The Concrete Jungle

Posted on 26 June 2008 by christao408

Like any major metropolis, Khrungthep stuggles with how to strike a balance between open space and development, between the green of tropical foliage and the grey of the concrete jungle.

Unlike many other cities around the world, Khrungthep’s development wasn’t concentric, built along major roads radiating out from an old center of the city. There is Ratanakosin Island, the historic old city – the royal island on which the Grand Palace and the government ministries are located.

But it is not truly the center of the city. There were never any high rises there, no physical concentration of the population. It was originally ministries and mandarins and to this day has a lower concentration of residents than many other areas of the city.

The pattern of the city’s growth is of old waterways and canals – khlongs – being filed in and paved. Smaller paths – sois – connect to these khlongs and today form the narrow and often twisted backroads that do not make a coherent alternative to the major, vehicle-clogged trafficways.

Thanon Sukhumvit – Sukhumvit Road – was once a road to the suburbs, where wealthy families would build their weekend houses to escape from the traffic and polution of the old city. These days, these same old houses are being hemmed in, right, by condominium developments, quaint reminders of the days when greenery on your property meant a proper garden, not just a potted plant or two on the balcony.

To this day, there is a surprising amount of green in this city, given how little unpaved area there is. This is more a testament to the robust nature of tropical flora than anything else.

Along Sukhumvit, now permanently in the shadow of the Skytrain viaduct overhead, the Metropolitan Authority tries to spruce up the city, planting median barriers with bushes and flowers and trying to bring some green back to the dark monochrome of concrete. Left, there are even billboards with pictures of tropical foliage, in case the real plants aren’t enough. The trees that are there exist only because they provide a screen for the national police headquarters behind them.

In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the shells of three hundred buildings were left uncompleted, in various stages of construction. These ghost buildings serve as a reminder to us of the pitfalls of an unrestrained lust for development, growth and progress. Sadly, the reminder goes unheeded, as more lots are graded over, trees pulled down, and single family homes meet the bulldozer so more development can occur.

At least this development is “in-fill”, within the existing city limits, not expanding them. Increasing density near existing transit, not encouraging a new generation of car owners. But it is still at the loss of openness and greenery, taking away the lungs we need to scrub this urban air.

Popping Pills Like Candy

Posted on 25 June 2008 by christao408

This week I’ve been battling a bit of a chest cold, my chest feeling like it was filled with wet sand. A visit to the doctor Tuesday indicated clear lungs that were moving air effectively, leading to a diagnosis of just a bronchial infection. As it had lasted a few days already without any signs of clearing, the doctor concluded that it might be bacterial rather than viral and prescribed antibiotics.

It seems that doctors here in Thailand love to prescribe medicines, especially antibiotics. Since this nice doctor was an expat Indian, I decided to get her perspective on this trend.

She agreed that doctors here are prescription-happy and said there were two main factors:

First, because pharmacists have the latitude to prescribe low level antibiotics, they are used “like candy”, leading to many bugs building resistance to these drugs that would normally be sufficient to treat them. Over time, this leads to doctors having to prescribe stronger medicines more frequently to treat those resistant strains of bacteria.
Second, Thais seem to expect that when they go to the hospital or clinic to visit the doctor, they will return with a “goody bag” of colorful pills. This leads to the prescribing of more medications than might normally be the case.

Even after this conversation with the doctor I still walked away with antibiotics (azithromycin), a cough suppressant (dextromethophan), and a mucolytic (Mucocin, which I’m fascinated to learn is an extract of the rollinia mucosa, or wild sugar apple, tree – native to the West Indies and Central America!). So no shortage of medications. I did save the environment and forego the little paper bag, opting to instead carry the drugs in my messenger bag.

Interesting articles here and here about the overprescription of antibiotics and the public health risk it creates.

Weekend Recap

Posted on 23 June 2008 by christao408

What a busy weekend! It seems that there was so much to do that the weekend went by in a flash. Sadly, along the way I managed to catch a bit of a chest cold so I’m coughing and feel like I have cement in my lungs. Let’s hope a bit more rest clears that up.

