what we were used to seeing was this:

There were several tables covered with fried mealworms, grubs, crickets, and grasshoppers.  We thought about it, but didn't end up buying any.

All too soon, we were getting back into the pickup truck.  Now, it contained other people - a Canadian couple from our hotel and a couple of British girls.

We bounced along smaller and smaller roads, until finally we were on a dirt path.  Eventually, we turned into a small driveway and unloaded in front of a wooden building with a thatched annex.  The annex was where we'd be.

Nice place to learn to cook Thai!

The main room was occupied by a German group while we were there, but we got a quick picture of the setup while they were out.

They're actually building a new building right now, so I gather business is good.

The first things we learned is that sticky rice needs a precious little hat while it's steaming, or it gets all self-conscious.

Then we all got dressed up like enormous dorks and went for a tour of their organic garden.

Those hats came in real handy, though.  I don't know if you've heard me say this, but Thailand in May is rilly rilly hawt.

Tommy was a great guide, letting us eat things out of his little basket (that's not dirty!).  Here he is, showing off what I think is a long bean plant.  Taa-daa!

I wrote that this farm is organic - since they don't use pesticides, they put their mangoes in a bag, while they're still on the tree, to keep insects away!  Simple, yet effective.  But probably a pain in the ass for whoever's job it is to bag all the mangoes.

There were all sorts of beautiful and tasty things growing in the garden.

When we got back from our tour of the garden, it was time to start preparing curry paste.  I was pretty intimidated by this, since I thought you had to pound everything for hours and hours, but it turns out that you just take 9 ingredients (for red or green curry), cut them up fairly small, and then pound them for five minutes or so.

I mean, it's certainly not the type of thing I'd just whip up for the heck of it, but I definitely feel like it's more reasonable to attempt.

Here are the ingredients:

If you're saying "What the hell am I looking at here?", well, it's lemongrass, galangal, garlic, shallot, kaffir limes, chilies, and Thai ginger.  You also throw in a bit of cumin and coriander.

The difference between green and red curries?  Well, it's in the type of chilies - red curry paste has dried red chilies.

Husbear chose to make green, while I picked red just to be contrarian.

This is what Husbear's chili paste started out like:

Several minutes of pounding commenced.  Husbear was first done, of course, so he started taking pictures of the rest of us taking a long time.

As you can see, I'm not following instructions - we were supposed to keep our hands over the top of the bowl to make sure a rogue pepper didn't fly up into our eye.  I 'spose I got lucky this time.

Here's Husbear's completed curry paste.

We then walked this curry paste over to a station, waiting for us, where we honest-to-goodness cooked our very own Thai curries! 

Don't blink, or you'll miss it.  I'm cooking!

The curry was pretty simple.  It seems like that's the deal with a lot of Thai food - it's all in the preparation, and then everything is thrown together and cooked quickly.

Take their version of Tom Yum, the ubiquitous spicy/sour soup seen on Thai menus worldwide.  Here's the mise en place we were given:

See, there's some preparation involved there, but not overmuch.  Then you take some water and a big chunk of chili paste, bring it to a boil, and throw all this stuff in.  Not at the same time, but you get the idea.

Shrimp goes in last.  Husbear turned the heat off on his soup before adding the shrimp, and thus managed not to overcook it.

Just dive on in, there, shrimplets!

On top of the curry and the tom yum soup, we also learned to make chicken stir-fried with a heaping tower of Thai holy basil.  That's three dishes each, not counting the two kinds of rice.  We also got to sample lemongrass tea and roselle tea - the roselle was really similar to the Egyptian hibiscus tea.

It turned into a spread of bacchanalian proportions.

And if that wasn't enough, Husbear expressed interest in a tree growing on the edge of the water, and Tommy brought us a sample.  I... uh... didn't write down what it was.  It was pretty sour, with the same strange pockets of jujube-like meat that so many tropical fruits apparently have.

After lunch, we washed up and learned how to put our leftovers into air-filled, top-knotted baggies.  Then, Husbear and I went off-menu and learned to make the green papaya salad, which means we got to use the mortar and pestle again.  Fun!

The rest of the class continued on with the regular menu, making spring rolls - popiah.

