Badger Eats Asia

How Learning a Language Makes You Stupid Again

2010-01-13T20:49:00.001-08:00

Take, for example, this conversation:

I would like a coffee.

We do not have any coffee.

Then I would not like coffee.

Good.

Or, for your consideration:

Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

But you are korean?

Yes.

Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

Koreans like pink.

I do not like pink. I am Korean.

I do not understand. Goodbye.

Club 7

2010-01-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

This is where Josh and I hang out when we are feeling cheap. There is a lawn (which is part of an office complex, but no one seems to mind) across the street from our local 7-11 (you might think that 7-11 isn't very Thai, but you would be ever so wrong). So we buy beers at the store and then lay in the grass and drink beer and talk about how we don't ever want to go home. I'm sure if we spent too much time here we would discuss how we wanted to go home, but we haven't gotten to that point yet.

Klong Toei Market

2010-01-13T20:41:00.000-08:00

This is the market where Thais go for, well, everything. Need a motorcycle fender? And some superglue? And a pair of gigantic cotton panties? And a kilo of red curry paste? And a live chicken? This is your place.

This is my favorite stall- the curry paste vendor. I love that there are like six different kinds of red curry paste.

These will make your face implode.

Mmmmmm... crabs. Wrapped for my protection.

OH GOD THE FOOD!

2010-01-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

Glass noodle salad with peanuts, shrimp, ground pork and cilantro. Tastes like I might never come back to Washington, DC.

Sticky rice.

OH GOD. Som tam with tiny field crabs in it to flavor it like crab. You don't actually eat these crabs, but the crunch of the green papaya and the heat of the chiles combines amazingly with the lime and fish sauce dressing.

Wat Sutthat

2010-01-13T20:26:00.000-08:00

A wat is where buddhists go to believe in magic, the same way that church is where christians go to pray to their dad. Summing up religion is easy!

Entrance to Wat complex.

This guy should be a cartoon character, preferably one that sells cereal to children. "Captain Chanachitporn's Chocolate Chomps", or the like.

That's a big Buddha. Don't get in his way.

Roof!

One of these things is not like the other.

Sunset over Bangkok

2010-01-13T20:25:00.001-08:00

อนุสาวรีย์ ชัย / Our Neighborhood

2010-01-07T02:53:00.000-08:00

This is the view from our apartment balcony. I use the word "apartment" loosely. Bed in a room might be more appropriate.

This is the actual monument our neighborhood is named after. In Thai you say ahnusawarichisumanipum. Or rather, Thais say that. I just point at a picture of the monument and then throw my hand up in the air. As if I just don't care. Jump around! Ok, that got derivative.

Ma ride.

ข้าวเหนียว Tasty Treat

2010-01-07T02:47:00.000-08:00

This is my current street food obsession. It's sticky rice cooked with coconut milk and then wrapped in a banana leaf. It comes with a little packet of white sugar ground with deep fried crispy garlic pieces and dried shrimp. You dump the spice packet onto the leaf, break the sticky rice into chunks and dip and snack and repeat.

Krushing Koreans

2010-01-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spent three hours in a small, gray classroom repeating unhearable tones to a thin woman who never stopped smiling, even when the Japanese student got ten out of ten wrong. She is Kruu, or teacher. Kruu started class by having us practice vowels. Having not really thought about vowels for a very long time, it was kind of hilarious sitting in a classroom making the O face to practice long o sounds with five other adults. Also, Thai has some huge ridiculous number of vowels. Did anyone know there are like six ways to pronounce U? I did not.

Kruu gave us some listening sheets and she would pronounce different sounds, and we had to fill in the sounds she made on the sheet. I've always felt I was pretty good at languages, and I'm also quietly competitive, so I was irrationally angered when the Korean girls got perfect scores on the listening. I want to be the best! I want to get all the right answers! It made me feel better that the Spanish guy and the Irish guy did worse than me, but still. Schadenfraude only gets you so far in beating the Koreans.

Luckily, their Waterloo was yet to come: tones. In addition to multiple and ridiculous ways to pronounce the vowels, there are also tones in Thai. There are five tones: low (talk like you imagine a sexy telephone operator would talk), mid (normal), high (like when you get really mad and the ends of words start to go up in pitch), rising (gets confusing here: basically make the word dip, high on each end but low in the middle), and falling (reverse of rising, shockingly enough). While I admit I struggle to hear the tones when regular Thais talk, I can definitely hear Kruu's tones, probably because she talks as if her class is full of retarded bears.

I can't wait to see what today's class brings! Also, I vow to crush the Koreans.

While this looks very impressive, it's actually just me writing all the numbers to 100. I love the way some thai letters have hats.

Bangkok Arts and Culture Center

2010-01-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

Some art is about the future. Or being in a tanning bed.

Some art is about fourth-grade gym class.

