Cooking with Friends

Posted on 30 April 2011 by christao408

The past few weeks we’ve had the opportunity to cook at other people’s houses, which is always a fun change of pace. I find cooking outside my own kitchen to sometimes be a challenge – What do you mean you don’t have a potato ricer!? – but also fun because many friends have kitchens larger and more geared to socializing than mine.

Over Songkran we went to Ko and Per’s house. Ko was Tawn’s university classmate and her husband, Per, is from Sweden and moved here late last year. We decided it would be fun to try and make Swedish meatballs although we didn’t have a specific recipe and I’m not sure any of us knew what we were doing.

Nonetheless, we intuited our way through it, and wound up with something that despite looking kind of gloppy, tasted good and seemed close to the real deal. At least that’s what Per said. Maybe he was just being polite.

Ko takes pictures of the meal: Swedish meatballs, roast potatoes, mixed green salad, and I think we made spaghetti with meat sauce, too. It was tasty and, more importantly, the company was wonderful.

Tawn and me after a dinner of Swedish meatballs. Compare that to our picture on the beach after the rough 30-minute ride on an unpaved road on Kauai!

The following week I went to cook at another friend’s house. Chow, who is the author of the must-buy and use guide Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, invited friends over to cook Mexican food in honor (kind of) of the upcoming Cinco de Mayo holiday. Never mind that we were a bit early. Unfortunately, Tawn was not able to make it. That didn’t stop us from having fun, though, and making too much good food.

Enchiladas stuffed with avocado and smothered in red sauce and cheese sauce. Tasty!

Chicken enchiladas baked in a homemade mole poblano sauce. Pronounced “mo-lay”, this sauce has cocoa powder in it, lending an unexpected flavor to its spiciness.

For my contribution, I resurrected a recipe for fish tacos from Michael’s blog, using his avocado cilantro lime sauce. This sauce just goes perfectly on fish tacos!

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And finally, a random picture not related to cooking with friends. We had a visit from Ty, someone who was a very active member of the Xanga community under the username Just2Tyght when I first started almost six years ago. We met in person several years back in SF and while Ty has gone AWOL from Xanga, we’ve stayed in touch through other channels. Glad we had the opportunity to meet here in Bangkok.

Coming up soon… caramel rice flan.

Not an Event Entry

Posted on 28 April 2011 by christao408

When my blog started out, it was a tool to keep family and friends up to date about my experiences living in a new land. An easy way to stay in touch with everyone, if you will. Over time, I’ve realized that my entries are more like articles in a magazine. Not in quality, mind you, but in terms of how they tend to focus on a particular story, event, or subject. One entry is about a type of dessert in Thailand, another is about a new mall that is being built, another is about a trip to Hong Kong. So this entry is not driven by a particular event. It’s just some random musings about what’s going on.

Since returning from Kauai nearly four weeks ago, life has been very busy with work. With it being the start of a new fiscal year, there are lots of projects under way and I’ve been putting in extra hours in order to get them accomplished. While it can be tiring since all my work is done sitting in front of a computer, I enjoy the work I do and the people with whom I work. To top it off, I feel like the work I do – creating training materials – has a positive impact on people, so it is meaningful.

Barely over the jetlag, the final bits of planning are falling into place for our June trip back to the US. Normally, I wouldn’t travel again so soon but there’s this tricky bit about my yearly visa. It expires in June so I need to return to the US to apply for another one. Had I had my way, I would have waited until later in the summer of even the autumn before returning.

Speaking of the June trip, our original plan was to connect in Tokyo and spend a few days on the way back visiting Daniel and Jason. Unfortunately, because of the unsettled situation there, Daniel’s employer kept them out of the country for several weeks just around the time we needed to finalize our travel plans. They’re back in Tokyo now, but it is too late for us to change our tickets. Maybe if we can, we’ll fit a long weekend visit in later this year. But if we do it, it needs to be before another friend in Tokyo, Taro, moves back to the US to get married. (See? All of these logistics to deal with…)

The trip to the US will not be only for visa application purposes. While there, we’ll meet my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces for a week in LA. That’s right, we’re going to Disneyland! Also a chance to meet two of Tawn’s cousins and their families, along with his aunt and uncle. They’ve been very welcoming to me over the years and I’m excited to see them again. Plus, the cousins’ children are just about the age of my oldest niece, so they should have fun playing together. Of course, I have my own cousins there, too, as well as a few Xangans with whom I need to catch up.

As for Tawn, he’s been very busy with his fashion design studies. He’s supposed to present four looks at a student fashion show in a few weeks. Needless to say, “the annex” (our second condo unit which serves as an office and workroom) has been a frenzy of fabric, thread, and the occasional needle on the floor. I’ll share photos as the time comes. (Seriously, I think of my life in terms of potential blog entries.) In the meantime, I’m just trying to keep my head down and stay out of the way.