They used these neat wrappers, bought fresh from a woman at the market.  Sigh.  See, that's the problem - we don't have a market in Austin with a row of women squatting and making spring roll wrappers. 

Their spring rolls were fried and settled into a cute little banana boat wrapper.  I think everyone was too full to eat theirs, though we did finish our papaya salads... but we don't really fool around when it comes to food.

Again, note the little baggie of sauce.

For dessert, we made bananas in coconut milk.  Wanna know how?  Well, you take a pot, put coconut milk in it, heat it to a simmer, then put bananas in.  Cook until the bananas are tender.  That's it.

That's the kind of recipe I like.

And with that, the end of a day at the Thai Farm Cooking School.  I'd definitely recommend them, but I know the options in Chiang Mai are pretty extensive.  We were lucky that Mia had been there in February and was so excited about recommending them!

We bounced back along the roads to town and were dropped off right back at our hotel.  Much smoother than the pickup.

We figured we deserved another dip in the pool, so we went down there for a couple of hours.

But we didn't want to miss Chiang Mai's Sunday night market!  (I mean, check out this post on EatingAsia... we couldn't not go!)

The market spreads out along one of Chiang Mai's major streets, but it also flows out beyond the walls, along many of the secondary roads, and even into the front yards of many of Chiang Mai's wats.  (A wat is where we found a beautiful hanging for Brandon and Whitney's wedding.)

The original idea was not to shop, it was to get dinner.  We dragged along the Canadian couple who'd been in our cooking class, and they had already done the majority of their shopping and had no more room in their bags.

We started out with a couple of bowls of so-so noodles.  Then, continuing our walk, we found this guy just within the city walls.

I got a lemon tea popsicle, which was just the thing for the still-sweltering evening - nicely astringent with a little lemony sour.  These could be addictive... and they are of course one of the many things we were cautioned to avoid.  Unsanitary, apparently.  Oh well.

Continuing along, we came to a small courtyard off the main drag filled with food vendors.  These omelettes in a basket drew our eye, but turned out to be a little on the dry side - probably just because they sat on the grill after they were finished.

We did a little more grazing, but on the way out spotted a woman hand-making dumplings we just had to try.

Poking around afterward, I found this extremely informative post on EatingAsia - turns out these are most likely Khao Giap Maaw.  EatingAsia goes more into the regional variations, which we knew nothing about at the time.

The woman spread here rice-paper batter on this cloth-topped steamer, let it sit for a moment, and topped it with a moist, coconut-heavy shrimp filling.

She then put eight of the dumplings in a container for us, topped them with a little coconut milk, and sprinkled fried garlic over the top.  The contrast in textures was delightful, between the softness of the rice paper, the moist coconut and savory shrimp filling, and the crunch of the garlic.

Apparently, this is often served with a crisp lettuce leaf for wrapping, as well as a numbingly hot tiny pepper.  I'm sure that would have been even more wonderful, but it was probably good not to know that at the time.

After our grazing dinner, we started shopping in earnest.  We eventually parted ways with the Canadians, who had an early morning trekking trip planned, and we shopped until everything shut down around 11.

We took that as our cue that it was time to find our hotel and get to bed.  Tomorrow, a downright orgy of wats!  (That's probably inappropriate.  Oh well.)

Not to be crudo, but do you like it raw?

I didn’t know that I could almost crash my truck into a tree because I’m listening to someone eat fish on the radio. Last week I was tuned in to NPR. They had on a chef named David Pasternack who happens to specialize in crudo, or what basically amounts to Italian sushi.

It’s becoming more popular in the US with whole crudo restaurants opening up in New York and LA (bastards). But even when we were in Italy the stuff was hard to come by. Like good seafood should be, it is also fairly expensive - effectively limiting our (broke ass) exposure.

However, hearing this guy talking about some of the recipes in his new book The Young Man and the Sea, was too much for me. I don’t have the book, but I was able to get the gist of a few of his preparations.

Inspired, I rushed out to pick up a nice fatty hunk of the underappreciated albacore. Slicing it to a moderate thickness, I laid the strips on a little lime juice that I had put down on the plate and then topped it quite heavy-handedly with some delicious olive oil. I served the fish with some blanched sea beans and fresh grated daikon. As a final fun touch, I put out little piles of fleur de sel and black sea salt from Cyprus.

