Of what business do you speak?

I think I may have seen a CEO carrying one of these on a business flight the other day.

Nice buns.

Mr Bun has the nicest buns I've ever seen.  Don't they look friendly?

What's better than a fried chicken leg from a street vendor?

Q: What's better than a fried chicken leg from a street vendor?

A: *Four* fried chicken legs - on a stick!!!

Best.  Snack.  Ever.  And yes, it tasted as good as it looked.  I actually walked by the vendor first, and then something clicked in my head that said 'I must eat that', so I stopped and backtracked.  And I'm not ashamed to say I ate them for breakfast.

Some might say food like this is bad for one's heart, but can anything that makes one's heart so very joyful be bad?  I think not.

Fish, with that strange plant as garnish

You know those plants with the leaves that close up when you touch them?  We had them served as a garnish in a fish dish we had the other day.  The fish was excellent, and it was fun to touch the plants as we ate it.  Good times.

More food!

A couple delicious foods from around town.

Included here is NE Thai style deep fried fish, takoyaki Japanese style octopus balls, fish cooked in a copper kettle over hot coals, duck salad, and loquat fruit.

Erawan Shrine

A few pics of the Erawan Shrine, a shrine outside a hotel in downtown Bangkok that has a constant stream of worshippers coming to make offerings and ask for assistance. People who feel doing so helped them often donate to the shrine, which finances a constantly performing traditional dance company next to it. You can see the shrine from above at a BTS stop, so you can watch the stream of people going in and making their offerings. It's a festive and colorful affair.

Mmmm... rice flour donut

This is a snack we got the other day - it's sort of like a deep fried rice flour donut, coated with sugar and sesame seeds.  It was chewy, moist, sweet, and probably not very good for us.  But the few bites we had were very tasty.

Boar: it's what's for lunch

When we were in Ayuthaya we ate at a riverside restaurant that, I kid you not, that was literally built around/against a huge tree growing through the center of the roof.  

One of their special dishes was wild boar.  It was excellent, not gamey, and it was like being a character right out of Lord of the Flies.  I felt like a hunter that had just brought down a big kill.

When you gotta go...

These are the most descriptive signs I've ever seen for restrooms.  These folks certainly convey the urgency of the situation.

Shallots!

Sam wanted to make sure I posted this, especially for my brother and my mother.  These shallots are not only fresh and tasty, they're also only about $1.50 USD in the local market.  Sam says they're slightly more expensive in the US.

Toilet Humor

I have no idea why I find signs for, about, and around toilets so amusing, but here you go.  Enjoy.

Our hit list

So we finally found (after some looking) the same posters we saw once at a Japanese fresh fish stand in a Japanese grocery store.  They have all the fish of Thailand, and are conveniently covered in plastic, so when we stab them with our finger, and say 'we have eaten you!', we don't get the poster dirty.

Think of these posters like a hit list - now when Sam's at the fresh fish market, she can say 'I wonder what that one is - we haven't eaten that before', and then find out on this poster what it is.  Then, time for fish!

Can we eat all of them during our time here?  It remains to be seen.  I'm not sure I want to eat a goldfish, for instance, but most of the rest look awfully good.

Whiskey set

So one of the local drinks in Bangkok is to take local whiskey (which is really rum, and quite high quality), soda water, lime, and a splash of cola, and mix it over ice.  You can go to a local restaurant and have them mix it at your table as you eat.  Quite good on a hot day - and just the thing for spicy food. Total cost of pictured set - about 150 baht (less than $5 USD).

Grocery cart

Matt and Michelle brought Sam a rolling grocery cart from the States when they came.  It's been just the thing for Sam when she goes to market or grocery shopping.  Who needs a car, anyways?

I haven't actually seen her using it since I'm usually at work when she's shopping, but I bet she looks really cute rolling it around.

Vietnam - Motorcycle Madness

Ho Chi Minh City has some seriously crazy traffic, and a lot of it is due to the motorcycles which are everywhere.  Combined with everyone's complete disregard for traffic laws (which side of the road one is to drive on, the concept of lanes, stop lights, whether one should drive on the sidewalk or not, whether the right of way goes to who is legally entitled (or whether it goes to whoever is bigger or whoever got there first)), it is truly madness.  

Most of the time I just sit in awe at the spectacle, but I shook myself to my senses last time I was there long enough to take just a couple pictures, which don't really do justice to the insanity.

Thai wine

They make wine in Thailand.  It's a difficult thing to find wine in Thailand - heat and light are the enemies of wine, and it's hard to keep anything away from those two conditions around these parts.  

This wine (given to us by Ben and Megan) tasted excellent.  From what we understand, there are parts of the country that have high, cool valleys, good for growing wine, strawberries - pretty much any cool/temperate weather crop.  Who would have guessed it - fresh wine and strawberries in Thailand?

Old school shaved ice

Here's someone shaving ice the old fashioned way.  Old school!  Pour a bit of syrup on top, and you have yourself a cool snack for a hot day.

I'll bet his handshake is like iron from doing this so often.

Cambodia - plants and flowers

A last few couple pictures of Cambodia - a few plants (a tree covered by vines that were consuming it on the grounds of Angkor Wat, a mango tree with green mangoes growing on it, a white flower the Chinese call 'chicken egg flower', one of those little plants whose leaves curl up when you touch them (growing wild), the vehicle the locals call 'tuk-tuk' which is different from what they call a tuk-tuk in Bangkok.  And one of the many temples we passed by but didn't visit - because hey, when you're eating from such a rich buffet, what is it to leave a few grapes on the table?

Siem Reap: highly recommended.

Hearts in lights

A neighborhood restaurant we passed by (open air) had some Christmas lights out - but arranged in happy patters of hearts and stars.  It was a very nice touch, and in such a local neighborhood, it's really just for the fun of it.  Very Thai.

And the restaurant was good to boot!

Cambodia - Dead Fish bar and grill

Have you ever checked into a hotel, and asked to be in room 23, and everyone at the hotel immediately looks at each other with a knowing look in their eye, and then an old guy behind the counter who you didn't notice before says in a gravelly voice "room 23 - why, that's the room that nice family was killed last year... by an axe murderer!"?  No, I haven't had that experience either.  But I would imagine if I had it would feel a lot like going to the Dead Fish bar and grill in Siem Reap.

Now, to be fair, the strange feeling was probably partly because we were the only people in the place (it was huge).  And it only half looked like it was open, despite the large amount of wait staff.  Maybe it gets busy later on in the evening?  Maybe tour buses come back from the temples and the place is hopping?  Who knows.  All I know is the servers there were all acting like there was a big dark secret they didn't want us to know - like, if we stayed much longer, we were all... DOOMED!

So we stayed for a drink (Sam had a great cocktail called an Angkor Sunrise - very well mixed and highly worthwhile if you ever find yourself there, I had an Angkor draft beer that was fresh and tasty), and then skeedaddled.  No sense in getting killed by an axe wielding maniac on our first visit to Siem Reap.

Oh, and it had a crocodile pit in the restaurant.  Sweet.