Eggs Benedict

Posted on 18 August 2010 by christao408

Tawn and I enjoy poached eggs and find Eggs Benedict to be a nice weekend brunch treat. For some reason, though, we haven’t had a lot of luck learning how to poach eggs. Everyone has a special secret or tip to share – put vinegar in the water, stir the water in a clockwise motion before introducing the eggs, use only the freshest eggs, put the unopened egg in the hot water for ten seconds to firm up the whites – but we still come up with wildly inconsistent results. So we recently bought a non-stick poaching tray and set about learning to make Hollandaise sauce.

The Hollandaise sauce was surprisingly easy, employing a technique similar to making the wonderful French dessert sabayon, also known in Italian as zabagione. You whisk egg yolks with lemon juice (I managed to use a little too much, thanks to eyeballing it rather than measuring) in a baine-marie – a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. The gentle heat of the steam cooks the eggs slowly and as you whisk them, you keep them from scrambling.

Then, once doubled in volume, you add a stream of melted butter, whisking all the while to emulsify, or incorporate, the butter into the egg yolk mixture. This produces a thick, rich sauce that can then be seasoned with salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

On the back burner, the sauce is set to a low heat to keep it warm and I’ll add a few teaspoons of water to thin it out before serving. The egg poacher in on the front burner, with simmering water halfway up its side. In about four minutes, the eggs will be nicely done with firm whites and liquid, but warm, yolks. On the right, Tawn fries some ham slices.

The finished Eggs Benedict, employing a slice of homemade whole grain bread in lieu of an English muffin, accompanied with some fresh papaya. Tasty.

New Pedestrian Bridges at Asoke and Thong Lo

Posted on 17 August 2010 by christao408

For a city of about 8 million people with generally poor mass transit systems, Krungthep (Bangkok) can sometimes surprise you with the usefulness of some of its infrastructure development. A good example of this are the pedestrian bridges built to connect some of the BTS Skytrain (elevated rail) stations to surrounding buildings. In a city with lots of traffic congestion, poor air quality, and even poorer footpath quality, an elevated way to get from the station to the buildings is a big incentive to get out of the car and into the mass transit.

Asoke Road

The junction of Asoke and Sukhumvit roads is an example of this bridge building trend. One of the busiest intersections in the city, crossing at street level has long been a hazardous activity for pedestrians. Located at the intersection of the MRTA subway and the BTS Skytrain, this junction houses three high-rise offices each with a few floors of retail, two large hotels, and a nine-story mall that is under construction.

The pedestrian bridge built under the Skytrain viaduct, heading east from the Asoke station.

In the past two years, pedestrian bridges were built to the west of the BTS Skytrain station, connecting the two hotels and one of the three office buildings. Then a large bridge was built to the east under the Skytrain tracks on Sukhumvit, crossing Asoke in a single cantilevered structure. On the east side of the junction the pedestrian bridge connected to the building in the southeast corner, but not to the newer building on the northeast corner.

The northeast corner of the Asoke-Sukhumvit junction.

Before the pedestrian bridge opened across Asoke, you had to descend from the Skytrain station to the subway station, cross under Asoke road in the subway station, and then reemerge at the base of this building. The subway entrance is in the lower left of the photo, near the large umbrellas. The new pedestrian bridge is on the right that connects directly to the building is on the right. What follows are some pictures of the connection under construction over the past two months:

Taken about six weeks ago, you can see in this picture how the new extension of the bridge will connect from the existing pedestrian bridge (shown in the very first picture in this entry) to the third floor of the building. At this point, just a part of the metal framework has been put into place.

A few days later, crossbeams have been added and some of the concrete flooring is in place. You can also see how a stairwell to the street level – a requirement for all the bridges that connect to buildings to allow after-hours access to the pedestrian bridge – fits into the design.

A few days after that, the columns for the roof structure are mostly in place. The following week, the roof itself has been added and most of the side panels are installed.

Finally, about two weeks ago the bridge is finished and is nearly open. Lighting is working, as you can see. This will be much more convenient to access the building and its businesses. Certainly much easier than having to pass through the subway station to get there! Plus, you can now descend to the street and access businesses along this side of the street more easily.

Thong Lo

A second example of new pedestrian bridges is going up on the west side of the Thong Lo Skytrain station. This is my neighborhood station and it lies just to the east of the junction of Thong Lo and Sukhumvit Roads, two stops to the east of the Asoke station.