This art appears to be about awesome paper mache, but actually it's about Burmese migrant workers. Art can be tricky like that.

This art is about twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

This art is about being the food, instead of the food eater.

Pictures from Thailand

2010-01-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve Update: Drunken Finnish Boy Declares Maybe He Likes Guys. Calamity Ensues.

2010-01-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve at our guest house, Respected Older Sister put on quite a meal. I promise pictures, as soon as I can find an internet cafe with a card reader. There was fried mackerel, laap, pad prik king, snapper braised in coconut milk and red curry paste, and more than I can remember, because there were also buckets of booze provided as a New Year's Eve treat. While Respected Older Sister is a hilarious force at this guest house, the yang to her yin is a man that we will call Fake Hippie. FH is maybe the owner, maybe ROS's husband (or brother)- who can know? I certainly couldn't figure it out. FH has long flowing hair, loves pot, and wants everyone to "be happy!" Forced merriment is a concept that simply doesn't work; it's like willing someone to love you. It is doomed to fail. Unless you ply your subject with intoxicants, which is what FH did.

There were eight or nine Thai hipsters that were staying at the guest house, two weird Dutch guys, a Russian couple (his name was Vladimir. No, really. He didn't seem that excited that my bicycle was also named Vladimir), a dude of indeterminable origin, as he never deigned to talk to us, and the three Finnish boys. I say boys because their mom must have had to pry the Nintendo controllers from their hands to send them on this trip. The Finns have unpronounceable, unremembered names, so we will call them Ulrich, Helmat, and Paco. Helmat and Paco were brothers, and Ulrich lived across the street from them in Finland, and they had been friends since kindergarten. Ulrich told us this joke: "Poles drink water. Russians drink vodka. Finns drink vodka like water." And so they did, except it was Thai whiskey mixed with Red Bull.

After dinner, almost everyone walked down to the beach for star-lit dancing and really bad techno, followed by fireworks. On the way, Helmat asks me if I have a girlfriend and I said no, I'm gay, that's my boyfriend, blah blah blah. That's when Helmat says "I think I might be gay too. I mean, I have a girlfriend now, but when I watch porn I usually watch gay porn." I don't really know what I'm supposed to say to that, so I just say "Uhhhhhhhh, maybe you should have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, then?". He says, with out obvious irony, "I'll think about that."

At this point, the Finns are getting drunk enough that they keep getting lost on the beach, in sight of each other, so Josh and I decide to go down the beach and do some good old proper nightswimming. So while the fireworks went off, I was floating in the South China Sea, thinking that maybe I am the luckiest person alive. The next morning, we wake up to find out that Helmat and Paco had gotten in a fist-fight over his revelation that he maybe likes guys when he is drunk, and their friend Ulrich had to pry them apart. Moral of the story: swimming at night is less dangerous than being Finnish. K Thanx Bai!

Beach Causes Retardation

2009-12-31T18:15:00.000-08:00

**Because of the mentioned retardation, I posted this to the wrong blog, so now I am setting it right.**

No really. It does. Sitting in the sunshine and then running off to splash in the waves is making me dumber by the moment. I have spent the last two days memorizing EIGHT thai vowels. And I'll be honest. I'm not sure I actually have them down. But thanks to the side effects of the sun and water, I have become too dumb to notice.

Tonight, on the final day of the year, there are gigantic speakers being set up on the beach, as well as ridiculous amounts of beverages being laid in by the beach-side bars. The full moon has decided to sync with the evenings events, piling even more tinder onto the bonfire of twenty-something beach goers that are ready to puke into the surf to celebrate another passing year. Hurray! A pinnacle for western civilization!

I'm being entirely too cynical, because I plan to have more than the recommended dosage of beer and dance my ass off under the stars. Don't be surprised when I drunk dial you at your mom's house.

Eating Asia: Part The Second

2009-12-29T19:43:00.000-08:00

So, we're back in Asia. Thailand this time. J. is studying advanced Thai in preparation for a possible fellowship in Bangkok, so I am coming along so that when we arrive this summer I will be able to ask for the bathroom and drinks. Why learn Thai, people ask? Because I often need the bathroom and drinks.

Anyhoo, thought we might start looking at food again, and this time I might actually continue posting. Sorry about that last summer. Things got busy and then everyone was mad and I cried.

Birthday Weekend A Success; Nation Cheers

2009-06-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

Josh and me in the minibus on the way to the Thai border.

Uhhhhhh.... right. This is what Josh is around for. READ THE SIGN, MONKEY! No, really, he's totally good at reading signs and I am proud.

Raul (we named our car Raul. Get on board.) has many cousins in Thailand! His name is Pracornchit. No seriously.

Oh god THE FOOD. Coconut Curried Fish and Braised Pork with Green Chili, over jasmine rice. OH GOD THE FOOD.