We celebrated Tara’s third birthday on Thursday. She’s the daughter of Tawn’s long-time friend Pim, so we were invited to the family celebration held at The Sylvanian, a family friendly restaurant that has a large play area and caters especially to birthday parties.

For a three-year-old, Tara is quite tall and is very vocal about things. Anytime Tawn goes over to visit with her, she asks about me, but then when she sees me in person she gets tongue-tied. Probably because she doesn’t understand either my Thai or my English.

We had a fun time, but when the birthday cake came out and the staff came over to sing “Happy Birthday”, Tara was unsettled by the human-sized rabbit that came out for the singing. I’ve never seen a child climb further into a seat cushion before!

Her Uncle Tawn posed for a picture with the rabbit, but no amount of coaxing would convince her to get near it.

I can understand her concern. Even as an adult I get a little freaked out by these costumed mascots. There’s just something strange about them.

Tawn, being born in the year of the rabbit, saw nothing odd about the rabbit at all. But he’s biased.

Both Friday and Sunday I caught films as part of the annual French Film Festival. This is part of a larger arts festival called Le Fete, which is the largest cultural festival in Khrungthep.

Friday’s film was Naissance des Pieuvres (Water Lilies), a coming of age story about three teenage girls in suburban Paris who struggle with their sexual identities as they become aware of their desires while also trying to conform to peer expectations. It was well made, a bit quirky in the way that some French films are, and well acted. All three of the young actresses have the talent to go on to strong careers.

Sunday’s film was Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), based on the novel by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

American director Julian Schnabel manages to give vision to something almost unimagineable: the true story of Elle editor Bauby, (played by Mathieu Amalric, shown to the left shaving his father, played by Max von Sydow) who was left entirely paralized by a stroke with the exception of his left eye. Seemingly impossibly, he learned to communicate and was able to write the book on which the movie is based.

My original expectation was that this film would be haughty and pretencious, as Schnabel himself is known to be. But it is a gorgeous, touching, and even humorous film that gives a lot of insight into the most trying of circumstances: being locked fully conscious but nearly uncommunicative inside your own body.

Adding to that fine amount of culture was some exercise. Markus and I did a 40-km circuit of the old city, stopping by the construction site of the new Airport Express rail line to check on progress.

I’m fascinated by the machinery they use to lift the viaduct sections into place. I had previously assumed that they lifted each individual section, about 2-3 meters long, and then attached it to the adjacent sections.

But based on what I saw in this picture, it looks like the entire length of 10-11 sections is fastened together on the ground and then lifted into place with this crane.

That seems terribly heavy, but then this is large equipment we’re talking about.

Along the way, we also saw the section of machinery that is being used to construct the viaduct over Asoke Road. The crane is slowly inching its way out over the road, and based on what they’ve done elsewhere, this will be built section-by-section as they can’t afford to shut this major arterial road down for any more than a few hours in the middle of the night.

Our bicycle riding also took us down to the hotbed of political protests: Government House. This is the office of the Prime Minister and we’re back to pre-coup levels of protest and political friction, with rumors running around that we’ll have another coup. The army head has come out and said that the military has no part in politics and that as long as they are peaceful, the protesters have a right to voice their concerns as part of the democratic process.

Just remember, that’s what the previous head of the army said shortly before the last coup.

Below, protesters have baricaded the entrance to a four-square block area around the Prime Minister’s office. We considered entering the area – the protesters invited us to – but figured that there is only so much risk worth taking on a Sunday morning. The last thing I need is a police officer asking to see my passport.

With rainy season fast upon us, we’ve been getting near-daily thunderstorms, often torrential in nature. Compared to the horrific flooding in the American Midwest, the flooding our soi experiences is almost indecent to mention. However, since it is a feature of life in Khrungthep that isn’t “normal” for most of my readers, I thought I’d share this short video with you that shows the post-rainfall water we regularly contend with.

My thoughts go out to everyone who is dealing with real and devastating flooding.

Sidewalks of Khrungthep

Posted on 20 June 2008 by christao408

As the week comes to an end, I want to share with you a recent development in the sidewalk near the entrance to the Thong Lor BTS Skytrain station.