Finally, I recently went to the doctor about some pain in the ball of my left foot. He diagnosed it as capsulitis, an inflammation of the capsule surrounding the joint where the fourth toe and the foot connect. Doing some online research, the cause is probably from wearing shoes (esp. running shoes) that are too narrow. I have wide feet and while I purchase some of my shoes from zappos.com when in the US, I also have some pairs that aren’t sufficiently wide. That’ll teach me! Right now, I’m trying to stay off the foot as much as possible and am wearing support pads to help redistribute the weight into the arch and away from the ball of the foot.

Well, not an event, but that’s an update of what’s going on. Oh, as I’m writing this there’s a caramel rice flan in the oven based on a NY Times recipe. That’s an event you can be sure I’ll be writing about soon!

Winner of the United Retro Jet Contest

Posted on 27 April 2011 by christao408

This year marks the 85th anniversary of United Airlines. In a post last November, I mentioned that they were holding a contest for employees to vote for their favorite previous livery. The winning livery would then be painted onto a “retro jet” to commemorate the anniversary. Five previous color schemes were presented, voted on, and I recently saw that the Airbus A320 painted in the winning colors recently took to the sky:

Sigh…

I’m quite excited because of the five liveries, this was my favorite. It is the one I associate with my early childhood in the 1970s. I remember drawing airplanes when I must have been in my early elementary years and this was the color scheme I could recreate from memory.

The other four liveries that represent the different eras of United Airlines.

While I’ve had my rough patches with United over the years, it is the company that my father, my husband, and I (not to mention countless friends) all worked for at various points in our lives. Happy 85th anniversary to the Friendly Skies. May the merger with Continental make the skies friendly once again!

On Being Intimidated by Poetry during National Poetry Month

Posted on 26 April 2011 by christao408

(From topless teens to poetry. Where is this blog going?)

As you may know, April is National Poetry Month in the United States. Several Xangans to whom I subscribe frequently write poetry. Generally speaking, I greatly enjoy their poems. But I must confess that at a certain level I am deeply intimidated by poetry. The same is true for opera and ballet, but I won’t address those anxieties in this entry.

Like opera and ballet, I realize that poetry is supposed to be a beautiful art form. And many, many times I can experience a poem and recognize that it is indeed something very beautiful. But then I get a bit frustrated that I don’t understand it. Or, at least, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to understand. Or, maybe, I have this understanding that I’m supposed to understand the poem’s meaning.

This isn’t to say that I’m completely unappreciative of poetry. Indeed, there are several poets whose work I greatly enjoy.

As a child, I read the books by Shel Silverstein such as The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Who could not be moved by playfully subversive verse like “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes”?

If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore

(Did you know, by the way, that Shel Silverstein was one of the leading cartoonists in Playboy magazine in the late 50s? And he was able to publish successful children’s books, too. Would that ever happen these days?)

ts eliot

As a teenager, I discovered T.S. Eliot by way of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s musical Cats. Eliot was a Nobel prize winning poet but it was his book of light verse titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (which Lloyd Webber turned into the musical). I found these poems to be very accessible, if for no other reason than that I knew the music with which they went, so I could hear the lyrical nature of the poems when reading them.

There’s a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart,
Saying `Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can’t start.’
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster’s daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying `Skimble where is Skimble for unless he’s very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can’t go.’

Taken from “Skimbleshanks” from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

Of course, who was I to know that this opening verse was in fact a parody of a Rudyard Kipling poem? That level of comprehension would have been much beyond me.

In university, I discovered (and had the chance to meet) Dr. Maya Angelou. Her books first attracted me, as the theme of exploring identity which runs through them resonated with my own journey at that time in my life. I did not read her poetry extensively, but when I attended a talk she gave at my school and heard her give voice to her poems, they came to life for me. It was her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning“, which she read at the 1993 inauguration of President Clinton, that seemed to speak widely to Americans, myself included.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
From “On the Pulse of Morning”

So you see, it wasn’t as if I had no exposure to poetry. But somehow I still feel intimidated by it. Despite the best efforts of Bob Dickerson, my junior college English professor and the first person (by virtue of his Tennessee accent) whom I ever heard pronounce poem as “po-em” instead of “pome”, I look at a lot of poetry and just don’t know what I’m supposed to make of it.

So this week when I listed to a podcast of NPR’s Talk of the Nation from earlier this month, it was if I had heard from my messiah of poetry. Billy Collins, the US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, values approachability over pretention. The article summarizing his 30-minute interview summed up his position nicely:

[Collins] thinks former students have “lingering anxieties” about poetry. Teaching of poetry, bound as it is to the teaching of critical analysis, is the culprit. In what he admits is a cynical interpretation, he believes that to some extent, teachers “teach difficult poetry because it ensures their usefulness as people standing between the reader and the poem” who help with interpretation.
In the classroom, “every time you hear a poem in a classroom, you know questions will follow,” he says. “This sequence — hear a poem, then get interrogated over it,” says Collins, can create an anxious relationship between readers and poetry.

