Boots in the Oven

One last Thai meal... in a manner of speaking.

Stepping back into Thailand, June 2006, for the second-to-last time...

(You can refresh your memory, or meet these posts for the first time, over here.)

We got back from our Ayutthaya day trip midafternoon covered in dust and dirt and soot marred by rivulets of sweat.  It was so hot outside that we knew we'd have to retreat for a while to the quiet white coolness of our room at the Baan Sabai. 

But lunch had been really, really lacking in the department of deliciousness and decency, even, so we were hungry.

Street vendor to the rescue!  This woman was almost directly in front of the Baan Sabai.  She offered my two favorite cooking methods rolled into one... grill plus dumpling. 

We got a little variety - one with banana, one with peanut, and one with more bean, if I remember correctly.  This, plus a trusty large Beer Chang - Elephant Beer, that is - helped our moods considerably.  Though I could be confounding my variables... we also each had a bracingly cold shower and a brief nap.

To be perfectly truthful, the rice balls were a little dry, probably because they were being kept warm over the grillwok.

We waited until dark to poke our now quite tan and scrubbed faces tentatively outside.  Almost immediately, Husbear spotted a strolling man with an intriguing mix of... what could that be?

Not wanting to miss out, he picked up speed.

Just as we thought - this gentleman was our first mobile insect vendor!

We'd seen insects a couple of times before - most notably at the market we visited during our cooking class in Chiang Mai -  but we hadn't tried any.  And after a trip during which we found ourselves eating, at various times, hot vit lon (fetal duck egg), field mouse, and traditional British jellied eels, we had to have one last thing you can't find here in the States.

But, having made the decision to try some of the wares, um... how do you choose between all of them?

I wanted to try the bamboo worms, mostly because of their gratifying lack of spindly legs.

Husbear went for the grasshoppers, because, well... he wanted to stick up for all that hopped-on grass?

So, we requested a small baggie of the two types, with some crickets thrown in for good measure.  The guy sprayed a thin brown liquid (fish sauce mixed with something, perhaps?) over our bugs, and handed them over.

We immediately selected one of each type for each of us and snacked.  Honestly, not bad.  A little fishy, from the spray, perhaps?  A nutty flavor predominated.

These definitely needed a beer to help wash them down, so we trudged over to a place we'd scouted earlier that looked to do a good job on whole grilled fish.

Taking a table, we ordered a couple beers and unwrapped our tiny, leggy bounty.

Care for a closeup?  With a full-face view of a grasshopper, who looks like he's being stalked by a particularly brazen cricket?

With the beers, this became a satisfying aperitif.  I liked the smaller insects better - the grasshoppers' legs kept getting stuck in my teeth.  Undesirable.

But, of course, man does not live on leggy hoppers and crawlies alone, so we ordered some food.  After our day in the searing heat of Ayutthaya, I was totally dehydrated and thought the menu's miso soup would be perfect.

Oops.  Forgot we were in a Korean restaurant.  Still, though, the soup was nice, and definitely began the process of restoring my electrolytes.

We had to order a whole fish, of course.  That's one thing that I've found to be lacking at restaurants around here - it's hard to just get a whole grilled or fried fish.  Fillets rule in the States.

It's been so long that I've stupidly forgotten what kind of fish we ate.  A flat one.  Grilled.

It came with so-so panchan.

The fish, whatever it was, was really yummy.  It was served with a nicely spicy tangy sauce and fish sauce, along with a bit of a cabbagey salad for crunch and some greenery.

All in all, very nice.  We left and walked back towards our hotel, stopping at some hostel that was playing the Borat movie.  Nice. 

Only one more Southeast Asia post!  And that one is predominantly airplane food. 

When do we go back? 

Sliding Around Ayutthaya

I've been dickering around for almost a freaking week about this Ayutthaya post, but every single way I wrote it was extra-lame.  The pictures are way too cool to let them flitter off into the ether, though.

Here's a slideshow of the pictures we took in Ayutthaya, Thailand, capital from 1531 to 1767, when it was sacked by the Burmese.  There are many beautiful Buddha statues scattered around the many sights in the city - some of them were burned and desecrated by the Burmese, but a few survived.

