• 2026 | five flavours,  asia,  chiang mai,  thailand

    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…

  • 2026 | five flavours,  asia,  chiang mai,  thailand

    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…

  • 2026 | five flavours,  asia,  hue,  vietnam

    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…

  • 2025 | seven nation noodle,  chiang mai,  thailand

    7NNT25: Day 15 – Chiang Mai

    Soundtrack: “Yellow”, Coldplay (sigh) Khao soi day. I dragged my slightly tired carcass out of bed, quick stop for some hotel noodle and egg breakfast, and then headed out to a laundry I’d spotted on my wanderings that offered 50 THB/kilo. I handed over my trusty orange laundry bag (it’s been with me since at least 2009) and was told it would be ready after 6pm (note that I put in this detail about the time because I occasionally think I can do clever writer things, like foreshadowing future events, so you’ll just have to read along until I get to 6pm — FYI I’m under no pretensions that this…