There it was. Suddenly my anxiety about poetry had found a voice. Someone had put into words the reason that I felt inadequate when reading poems. Every time I read a poem, I feel like I have to understand it well enough to answer questions about it.

One of the projects that Collins has worked on in conjunction with the Library of Congress is called Poetry 180. It is designed to make poetry accessible to students by presenting a poem each day for the 180 schools days each year. (Only 180?! That’s why American students are so far behind their global peers.)

The selection of poems is geared specifically to high school students. In Collins’ words, “Hearing a poem every day, especially well-written, contemporary poems that students do not have to analyze, might convince students that poetry can be an understandable, painless and even eye-opening part of their everyday experience.”

Let me share the first poem in the collection of Poetry 180. It is titled “Introduction to Poetry” and is written by Billy Collins. It sums up pretty much how I feel:

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
from The Apple that Astonished Paris

Now that I’ve found a poet – a Poet Laureate, nonetheless! – who has put into words exactly the trepidation about poetry I feel, it is as if I have had a catharsis. The boil has been lanced, and I can face poetry with a fresh start and now expectations.

I am just at the very beginning of my journey to learn to appreciate poetry, but I realize now that poetry is something I can learn to enjoy without having to worry about understanding it.

Happy National Poetry Month.

The Great Bangkok Songkran Bare Breast Debacle

Posted on 24 April 2011 by christao408

Songkran is the traditional Thai New Year’s festival, a three-day holiday held each April at the height of the hot season. The meaning of Songkran has been subject to much debate and over the past many years it has evolved into something much different than it originally was. This year, however, Bangkok was caught up in a great Songkran scandal that, according to several local pundits, revealed the hypocrisy with which we choose to view “culture” and what is “appropriate”.

At its roots, Songkran is something of a harvest festival, a time of cleaning up after one year and getting ready for the next rice-planting season, which will begin when the rainy season arrives shortly after the peak of hot season. Water has always played an important part in the Songkran celebration, and traditionally the holiday was celebrated by performing the “rot naam” (pouring of water) ceremony.

In this picture I took three years ago, school children dressed in traditional Thai outfits pour water over the hands of their elders. This is a way of showing respect and blessing them.

In fact, this same ceremony is performed when a couple is married, as in this example from my Thai teacher’s wedding this past December.

Songkran 3

In addition to pouring water on the hands of elders, there is a religious aspect to the Songkran celebrations, where you pour water on the hands of monks and also over Buddha images, washing and blessing them.

So those are the traditional celebrations of Songkran. Given that Thailand is a hot, tropical country it is no surprise that along the way some amount of splashing about with the water also happened. So Songkran started to get a reputation as being “the water festival” and was thus stylized by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. A little bit of playful, good natured splashing for the youngsters to engage in, if you will.

Somewhere along the way, though, it evolved into something more: a water war with roving mercenaries with pump-action water guns. This picture above is typical – families or young people fill up large tubs in the back of a pickup truck with water (usually with some blocks of ice in them) then drive around the city looking for revelers in other trucks or playing by the side of the road. An impromptu water fight ensues.

Often, though, it isn’t just the revelers who are involved. Anyone on the street – including those who are not interested in playing – are targeted with ice cold water. A favorite target is passing motorcycle drivers and as you might imagine, there are any number of accidents in which motorcyclists lose control and crash after being splashed unexpectedly.

In some sections of the city the celebrations turn into chaos, the streets shut down with people splashing each other with water and smearing each other with talcum powder. Needless to say, the partying is fueled by substantial quantities of alcohol.

Which leads us to this year’s scandal. Let me start by making clear that, while I don’t particularly enjoy the mess that Songkran has become, I also don’t have a bone to pick with it. I either get out of town during the holidays or stay indoors to avoid unwanted splashing.

The scandal began when video clips appeared showing a trio of young women – reportedly ages 13, 14, and 16 – dancing topless on a vehicle along Silom Road. Worth noting is that Silom Road is adjacent to one of the more famous red light districts in Bangkok where you can find things much more racy than this.

As you might imagine, there was a big fuss over this nudity and there were no shortage of pundits and officials tripping over themselves to proclaim what an insult to Thailand and Thai culture this was. In a statement, Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat said, “the clip has negatively affected the image of Thai culture and that all parties involved with such behaviour should be punished, while asking police to give importance to this issue, for it destroys the country’s reputation.” (emphasis mine)

The girls surrendered to the police, were made to publicly apologize, and were fined 500 baht (about US$16) each, and released.

As for the hypocrisy that was pointed out by several observers? Well, that comes in two parts. The first is the “oh, that’s too damn funny” part. Reportedly, at the time of this whole scandal, if you went to the website for the Thailand Ministry of Culture, the following art was displayed on the page banner:

The picture shows some young Thai girls dancing topless in what looks like a water festival, right? This was quickly picked up on by the denizens of the internet who hooted and hollered, posting and tweeting about how the Ministry of Culture was both promoting and punishing topless Thai teens at the same time.

