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Five flavours: Day 17-18 Chiang Mai to Singapore to Perth
Soundtrack: “Cars”, Gary Numan My flight out of Chiang Mai wasn’t until the late afternoon, and I managed to sleep fine, no waking in a panic thinking I might have overslept, no lying for hours not getting to sleep. I even slept long enough that my sweaty clothes from the night before had time to dry. I repacked everything, in spite of Sunday evening’s shopping spree, everything fit comfortable with minimal effort. The suitcase expansions weren’t required. I had time to kill between breakfast and checkout, so headed out for another massage. Again I got a solid working over, it’s one thing to have a light person walk on my…
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Five flavours: Day 16 Chiang Mai
Soundtrack: “Hit me with your best shot”, Pat Benatar Last full day in Chiang Mai, last full day anywhere on this trip, so it’s go hard and then go home. Woke up with plenty of time to do the same hotel breakfast, then get a rideshare to The Arrow Rest. Even the traffic was running early, so I wandered a couple of minutes up the road to a little cafe and bakery. I was hoping for a little pastry or something, but they only had cake. I went for a slice of a double layer mango cheese cake, and a cup of a coffee crime. I’ll be honest, it took…
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Five flavours: Day 15 Chiang Mai
Soundtrack: “Jet Airliner”, Paul Pena/Steve Miller Band Today was about mixing things up, getting out of the Ancient town and into the rest of the city. The historical parts of Chiang Mai are interesting, but also with a focus on tourists. It finally dawned on me that for Chiang Mai at least, if I wanted to get out and see and taste what the locals eat, I wasn’t going to find it in places full of foreigners. Also, Chiang Mai has one of L and my favourite places, The Arrow Rest, an archery cafe, and I’d booked some time there. After a hotel breakfast of noodles and egg, I took…
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Five flavours: Day 14 Chiang Mai
Soundtrack: “It’s Raining Men”, The Pointer Sisters One of the inconvenient things about going to the tropics during the rainy season is that, well, it will almost certainly rain. Totally inconvenient, who would have known that would happen. So, believe it or not, today it rained. In Thai food heat levels, it rained a little bit. It wasn’t tropical monsoonal downpour heavy, mostly just a drizzle or slightly above — I don’t know how to describe it in meteorological terms, it was less than the rain in a hard boiled detective novel, but more than a fine mist rolling over the moors. I managed to book the hotel breakfast, and…
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Five flavours: Day 13 Bangkok to Chiang Mai
Soundtrack: “Young and Beautiful”, Lana del Rey It probably says something about the last few days that I slept almost okay the night before a flight. I woke up once or twice too often, and certainly didn’t feel refreshed and bouncing by the time the alarm went off, but I’ve definitely had worst nights this (and other) trips. It wasn’t the most organised and elegant packing job, but everything fit okay. It’s just over an hour to fly from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, so while I packed essentials into hand luggage, I wasn’t too fussed about making sure I had a book to read and stuff like that. There’s also…
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Five flavours: Day 11 Bangkok
Soundtrack: “Reptile” The Church Thanks to my disciplined routine of only having two beers and getting to bed before 2am, I was at least able to be upright with a can of coffee in my hand before 8am. I spent a bunch of time scouring all the shiny influencer travel blogs, the ones totally unlike this one as for one they have shiny photos and links to make commissions from random businesses, and for two clicking anywhere on them has a better than even chance of being unable to actually read anything due to pop-ups and redirects to booking sites. Sometimes it’s a case of finding out the information in…
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Five flavours: Day 11 Bangkok
Soundtrack: “Pink Pony Club”, Chappell Roan “Bangkok, oriental setting, and the city don’t know that the city is getting … I’d let you watch, I would invite you but the queens we use would not excite you.” So go the lyrics by Tim Rice and Bjorn Ulvaeous, and in the context of the Chess musical fair enough. But I can tell you that Bangkok queens should excite you. Just don’t get too excited. I woke up after too few hours sleep, too little water, and possibly one too many drinks the night before. Bangkok is a noisy city, and my generic hotel room’s airconditioner is possibly overpowered for the space:…