Even better with a bottle of $2 ice cold Singha beer. OH MY GOD THE FOOD.

From left to right: red beef curry with coconut milk, red braised pork in ginger-wine broth, sour tamarind curry, chicken curry with sweet potato. Did I mention: OH GOD THE FOOD.

Our Thai friends, excited that we could eat "village style". I think it was called village style because there was a pig laying in some mud about fifteen feet to the left and a chicken was sitting under the table at one point. As if farm animals are going to keep me from eating curry.

Me, swimming in a waterfall, in the jungle, the day I turned 32. Swimming in the waterfalls in the jungle was seriously one of the best, most refreshing things I have ever done and I never want to forget about it. Although, two minutes before this, the Thai kids in the picture were laughing at me histerically because I fell into the water, cause I am totally awesomely coordinated. Hope the government doesn't mind my passport being soaked.

This picture is blurry cause it was night and everything was moving and Josh had drank like four beers at this point, but look very carefully at what I am petting. AN ELEPHANT. That's right. I fed it sugarcane and it put its weird, wet trunk on my head and I felt very special.

After many more beers, Josh decided he needed the "Fat Girl Special" from 7-11, which is instant noodles with a spicy hotdog inside. No really, it's called that.

So in summary, Thailand is awesome. That is all.

Is this irony, or not irony? It's confusing.

2009-06-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

I feel like in my life I have spent a lot of time explaining to people that travelling overseas is not dangerous, people don't target you because you are foriegn, most countries have a vested interest in maintaining the safety of their tourists, blah blah blah. Then yesterday I got robbed.

I got robbed while I was riding the previously mentioned motorcycle ON THE EXPRESSWAY. Yeah, I didn't even have to slow down to get robbed. The douchebag rode up beside me, grabbed my bag, gave my bike a shove, and was off. My bag, which had an unfortunate amount of stuff I would have prefered not to lose, was snatched right out of the basket and I was forced to wave goodbye to my phone, camera, notebook full of recipes, watch, ring, mp3 player and my backpack itself, which was awesome. Also, my water bottle.

I chased the twatwaffle who grabbed the bag for awhile, but he obviously had done this before, and I wasn't in the mood to be robbed and die in an accident in the same day. At least I wasn't hurt, and things can be replaced. Cold comfort, but still. Not dead at the end of a robbery is a fine consolation prize.

Luckily the asshat on a bike turned the corner too fast and ran into a petrol truck and died in the ensuing explosion. [This is what I like to call imagined reality. It's the best. Try it.]

Motorcycle!

2009-06-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

So walking around town was fun, but RIDING AROUND TOWN is AWESOME! Josh keeps making fun of me because I like to act like this awesome bike is some sort of bad ass chopper, instead of what I think is considered a "non-licensed vehicle" at home, meaning the engine is so small not only do you not need a driver's license to operate it, but that it doesn't even need tags in most states. Plus, it costs $90 a month to rent it, and a dollar to fill the gas tank.

But, the Honda X5 Dream is the first step towards the middle class for millions of Asians, so I am justified in renting this motorbike because it can be considered research. That's right. Justification is fun.

Whheeeeeeee!!

PS. Mine does not have that retarded basket on the front. That is for total losers.

Langkawi

2009-06-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

Just north of Penang Island is another island chain, called Langkawi, which means eagles butt or something in Malay. We went there for two reasons: need more beach time, and it's a duty free port. Which means that a can of beer is 50 cents. Also, this happened on Langkawi: met cute Dutch boys who turned out to be 18, met Finnish girls who were drinking buckets of vodka (no really, buckets- the bar was serving booze in buckets), and went midnight swimming under the southern cross. A very good weekend, all in all.

Nasi Lemak

2009-06-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

*Note to self: taking pictures of food under florescent light does no favors to the food.

Remember, from before, that thing that I ate? Yeah, well I learned how to cook it. At last we have a kitchen. Nasi lemak consists of three parts- the rice, the sambal, and the garnishes. The rice is cooked with coconut milk and lightly spiced. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the traditional spice is Pandan, or Screwpine Leaves (yeah, I have no idea where that name came from, as the plant itself looks like broad grass). If you can't find that, a bay leaf will work nicely. The sambal is the spice paste that is garlic, shallots, onion, fresh chilies, dried chilies, shrimp paste, and sometimes lemon grass, fried until fragrant in oil and then cooked with tamarind juice to give it some tartness. The garnishes are traditionally fried peanuts, chopped cucumber and maybe some cilantro or mint leaves.

Nasi lemak actually refers to just the rice, but it is normally served with a protein as well. I decided to go crazy traditional Malay: dried tiny anchovies. Yeah, I know, sounds gross. But really, they came out excellent. You can easily substitute peeled shrimp or pieces of fish or chicken. The tiny anchovies are friend until they are golden brown and crunchy, and really, they sort of remind me of bacon. Fish bacon.