Not only did the flavors all match really well, the color contrasts were pretty sweet; the deep pink of the fish, the bright green of the beans and white of the radish all highlighted by the golden oil and shiny black salt. This was definitely one of those staring meals. I almost didn’t want to eat it, but if you’re too slow around Girlie and raw fish you’re guaranteed to only have spectator status.

It really is a perfect summer meal.

Uncooked sea creatures, not just from Asia anymore.

-L. Pants

A tip: sweat is dried by tuk-tuks

Note to future self: Second-class non a/c Thai sleeper trains, though they may be supremely economical, are not particularly conducive to sleep.

Around 6 AM, I poked my head around the side of my top bunk to see Husbear already up and reading.  Just about everyone else was up and moving around, too, so I got dressed and climbed the ladder down to join him.

We went ahead and ordered a Thai-style train breakfast; watery rice soup, tea, and reconstituted OJ.  It was fine.  Later, we talked with a girl who had the "western" style breakfast and said it was horrifically greasy eggs, so our breakfast obviously could have been worse...

As it turned out, we were lucky to have ordered the breakfast.  We stopped at towns where we disgorged passengers, and occasionally we stopped in the middle of the forest for no reason at all. 

Between all of these scheduled and non-scheduled stops, we were soon running pretty late.  Luckily for us, several of the longer in-town stopeovers featured folks hopping onto the train with us, selling food.  They had noodles, fried chicken, rice packets, fruits, drinks in little bags, strange sausages, and things in banana leaves.  By now, it was lunchtime and, well, GIRLIE LOW BLOOD SUGAR HUNGRY.  (The best term I've heard for the irritability I get when I'm low on food is "hangry".  Can't remember where I read it...)

We got some rice, some things in banana leaves, and a little newspaper cone of what turned out to be quite good pad thai.

The banana leaf wrapped tasty turned out to be nem, a sour fermented pork sausage.  It had a little spice, a great meaty flavor, and a satisfying pickle twang all at the same time.  I was definitely regretting ordering only one little ball.

We were seriously impressed with the wrap job on the pad thai.  You can see it there on Husbear's leg, all done up in newspaper, with a set of chopsticks and a green onion attached with a rubber band.  Unwrapping the newspaper and a sheet of plastic underneath, we arrived at a tasty little mound of sweet, savory, shrimpy noodles.  We pushed them all immediately into our faces.

Thank goodness for the strolling in-train food vendors!  Wouldn't that be great on trains and long-distance buses here?

We looked out the window and watched the countryside crawl by.  Almost three hours late, we arrive!  We picked up a map from some thinly-veiled touts at the "tourist office" inside the station (when we told them we already had a place to stay and a cooking class lined up, they snatched away the nice map they had already given us and replaced it with a crappy little notebook-paper version).  Then, we ran perhaps the most insistent gauntlet of tuk-tuk drivers we'd seen since our arrival in Bangkok. 

Tuk-tuks are so called because of the sputtering noise their little wind-up engine makes.  Their drivers are more persistent than taxi drivers, perhaps because they make less money.

We came to an agreement with a tuk-tuk driver to get us to our hotel.

He took us through a good little chunk of the city, pointing out where the Sundat market would be on the next day, where a few of the more impressive wats were to be found, and the moat that surrounds the old city.  (We could have found this one on our own, I think.)

With a flourish, he deposited us at our hotel and told us where he usually parked, in case we were wanting a tour of the city's wats?  We thanked him, but told him no for now.  We had an urgent date with a pool.

It was all we could do to check in to the hotel and pretend to be nonchalant enough not to jump on the first room we were shown.  It really pays to wait out the management a little when checking into a hotel in Thailand or Vietnam - the first room you're shown will probably be a dump, but you're under no obligation to take it.

We edged our way up the rickety spiral staircase to our room, rooted through our backpacks to find bathing suits, sarongs, sunscreen, and poolside reading material, and...

Bliss.

We stayed by the pool for several hours, jumping in and out, being chased into the bar by rain and emerging again.  After the sun went down, which happens surprisingly early in the tropics, we went to get a couples mani/pedi.  What?  Every once in a while, we both need pampering!  Especially after a train ride like that.

