A Single Step

Grasslands, horses and thunderstorms - the Mongolian Experience in a nutshell

2011-09-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

So it was that we pulled into UB, inspired by the unfathomably gorgeous scenery for the three hours of daylight we’d had coming into town, but embittered by that miserable train ride. It was Nadaam, day of the national festival, so we had little time to get going. Breakfast at the guesthouse consisted of bread, jam, butter and coffee, not exactly the most important meal of day in Mongolia apparently. The walk to the main stadium for the opening ceremonies, we were told, took 15 minutes. Nearly as hour later, we dragged our sweaty asses onto the festival ground. According to our tickets, we had assigned seats. To how many people they assigned these seats is unclear. There were about twice as many people in the stands as could comfortably fit. It looked like an Indian train car. A jolly big Mongolian in traditional dress elbowed out enough room for me to sit, with Sun in my lap. Close enough.

There were dancers, the President of the country, the “Mongolian Michael Jackson” and Mongol hordes, hundreds of soldiers in nomadic dress. That part was really cool. You can feel the legacy of Chinggis Khan in every Mongolian, and see actual Mongol hordes armed and ready, it was awesome. Chinggis himself appeared, in thespian form of course. But he’s on all the money, too, and in statute form in the main square. Mongolians are still nomadic, many of them, and even city dwellers may spend the summer in a ger on the grasslands. Their lifestyle has change little and they still have great admiration for the greatest of their number to ever walk the earth.

We ate khuushuur, which is fried dough filled with meat, except that we found a vegan one. As Buddhism recovers from Communist suppression – a process only 20 years in the making – vegetarianism is gaining a following. Western influence is also contributing. Mongolia has received a significant amount of investment, particularly in the mining sector, and there are worries that this, too, will corrupt the nation.

We drank kvas – they got it from the Russians and seem to really like it. We drank airag – the local fermented mare’s milk. We drank Chinggis beer, which is pretty good. And then we went back to the hotel. A thunderstorm blew in rather quickly, and so we had to wait an hour and a half to get dinner. Everything was flooded. It took forever to go even one block, it was so hard to find dry spots to zig zag a path. It actually took a few days for the streetlakes to dry out – surprised we didn’t see people getting around on horseback to solve the problem. Mongolia is definitely an experience.

After a couple of days in town at the festival, we headed for the countryside. Most people, if they’re not going for Nadaam, go to Mongolia specifically for the countryside. It is vast, endless rolling grassland, dotted with sheep, horses, goats and gers. We saw a few sites, like the Erdene Zuu monastery, but on the whole the highlight was simply being out there. The views were amazing, as were the stars at night. We slept in tourist gers, which were comfortable and cozy. We had an excellent guide and a serious vehicle. We could not have asked for more, really.

After we expressed an interest in trying more airag, our guide Gana took us to find some. How it works is this. You drive around looking for horses. If you see lots of foals, you stop in at the ger. This is what people do – they just drop in randomly on strangers. It’s part of the culture. So we stopped by this family and were treated to some airag from the bucket. It’s thin drinking yoghurt, very mildly alcoholic, and you’ll be full long before you’re even remotely tipsy. Three mugs each and we were bloated and ready to crash out. So that’s what we did. After all the intense traveling, it was nice to have very little to do.

We returned to the city and the next morning we dragged our bags to the station for the last leg of the journey, a 31 hour ride to Beijing. Everybody was dragging their bags, along with extra bags full of food and water. For once, our load seemed normal. We were fearful, though, as this was another Mongolian train. We were booked in 1st class, however, and this gave us hope.

It rocked. The cabins were brilliant, probably the best we’ve ever seen. The beds were stacked, so that the other side of the room had two things. The first was a chair – okay it was dusty and mildewy a bit and made me cough – but we had a proper chair to sit in. There was also a bathroom. It was shared between two cabins – close enough to private. With toilet paper, a shower, more amenities and less stench than most train bathrooms, this was luxury at its finest. The car was quiet – it was actually mostly tourists – and we settled in for a peaceful ride.

It was not without its glitches. The cabin with which we shared the bathroom was occupied by a sick lady, and I got that cold for a while. The border wait was long and boring again. But the Gobi Desert was awesome. There were random camels and fly-blown villages and endless stretches of nothing.

The next morning we awoke to China. We were out of the desert and everything looked, well, like China. That means grey and polluted. It means Communist apartment blocks and ramshackle mud villages. We could no longer read any of the signs – Mongolians use Cyrillic so we could still decipher signs there.

We rolled through some beautiful mountains and gorges on our way to Beijing, but we could hardly see any of it through the haze. There were no stops of consequence either, so we were glad to have a well-appointed cabin and a stockpile of instant noodles. When we pulled into Beijing, it was show time.

The Ride to Mongolia

2011-09-06T13:17:00.001-07:00

We were standing at the top of the stairs, looking out over the entire platform where our train to Ulanbaatar was waiting, and we knew already it was going to be a problem.

Already the orderly shopping and smoking of normal Russian train stops had been replaced by chaos, people pushing, crowding and hawking. There is an energy to the third world that can be quite stimulating and attractive, but sometimes it is mostly just a mess and a hassle. With giant bags and a long journey ahead of us, mess and hassle were not want we wanted. Not that we had any choice in the matter.

We got into the carriage and went to our cabin, 2nd class, shared accommodations. For this run, 1st class was already sold out: because of the visa problems we hadn’t been able to book early. But second class isn’t usually a big deal on these trains anyway. Except this time.

It was a total joke. The sheets were crumpled in a ball on the bed. The table was filthy with garbage, dirty dishes and random sticky spots. Bags were everywhere – in our baggage spots even. We have big bags ourselves, no room to share space, so we can’t accommodate anybody else’s luggage. And especially not when going across a border. It was an absolute disaster – the more expletives you add to that the closer you’ll come to how we felt.

We were mad. The owner of the bags was, predictably, AWOL. We moved all the bags into the corridor. Not our problem. We moved the open jar of pickles into the corridor as well. You read that correctly – an open jar of pickles, sitting on the floor in the middle of the compartment. Bobbing in the brine and everything. Your guess is as good as mine, but the jar was also summarily removed. Cleaning the place was an extensive procedure, and naturally the cabin crew were nowhere to be seen. We’d spotted them taking bribes as we got on the train, so we didn’t have a lot of faith in them from the outset.

We were just sitting down after getting rid of the old sheets, getting fresh ones and scrubbing down our table – not our jobs but waiting for the attendants was clearly going to be futile – when this fat Mongolian shows up. (In fairness, there are a lot of big, stocky Mongolians). He immediately starts screaming and grunting – Mongolian can be pretty coarse to the ear. We just look at him, standing there in our doorway acting like an idiot. We were in no mood for this crap, but our cabinmate was a trilingual Mongolian and we let him do the talking. The fat Mongolian makes a throat-slash gesture.

Welcome to Mongolia – we’re not even there yet and they’re trying to kill us. Our cabinmate was trying to calm the guy down. The guy actually thought he was entitled to use our space for his stuff. Screw that.

Don’t worry, though, it got better. This journey was the gift that kept giving, for the full 18 hours. We barely had a moment of peace. We it came, we were able to enjoy the scenery as it became increasingly beautiful heading south towards the border, with forests thinning out into rivers and steppe. Those peaceful moments were sparse, what with the cavalcade of mental midgets coming by our cabin, in addition to our grunting, belligerent friend.

There was another guy, another trader with multiple bags of goods. We’ll call him Dumbass, so as to distinguish him from Fatass. He was trying to spread all his possessions all over the carriage to avoid paying customs. Yes, that’s what I want when crossing a border: some guy saying “Here, just hold onto this bag for me ‘til we get to the other side.” Our cabinmate, good guy, was perhaps a bit naïve or maybe just intimidated, and took some bags, as did most of the other Mongolians on the train, to the chagrin of the foreigners who were stuck with these bags. Not on our side of the cabin, mind you, no way.

The Russian border police, for their part, were having none of it. I was in the process of hauling giant bags out of our cabin and back into the hallway when they boarded, with Dumbass coming down the hallway to stress out about it. They had him pegged immediately – they knew it had nothing to do with us. They told Dumbass off. The bags were removed and sent down the hall to live with him for the crossing. He freaked and panicked. Normally, such histrionics would fall into the “not our problem, don’t care” file, but he did get our attention when after one tongue-lashing from a border guard he threw a big red suitcase flying down the hall, crashing by our door and spilling its contents all over the corridor.

Border crossed – after six hours I should note, most of which were under conditions of zero access to the toilet. We kept a sentry on duty while I made a beer run. If I had known we were about to lose access to our bathroom I probably wouldn’t have made a beer run but we were bored and knew it would take six hours. Fatass came by. One hour of me sitting around doing nothing, and he just happens to come by in the five minutes that I was gone? So Sunshine is sitting there by herself and he grunts whatever stupid thing he wanted to grunt, the coward not man enough to come by until he saw me walking to the store. Unreal.

With the border crossed, we rolled through the night towards Ulanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. I would have preferred to look out the window at the new country but it was night. Good time for some shut-eye, right? Maybe a little peace and quiet after all that stupidity? No, not quite.

There are two locks on these train doors, a mechanical lock where the handle is and another blunt lock that simply blocks the door from being opened more than a crack. We learned that the handle lock didn’t work when a random lady opened the door as we were sitting around reading. What? I went outside, Sunshine locked me out and sure enough I powered the door open. It had been tampered with, broken, whatever. One lock down. The other one didn’t work either. We found that out when Dumbass burst through in the middle of the night. What the hell?

He passed out within seconds of breaking in. He was drunk as hell, no doubt, the smell confirmed that. The cabin attendants, as they’d been the entire trip, were worthless. They were in on whatever was going on at the border – and if this guy was paying them then one can imagine how much help they were going to be. I did try to get their help on the matter of the passed out drunken a-hole in our room. They just laughed. Not sure what you do. The train was full or we would have moved to a different car a long time ago. You could do something to the guy, but if he wakes up you’re kind of screwed because he has a bunch of friends down the hall.

Later, we found out how this worked. His ticket was only to Sukhbaatar, on the border. He’d paid the conductors for the bed, and they’d already tampered with the locks. It was our bad luck that the free bed was in our cabin. The conductors were getting paid to let a drunken loser break into our room and pass out. We were entirely on our own, in a brand new country, rolling through the countryside with no towns of any sort, and no hope other than that things wouldn’t get even worse than they already were.

There is some humour in it, I guess. Like when Drinky McIdiot rolled off the bed onto the floor and stayed there. Our polite Mongolian cabinmate attempted to poke and prod the guy awake because he had fallen on our cabinmate’s bag, but to no avail. We tried to chill out and relax, but it really wasn’t something that was going to happen. We could not get off that train fast enough.

Calm Before the Storm

2011-08-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

The ride to Ulan Ude was very smooth. It’s actually one of the best parts of the Trans-Siberian because for two or three hours the track runs alongside Lake Baikal, giving off great views. It was like a long, extended good-bye. On Olkhon, we’d had the chance to dip our toes into its cold waters. With wind-blown trees around us, shamanistic totems above us, the power of the frigid, mile-deep waters was palpable. The locals know it, too, and there are many shaman sites around the island. Baikal is one of the most spiritually powerful places I’ve been too. It sucks you into its vortex and you don’t really want to leave.

As we skirted the lake on the train, we mostly stared out the window. Farewell came and soon we were in Ulan Ude. It was with great – great – relief that we saw two girls on the platform bearing a sign that read “Sunshine”. For once, our contacts were there waiting for us. They took us to the guesthouse – a tiny one with just three rooms – and then guided us around town. Ulan Ude is good for two things, basically. One is the Lenin head. It must be the largest such thing in Russia. It towers over the main square, black and round like the giant Communist bowling ball of death just waiting to roll over the hapless bourgeoisie. The Russians still like Lenin, for the most part, along with other aspects of Soviet kitsch. There are Soviet kitsch restaurants in St. Petersburg and Moscow...the ones too young to have truly suffered those days just love it.

The other thing about Ulan Ude is that it is a cultural transition zone. The Buryats are Mongols and Ulan Ude is their capital. It still feels like Russia, but the people are more Asian. And for anyone going to Mongolia, it is a worthwhile introduction to the culture. They even eat the same food – buuza (in Mongolia just buuz), a steamed dumpling filled with meat.

We actually had way too much time in Ulan Ude, but it gave us a chance to explore a bit. We found three brewpubs, which was good times. The largest and most professional was Bier Haus, which sits at the edge of town. A row of stalls lines the road leading there and in one of those we found five more beers we’d not seen until that point. It wasn’t really a pub, but we made it one.

When the sun finally set, we hit up a very well-stocked grocery store we’d found for provisions for the 18-hour ride to Ulanbaatar. A little tipsy, we bought way too much food. The prize purchase has to have been the bag of ikura. It was cheap by ikura standards, but what exactly did we think we were going to do with it?

As it turns out, figuring out what to do with an abundance of salmon roe wasn't even close to the worst of our problems on that journey.

Into the Land of the Omul-Eaters

2011-08-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

We took a stop at Irkutsk, like many people do. It must be the most popular stop on the entire Trans-Siberian. We wanted to head to the remote Olkhon Island, in Lake Baikal. A mile deep, holding 20% of the world’s fresh water and no small amount off the world’s powerful nature spirits, Baikal is a special place. But first you have to get there.

We had somebody make arrangements for us ahead of time. And just like last time, those arrangements weren’t really worth much. We had been told that a minibus would leave at 11am to take us there, from the train station. They’d have our names on a sign, waiting for us when we got off the train. And of course our minibus would have “Olkhon” written on a sign in its window, too.

We didn’t honestly expect to see someone standing there with our names on a sign, but we also couldn’t find the minibus, either. Must not be here yet, we thought, it’s only 9:30. No worries, just find a bench and relax. I bought a chebureki – fried dough filled with meat and onions. Three bites in I donated it to the local pigeons, fumbling it to the ground, then cursing myself for doing so. But seriously, there are a million variations of meat in dough around the world, and chebureki is one of the better ones in my experience. No idea why. It’s mystery meat of the highest order, greasy as all heck, and spiced according to Russian tastes, which is to say not at all. I probably shouldn’t even like it, but I do.

10:55 arrived and still no minibus. Now we were getting worried, especially after what had happened in Krasnoyarsk. We did not need to be stranded for 3 days in Irkutsk. With onward tickets already booked we knew we might be able to move on, but it would mean forfeiting the tickets we’d already purchased. Oh, and three days in Irkutsk is a lot, especially when sleeping on park benches.

11am rolls around and we’re getting worried for real. We didn’t have a place to stay in town, and we didn’t really know what we were going to do if we couldn’t get to the island. Drink beer down by the river, I suppose. I know I said that last time, but that’s what you do in Russia in the summertime. They set up seasonal beer tents. They’ve got sound systems, draught taps and the whole works. And then they all go drink beer by the river. And eat dried fish. Or smoked fish. Whichever you like better.

With our situation becoming rather murky, Sunshine suggests I ask at the minibus that’s been there a while and looks like it’s ready to leave. It has no sign, it looks a bit like a private tour actually, but it looked promising, I guess because the driver had a Baikal shirt. I am the designated “talker”, on account of knowing more Russian than Sunshine. I asked, and it was the minibus we wanted. What? Yeah, our fixer hadn’t fixed a single thing for us. Thankfully, we did it for ourselves. Crisis averted. We probably should have asked much earlier but no worries because we were on the minibus and on our way.

The road to Olkhon is long and mostly boring, through pastureland. Did you know they raise cows in Siberia? Well, they do. Sometimes, like when we’re rolling past birch forests, Siberia looks like Siberia. But green grass fields with cows? Who knew?

As you near the lake, the green of life disappears. The ground becomes a barren moonscape, the villages increasingly desolate. At the penultimate village, the roads are littered with stray dogs and fallen drunks, right in the middle of the street. Amid the desolation, there are totem sticks at the side of the road and among the Buryat people that live here, elements of shamanism must still exist. These totem sticks are not unlike shrines you see at the side of the road in a lot of Asian countries. We saw a stupa, too – Buryats are Buddhist, almost unique among Russia’s ethnic stew (Tuvans are as well).

A short ferry takes you to Olkhon. By this point we’d been blasting at 80 km/h on dirt roads, jarring our vehicles and our bones. The scenery, aside from the decrepit villages, was stark beauty. On the island, it is more of the same. The driver didn’t seem to care much for his vehicle and we hammered through the rocky landscape, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

The main settlement on Olkhon Island is Kuzhir, a ramshackle wooden village. Sunshine made a good point – it looked like what a village in British Columbia would have looked like in the 19th century, just ramshackle wooden buildings and a muddy main street. The island is basically split between the barren southern and western parts and the green northeastern parts. The village sits at the edge of the forested part of the island, close to both water and wood. Even at that, life must be tough.

Smoked fish are cheap here, and a traditional source of life. These fish are called omul, and they are among the tastiest fish on the planet. Our guide in Ulan Ude would later note, in reference to omul, “I eat no other fish.” By that point, after several days of indulgence, the statement did not seem unreasonable at all. Omul come in a lot of different forms here, different treatments, cures, and levels of smoke. You can buy fresh ones, too, and the locals use them to make a ceviche-like dish.

Olkhon only recently received electricity and is starting to become an eco-tourism destination. Such places – relatively undiscovered and underdeveloped – can be great, albeit with some frustrations as well, as there remain some kinks in need of ironing. Here, though, the biggest problem was the weather. It’s Siberia. It was cold and rainy. The week before was hot and sunny, we were told, great for hiking, mountain biking and excursions for shamanic sites and traditional Buryat villages.

For us, however, the deluge meant forgoing all of those things and staying in our warm and cozy cabin. I finally finished my book. I’m a slow reader, and books take me forever to get through. We comforted ourselves with delicious smoked omul and planned a trip to the banya. Once they get this place going, Olkhon will be a great destination. And if they leave that road unpaved and the crossing to the island unbridged, it will probably remain an off-the-beaten track treasure.

But who knows what they’ll do – they need the money. There is no economy. Most of rural Siberia is subsistence living. The wooden villages are pretty, but there’s no industry and the growing season is short. Olkhon appears worthless for agriculture, so it’s all about the fish. A few years ago, stocks were at a low level and fishing for omul was banned – the locals kept fishing anyway because that’s about all they eat most of the year.

Overall, the richness and variety of smoked and dried fish in Russia is unparalleled, and the prices are great. One could be excused, upon sampling some oily, smoke-rich omul, for thinking that a life of eating nothing else is really not that hard a life after all. We felt like Olkhon was the land of the lotus-eaters, substituting lotus for omul. Even the Wikipedia article on the fish cites it as a “highlight of travelers along the Trans-Siberian”. Yup.