A former classmate of mine, a British man here with his wife and two children, shared his fear that he’d be walking down the street with his family and return home minus one child, what with all the gaping holes in our footpaths.

This rather dangerous situation fills almost the entire width of the footpath and is a result of the excess wear brought on by large vendor carts and motorcycles traversing the path every day, both of which are heavier than the utility covers are designed to withstand.

Hello, Bangkok Metropolitan Authority? I’d like to register a complaint…

Karaoke Etiquette

Posted on 19 June 2008 by christao408

Last Saturday I hosted a karaoke gathering at R&B Karaoke on Thanon Naratiwat. Marc was actually the person who kept sugesting we do karaoke, but he didn’t really know a place so I offered to pull it together.

A large number of our “regular” group were out of town or otherwise unavailable. At one point, it looked like it would be just six of us, even though I had booked a room that held up to fifteen people.

Roka came through a few days before, inviting a group of her friends who were already gathering to celebrate a birthday. It made for a lot of new faces, but I’m always ready to meet new people. Especially if there is singing involved.

All in all, the night was good fun. The selection of songs was good, the singers were no worse than “okay”, and the food was tasty. We ran into some problems as the evening progressed, though, the types of problems that karaoke parties can often encounter.

At the end of the night, on the way back home, Tawn shared with me some of his expertise in this area. See, you have to appreciate that I grew up in a culture that, while very musical, was not very karaoke-savvy. As much as I enjoy singing, I can safely say that I’ve been to a karaoke place less than ten times in my life, including the six months I lived in Hong Kong.

I know. You’re surprised, right?

To address some of the challenges we encountered at karaoke, Tawn educated me about karaoke etiquette. Like bowling etiquette (Don’t bowl at the same time the people in the adjacent lanes are bowling. You did know that, right?), karaoke etiquette contains rules for genteel behavior that makes the experience more pleasant for all involved.

Let’s review:

Choosing songs

One common problem is that whoever grabs the remote control device starts browsing the catalog and, before you know it, they’ve entered ten songs that they really like. The problem is by the time those songs come up they only want to sing the first couple, then they tire of singing and try to pass the microphone to other people, none of whom is enthusiastic about the song because they didn’t choose it.

Solution: The two song rule. Each person gets to choose two songs to sing then the remote is handed to the next person. If the remote is difficult to use, you can have a designated “DJ” to enter the information, but each person chooses two songs. Once you’ve gone around the room you can start again.

Another problem with song selection is that there are just certain songs that aren’t really good for karaoke. You know the ones. They are hard to sing. You don’t really know the melody because you only sing along to the chorus. They are slow balads that are really depressing. They have l-o-n-g instrumental parts between verses.

Solution: Choose songs carefully. The best ones are ones that are upbeat and that everyone knows and can enjoy singing to. “Summer Lovin'” from the musical Grease is a great example. “Like A Virgin” by Madonna is another good example. Nearly anything by the Beatles. If you need something down tempo, choose “Misty”.

Group Composition

This may be a little touchy, but I’d argue that the best karaoke experiences occur when your group has pretty common tastes in music. We listened to everything from the Everly Brothers to Robbie Williams to some new hip-hop artists I’ve never heard of. Hey, I enjoyed the music but there were frequently several people sitting around kind of bored with the music at that given point.

Solution: Meanly cherry-pick your participants so the range of music doesn’t get too wide. Okay, I’m kidding a little bit on this one, but there is still a point to be made here. I’m not sure I can relate to what those youngsters are listening to these days.

Paying

This is always a challenge. Some people arrive early and leave early, others arrive late and leave late. Some just stop by for a bit in the middle of the evening. At the karaoke places here in Thailand, you can order food and drinks to eat in the room. These are good quality but expensive, as that’s how the money is made.

So you have the twin problems of how to collect money and how to divide the bill fairly.

We ran into that at the party. Part way through, a few of the people decided to head out. We actually totaled the food and beverage bill through that point and agreed about how it would be divied up. We also agreed that the room rental would be divided equally by the number of people who eventually showed up and would be added to the food and beverage bill that we had just settled. Then we did the whole thing again at the end of the evening.