Just a note on getting all this to come together, I put the rice on and then fried the fish and the peanuts, and then made the sambal. It was all done about the right time.

The How To:

Coconut Rice

240 ml / 1 c rice

240 ml / 1 c coconut milk

80 ml / 1/3 c water

2 pantan leaves or 1 bay leaf

¼ stick cinnamon

1 whole clove

pinch of salt

Put everything into a saucepan with a tightly fitting lid. Bring to a boil and then reduce to the lowest flame possible (just barely simmering). Let cook undisturbed for 20 minutes.

Sambal

1 small red onion (really, should be ¼ small red American onion- we seem to have gargantuan produce in North America)

4 small shallots or 2 large

2 cloves garlic

10 whole dried red chilies

5 fresh hot red chilies

1 t shrimp paste (substitute anchovy paste, normally sold in the Italian section of the supermarket in a tube, if you can't find it at an Asian shop)

¼ t salt

1 T sugar

4 T tamarind paste, dissolved in 1 c water for 30 min, then strained

You can do this by hand, like I did (because I don't have anything else to do it with, not because I am better than you), or use a food processor. I wholeheartedly approve of the food processor. Basically, grind the onion, shallots, garlic, dried chilies, fresh chilies, shrimp paste, salt, and sugar until they become a chunky paste. You might have to add a bit of water to the mixture to get it to blend smooth, but try to add as little as possible. When you have a paste, heat four tablespoons of oil in a wok. When the oil is shimmering, add the spice paste and fry about two minutes, or until the garlic smells fragrant and the chilies start to smell toasted. Add half of the tamarind water, and mix well. Continue cooking over high heat until the oil begins to separate out from the sambal. That is your signal that it is done. Reserve the sambal and the remaining tamarind water.

Garnishes

60 ml/ ¼ c raw shelled peanuts, fried in 2 T oil for few minutes, until golden

½ English cucumber, sliced into small pieces

Protien

2 oz dried ikan bilis (small whole anchovies)

-or-

4 oz shrimp, peeled and cleaned

-or-

4 oz boneless chicken meat, chopped into small cubes

If using the dried anchovies, fry them in a ¼ c of oil until golden brown. Strain.

If using chicken or shirmp, sear in a hot wok with a spoonful of oil until nicely seared but not done.

Add the protein and 2/3 of the sambal mixture to the wok, and add the remaining tamarind water. Bring to a boil and cook until the meat is done and the sauce has thickened (you want the sauce to be like thick chili, basically).

To Serve:

Mound the rice and top with the protien in sambal sauce. Serve the remaining sambal on the side as a condiment, along with the cucumbers and peanuts. Eat, and be mad you never had this before.

The Servants are Stealing Sugar

2009-06-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Part of this trip has been travel, and the other part practice. Josh is practising having a real job, and I am practising being a diplomatic wife. A diplomatic wife, you ask? Yes, the partner of a diplomat who, because diplomats' wives are not allowed to work, becomes more paranoid and cooped up, eventually falling into a pool of drink and abusing the household servants. I mean, at the very least, it's a romantic ideal.

So on Monday, Josh went off to a conference at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel to meet and greet, and I started searching for an apartment to rent, holding a gin and tonic and yelling at the maid the entire time. If you used to read my other blog, then you remember the multitude of apartments that we went through to get our current place. I vowed not to repeat that experience.

Armed with the Malaysian version of craigslist (craigslist does actually exist here, but no one uses it, ever), the newspaper, and my mobile phone, I discovered the following things about myself: (1) I am not a Muslim. (2) I am not Chinese. (3) I do not wish to rent an apartment for two years. Granted, none of this was new information, but apparently my love of bacon disqualifies me from furnished apartments owned by Halal-keeping Muslims. Halal is the Islamic equivalent to Jews who keep Kosher (there is a statement designed to get you beat up in both Tel Aviv and Cairo). I didn't realize this, but cooking bacon while smooching my boyfriend and drinking a beer at the same time basically means that the apartment owners have to burn it down and start over. Seems drastic, but there you go.

In America, if you state in your apartment listing “Chinese Only” or “Black Only” or whatever, it's basically an invitation to go to court, twice. First as guests of the federal government, and second as a class action defendant. I like that system. It's cruel but fair. In Malaysia, it's totally ok to be all “Chinese Only, peeps, Whiteys Smell Like Butter and Can't Trust Indians, so Later Skaters”. I called a couple “Chinese Only” apartments just to see if they were serious. The sound of getting hung up on indicates that they were.