The other thing about rural places is the quality of sleep. I grew up in the suburbs, and I remember having trouble sleeping at my grandparents’ place in the country. It was too dark and too quiet. Now places like this are unbelievably good for sleep. Yet, it’s also interesting that we’re so spoiled for daylight I feel a little cheated when we actually have night time. Why does it need to get dark at all? We start going south in a few days and the adjustment will be a little weird.

We never did see good weather on Olkhon. The sun finally arrived about the same time we left the island, so at least our evening in Irkutsk was bright. That was more fun. The same non-fixer who had “booked” our passage on the minibus – but clearly did not – had set us up with a guesthouse. This place did not exist. We went to the address and nothing. We searched around – we’ve stayed in unconventional places without signs before – and nothing. We ended up staying at the Hotel Irkutsk, the local Soviet-era monstrosity. It was perfectly fine, and cost less than we’d expected. We walked along the river (as did the rest of the city) and had beers on a barge as the sun set on us for the first time in days. It felt good, and the next day was just a six-hour train ride to Ulan Ude.

The Krasnoyarsk Story

2011-08-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

And then things went off the rails.

Not the train, thankfully. That thing just kept on rolling. Coming into Krasnoyarsk, the scenery got prettier. Green rolling hills were dotted with picaresque wooden villages – those villages will truly be emblematic of Siberia for me now. I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours when we pulled into Krasnoyarsk. The timezone thing was starting to really get to me. Our arrival was at 2:30am Moscow time, and that’s where I was stuck, even though locally it was 6:30 am. I had fallen asleep at the early hour of 11pm Moscow time…so you can see I got almost no sleep.

We’d expected to be met at the train station, by our homestay host/guide. We had visions of a hot shower – important after a 34 hour train ride – and a big bowl of porridge, followed by a big hike in beautiful Stolby Park just outside of town. Instead, we enjoyed panic, despair, and a few hours inside of a Subway being blasted by the soundtrack to a phenomenally crappy nightclub.

Our guide was a no-show. It is such an empty feeling, to get off the train expecting somebody to meet you and seeing nothing. Nobody. This was really, really, really not cool.

Krasnoyarsk is not Moscow – there isn’t much to do and not many places to stay. I’ve been down this road before. A $25 hotel room that costs $200, and an afternoon sucking back beer down by the river was starting to look as good as our day was going to get. The whole homestay thing was sight unseen, without even much information online. We were already out on a limb, but we wanted a really good experience in a short amount of time. Now we were stranded. What to do?

Well the first step was to call the homestay, right. Need Skype for that. The train station, of course, was in the grottiest part of town. It was grim times, but there was a Subway not too far away, and it was open. That became our home base. For many frustrating hours. This being Russia, they played very bad music at very high volumes for the duration of our stay. Can't complain too much, though, because the laissez-faire attitude of the staff allowed us to set up camp for several hours without actually buying anything. At one point we actually tried to buy something, but couldn't find anybody to actually process the transaction.

Eventually we were able to get hold of our host. She realized the mistake she made was pretty bad, and wanted a second chance. We rolled with it.

Stolby, the park we’d come to see with its green-cloaked mountains punctuated by sharp rocky outcroppings, was closed. As it turned out, they’d had some problems with the local bears (language lesson - 'bear' in Russian is 'medved') including some people being chased onto a roof and that sort of thing. Bears, huh. I guess we didn’t want to deal with bears anyway. What am I going to do with a bear? Stab it with my cheese-slicing knife? Call it names? No thank you.

They have a local equivalent of Grouse Mountain in Krasnoyarsk, so we did that, a packaged nature where you mostly just look at the wilderness from the top of a peak that you access by chairlift while drinking Japanese beer. It is a very pretty area, and we didn’t get the exercise we’d wanted, but it was a good substitute. There were no bears.

The homestay was actually quite nice. The hosts were friendly and we were well-fed. Krasnoyarsk – more than any other Siberian city we saw – has neighbourhoods that are essentially villages, with the wooden houses and lots of green space. We stayed out there, in one of those little village-hoods, on the edge of town.

They had a kitten named Tomas, a savage killer in the making. We did battle. Kittens love play-fighting, and I’m more than happy to accommodate. For dinner they served us some smoked salmon. It was the best we’d ever tasted. We asked where they got it – some old lady or fifteenth-generation smokehouse no doubt. The grocery store, they said. We were floored – they just randomly bought smoked salmon from the grocery store and it was the best we’d ever had. The Siberians seriously know about smoking fish.

The next leg, our third in total, was our first leg in 1st class. First class is definitely a step up. The clean bathrooms actually have toilet paper - most other trains seem to have budgeted a single roll for trips that average four or five days. Great if you're first to the dump as you're leaving Moscow but otherwise, well, there's a reason they sell toilet paper at the kiosks in the train stations. And the toilet paper is, um, well technically it is paper and it is positioned in the toilet, on a roll. But that's about the only way you'd know it was toilet paper...might as well use yesterday's newspaper. Hemorrhoid sufferers look out!

But most of all in first class you have two beds in the cabin, so no roommates. It is a little antisocial, yes, but privacy is the biggest luxury of all. It’s not a five-star experience or anything, with a big giant bathroom, a palm-lined beach or a pillow menu, but it’s nice to have space to yourself and it makes the trip just so much easier. The ride to Irkutsk takes 18 hours. Feels like nothing. You’re literally sitting there, two hours into the journey, wondering if you’re going to have time to do anything at all. A couple of beers, a couple of chapters, a quick nap and we’ll be there. And there is one of the most amazing places we’ve ever seen.

Rolling Through Siberia

2011-08-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Moscow seems like a very long time ago. We’re east of Novosibirsk on the second leg of the journey, still nine hours out from Krasnoyarsk. We entered Siberia, technically, somewhere just west of Tyumen, which was only a few hours after leaving Ekaterinburg. We toasted with a few beers purchased on the train platform in Tyumen, something the Russians are planning to ban (sales of beer at train stations) in 2013. I don’t really see what problem this solves – people want to find oblivion for a number of reasons and convenience isn’t really high on that list. And for those of us who want a beer for non-oblivion reasons, such rules are nothing short of ridiculous. Hey Dmitri, do something about the world’s highest number of junkies, before enacting stupid laws that take the fun out of those long-distance train rides.

Tyumen was the first of several cities that we would pass by. In the western part of Siberia, there are cities with some regularity. It was dark in Tyumen. The train system in Russia runs entirely on Moscow time, which can be a bit disorienting as you progress through the countries nine or so time zones. You wake up in the morning and the meal car isn’t open because to them it is in the middle of the night. But they’re still serving dinner at what to you is 2am.

When we awoke, sometime past the city of Omsk, the landscape had become decidedly more Siberian. It was flat, with and endless expanse of forests, fields and bogs. Villages are nearly all wooden now, sometimes brightly painted, and having a much cozier, more timeless appearance. A few hours before Novosibirsk we stopped at a place called Barabinsk. This was classic. The platform consisted of a thin strip of chewed-up tarmac, clearly not having received a single kopeck of funding for repair since the end of Communism, and possibly some time before that. Babushkas owned this place, walking around selling bread, fried doughy things and whole smoked fish. I bought one such fish from one such babushka, and it cost four dollars. Smoked fish is something the Russians do really, really well. They eat it with beer. I bought some beer, too. All the small stops have great food. The big city stops are worthless for food – I guess the theory is that the longer stops people can get out and go shopping or something. But those small stops – ones like Barabinsk – became some of the most memorable on the trip for the local characters selling local food. Our cabinmate bought a whole roasted chicken. Why not?

Along the way, we determined with the help of our map that we really were in Asia. We were farther east than Kashgar, which was the first place I’d been to in China. At Novosibirsk, we resupplied our beer and ate the last of the smoked fish. Our cabinmates were doing much the same thing, and as a result we finally after 22 hours or so got to meet them and hear their stories. Time moves slowly on the Trans-Siberian and there is seldom any urgency to do anything. We still had nine hours to chat.

Day One...slow and easy

2011-08-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

“It doesn’t feel like we should be that close.”

It’s a funny thing to say when you’re still five hours away from your destination, but also funny when you’ve been on the train for 23 hours already. But Sunshine was right. We’d fallen into the rhythm of train life almost instantly, as soon as the gentle rocking began. Our 2nd class cabin had seen a variety of occupants as we rolled through the endless green of European Russia. We’d figured out ways to make the bathroom tolerable; we’d stretched our legs at the station stops and taken the opportunity to acquire local beer along the way. We were feeling pretty good about making it to Beijing with our sanity intact.

Our route took us through some of Russia’s ethnic republics in the central Volga region. Russia is more diverse than most people realize. This is evident in the faces in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but soon after leaving these cities come the Volga republics. The Chuvash live in Chuvashia, the Tatars live in Tatarstan. The Mary live in Mary-El and the Bashkirs live in Bashkortostan. This is just one small region of the country – further ethnic quilts exist in the Caucasus Mountains, in Siberia and in the Far East as well. We rode through the hop farms of Chuvashia at night, but we were able to see the Kazan Kremlin as we pulled in around 3am. A kremlin is a citadel, and many Russian cities have one. Kazan’s is unique in that it has not only a large Orthodox church but also a mosque. The Kazan Kremlin was lit up brightly, and was an amazing sight – probably better than when I visited it in 2004.

We passed through oil-rich Bashkortostan, and cut through Udmurtia as well, home of the Udmurts. Villages grew progressively older as we moved east. Modern suburbs fell into memory, replaced by wooden houses with large vegetable gardens, woodpiles and little wooden banyas pouring smoke from their chimneys. Soon we would arrive in the mineral-rich Ural Mountains, another section of vast Russia, and another unusual gateway into Asia – if you fly into Tokyo or Hong Kong your Asian gateway is quintessential. Ekaterinburg, a few kilometres inside the signpost marking the beginning of the continent, is definitely a different way of doing things.

The city is pleasant, which I guess is good enough. They have a little subway system that took us to our hotel, and we had a drink at a Czech pub. There is a pretty lake in the middle, some older buildings...basically a quiet provincial town that in summer is nice enough. There's a great beer store there that allows you to buy draft in big plastic bottles to go, so we did that. It wasn't the most adventurous stop of the trip...so probably the last stop on the trip that wasn't a little bit crazy in some way.

The Blog is Back

2011-07-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

The blog is back!

We’ve been bad posters, largely on account of not having anything terribly exciting to talk about, followed by a stretch that had just way too much excitement. All day adventure, every day, and no time or energy at the end of the night to write about it. It’s a crying shame, too. You'd probably like to hear about it. When we left Cyprus we made the quick flight to Athens. It was beautiful, soaring over the Aegean and all the islands.

Athens was a great city. Yes, there are riots and protests but we avoided those. Due to a mix-up, we had two apartments, one on top of the other, with a rooftop as well. Views of the Parthenon, it was brilliant. The night life in Athens was much better than expected, and the people were friendly, contrary to what is sometimes written. There’s a metro, so no worries about the traffic, which also has a bad reputation. We found nothing to complain about and would gladly go back.

From there, we went to Israel for an intensive crash course in just about everything – the many types of Judaism, Middle Eastern politics at ground level, falafels, desert life, beach life, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Lots of places that we went to made the news for something or other either just before we got there or just after we left.

After Israel, we went to St. Petersburg, with its jaw-dropping architecture and impressive beer scene. We drank with Per Forsgren and his family, discovered Brasserie Metropole (a truly awesome brewpub) and in general had a lovely, easy introduction to Russia.

And this is where the story begins.

The Trans-Siberian is rightfully one of the world’s most famous journeys. I’ve dreamed about it for a long time and experienced elements of it in 2004 when I traveled from Warsaw to Bangkok. I went to Russia’s Volga cities, Central Asia and Western China. That trip was unconventional; this is a more traditional journey. It is most properly known as the Trans-Mongolian but that is a mere technicality, mostly for hard-core train buffs and epic journey geeks. For all practical purposes, this was the Trans-Siberian.

Despite planning well in advance, we actually had very little time to prepare. We had trouble with the new Russian visa rules, and by the time we got our visas we only had a week or so to honestly get ready for this thing. Most people undertaking a journey like this would prepare for months. We basically spent a day in Moscow getting our act together – food for the train, a Russian railways guide to follow along with all the stops, and to make last-second arrangements that would hopefully ensure that we could avoid sleeping in any deserted train stations along the way.

Stress was high when we got on board for the first leg – a hearty welcome ride of 28 hours that would take us from Kazan Station in Moscow to Ekaterinburg, the main city of the Ural Mountain region. Not quite Siberia at that point, but technically Asia, by a few kilometres anyway. It was hot and sweaty in Moscow that day, and the train was worse by far. Sitting at the station, broiling in the hot sun waiting for departure, it was more of a banya than a train car. Sweat was pouring off of us like Victoria Falls. We were loaded down, too, and badly. We have our bags – with four seasons of clothes and all we need to survive – plus all the food and water we could manage. We looked ridiculous, of that I have no doubt. But we can’t drink the water on the train and we’d heard nothing good about the meal cars. So we took no chances. Russian trains do have samovars, so we had a bunch of instant noodles – they weigh nothing but they take up a lot of space and that makes it looks worse than it is. Water, on the other hand, is just plain heavy.

After our death march to the station and then onto the banya-car, the wagon lurched underneath of us and our journey commenced. It was a proud moment. The train was not the official Trans-Sib, the No. 8, but was one of many that cross the country. This one was going to Tinda – somewhere in the Russian Far East – but I can’t imagine too many people on board were going that far. We rolled slowly through the Moscow suburbs and finally into open countryside. In European Russia, it looks mostly like fields and birch trees. The view is not actually that exciting, but that’s part of the fun. The sun sets very slowly in Russia during summer, and at that latitude it barely sets at all before it begins to rise again.

The journey was under way. 7855 kilometres. 135 hours on the train. 5 stops along the way. See you in Beijing.

Year in Review: A Superlative List

2010-12-31T05:27:00.000-08:00

Beer of the Year

With twelve months of beer drinking under our belts this year, this was a surprisingly easy decision It would be pretty hard to top the experience of drinking the new beer brewed by Schlenkerla, the Eiche (oak) smoked doppelbock. We got to try it three ways: straight from the tanks in the brewery cellars, from the wooden barrels in the tavern, and in bottles. Our near-fanatical commitment to in-situ drinking holds here, as drinking any Schlenkerla brew from the barrels in the tavern is an unforgettable experience.

Most Surprising Beer

No, it wasn't that imperial stout from Brunei (just kidding--alcohol is banned in Brunei). For Josh, the Wuhan brewing institute hefeweizen was not a surprise because he'd already had it after visiting Wuhan a few years back, which is of course why he made it possible for Sunshine to visit in 2010. The Wuhan brewing institute is part of the local technology university. Each year the graduating class learns how to make a classic German hefeweizen. The finished product is astonishingly tasty, to the point where it is easily better than most native German versions of the style. Given this was not a surprise to Josh, we'll both agree that the surprise beer of the year was the gueze blended by a non-commercial German lambic blender. To tell you just how good this gueze was, we opened a bottle of Cantillon lambic Bio afterwards and it paled in comparison.

Most Memorable Meal

This is by far the most difficult one to choose, after spending our year in some of the world's best food nations. Was it the salted egg crab in Kuala Lumpur? The chili pan mee, also in KL? The Nyonya feast we had in Ipoh? Alley dumplings in Shanghai? Overall, we agree that the Philippine birthday dinner over in Kuching, Malaysia on the island of Borneo deserves to win. Our curry was served in a pumpkin.

Serious Barista Coffee of the Year

This one is a tie between Zoka in Seattle and Artisan Roasters in Edinburgh

Pub of the Year (Besides Schlenkerla)

They didn't have the best beer selection and a couple were wonky, but for some reason we kept feeling drawn to return again and again to the Bow Bar during our three week stay in Edinburgh. There is something about the character of that place, not to mention the stellar single malt selection, that makes the Bow Bar a (relatively) easy winner.

Dessert of the Year

Neither of us are dessert lovers to begin with, so we really mean it when we say that England had the only dessert worth talking about: sticky toffee pudding. I don't know how they make it, but it's absolutely decadent and delicious--the way a proper dessert should be. One of the best we had was in the English lake district in a town called Torver.

Restaurant of the Year

Is it possible to eat at the same restaurant four days a week for five months straight? You would not think so, but during our busiest time of year Nasi Ayam Lorong Perak fed us fresh and varied array of Malaysian food ranging from curried crab, squid with sambal, tempeh goreng, banana leaf fish and rendang. Easily the best nasi champur in town--and it's a simple street stall too and we got our meals to go.

Concert of the Year

Based on atmosphere alone, the Rainforest World Music Festival wins. Held in the middle of the Borneo jungle, our two full days of concerts came complete with pouring rain and mud pit dancing. Based on music alone, though, seeing Einsturzende Neubauten in Prague takes the cake.

Islay Malt of the Year

All of them. If we had to choose, we'll take the Laphroaig 30-year old.

Pork Sandwich of the Year

After waiting in line for the famous pork sandwich in Macau in 2009, and touring the American South earlier that year, we are well on the way to creating a global top ten list of pork sandwiches. Oink in Edinburgh wins this year, with their fabulous take on pulled pork. The hax'n semmel at Oktoberfest is in second place.

Beer Festival of the Year

We went to some goodies: Strange Brew near Seattle; the Singapore beer fest. By far the most characterful--and probably the one with the rarest beers and ciders--was the Swansea Bay beer festival in Wales.

Beer Culture of the Year

Somerset, with its commitment to real ale, real character pubs, slow food, and traditional cider, was one of the real joys of 2010.

Berliner Mauer

2010-12-14T04:05:00.000-08:00

Our flat in Berlin is in Pankow, the former East. What’s amazing is that we are a stone’s throw from one of the S-Bahn stations. I can read the names on the shopping bags of the people standing on the platform. I mean it’s RIGHT THERE. But between us and the tracks is a little marker that reads “Berliner Mauer 1961-1989”.

The Wall.

For nearly thirty years, whoever lived here would have looked out of the front window and seen West German commuters. I’m trying to imagine how strange that period must have been if that was us. We would have received their television and radio of course, but from here we would have seen the buildings, the people…we could have shouted to them and them back to us. We could have flown kites from our street and sent bottles of East German Schultheiss Berliner Weisse to the other side. They would have flown kites and sent us fancy cheeses or something. Ok, the guards wouldn’t have allowed any of that. But we’re people that do our best not to have borders and constraints. I’m trying to imagine looking at your window everyday at a place you could never go. Looking at a giant wall with guards and machine guns, telling you that you could no longer patronize your favorite bakery or tavern, even though you can smell the bread or hear the din from the biergarten.