Even though I thought everyone had agreed to the division, I received a call the next morning from one person who seemed to feel he had paid an unfair amount and questioning the motivation of other people who had showed up, suggesting they maybe were intending to free-load. Oh, brother.

Solution: Come to an agreement beforehand about how bills will be covered. I can agree that the cost of alcohol (which is a big expense, along with mixers) can be unfair to spread among people who did not drink, although if they had juice or cola they were drinking expensive mixers. But outside of that, I think the room and food costs need to be splite evenly per person regardless of how long you stayed, how much or little you sang, and how much or little you ate.

It is just the easiest way to ensure that the hosts (or other people) don’t end up paying a hefty “surcharge” to cover a bill when those who pitched in didn’t pitch in enough.

So those are my initial thoughts about karaoke etiquette. I’d appreciate you sharing any more so that I can be coaxed into organizing another outing.

Sii Ruup (Four Pictures)

Posted on 14 June 2008 by christao408

Here are four pictures that characterize my past week:

View from my living room window during the day: gardeners trimming palm fronds and then retrieving them from the swimming pool.

A new project for my to-do list: scrub and re-season my old cast iron skillet.

The idosyncratic sights of the Big Mango: A gardner for hire drives through city traffic with his broom and weed wacker strapped to the back of his motorsai.

Highlight of each morning: Seeing Khun Tawn dressed up sharp before he heads off to work.

Coming soon: Another bread baking experiment (with video!) and a night at karaoke.

Chiang Mai Part 2

Posted on 13 June 2008 by christao408

Saturday morning was beautiful, still a little overcast but cooler than most mornings in Khrungthep and a bit less humid, too.

Breakfast was included in our room rate, so we walked over to the restaurant.

Left: Me outside the main lobby building.

As I mentioned in Part 1, Chiang Mai was pretty deserted as this is the off season. The population at the resort was similarly sparse.

The restaurant staff did a really good job of maintaining a wide selection of items in the buffet without putting a large amount of food out. For example, instead of a basket full of muffins, there was a banana-leaf tray with six of them. They were neatly arranged, had a flower as decoration, etc. but you could tell they didn’t want to waste food.

The restaurant is open-air and has an adjacent patio (right) where you can dine under the branches of a huge tree.

The tree, with its many vines, roots, and Northern Thai-style lanterns (the white ones, below) hanging from its branches, was the focal point of the resort. The owner wrote in his welcome letter that he selected the site of the resort specifically because of the tree.

After breakfast we looked around the resort. We learned that the annual staff party would be held that evening, so the restaurant would close at eight. This was fine as we had other plans in mind for dinner. We also noticed (“we”, “we”, “we”… as if Tawn doesn’t have his own blog – maybe if I stop writing “we”, he’ll update his blog), that the staff was conducting a ceremony at the base of the large tree. It seems that they were replacing the spirit house with a new one.

I’ve spoken about spirit houses before, but a brief explanation for those who are unfamiliar: While Thais are mostly a Buddhist nation, many animist, Brahmanist, and Hindu beliefs form a sort of quasi-religious subtext. One of the more common of these is the belief that the land, trees, mountains, etc. have spirits living on or in them.

When the land is developed to build a house, shop, or other building, you are obligated to erect a house – a “spirit house” – in which the displaced spirits can live. This is placed in an auspicious spot, is appropriately sized (huge ones outside malls, smaller ones outside residential houses), and the residents and tenants regularly pay respect to the spirits by offering incense, candles, drinks and food.

In the entry located here, you can see me making an offering to our condo’s spirit house on the day we moved in. Also, the most famous spirit house in Thailand is the Erawan Shrine. Read more about it here.

The peacock motif appears throughout the resort, often on the ridges and corners of buildings where more commonly a naga tail might be placed.

A little online research didn’t yield many satisfactory answers as to why the peacock motif is so prevalent in Chiang Mai, although I did learn that in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the peacock is symbolic of the worldly realms of appearance whereas the swan is the symbol of the higher realms.