In no time at all – as one observer pointed out, on a Sunday, nonetheless! – the nubile nipples were replaced with this classical Thai picture which, if you look closely, also has some bare breasts displayed in it.

Several other commentators pointed out that the impromptu redecorating of the Ministry of Culture’s website wasn’t the real hypocrisy, though. They explained that the real hypocrisy is that Thai society has long treated women and girls poorly. The sex industry here, the vast majority of which serves Thai men, not tourists, is founded on the treatment of women as sex objects. Young women and girls are sold into sexual slavery and rape is often not reported or, when reported, the women are treated as the guilty party for bringing shame on their family by not keeping quiet.

Now, I want to make clear that I’m not singling out Thai culture for its hypocritical treatment of women. I’m just reporting on the controversy that erupted here. Plus, hypocritcal treatment of women is something that is too common almost everywhere in the world. But as a number of cooler-headed commentators pointed out about this event, the trio of topless girls aren’t the cause of the problem. They are the symptom of larger societal attitudes that need to be discussed and addressed. I wonder if this event will provide a catalyst for that discussion to begin?

Great Eats in Bangkok Volume 2 – Khanom Krug

Posted on 22 April 2011 by christao408

As I promised, my “Great Eats in Bangkok” series is in fact becomming a series and not just a single video. Using my new wireless microphone that plugs into a Kodak Zi8, the audio quality is a bit better than the first time I shot the footage for this episode. I’ll have to keep playing around with the equipment in order to learn to master it, but hopefully each successive volume of the series will get better.

Photo courtesy yang1815

In this volume we explore one of my favorite Thai desserts, something called khanom krug. “Khanom” is the broad term used for snacks and nibbly type of desserts and “krug” refers to the half-sphere shape in which these tasty treats are made. You can loosely describe khanom krug as “rice flour and coconut milk pancakes”, although that description fails to capture what makes them so special and worth seeking out.

Here’s the 3-minute video.

Photo courtesy yang1815

The interesting thing about khanom krug is how it is composed of two batters, both made with rice flour and coconut milk. One batter is a little saltier and the other is a little sweeter. The sweet batter is poured into the indentations in the pan, filling them about 2/3 of the way. Then a few seconds later the saltier batter is added. Savory fillings such as corn, taro, or free onions can be added (but just as often, are not) and then the whole thing is covered and allowed to bake and steam for several minutes.

Once the khanom are fairly firm, but still a little molten in the middle, the halves are scooped out and paired together for serving. You have to be careful of a few things when eating them: first, they will be incredibly hot and the interior will decimate your tastebuds like lava flowing through a forest. Second, don’t let the vendor put the container of them in a bag. Steam is the enemy of these khanom and they will lose their crisp exterior very quickly. Third, solve that problem by eating them right away!

I hope you enjoyed the video. A third one is being edited now and the first volume, focusing on rice noodles called guaytiaw, is here.

Two Days in Hong Kong

Posted on 20 April 2011 by christao408

The final leg of our Hawai’i trip was a two-day stop in Hong Kong. A former residence of mine, it is one of my favorite cities in the world and a place I always enjoy returning to. Thankfully, we still have many friends there are were hosted by a former university classmate and her husband.

This couple has three adorable children and two days wasn’t enough time to properly visit with them. The older two were keen on showing off for the camera, seeing what funny faces and poses they could make! Next time we’ll be sure to leave extra time so we can do some exploring of the city with them.

One of our stops was breakfast at Lan Fong Yuen along the Central Escalator. I wrote about this place almost exactly a year ago. The full entry (with loads of food porn) is here.

It was mighty crowded and we were placed at a table shared with two other couples in the back corner of the restaurant. Ordering is always a bit of a challenge because the level of English spoken isn’t as much as it used to be, and our Cantonese is basically nonexistent. Nonetheless we were able to work it out and were rewarded with some comfort food.

Drawing on the memories of so many school children throughout East Asia: instant noodles and broth with chicken on top.

And toasted buns with sweetened condensed milk on top, to accompany the milk tea that is just at the edge of the frame. Nothing fancy here but certainly a tasty way to start your day.

Most of the two days was spent wandering around, with Tawn doing some shopping and me chilling out in cafes, reading magazines. Above is a small street in Lan Kwai Fong with some pretty flowers. We passed by on our way to dim sum with a friend I had not seen since the day Tawn and I met in January 2000. By coincidence, I ran into this friend and her mother in Hong Kong Airport that same day, as they were on their way to India and I was on my way to a fateful meeting with destiny.

Lots of galleries in the Hollywood Road area. This work is called Imperial Pig and it is by Chinese artist Huang Cheng. It shows a pig receiving a traditional Chinese medicinal treatment known as fire cupping. When I lived here, I actually had my own not so good experience being on the receiving end of one of these treatments, which left me bruised for months after!

One of the coffee shops where I spent some time: Holly Brown Coffee, located on Stanley Street. Fantastic coffee and ambience. Their gelato is supposed to be pretty good, too. I like the graphics on their cup.