We hopped another tuktuk to Chiang Mai's famed night market, but halfway there Husbear realized he had forgetten his baby, his Canon 30d, at the salon.  So we grabbed the driver by his ear and turned him around... well, not quite literally, but there was some impassioned yelling and "turn around!  OH GOD TURN AROUND!" (I know I'm young for a heart attack, but I swear my right arm went numb.  Surprisingly, I managed to keep lunch down as well.  -L. Pants)

When we got back, one of the salon ladies was out in the street, holding out our bag.  All's well that... well, something or other.  Avoid cliches, that's my philosophy!

Anyway, we did make it to the night market with all of our belongings, though the tuk tuk driver tried to double the fare on us, and we worked our way through booths of silks and Buddhas, dodging the ladies in traditional dress making urgent frog noises at us.  We were really just hungry, so we found the food area and ordered a few things.

I guess I was feeling a bit dehydrated, as I wasn't all that hungry, but I sure did demolish that plate of Vietnamese-style spring rolls.  We also had another good som tam (green papaya salad), and Husbear did enjoy the northern-style beef noodles, but said he wouldn't rush back to order it again.

By the way, Husbear has shaved the beard he's worn for almost 9 years!  He is beardless!  I almost jumped into the wall when he came out of the bathroom yesterday.  Good lord.  I'll have to take pics, 'cause I don't think he's sure yet whether it's going to last or not.

Tomorrow, look for a possible Kooking Korner with Mr. Pants update!  I ain't promising nothing, as the man is busy.

Sangkhlaburi to Bangkok to Chiang Mai, oh my?

You know the saying "If you want something done, get a busy person to do it"?  Well, the inverse of that is what I'm experiencing right now, namely, with very little to do I'm not getting ANYTHING done.

I know that's not totally true.  I mean, I have been to the grocery store several times, even walking there on most occasions, and we've played catchup with Austin friends, and I've been instrumental in putting together a few meals.  But, I haven't used this long awaited free time to catch up on blogging.

A Friday, July 13th resolution - I will have the entire trip to Southeast Asia blogged by August 13th.

Phew.  Hopefully, this resolution won't go the way of those undertaken at more auspicious times of the year...

We got up on the morning of May 25th knowing it was going to be a long, long day.  We were going to take a bus to Bangkok, where we'd need to get across town to change to a train for Chiang Mai, in the northern part of the country.

First things first - how do you get to the bus station in Sangkhlaburi?

Well, by motorcycle taxi, of course!  It's the only way to travel there, actually.  Unless you have your own car.  My driver was able to put my backpack on the floorboards in front of him.

I will admit that every time I got on one of these motorcycle taxis, I wondered if the local hospitals were used to treating Westerners with road rash.  I felt like a lumbering hippo, sitting behind this 15 year old Thai kid, and I just prayed I wouldn't throw him off balance.

Things went fine, of course, and we arrived at the bus station with twenty minutes or so to spare.  We never would have found this station on our own - it wasn't the one we arrived at.  In fact, it was just a storefront.

Most towns apparently have different bus stops for a/c and non a/c buses, so you can't just hop in (or on) a taxi and ask for the bus stop.

Husbear was excited to see that we had been dropped off right next to the market, so I went inside and bought tickets while he went off to explore.

Tropical fruits: rambutan, lychee, rose apple, mangosteen, and so on.

Fish, drying outside in the sun:

Variety meats, inside the market - note the fan, used to keep flies away:

Pig heads!  These weren't nearly as scrubbed-looking as the ones we saw in Italy.

And, if you were wondering how to season all of these items:

No problems, once again, getting on the bus.  This time, we had a more comfortable experience, with a/c and reclining seats.  Two hours into the four-hour trip back to Kanchanaburi, we stopped to stretch our legs and have a bite to eat.

This place was much more farang-friendly than the place the non a/c bus stopped on our way to town.  Unsurprisingly, the food wasn't nearly as wonderful - we had a couple of bowls of so-so, bland chicken noodle soup.  We did buy some crispy cashew and sesame rings that were tasty and crunchy and begged for beer that we didn't have.  Ah, well.