Looking west from the foot of the Thong Lo Station

The main driver behind this bridge is the Noble Remix condo (the purple building) which will have two floors of retail below about 35 stories of residences. While the retail floors will get traffic from the residents, there’s no hope of anyone else traipsing over there unless it is convenient, and that means a pedestrian bridge.

Looking west from the station’s westbound platform.

Looking from the station platform to the west, you can see the condo on the left and the entrance to my alley on the right, just under the tracks before the first column. The rationale for needing a pedestrian bridge is that someone walking along the sidewalk has to go along the petrol station and then cross a small but busy alley between the petrol station and the condo. By building the bridge, it is safer and more convenient for pedestrians.

At the same time, some stairs will be built on the north (righthand) side of the road in front of the international school – the building that is wrapped in blue construction tarp. This should be safer for students and their parents to access the Skytrain station.

Looking back from in front of the international school towards the BTS Skytrain station, you can see the condo to the right and the first columns of the pedestrian bridge. This is about two months ago.

As of four weeks ago, box frames were built around the train viaduct’s columns.

A few weeks later, the bridgework was added to connect each of the support columns. For the past two weeks, no further work has been done including the connection to the station itself. I’m curious to see how quickly they will finish this project. It seems like it should not be difficult but each step has moved quite slowly. In the end, it won’t benefit me very much but it is another sign of progress in making the Skytrain more accessible to the area surrounding the station and and more user-friendly to potential passengers.

Is America Saudi Arabia?

Posted on 17 August 2010 by christao408

Not to get bogged down in this topic, but I was amused to read this quote in a newspaper article today:

“Ground zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard, a Republican trying to unseat Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat, in West Virginia’s Third District, said in a typical statement. “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?”

What the Saudi government would or would not allow in their own country is irrelevant to the question at hand. Saudi Arabia is a theocratic monarchy. The United States is a federal constitutional republic and a representative democracy. Is Mr. Maynard proposing that we change our system of government so that we can meet out religion freedom (or the absence thereof) in the same manner as the Saudi throne?

Oh, brother!

There are a couple of salient points made in an op-ed on NYTimes.com that I want to highlight:

The problem with [Republicans’] claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Food for thought…

When Did We Forget the Bill of Rights?

Posted on 15 August 2010 by christao408

There is a great deal of furor going on about the proposed building of an Islamic community center and mosque a short distance away from the World Trade Center site in New York City. On Friday, President Obama made a public statement about the issue, pointing our that “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”

Republicans jumped right on him, accusing the President of “pandering to radical Islam” and saying he “caved in to political correctness.”

I’d like to ask the Republican leaders a simple question: When did you stop supporting the Bill of Rights?

In case there’s any confusion out there, or Americans who didn’t get civics lessons because their teachers were busy ensuring no child got left behind, let’s quickly review what the Bill of Rights is. Namely, the Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, and came into effect in December 1791. They include such “golden oldies” as the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Bill of Rights is about our civil liberties. It is about our freedom, the freedom for which men and women in uniform are fighting and dying. Protecting our civil liberties is not “pandering to radical Islam” or “caving into political correctness.” Denying our civil liberties plays into the hands of terrorists, letting those who would undermine American values, win.

Conservatives go on and on about the importance of upholding the Constitution. Their claim is that President Obama has been “trampling” the Constitution throughout his first 20 months in office. But suddenly, when he explicitly upholds the Constitutional rights of Muslims to build a place of worship on private land, these “staunch defenders” of the Constitution are nowhere to be seen.

Let’s give credit to Flordia Governor Charlie Crist, the former Republican now running as an independent candidate for senator, who supported Obama’s statement. Let’s give even more credit to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who actually led the way making a powerful speech in favor of religious freedom on August 3rd. The video of this 7-minute speech is here. Here’s the bit that I thought was most important:

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property, based on their particular religion?”

As we head into the midterm elections in November, before you make a decision about who deserves your vote, I’d ask that you take the time to ask the candidates whether or not they support the Bill of Rights. Use this case of the New York City mosque as a litmus test, because there really is only one way to support the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution. That’s to answer “no” to Mayor Bloomberg’s question: the government should not attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property, based on their particular religion.