Walking around Central, I noticed this store. I think the metal screens on the facade of Harvey Nichols are beautiful. There is so much interesting architecture and design in Hong Kong.

We also had the opportunity to meet up with some Xangans. By sheer coincidence, Jason and his husband Daniel, exiled from Tokyo for the moment, were in town for the weekend. While they had visited Bangkok just a few months ago, we were excited for the chance to spend some time with them again.

Photos borrowed from Jason’s facebook page (without permission – yikes!). On the left, Tawn, Jason, and Daniel. On the right, me, Jason, and Tawn. You should check out Jason’s blog. He isn’t posting as often these days but has some of the spectacular music he has written and performed.

Following a tip from Gary’s blog, the four of us sought out this retro Starbucks. Located on Duddell Street, which dead-ends off Queen’s Road in Central, it is designed as an old bing sutt, literally an “ice house”. The exterior doesn’t give anything away…

But once you’re inside, you feel you have been magically transported back to the 1950s and 60s. A bing sutt was the coffeehouse of the old days, where people could take a bread, enjoy a beverage or trendy Western treats such as soda pop and ice cream. The design was a fusion of East and West even back in those days. It feels even more fusion seeing a recreation in the context of the modern day.

This particular project was a collaboration between Starbucks and the Hong Kong brand G.O.D. (Goods of Desire) and the location was chosen because it is very close to the city’s arts community.

While we were there, some photographers started a fashion shoot. My lighting isn’t that good but the model’s cheongsam fits the interior of the bing sutt perfectly. Feels very much like the Wong Kar Wai film, In the Mood for Love.

New shopping area at the tip of Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon called 1881 Heritage. The developers took the former Marine Police Headquarters (which closed in 1996) and restored it, creating an interesting mixture of history and commerce. Worth a visit, more for the sights rather than the shops.

A ride on the Star Ferry remains one of my favorite ways to see the city, and one of the least expensive, too.

The other Xangan we met with was Angel. He splits his time between Hong Kong and Vancouver, so we’ve been able to meet before. Didn’t get a picture as we met in a crowded coffee shop. You should stop by his blog, too, as he recently wrote about a stay at the new W Hotel in Taipei, which is beautiful.

We did a lot more with our two days, but those were the highlights. On Sunday evening we headed to the airport and flew back to Bangkok, arriving just before midnight. Of course, all this happened two and a half weeks ago. I’m so far behind in my blogging! So now I’ll get back on course and catch you up with what’s happening here in Bangkok.

Heading Home: Honolulu to Guam to Hong Kong

Posted on 19 April 2011 by christao408

After six days in Hawai’i, I had attended my cousin’s beautiful beach wedding, I had tasted the holy grail of desserts – macadamia nut cream pie, I had eaten poke and ordered loco moco, and I had bumped along an unpaved road to reach the place where Hawaiians believe the spirits of their dead depart for the next world. After accomplishing all that, it was time to begin the journey back home.

While the trip was quite similar to the one into Hawai’i, I though I would share some more pictures of the trip for those of you who enjoy them. Check out the video of our takeoff from Honolulu – the reef just off the runway is gorgeous.

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The check-in area of Honolulu International Airport reminds me a bit of LAX. In fact, it looks more “LA” than LA does.

The interior, though, is still in that 1970s time warp that seems to be pervasive in Honolulu. It seems that an expansion and remodel is planned so we’ll see if that brings the airport into the 21st century.

Oddly, this video monitor shows the date as November 30. Only off by a few months.

Another beautiful outdoor garden you can access from the gate area. While the airport is in need of a remodel, I give it high marks for having lots of open air spaces and also for offering a lot of visibility of the airplanes. A lot of airports make it hard for you to appreciate the view of the planes, which I think is a part of the romance of air travel. Here is a selection of the planes I saw while waiting for our flight:

A Delta Boeing 767-300 heading to Los Angeles.

Two Continental jets. The nearer one is a Boeing 737-700 headed to John Wayne International in Santa Ana, CA. The further one is a Boeing 737-800 in the new United livery, headed to Los Angeles.

This Boeing 757-200ER belongs to Omni Air International, a charter operation based in Tulsa, OK.

An American Airlines Boeing 757-200 with winglets, bound to Los Angeles. (Lots of flights to LAX, no?)

Alaska Airlines also flies to Honolulu. This flight is going to Portland, OR. This Boeing 737-800 is part of their Hawaiian subfleet – notice the lei of flowers around the Eskimo’s neck.

Hawaiian B767-300 without winglets

Hawaiian Boeing 767-300 with winglets. These winglets help reduce drag, resulting in an improved fuel economy of about 3-4%. One of Hawaiian’s new Airbus A330s is in the background.

Japan Airlines Boeing 767-300 in “Oneworld” alliance colors. This plane is bound for Osaka.

Another Japan Airlines plane, this one a Boeing 777-200, destined for Tokyo.