We had thought we'd have to change buses in Kanchanaburi, but it turned out our bus went all the way to Bangkok.  Yay!  We bought tickets all the way through and stretched out.

When we arrived in Bangkok, it was almost 6.  We had until 10:30 for our train, but we had our luggage with us, so we flagged down a taxi to Bangkok's Hualamphong train station.  This one, impressively, was metered!  What?  We almost didn't know what to do... so we overtipped.

We were still three and a half hours early for our train, so we found a nearby Internet place.  Really easy to stay connected in Thailand.

I read in my Southeast Asia on a Shoestring that the food court at Hualamphong train station was full of good food for a cheap price.  Since it was either that or some weird corn shack, we tried out the food court.

Iced coffees were tasty, but maybe not a good idea before an overnight train ride?  It's hard enough to get to sleep on those uncomfortable and oh-so-public beds.

And some noodles.  Pad see ew in this case.  They looked a lot more enticing on other people's plates but turned out to be overcooked and underseasoned.  Not awful, though.

I also ordered some Chinese-style BBQ pork on rice, which turned out to be overwhelmingly sweet.  The som tam, or green papaya salad, was probably the best of the things we ordered, but it still had a muddled flavor instead of the true, sharp Thai taste.

Eh.  All ths food was pretty reasonably priced - 160 baht, or about 6 dollars.  But it seemed to be tilted towards the farang (foreigner) palate - bland and sweet.  Oh well.

I knew we shouldn't be trusting guidebooks for food recommendations, but we were stuck at that point.

With an hour to go before our train left, we went out to see what we'd be riding.

Aw, shite.

I really thought we'd paid for an air-conditioned sleeper, so when I saw this train with the windows I got pretty pissed.  Going inside confirmed what I feared - we were booked on a non-a/c second class sleeper train.  One top bunk and one bottom.

We went inside to talk to the ticket-sellers, but to no avail.  All a/c seats were sold out.  In an effort to make myself feel better, I walked the length of the train with Husbear.  We noticed that there were in fact no a/c sleepers on this train, just one air-conditioned car where we could sit up all night.  Yow.

Comforted that we had at least the best options available, we got our bags and loaded up...

Our castle.

A note about these trains.  The bottom bunk is more expensive, for several reasons.  The bed is wider, each bottom bunk has a window (none of the top bunks do), and because you're further away from the light, it's a lot darker.  I took the top bunk.

I don't think I've ever passed a more hellishly hot night in my life.  I know I sound like a prima donna here, and I don't really care.  Closing the curtain meant cutting off the air being desultorily circulated by the sputtering fans, so I left it open.  This meant that the greenish light flooded into my bunk all night long.  I had a sleep mask, but kept sweating it off the top of my head.

It was an experience, I suppose.  One thing I will say for this train - everything, including the bathrooms (though they were squat toilets, of course) was kept really clean.

We were told we'd be arriving the next morning at 11.  (A cursory glance at an online timetable shows that would have been dreaming the impossible dream.)  Not even close.

I consoled myself with the remider that our hotel in Chaing Mai would have a pool.  A pool never sounded better in my whole life.

Let's leave us there for now, tossing and turning and dreaming occasionally of cool, watery pools.

One day, seventy-two forms of transportation

Sangkhlaburi, May 24, 2007

You have to go on a trek in Thailand.  Right?  We didn't have the time or the particular desire to go on an overnight jungle trek, so we just opted for a one-day "lite" trek.  With elephants.  And boats. 

When we signed up for the trek, the receptionist said to us, "There are more people who go, farang, like you!"

We lucked out with these fellow farang, though, thank goodness - they turned out to be a terrific group of doctors and nurses with the Indigenous Health Alliance, and wonderful people.

Anyway, this is how we came to be cramming ourselves onto a boat with nine doctors and nurses at 9 in the morning.

We were riding extremely low in the water.

We were shipped (boated?) over to a closer view of the Mon wooden bridge, which looks possibly even more rickety from sea level.

It was pretty relaxing being out on the water.  There was a nice breeze - that is, until we threw a rod (or something... I'm not a mechanic, either) and baked under the sun for a few minutes.  Just when we were ready to start paddling with our lifejackets (these guys were definite go-getters) our guides got the boat started again.