Shanghai Style Minced Meat with Pinenuts in Sesame Pockets

Posted on 15 August 2010 by christao408

One of my favorite places to find recipes is Joanne Choi’s Week of Menus website. That’s where I found a nice recipe for Minced Chicken with Pinenuts served with Shao Bing, something like a Chinese sesame pita bread. The chicken is prepared in a Shanghainese style with ginger, oyster sauce, and water chestnuts. The Shao Bing, something that you can buy ready-to-bake in the US, was an unfamiliar bread I would have to make from scratch since I am here in Thailand.

The Shao Bing was a bit of a mystery. Examples of it on the internet varied both in size, shape, and even technique. I pulled three different recipes from presumably reputable sources, compared them, and decided to try the one from Ming Tsai on the Food Network. After all, he’s Ming Tsai, so how could I go wrong?

The ingredients are pretty basic: vegetable oil, flour, yeast, baking powder, water, sugar, sesame seeds, and salt and white pepper.

You basically make three components to the dough: the first is a roux, a mixture of equal parts oil and flour, heated until the mixture thickens a bit. The second is a sponge, a relatively wet mixture of flour, yeast, sugar, baking powder, and warm water, which is allowed to sit and begin to rise. The third is a dry dough, a combination of just water and flour.

After letting the sponge rise and the dough rest, you combine them and knead until completely integrated. After another rest, you roll the dough out to about 1/16-1/8th of an inch. The oil-flour roux is spread on the surface of the dough. Despite following the recipe carefully, I found the roux was too runny – I’m not sure why this happened but it proved to be problematic.

Roll the dough into one-inch thickness, then cut into four-inch lengths. You can see that the roux was running out the ends. The subsequent instructions involve sealing the ends, rolling the dough thinner, folding it into thirds, basically creating what amounts to a typical pastry dough with alternating layers of dough and fat. The instructions for doing this confused me. Take a look:

Place 1 of the rolls seam-side up and seal the end using a small rolling pin (this will prevent the oil paste from escaping). Fold the roll into thirds, so that the seam is covered. Then roll this tripled roll into a flat dough about 5-inches by 2-inches. Fold this piece into thirds. The stack should be about 2 by 3/4 inches thick. Flip the piece over so that the seam and fold are on the bottom. Cover and set aside. Repeat the process for the remaining rolls.

Huh?

I did the best I could, but wound up with roux everywhere and too much flour on the dough. I sprayed one side of the dough with water and pressed it into the sesame seeds. These were baked in a 350 F oven for about ten minutes on the bottom side, then flipped over for another five minutes.

P1050799

The interior of the resulting Shao Bing looked like this, with distinct layers. The flavor was too floury and it was difficult to really open them like pita pockets. Maybe too many layers? After this meal, I tried cooking a leftover bread in a toaster and spreading it with peanut butter. Worked out much better then!

The second half of the dish was the filling you are meant to stuff into the pockets. The original recipe calls for chicken but I used a mixture of chicken and pork for more flavor. Instead of coarsely chopping whole pieces of meat, I used ground meat. It was marinated in a mixture of garlic, ginger, sake (substituted for Shao Xing wine), and soy sauce.

The other ingredients are a mixture of chopped celery and water chestnuts, pine nuts, and a sauce composed of more Shao Xing wine (or sake), oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

The meat is fried, then the celery and water chestnuts are added, then the sauce is added. Add the pine nuts when the mixture is finished. That’s all it takes.

For the final result, serve the Shao Bing with the minced meat mixture, stuffing it into the bread like you would with a pita. The dish was tasty, although the Shao Bing was a bit floury. In absence of the bread, you could actually use lettuce cups, which would be very nice, indeed.

I’ll need to try a different recipe for Shao Bing and see what the results are. The other two recipes I have for Shao Bing have different ratios of oil to flour for the roux. This recipe I used was 1:1 and the result was too thin. Another recipe is 3:2, which would be thinner. The final recipe, the one I think I will try next time, is 1:4. Amazing how different they are, no?

Changes in Income Force Re-evaluation

Posted on 13 August 2010 by christao408

What makes me happy? Certainly it is not the material things in life that make me happy, although there is some comfort that comes from having them. On the whole, my life is pretty much free of a consumerist bent. But there are certain things I want in life that come with a price tag, especially the ability to travel to visit friends and family now that I live an ocean away from them.