Also, in Buddhism the peacock’s tail is associated with the Wheel of Dharma.

How’s that for a whole lot of additional trivia that you probably didn’t ever expect to learn?

Below, Tawn takes a picture of a beautiful three-dimensional mural of a peacock in the outdoor dining area.

We started the day with a massage, which is always a fine way to start. Afterwards we wandered over to Tha Phae Road, on the north side of the Night Market, looking for a tea house that Khun Ken had recommended. Along the way we found some interesting shops, including the Sun Gallery, pictured below.

The downstairs area had a wide variety of objects and paintings for sale, but the owner, Khun Veeraphat, opened the upstairs area for us. It was this beautiful space, one side of which can actually be used by painters to create their works and the other side of which displays more paintings. The light and volume of the space were really nice as there were balconies at the end of the rooms providing natural lighting.

Just down the street we found the Siam Celadon Tea House, housed in a two-story teak building of neocolonial design that dates to 1915. Khun Nit Wangwiwat, owner of the Raming Tea Company, bought the house in 1986 and it was eventually renovated for use as a shop and restaurant.

The highlight of the building is its central atrium, which floods the space with diffused light. No air conditioning is used and the design, which includes high ceilings, lots of open grilles at the top of walls, and good window placement, allows for visitors to comfortably enjoy their tea with a nice breeze.

It is a pleasant space with a lovely garden in the back and we enjoyed a light bite to eat and some tea. The shop is located next to a small khlong or canal and every so often the hint of an unpleasant smell wafts over on the breeze. That was the one downside.

We headed back to the resort mid-afternoon and I was able to get a swim in at the pool until I was interrupted by the rain.

That evening we enjoyed an Indian meal at the Whole Earth restaurant, located adjacent to the resort. I’ve eaten there before and they used to have a branch in Khrungthep that has regrettably closed.

Located in a beautiful Thai-style building pictured to the left, the food is well-prepared with an extensive vegetarian menu and other meat selections. We had a fish tikka and a curried okra dish that were amazing. The service is attentive, too.

Pretty tired from all our walking around – how is it that holidays are so exhausting? – we stopped by the front desk of the hotel and borrowed the Michelle Pfeiffer film, I Could Never Be Your Woman. Even thought they had several dozen films, they were all things we had either seen before or had no interest in seeing, so we settled for this 2007 comedy. It was okay, but I’m glad I didn’t pay 100 baht for it in the cinema.

Sunday morning was sunny, with blue skies finally breaking through the clouds. Our flight was just after noon so we didn’t have a lot of time.

The one last thing on my list was breakfast at Bake & Bite Bakery. A Chiang Mai fixture with three locations, this is a straight-up American style breakfast place with an emphasis on homemade breads, bagels, muffins and cinnamon rolls.

When Ken and I were up in Chiang Mai a year ago, we enjoyed nice breakfasts here a couple of times. Since then, I’ve concluded my quest for an American style breakfast place in Khrungthep with Little Home on Thong Lor, about which I have yet to write.

Left, full-on American breakfast with homemade sausage patties. My sourdough biscuits are much better, though.

For some reason, I ended up fully satisfied with my breakfast while Tawn was not satisfied with his at all. I think some of it was that Tawn’s stomach wasn’t feeling terribly well. But part of it had to do with the chef’s inability to hard boil an egg. Tawn ordered two hard boiled eggs and the first ones that came out were really soft and spilled all over the place upon cracking the shells.

He pointed this out to the waitress who apologized and brought out two more eggs a few minutes later. Same problem. Needless to say, Tawn now doesn’t understand why I like the restaurant.

After breakfast, we packed our bags and said goodbye to the friendly staff of the Yaang Come Village, who all lined up and wai’d us as we left.

Our short flight home was on THAI Airways, a different airline from our flight up because Tawn was originally going to be up in Chiang Mai on business and I booked the same, slightly more expensive flight back as he had.

Even though the flight is only an hour from takeoff to touchdown, they serve a snack service that, while not gourmet, certainly puts to shame the “hospitality” offered by any US-based airline.