After a little while, we pulled up to a muddy patch on which sat the ruins of a temple.  This was the area's wat for years and years prior to the flooding of the old town in the 1980s.  Apparently, much of this is underwater during the rainy season, but being here at the end of the dry season meant we could explore the area on foot.

We walked inside the building, where we learned that each of these small niches used to hold their own buddha.

We could see that people still come here to worship, laying flowers by the ruined Buddha heads scattered around the property.

Very quickly, we were back in the boat and heading towards... well, we weren't sure exactly what.  But the surroundings were amazing.  I couldn't believe how green everything was, up to and over all of the hills.

Thank gawd the boat didn't break down again.

Eventually, we did stop, and were all ushered into a pickup truck with two back benches.  The road wasn't particularly paved, but we made it through just fine.  Only a couple of fishtails.

The pickup truck soon pulled into a small clearing populated by milling elephants and handlers.  A woman sold bunches of green bananas for feeding the elephants, and how could we resist?

They were definitely appreciative.

These elephants weren't huge.  They knelt down for us to mount, two to an elephant, and we were off!

Our guide was kind enough to take a picture of us as our elephant (whose name I've unfortunately forgotten) forded the first of many streams.

We were on the elephants for an hour and a half.  The ride was peaceful, which surprised me since my only previous elephant-riding experience was at a Florida flea market in the mid-80s, which was not a moment where I communed more deeply with nature.

The only sound was the chiming of the elephants' bells.

We crossed some pretty deep rivers, where the water came up to the elephants' shoulders.

We were also rained on for a little while, which was refreshing in the muggy heat. 

Some of the slopes the elephants picked their way down were pretty steep.  Nobody toppled.

After fording one last river, the elephants all knelt for us to dismount.  With a few more bananas, they were on their way, and we were digging into delicious bags of fried rice with bits of chicken.  There was even a bag of chili sauce to flavor things up a bit.

For dessert, a man squatted and cut up the best pineapple I've ever eaten.  It was sweet and tart and so juicy that a piece actually jumped right out of Husbear's hands.  He juggled it twice before it fell to the ground, where one of the two dogs that had been following us all day snatched it.

After lunch, our guides got out a large plastic barrel and suggested, firmly, that we put anything of value in it, since we'd be getting very wet in short order.  We shrugged and dropped our little camera, the only one we'd brought for the day, in with the other backpacks.

Then, we crossed rivers where the water came up to our armpits and walked on small paths through the jungle until we came to another bend in the river, where long narrow platforms made of lashed-togther bamboo waited for us.  The only instruction we were given, as six-foot bamboo poles were thrust into our hands, was "Two to a raft."

We each shared a raft with a partner and a guide, without whom I'm sure we would have each fallen down that much more.  The first hundred yards or so were difficult for everyone, especially given that they were made up of rapids.  I'd say pretty much everyone fell down except for Husbear and, of course, our guides.  The one gentleman who had kept his camera actually went completely overboard, though his hand remained above water clutching the camera - impressive.

I think I worked more on my balance in the 40 minutes or so we were on those rafts than I have in the previous seven years.

We did get a picture when we stopped.

After the rafts, we were ushered quickly back to town, past a large temple complex complete with enormous reclining Buddha.

It was a great trip, and well worth the money we spent.  Elephant and truck and boat and bamboo raft?  Awesome.

By the time we got back to the hotel, we were pretty hungry again, so... snacks!  On our balcony.  We had to use the balcony as many times as we could.

We felt comparatively refreshed (meaning a little more prepared to ignore the stifling heat) so, time for a closer exploration of the Mon tribe's wooden bridge!

The walk through town to get there - another time that Thailand made us feel like entitled jerks.

The bridge is a marvel - it's anyone's guess how it stays up.  It feels more steady than you'd think, as long as you don't look down or question it too closely.

It was wonderful being able to watch life from the bridge, too.

Laundry.  And I complained about the lack of a dryer.

I'm not sure how you'd ride a bike over this bridge.  The best answer I've gotten so far is "carefully."

This bridge is 400 meters long, which is no small feat.  It's really impressive that it stays up.