We’re old enough to remember when they tore that thing down, and what a big deal that was for the city and for the world. But there’s still nothing quite like envisioning that for yourself.

SCAM ALERT Be smart.

2010-10-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Today I found this Web site.

On the surface, it looks like a legitimate booking agent for flats in Europe.

Having seen many Web sites similar to this one, I took it at face value. The prices are excellent. So, I sent an inquiry regarding an apartment in Dublin and another in Berlin. The response was friendly and prompt. The agent summarized the details of the apartment and even gave me a discount without me asking. They offered a free airport transfer too. It was really tempting.

But look a little closer.

Click on any city. Just pick one. Let's say Paris. OK? View the apartments listed.

Then click another city. Amsterdam maybe? Or try Dublin or Berlin like we were. Tell me what you see. Notice anything funny?

The pictures change, sure. But make sure you read this part of each listing:

"FACILITIES INCLUDE:
Safe, Iron & Ironing Mat, Hairdryer.
Air Cooling System
Direct Dial Telephone
Satellite TV, Music System
Passenger Lift
Same day Dry Cleaning service
Refridgerator, Air-condition
Laundry facility available in the building
Cots / Crib available free of charge
Free of charge high speed Internet access in all apartments & Wi Fi in the lobby.
Linen changed once per week, towels changed twice per week. Daily service available at extra charge.
Fully equipped kitchen with hotplate, microwave, dishwasher, fridge, kettle, toaster, cutlery, china, glassware

ON-SITE FACILITIES
24 Hour Porter/Security Guard,24 Hour Concierge,Private Car Parking at Extra Charge,Communal Courtyard

SERVICES
Cots & High Chairs Available,Welcome Packs,Maid Service once a week,Air-Port Shuttle

DETAILS
Apt Type: One Bedroom
Bed type: Real Bed
Accommodates: 3max
Cost: £35 per Night - £240 per Wk
VAT: 1%
Total Sq Ft: 712 (70 Sq M) approx

BOOK NOW"

Check the prices, too.

How is it that flats in different cities, on different streets, in different buildings, owned by different people, all have the same facilities? How is it that they all cost the same?

Thanks to a combination of suspicion and pragmatism, I Googled the Web site and asked about it on the best travel Website of all time, Trip Advisor. Here's hoping that TA will see my plug and duly reward me with perks.

On Google I discovered a lone Tweet bemoaning the loss of some £400+ to the aforementioned businesspeople who run the europevacationhomes.eu.com Web site.

Wow. That could have been me! Or you! Be careful folks. I've been around the block long enough to know this: If it smells like crap it probably is.

This scam doesn't even look like one on the surface. It seems like a booking site no different than any other. But one thing is important to note. I found the link to this Web site not on Google, but on Craigslist. I would not typically trust Craigslist for short-term housing, at least when renting sight unseen.

The first thing that raised my eyebrows (after the cheap prices) was that every building had the exact same amenities. That is impossible, even in our homogenizing world.

The prices raised some red flags too. Not only were they uniform across different cities, but they were also lower than market value for similar properties on a short-term let basis.

Whoever runs this Web site is smart. They used a lot of different, but realistic, photos. They respond to email requests very promptly. They also price the flats so that they are just below market value but not so low that you would know something was wrong. They are just low enough to seduce the frugal traveler.

Fortunately, they can't nail a smart traveler!

Roots

2010-10-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

Josh – I lost my grandmother the other day. It was expected, as health issues had been fairly severe for quite some time, but it still leaves me with a hole. Where once I had roots, the vestiges of those roots are disappearing. One could argue that the way we live – traveling around the world staying for just weeks or months in any one place – it’s hard enough to have a sense of roots.

And it is. There are a lot of challenges to doing this whole living on the road thing. You don’t really get a chance to put down roots anywhere. We’re back in Bamberg now, where the journey basically started last summer. It’s comfortable because we know where everything is, but it’s also a little uncomfortable because it’s still not home. A fun waystation, but we’re not Germans and we’re not trying to be. We just like the beer here. And in a couple of months, off we'll go to a new adventure, some other new crazy place.

One of the things I like about what we do is that we do get the chance to form bonds with people all over the world. Everywhere we go gets to be a home for a while, and that’s a bit different than the whirlwind sightseeing we used to do. But this whole thing has me thinking about my roots and the best ways to keep them. Technology is great, but it’s not perfect because not everybody is online as much as we are. So sometimes we have to remember to work a little harder. We still wouldn't trade what we do for anything - it's one heck of a way to live. Definitely a little different, just like we are.

I feel like I’ve lost part of my connection with Nova Scotia now that both of my grandparents there have passed. Of course, that had to happen, because transition is the one constant in this world. I read today that in 10 million years, long after the human race is gone, Africa will be split into two by a new ocean. Transition is constant, even if slow. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how good it is. Rest in peace, Grandma.

"Muslims go to Mecca. Swedes go to Islay."

2010-09-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's a running joke at the distilleries about the large groups of Swedish men--unfortunately out of shape and gray ones, not boyish blondes--who come to Islay. Like us, they are on pilgrimage for peated malt, and indeed every distillery tour we were on had a Swedish contingency. There were smaller groups of Finns and French, Americans and English, Italians and Indians, Canadians and Japanese.

Our global group of whisky tourists cutting peat

We arrived on the island by 30-seater Saab turboprop, a more nauseating journey than expected. The only commercial flights to Islay are from Glasgow, where we passed a kindergarten whisky exam at the Bon Accord bar. Amused by my note-taking, a friend of the owner asked the bartender to pour us two drams for a blind tasting. One was a Macallan 16, the other was plonk. It was an easy test, and we both passed.

At the Bon Accord

Our Islay adventure began by getting stranded at the airport. The only taxi had already left and there were no busses. All three of the airport staff did their best to help. The woman at the cafe asked the other two, "They are staying at the Oystercatcher. Do you know her number?" (as if one of her coworkers would know the owner's number by heart). When we finally got a hold of the B&B owner Lynn on the phone, she suggested that we drive her car to town. It was parked at the airport with the keys left inside. How's that for small town island life?

Port Ellen

The day was bright, and the scenery left me with mouth agape. The hills and vales are mostly treeless, with craggy rocks jutting out from a blanket of peat and purple heather. White-washed houses from the early 20th century line the crescent-shaped harbor. The malting company dominates the skyline of Port Ellen and emits a continual plume of peat smoke.

Rural Islay

After some mad photographic moments, the distillery touring began with Ardbeg. This was a proper pilgrimage for Josh, who has been a member of the Ardbeg society for some 7-8 years. We walked from Port Ellen but wouldn't recommend that until they build a proper walking path. As it is now, the only way is on a shoulderless asphalt road that the trucks use to tote their tons of barley. We did take a short detour through the fields to see one of the many ancient standing stones on the island. Islay has been settled for millennia by Neolithic farmers, Christians, Celts, Scots, and Vikings.

standing stone nr. Port Ellen

Day two we took the special Laphroaig "Source, Peat, Malt" tour in the morning, likely one of the last of the season they will offer as the weather is starting to turn. We walk to Laphroaig's water source, drink a dram, walk to Laphroaig's peat bog, cut peat ourselves, drink a dram, smell and watch the smoke penetrate the barley in the distillery kiln house. A terroir lesson par excellence. We also become "owners" of a piece of distillery peat land, and we can stick a flag on our plot.

Sunshine cutting peat

the Laphroaig peat plot

the kiln

On the tour we met an American couple, Karen and Carl from Raleigh, who were on the Ardbeg tour with us the day before. They invited us first to do the Premium Tasting at Laphroaig, which we all loved. The 30 Year Old Cairdeas was so delicious that I was almost ready to plonk down the ￡500 for a bottle...

Laphroaig special tasting

Luckily for the bank account we had to leave in a hurry, as Karen and Carl invited us to tag along on their distillery plans for the rest of the day. We went first to Caol Ila and then to Bunnahabain. I thought we would get bored but each distillery tour offers some new information, and each one is slightly different.

For all the distilleries, the first half of the tour is basically like visiting a brewery. There is a mash tun holding the wort, followed by the pitching of yeast. At Caol Ila and sister distillery Lagavulin, the tour includes a taste the pre-distilled fermented wort called "wash." The name "wash" is appropriate. It tastes like what beer must have tasted like before the discovery of hops: yeasty, sweet, sour, dirty, and in this case, a little smokey. It sounds better than it tastes, but the experience of imbibing the source produce is fun.

Josh drinking the wash

On day 3 we took a quick tour of Lagavulin, unfortunately missing out on the connoisseur tasting in the barrel room because of our tight schedule. Something to leave on the table for next time (there will be one). Before heading to the airport we squeezed in one more distillery: Bowmore. Josh and I agreed that Bowmore was the biggest surprise of Islay. The standard expression has loads of chocolate and cocoa butter along with the subtle smoke, and we also opted to try a few more expressions with a bottle of Islay Ales Single Malt beer we got at the grocery store--they kindly let us open it in the distillery. Our last moments on the island were technically spent going through the ridiculously tight security the airport, but our last spiritual moments on Islay were at Bowmore sipping on a dram and a beer in the upstairs lounge overlooking Loch Indaal.

I took tasting notes on almost all the whiskys I tried. Among the highlights of Islay included the Ardbeg Uigeadail, and pretty much everything from Lagavulin and Bowmore. A Lagavulin double matured in Jimenez casks is not available at the distillery. We were introduced to it at a friendly bar in Port Ellen called White Hart. Unlike some of the other sherry barrel matured whiskys, the sweetness never overpowers the peat. We also had Bruichladdich 20-year at the White Hart and found it exceptionally smooth and filled with delightful hints of peaches and licorice. Bruichladdich was one of the two distilleries we did not get around to visiting on this trip; the other was Kilchoman.

At the distilleries I particularly enjoyed the entire set of special Laphroiag expressions including the 25 year; the Cairdeas, and especially the 30-year--which was that ￡500/bottle gem that blew me away and might have changed my whisky palate forever. The Bowmore from the barrel was also memorable.

Distillery offerings are called "expressions," and am trying to incorporate that word into my vocabulary without sounding pretentious. I learned that some of the readily available and inexpensive expressions of Islay malts--the Lagavulin 16s, the Ardbeg 10s, the Bowmore 10s--should never be considered lowly. In some cases they are just as good if not better than some of the fancier and high priced limited releases. Some of the high prices reflect not quality but just rarity. All the distilleries are owned by a large liquor company (Laphroaig by Jim Beam; Ardbeg by Louis Vitton; Lagavulin and Caol Ila by Diageo). Signs of clever marketing are everywhere, and as with anything else it's important to be an educated consumer. It's heartbreaking to consider the amount of people who purchase high-end bottles for status purposes only and never even open them. It is probably most important to make lots of friends at distilleries and whisky bars because that's the best way to get to a wee nip of something you wouldn't typically buy.

Everything on Islay (pronounced Isle-le) is touched by whisky, and the distilleries are the center of village life. The situation was more intense in the early 20th century, when there were schools, churches, and housing at the distilleries. Even today, business and daily life on the island revolves around whisky. The cows eat the spent barley, the kids are raised by parents who work at a distillery, the malting company, or in local inns catering to whisky tourism.

In spite of the high-profile whisky from Islay, the island makes for a blissful retreat. The distilleries only recently opened visitors centers and they are not on the tour bus circuit. Our B&B had only 3 rooms. The largest hotels are still run like like guesthouses. Distillery tours are relatively small.

Everyone knows everyone on Islay. They are different from the mainlanders. They say "Aye" instead of "Yes," and they speak with a natural instinct for storytelling and poetic turns of phrase. Like the other Hebrides islands, Islay is a destination in itself for its stark beauty and quietude. Whisky adds an extra special dimension to Islay's culture and spirit.

2010-09-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

We haven't felt like blogging lately at all. We have been too busy cramming in every last beer and pub as possible in the Bath region (and succeeding quite well). In the time since we last wrote a blog entry, lots has happened. On our way in from Malaysia, were unexpectedly detained by British immigration for quite some time--2 hours. They even put us in separate holding cells, just to enhance the sense of intimidation. It worked--practically ruined our first day in London but we were saved by a series of great pubs and the warm company of some Ratebeerians (ChrisO & MagicDave). On day two we had another great day with Josh's cousin Andrew, visiting a few more pubs and also fulfilling my need to see some live music after a 5 month drought of it in Asia. This was a special performance with Stephen O'Malley of Sunn 0))) and percussionist Steve Noble at the small Cafe Oto.

At the moment we are are living the genteel lifestyle in Bath. The town is in a prime location for beer and cider hunting. We have been here more than 2 weeks and haven't even visited the main tourist attractions--the Roman Baths and the Bath Abbey--but we have managed to fit in a few sessions of squash. During the last one I badly pulled a calf muscle and now can't even walk properly. Sucks.

On the full moon, we rented a car for a day. We planned an ambitious itinerary that included (roughly in this order): the Stanton Drew stone circle; Cheddar; Wells; Glastonbury; the Nunney Castle; Stonehenge, and Avebury. Of course we fit in some pubs along the way. Incredibly we did all this in spite of getting a flat tyre near Nunney (yes I said 'tyre'). An angel came along and changed it for us--the delay lasted all of 30 minutes. Given that seeing Stonehenge spontaneously moved me to tears, I would say that day was a highlight of my life. I've seen the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, witnessed mass at the Vatican, walked through the Taj Mahal and ridden through the rice fields near Guilin, China. I've even shaken hands with the Dalai Lama. Stonehenge is right up there for the effect being there had on my soul.

This past weekend we took a cider-soaked side trip to Wales for the Swansea Bay Beer Festival. Just spent the one night in Swansea and then the following afternoon in Cardiff. Absolutely loved Wales and was surprised how different the vibe and people are from English. Plus, the language is cool and makes it feel quite exotic to be there.

That's about it for now, I will make a hyperlinked summary of the places and pubs we have been to when I can. We are very happy right now. We have been to a lot of memorable places and had lots of real ale, hand pulled from the cask.

Tuesday Sept 7 we will go to Scotland for 3 weeks. We will have one more update before we leave England because we are meeting some people in Bristol this weekend. On Saturday we meet Dawn, my penpal when I was a kid (who I have never met before). On Sunday we hang out with Josh's second cousins Mark and Jackie.

P.S. We have been eating a lot of cheese

Farewell, Sun

2010-08-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

This might be the last day we see the sun in quite some time. Certainly the last day we wear sandals. No more laksa. No more wantan mee. My parting words are this: We have been in Malaysia for 4.5 months and have barely scratched the surface of what there is to see, experience, and eat in this gorgeous country. Just last night we learned about the Malayan Emergency and discovered how much we don't yet know about how this--one of the world's most effortlessly multicultural nations--was formed.

Malaysians are a lot like Canadians in that they are simultaneously proud and self-deprecating. Many wonder why we like their country so much, but deep down they know. Josh and I have made a pact. It is too easy for us to return to Southeast Asia. We feel too much at home here. In 2011 we will challenge ourselves. We will decidedly NOT return to this part of the world until 2012. There are too many places we need to see to succumb to the seduction of familiarity. So, fare thee well Malaysia until 2012.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

2010-08-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

Argh. Today we found out that the apartment we wanted to rent in Bamberg fell through. It was the only one with enough space and amenities for our needs. Bambergians--and Franconians in general--defy the German stereotype. They can be woefully backwards and out of touch with technology. The apartments there have doilies and floral wallpaper and many are not Internet ready.

We finally find one we can live in and have been going back and forth with an uncommunicative landlord. After months of assuming that we had the place secure, the landlord demands an immediate deposit (which is fine) but he won't use PayPal even when I offered to pay the receiver fee. He kept saying "PayPal gives us fees." And I kept responding, "That's cool, I'll pay the fees." But he obviously didn't want to use PayPal. When I told him that my bank won't allow for an international bank-to-bank transfer he suggested we look for another apartment. This is a guy who normally rents on a daily or weekly basis and he's turning down almost 3 months of steady tenancy.

Which for us means that we are out in the cold looking for a flat for 3 months in one of Germany's top tourist towns. By now our backup flat in Bamberg is booked up. Thanks to Mr. Lameo country bumpkin.

Let's turn a bad situation into a good one shall we?

My first instinct after finding out the bad news:

Sunshine: Hey Josh wanna live in Munich instead? We'll just visit Bamberg to drink beer.
Josh: Won't it be expensive?
Sunshine: Fuck expensive, I have ruthless resourcefulness skills. I will find us a flat.
Josh: Go for it.

So I spent some time online. We have our eye on a few nice flats in Munich, where they actually live in the modern world.

Speaking of the modern world, it's really neat being at this threshhold. We are so friggin lucky being able to live like we do, and it's all because of technology and globalization. It's actually just as easy for us to find a rental in Malaysia, Singapore, and Shanghai as it is in London. And it's easier to find a flat in Borneo than in Bamberg.

We leave for London tomorrow!!! Last time I was in London I was 8 years old.

Looking forward rather than back, I have only two things on my mind: BEER and MUSIC. The two things that I have missed most.

Our Take on Brunei

2010-08-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

It was like taking a 20 minute flight to the Middle East. We descended into Brunei before we’d even bothered reaching cruising altitude and were greeted with Shell signs in Jawi (Malay written in Arabic script). The skyline of the capital is dominated by mosques and photographs of the sultan are everywhere. Even the town of Bander seri Begawan (BSB) itself seems strangely like Abu Dhabi, with low rise shophouses, more open to the street than the usual Malay style. Oh yes, and in keeping with Sharia law, no alcohol and no pork. Even in the Chinese restaurants. That’s a bit strange, really, but there was something strange about Brunei the whole way through.

Strangeness number one – also coolness number one – is that half the capital city is on stilts in the water. Water villages (kampung ayer) are fairly common in parts of Asia. They are the provenance of the ultra-poor in Cambodia, and of fishers in the Malaysian parts of Borneo. In Brunei, the kampung ayer is fairly well developed. The government has sprayed away all the mosquitoes, pushed the crocodiles out of town and built stilt-mosques, stilt-hospitals, stilt fire house, stilt-schools and even a stilt-jail and cop shop for the residents. Inside the outwardly ramshackle homes are computers, video games, and televisions. The hackeneyed travel cliché “The Venice of….” actually applies here, since you cannot go anywhere without a boat as there are no roads. Definitely cool. A water taxi only costs .50 or $1 to get from point to point but if you want to hire one to take you to down river to the Sultan's palace (worth a peek) it will cost up to 20 Brunei dollars, about USD15.

Only people of Malay origin live in the kampung ayer, but downtown you see other groups, including the Chinese who have a temple there. Our first night we stayed at the budgetary Jubilee Hotel, spent a little time in the city, and took a taxi to the Gadong night market. The town component of BSB is small and quiet so it will not be confused for any other Southeast Asian capital. But the markets could not be mistaken for anything other than Southeast Asia.