Short-term apartments are not really that common in the US, but normally you can find a student's place or something to sub-let. I could not, here. Everyone wanted me to sign a two year contract, and asking for a shorter contract involved a lot of teeth sucking and hand waving on the part of the agent, only to be offered a one year contract. Asking for two months caused the sky to rip and frogs to rain from heaven.

But, persistence wins. (Persistence and cheating. They both win.) I found an agent that was familiar with the concept of short-term rental, and who didn't care if we were Chinese Muslims, and now we live in a three bedroom apartment on the twenty-first floor next to the ocean.

Totally didn't see that coming.

View from the room where the washing machine is kept, because, obviously, laundry enjoys a nice view.The Sultan of Kedah (the state next to Penang) has a house right across the street. Not much seems to happen here, but I like to imagine it is a den of inequity.
This is the view of the Straits of Malacca from our balcony. Just across the water you can see mainland Malaysia.

More Satay, and What I Wouldn't Do for It

2009-06-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

I promise I will figure out how to make this. The meat itself is fantastic, but the satay sauce is where the real magic is. I'd lick it off the floor. Off the floor of a slaughterhouse.

Carniverous.

Last Meal in Indonesia

2009-06-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Fried shrimp with black pepper noodles, fried calamari, and some other kind of noodles, fried, most likely. Can you see the fried noodle fatigue in Josh's eyes? Yeah, it's the thousand yard stare.

Actually, our last meal in Indonesia was at Pizza Hut. Yeah, I won't apologize for it. It was excellent. I'd do it again in a second.

Banda Aceh: Nature's Least Favorite

2009-05-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

I could never understand why over a quarter million people died in the Boxing Day Tsunami in Sumatra. I was on a small island off the west coast of Thailand when it happened, and the destruction was pretty amazing, but the death toll never reached the proportions that it did in Indonesia. And now I know why.

Banda Aceh sits in the middle of a wide, flat plane that is surrounded by an arc of dormant volcanos, effectively forming a half-ring along the coast, in the center of which sits Banda Aceh. The arc of mountains is aligned so that the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunami happened to be directly in front of the ring. The power of the waves that flattened the city must have been phenomenal, while the enclosing mountains ensured that the water level continued to rise as subsequent waves crashed to shore.

Banda is an interesting town today, if only for playing "spot the aid organization logos", which are everywhere, labeling everything. It is pretty much all cleaned up, but there is still a lot of construction to be done. The surprising thing was how empty it felt. Indonesia is a fairly crowded country, but Banda felt positively deserted by local standards. I couldn't figure out if that was because Banda Aceh sits at the very tip of the most western part of Indonesia, or if 250,000 people were missing from daily life.

Mama Donut

2009-05-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Food on Palau Wey was, uhhhh, sort of fail. I don't really expect that much when you are on a tiny beach, on the backside of an island, in the middle of nowhere, at the tip end of a gigantic country. So Mama Donut was a blessing. I don't actually have a picture of her, as she was very shy and/or hates my blog, but imagine the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle lady, but wearing a head scarf unstead of whatever the bottle wears, and holding donuts, not selling syrup like a cheap hussy.

Mama Donut would just appear mid-morning, I guessing from the next village over, but for all I know she could be camping in the jungle and have a big bonfire over which she does her frying. In the afternoon, after I had personally eaten all of the donuts on the island, she would just sort of melt away. She did a very nice sugared donut, as well as fried bananas, egg rolls, spicy vegetable fritters, and the holy grail of the beach: fresh coconut filled beignet. I can taste them now.

Egg rolls from Mama Donut save me from eating fried noodles. AGAIN. No seriously, I love me some fried noodles. But I love Mama Donut more.

Palau Wey

2009-05-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

We are in Palau Wey right now (NOTE: well, when I wrote this we were), a long way from the rest of the world. Or so it seems, anyway. Blue water from the Indian Ocean curls around my feet as I stand looking out to sea, the next land mass either India to the north or Africa to the west. The Indian Ocean hisses gently at night; tropical showers sometimes start falling, dripping softly off the thatched roof of our hut.

The food? Not so much. Backpacker melange, I call it. Banana pancakes, strange “spaghetti”, odd imitations of Thai food. But I don't care. There's nothing here but the ocean to swim in and the easy camaraderie of displaced people. I've already swam three times today, out past the mouth of the bay, into the deeper, indigo water, watching my toes sparkle below the crystal surface of the gentle water, washing away the grime of the last ten days.

Technical Difficulties No Match for Mad Skillz

2009-05-29T02:32:00.002-07:00

With an internet connection the speed of frozen sloths, my thumb drive, and more patience than I can normally muster, the computer is back. I have the text, but there were some losses of photos. So if you are reading something that seems like it should have pictures but doesn't, shake your fist at the sky and swear until you feel better.

I've back-posted in more or less chronological order. I think. Remembering is hard.