Below left: Tawn special ordered a fish meal, which ended up being cold fish sticks with tartar sauce. Below right: I ate the standard meal that was being passed out, a pork laab patty (kind of like chicken salad but with pork and Thai spices – it is normally served as a salad and not formed into patties) served with fresh veggies. As with many of our meals this weekend, mine proved to be the better choice.

And thus ended our weekend in Chiang Mai. We’ll have to travel somewhere again soon as there is so much to explore here in Thailand.

Chiang Mai Part 1

Posted on 11 June 2008 by christao408

One thing I’ve discovered the past few days is that if I stay away from my computer (or at least non-work related things on my computer) I get so much more done. It just can really suck you in. Gosh, what a discovery!

Our trip up to Chiang Mai was nice. It is low season here in Thailand and things were deserted up north. One evening we went to the famed Night Market and it was so empty, I had wondered whether there were any other tourists in town!

Chiang Mai is a popular city, and I enjoy many of the things it has to offer. But part of me hasn’t ever really liked it, ever since my first visit in 2000. The core of the city – the Old City – looks and feels a lot like Khao San Road, the backpacker paradise in Khrungthep. As Tawn points out, that’s a lot better than Pattaya, the whole of which feels like Patpong, the sex bar district in Khrungthep.

We arrived mid-afternoon on Friday and within minutes of stepping out of the airport terminal the afternoon thunderstorm, an event to be repeated daily throughout the weekend, had started its downpour. The staff of the resort, Yaang Come Village, used a large umbrella – the sort you see in the middle of your outdoor dining table – to ferry us from the taxi to the front steps and then from the lobby after check-in to our room.

The resort is gorgeous just as in the pictures I posted in the previous entry. It isn’t very large so the staff quickly gets to know you and your preferences. They are friendly to a degree that is just hard to describe and well-trained. I’d recommend it for anyone visiting Chiang Mai who wants to stay in a resort.

I will add that I’m not sure I’m really the resort type of person, as I rarely spend a lot of time sitting around the pool or strolling in the gardens. But this was a beautiful resort.

Friday afternoon after the rains, we headed to Nimmanahaeminda Road Soi 1, an artsy district near Chiang Mai University. Tawn had read about this soi in Elle Thailand and it seems like an up-and-coming corner of the city. Apparently, many artists and designers from Khrungthep have relocated to Chiang Mai.

Many of the old houses have been converted into shops. Some are boutiques and others are galleries and all of them are very cute. Here are some pictures:

Above: A cute hair salon. Below: The front car park and entry way of a shop.

Above: The extravagant entry to Suriyan Chandra, one of several combination art-furniture-music “lifestyle” stores. There is a new store called Avatar by the same owner, located a few blocks away. Avatar is in the midst of a six-month “pre-opening” even though it looked fully open. Eventually, he’ll have a cafe there, too. Sadly, it was too dark by the time we arrived so I didn’t get good pictures. Below: Tawn inside the Suriyan Chandra garden on the other side of the wall above.

We walked through this neighborhood, a series of small sois that have a number of interesting shops. Along the way I encountered this tree, below. Any guesses as to what it is?

If you guessed “papaya”, you’d be correct. For all my time in Thailand, I hadn’t seen a papaya tree. Maybe I can get one for the balcony!

In the late afternoon the last of the stormy skies had cleared and even Doi Suthep (Suthep Mountain) which stands sentry over the city’s northwest, was unshrouded as the clouds dissipated after the storms.

For dinner, Tawn suggested another Elle recommendation. The House is a self-styled “restaurant & wine and tapas bar” with a little Thai cafe on the side. It resides in a renovated colonial home, is very cute, and has attentive if somewhat unpolished service.

It is an attractive place, one of many European restaurants in a city that caters to a large population of expat retirees. It is my observation that Chiang Mai probably has a better quality of European restaurants than Khrungthep. What I’ve tried so far has been pretty good.

The food was generally nice but the preparation lacked nuance. One item in particular, a crab bisque, was a disaster. When it was served to Tawn, the wide bowl had a brown broth strewn with small bits of crab meat. There was no cream in sight, which by the very definition of the name is required in order to make the soup a bisque.