When we went to Singapore, it was interesting to compare it to Malaysia. Basically, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei are all close cousins, brothers even. They all speak Malay and English; they all have varying degrees of economic success, they all have sizable Chinese populations and they are all tropical rainforest climates. But as with Singapore, we found Brunei very different from Malaysia in vibe and content. At the Gadong night market, there were all sorts of things we hadn’t seen before. One of us was especially smitten by the local red-fleshed durian varietal; the other was down with a big chunk of goat on the bone, fresh of the grill and full of marrow. No need to mention who was who. The day market at Kg. Kianggeh the next morning yielded other unusual delights, including tarap, a member of the jackfruit family that resembles a hairy rubber ball. It's in season now and and we bought one eagerly after reading about it online. The tarap vendor also gave us some strange nut-looking things that we were told to take back to KK to cook.

After checking out the town, we checked in to the Empire. This 5-star+ hotel is the opulence you expect from one of the world’s richest countries. With its wealth, Brunei could be Singapore, but it isn’t. Instead, it has a sultan worth $20 billion. Thus, strangeness number two. The Sultan of Brunei, once the richest person in the world, owns 7000 cars according to Wiki. What the hell does he do with all of them? It’s hard to say what is the impressive car statistic after that number, but maybe the 452 Ferraris or the 134 Koenigseggs would be in there. Or the 604 Rolls Royces. And we should probably mention the guy has two 747s, presumably so he isn’t stuck flying in some sort of non-gold-plated bucket while his plane is in the shop. At least we felt good that the airport would be equipped with the latest equipment!

The Empire was built by the sultan’s brother, and sprawls over a vast oceanfront estate. The lobby has gold-plated fixtures and staircases with hundreds of large semi-precious stone inlays. Our massive room (with a bathroom almost the same size as the main room) came with a monstrous deck overlooking the South China Sea. There are pools everywhere, and a full country club as well, including a Nicklaus course. We didn’t golf, but we tried to do as much else as possible. A favorite of the sultan (and indeed many in this part of the world) is squash, so we rented some rackets, invented the rules based on what seemed would be good rules for squash, and played for an hour and a half. Fun game.

Being in the middle of nowhere, we ate at the resort, at its Italian restaurant. The food was ok, even if not authentic. And we had no bottle of wine. They don’t have alcohol in Brunei. Public drinking is banned, selling alcohol is banned. Non-Muslim visitors have an alcohol quota and expats tend to bring theirs in from Malaysia - no doubt from the nearby duty free island of Labuan. Tribespeople probably make their own toddy at home. But here’s the thing. Not knocking Islam here, because if a nation of Muslims wants to impose their alcohol restrictions on its own people, that’s their choice and too bad for the foreigners. But Brunei is only two-thirds Muslim. The Chinese are Buddhist and some tribes are Christian. Plus there’s a lot of foreigners on account of the oil business. It seems to me that if places like Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and even Pakistan can find ways to accommodate those who would like to drink (and those places are well over 90% Muslim) then so can Brunei. The Empire is a great place, but to lack that bottle of wine with your Italian dinner; or to be unable to enjoy a fine stout while watching the sunset or a cocktail at the pool bar just seems wholly unreasonable. There are non-Muslims to serve, most of the guests we saw were non-Muslim and really bars in Muslim countries get by just fine by taking measures to ensure that Muslims aren’t served. Brunei would benefit from the same – they are out of step with their more tolerant neighbours on this one. There are ways of doing this while being respectful to 1/3 of the population and a large portion of visitors. Having said that, the Empire Hotel would be a great place for a rock star detox.

Ok, rant done and really for us two days with no alcohol wasn’t a big deal. We made do just fine, because the Empire was so amazing. Sunshine had a private beach all to herself one afternoon, which is just unheard of anywhere. The hotel grounds have a full cinema with three different theaters showing new releases; 8 lanes of 10-pin bowling; billiards; badminton; tennis; and several stretches of private beach.

For a country that could have a lot going for it, it just seemed like there were too many little strange quirks, too many niggly things. There is a sense of unease that you can’t really put your finger on, and you don’t feel as relaxed in Brunei as in Malaysia or Singapore. It’s just that little bit more foreign, which made it fun for a couple of days but might become stifling for a longer visit.

Leaving KL

2010-08-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

Leaving KL was actually a very difficult process for us. We had settled into routines that made us very comfortable. We had even adapted to the miniscule supply and exhorbitant price of serious beer. We have our lunch hawkers Salwah and En Sham, with whom we became friends after eating at their stall five times a week for the past four months. Their lunchtime nasi campur (buffet) spread is exceptional – we saw no better. Each day we would take some rice and pile on a vast array of meats and veg, everything from fish-sized crabs to fried tempeh to rendang. Great traditional Malay food. We got to know a few different people in town – KL is open that way. Malaysian people on the whole are friendly and warm. It becomes easier to become at least a little bit immersed when you share a common passion, in this case food. We hunted food like the locals. The food in KL is diverse, spanning many cultures. It is at once rich and approachable. We got the sense that we would never run out of exciting new foods to try even if we spent years there. Even in our last week, we were chowing down on new things like chili pan mee (a local spicy noodle bowl) and crab with salted duck egg sauce.

I took to running around KLCC Park, located at the base of the Petronas Towers and featuring a running track. I don’t normally run, but our building’s exercise room was grubby, small and full of broken equipment. So I started running, trying to remind my lungs and heart that I used to be able to run cross-country races as a kid. The park also features a fountain. Locals and tourists alike hang out around this fountain every evening, making it a really nice public space. In short, we had found a way to become comfortable. The point we reached was sort of like the point where if we were expats staying for years we would have just felt like we knew our way around and could really maximize our experience.

Instead, we left. That’s a weird time to move. You can re-set your visa endlessly simply by taking a $10 bus to Singapore and back, so it wasn’t for any legal reason. We just have a lot of things we want to do. Leaving brought about a strange sense of anxiety as for the first time in months, we felt like travelers. Adapting back to that feeling was, if nothing else, a challenge.

We’re actually excited for the challenge that lies ahead. Our hearts are filled with joy, even if we reserve the right to occasional grumpiness. Kota Kinabalu for us is a writer’s retreat, with maybe some beach time and some nature. We will go to Brunei as well while we’re on Borneo. After that, the familiarity and comforts of Europe beckon. We look forward to all of it.

Cat City, Borneo

2010-07-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Kuching experience began with one of the most fantastic sunsets I’ve seen in a long time. The town, one of the largest on Borneo at nearly 1 million people, actually feels quite small in the core area. It was not a long walk from our hotel at the edge of downtown to the riverfront boardwalk. As the sun set, vibrant colours spilled across the sky, painting the clouds and the deep blue air everything from pink to violet and beyond. It was magical, the Borneo sky.

Kuching is the capital of Sarawak state, one of the largest parts of Malaysia and one of the historically richest parts of Borneo. The island itself is the 3rd largest in the world, but for the most part is primeval jungle, extensive mangrove and unfortunately vast expanses of palm oil plantations as well. Kuching in Malay means ‘cat’, hence the nickname Cat City, something the locals play up with cat statues and a benevolent attitude towards stray cats. Actually, the Prophet Mohammed sang the praises of cats for their role in pest control, which is why cats are treated well in most Muslim countries.

Kuching has a lot to offer. There is the Rainforest Music Festival, a three day world music fest in a jungle park. We came here for Sunshine’s birthday, specifically because it coincided with the music fest. World music festival + exotic island + monkeys + food = birthday awesomeness. There are ecotours galore, everything from native Dayak longhouses to monkey-spotting in the mangroves to trekking in a number of different jungle climates. There is also food, although this wasn’t the primary focus of our visit. Sarawak laksa is the local variant on the Malaysian classic, and our hotel featured a build-your-own-laksa at its breakfast buffet. We had midin, a local river fern, sautéed with belacan, which is a fermented shrimp paste. There was kolo mee, something like a dry wonton mee (simple dish with both wontons and noodles). We even found some Filipino food, which is not common in Malaysia. It provided a special birthday meal: bicol express served from a pumpkin, adobo pork and for a local touch some midin belacan.

We spent a week in Kuching, operating at a leisurely pace. The last night of the music festival, we found out why they call it a rainforest. The skies threatened for the two-hour buildup to the start of the music. No sooner did the first band take the stage when the clouds opened and a three-hour deluge ensued. This actually took the edge off the crowd, with everybody very happy and nobody too worried about the wet. We had ponchos set up at our camp, protecting both us and our possessions (seats, cameras, etc). The rain gave the whole show an exceptional energy, despite the grounds becoming one giant mud pit.

As nature goes, we actually did not see very much. We tried, but did not have our nature luck. We saw a few different troops of endangered proboscis monkeys, but mainly from a distance. There was a tiny snake, some bugs, fireflies but little else. Sunshine got attacked by a macaque, the little bastard wanting to steal her lunch. That was not cool, not at all.

Borneo is a place to return to. There are no big name attractions, but that is part of the attraction. It is still, by and large and despite some sprawling urban developments, the back end of nowhere. It feels remote. The skies look like remote island skies. You are a hop, skip and a jump from New Guinea, the Solomons and right into the Pacific, yet at the same time you’re a stone’s throw from the Philippines and from Singapore’s modernity. There is something unique about being there that makes you want to return.

Travel Notes

Lime Tree Hotel. We stayed 7 nights in the executive deluxe room. Loved the hotel and the room. The rooftop bar is a real highlight, with a stunning sunset view over the river and Mount Santubong.

The Rainforest World Music Festival was great, highly recommended if you are in the area.

We flew Air Asia.

For more detailed info on food and excursions, check Sunshine's Trip Advisor trip report .

Langkawi - Dry season, huh?

2010-07-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

Apparently, our visit to Langkawi took place in the dry season. The wet season must be one degree of wetness away from Atlantis I guess. Isn’t that always the way with beach vacations? Rain, rain, rain. But let’s back up a minute.

I was really out of sorts getting ready for the trip, just not there at all mentally. This culminated in missing the train as I slid across the slippery parquet at the KL Sentral train station while Sun announced the train’s departure from the bottom of the escalator. I was at the top and there was nothing we could do. We blew it. There were actually lots of places where we lost thirty seconds, it was that kind of morning. But something cool happened – when we caught the next train the rest of the train was silky smooth. We take these short trips with just carry-on and we were able therefore to check in very quickly at the kiosk, breeze through security and within ten minutes of arriving at the airport we were sitting at our gate sipping on overpriced airport water.

I should probably state that our visit to the beach island of Langkawi was not all rain. We had enough sun for me to get burned, although that same amount of sun doesn’t affect Sunshine much at all. The rain, for its part, mostly just prevented me from becoming totally lobsterized, and I was grateful for that. We had five days to do not much. So we did.

We drank at the German bar on the beach. We drank at the reggae bar on the beach. We watched some World Cup. We lay on the sand. Sun read a book and I finally sketched out some key ideas for my novel. I knew what A and B were, but only on the beach did I figure out how I was going to actually get from A to B. Now I’m ready to go. Woo!

The rains came in on our second day in the middle of the afternoon, chasing us inside around 2:30 and not letting up the rest of the day. You think the quaint beach resort with 2 TV channels and no Wifi is perfect for relaxing? We did. Except that when it rains you’re just sort of stuck sitting in the room with nothing to do. D’oh.

We rented a car on a clear Friday morning to take a trip on the cable car, which is supposed to be the highlight of Langkawi. Cancelled. Yup, our one shot and they weren’t running it. They actually had the audacity to blame the weather. 32C, sunny and no wind. Seriously – we could see the top of the cable car and there was no wind up there either. Argh. We drove to the top of the highest mountain on the island to make up for it.

Mostly, though, Langkawi was precisely the type of “did nothing” vacation we needed. 

Travel Tidbits

We stayed at the Sunset Beach Resort, on Pantai Tengah. The Trip Advisor reviews can be found here. The hotel has lovely landscaping and is right on the beach, but the rooms are set back so you cannot hear the ocean when you sleep. The rooms are very basic for the price point, but you can do a lot worse.

We enjoyed German beers and the freshest Carlsberg draft in Malaysia at the relaxed Beach Garden Resort, on Pantai Cenang about 20 minutes walk from our hotel. Beach Garden also makes a decent Mediterranean snack platter among other things.

There are a surprising number of cheap local joints for a quick meal of nasi campur or noodles. In general the food on Langkawi is generally of mediocre standard compared with the rest of Malaysia. One exception is a pizza place called T-Jays, run by a Brit who was born in Penang. This is the first Western restaurant we have eaten at in almost four months and the pizza was fabulous and worth seeking out. No Website but info is here.

Langkawi is a large island with some lovely scenery to see, especially Pantai Tanjung Rhu on the north of the island. Getting around is best by motorbike or car rental, which can be arranged through your hotel. Expect to pay at least RM100/day. Otherwise you can hire a taxi for a private tour or a tour company for specific tours, but those options would be more expensive.

Getting to and from Langkawi is either by plane or ferry. The easiest and cheapest way to get there from Kuala Lumpur is on Air Asia. Air Asia sometimes offers free flights to Langkawi, when booked several months in advance, from Penang.

Beerfest Asia Puts the Pour in Singapore

2010-06-24T01:10:00.000-07:00

Singapore is a hard city to pin down. The best way to describe it to my Florida friends is Boca meets Hong Kong--an artificial, soulless, new, manufactured, wealthy, consumer-driven zone, yet one that does not totally lack the character and culture of Asia. It's got green space, public transport, and street food but an Epcot Center ambiance.

What Singapore lacks in natural charm it makes up for in terms of convenience. Everything is easy in Singapore: especially walking. We noticed that right away because walking in KL is a pain the ass. The only thing not easy about Singapore is the cost. Ouch.

We had a killer time in Singapore because we hung out with some great people (Clive Wright from Vancouver, who we met on Facebook through Rick Green; and also fellow Ratebeerian Lars) and drank some very good beer. Beerfest Asia Singapore welcomed us as media, and we had passes for three days to the festival. The festival was 90% piss-up with most people drinking macro swill being peddled by hot chicks in costumes with fuzzy angel wings and silver tights. To me this was not a surprise because the Beerfest Asia is exactly what would happen if Miami Beach had a really big beer festival.

Festival highlights included Polish dark bock from Amber brewery called Kozlak; Locher Appelzeller Schwarzer-Kristall from Swizerland; Epic Galloway Porter from a Utah brewery; and another American brew Lakefront Bridge Burner.

Other highlights included meeting the brewer from Storm in Bali, which made me think about my cousin Court who has a second home there.

One night we got caught hungry at the festival and found out the hard way how thoughtless the planners were in neglecting to include some good eats. This seemed extra sinful in Singapore, a city known for its cuisine. The fast food was below-average even for its type and made Sysco look like a Michelin guide candidate. I picked away at some cardboardy fries to stave off inebriation while I sipped on the beer to assuage my palate.

In Singapore itself we didn't actually get to eat as much as we would have liked because we were there for only 3 days and all 3 days were festival days. But we did go on one hunt for laksa. The stall is one recommended by Bourdain but surprisingly we were the only foreigners there. The laksa was different from any we had before, with the white (rice) noodle cut up into small pieces to eat with a spoon alone, plus the addition of plump fresh oysters and real squid.

The bands at the fest were all crap except for Hell's Belles, a fun all-female five-piece AC/DC tribute band from west coast, USA. With my press pass, I had pit access and even though I looked like a fool next to the real pros I got some good shots. Of course, all my good shots are of the bass player because that's the way I roll.

I miss music as much as I miss good beer, but we did not get to do anything beyond the beerfest in Singapore in terms of catching some shows. KL leaves us starving for good entertainment but thankfully we have the World Cup! We have watched as many matches as possible and they were showing them on two large screens at the festival.

We fit in all of Singapore's brewpubs except for Archipelago, which was closed on Sunday afternoon. However, we had all of the available Archipelago beers at other bars as well as at the festival where we drank with the brewer, Fal Allen. For your convenience, here is a link to Fal's list of the Singapore brewpubs.

You can check out my impressions of some of those places on Ratebeer as well as the individual Singaporean beers here. Both Josh and I agreed that of the local brews, the Brewerkz cask-conditioned Hopback Ale was the most enjoyable.

We stayed at the Swissotel Stamford, which is a classy but friendly establishment. It was once the tallest hotel in the world, and it's still one of the tallest. Our room was on the 56th floor--certainly the highest room I've ever had. The hotel is located in the same mall as the City Hall metro stop, making getting around town and to the festival very easy for us. You can read my review of the Swissotel on Trip Advisor. We flew in via Air Asia because they had a good deal on the hotel. The bus from KL would have taken about 5 hours, maybe more with the border crossing. Maybe next time we will try it that way just to see what it's like to go through the bustling border town of Johor Bahru.

A brief note on Kyrgyzstan

2010-06-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to write a short note about the crisis in Kyrgyzstan these days. I spent some time there in 2004, and I spent four days in particular in Osh, which is now the epicentre of the violence. The events are described here.

Osh is one of the crazier places I’ve visited. It can at times seem like nothing much. The food there was better than most places in Central Asia because the Fergana Valley is an agricultural heartland of the region. The problem is that the Fergana Valley was split among three republics by Stalin and those divisions stayed after the USSR collapsed. So the situation is that although Osh is in Kyrgyzstan, it is populated mainly by Uzbeks. It’s actually a multiethnic stew as there are lots of Tajiks there as well, along with the odd Chinese, Afghan and a handful of Russians. When I was there, unemployment was around 80%. It was primarily a narco-city, a major transit point for drugs coming in from Tajikistan and Afghanistan going either to Moscow or China.

There are signs of trouble in a city like that. When people tell you not to go out after midnight they give you that look that tells you they aren’t joking around. They know as a young man you might ignore their advice but they want you to get the message loud and clear. I stayed in a flat in a typical Soviet apartment block. On the ground floor, a fence was thrown together around a fairly nice car. One savage beast of a dog guarded that car, the sort of dog that if it ever got out of that enclosure would have gone on a killing spree. You don’t see that kind of thing in most places, only in places that are a little bit lawless.

They have cops and all, but they aren’t that interested in what we think cops should be interested in. Once in the bazaar, a group of Russians in front of me did a 180 and pushed pass me, very abruptly. I kept going and sure enough I ran straight into a policeman. I don’t trust policemen much back home much less in one of the poorest countries in the world. Sure enough, I was hauled in. He was more interested in my money belt than anything else. I decided that I probably had some sort of rights and refused to even show any money besides the fistful of som I had in my pocket (enough to buy lunch). I was eventually allowed on my way. It was a bit of a lawless place, with the police more worried about shaking down Russians (no doubt he thought I was one, since other foreigners are very rare in Osh) rather than the drug trafficking that fuels the city’s economy.