The other major Japanese carrier, ANA (All Nippon Airways), Boeing 767-300. This is operated by ANA subsidiary Air Japan, which operates charter flights to popular vacation destinations.

A United Airlines B777-200 scheduled for Chicago O’Hare. A Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717 departs for another island in the background.

Our ride to Guam: A Continental (but in the new United livery) Boeing 767-400.

The gate area was particularly crowded. In fact, the flight was oversold and they were asking for volunteers but $300 in travel vouchers was incentive enough, since I’d have to use the vouchers on another Continental flight!

The interior of our plane during the boarding process.

A video of our takeoff from the Reef Runway in Honolulu and landing in Guam.

The lunch service was a choice between cheese tortellini and some chicken dish. I overheard the flight attendant tell another passenger that the pasta was the better of the two options, so that’s what I went with. It was actually pretty tasty, better than the food we had been served on the inbound flight.

Mid-flight the flight attendants served ice cream – cups instead of sandwiches – and then about an hour before landing in Guam, they served these turkey ham sandwiches. All in all, I think the flight from Honolulu to Guam and onto Hawaii was better than when we had traveled to Hawaii, probably because it was a daytime flight and we weren’t utterly exhausted.

We didn’t have that much connection time in Guam. Here’s a picture of a Chinese tour group taking a picture moments before boarding. While they were seated further back in the plane and thus were to board earlier, we sneaked ahead and the gate agent, seeing the unruly crowd coming towards the boarding gate, let us board ahead of them.

Our flight to Hong Kong, a Boeing 737-800.

Once again, we had the option of buying extra leg room by sitting in the exit row. It was worth it and just like on the flight from Hong Kong to Guam, we had an empty middle seat between us. Interestingly, this flight was operated exactly a week after we had left Hong Kong and one of the flight attendants from the flight out of Hong Kong was working our flight back to Hong Kong. I don’t think he recognized us.

Some thirteen hours after leaving Honolulu we arrived in Hong Kong, at about 8:00 pm. We headed into Ho Man Tin, a portion of Kowloon where friends of ours live. More about our two days in Hong Kong – and two Xangans we ran into – tomorrow.

One Night in Waikiki: Mac 24/7 and Boots & Kimo’s

Posted on 18 April 2011 by christao408

Since we missed our flight out of Lihue, we also missed the opportunity to have dinner with Michael. But he sent a few suggestions of places we could catch a decent bite later in the evening. The suggestion we took was Mac 24/7, a restaurant featuring modern American cooking, located in the Hilton Waikiki Beach Hotel, a few short blocks away from our less ritzy hotel.

After five days of eating mostly local fare, it was nice to order a cosmo and tuck into somewhat more conventional American food.

The interior was pretty much a modern take on the classic American diner, ESPN playing on the flat screen TVs and just a few customers scattered throughout the place. Service was friendly and the kitchen had our food to us in about fifteen minutes.

Well, despite the more conventional menu, Tawn didn’t order too far off what we had enjoyed the past few days. More seared ahi tuna served with kim chi fried rice.

I decided to go traditional and get a pork chop and mashed potatoes, which were very tasty.

We returned to the Aqua Waikiki Wave, which describes itself as a boutique hotel but which is nothing more than a standard tourist grade hotel. In fact, Waikiki seems to be positively bursting with these three-star (or less) hotels. The place was clean and looked like it had seen a remodel within the past few years, but it was still a pretty standard accommodation.

One thing I’ll give them credit for, though: the hotel is located right on the main boulevard where there is a lot of action well into the night, including a nightclub just outside the hotel’s entrance. In the room was a pack of foam earplugs with a tactfully phrased note explaining that the hotel is located in “an energetic and vibrant neighborhood” and suggesting that “if you are a light sleeper, you may wish to make use of these complimentary earplugs” and helpfully explaining that more are available by calling room service. These were the best earplugs I’ve ever used and they really did muffle the noise from outside.

Above, me horsing around on Waikiki Beach at sunrise. We were up early and walked the block from the hotel to the beach, which had a surprising number of people who were also out to see the sunrise, catch the surf, or secure a primo lounge chair in front of their hotel.

Here’s a short video of the beach during sunrise.

We then stopped for coffee at the branch of Honolulu Coffee located on the ground floor of the Westin Hotel. It was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed a pot of French Press coffee before stopping to buy some boxes of chocolate covered macadamia nuts to bring back to Thailand. Ignore, for a moment, the fact that macadamias are grown in Thailand. It’s what people expect you to bring back from Hawaii, right?

While we had missed the opportunity to dine with Michael the night before, we had thankfully also been pencilled in for breakfast. Braving the commute into town from the west end of the island, Michael then drove us through the tunnel to the east side of the island so we could visit a popular breakfast place called Boots & Kimo’s in Kailua.

Boots & Kimo’s is a kind of random place located in a small strip mall and decorated like a sporting goods store. For whatever reason, it has gained notoriety with Japanese tourists and it seemed like a large portion of the diners were Japanese families. As Michael explained it, it has kind of reached the point where locals don’t come as often because it is too crowded with tourists. I felt a little guilty about contributing to the problem.