Tawn tried the broth. Very bland, as if water had been used to make it instead of stock.

A minute or two later, the waiter arrived with a small bowl of a thick cream and a spoon. He explained that this was a “do it yourself” bisque where you added the cream.

That was a terrible idea. The soup was not piping hot and when Tawn added the cream, it curdled, forming small, unappetizing lumps in the broth. We each tried a spoonful and agreed that the bisque was now even more of a mess than it had been before.

Tawn called the waiter over and explained that its was not edible and ordered something else for an appetizer. The waiter seemed a little befuddled as to what to say, but eventually did admit to us – rather candidly! – that several other people had said the same thing about the bisque.

The remainder of the meal was better. I had a beef carpaccio that was pretty tasty. Our main courses, a pan-seared sea bass fillet on white bean puree with fresh veggies for me (below) and potato croquettes with avocado salsa and vegetables for Tawn (above), were enjoyable although I definitely wound up with the better selection of food.

We did enjoy a really good wine find: a 2004 Madfish Cabernet Sauvignon Rose from Western Australia. It was very fruity but also very dry and crisp. I’ll be poking around the wine shops here in Khrungthep to see if I can find a half-case.

Finally, for dessert we shared a stalk – that’s it, just one stalk – of rhubarb poached in grenadine syrup, served with raspberry whipped cream and a scoop of rum raisin ice cream. It was an interesting concept but the syrup was simply so sweet that it overwhelmed the natural tartness of the rhubarb. Still, it was a light end to the dinner.

From there we headed to the night market and walked around for a little while. As I mentioned earlier, the place was deserted. After an hour we decided to return to the hotel, exhausted from our first afternoon in town.

I’ll leave you with a short video clip shot in the back of a Tuk Tuk as meter taxis are rare in Chiang Mai.

More soon…

A Computerless Weekend in Chiang Mai

Posted on 5 June 2008 by christao408

Tawn and I are getting away today to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s “Second City” and the largest city in the northern, mountainous part of the Kingdom.

We’re staying at the Yaang Come Village, a resort that is one of the highest-rated on Trip Advisor. Hopefully, all those people are right. Here are some pictures:

Looks nice, eh? Well, the biggest “escape” in this whole trip is that I’m leaving my laptop behind. I spend way too much time staring at the screen both for work (really!) as well as blogging. That’s it, a weekend of resting my eyes.

Talk to you Monday!

Cooking for Khun Vic’s Party

Posted on 5 June 2008 by christao408

Every so often, Khun Vic invites friends over for a get-together at his apartment. Sometimes it is a poker party, but seeing as how so few of us actually play poker, more often than not it is a simple get-together. Most people contribute by bringing something snacky or a bottle of something alcoholic. No surprise, I contribute something cooked.

Last time we attended a party that I didn’t host, there was too much of the salty, snacky, sweet stuff and nothing substantial. By the end of the evening, Tawn and I were feeling yucky and not because of the drinking. If you invite people over pretty early in the evening, there should be at least something quasi-substantial (cheese and crackers with fruit, for example) to fill your stomach.

Taking matters in my own hand, I bowled over Vic’s objections (“I didn’t want to have to put out utensils or plates…”) and insisted that I would bring some salads. I’m kidding, of course, about the “bowling over” thing. Vic and I talked a couple of times and, ultimately, I wore him down and he agreed that some substantial food would improve his party.

Turning to Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties, I found some perfect recipes. Ina believes that parties should be as much fun for a host as for the host’s guests, so she emphasizes recipes that are either easy to prepare or that can be prepared in advance. Since this wasn’t my party and I was a guest, not a host, “prepared in advance” was critical but “easy” wasn’t.

Chinese Chicken Salad

Sure, I know it isn’t politically correct because the Chinese just don’t eat chicken salad like this. But that’s the ubiquitous name of the salad that is dressed with a soy sauce – peanut better – sesame seed oil dressing, which makes it sound more like satay dipping sauce than anything else.