Mouse over the top of the slideshow to slow it down or speed it up.  Clicking on any picture will give you the option of viewing it on Flickr, where I'm going to to input further information.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Falling in love with a beach

I've never really been a beach person.  The idea of sitting out in the hot sun, then yelping your way down to bone-chillingly cold water while trying not to burn the soles of your feet, then yelping your way back up to your towel (crowded among 10,000 of your closest friends' towels), while trying to keep shards of sand from sneaking their way up into your bathing suit... no thanks.

But, we were in Thailand, home to some of the best beaches in the world... and we weren't going to go?

We agreed to give it a try.  Though we didn't have the time to get on a 20-hour bus to the famed beaches of the South, we could spare an overnight for a jaunt to Koh (or Ko) Samet, a beach idyll just four hours or so from crowded Bangkok.

First, though, sustenance for the trip.  Our Bangkok hotel had a huge, generous, and actually pretty good breakfast buffet, so we loaded up.

The trip to Koh Samet was easy - first a bus to Ban Phe.  The bus conveniently dropped us off right where boats leave for Koh Samet.  Nice.  We only waited fifteen minutes or so, looking out over the water with anticipation.

The boat ride was lovely - the water was calm, and we felt an actual breeze for the first time since leaving Bangkok.  We were already getting into the swing of things, enjoying the crisp sunlight and the open skies.

The boat dropped us at Koh Samet's main port, Na Dan.  This was a bit of a cluster, but not so bad - modified open-backed pickup trucks (actually, sawngthaews) waited to take you wherever on the island you needed to go.  It was just a question of the drivers hooking you up with people going the same direction. 

Transport on the island was basically simple.  You pay rental for the sawngthaews to take you where you want to go.  They usually like to wait until they have more people going, but are happy to take you by yourself if you're willing to rent the whole truck - which gets expensive. 

We climbed aboard with a family of eight or so Thais, grandmothers down to grandchildren, and bounced our way along the road to our hotel, the Silver Sand in Ao Phai.

Koh Samet is a national park, so you have to pay an entrance fee once immediately outside of the main town.  It's 40 baht for Thais and 400 for foreigners (now about $13, though it was $11 when we were there - I can't believe this stupid dollar!), which was a bit of a shock as it was double what both of our guidebooks reported. 

Though it is a national park, there's a huge amount of development on the island.  It's supposed to be sustainable development, but I'm not so sure that's the case.

Our arrival at the hotel wasn't particularly auspicious.  The first bungalow-style room we were shown reeked of smoke and air freshener.  When we marched back to the checkin to ask if they had other rooms available, the young man behind the counter said "well... we do have a room available, but it's by the creek."

Ooh, a creek!  Lovely!

The creek turned out to be a rancid, stinky drainage ditch of some kind.  We could see turbo mosquitoes hatching evil little plots inches away from the surface of the muck.  The first room it would be, after a quick airing-out.

They did have a lovely little restaurant, though, shaded under an enormous tree with lanterns hanging here and there.  And we were hungry.  (I've compressed about five hours of travel into those two pictures up there.)

Having eaten, we immediately went and shed our lightweight linen and cotton clothing in favor of our bathing suits, and spent the next several hours luxuriating down by the water.  Chair and umbrella rentals were inexpensive.  Women came by offering massages or papaya salads or huge sarongs.  I took one up on the massage, which just pushed all the travel knots out of my body.

When the sun started to go down several hours later, we returned to our room, showered, and headed out for an aperitivo at the on-beach bar run by the hotel.

I honestly don't think I've seen a prettier place to enjoy a drink.

I'm guessing the preponderance of bucket drinks on the menus of Koh Samet's bars is due to the island's popularity with tourists.  Whatever, we just wanted a huge Singapore Sling.  We shared it.

It was nice to be in a place where all there was to do was relax.  I think I'm starting to see the draw of beach vacations, though I don't think I could handle more than a few days.  I like my museums and history.