They’ve had problems like the ones they’re having now before during the Soviet days. Everything seemed peaceful otherwise – the Kyrgyz themselves are wonderful people and the Uzbeks pretty cool too. But Kyrgyzstan has crap government, and that part of the world is always a bit tribal. It’s sad to see the country rip itself apart under these types of circumstances. And a little bit strange to see a city I was in just six years ago burning to the ground.

FOUSs (not ROUSs): Fruits of Unusual Size

2010-06-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

If wild goose chasing were a sporting event, Josh and I could easily be world champions. We chased a lot of geese on Penang island, but luckily the ones we caught laid golden eggs.

Penang Days 3 and 4 consisted of a lot of hunting proverbial wild waterfowl. First we seek what we both heard was the best asam laksa on the island. That's about as valid as saying we are going to watch the best movie or drink the best beer...but it is like saying we are looking for the best asam laksa in the world, because Penang is the home of the sour, fishy, non-coconut milk noodle soup known locally simply as laksa.

To get there, we have to drive out of our way to Air Itam, an inland market town looked down on by an oversized Quan Yin on a hill. We do our part but are not pleased to find that the famous laksa stall is as deserted as a kosher deli on Saturday.

Our consolation prize is wonton mee in the market. We order one dry (without broth) and one in soup. Halfway through our bowls, we start to smell durian. Josh finds the stench like sewage, I find it a sign of god's love for humanity.

In the ten minutes we were in the food court, two small wooden carts selling durian are set up and families are buzzing around them. In some countries it's the ice cream man, in Malaysia it's the durian man that brings out the throngs.

I saddle up to the cart full of greed and lust. The families around me gorge on durian standing up, hovering around the cart and asking the guy to chop up some more. Most of the customers know exactly what types of durian they like. They have the durian glow on their faces. I am offered a taste of a strange variety with a gray flesh that tastes slightly bitter. There are many different varieties of durian, and just as with apples and oranges each one tastes and feels different.

The durian vendor looks around for a small one-person size durian. He seems to intuit I will like it and proceeds to cracks open the punk rock rind to reveal the bright orange, sweet pudding flesh. Josh just stands by and watches, bearing the burden of the white man: intolerability to durian. For future reference, I ask what kind of durian it is. It's called Siew Hung.

We then visit the Kek Lok Si Temple with its giant Kwan Yin/Avilokiteshvara statue before grabbing lunch. Lunch is at Hot Wok, a solid, no-nonsense, high quality indoor restaurant you can take all your foodie friends. A few of the dishes were superlative: the mango salad with dried prawn; the kangkung (convuvulus, a dark leafy green) with belacan sauce. The roast pork cincalok was delish but too salty and the otak-otak was too creamy and not as herbal as the one we had the other day at Hot Bowl. We drink nutmeg juice. Overall the meal was excellent, reasonably priced, and offered a nice air-conditioned break.

Properly full, we head over to Batu Ferengghi, the beach resort area. Our hotel, the Traders, has a sister property on the sea and we can use the pool facilities for a splendid beach side afternoon. I sunbathe (more like cloudbathe) while Josh plays pool volleyball with the Aussie package tourists. Afterwards we happily sip overpriced Hoegaardens as the day fades.

Before it fades fully into night, we visit the Tanjung City Marina. One of the reasons we came to Penang at this specific time was to catch a glimpse of the Jewel of Muscat, a faithful re-creation of a 9th century Omani sailing ship. The story behind the re-creation is fabulous, even for non-boat nerds. Unfortunately, the ship is not open to the public as we were led to believe by the Web site. Instead, we can only peer at it from the dock. We are surprised and frightened by how small the sailboat is: it would be dwarfed in a marina in Vancouver or Miami. They are sailing it through the Indian Ocean, without a motor, or anything else that they would not have had a thousand years ago for maximum authenticity.

Our dinner plans are vague. Knowing it is our last night in Penang, we both want most of all to return to New Lane for the atmosphere and hawker food. Armed with appetite and camera lens, we trek over to New Lane and...it's deserted. Must be New Lane sabbath.

Shut out of New Lane, we wander down the road where we knew there to be other hawkers. This turns out to be some of the best food we've eaten on the island so sometimes things work out just the way they should. First we stop at food court #1, an all-Chinese coffee shop grinding out fresh fruit juice in a loud machine as well as hosting all manner of hawkers including a fried oyster vendor. I've been craving the fried oysters ever since we got to town. We get a bowl of wonton mee, made by the vendor who moulds the wontons by hand. A few shops down is another Chinese non-Halal food court. This one is large and bustling with the best array of dishes we have ever encountered. The choices range from whole grilled fish to brick-oven pizza. The stall preparing brick-oven pizza is rolling out fresh dough. The tiny oven appears hastily constructed out of masonry bricks and is large enough for only one pie at a time. We forego the pizza, knowing that even though it is made with care it probably will be disappointing what with the quality of bread and cheese in Malaysia. We get a few decent dishes including curry chee cheong fun, char kwey kak, and Josh's favorite dessert: satay.

The next morning we check out of the hotel and return to Air Itam, on the off chance the laksa vendor decides to be open. Nope, they goose us. Plan B is Ang Hoay Loh, rumored on the blogosphere to have some of the best fried oysters in town. They give us the goose too.

By now we are sick of wild geese and opt for a sure thing: Gurney Drive. Gurney Drive is about what I wish Ocean Drive on South Beach were like: lined with large but low-key hotels, dotted with hawker stalls, and to park costs 30 cents.

Expecting Gurney Drive to be a tourist trap, we are pleasantly surprised to find a food court entirely devoid of anyone but locals and we pull up a chair for some laksa. Our first bowl of Penang laksa on the island turns out to be a decent one: the most balanced bowl we have tasted to date. It's not too fishy, not too salty, not too sour, not too sweet. Setting the GPS to the Tropical Spice Garden and then the National Park in Teluk Bahang, we take in some nice nature (Josh almost got attacked by a monkey) before driving into the jungle of F.O.U.S.'s: fruits of unusual size. Durian.

The fruits hang like medieval mace from the tall trees. The forest canopy is so dense with durian that I ask Josh to please pull over so I can photograph the world's richest fruit. On the road--the only road on this part of the island--there are dozens of durian stalls. The protocol is simple. Pull up, ask for the size and type of durian you want, and the vendor cracks it open for you to eat right there with your hands. We pass a mile of stalls before finding the one that feels right. Stall #118 and calls out to me because there are at least 3 families seated around picnic benches chowing down. Many of the stalls offer an all-you-can eat price for families or large parties. Unfortunately, I'm in it alone and thus only have a crack at one durian. This durian variety is called Mosan King and is similar in character to the Siew Hung I had yesterday but a little more expensive. It is worth noting that one durian costs the same as four bowls of laksa. I want another durian but I can see Josh wants to leave so we pay up and go. It's probably a good thing, as the winding mountain road might have led to some bright orange upchuck.

Leaving Penang island is a little sad, leaving the durian forest even sadder. But we have one more thing to look forward to: dinner at Yum Yum in Ipoh. About halfway from Penang to Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh the food city is a happy place to stop. The restaurant lives up to the hype: it's more Nyonya food and we order well. Fish head curry, "Chinese brussels sprouts" with belacan sauce, pandan leaf chicken, and house special tofu. Washed down with calamansi juice, we toast the end of a killer road trip.

Low Expectations Yield High Results

2010-06-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

I said I wouldn't be caught dead there, and it is the most unlikely place we would have ended up watching the opener of the World Cup 2010 but there we were in seats suited for VIP at the Hard Rock Cafe. Some things are simply meant to be. Our first choice of venue, Bayernhaus, has no televisions whatsoever. And no patrons--not a one--on the opening night of the World Cup. Hopefully management figures out the gaffe because it would be sad to see Bayernhaus go under. Their beers are invariably fresh, they have a temperature-controlled fridge, and the owner does seem to want to bring in different Bavaraian brews that no other bars in town have.

Having nowhere else to go on the way to Pavillion (our absolute last resort) we peek at the outdoor patio of the Hard Rock Cafe. There is a large projection screen on the patio, and several high tables are empty. I presume they are reserved as the inside of the place looks packed. But, we approach the hostess crew and those tables just happen to be free. A few minutes later one of the servers offers us the table in the front. That was very cool, he needn't do that. The staff was absolutely excellent at the Hard Rock, I give them a lot of credit for making the overpriced beers more palatable. RM 34 (US$10) for the Hoegaarden 500 ml, before tax. Once every four years, I think we can handle it.

If MSG doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger: Penang Day 2

2010-06-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

1. We wake up, we get a caffeine injection. At about 11AM we walk about twenty minutes down the road to a nondescript one-way street because we have a solid tip on the town's best white curry mee: noodles in coconut milk broth with the chili paste served on the side. On the way we pass the Red Rock hotel, which has a restaurant inside with a good reputation. We never got to test that one out.

2. Our destination is Hot Bowl. Hot Bowl is rumored to have been a hawker stall that became successful enough to open a small restaurant. Cars are blocking the small driveway and double-parked on the street. There are several patrons, even though it is in the off-hours between breakfast and lunch. Josh goes to order at the counter while I grab a seat. Looking around, I notice each diner has a bowl of curry mee and at least one side dish, even the solo diners. The side dish appears to be chicken. Surprise surprise. When Josh returns to the table he reports that we have been told to order a plate of "white chicken," which, even though I don't like chicken, makes me happy. I have learned that paying attention to what other people are eating is the best way to have a good meal in Asia. No longer being a strict vegetarian helps, too.

We get one white curry mee each, and two side dishes: the "white chicken" and an otak-otak. Each dish complements the other. The "white chicken" is just chicken chopped into bits Chinese-style, bone and skin included, in a simple soya-based sauce, green onions, and a few welcome sprigs of cilantro and served room temperature. I don't like chicken but I appreciate this approach with the fat and bone intact, allowing the small bits of meat to remain moist and bathed in the flavorful salty sauce. The dish is quintessentially Chinese--simple but magically tasty--with lots bones and fat and stuff to play with.

As an aside, Americans have forgotten how much fun it is to suck meat and fat off of bones, pick at fish heads, and use meat as accents instead of main events. Americans are about as out of touch with their food as is humanly possible, afraid to pick, play, prod, and eat organs. I believe this is just one of the reasons why Americans are fat and why vegetarians are angry.

Rant over. Back to Penang. Hot Bowl is a Nyonya (Straights-Chinese) restaurant so we get the glorious bundle that is otak-otak, a Nyonya dish that has no parallel. They take fish, mash it into a pulp with coconut milk, lemongrass, galangal, turmeric, and who knows what other aromatic spices, wrap it in a banana or pandan leaf, steam it and serve the bundle piping hot. The texture is about that of a really thick dip, creamy and slightly fluffy. We've sampled quite a few otak-otaks recently and Hot Bowl's is the best one by far. The herbal flavors are outstanding, and they don't a back seat to the coconut milk or fish. The texture is not too moist or too dry, it's just right.

But the reason why we came to Hot Bowl is white curry mee, a Penang specialty. The bowl is small and the broth is a bright milky white. It looks naked. Before we add the curry paste, we take a sip. It tastes naked too, but the rich coconut flavor coats our tongues. We add a spoonful of the paste and the soup comes alive, its color changing from porcelain to a rich orange-red with freckles of spice and tiny globules of oil. The small bowl contains two different types of noodles, standard yellow mee and mee hoon/vermicelli. This in itself is rare, two noodle types in one bowl. We like it. Also swimming inside are oysters, bean sprouts, and tofu puffs. A sprig of mint adorns the top. We each finish our entire bowl. Unfortunately my camera lens was too dirty to take any good photos.

We are satisfied with our brunch, and with knowing we will be hungry in a few hours. That's all part of the plan, of course.

3. After Hot Bowl, we return to the hotel. Josh has some work to take care of and I workout and do yoga in the gym after the food has digested.

4. Time to hunt our dinner. We have a few leads. The first is one we tried to hit up yesterday: Kheng Pin Cafe on Penang at Sri Bahari. It's shut again, leading me to believe it may be a lunchtime only place. Our second lead is also closed: Nan Yang. The sign on the door indicates that Nan Yang will be closed for the next few weeks. This kind of thing happens to us here about as often as it did in country brewpubs in Franconia: we show up during stated opening hours and they are closed but it's no biggie because there is always something else around the corner. Plus, the delay gives us ample time to gawk at the turn-of-the-century Chinese shophouses in the purple light of dusk.

5. We stop for a few beers at a very unusual bar on Chulia near the intersection with Penang St. The bar is interesting because it is (a) not for backpackers; (b) not corporate; (c) Indian-owned and patronized but by a mixed-gender mixed-race crowd. Out of solid ideas for this part of the Old Town, we decide to return to Goh Huat Seng on Kimberly St after our beer because we are fading.

5. What was intended to be a light snack turns out to be our whole meal. We get the same char kwey teow as yesterday. We also get a char kwey teow soup from the next stall over, and a soya-sauce egg (like a tea egg). While mulling over what our next stop will be, I notice the large table next to us. Each family member has a bowl of soup with a dark broth and some sort of dumpling inside. I saw this soup on many tables yesterday but could not find out which hawker it came from. Overcome with curiosity, we point and say, "We would like one of those." A minute later, a bowl of mystery soup arrives. Inside the rich dark broth, probably made with blood, are a bunch of organs and white rice flour cone-shaped twists that are neither a noodle nor a dumpling. Another dish most Americans won't like, this one more so than white chicken.

6. I get iced chrysanthemum tea to go from a nearby stall on the way home. It comes in a plastic bag. By the time I get home I have a raging MSG headache and feel slightly queasy. I am not used to eating so much animal product at one go, and tonight's food must have had an extra dash of "flavor enhancer." The stuff is poison. Penance for gluttony, perhaps.

The Good Thing About Chinese Food is that You're Hungry Again Two Hours Later: Penang, Day 1

2010-06-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

From Penang

Ah, Penang. Where wafts of Chinese temple incense mingle with the stench of the nation's best durians. Penang. Where curry mee comes white and you have to add your own chili paste to make the rich broth turn a sinister red. Penang. Where they throw fruit and squid together in a bowl, drizzle it with tamarind sauce, and call it food. Penang. Where they will eat curry mee, but not curry laksa, because only sour fishy asam laksa will do. Penang. Where history and character magically manage to overshadow overdeveloped beaches and an eroded shoreline. Penang. Where Chinese shophouses line narrow roads like medieval European towns, where trishaw drivers languish in their cabs after smoking too much heroin, where in spite of their being no bars we have a great time. We love you, Penang.

From Penang

Here is a summary of the past few days.
1. We reserve a rental car for Monday 9AM, and they don't have a car. An hour later they find us a car that has never been vacuumed and has no gas in the tank. We get out of KL at 11AM. Thank you Hawk Rental Car!
2. Arrive Penang island around 3:30PM but can't move because the traffic is so thick. Takes 1/2 hour to move two blocks.
3. We check into the Trader's Hotel, a 3.5-star landmark that still claims to be a 5-star like an old movie star who still thinks she is 21.
4. We are hungry. We walk aimlessly ISO food and within five minutes we find gold: a family's living room turned into a buffet serving out food for the masses. I guess it's "economy rice." There must have been at least 20 different items ranging from whole fish to mapo tofu to yams, eggs, and five different leafy greens. The food was delicious, and cheap. Including 2 iced coffee came to 9 ringgit, less than $3 for the two of us.
5. Knowing we will be hungry a few hours later, we then check out the 3 pages of food recommendations we have culled from Internet research. First, we decide to first hit up one of these restaurants that isn't actually a restaurant. It's a coffee shop that doesn't have its own kitchen; they just provide indoor seating space for the street vendors. They make their money on selling drinks. These establishments are ubiquitous in Malaysia, an integral part of the country's food culture. The atmosphere is casual, and people of all ages and walks of life can be found supping up.
This one in Penang, called Goh Huat Seng, is at a hawker known for its char kwey teow (flat rice noodles with bean sprout, egg, dark sauce, a few oysters and prawns, and fried in...get ready...pork fat). We go for it and eat the best char kwey teow we've ever had. The stuff we tried before this doesn't even deserve to bear the name.

From Penang

Another stall has kwey teow soup, chicken feet, tea eggs, and other stuff but we want to save room for trying other places around town...
6. Oh forgot to mention. We had a small snack of char mee hoon (fried rice vermicelli) at a vendor down the road and Josh wanted to try the fried chicken stall and gets a wing as another snack.
7. After the insanely delicious char kwey teow and a couple of Jaz beers, we head over to some other recommended restaurants but find they are closed either for the evening or the day. A craving for rojak begins to settle in...
8. We walk about 20 minutes out of the way to check out another recommended street but the stalls are apparently daytime only. Undeterred, and happy to be building back up our appetites after the kwey teow, we walk back along Jalan Macalister towards our hotel and...we serendipitously find New Lane. I read about New Lane but did not know its whereabouts and there it is, just 5 blocks from our hotel. Score!!
9. New Lane is bustling. On the prowl, we peruse the bustling row of hawkers selling things we have never even heard of (and which I have since looked up online) like char kwey kark. Josh gets a decent chee cheong fun, a small Chinese dish made with glutinous rice dough, chopped up into little bite sized pieces, drenched with different sauces like sweet thick soya, and then sprinkled with sesame seeds. I had my fill of savory for the night so get bubu chacha. Bubu chacha sounds like what it is, a frivolous concoction made with undercooked blackeyed peas, peanuts, electric blue jellies, large chunks of cassava, chunks of yam, slices of starchy banana, and all drenched in sweet coconut milk broth. YES. I'm serious. That's what it is...and it's a lot of fun. Stall number one on New Lane is the only one doing this, ice kacang, and other psychedelic things. Note, I do not find the rojak I've been craving...

Ikan bilis = ikan bliss

2010-05-31T02:25:00.000-07:00

Ikan bilis, the magical little dried fishes of my dreams. Ikan bilis is one of the best things about eating in Malaysia. The Malays add ikan bilis to nearly everything here, adding salt, crunch and some fine briney umami to the dish. At lunch on weekdays, the local row of hawker stalls has a buffet, which is known locally as nasi campur, meaning mixed rice. The name derives from the style of eating. You get a pile of rice and then add to it whatever you want from the buffet. You are charged by the item. Some days I’m feeling rendang, some days curry, and on other days just some mixed vegetables and an egg. Today, I had three different dishes featuring ikan bilis, which is almost too much. But not quite.

The ikan bilis is an anchovy, a small one that is typically found off the coast of Southeast Asia. The little fish are harvested, then dried and salted. If you visit a grocery store in Malaysia, you will see large bins full of different types of ikan bilis, priced by grade, size of fish and possibly even type of anchovy.