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Five flavours: Day 10 Hoi An to Bangkok
Soundtrack: “England 2 Colombia 0”, Kirsty MacColl Our last breakfast in Hoi An was mi quang, wonderful rice noodles, pork, quail eggs, and shrimp, in a salty broth full of flavour. I did a better job of making the ca phe sua da, being more patient in my water pouring. The hotel dining room television has generally been off during out stay, but today the Mexico vs England men’s world cup football game was on, so as I ate I watched the second half. The Vietnamese commentator was getting very excited when goals were scored or came close to being scored. I haven’t been paying the hugest amount of attention…
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Five flavours: Day 9 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Fame”, David Bowie Tôi no vô bụng rồi. Sitting on the bed after a wonderful evening eating (and drinking) our way around Viet Nam, all within a few hundred steps of our hotel. So very full indeed. Breakfast was banh mi, and I’m happy to say that our hotel does one of the best banh mi around. Having had the famous (thanks Anthony Bourdain) Banh Mi Phuong yesterday, I’d honestly say that I thought this morning’s was better. The bread was as crunchy, and the fillings, pork, egg, greens, pate, were just a little better, plumper, and more balanced. After a few days here we’re feeling the hotel loves…
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Five flavours: Day 8 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”, The Kinks I could get the hang of holidays like this. Sleep in, breakfast, shopping, banh mi, massage, relaxing, more shopping, cocktails, and dinner. The hotel’s breakfast this morning included a serious serve of cao lau, meaty rice noodles with plenty of pork on top. Lots of greens on the side too. I’m working on a theory, backed up by no evidence whatsoever, that the Vietnamese diet used to just be a lot of noodles and meat, until a nutritionist (possibly sponsored by big lettuce) came along and got famous promoting having a big serve of chopped greens on the side of every soup dish.…
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Five flavours: Day 7 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Fashion”, David Bowie A quiet day in Hoi An. We started with the hotel breakfast, not a huge buffet but a small menu freshly prepared to order. We started with some yogurt and fresh fruit: watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit and banana. I think that this hotel, and many hotels in Hoi An, get a lot of western tourists wanting western food, as when I was asked for my coffee order and I replied ca phe sua da, our server’s eyes lit up. I went for a banh mi for breakfast, the delicious crunchy bread, nicely filled with pork, scrambled egg, vegetables, herbs, and a little spicy sauce. I happily…
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Five flavours: Day 6 Hoi An
Soundtrack: The Hoi An Memories show music Today started way too early, as I’d booked us into a tour of My Son Sanctuary and surrounds. There were two choices, the 5am start to beat the heat, or the 7.30am, so I went with the 5am. FYI My Son is pronounced “mee son”. Our guide had the indecency of being on time. I’d managed to quickly drink a can of coffee so I was vaguely conscious for the drive through Hoi An picking up the rest of the tour. Then is was about an hour out to My Son via the local twisting roads. For part of this our guide gave…
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Five flavours: Day 5 Hue to Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Sharp Dressed Man”, ZZ Top This should be a short post today, as we didn’t really do much. I don’t really plan these posts, just open up the laptop and words fall onto the screen, so there’s no guarantee that I won’t end up with several thousand words about today. Though I really do doubt it. Last breakfast of Hue hotel soup and assorted buffet bits. If only I had the time, energy and skill, I could really get used to that Hue soup for breakfast, the meaty stock, lots of lemongrass flavour, and a hint of chilli. I won’t be surprised if I do lots of cooking with…
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Five flavours: Day 4 Hue
Soundtrack: “The Lovecats”, The Cure Five flavours: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy. I must admit that over the last few years bitter and sour had become almost synonymous for me, thanks to flavours like bitter lemon, I’ve been using bitter to mean sour, and sour to mean bitter. Call it getting old and lazy. So I went back and looked it up: lemon juice/citrus is sour, coffee is bitter. Sour is related to acidity, bitter is more about the other chemistry. It gets confusing with things like beer: beer is acidic, but with the addition of hops it’s bitter. Lemon juice is sour, but lemon rind is bitter. A whisky…