Step 1: Cook the chicken. Ina suggests thighs, which have more fat and, therefore, more flavor. She also suggests roasting the thighs in the oven with the skin on. I like thighs, too, but went with breasts as they were less expensive and I tried poaching just for a change of pace. Below left.

Step 2: Prepare the other ingredients. The body of the salad contains scallions, red bell peppers, and blanched asparagus spears. I blanched the asparagus in the liquid I had used to poach the chicken breasts. Water chestnuts would have been a lovely addition, too, but I didn’t have any. Above right

The sauce was a mixture of the aforementioned soy sauce, peanut butter, and sesame oil, with cider vinegar, honey, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper to taste, and some good-quality vegetable oil to smooth the whole thing out.

Step 3: Combine. Afterwards, I’d recommending refrigerating for a few hours to let the flavors mix and develop.

The second dish was Pasta, Pesto and Peas. For her recipe Ina suggests that you can “cheat” and use store-bought pesto to save time. But with a large bunch of fresh sweet basil selling for only 7 baht – about $.023 – how can I not make fresh pesto? Plus a little extra for the freezer!

Step 1: Prepare all the ingredients. This includes your basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts and walnuts, and Parmesan cheese for the pesto. Wash the basil leaves and remove them from the stems as the stems will add a rather chunky texture to your pesto.

Step 2: Make the pesto. This is super-easy. The hardest part is washing, drying, and removing the basil leaves from the stems. You start with a small amount of olive oil in the base of the blender and then grind the pine nuts, walnuts and garlic into a paste. From there you start to add the leaves a small amount at a time, adding a little olive oil as necessary to maintain consistency. At the end you can season with some lemon juice (to keep the bright green color) and salt and pepper to taste.

Below, the finished pesto. Lovely, isn’t it?

Step 3: Gather your remaining ingredients. You’ll need lemon juice, mayonnaise, frozen peas and spinach, and of course cooked pasta for the rest of the salad.

You take your pesto and put it back into a blender or food processor (if you made it from scratch, no need to have taken it out in the first place) and add the spinach, making sure to squeeze excess water out of the spinach.

Puree it to blend the spinach into the pesto then add some lemon juice and some mayonnaise. Blend until mixed. This is the sauce for your pasta salad.

Step 4: Mix together. Your pasta is mixed with the pesto-mayonnaise mixture and then add the peas, grated Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. You can also throw in a few handfuls of toasted pine nuts for garnish and texture.

Those two salads took me about two hours to make, but I wasn’t entirely focused on the cooking and was multi-tasking. The results were lovely and perfect for any party.

What’s especially good is that the pasta dish is entirely vegan so it is good for any crowd. And it tastes great, too. Now, if you wanted to add some grilled chicken to it then you’d really have something going. But then the vegans would be unhappy. So would the vegetarians. And the chicken.

Left, Tawn is ready to go to the party in his “school boy” outfit.

We headed out on Saturday evening and arrived just a few minutes late, what we would describe as “fashionable”. Since Vic lives in the Asoke Place complex where we lived until this past December, the guards still recognized us and gave us a resident parking pass instead of the usual guest parking ticket. No waiting to have our host come down to get us as the clerk working the front desk wai’d us and buzzed us in. So nice to be known!

Vic is from San Francisco and is a man who defies stereotypes. There is nothing more demonstrative of this than his big-ass toolbox that he keeps on his balcony, padlocked so his maid won’t steal a monkey wrench. Would you believe that he had this shipped over from the United States when he moved here? It must have weighed as much as everything else he shipped, combined. Next time I need a tool, I know who I’m invited over for lunch.

Above, the party-goers. Sadly, we’re lacking in diversity when it comes to gender and sexual orientation. I’m trying to work on that, but it is a slow process. Since some of these people may not be familiar to you, I’ll let you know who they are. Back row, standing from left: Russ, Jay, Markus, Vic, Brian, Piyawat and Stuart. Middle section, seated from left: Francois, Chairat, Ken and Mark. Front group from left: Tam, Darrin (visiting from SF), Tawn, Kobfa, and Suchai (standing on right).

christao408

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

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