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Day 7: Bangkok, market city
Today was all about the markets. In a possibly related note, it’s only 8pm and I am exhausted from wading through seas of thousands of people, avoiding trolleys and tuk-tuks and bigger vehicles, looking over millions of weird and wonderful items, all in 32+ degrees and a regular amount of humidity. I’m not sure there is a city in the world that is blessed with sensible market crowds. Maybe, once you pack a number of market stalls tightly together, leaving only narrow pathways to traverse the maze, and then dump enough people within, some switch gets flipped in the human psyche. For some, it manifests in the desire to stop…
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Day 6: One day in Bangkok
I believe I may have mentioned that Bangkok is quite busy. If not, Bangkok is quite busy. Especially at night. Saturday night. We may have got a budding Robert De Niro as our taxi driver this evening, he certainly seemed about ready to go postal after 30 minutes of taking us around the block and then dumping us a couple of streets away from where we started. No where near Chinatown, where L and I thought we were headed. The day started by experimenting with the hotel breakfast, at the Coffee Club which is kind of part of the hotel, but also its own thing. There’s some crazy thing with…
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Day 5: LPQ to BKK
Wrapped up our time in Laos this morning, with L choosing the chicken soup for breakfast and discovering why I’ve been sweating so early in the day (the chilli fish sauce packs quite a kick). Wrapped up with a stroll around the block and along the river, and finally bravely took the plunge and had a Laos coffee. FYI, Laos is one of the largest coffee producers. However, when left to their own devices, they, like many SE Asian countries that got refrigeration long after they got coffee, found their own path to making this beverage palatable to the populace. In Laos, this involves lots of sugar, sweetened condensed milk,…
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Day 4: Laos and water
Today’s rather accidental theme was water. After another good bowl of chicken noodle soup and too many chillies for breakfast, we headed into the jungle, aiming for the Tat Kuang Si bear rescue centre. This is home to a couple of dozen moon bears, beautiful creatures that wander around like big dogs until the stand up, and then you realise that’s no dog. The younger ones can be playful, and the older ones seem happy — especially when you consider the alternative is being caged and tortured for a miserable short life for some limp dick chinese or vietnamese to take their bile to make them “stronger”. If you think…
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Day 3: Laos and chillies
It’s okay, while today was about food, especially chillies, there’ll be no episodes or descriptions involving Laos plumbing (which is, so far, as good as anywhere). Laotians like it spicy. Some menus have a grading of 1-4 or 5, with 2 being “European spicy”, 3 being Laotian regular, and 4/5 roughly translates to “it goes to 11”. So far I’ve been okay with 2, it’s comfortable without raising a big sweat behind the eyeballs. I’m yet to go to 4, though it is a little tempting. Today we did a cooking class with Mr Sit from the Tamarind Restaurant. About a dozen of us, from Germany, the US, Hong Kong,…
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Day 2: Laos and how to live it
Day started too early and too painful. Not sure if it was the Laos whisky, the soft pillows, the hard bed, the dehydration of flying, the change of routine, but I was awake before 5am with a headache that has buzzed me all day. Hotel breakfast was surprisingly pretty good: fruit, chicken noodle soup, good bread, and strong coffee from an italian stove press. From there we took a wander over to the big Wat (Wat Xiengthong) which was pretty, full of shiny things and spiky trees. Then it was a stroll along the Mekong, which is certainly a big arse powerful river that puts any Australian creeks to shame.…
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Day 1: Transit to the heart of darkness
The day started way too damn early, up before dawn. It finished with a good meal, fine company, some booze, and with an extra hour thanks to these time zone things. The first leg, PER > SNG, was generally uneventful. L did the booking, so it was business class, but an older airplane so not super shiny and swish. Still, I could recline the seat, and got some okay food, but for business class I’ve certainly had more attentive staff. At Changi we had to get passport pics for our Laos visas on arrival, and tried to score some Changi $$$ but due to the Byzantine bureaucracy the computer said…
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Indochina1718. Day 0. It begins.
All up at 0324. Immunities injected in preceding weeks. Essentials (laptop, books, underwear) packed. Loved ones kissed goodbye. The heart of darkness beckons. I really shouldn’t blog before I’ve had coffee, or whatever local equivalent L and I are heading for. The long awaited trip is here: 3 weeks, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, with a bounce each way at Changi. Adventures await: elephants, temples, and all the awesome and mysterious food we can eat (durian included). It’s early. Too early. All i can smell is a clean uber; all i hear is David Bowie, all i feel is the linen shirt on my back. It begins.
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Been halong time…
Yup. Due to Life, the universe, and everything, I haven’t used my passport in over 2 years. I’ve lost my gold frequent flyer status, and have 6 months to rescue my silver. Some days it feels the furthest I’ve been lately is Mandurah, and regardless of what my ipod plays it doesn’t look like the cover of Born Sandy Devotional anymore. But this is about to change. In just over a month, this blog will be alive with images of Indochina; posts about pachyderms, musings on nuoc mam cham, ramblings about rambutans, dribbling about durian, scribblings on sticky rice, warblings about wats, and ponderings on pho. Stay tuned.