Out of Order Miscellanea #1

2009-05-29T00:52:00.000-07:00

This krazy kute kancil (Malaysian Mousedeer) was housed in this amazing park that surrounds the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. I like things that replace C with K. These are terrible pictures, but they really do prance like deer, but are the size of guinea pigs.

Which make me think they would be excellent roasted.

Mie Aceh

2009-05-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

I'm going to level with you: Indonesian food has been underwhelming. Less than impressive. Lacking.

Until I found Mie Aceh. Mie means noodles in Malay (a dirty secret: Indonesians and Malaysians speak the same language. Don't say that to their faces, but the difference is about the same between American and British English. They're a touch tetchy about the subject.) Aceh is the northern part of Sumatra.

Again, apologies for no picture here (earlier technical difficulties were resolved, but there were losses. We have to move on people. Don't loose faith.) Mie Aceh reminds me of Pad Thai- noodles fried with garlic, peppers, and ginger, but in place of fish sauce and lime, they use soy sauce and bitter kalamansi lime juice. Brilliant, delicious, and I ate two servings.

Chicken Satay, Redux

2009-05-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the truly terrible photo. I was starving and you are thousands of miles away, so guess what was my first priority? Not you.

Malaysian Chicken Satay 0, Indonesian Chicken Satay 1. Hands down, this Indonesian satay wins by multiple goals. Lightly acidic while still being rich and a touch sweet, it had notes of kafir lime and lemon grass in the sauce, with just enough ground peanut to give it that distinctive taste. The fact that I ate it at this random restaurant in Danau Toba only added to it's appeal.

More like this please, Indonesia.

Danau Toba

2009-05-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of a volcanic lake we went to in North-central Sumatra. It was formed by the largest volcanic explosion that ever happened.

The second largest volcanic explosion that ever happened in Sumatra happened the evening that we arrived, when the effects of Medan's local water caught up with me. There were thousands of casualties; may we never speak of it again.

Seksparti

2009-05-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Medan is kind of shock after coming from more mainland Southeast Asia. It's the third largest city in Indonesia, and is the epitome of what people don't like about Asian cities: full of traffic, smog, too many people, no sidewalks, and of course, blindingly hot and sweaty. It's also a Muslim country.

As Muslim countries go, it wears it's religion pretty lightly. It's very comfortable to be in Indonesia, even though they don't have a huge minority population, as really, they don't seem to be into some of the harder-line policies that the Gulf States love. You can usually find beer, if you want, and everyone is pretty tolerant of foreigners not being good at passing as Muslims.

Which is why it was blind siding to be propositioned for a sex party. By two separate men. In a crappy, dirty, broken down hotel, directly behind a mosque. Indonesia doesn't seem to mind having beer around or foreign ladies swimming on their beaches in bikinis, but it's not exactly Amsterdam.

Uncomfortable? Just a little bit. Imagine the scene: two white boys, trying hard not to culturally offend, having a broken conversation in Indonesian, slowly realizing that the guy they are talking to is propositioning a three-way. TWICE IN A ROW, WITH TWO SEPARATE INDONESIANS. Jesus wept.

Dear Lonely Planet: the Raja Hotel, on Jalan Raja in Medan, is now a gay cruising hotel. You might want to update it's listing.

Technical Difficulties

2009-05-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned. My computer, which has never once had any sort of problem, decided it was tired of SE Asia and would like to no longer function. Do not worry: beatings will continue until it works correctly. Food is still being eaten and stories written... just going to take a bit to figure out the other part.

Uhhhh, this is food?

2009-05-21T02:15:00.000-07:00

Food FAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL.

If you are ever in a hawker center in Kuala Lumpur and you look up and as sign that says “Economy Rice. Cooked Meat Vegetable” turn around and run away. I haven't a picture of the bowl of noodles, which I decided to call “Used Chicken Soup”, but it was this: one shred of chicken meat, a meager fist full of noodles, a broth with the full rich flavor of salty water. The owner of the stall was eating something that looked totally delicious, some sort of huge dumpling, almost like a Chinese perogie. I pointed to it and tried to order two, and he swatted my hand away and said “MY FOOD!”

Indeed.

So we got what was not his food, a bowl of nothing served with noodles. His cooking skills are almost as good as his English skills.

Nasi Lemak

2009-05-19T04:18:00.001-07:00

Breakfast is really where a people show their true colors. Do they want a sweetened fried bun? Do the like toast spread with jam? Do they like rice spread with sweetened fish paste, chili sauce, peanuts, and coconut milk? I thought that I would be two of those three types of people. I mean really, donuts and marmalade are pretty easy to get behind. But fish paste?

I was wrong. Spicy, salty, crunchy, and satisfyingly rice-centric, it goes great with a cup of iced coffee as the sun starts to come up.