On the way back into town, we stopped into an internet joint to send my brother a happy birthday email, and we learned specifically where the no sex zone is in Sangkhlaburi.

After catching up with email, we had a pretty unspectacular dinner at the market (it probably would have been best for us to learn how to say "please make us something tasty, whatever you make here" in Thai, but we didn't).  We hopped motorcycle taxis back to the hotel.  I was feeling really tired, but this little guy at the door caught Husbear's eye and he stopped to take a couple of pictures.

This attracted the attention of a group of young children studying right by the door, so Husbear went over and showed them the pictures he had taken of the snail.  They wanted him to take pictures of them, too, and were pretty impressed with seeing themselves on the screen.  He does have a pretty cool camera.

Exhaustion set in at this point, so we headed off to bed.  It was going to be a fairly difficult day the next day - we had to get back to Bangkok in time to catch a train north to Chiang Mai.  That train would turn out to be maybe the hottest vehicle I'd ever been in.  yay.

In real-time news, it looks like we're moving back to Austin on Sunday!  We will probably only be there for a couple of months, so we're packing very very light.  I hope to have internet and be able to work on the blog some over the next few weeks.  I'm crossing my fingers.

Kanchanaburi to Sangkhlaburi

May 23, 2007

I uploaded these pictures last week, and then time got away from me - we've been off having fun in New Orleans!

Our one morning in Kanchanaburi had a false start pretty early when I woke up, rolled over, looked out the window, and kicked Husbear out of bed to take a picture of the view.

Then we went back to sleep for a few hours.  You know, until it got just about too hot to do anything.  Otherwise known as 9 AM.  Man, was it hot in Thailand in May.

We knew we had a limited amount of time in Kanchanaburi, because the bus ride to Sangkhlaburi (where we'd be going later in the day) is pretty substantial.  With this in mind, we narrowed down what we'd be doing to just the British war cemetery and the famed Bridge over the River Kwai.  No museums.

First things first - breakfast.  We considered some of the beautiful fruit we passed.

We ended up having something a little more substantial.  Noodly breakfast!

The place we sate at was right across from the war cemetery, our first stop.  This particular cemetery contains the remains of 7,000 of the 16,000 Allies who died constructing what came to be called the Death Railway, from Thailand to Myanmar.

The markers themselves don't have the stark uniformity of the American war cemeteries we've visited in the past.  Many of the markers were topped with flowers.

Most heartbreaking were the inscriptions on many of the headstones, honoring dead fathers, brothers, and sons. 

We spent a good bit of time, looking at the graves of the British, Dutch, and Indian men who died in the area during World War Two.  Then, overheating, we walked back to our guesthouse to gather our bags and charter transportation to the Bridge, which is a couple of kilometers outside of town.

For about four dollars, we got a guy riding a motorcycle with a covered sidecar to agree to take us and our luggage to the bridge, wait for us there, and then take us to the bus station to catch our bus.

Seriously, if you travel to Southeast Asia, bring backpacks.  You may have to fit yourself and your luggage onto a motorcycle with a driver, or into a very small space, and a giant suitcase is going to be a giant headache - even more so than normal.

The driver dropped us off at the end of the tour bus parking area for the Bridge, and we ran a low-key tourist tout gauntlet.  After Egypt, though, it was no big deal.

The Bridge itself is apparently mostly original, though the central span was bombed by the Allies near the end of the war and rebuilt later.

The bridge had no guardrails, and you had to kind of shimmy your way around the other tourists.  Vertigo!

We walked all the way across the bridge to the other side.

Our guidebook says that 16,000 Allied POW's died during construction of the railway, along with 75,ooo Asian forced laborers.  This is for 415 kilometers of railroad; 250 miles.  Depressingly paltry, really.

You can still ride twice-daily trains along the 130 kilometers that remain of the Death Railway.  Trains cross the bridge and go through Hellfire Pass.

In our little sidecar on the way back to the bus station, we passed the Chinese war cemetery.  At high speed.

I wish I could read the grave markers.  I wonder if they're as sparse with the information as the American war cemeteries, or more like the British with inscriptions.