These fish are mixed with sambal, the spicy chili sauce that is the standard condiment in this part of Asia (roughly Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei). In my lunch above, this sambal-ikan bilis mixture is used with fresh peas, with fried tempeh and in a deep sambal sauce to pour over rice. Yum.

These same anchovies are used in Vietnam to make nuoc mam, that most outstanding of fish sauces. These fermenters are in Mui Ne, one of the absolute top spots in Vietnam for fish sauce. The fish sauce there was another planet of awesome from the large-scale industrial stuff you buy back home.

All told, ikan bilis is just something that makes everything it is added to better. It is commonplace to mix seafood with meat in Southeast Asia. This is especially true in Malaysia where the food is all mixed up anyway, blending multiple cultures in a single bowl and where every hawker stall has its own take on classic dishes. A vastly underused item back home, I’m sure I will crave ikan bilis when I leave here.

Visitor Shows Up to Brewery Wearing Shorts

2010-05-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

An opportunity to laugh at the incident at GAB:

Things got hairy at the Guinness-Anchor-Berhad (GAB) Brewery near Kuala Lumpur Thursday, when a foreigner named Joshua Oakes showed up for a GAB Brewery tour wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and mandles--men's sandals. The rest of his group was all wearing appropriate attire.

"I don't know, I just threw some clothes on," Oakes said. "Most of the brewers I know wear shorts. Some of them even in the winter. I didn't think it was going to be a problem."

The casual outfit has become common among local and foreign men over the past century. Oakes claimed that he would have gladly worn traditional Malaysian garb, such as a batik sarong, if he had been told to do so.

"Nobody at Guinness said a word about there being a dress code," claims Oakes.

Officials at the GAB defended their employees. "Foreigners who have poor fashion skills should not be enabled. I am not impressed with what these people are wearing, except maybe for the Italians," claims one of the managers at GAB, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Another GAB official, who wishes to remain anonymous, agrees. "We at GAB have an image to maintain. The last thing we want people to think is that we condone this sort of behavior. What do you think this is, a common tavern?"

Josh Oakes Apprehended by Guinness Fashion Police; Free Beer Palliates

2010-05-28T00:47:00.000-07:00

The Guinness-Anchor-Berhad (GAB) Brewery is the size of a automobile manufacturing plant, in the suburban styx of Kuala Lumpur. Kennhyn Ang of BeerBeer arranged a brewery tour for the two of us, and about half a dozen others. The BeerBeer crew gave us a ride from the nearest metro stop--which is the eponymous end of the Kelana Jaya line and 20 minutes away from the brewery.

When we arrived at the security gate, we all got out of the car to let them check our temperature for H1N1. Then the security guard pointed to Josh's sandals and then told us to wait across the street under the blazing mid-day sun, in the parking lot, with no breeze, no cover, and no sign of life.

The uncivilized situation got worse before it got any better.

What kind of business makes their guests, who have an appointment, stand around outside in a parking lot?

I knew right away it was not for safety regulations they wouldn't let us in. As a female, I was told my sandals were just fine. Something similar happened to us once before at a bar in KL with a dress code. In that case it was fine; we hadn't traveled to the end of the earth to visit the bar and also it's understandable a bar might have a dress code. But an industrial brewery? No one told BeerBeer when they booked the tour that there was a dress code. Besides, Josh wore classy men's sandals that actually cover a lot of his feet, not flip-flops.

Told it was the sandals that was the problem, one of our friends was kind enough to lend Josh his closed shoes. Assuming the best, we then walked to the pub area and waited for the tour. But here we also sat around again in an empty bar room waiting and waiting with no offer of water, or beer.

Management did not speak with us directly, instead using Ivan Pinto the tour guide as their intermediary. Pinto dutifully apologized and told Josh he had to stay back because he was wearing shorts.

WTF? First it was sandals and now shorts. Our intermediary said they won't make any exceptions and they can't find a cloth to put around the offending calves. He also pointed at the security cameras to let us know "they were watching." In an attempt to maintain an image of appropriate fashion for brewery tours, a couple of low-level management dweebs insult their visitors and create a bigger PR problem than shorts or sandals ever could. No wonder they did not have the dignity to come out of their puny offices and talk to us themselves.

I offered to wait with Josh in the holding area, but one of our friends had already been on the tour so he kindly volunteered to wait with him. They did not even offer to give Josh a beer--he actually had to ask to be served while he waited for us.

I did not want to go on the tour on principle but was encouraged to by BeerBeer and Josh--and I'm glad I went because I saw a robot. A real one, not GAB management.

The tour was actually quite good, as the guide was a former chemical analyst with the brewery and mentioned things like diacetyl and alpha acids in hops. The non-dumbed down approach worked very well and was more in-depth that I'm used to even from microbrewery tours.

Until yesterday I had only been on one macrobrewery tour and that was Pisner Urquell's Beer World, which is much more professional and set up for visitors than the GAB was.

BUT, GAB did offer something that many breweries--micro or macro--do not: Free-flow of beer after the tour. That's right. Free pints of Guinness, Kilkenny, Heineken, and whatever else they keg up at GAB. Sources say they are stopping this policy in the future. They should think about stopping their inconsistent fashion policy instead.

The after-party was fun enough to erase the unpleasant memory of the anonymous, cowardly fashion police.

Also on our tour was a Scottish gang come to town for a wedding party. Learned a Chinese toast (the Yam Sing) that was very cool and exchanged email addresses with an Edinburghian, given Josh and I might shack up there soon.

Then a group of about 100 people came by for a brewery tour. They were wearing some kind of uniform, I assumed from a corporation. I decided to ask one of them where they were from and they said, "Hash House Harriers!"

AWESOME! The H3 was started in KL in the colonial days as a sort of running club for overweight alcoholic British expatriates. It's exactly what it sounds like--you run, then you binge drink. The club evolved to where chapters can be found all over the world. My first encounter with the H3 was in Bali, where lots of the expats and a few locals do the runs and the piss-up afterwards. Here were no orang putih, I think the entire group was Chinese-Malay from Johor Baru.

They were the friendliest people--the exact opposite of the management of GAB. They ushered me to a seat at one of their tables, introduced themselves with their Hasher names (like "Furniture," "Rabbit," and even "Ganja"). I asked Ganja if he liked to pass the dutchie, making the universal toking sound and gesture. I'm not sure he knew what I was talking about.

They kept fetching us more drinks and chatting, and we sang some drinking songs together before the bartender called last call on the freebies and sent us all home. I was too busy having fun to take any pictures but Josh got a few.

Afterward we went out with Kennhyn and friends to eat bat kut teh (good Chinese grub). All's well that ends well. Get a life, fashion police.

Lost and Found

2010-05-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

I left my camera in a restaurant the other day. Because I like to take photos of good food, I had it out and on the seat next to me. My purse was there also and when we got up to leave, I took my bag assuming the camera was inside. I realized it after we got home.

It embarrassed me that I could be so careless. I mean, I can't count the times I've had my camera out in bars and been drunk and still remembered to put it back in my purse! And here I am stone sober and forgetting it.

Also, I did not know the name of the restaurant. I didn't even know the name of the neighborhood it was in. Our landlord Sam took us to one of these out of the way places that only locals know about. I really did not like having to call him to ask for a favor right after he picked us up at home and treated us to a special lunch. It's not like the restaurant was near by--and it's certainly nowhere near where he lives in the suburbs.

When I called Sam, he offered to phone the restaurant and called me right back saying yes, it was there! Without me having to ask, he said he would fetch it for me. I was thrilled when he would bring it over tomorrow. Ten minutes later he called back. "Are you in the apartment now?" I was. "I have your camera. I'm bringing it over." I was jumping for joy, I really couldn't believe it.

When he delivered the camera he said he took some photos of the owner and the outside of the restaurant. I was thrilled, because now I have a memory of the incident and the people who went out of their way to help. This was good karma in action.

And now I can share the mouthwatering photos of the food the three of us shared. We had five dishes including fish curry, prawn and squid in house special sauce, chicken wing, green veg in belacan sauce and even Chinese-style schweinhaxen (pork knuckle). Everything was super tasty, and now thankfully I have the pix. I will never forget this. Cheers to kindness.

Our First Malaysian Road Trip!

2010-05-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a 4d/3n road trip--our first ever in Malaysia. Renting a car was easy and about the same price as in Europe, but a little more than in North America. The total price including the rental of a GPS came to about $45-50 per day. We got a local car called a Proton. Petrol prices are cheap, though because it's subsidized by the government. The price per liter was about USD.60 so in gallons, about US$2.25. Roads are in very good condition. As for the driving experience, it is very smooth. I have heard that foreigners complain about the driving but I can't at all understand why as it's totally civilized and people follow the rules. This is not a typical Asian driving experience but rather more like a European one. It's not at all as bad as driving in Miami.

Our first stop was the Cameron Highlands, a hill station of tea plantations established by British in the colonial days.

We stayed for 2 nights at a place called Father's Guesthouse. I described Father's Guesthouse as being like a resort for backpackers because it has gorgeous grounds worthy of a resort but "backpacker" style digs and prices. The rooms themselves are not so nice, but the grounds made up for that. Having said that I did not sleep well there and might stay somewhere else next time.

In many ways we had a typical Cameronian experience, visiting tea plantations and honeybee farms, and walking in the woods.

Having a car for total freedom and independence was wonderful. Otherwise you have to take a tour to see all these things and you just get carted around on someone else's schedule. We also would not have found a new 9% Belgian stout called Roberts that happened to be at the apiary we visited. Josh spotted some other international swills too:

The restaurants in Cameron Highlands are nothing special, at least by Malaysian standards. Oh btw I had a very good reflexology by a skilled lady who treats more locals than foreigners.

We decided to spend a night in Ipoh on our way back to KL. We took a detour to see Taiping, which has a lovely lakeside garden. There is a mangrove near there but we did not have enough time to visit but we still saw some birds and lizards.

Ipoh

Ipoh is a pretty big city with a strong reputation as a food destination. Foreigners often give Ipoh a miss but it gets a decent amount of domestic tourism. The Old Town is quite nice visually, with historic Chinese two-story shop fronts from the 1910s-30s.
Although many of the buildings are dilapidated or abandoned, most are used for modern day businesses including Ipoh's stunning array of restaurants. We stayed at a decent 3* business hotel called Regalodge a ten-min walk from Old Town.

Ipoh food is well-blogged about. We had several options of where to eat two dinners and one breakfast in our one-night stay. The doorman at the hotel volunteered recommendations for local dishes and where to get them. Then he matter-of-factly said, "What are you going to eat after that? Do you like noodles?" He certainly intuited that we wanted to eat our way through town. His advice and enthusiasm gave us some good food mojo that lasted until the following day.

We opted to try some of the local specialties that we would never try otherwise such as bean sprout chicken. Sounds quite mundane but like so many Chinese it's hard to understand how so much flavor can be coaxed out of something so simple. That is the beauty of Chinese food and why it's one of the best food cultures in the world. Ipoh is majority Chinese, and therefore looks and feels quite different from other Malaysian cities which have more like 30 or 40 percent Chinese.

This also meant that Ipoh had a slightly more liberal bar culture. We found a chill spot to have a beer at, the type of place we wish existed in KL

After our appetizer meal digested we hunted for the next course. We got shut out (temporarily) of another local speciality called "salt chicken" but it's for the best since it's only sold to go. We ended up taking one home the next morning to steam up in our KL apartment. We had some local hor fun noodles with grilled baby octopus on the side.

In the morning around 11AM we had curry mee (noodles with rich coconut based curry sauce) which is only served early in the day. We also tried the famous Ipoh "white coffee." I was suspicious of it but white coffee is not really white, it's just incredibly rich.

On the drive back to KL we tried to stop at a big nature reserve for a picnic but it was starting to rain so we headed back and drove in rush hour through the storm. It was quite annoying but so similar to Miami I couldn't believe it--the drivers who recklessly charge through as if the weather does not affect the road conditions, the giant puddles, the gridlock in the suburbs. All that during what turned out to be a lovely purple sunset during a round of overpriced beers made me feel quite at home.

Oh I almost forgot, we stopped to visit a strange place called Kellie's Castle, an unfinished mansion built by a Scottish rubber baron back in the day. Now it's just a weird out of place structure half in ruins and inhabited by birds.

Feeling Bitter

2010-05-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

Oh what we would do for a regular supply of luscious IPA or hoppy pils here in Malaysia! But look at the bright side. We have---bitter melon!

Bear with me a moment. This is going somewhere.

Bitter things are not for the timid of tongue. That holds true for hops, which could be why many beer lovers acquire good taste in food. And why foodies learn to love good beer.

We might be craving those IPAs for a reason, too. Hops, bitter melon, dandelion, and other bitter things are good for the body. Traditional Chinese medicine extols the virtues of bitter herbs. Recent research reveals the effects of bitter melon on reducing breast cancer cell growth and also on Type II diabetes.

Time to pick on Americans
Americans really don't like to think to think too hard about anything, let alone what they eat. All that gray matter gets in the way of a good gullet-stuffing, and dumbed-down foods are the answer. Americans have lost their taste to the extent that they no longer know that their tongue has specific receptors for bitterness:

As an underused organ, the American tongue prefers tasteless and homogenized flavors like iceberg lettuce. On the other hand, the Italian and French tongues prefer the punch of bitter greens like dandelion, escarole, and endive.

Even the English, who have a horrible taste in food, know bitterness. When I was a child, we went to London and at the pubs my go-to drink was a bottle of Bitter Lemon. I remember how it used to come in this adorable child-sized bottle. What kind of 8 year-old drinks that stuff? I should have been quaffing a pint of English bitter!

My mom, who is from Mumbai, introduced me to the weird flavors present in Indian pickles (sour-bitter-spicy), Campari (stark bitterness), and European salad greens (earthy bitterness). Like the French and Italians, Asians also appreciate the whole tongue--bitter, sour, and all. Which is why IPA and lambic should be sold everywhere in Asia...

In Southeast Asian cuisine all flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy) are ideally present in each meal. Bitterness can come in assertive form such as in bitter melon, aka bitter gourd.

Bitter melon is provocative and aggressive. In Vietnam once we inadvertently ordered a salad made from bitter melon. It was misspelled on the menu as "bitter lemon." When the salad arrived, the bitter melon was thinly sliced and had dried shredded pork on top of it. The sweet-n-salty pork complemented the bitterness of the gourd, and of course being Vietnamese they rounded out all the five flavors by adding chili and lime. An orchestra of flavors to entertain the tongue.

In Malaysia, bitter gourd is on the ulam table which also has raw herbs, random leaves, banana flower, and other veggie condiments. One of the common ulam-ulam is bitter gourd, boiled plain, deseeded, and simply halved. Like this, its flavor really shines. The first time I took one I didn't realize what it was until I bit in. I rode out an initial aversion as a personal challenge and now I take a bitter melon piece whenever I feel like filling my mouth with a sensation that does not come from any other food. Why can't Asian beer be this much fun?

The Other Oakes Just Isn't As Cool as Ours...

2010-05-12T02:56:00.000-07:00

A quick search on WebMii.com revealed this Other Josh Oakes.

I particularly liked this part at the bottom:

Everybody loves a beer writer! Television fishing program hosts, on the other hand...

I thought it funny though, that Draft Magazine is asking "Who's Your Favorite Beer Blogger?" and Oakes is not mentioned. Personally I think he's more insightful than those who have shout outs. But I'm biased so I won't vote. Looking at the responses (which are also biased towards Americans), I think it may be due to the fact that we are getting old. The younger generation of beer enthusiasts and bloggers are in another world, and one I cannot always relate to.

2010-05-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Having a couple of free hours and looking for something interesting to do, we took a walk to the Petronas Towers, got on the subway and went one stop, to the other side of the freeway. That’s a bold step you understand. Within the freeway ring of downtown are towers, malls, expats, and all manner of normal things. On the other side of the freeway – one stop! – is Kampung Baru.

The neighborhood of Kampung Baru is, for lack of a better term, the Malay ghetto of central KL. You have to be Malay to buy here, which keeps the area nice and ethnically pure. And guaranteed that we would not find any beer. What you can find here, is the Saturday night market. The twin towers still looming overhead, going to the Kampung Baru night market is a little bit like leaving KL and going to Malaysia. It’s a bit third world there, with garbage, lots of stray cats, low, run-down buildings and some fine tenements.

The main drag is filled with restaurants that come alive in the evening, especially the seafood places. At the end of the main drag there is an offshoot lane of vendors and food hawkers who set up shop just for the one night each week. You get a wide variety of Malay food, from barbeque satay to sweets to strange-tasting drinks. I got hooked up with some of the freshest ayam goreng I’ve ever had. That’s fried chicken. The chickens were still clucking and flapping when they get dipped in the batter and tossed in the boiling oil.

Just kidding. But it was fresh. They batter the chicken on the spot and toss it into one of four boiling vats. Some chickens go in whole, others in pieces. The line forms at the table and when the chicken comes out of the fryer, there are people waiting to snap it up. I butted in line – I actually didn’t realize I was doing that until later – and got the crispiest piece I could see. I’ve got no time for the Colonel, but I’m all over fresh soul food fried chicken and this was the real deal.

I followed this up with some “Mexican chocolate” shake. Made without ice cream, ancho, cacoa nibs or any of that stuff. Just chocolate powder, ice, sprinkles, spray can whipped cream and chocolate syrup. Not bad actually. Total cost for the meal – under two dollars. Sunshine got hooked up from the fried tofu vendor with a mixed tofu platter and some smoky dipping sauce.

The night market is great fun if you like to eat local. It feels nothing like any other neighbourhood we’ve seen in KL. No tourists, no Western stuff, and yeah no alcohol. Good times nonetheless and we’ll be back.

Banana Blossom!

2010-05-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Our hawker down the street offers a full table of raw herbs and vegetables (collectively referred to as ulam) as condiments. On most days the ulam array includes banana flower, simply steamed and left to cool. They have usually oxidized by the time they make it to the table for lunch, and some petals have turned black. But you can peel those large layers off to reveal the inner beauty:

As I chomped down on some plain banana flower the other day, I wondered, "Why aren't they used more often in the West? What do they do with the flowers on commercial banana plantations?" Some make their way into cans, but I bet most are wasted. If you have a banana or plantain tree, I strongly recommend looking up some recipes on how to use the blossom.

The banana blossom tastes like artichoke and has a similar texture. To a degree it even looks like artichoke and even has a core called the heart. The heart is meaty and versatile, and the petals have a strong texture too. Banana blossom is nothing like the delicate flowers used in European salads. You can work with banana blossom in cooked preparations like curries, and also consume it raw in salads, side dishes, and condiments.