Melacca, Malaysia

2009-05-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

Melacca was kind of ridden hard and put away wet by the colonial powers: founded by the Portuguese, it later became part of Dutch East India before finally bedding down with the British. All that confusion has left a mix of Malays, Straits Chinese, and Tamils, and decades later, a quiet port town filled with the smell of frying chiles and noodles.

Hindus Make the Best Alarm Clocks

2009-05-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Malaysia, and South East Asia, in general, is not a land of sleeping in. When the temperature can reach 95 F/35 C or more by noon, it makes sense that you would get the heavy lifting done before lunch. I, however, am not normally one of those people who rises early. I'm not one of those people who can sleep till 2pm, either, but rousing me from bed before nine am is normally a re-creation of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

Not so in Malaysia, thanks to organized religion.

The Muslims tried their best. They start their call to prayer around 5:45 am this time of year. Yesterday's morning guy was considerably better than today's, the call to prayer starting slow and sweet, but he got some vibrato into it towards the end. Today's guy was either very ill, or maybe had lost his vocal cords in a freak washing machine accident. It sounded like he did the chanting thorough one of those electronic voice boxes. But for either of them, it was simply too short. What, three minutes of amplified warbling is going to wake me up pre-six am? Come on Mohammed.

Yesterday being Sunday, the Catholics tried their best, chiming in with some serious bell work at 6 am, probably just to remind their flock that if they didn't get out of the house while the Muslims were chanting then they were going to be late. But it was pretty weak.

But the Hindus: well now, that was something spectacular. Yesterday they started with some chanting around six thirty, and then about five minutes later a bell joined in. It doesn't sound like much yet, but this 'chanting' could be described as 'yelling', and the 'bell' would be better called a 'gong'. After five more minutes of that, we started in with the drumming. This was not one guy with a bongo- it sounded like the entire drum corps of a NCAA Championship Football Team- back beat, syncopation, a cymbal. This is actually when I woke up the first day. And I blamed it on the Catholics, assuming that because it was a Sunday, they had decided to assemble an actual marching band as a piece de resistance to show the other denominations in town what was the what.

At about the twenty minute mark, this little wake up call has the force of a jet engine and the excitement of a snake charmer, and this is when the horn comes in. The horn doesn't really play a tune, it justs sort of chimes in to underscore that sleeping is over. Hindu scholars might argue that the horn represents Vishnu, or maybe Amber, the destroyer, but for all intents and purposes, Horn says Get On With Your Day.

And that's how I woke up yesterday, and this morning. And because I got up so early, I got to eat this, Masala Thosai (also spelled Masala Dosa in some places). It's like a crispy crepe filled with curried potatoes and served with three separate and delicious sauces. So, in the new world order, the Hindus of South India are invited to be in charge of waking and breakfasting.

Yet another picture of me looking rather odd in a public eating place. Note to self: quitting looking weird on film. PS, to All the Stick People (prior travelling partners extrodinaire), it breaks my heart to be eating this without you. Get your shoes on and meet me here.

One of us! One of us!

2009-05-17T02:43:00.000-07:00

Know what is not fun? Being labled as diseased. I can see why lepers hate that so much, what with the jeering and the name calling and all. It's a nasty business.

J and I just crossed the Straits of Johor, between Singapore and Malaysia, over the new Tuas Causeway on a bus. You leave downtown Singapore and then traverse through this strange part of city in the West, full of shops that sell tranmissions for oil dereks, gigantic flywheels, transformers, and other industrial errata that doesn't really fit in with the trim-ladies-walking-around-shopping-for-Hermes-bags part of the city we had been staying in. Ending a sentance with a preposition? Love to. For those of us who grace the Potomac with our presence, it's Singapore's PG County: used cars and grumpy men until the sun sets. I digress.

We got stamped out of Singapore with adrimable efficiency and then drove acorss the Straits, duly presenting perfectly filled out paperwork to a Malaysian official. Now, I've travelled a fair bit, and, as much as I do not like carrying a US passport (too much explaining about how you are not a huge asshole intent on killing your hosts' top officials and then taking their natural resources), the great advantage is that normally just waving it around in the air gets you thorough immigration. Holding that thin blue folio usually allows you to skip the visas, skip proving you have enough money to not die in a ditch in this new country, skip providing finger prints and police reports and dental records or whatever else is asked of people who have less privledged passports. Even paperwork has a pecking order.

But this time, all the immigration officials could see were invisible Swine Flu viruses crawling around on the pages. Because clearly Americans use their passports to clean their noses when ill. Love that paper cut feeling from the stiff card stock. We were shunted off into a separate line, everyone eyeing us, just waiting for one of us to drop dead or explode, spreading the disease all around Malaysia. This must be what the Chinese feel like, as it seems like everywhere they go people are looking at them suspiciously, as if thinking “I know you sleep with a chicken under your pillow- what fresh death are you bringing today?”. Actually, we were the only non-Chinese in the health inspection line.