With the sun well and truly down, we went to an internet cafe to email friends and family, and then perused the menus at the different restaurants of Ao Phai.  We ended up at Sea Breeze, with their enticing display of seafood.  Yup, including barracuda.

We chose a pomfret and asked them to fry it, and settled into our table with a beer and a sigh.

It was pretty quiet still; the thumping of the low-rent eurotechno hadn't begun to blast from the beachfront bars.

Listening to the waves thump languidly against the beach, sipping our Thai beer, I really started to think that this beach thing might actually not suck.

Our fish arrived, doused liberally in a sriracha style chili sauce.  Though it didn't approach the deliciousness of the snakehead fish of the nameless restaurant in Kanchanaburi, it was nicely fried and tasted like food on a beach vacation should.

After this flavorful meal, we were ready for some after-dinner entertainment!  Most of the hotels were offering quasi-legal showings of movies that hadn't technically been released on DVD yet, but one place was offering a fire show.  Wheee!

We sat back with a huge Mai Tai bucket and enjoyed the proceedings.

These guys went on for at least an hour, dousing and redousing their,um, tools... no... let's go with flaming balls (I really don't mean this to sound dirty, but I don't know what they're called) in jugs of kerosene set out for the purpose.

Here's a brief video we took so you can have the full experience.  There was a disco party going on right behind us.

After enjoying the fire dance, we headed off to bed.  I know you think we're all-night disco party people, so I hate to burst your bubble.  We'd be heading back to Bangkok fairly early the next day, and I wanted a little more beach time.

We got it.  Around 8:30, we had the beach in front of the hotel almost entirely to ourselves.

By the way, that boat you see in the foreground was picking people up to take them back to the mainland.  This won't even be the last time in this post you hear me agitate for tiny luggage in Southeast Asia!

When we started to get hungry, fusion food saved our butts.  It was apparently a little early for the strolling som tam vendors to be out, since there weren't any tourists beaching themselves on the sand just yet, but we were able to rustle up a guy who ran a crepe stand.  We got him to make the menu's most interesting offering, a pork floss and chili paste crepe.  I know, what?  I'm telling you, pork floss is awesome.

Come midday, we packed our things up and caught another pickup truck back to the island's main pier. 

An hour or so later, we pulled up to Ban Phe and tied on to a boat carrying ice.  We'd all have to traverse the narrow, slippery isles of the ice boat and clamber up the pockmarked concrete step of the pier. 

Hey, I did say there would be another warning about luggage size...

This was a serious pain in the ass, guys.  The step we had to take out of the second boat was at about waist height - luckily there was a guy there to grab my backpack and give me a hand up.

Another four hours or so later, there we were, checking back into the Baan Sabai on Soi Rambuttri.  We had an extra night there we'd paid for, and we weren't about to let that pass.

After a quick shower to wash off the dirt of travel, we went for a walk outside to find some dinner.

We ended up at one of the dime-a-dozen streetfood stalls off of the busy part of the soi.  Hey, fine by me - we had some great luck at street stands!

Plus, the ambience can't be beat.  These guys did a good morning glory dish, which is definitely a staple of my Thai diet that I miss back here in the States.  They also did a pretty yummy stir-fried wide rice noodle, which we got to season ourselves with the requisite Thai condiment tray - sugar, fish sauce, vinegar, chili.

I love this picture.

I had wanted to do some shopping in the inexpensive clothing stores up and down the streets near Khao San Road, so we wandered into a few.  Most of this stuff is not well made, but it's usually wonderful for the heat, lightweight cotton in nice bright patterns, and you can find some real bargains.  I bought an adorable sundress for $8.

I suppose there are some perils to running a clothing store in a land where it's always steaming hot.

Flush with my new purchase, we retired to the VW Bus bar to have a drink before bed.  Yeah, I have no idea either.  It's a bus!  With a bar in it!  They had a huge drinks list, 200 drinks or so, with one failing - the exotically-named concoctions didn't have their ingredients listed next to them!  So we just picked a couple that sounded good and went with them.

I think mine, the "bee's knees", had gin, honey, and lemon in it.  Not bad.