Banana blossoms are also one of those foods that transcends borders. They are actually used a lot in Southern India and Sri Lanka but also throughout Southeast Asia.

the banana flower on the tree

Another item on our hawker's ulam table will receive a love letter next week: bitter melon (aka bitter gourd).

My Makan Malay Part I: Tempeh

2010-04-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Chances are if you know what tempeh is, you think it's something vegans and health nuts eat. Well OK they might, but California is not where tempeh originates. Tempeh is a traditional and humble ingredient in Indonesian and Malaysian food.

And like all good things in life, tempeh is fermented. It's started by a lactic acid bacteria similar to the one present in those sumptuous mould-ripened cheeses. The precise bacteria that ferments the soybeans has been isolated and studied for its biopreservation features. Consider tempeh a food for fermentation nuts, such as lovers of beer and wine.

It is made from soybeans and yet different enough from its coagulated cousin, tofu, to the extent that people who dislike tofu like tempeh. Personally I love both but tofu can be gelatinous and tastes like, well, soybean milk curd. Tempeh, on the other hand, is dense and nutty. It can take more of a beating when cooked but admittedly, tempeh is not as versatile as tofu.

No offense to our good friend tofu (which is also present in Malay food, although not as much as in Chinese), I absolutely love tempeh. I'll go so far as to say I obsessively crave tempeh when it's not around. Living in Malaysia, I can get a fix of my favorite fermented soybean cake anytime. As long as I have access to Malay of Indo food, I'll be able to sink my teeth into one of the dozens of dishes with tempeh at their heart-- or even buy it fresh from the market where it's sold while still warm.

We eat at the same nasi campur hawker stall each day for lunch and without fail they have two tempeh dishes on their buffet.

On the left you see tempeh cut into rectangles and fried up with potatoes, ikan bilis, and sambal. On the right you see a large tempeh cake, simply pan fried.

Tempeh's main features include dense but soft texture and distinct umami--a sort of mushroomy, earthy savoriness.

(image from Google Images)

Uncooked tempeh has the somewhat unsettling appearance of a blue cheese because of its lactic acid bacterial veins, but the flavor is surprisingly not sour or tart or even that intense. Although I personally don't believe you can make tempeh taste bad, Malaysians and Indonesians know better than anyone how to make tempeh taste good.

The following tempeh recipe from the Salt n Turmeric blog incorporates another key Malay ingredient, ikan bilis (dried anchovies). I haven't tried the recipe yet, so if you do please post back your results. There is another recipe that looks great to me.

If you happen to be in Vancouver, The Naam makes a killer Ruben sandwich using tempeh.

Finally, if you're keen on making your own and have access to the starter culture here's how to make tempeh. If you make your own, though, I absolutely insist that you post back with your results!

And we become mall rats

2010-04-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

I don’t like malls. I actually quite hate them. I was never knocked out by them, even as a teenager (not that we had one in Pitt Meadows). But under normal circumstances you’d have a hard time finding me in one of those sterile, soulless, lifeless crapholes. I think I went to the mall once in Vancouver, because that’s where the DMV is and I had to renew my driver’s license.

But in KL, it’s an almost daily thing. Asia loves its malls, and Kuala Lumpur is definitely a stronghold of mall culture. Malls are the major landmarks here. When describing where something is, the mall is the focal point. You don’t say “Petronas Towers” you say “KLCC”. Why oriented yourself to the gigantic twin towers that stretch up so high you can see Hong Kong from the top floor when you could oriented yourself to the mall that sits beneath them? "Just past Mid-Valley", "behind Pavilion", "across from Times Square", "out by 1 Utama"...you simply cannot get around town if you don't know your malls.

We go to malls for a couple of reasons. One is that that’s where the grocery stores are. They’re in the basement of the malls, invariably. Unless you want to buy your groceries at the 7-Eleven, you need to go to the mall. The second reason is that it is bloody hot. Kuala Lumpur is just above the equator at 3 degrees north. It’s always hot, all the time. The all-time record low temperature here is 19C (66F). Temperatures range from pretty warm to seriously scorching. So naturally during the middle of the day the entire city retreats to the comfort of the mall.

Malls have become the sole gathering space for an entire generation of Malaysians. I went out for a walk and came across a Muslim restaurant with a few dozen people out front dining al fresco. It looked like a good crowd...until I got across the street and went into the mall. A cast of thousands milled around, buzzing and swarming. Most were not doing much of anything in particular. People go to the mall just to wander around and spend time.

And eat. Malls here have a lot of different dining options. There’s restaurants and coffee shops scattered all throughout any given mall. There’s always some sort of food court. Malaysians have long had this tradition – either in rows of hawker stalls or in old-school outdoor food courts. The food in the outdoor food courts is better of course – the one behind Pavilion absolutely slaughters the food inside the mall. In addition to the regular garden variety food courts (a mixture of local chains, western chains and some local independent shops) there is sometimes a “locals” food court. These are grottier, with less A/C and the same food at about half the price. I can dig that.

Two types of food courts and random restaurants isn’t enough – malls in KL are also home to some of the city’s nicer restaurants as well. You’ll see higher-end ethnic food in these places and some such restaurants have become dining destinations…on the sixth floor of a shopping mall! Pavilion has a nice touch – a bar street. This includes one of KL’s many German places, which are always good for a half litre of weissbier at prices that would make a Scandinavian discombobulate.

Malls are so utterly ingrained in KL culture that it is hard to imagine how one would function without them. I wouldn’t know where to buy food, for one thing. How would I see a movie? And where oh where would I buy a shirt that bleeds its red all over the rest of my clothes?

After we leave KL, I might not set foot in another mall until my driver’s license expires, but while we’re here, we’re practically mallrats. That’s just how it goes.

Breaking down Malaysia's Beer Barriers

2010-04-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

Breaking down Malaysia's Beer Barriers

Yesterday we had the honor of hanging out with Kennhyn Ang, who heads up the premier Malaysia beer blog BeerBeer. He also introduced us to Chong Wai Lun, owner of Bottles and Bottles (Web site under construction). Over a few choice bottles at Bottles and Bottles, we had a pithy conversation that never veered from beer. These guys know their stuff, and can be considered regional experts considering their familiarity with Malaysia's laws, how to get around those laws, and how to work within those laws.

Just as BeerBeer is Malaysia's top blog for all things beery, Bottles and Bottles is becoming Malaysia's number one beer resource. The knowledge and the caring behind the store's beer bottle inventory is what makes Bottles and Bottles special. The bulk of its shelves are stocked with wines from around the world but when we talked to Wai Lun, he blurted out, "If it were up to me, this would all be beer. I love beer more than I love wine."

Proving his point, Wai Lun casually mentioned that he'd met the owner of the Heller-Trum (Schlenkerla) brewery when in Bamberg. "Mattias a very nice guy," he said, making Josh and I very jealous.

Wai Lun showed us copies of his favorite beer books, ogling the pictures as we leafed through them and pointing out his favorites as well as the ones he wanted to get a hold of. "Have you had this?" he pointed to a bottle of Cantillon. I practically salivated all over his hardwood floors before he quickly admitted to not having a palate for lambic. "But I love Rodenbach Grand Cru," he said. What beer does he and Kennyn want to try the most? Westvleteren. Both of them brought it up almost instantly when we met them. Both pronounced it perfectly, I might add. "Have you tried Westvleteren? Which ones? I want to so badly..."

Never mind what they have lacked in terms of access to beer; Kennyhn and Wai Lun know more than you can ever hope to about the beer market in Malaysia. We shut up as Kennhyn and Wai Lun conversed about how the Jaz beer brewery was streamlined for market entry ("The President gave it to his brother"); and how the "microbrew" Stärker is brewed on the Jaz beer premises. Kennyhn even knew that the new brewer of Stärker was "not attractive enough" to be placed on the brochures, which is why the brochure still features the old brewer.

Why, if these guys are so linked in, don't they try and bring in more beer to Malaysia to stimulate market demand? The answer is as complex as Malaysia itself. Malaysian consumers need marketing gimmicks, claimed Kennhyn. (That's fine, they need them everywhere). Malaysian consumers don't like a lot of the beers that would be considered full-bodied or intense in flavors, especially those that are boldly hoppy, sweet, or sour. (I would argue this point, given that the Malaysian food palate is stretchier than any I can think of; this is the land of durian after all).
Ah--here's a reason. Distributors aren't getting on board. It's only worth it to them to buy beer in large quantities, by the container. Wai Lun has been told that anything less than a container will not be financially feasible. And how much beer is in a container? About 200 cases. "There is no way we can turn over that much beer and have it stay fresh," notes Wai Lun. Unwilling to compromise on quality, this is a guy who respects his beer. Cheers.

Price is also a major issue in Malaysia because the country has a 15% liquor tax. Beer in Malaysia ends up costing the consumer three times the price of what it would cost "anywhere but Norway," notes Wai Lun.

As if he was expecting the question, Kennhyn said, "And it's not because it's a Muslim country. Most Malaysians love to drink. We drink like there's no tomorrow."

With a lot to ponder, we sip our brews, presented in branded goblets. We salute two guys who are propelling the beer scene against the current and who stand a strong chance of getting the hundredth Malaysian monkey to demand better beer, even if the Orangutans have to get on board with the beer program. We're somewhat optimistic.

Move over chai!

2010-04-20T20:08:00.001-07:00

Do you like chai? Then you'll love teh tarik. Even you're "meh" on chai like I am, you might still like teh tarik.

Literally "pulled tea," teh tarik strongly resembles non-masala Indian chai although there is a version with ginger (teh tarik halia). It's milky and sweet like chai but the tea is "pulled" from vessel to vessel with elaborate flourish, thus aerating the hot liquid. Check out this photo montage.

The technique defines the drink. Behold this video demonstrating the showmanship that accompanies teh tarik:

Teh tarik is a national drink of Malaysia, and is popular in Singapore too.

Condensed milk is used. The taste strongly resembles Indian chai but the "pulling" creates a light layer of froth on top. Not only that, the increased aeration makes the whole beverage feel lighter on the palate and cooler on the tongue. It's no longer piping hot. I speculate that tarik might very well have stemmed from the Indian traditions that have are so richly ingrained here in Malaysia, but I haven't found any research to back that up.

Malaysians are damn proud of teh tarik. There are teh tarik championships throughout the region. There are chains specializing in teh tarik, like this one. There is even a Malaysian hip-hop band called the Teh Tarik Crew (TTC).

We'll leave you with one of their videos:

Between Bayernhaus and Brussels Cafe, We've Got KL Covered

2010-04-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take us much beer to get happy these days. Give us an $8 Hoegaarden and a $10 Hacker-Pschorr Animator and consider us tickled.

Finding tasty alcoholic beverages in any Muslim country can be a real challenge. But thankfully, KL has a vibrant blogging community. One of the local blogs happens to be devoted exclusively to beer: Kennhyn Ang's BeerBeer blog. BeerBeer has helped us unearth beer bars and helps us see what beers are being distributed locally.

Including Tiger Crystal lah!

You know us. We're got all the local spots covered. After our visit to Craft Brews in Damansara we visited Bayernhaus at CapSquare. They have no Web site either but read about it on TimeOutKL. We were surprised to see a long lineup of bottles at the bar signaling their inventory. They were out of several of them but they had the Hopf selections, as well as the Hacker-Pschorr Animator.

A stone's throw from our condo we have Brussels Beer Cafe (Hap Seng location) which does draft Hoegaarden at $8 during Happy Hours 6-8PM. Regular price bottles of Chimay Red, Chimay Blue, Tripel Karmeliet, Duvel, and others go for $10 a bottle.

Each bottle is the price of our total eating expenditures per day. That means one beer costs the same as both lunch and dinner for the two of us. Just think about that. One beer costs the same as four full meals.

Think of it this way: if a plate of food like this cost $8 in the US, your glass of (non-premium) beer would cost you $32.

2010-04-11T01:36:00.001-07:00

So, we're camping out in KL. Cool city, very underrated. Telling people you're gonna live here isn't anything like telling them you're gonna live in Paris. No one's jealous (no one threatens to visit you either). Lots of people are confused or disappointed. Hey, if I wanted to live in Paris I'd be in Paris.

Anyway we're renting a condo direct from the owner who is a nice guy. The flat is a small one bedroom on the 12th floor in a 40 floor high rise. The building is centrally located. Derek Jeter could hit a fly ball from our bedroom and hit the Petronas Towers. We have a rooftop pool and gym. I got back into my ashtanga practice, the warmth inspires me so much.

What about the beer, you ask? Not much variety. Lots of regional swill. Carlsberg. Tiger. Skol. Varieties thereof. Then there are the stouts. Thank goodness for the stouts. We have two--Malaysian Guinness and Danish Royal. The former has gone downhill, suffers from a diacetyl problem. The latter is good enough to buy by the case, which we do. Comes out to much cheaper that way. Beer in Malaysia is expensive. More expensive than it is almost anywhere I've been including Munich. When you go out to a bar and order a Hoegaarden you pay almost $10. Seriously! So we drink mostly at home, and save the outings as treats.

There is one place called Craft Brews, it's in the suburbs. They're trying real hard to live up to their name. On tap they have some beers from a Singaporean brewpub. Here are some photos of the beers. That's our friend Rezufrin with the spirulina beer.

Food here is damn cheap and damn delicious. Malay be one of my favorite cuisines in the world. If you check out my Flickr page, you can see we have a regular hawker stall down the road. I can get 2 meals worth of food for $2 from her. She makes tons of different dishes, too--like 10 different fish dishes each day and half a dozen veggie preparations, and tempeh and stuffed tofu and rendang and you name it, they put it on the buffet and you pay by the item. Unfortunately I think they use some MSG. I feel funny after eating sometimes so I make a point to eat small portions.

That's it for now, we've only had one real storm since we've been here. Disappointed--we both like storms. We've been working real hard the past few days, burnout is immanent and that means we'll be taking a break. Maybe Langkawi. Maybe Perhentian.

Oh wait before I forget...across the street they are constructing a building. I like watching it. I am taking pictures periodically to document the progress. This will become my time-lapse project. It will be nice to visually mark the passage of time.

Al-Amar

2010-04-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

In the mood for high caliber Lebanese food in KL? You might wanna go to Al-Amar, in the Pavillion shopping plaza in Bukit Bintang. We went during off hours but the only other patrons in there were speaking Arabic. One family was having a shisha session, mom included but not child. The atmosphere is upscale but not in an oppressive way. Right away I order Almaza beer and Josh a Lebanese coffee. The Almaza was not bad, a little buttery but more tolerable than most of the Malaysian swills. Unfortunately the waiter whisked away the bottle before I noticed so no photo. Josh's coffee looked luscious, and he said it was a solid Turkish-style.

We ordered mezes. Heard the hommos was good, and figured that deceptively simple dish would be a good test of the kitchen. It was. Outstanding. Drenched in bright extra virgin olive oil and garnished with fresh chick peas, this was the real creamy deal. Next up, we ordered the chicken livers with pomegranate molasses. Wouldn't you? The livers were rich and soft as they ought to be, and not fried. The deep fruity flavor of the pomegranate molasses complemented the heavy fat of the livers very well. The dish was almost rich enough to be called dessert. A third dish we ordered was described as "pastry" but it was more of a flatbread liberally dusted with thyme and lemony herbs. Delicious, and not as redundant as it might have been with the delightfully fresh puffy round breads (no cardboard pita here) that were served with the meal. Oh, I forgot to mention they give you snacks while you wait for the food to arrive. Those were fun, including raw carrot sticks with lemon, salt, and a pinch of sugar. This is a great table snack, and brought back memories of the Pink Bar in Selcuk, Turkey. They also gave us a fun nut mix. We will return next time the craving hits. Though it's pricey for KL standards the value is still good overall. The total bill for all of the above was less than $30.

"Little Penang"

2010-04-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

"Little Penang" 4th floor in KLCC mall has mediocre food. I ordered the prawn set menu, which included 3 dishes one of which was not prawn but a chicken skin roll that is pawned off on all the set menus. It looked like a chicken sausage wrapped in chicken skin. I gave it a taste but it was not to my liking so I gave it to Josh, he ate it but not with gusto. We ordered Penang style rojak--a sweet-savory fruit salad not treated like dessert. This version had small pieces of squid, unripe mango, and apples drenched in molasses and some powdered peanuts. I liked it even though the molasses was intense. I can see that dish being fabulous when executed well. Then we ordered Nonya "top hats," which are snacks/appetizers. They have a crispy dough shell the shape of a top hat, filled with various crunchy things--served cold. Reminded me of a Vietnamese snack with the fresh herbs in there but again, not well-executed at this place. The crispy part tasted too oily and the innards had little flavor. The prawn curry that came with my set menu was quite nice, rich with clove. The third dish to come with my set menu might have been my favorite thing. It was cooked shredded turnip with bits of dried prawn. The flavor was reminiscent of Japanese seaweed salad, which leads me to believe there might be sweet rice vinegar maybe? No alcohol is served. I ordered barley with lime and Josh got the nutmeg juice, which tasted too much like coca-cola to me. Total price for two about RM40 (US$15). Sorry no photos.

Return to Asia

2010-04-04T18:57:00.001-07:00

So what is it like being back in Asia, and in Kuala Lumpur in particular? Well, we’ve been here a week and barely left our neighbourhood. It’s not that our hood is pure genius. It’s adequate, though. There is a row of food stalls in the alley out front of our building to provide us with a variety of dirt cheap sustenance. There is a 24 hour restaurant on the corner for the same purpose. We have within five or ten minutes the city’s only outlet for Malaysia’s first microbrew. It’s not that great, but it’s a start. There is also a branch of the local Brussels Beer Café chain for when we want a ten dollar Hoegaarden. A German place lurks not too far away as well. The Petronas Towers are five minutes away and they have a huge mall underneath of them, with a couple of good-sized grocery stores. So I guess we’re relatively covered for shopping.

Now that we’re back, it doesn’t seem like we were gone all that long. We think back to Shanghai and that was just the middle of January. When we were in Vancouver, I in particular (J) found myself getting sucked back in. That’s how home is sometimes. But now that I’m back in Asia, I don’t really miss being in Vancouver. It seems much closer now than it has in the past, for one thing. Having gone back and forth across the ocean a couple of times now I can safely say that it is a much less daunting prospect now than it has been in the past.

Asia, too, seems smaller. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Phnom Penh all seem like right around the corner, not too far away. Japan still seems far, but not as far since we’ve now flown over it a couple of times. But yeah, it just seems entirely conceivable that we could end up in any one of those places at any time. We probably won’t – we have other places to visit like Singapore, Borneo and various places around Malaysia. But there is comfort in being familiar with those sorts of places.