It was with interest that I read this recent New York Times article about consumers finding ways to spend less and still find happiness, a topic that has long fascinated me.

Amid weak job and housing markets, consumers are saving more and spending less than they have in decades, and industry professionals expect that trend to continue. … On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses

That rings true, especially the part about experiences being more fulfilling than simple objects. There are plenty of things I’ve bought in life that I later realize I don’t use often, I don’t appreciate very much, or that I wouldn’t miss if I didn’t have them. But there are few trips I’ve taken, nice meals I’ve eaten, film festivals I’ve attended, and books I’ve read that haven’t left at least some impression on me, some residual amount of enjoyment that I get to relive each time I think of them. Of course, the Times’ article goes on to note that the possible exception to this finding is that purchases of clothing are more likely to continue to thrill the purchaser each time they are pulled form the closet, a finding with which Tawn might all too eagerly agree!

These questions about happiness, spending, and the relationship between the two arise at this point in my life because in the past two months, Tawn has made a change from full-time work to part-time, seeking a new sense of direction and an opportunity to create some balance in his life, including the time for more yoga practice and spending more time with his parents.

That reduction in our household income has already been felt and likely will be felt more in the months to come as we learn what the full impact is of losing a good chunk of the income we were used to. That reduction in salary was one of the reasons that I traveled solo back to the family reunion in Kansas City last month, in fact.

We’re speaking regularly about this transition and its effects on us, sharing our feelings and concerns and regularly reviewing our financial situation to avoid undue stress caused by unexpected bills. This is a good thing and I’m confident that we’ll be able to survive fine with less income and will hopefully find that the free time is beneficial and brings happiness in ways that money and things cannot.

Still, every so often I worry a bit. Will this mean I can’t do the travel I want to? Will that mean fewer of the experiences that I enjoy? Is that something I’m willing to give up?

In reflection on all these questions, I recall a chapter from the Chinese philosophical treatise, the Tao Te Ching.

Tao Te Ching Chapter 44
Translation by Stephen Mitchell
Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success or failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

Let’s see if I can keep focused on this message in the months to come, to remember that there is nothing lacking and the whole world already belongs to me.

Religious Intolerance

Posted on 11 August 2010 by christao408

Remember the pistachio pudding entry a week or two ago? It was the one about how I bought powdered pudding mixes for some Christian missionary friends up in Chiang Mai. After cross-posting that entry on facebook, one friend took a thinly-veiled swipe at organized religion, making a potentially hurtful comment on my profile page that could also be read by the missionary friends. This bothered me.

After a conversation with the friend who made the anti-religion remarks, he apologized for any offense and asked me to remove the comments, which I did. But I was left pondering his remarks in a broader context and wanted to put those thoughts down on paper, as it were.

There are many people who have suffered discrimination and persecution at the hands of organized religion. As a gay man who continues to struggle for my right to be married to the person of my choice, I fully understand that there are people whose faith is pitted against my rights.

There are also many people who think that all organized religion, regardless of faith, is a sham. Books such as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” lay out a comprehensive argument why belief in a god is irrational and is bad for mankind. Being a rational person, I fully appreciate the points people who argue against religion make.

There are also many people who have deep faith in one religion or another, people who are my friends, family members, and loved ones, whom I know to be good people who give deeply and generously of themselves, their talents, and their time, people who are not predisposed to impose their beliefs upon others, and who have been great supporters of Tawn and me and our struggle to have the same rights as any members of society.

There are many people who have a deep mistrust of people of faith whose faiths are different from, but as equally deep as, their own. Hateful, ignorant comments fly from the mouths and the fingertips of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists about members of other faiths. Witness the recent fuss over the building of a mosque in close proximity to the former World Trade Center in New York City.

I am a person who was raised in a family of faith and who struggled with the contradictions between the teachings of that faith, the teachers of that faith, and my own position in the order of things. I am a person who many years ago arrived at a comfortable answer to these contradictions, an answer I do not choose to share here on Xanga because I think it is a personal answer. Most importantly, I am a person who believes deeply in the freedom both of speech and of religion. So I find myself in a middle ground that I feel gives me the perspective and the right to say the following:

We need to rein in the religious intolerance.