We had to wait about a half-hour to be seated, but once inside the service was quick and our food showed up in no time. Tawn enjoyed the eggs benedict, which were done just like the textbook shows. You can tell they poach the eggs in molds, though, and not free-form.

Here we are with our food. That blue Hawaiian shirt got a lot of mileage this trip, didn’t it?

Michael and I ordered the same thing: beef short ribs which they hang above the grill in the kitchen so it picks up the smoky flavor as other orders are being prepared. Then, when your order is placed the necessary ribs are cut off and finished on the flame. These were really tasty with a nice beefy flavor.

The thing Boots & Kimo’s is known for, though, are their macadamia nut cream pancakes. Per Michael’s suggestion, we ordered a stack to share. Good call because while they are really yummy, eating an entire order by yourself would be overwhelming. We discussed how they manage to get so much macadamia nut flavor into the cream sauce. The thing with macadamias is, they don’t give off a lot of flavor once cooked, so the process of extracting the flavor into the sauce must be done with some sort of “low and slow” steeping of the nuts in the cream. Anyhow, they were a really tasty end to our trip!

Finally, before heading out the door, we got a picture of the three of us. Why it didn’t occur to me to have Michael take off his sunglasses, I don’t know. Perhaps it is best he remains somewhat anonymous so as to lend to the air of mystery that surrounds this long-absent Xangan. We’ll see if my subtle needling will be enough to get him to write again.

A gracious host, Michael drove us to the airport, dropping us off just the right amount of time before our flight back to Guam and Hong Kong. Just enough ahead of time so we wouldn’t miss this flight!

Food in Kauai: Puka Dog, Yumi’s, and Jo-Jo’s

Posted on 17 April 2011 by christao408

A bit over two weeks after we left Kauai, I’m still trying to wrap up blog entries on the trip. To make some progress, I’ll combine three eateries into a single entry: Puka Dog, home of the “Hawaiian style” hot dog; Yumi’s, a small cafe in Waimea; and Jo-Jo’s Anuenue, the “original” (kind of) Waimea shave ice shop.

First up was Puka Dog, the Kauai branch of this “Hawaiian style” hot dog shop featured in Anthony Bourdain’s show “No Reservations”. (He visited the branch in Waikiki, on Oahu.) The concept is staight-forward: polish sausages (or veggie dogs) served in a bun with secret sauce (mild, spicy, hot, or hot hot, none of which are particularly spicy) and topped with various tropical relishes (papaya, mango, coconut, banana, etc.).

“Puka” means “hole” in Hawaiian and so the buns, instead of being split along the side, are instead impaled on this medieval looking contraption above. What is it? A European style hot-dog bun roaster, of course. That’s why it looks medieval! The point (no pun intended) is that the interior of the bun is toasted. Sauce and relish are pumped into the hole, serving as lubricant to help slide the sausage in. Sorry, this blog entry may not be appropriate for all age groups.

The puka dog is a bit hard to eat as when you bite it, the juices have nowhere to go but towards you. As for the flavor, the relishes are all a bit sweet and so you get the salty, meaty sausage with very sweet relish, but there needs to be something to cut the flavor. Maybe the spicy sauce is meant to do that but we ordered “hot hot” and it wasn’t spicy enough. Maybe something like pickled hot peppers, fresh Maui onions, or else sauerkraut would have been enough?

After our puka dog we went next door to the ice cream parlor for some locally made Papalani gelato, available in all manner of tropical flavors. This was pretty tasty. I had a lichee sorbet and Tawn had a macadamia nut gelato.

. . .

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Our final day in Kauai, the four of us drove to the extreme west of the island, going down several miles of an unpaved and badly rutted dirt road until we reached the beach at Polihale State Park. Looking at the Google Map now, it appears there may have been a paved option that would have led us there, but the signage was not clear. We bumped along for thirty minutes, driving v-e-r-y slowly, until we reached the beach. It was clear that Tawn was not having a good time.

When we did reach the end of the road, though, we were rewarded with these spectacular views of the Na’Pali coast, the one section of Kauai’s coast that cannot be accessed by road. The beach is very long, very wide, and almost completely deserted. The cliffs loom over the water, the layers of lava laid down by subsequent eruptions clearly visible.

The face of a husband who was trying his best to maintain a sunny disposition after being bounced down the road like a rock tumbled in a clothes dryer. He gets bonus points for patience.

On the way back to Poipu, we stopped at Yumi’s Restaurant, a small family run place located in the storefront of the art deco Waimea Theatre.

The place was deserted, thanks in part to the street construction that was going on directly in front of the shop.

This menu board gives you an idea of the range of local “grinds” – breakfast all day, plate lunches, and various sandwiches.

On special was futomaki, a catch-all term used to describe sushi rolled with seaweed wrappers on the outside, filled with various ingredients with complementary colors and flavors. These had tuna, egg, green beans, and carrots – very basic.