The moral of this long and twisted narrative is that if you're in Bangkok for a few days, you should definitely head to Koh Samet, especially if you don't have enough time to make it to the beaches of the far South.  It's a great break from the hectic dirtiness of Bangkok, and you can get there in just a few hours. 

Then you too can come back and have drinks out of a bucket from the back of a VW bus.  Why not?

A tiny taste of the suffocating beauty that is the Royal Palace in Bangkok

Thanks for visiting!

Ha.  No, really.

I really do want to finish blogging the amazing trip we took through Thailand and Vietnam (check here for older posts) before I forget absolutely everything about where we went and what we saw.  Luckily, this means only 4 or 5 more posts, and they're about amazing places, including Ayutthaya, Koh Samet, and the Seattle airport.

Unfortunately, six months on, I've already forgotten a lot about a culture which, admittedly, I didn't know so much to begin with.  So, join me once again on my voyage of cultural insensitivity and ignorance!  (Hey, I don't think it's as bad as all that.)

Bangkok's Royal Palace is part of a huge complex of wats and chedis and stupas and tourists and cannons.  You know immediately upon walking up to it that this is going to be quite a visit.

This mess of buildings was begun in 1782 and has presumably been continually restored ever since then, to keep the luster and sparkle on the gilded mosaics and murals.

The heat, I remember, was oppressive, and we were for some reason there during the worst part of the day.  Topping that, we learned as we entered that one of the site's main attractions, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaeo) would be closed for the day.  Well, we'd slogged our way over to the temple complex, braving the taxi drivers of Bangkok and the insane tuktuk drivers, and we weren't about to turn around and go back to Siam Square, so screw it.

It's not like all of the other buildings of the temple complex were mud huts.

Here's one view of a spectacularly enormous chedi and what I think was the library, the Phra Mondhop.  We had popped for the audio guide, but you've never heard anything drier in your life, and honestly the heat drove much of the monotone straight out of our heads.

Besides, we were so impressed with just looking around that it was difficult to take time out from staring to listen.

The scale here was really not to be believed.

And not only were these buildings enormous and of a style completely outside of our experience, they were also superbly detailed.

We spent a lot of time with our necks craned.  I'm sort of surprised we didn't wade into a passel of Thai schoolchildren, many of whom were there on school trips.

Of course, not only are there these amazing mosaics - and here's a closeup so you can see the unflinching attention to detail -

there's also a huge mural running the length of an enormous building, telling the saga of Rama - the Ramakien.

It looked so fresh it could have been painted yesterday.  It's apparently likely that parts were; it's under almost constant restoration to keep it shining.

And there weren't just mosaics and murals - what about the giant model of Angkor Wat?  So what if we hadn't made it to the real thing!  We could stand by the model!

For some reason, I think the experience of going out into the jungle to see Angkor Wat is probably a deeper experience than seeing the model on the grounds of the Royal Palace.

We also spent some time admiring what I've just read are garudas strangling nagas, or perhaps just holding them lovingly by the neck.  Naga, sure - snake thing.  I don't really know what makes a garuda.

I do know that the Thais praise serenity above many things, and certain of the statues scattered around the complex really reinforced that message.

We were still disappointed that we wouldn't be able to see the Emerald Buddha, so we peered across towards the wat housing the statue.

Wait a minute - there are people inside!

We walked over to take a closer look - turns out the wat had only been closed for a ceremony earlier in the day, but was now open to visitors.  Word just hadn't gotten back to the ticket windows yet. 

Sweet.

You can't take pictures of the Emerald Buddha from inside the wat.  I assume it's because people would be using the flash, like idiots, and perhaps because the Palace administration wants to sell postcards.

The list of things you couldn't do didn't end with pictures, though.

In reading up on Thai culture, we'd read that Thais consider the feet the lowest portion of the body, and unholy for that reason.  For this reason, you don't point your feet at people - it's considered rude.  How rude on a scale with 1 being yawning while someone's talking and 10 being flipping someone off while screaming obscenities about their mother, I don't know. 