Regardless of your beliefs, whether they be for a particular religion or virulently against all religion, there is nothing to be gained and no benefit to berating another person for his or her beliefs or lack of belief. Bashing others over the head will not win them over to your side of the argument. It won’t even make them stop to reconsider their own side of the argument. All it does is increase the level of hostility, vehemence, and distrust.

I encourage people to have serious, thoughtful discussions about ideas of importance. Questioning one’s faith is a powerful way to make it stronger and is also a powerful way to come to new realizations about its failings. Questioning others’ faith can be done in a way to both educates ourselves and creates shared connections with people of different ideas and backgrounds. But I don’t see any point to blatant and often ignorant religious intolerance, except to further your own anger.

There, I’ve said my peace. Back to writing about food.

Food in Hua Hin – Seafoodies

Posted on 9 August 2010 by christao408

As I mentioned in the recent entry about my weekend in Hua Hin, the people whom I was there with, Tawn’s colleagues, are foodies. Specifically, they are sea-foodies. I’ve never seen a group of people remove quite so much crab meat from a pile of shells in so short a time as this bunch of diners. As for me, I really enjoy seafood but there’s also a point where enough is enough, especially back-to-back meals of the same things. Let me share with you what we ate, so you can appreciate it, too.

Our main meal was at a popular local restaurant in the heart of Hua Hin town, an unassuming place that looks more like a loading dock with tables. “Loading dock” would actually be an accurate description, because it is adjacent to the fishermen’s wharf. Unlike such piers in some corners of the world that have become tacky tourist spots, these are the unassuming working jetties where the fishing fleet comes to offload their catch of fresh prawns, crabs, fish, oysters, scallops, and other delicacies of the deep. Based on my experience, there are few places where you can find seafood more fresh than the fisherman’s wharf.

Tables are placed on a series of extentions to the main dock, a series that seems rather haphazardly added on based on an expanding clientele.

The entire family (or families) seem to be at work, with youngsters sorting out fresh shellfish with each order that is placed. Half the main floor area is a series of tanks which are filed with different types of creatures depending upon demand. This being low season, only about half the tanks had occupants. I have no idea what the “spot babylone” is.

Clams with garlic and basil. Very sweet meat.

Fried squid. Instead of cutting these into rings, this restaurant cuts them into strips. A bit overcooked, I thought.

Lump crap meat, scrambled eggs, and green onions with tumeric and curry powder. My favorite of the dishes.

Hoy jaew – a crab meat sausage wrapped in tofu skins and steamed then deep fried. I wrote last month about a restaurant we went to in Chonburi that is famous for these. Entry is here.

Raw oysters. These were large and very briny tasting, not as clean a taste as I enjoy. Garnished with a very pungent herb, salt, lime juice, and toasted shallots.

Steamed crab, anyone?

Boiled prawns. The crab and prawns were served with a super-spicy dipping sauce.

Two of Tawn’s colleagues enjoy the meal. Looking behind them you can see the various seating areas, each with a tent roof. The solid roof structure way in the back is on the land, which is where all the holding tanks for the seafood are.

After the seafood dinner, we went to one of the night markets in Hua Hin. The traditional night market is on the city streets and is very crowded. There is a new area that has been set up that is a bit more park-like and focuses on the arts. There was a live band playing in a small ampitheatre, a food court area, and lots of vendors selling everything from paintings to clothing. Above, a pair of Tawn’s colleagues posed for pictures. Picture taking was a big part of the weekend.

At the night market I ordered some coconut ice cream served with sticky rice in a hollowed-out coconut shell. The meat of the coconut was cut loose with a little device so that I could eat it with the ice cream.

The next day…

Did I mention that picture taking was a prominent activity?

The next day after class we stopped for lunch at another seafood restaurant before driving back to Krungthep. I didn’t take any pictures because, well, it was pretty much the same menu all over again. I did take a macro photo of this fried prawn head, though, because I thought it was kind of interesting.

The restaurant we went to was in a small fishing village on the south side of Hua Hin. Interestingly, the tide was out, leaving the whole fishing fleet beached.

Thai fishing boats are very colorful. So that was my weekend in Hua Hin with Tawn’s colleagues. Very fun opportunity and I’m glad to have had it.

Happy First Anniversary

Posted on 7 August 2010 by christao408

Coming hot on the heels of Federal District Court judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling that California’s Proposition 8 unfairly discriminates against gay men and women in their right to marry the partner of their choosing, the timing of my first anniversary of marriage to Tawn seems quite appropriate. Yes, it was a year ago today that a group of family and friends gathered in a courtroom in Iowa and Tawn and I exchanged vows and started our life together as spouses.