But luckily, due to the diligance of the Malaysian Immigration service, we were deemed “NOT WALKING DEATH” by having a fourteen year old take our temperature with a peice of tape and a coat hanger. Maybe incubation period doesn't translate well, but still, it's nice that someone is paying attention. I'm glad to know that my temperature is a healthy 38.6 C.

7-Eleven is Awesome.

2009-05-16T02:00:00.000-07:00

Do not argue with me on this. I love it so much. While I would rather get shot than wander into a McDonald's overseas, I love 7-Eleven. It's such a snap shot of what is important in the country that it is in. According to 7-Eleven, Singapore cares about Hello Kitty, Fashion Magazines, Maps, Mints but not Chewing Gum, and Mobile Telephones. They do not care about, for example, Hot Dogs, like the Thais seem to, or Tequila, like the Mexicans do.

Bestow upon me your air conditioned goodness, a newspaper, a cup of coffee, and a reminder that all is right in the world.

Dim Sum: What God Serves for Breakfast

2009-05-15T02:45:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so Hawker Stalls continue to be awesome. So awesome, I cannot type awesomeness of this nature: I need something bigger than ALL CAPS, like maybe those flashing fonts in various contrasting colors that used to be all the rage on the early internet. But with lazers. And a smoke machine.

Dim Sum from Jalan Besar Hawker Center.

J and I are fast eaters. Get out of the way.

Buddah of the Forest Crystal Dumpling: AKA the Reason to Keep Living

2009-05-15T02:20:00.000-07:00

If you were on a ledge threatening to end it all, I'd bring you this dumpling with some red chili sauce and a bottle of beer. And if you didn't like it, I would push you.

Buddha of the Forest Crystal Dumpling.

It's amazing. I don't yet know exactally how this "crystal dumpling" is made. I have heard tell of an ancient chinese-woman magic that involves pouring boiling water into starch and then adding lard. Sounds logical. The dumpling had shrimp, green vegetables and a nice balance of ginger/garlic flavors. Or I think it did. I ate the tray so fast that several people plummeted to their deaths. I have no idea where the name comes from- get on this people. Google is alot harder to access when everything you own has to fit in a backpack.

Also, I don't know what forest Buddha frequented, but the forests of my times have no shrimp.

Still. So. Good.

Food, Glorious Food

2009-05-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

It's not a secret that I like to eat. And drink. Never forget that when buying me presents and trying to get me into bed. I'll do almost anything for barbequed brisket. And a cold beer on a hot afternoon- let's not talk about something we are all going to regret.

But Singapore. Oh my god. It had me at the first bite. Also, when it decided to be tropical and hot but also have an amazing public transit system. I have weird needs. Singapore also served up something called the Hawker Center, which is more delicious than it sounds. A while back, Singapore had great street food, but people kept getting hit by busses while eating noodles (or the noodle stands were blocking the sidewalk- I wasn't paying that much attention to the explination). The government decided that street food was here-by banned, but the hawkers would be moved to purpose built centers, which ended up looking like a mall food court somehow became detached from a Sears and washed up on the corner.

The architecture of vendors surrounding a central area of dining tables is where the comparison to a mall food court ends. In place of Sbarro's and Taco Bell are tiny stands serving Dim Sum, Laksa, Roast Pork, Pad Mie Goring, Steamed Buns, Fried Noodles, Lamb Murtabak, Roti, and also the occasional hotdog stand. There is usally a few stands suppling juice and beer and dessert, and a lot of fans, as none of them are air conditioned and Singapore is actually located on the surface of the Sun and it gets a touch steamy at times.

Your correspondant, looking creepy, like a cult member, if you will, waiting for people to bring him food.

Also, I ended up eating six meals a day in Singapore. There's one hidden after breakfast, lunch is two parts, and there is a third that I call “Afternoon Breakfast”. Be sure to schedule more time at the gym.

Singapore, 6:15am

2009-05-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

A woman in a headscarf walks by, trailed by two girls in Islamic school uniform, like black and white ducks following their more colorful mother. A kid in a square cap comes next, and a old, old, old Chinese man, who should be smoking an opium pipe, but isn't, and is smoking a cigarette instead. I'm wearing shorts and flip-flops. It's already almost 85°F/30°C, and the humidity hangs from the low sky in invisible curtains. I can't sleep any more, even though it's just six fifteen in the morning. We arrived last night, greasy and butt-sore, twelve hours off our schedule, twenty-six hours later. Numbers are confusing. That's why I am drinking a cup of too-sweet Nescafe and watching Singapore wake up, happy to already be sweating into my pants, happy to be wearing sandals and feel the heat, happy to smell that smell of rotting and spicy food frying and damp air. Happy to be here.