Our sidecar motorcycle driver dropped us back at the bus station, right behind a bus painted "kanchanaburi - Sangkhlaburi."  I thought it was strange that most of the buses we saw in Thailand had their destinations permanently painted on the side or front of the bus - what if they had to run a different route?

We threw our stuff on the bus and jumped aboard, only to find out that 1. the bus wasn't leaving for 45 minutes and 2. it was a non-a/c bus.  Husbear hopped off the bus to see if an a/c bus would be leaving anytime soon, but it appeared that this would be our only option for hours, so we stayed put.

Well, I stayed put but dispatched Husbear to buy leaf-wrapped snacks for the ride from a couple of ladies in the station.

When the bus finally left, it turned out that non-a/c isn't such a bad thing.  All the windows were down, and fans slowly circulated overhead. 

The bus was a terrific cultural trip.  We bounced along on hard little seats at maybe 40 miles an hour.  Whenever he passed a pedestrian, the driver would hit the brakes and honk, hoping to pick up another fare.  The bus even turned into a schoolbus for a little while.

It was so much fun just to look around and see our fellow travelers.  And the bus itself was hilarious - great signage and rainbow-painted fans. 

After a couple of hours, we started to get peckish. We busted open our little snacks.

They turned out to be not entirely delicious.  Rice studded with chicken fat and black pepper, basically.  But they were filling.

At one point, a woman carrying bags of drinks hopped on the bus.  We bought a bag of coffee with sweetened condensed milk and jammed a straw into it.  It was perfect.

Midway through the bus ride, we stopped at a dusty little roadside stand populated by chickens and dogs and home to a little eats joint.

And I'm not employing cliche here to make my point - this was honestly dusty.  Glad it hadn't rained too much that day.

We had the same problem we always did.  We had no idea what to order or how to say "bring us something tasty."  I thought I heard the Thai woman next to us ordering pad thai, so we did the same... but got laughed at.  Then she got some sort of crazy stir-fry and we got pad thai.  I dunno.  It was some of the best we had while we were in Thailand, though, so that was cool.

We did get pretty perturbed when it came time to pay the bill - we asked what we owed for our noodles and bright green pop, and were told "30 baht."  Husbear got out his money, but then an animated conference in which every other word seemed to be "farang" revised the bill upwards to 40.  Perhaps they forgot to factor in our soda, but I don't think so.

Whatever, we're still talking about a dollar here.

The last couple of hours, we stopped several times so the woman in charge of luggage and trash collection on the bus could hop out at roadside shrines and lay wreaths on the Buddha.  We felt like we were along on a pilgrimage.

The bus ride, all told, was 6 hours.  But we got to travel the way the Thais do, and we had a great time. 

We arrived in Sangkhlaburi right about 6 in the evening.  Our bus was immediately surrounded by motorcycle taxis, the only way to get around in town.  Like we needed further confirmation that backpacks are the only way to travel?

We each hopped on our own motorcycle taxi and held on for the ride to the Phornpailin Riverside.

This was actually the most expensive place we stayed our whole trip.  But it was right on the water and nicely appointed - we had our own little porch.

And the views were pretty wonderful as well.

We never did figure out which wat this is, but it was probably built after the old town of Sangkhlaburi was flooded during construction of a nearby dam in 1982.

Sangkhlaburi is just 10 miles or so from the border with Myanmar, and there are occasional skirmishes.  There are thousands of Burmese refugees in the area, and we actually saw a UN refugee truck in town.

Sangkhlaburi's claim to tourist fame, besides the fact that you can take a day trip into Myanmar if you're so inclined (and we weren't), is a 400 meter long wooden bridge constructed by Mon villagers.  It's supposed to be the longest wooden bridge in Thailand.

Here's a bad picture of it.  (We did go to visit the next day and got some good ones - this is just proof that we could see it from where we were staying.)

The Phornpailin Riverside was great - we were happy with it overall, though we did eat that first night at the restaurant and were underwhelmed.

I owe Mia at Nosh (photostream, website) a huge THANK YOU for the recs on places to stay in Kanchanaburi and Sangkhlaburi, as well as her invaluable travel advice!

Thanks, Mia! 

G'night from Sangkhlaburi!  Next day - elephants and rafting and the bridge.  A busy day!