Just don't test it our by showing your dirty soles to the Buddha.

We got a tiny, blurry shot from outside.  At least you can see our fellow tourists.

Having now seen a good chunk of what the temple area had to offer, we left that section and made our way over to the administrative and government buildings, grabbing a sincerely refreshing lemongrass drink on the way.  I can't say it was delicious, and it came out of a can, but I was getting tired of the constant inflow of lukewarm water.

We took a look at the Chakri Mahaprasart, a decidedly odd building that served as the palace for about thirty years.  What a strange mishmash of styles; columns and a gold tiered Thai roof?

Very earnest guards were keeping a keen eye on all the tourists.  It was difficult to get a shot of one of them by himself, due to the relentless press of tourists desperate, for some reason, to pose with their arms crossed next to these serious-looking men.

This portion of the grounds also housed several small museums.  There was one full of weaponry, with giant Mauser pistols tucked in next to armor and spears, and then one large room that contained my new favorite Thai artifact:

The nine-tiered umbrella of state.

Which was of course placed reverently over a very heavy-looking throne.

We were exhausted by the heat and, lulled nearly to faintness by the droning of the audio guide monotone, we left the complex.  A taxi back to our hotel was fairly simple to find, and, once there, we collapsed.  Well, to be fair, I collapsed... Husbear went outside in search of something to eat for an early dinner.

He was successful, finding the delicious and ubiquitous morning-glory leaves, a spicy red pork curry, and a hot and sour soup.  And a beer, and about seventeen bottles of water that aren't in the picture.

And then we didn't leave the room again, because even at night it was really hot and we were totally run down.

Plus, the next day we'd be taking an early bus to an early boat to Koh Samet!  Beach island paradise, here we come.

Wave a quick goodbye to Vietnam, guys.

Look, we knew going in that a week really wasn't enough time to spend in Vietnam.  I think, though, that the more you travel the more you come to realize that no amount of time will ever be enough (except, perhaps, for Manfredonia! in January).  We missed Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, and Da Lat, and that's only the start of a burgeoning list.

So, how were we to say goodbye to HCMC and Vietnam's South?

Let's start with another meal at Ben Thanh Market.

We began, this time, at stall 1168 .  Bun Mang Vit time.  It's a duck soup - no, not that kind.  This one has slices of duck breast along with bamboo, in a pork broth with noodles.  Of course it comes with a pile of greens you throw on top!

Kind of bland, if I'm being honest.  The duck was overcooked and the broth's flavor was pretty much limited to porkiness.  Eh.

So, we moved over to stand 1092 to get more My Quang.  Like I said in my last Vietnam post, which I barely even remember since it was two months ago, (holy paloly have we been busy), this is my new favorite unrecreatable and unfindeable in Texas dish.

1092 beat out 1138, secondo me.  The textures were more variable, with extra crunchy crunch and a better, more deeply rich broth.  This is such a delicious savory dish, with so many different flavors and textures and even temperatures going on in the bowl, that it's impossible to get tired of it.  Well, perhaps if you ate five servings of it, or ate it every day for a month.

We also ordered their banh beo, just because I wanted another order of those shiny rice dumplings and perhaps another slice of pork roll.  1092 did a good job, here.  Lots of chewiness and a good shrimpy backbone.

And then, unfortunately, I was completely stuffed.  It's sad, because this stand was one of those where you just wanted to point at various things behind the glass and say "One of those, please, with a topping of that and a big side of whatever's wrapped up in that leaf."

Husbear still had a hankering for some dessert, though, so he ordered a big glass of che thap cam from the stall next door, which seemed to be doing a bustling business in sweets.

Ordering a che thap cam gets you a big mix of lots of their various flavorants and toppings, all floating in a light coconut milk.  There's tapioca balls, grass jellies, beans, perhaps a chunk or two of yam... it all comes together into a refreshingly light cross between a pudding and a beverage.  Though it's sort of on the starchy side for my taste, Husbear's a big fan.