Not wanting to get into a tangent about legal issues, as I’ve written on the topic of same-sex marriage rights many times before, I’ll simply say that I agree with the gist of the 136-page ruling: My having the right to marry Tawn does nothing to diminish the value of any different-sex marriages, but denying me the right does me grievous harm while doing nothing to benefit the interests of the state.

Having just celebrated my grandparents’ 67th anniversary, I am hopeful that medical technology will progress to the point that Tawn and I, too, have the opportunity to reach such a milestone. Realistically, of course, I’ll be happy if we get thirty or forty years. Most importantly, though, I will focus on just enjoying each day we have together.

Happy anniversary, Tawn!

The full entry about that wedding is here, for those who didn’t see it and are interested.

Role Playing in Hua Hin

Posted on 6 August 2010 by christao408

By profession, I am a trainer. I have a wide range of background experience but people development (and managing people development) is where my heart and skill lies. When Tawn’s boss found this out, I was invited to join part of their team for a weekend training session in Hua Hin. Their industry is Public Relations, their training was about creating client value, and they needed someone to play the role of a prospective client for some of the training exercises.

Glowing lanterns (in a vaguely northern Thai style) in the early evening.

Hua Hin is a popular beach resort about a three-hour drive southwest of Krungthep (Bangkok). It is the home of His Majesty the King’s beach palace and so is a much cleaner and more desirable place than, say, Pattaya. In the past few years Hua Hin has also become much too popular and is now overgrown with high end hotels and fancy resorts. In other words, it has gone upscale and lost the inexpensiveness and carefree charm that made it a fun getaway spot for locals. Still, it retains its good weather, nice ambience, lovely beach, and tasty seafood. So who was I to refuse an all expenses paid two night trip to a beach resort there?

Beach, pool area, and the restored 90-year old teak house, right.

I’ll write more about the food in the coming days, but let me share some pictures of the resort. The resort, called Baan Talay Dao (“Home of the Sea and Stars”) centers around an authentic 90-year old teak wood house in which the training was held. It is a smaller resort, family owned and operated, and has probably been in operation for years and years. With the sprucing up of the rest of Hua Hin, it looks like they made a lot of effort sometime in the past few years to freshen up the resort’s facade and it now has a “boutique” look and feel.

Private villas – note the grotto with the Virgin Mary in it, which you don’t see all that often here in Thailand!

The property includes a combination of town-house style two-story buildings along with individual villas closer to the beach. The buildings are well-maintained and the landscaping is very lush. Inside the rooms, though, you can see the age of the facility. Not because things aren’t well maintained – they are – but simply because of the amenities offered and the roughness of the construction. I’ve seen this a lot in these boutique resorts in Thailand and that is why the price is $50-150 less a night than, say, the Intercontinental, the Sheraton, or the Marriott.

The townhouse section of the resort faces a reflecting fish pond and some beautiful trees.

There is a full-service restaurant downstairs from the teak house and you can either sit in the shade underneath or out in the open air overlooking the beach. Their breakfast buffet is pretty impressive for a small resort and the dinner I ate the first night – a curried seafood dish called hor mok talay – was one of the best things I’ve eaten this month.

Hua Hin is on the western side of the Gulf of Thailand hidden against a ridge of mountains on the narrow isthmus that is shared between Thailand and Myanmar. The benefit of this ridge of mountains is that the frightening storm clouds that blow over them tend not to drop their rain on Hua Hin, instead continuing up the Gulf and gathering more force before dropping their rain closer to Krungthep. This made for some very pleasant (and pleasantly breezy) late afternoons and early evenings as I enjoyed the relatively cool temperatures and watched the clouds, excpecting them to let fat drops of rain fall on me in response. Thankfully, this didn’t happen.

The path to the beach.

The two days of training were pleasant. I had met most of Tawn’s colleagues on several occassions before (he wasn’t at the training, though) and so it was a pleasure to spend more time with them. Not only did I learn a lot about the PR industry, which was fascinating, but I discovered that as a group they are the biggest foodies (sea-foodies, to be precise) I’ve met in Thailand, which is why I’ll write about the food in a later entry.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Monthly Archives: August 2010