Tawn ordered the chicken cutlet, which is basically katsu-style chicken (breaded with panko and fried) but instead of serving with a tonkatsu sauce, it was served with generic brown gravy. This caused a bit of a disconnect between taste buds that were expecting the sweet flavors of tonkatsu sauce and the reality of a salty, savory gravy.

Longing for some breakfast, I had simple fried eggs, bacon (which was supposed to be Portuguese sausage, an oversight that was quickly corrected), and the ubiquitous rice.

My mother had a small portion of the “loco moco”, a typical Hawaiian breakfast dish with rice topped with hamburger patty, egg (scrambled in this case, usually fried, though), and gravy. Definitely a heavy start to the day!

My father had a teriyaki beef burger that was pretty flat, both in terms of flavor as well as size.

One of Yumi’s specialties is apple turnover, so we ordered one of them to share. The crust, made with lard, was flaky and flavorful.

All in all, given the prices, Yumi’s was a fair value. The food, though, wasn’t very exciting and I don’t know that I would make it my highest priority to return. There are some other places on the west side of the island, including Da Imu Hut Cafe in Hanapepe, which I’d like to try next time, based on positive recommendations from my cousins.

. . .

After lunch we walked across the street for some shave ice. Waimea is famous for its rival shave ice shops: Jo-Jo’s Original Shave Ice and Jo-Jo’s Anuenue Shave Ice. The story is a bit confusing, but my understanding of the story goes something like this:

In the ’90s, Aunty Jo-Jo sold her popular, seven-year old shave-ice shop on Kaumuali’i Highway in Waimea, called “Jo-Jo’s Clubhouse,” to another family, in order to finance her return to school. The new owners didn’t do a very good job keeping up the reputation of the shop, possibly because Aunty Jo-Jo hadn’t given them all the recipes. In 2007, Aunty Jo-Jo opened a new shop at a new location just around the corner under the name “Jo-Jo’s Anuenue Shave Ice.” The owners of her original location were unable to produce the contract they claim contains a noncompete clause, so Aunty Jo-Jo has continued her business in the new location and the owners of the “original” Jo-Jo’s continue their business, too, under the name “Jo-Jo’s Original.”

Confused yet?

In all fairness, we didn’t take the time to go to both locations and do a proper comparison. Instead, we just patronized Jo-Jo’s Anuenue Shave Ice, figuring that Aunty Jo-Jo is probably worth the visit. The place is mighty modest inside and there’s no place to sit other than a bench and a few plastic chairs out front. The young lady who was working (I told her she must be the single most photographed person on the island, to which she laughed) pulled together our orders with a practiced hand, mounding the ice high and pouring the neon syrups generously.

My parents, setting their inner children free as they get a chance to sample Jo-Jo’s Shave Ice. After three shave ices during the trip, I have to say that this is a treat that can get overwhelming very quickly. Something about half the size would be enough. Maybe two people just need to share one, right?

. . .

We drove back to the condo and Tawn and I had an hour to pack before we headed to the airport and our flight to Honolulu, where we would spend one evening and have dinner with Xangan Michael. Unfortunately, Tawn and I both managed to have a serious lapse in attention and missed our flight. We left the condo about 4:00 for our 5:40 flight, arriving at the airport around 4:40 or so. There was almost nobody at ticketing or security, so proceeded through those quickly.

Once inside the terminal, I glanced up at a wall of clocks that showed all the time zones in the world. Unable to find Hawaii, I noticed the minute hand showing ten minutes after the hour so in my mind I thought it must be 4:10. Of course it was 5:10, not 4:10. We went to Starbucks and sat down with some coffee to write post cards. The shop is air conditioned and enclosed from the open air portion of the terminal, so we didn’t hear the “final call” announcements.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Hawaiian Airlines jet rolling down the runway and I thought, “That’s odd – the plane should be arriving about now, not taking off.” And then I looked at my phone and realized that we had missed our flight.

Credit to Hawaiian Airlines for running a tight ship – that plane actually took off about two minutes before scheduled departure according to the time on my phone. But we were late, missed the “be there ten minutes before departure” warning, and there’s no disputing that. They were accommodating and put us on stand-by for the next flight, which left two hours later. Unfortunately, that meant we had to miss dinner with Michael.

By about 9:00 we had finally made it to Waikiki and checked into our hotel for our final night in Hawai’i. More about that in the next entry.

christao408

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

Monthly Archives: April 2011

Cooking with Friends

Not an Event Entry

Winner of the United Retro Jet Contest

On Being Intimidated by Poetry during National Poetry Month

The Great Bangkok Songkran Bare Breast Debacle

Great Eats in Bangkok Volume 2 – Khanom Krug

Two Days in Hong Kong

Heading Home: Honolulu to Guam to Hong Kong

One Night in Waikiki: Mac 24/7 and Boots & Kimo’s

Food in Kauai: Puka Dog, Yumi’s, and Jo-Jo’s