Too bad, so sad, that's the end of our last meal at Ben Thanh Market.  I envy people who can go down there every day to eat from the stalls - there are so many of them, and each serves multiple dishes.  I bet you could spend several weeks eating every breakfast and lunch there and not repeat yourself - and that's not even counting the carts and hawkers outside!

We did have an item of business that needed taking care of before we left Vietnam - mailing a second wave of postcards back to the States.  It took us a little while, and the requisite dodging of rickshaw drivers and pedicabs and strolling vendors selling ten-foot stacks of paperback books (all fresh off the xerox machine of course), but we did eventually find our way to a post office on a street hear our hotel.

When we got there, there was some commiseration behind the counter about how many stamps we'd need for our postcards.  Then, it turned out that the post office didn't have large denomination stamps, so we'd need to use multiple smaller ones!  They offered to put the stamps on the postcards for us, but we insisted we'd do it ourselves.

The whole thing felt a little shifty, so we took pictures of the cards to prove to people back home that we'd tried.  Really, we had.

Imagine our surprise when all of these cards arrived in the States barely behind us, a week later!  Kudos to the Vietnamese post office!

After the post office, god, it was so hot outside, we needed a light colored beer with ice in it.

Aaahhh.

And, to get a little culture in, a visit to the Jade Emperor Pagoda.  It was a bit of a pain in the ass directing our taxi driver, since our stupid Rough Guide didn't give the name of the temple in Vietnamese and "Jade Emperor Pagoda" obviously didn't mean anything to him.  This seemed like a seriously stupid oversight on the part of our guidebook.  Eventually, we all figured out which way we were pointing and made it there inside of half an hour.

Unlike those in Bangkok, where you sometimes are completely unable to get a taxi to take you anywhere for any amount of money, the ones in HCMC were all metered.  Each taxi we took stuck to the meter scrupulously.  It was refreshing.

Anyway, the Jade Emperor Pagoda.  Also known for its collection of tortoises in a dank outdoor pond.

After the amazing temples we'd seen in Chiang Mai, this one was sort of a letdown.  Dingy, poorly kept up, dark.

Plus, we're completely ig'nant, so it was hard to glean meaning from the temple beyond what we found in our guidebooks.  I know that's sad.  We're more into the whole food as culture thing, I guess.

On the way out of the pagoda towards the nearest big road, where we hoped to catch a taxi, we passed a guy selling banh mi by the side of the road, so we bought two.

We had no trouble catching a taxi, so back by our hotel we picked up two more banh mi from the tiny lady selling wonderful specimens at the corner of Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham.

We sat in the park with our spoils plus two bottles of bia, and ate two of our sandwiches.  Napkins being a scarce commodity throughout Southeast Asia, we were unsurprised to find our sandwiches wrapped in some kid's homework.

Apparently, this is common around the world - we had similar serving utensils in Luxor last year.

We went back to our hotel, gathered our things, and hopped in the hotel's rickety van for a hair-raising ride back to the airport.  There's really nothing to report about our flight, save that we got in when we were supposed to, but we had a lot more trouble with the taxi stands at BKK than we'd had arriving the first time.  On our first arrival, we used an official taxi who was more than happy to turn his meter on and actually honor the numbers on the dial; the second time, though, we weren't so lucky with the official taxi.

We were given a receipt for 400 baht, all included, into the center of town (our previous ride had been 300 total), and then got into multiple arguments with the driver about paying tolls.  Argh.  I can't say the taxis of Bangkok are really the best introduction to Thailand, but hey, they apparently have to be dealt with.

This time, we were staying in the center of town - Siam Square.  We were paying a little more for the place, but I was hopeful about its description in the Lonely Planet.

Yeah.  Ha.  I'm still trying to figure out how they got that bed in the room.  I appreciate the lack of a closet, since I also can't figure out where they'd put it, though we just about had to sleep with our luggage.

The hotel had one very important rule it wanted to communicate as clearly as it could to all guests.

So, well, back to Thailand.  We were happy to be back, but at the same time, there was so much of Vietnam we had been unable to explore, that it felt sort of like we were doing a half-assed job of visiting both of these countries.  And we were.  Shaddup.