So for now, we are very comfortable here. We’re still sorting out the details of living in KL, like where to find decent coffee beans and piddly things like that. But for the most part, we are pretty happy to be here, the weather is very tropical and pleasant, and we are able to traverse between the modern world and the third world in just a block or two here, more seamlessly than in perhaps any other city I’ve ever seen. Life is good here, and it will probably only get better as we figure out how to get things done in this town.

What's Inside My Bag (In case you were wondering)

2010-03-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

It's not a kilo of marijuana. That would be a stupid thing take to Malaysia, where being caught trafficking drugs leads to a mandatory death sentence. And you thought the USA had a bad drug policy.

We are allowed alcohol so Josh and I agreed to pack up a box of beer for our stay. The selection in Malaysia and the rest of the region is dreadful so this will keep our mouths happy every few weeks or so. We even packed a mead. Here's what I have in "The Beast," my big REI rolling duffel.

1. A ceramic chef's knife. Have you ever used one of these things? If not, you must. This one was a gift from my stepmom and I absolutely it! I can't imagine living without a ceramic knife now. The thing weighs next to nothing, but its blade cuts nearly anything. Great for when we want to cook, which is more often than you would think.
2. A travel-sized wireless router/access point. Last year Josh and I traveled with my home router, which was large especially when the power adapter is taken into consideration. This year I bought a new travel-sized wireless router/access point. It's the size of an iPod and allows Josh and I to go online when we are at a place with a good hardwire connection.
3. Vitamins, and pharmaceuticals. It's pretty easy to find Vitamin C and other supplements all over the world, if you go to a pharmacy. It's not cheap, though. You can't get such things in a grocery store like you can in North America. Plus the variety is not so good. So, I take Emergen-C and a few other essentials like milk thistle for my liver and echinacea for when I first feel that tickle in my throat. Works for me! Any brand-name items you swear by at home (Advil, etc) just bring it.
4. Tampons. Believe it or not, tampons are not available even at expat/foreigner stores--in most of Southeast Asia. Pads you can get, but they are no substitute. (UPDATE: I HAVE LOCATED tampons in KL. At the Mercado supermarket in Pavillion Mall!)
5. Wet naps/moist towelettes. These things come in handy like when you find yourself ready to chow down with your hands and you realized you haven't washed them all day and you've been on busses, etc. I also have a hand sanitizer but never use it...
6. Clothes. Lots of them. I learned last year that it's crucial to have clothes for multiple climates. I was caught literally out in the cold--and rain--too many times without proper clothing to know that no matter how cumbersome it may be I need to bring a set of cold weather gear. So now I'm prepared for all but Siberian winter.

A lot of stuff is picked up along the way, lost and discarded, used and replaced. Umbrellas. Condoms. Random toiletries,

Inside my computer bag is my Macbook (old but still kickin), a new portable hard drive with Firewire, headphones, a paperback, and miscellany. No iPod. That's a topic for another day.

Well, bon voyage!

GOLD, GOLD, GOLD! The Women's Gold Medal Game USA vs. CANADA

2010-02-26T00:31:00.000-08:00

Before the game starts, the media interviews the sister of one of the American hockey players. The sister, her face fully painted with the American flag, says "When our team doesn't play Canada, it's just not the same." This rivalry sets the tone for entire game.

Canada was up 2-0 by the end of the 1st. Goaltending for the Canadians was mindblowing. If it wasn't for Shannon Szabados it would have been a scarier game. Even with the killer netminding, the game was a nailbiter. Lots of action, even without bodychecking.

Usually when the American women got possession, their fans chanted "U-S-A!" It was fun because Canadian fans would just chant "Ca-Na-Da!" over it. It's pretty easy to drown out "U-S-A!" in Canada Hockey Place! It was all in good humor.

The most tearful moment for me was after the game was over and won by the Canadians. The American team in general was not happy**at all**with their silver.

In fact, most of the players could not break a smile when the Silver medal was placed upon their necks. Saving the day, a few fans started to chant, "U-S-A!" Pretty soon the whole stadium was clapping and chanting, "U-S-A, U-S-A!" That was it, I lost it and started to cry. Canadians are the classiest fans in the world.

By the way, the Finns who won Bronze medals were so friggen happy.

Then we got some indoor pyrotechnics. Who doesn't like that?

Olympic Fever!

2010-02-13T23:37:00.001-08:00

After getting back from Victoria, we noticed a significant uptick in Olympic fever. The torch relay was making its way all over Vancouver, and to us was an important part of the buildup. We went down the street to Main & 2nd to see some of the relay, and being away from the hub of the action we got to see the flame up front. The torch bearer who ran past us on this leg of the journey was none other than Lui Passaglia, legendary kicker/punter for the BC Lions. The guy played from 1976 to 2000. That’s 25 years of professional football. In Vancouver, the guy is big time.

Then we heard about the Georgian luger who died in training. That put a pall over the rest of the day.

We had no tickets to the Opening Ceremonies, but we did get to visit Duncan, Joyce and Ian out in Richmond to watch it on TV. The ceremonies were very, well, Canadian. Understated, full of schmaltz, and saved only by the native dancers. It did capture our culture pretty well I guess.

Richmond is one of the host cities, because they have the (gorgeous new) speed skating oval out there. So Duncan and his family took us down to the "O.Zone" to watch special fireworks and related Olympics opening night events. For being a secondary show, the fireworks were great. Because the Dutch specialize in speed skating, their national pavilion is in Richmond near the oval. Who else but Heineken is their corporate beer sponsor. The lineups to get into Heineken House were over an hour long so we skipped that part of the program. The downtown Vancouver pavilions, however, we intend to explore as much as possible.

Olympic Countdown Begins

2010-02-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

I haven’t yet written about being back in Vancouver, mostly because we have been way too busy. The Olympics are on their way, starting on Friday, and we have a lot of things we’d like to get done before that chaos begins. We already made our run for the border, as we expect security to be nuts. We are heading to the island soon as well.

But mostly, we are getting jacked up for the Games. The city is all decked out for the party. The venues are long since ready. They have stages set up around town for all the entertainment. Tourists are piling in. The new tram line from the Olympic Village to Granville Island is looking sharp; the new Skytrain line is running smoothly. The buzz is starting. It’s what everybody is talking about. We have our tickets and we’re ready to go.

What I expect is that we’ll find time to blog almost every day about the Olympics. The curling venue is five minutes’ walk from here, for example. My best friend lives right near the speed skating oval. Downtown has a huge cluster of events. Then there’s the wall-to-wall coverage of all things in the mountains as well.

Speaking of the mountains, that’s a bit of a cause for concern right now. The snowboarding and freestyle skiing takes place on Cypress Mountain, one of the ski hills you can see from the city. They don’t have much snow. Next door is Grouse Mountain, and it looks like it’s April up there it’s so brown. It’s been a warm winter and these mountains have the least amount of snow at this point in the year that they ever have. It’s been called the Spring Olympics by some – technically I think Sydney already did that – and they’re not wrong. It’s not cold, it hasn’t rained and while the weather is fantastic for most of us I imagine the organizers are doing a bit of sweating.

But make no mistake – the city is coming alive. The countdown is on. And we’ll be here every step of the way, walking and watching.

Tearing it Up

2010-01-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

It's funny how we happened to fly directly from one torn-up city to another. Shanghai is an utter mess with new subway lines being built and the entire Bund as well as other major roads torn up for this May's Expo. Now we're in Vancouver and it's the same situation here as the city gets ready for the Olympics next month. Well almost, Vancouver looks pretty darn hot in its preparations for the Olympics and many of the new buildings built will become permanent fixtures on the skyline! Meanwhile, here's what Shanghai's signature heritage street, The Bund, looks like now:

These two cities are metaphors for our personal lives. It might look messy now, especially as we crash with Josh's brother in his small Vancouver apartment, living out of our suitcases with the same few articles of clothing we've worn all year. But all this tearing apart and rebuilding signals growth, change, and an investment in our future. Josh and I aren't traveling aimlessly, just like Shanghai and Vancouver didn't wreck their cities without reason. We've got living to do and lots of money to earn, which will ultimately culminate in superlative creative projects that could never get completed if we were willing to stick to predictable routines.

In the meantime, we're tearing it up by living it up. First meal after landing was sushi and then Gabe made an apple pie. Nice! We have tickets to tonight's Canucks game and tickets also to 3 Olympic events. Life is good, in spite of the mess. Go Canada Go!

Taking the Subway to the PRC!

2010-01-01T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Just a quick note. It’s the first day of 2010. It’s our last night in Hong Kong. (Hong Kong rocks BTW). Tomorrow we go to China. It’s a funny procedure, because you cross the border on the subway system. I’ve never heard of a subway that runs across a border before. After customs, we’ll be in Shenzhen. We don’t know much about it except it was a fishing village in 1979 and today it has 10 million people. We won’t be staying long, as we have a few stops to make before flying out of Shanghai Jan 27. Just booked the flight from Shenzhen to Guilin on Jan 3 and will be in lovely karst land for at least a week.

China sometimes blocks blogging websites like this one. We know they block Facebook, so that will not be updated. If we can update the blog, that will be our main means of communication until the 26th. Will set up the RSS to go through Facebook. If not, then we’ll be largely incommunicado until then. Unfortunately, uploading pictures might be impossible with Flickr out. Wish us luck!

Sun & Josh

Beyond the Killing Fields: Cambodia's heart and soul

2009-12-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

For most people, Cambodia is Angkor Wat.

But the country has so much more to offer than that. The Khmer Rouge genocide happened during our lifetimes, making the Killing Fields every bit as poignant if not more than the sunrise over Angkor Wat.

It's impossible not to be impressed by the resilience of people who grew up without parents or grandparents. You could easily understand if Cambodia were filled with angry militants. But somehow peace has prevailed.

Most of the people in Cambodia speak English and are trying to be players in the global economy and community. These are dirt poor people who don't have running water, but they manage to squeeze every ounce out of their education. Families depend on tourism and philanthropy for the very basic necessities. Even the village water pumps are donated by charities. If you go through the villages near Siem Reap (Angkor) you will see a sign on almost every water pump that says who donated it, and a flag representing their country. Many schools and orphanages bear the name of an NGO so that even the kids who are forced to sell trinkets to tourists can study and have greater opportunities than their parents. The international community is helping Cambodia get its feet back on the ground in formal and indirect ways both. Remarkably there is no resentment about it on the part of the Khmer people and no self-pity either. You will never mock Angelina Jolie again when you visit Cambodia.

Phnom Penh has a chill Bohemian vibe with killer colonial and Khmer traditional architecture. Residents are not destroying their city for a quick and easy buck. And almost all the vendors touting to tourists are totally cool. They don't look at you like "You have money and I don't so therefore YOU BUY NOW!" Even the tuk-tuk drivers are laid-back. What a contrast with Vietnam! In Cambodia I felt human again, my heart wide open.

2009-12-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

The Mai Linh Express bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh lasts about 7 hours including the border crossing. That’s about 2 hours longer than they claim but it was a smooth ride. Our bus was peopled with other peculiar passengers including a couple traveling on Cuban passports, and a Vietnamese-Australian family.

Cambodian customs and immigration was uneventful. The bus company holds your passport the whole time and they even save you trouble by filling in your forms. You just need to pay the $24 for the visa, in whatever currency you’ve got or combinations thereof.

Overall I wasn't crazy about Vietnam, but we enjoyed our 7 weeks. It was an interesting, educational experience.

A few things about Vietnam surprised us. For instance, toilets are very clean. Even at dinky roadside restaurants, the toilets were fine. They are usually Western-style commodes with seats and toilet paper. No squatters. I like squatters in theory, but they do tend to get slippery, dirty, and buggy if not cleaned regularly.

Besides the toilets, just about everything else in Vietnam is a 3^rd world classic. The traffic was heinous, as chaotic as India’s and with more motorcycles. At least in India you know to wait for a break because otherwise you will get hit. In Vietnam to cross the street you have to wade out into the traffic and trust that the drivers will go around you. Usually they do, sometimes they most certainly don’t which is why I got hit by a motorbike in Saigon.

We traveled from the north (Hanoi) to the south (Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City) and stopped at only five towns along the way. Because we stayed up to 2 weeks in each place, Josh and I get a lot of feel for the pace and style of everyday life in these towns, more so than just passing through. It was really nice to establish ourselves somewhere even for just that short time and become “temporary regulars” at coffee shops. Our only short stays were in Nha Trang (4 nights) and Dalat (3 nights). Everywhere else we stayed long enough to receive hotel discounts.

In Dalat we splurged on the Ana Mandara Resort and Spa. Dalat is a mountain town, and there isn’t much to do there anyway so we figured that this would be the best place for a relaxing retreat. This is a very busy time of year for our business and Josh was really getting burned out. So I found this deal on Agoda. Agoda is a must if you are traveling in Asia, it’s basically a Priceline/Hotwire/Venere for Asia and their prices tend to be better than other booking engines. Dalat was where we visited the coffee plantations.

My personal favorite place that we visited in Vietnam was Mui Ne. Mui Ne is a very small town near a larger town called Phan Thiet. Between Mui Ne and Phan Thiet is a beach strip, literally only one road that has only hotels and restaurants. It sounds lame but it turned out to be the most peaceful spot of the whole trip because of the chilled out surfer vibe. Not wave surfing but wind and kite surfing. Every day around noon when the winds start to pick up, hundreds of surfers at varying levels of expertise come out to play and practice.

It’s a long, long beach with soft sand. You can’t really swim in the South China Sea there because it’s rough. But the breeze keeps the air so cool that you can lay out all day (as I did) and not sweat. The eye candy is great, all the surfers many of whom do tricks in the air, and the novices learning. Their first lesson is literally flying a kite for 2 hours—that’s it! They don’t even get to surf until the 3^rd lesson.

Just as with all good surfer towns, there are plenty of places to drink beer including one brewpub down the end of the road that is a branch of Vietnamese brewpub chain Hoa Vien. We rode bicycles from the hotel, it took about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the beer wasn’t so great so we didn’t go back. But on the way out we rode past two signs that said “Live Beer!” I immediately knew that would mean fresh beer, and the next day we checked that out. Turns out the Russian microbrewery Fifth Ocean launched a brewery branch in Saigon just three weeks earlier. We had the Fifth Ocean (Pyatiy Okean in Russian) a few times after that. There is a large Russian contingency of both tourists and expats in the southern part of Vietnam.

Saigon was great, it surpassed our expectations. Just as Hanoi let us down, Saigon inspired us. Saigon is totally different from Hanoi, and it seems most people like Hanoi better for some weird reason. Saigon is bigger, and seems to have better urban planning. There is more green space, more traffic lights, better flow of traffic and pedestrians, more sidewalks, more restaurants, more bars, and more amenities in general. The food was better and the people friendlier than they were in Hanoi. Hanoi has more brewpubs (and better ones) but that’s the only tick on its side of the chart.

One thing I liked about Saigon is all the history of the American War (that’s what Americans call the Vietnam War). The War Remnants museum in town has great exhibitions on Agent Orange showing how babies were still being born with deformities in the late 1990s.

The day-trip to the Cu Chi tunnels shows how the Viet Cong dealt their decisive blow. That’s also where you can wreak some innocent havoc on targets at the shooting range. They have M16s, AK-47, and more. It was $10 for a round of AK-47 bullets and worth every dong. We also visited the Holy See of a Vietnamese syncretic cultish religion called Cao Dai. The Cao Dai symbol is the Illuminati eye in the triangle.

Given my fascination with such things, I really enjoyed that temple, and we even arrived on time to see the noon mass/chanting ceremony. Visitors are permitted to observe from the 2nd floor and take pictures.

Vietnamese Coffee

2009-12-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

These are robusta coffee cherries, on the tree, outside of Dalat. Vietnam is the second-largest exporter of coffee in the world, behind Brazil. Around Dalat they grow robusta; to the north around Buon Me Thuot they grow arabica. The government owns the land and leases it to farmers. The coffee trees live to about 20 years and take 3-4 years to bear fruit. The French brought coffee to Vietnam, but the Vietnamese have taken to the bean in a huge way.

Once the cherries are picked they are dried in the sun for 4-5 days. The cheap coffee is roasted with the husk on, the good stuff is run through a machine first to remove the husk. The husks are used for fertilizer, fuel or free range chicken feed.

Most Vietnamese roasters are tiny. In order to differentiate their product, they will sprinkle the beans with a small amount of flavouring - could be chocolate, vanilla, chicory or other. This gives each Vietnamese coffee its own distinct character. The most prized variety is Ca Phe Chon, which is the near-famous weasel coffee. In Dalat it goes for 10,000 dong for 100gm; it is about three times that price in Saigon.

The Vietnamese coffee experience begins with tea. Of course, condensed milk is used. The Vietnamese do not like black coffee. They like black coffee shops, however. They have a thing for sitting in near pitch black coffee shops at night, quietly sipping cups and having conversation. Daytime coffee shops are more convivial. As for me, I love the rich, chocolatey, earthy character of a great Vietnamese coffee.

Some Nha Trang Notes

2009-12-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

Nha Trang is Vietnam's premier beach town. It's scenic, surrounded by mountains and islands in the sea. It's got a sizeable population and a (perhaps poorly deserved) reputation for good nightlife. All things considered, we really liked Nha Trang (all things = bad weather). We came during the rainy season and we got what we paid for. Lots of clouds, hardly any sun, and some rain. One day at the brewpub we rented a few of their lounge chairs on the beach, but it was already clouded over.

So maybe we didn’t really “do” Nha Trang. We stayed just 4 nights, part of that’s because our room wasn’t super comfy and we ended up spending all our time in the brewpub anyway. Our hotel was a small family-run establishment called Ha Van, a typical mid-range with an LCD TV, good air-con, and some half-assed fixtures you can expect from low wage contractors. $25/night. It was an okay place for 4 nights but would not have wanted to stay much longer.

There was no nightlife to be seen, heard, or experienced. The few nightclubs around are inside hotels and I can only imagine the caliber of music they were playing based on what was pumping out of the low-grade sound systems at the backpacker bars. We probably could have gotten a tip on a fun place to go, but were working a lot at the time and knowing Josh he would have declined to go out anyway. I’m from Miami, and have pretty high standards for these things!

Never mind, the Louisiane Brewhouse was the highlight of Nha Trang. It’s a brewpub with a private stretch of sandy beach, a large swimming pool, billiards, cabanas, and on-site masseurs. With all that you’d expect some snooty or overpriced arrangement, but it’s neither nor. The service is friendly, and the pool is free to use. If you want a lounge chair on the beach it's $1.50. House beers are 35000 dong, about $2 a pint. They don't even carry third-party beers! Unfortunately they nail you on the brewery tour. It’s 180,000 dong ($10) per person. We didn’t take the tour.

The beer was good at Lousiane. The dunkel/dark lager is the best one—full-on lip-smacking chocolate malts and mocha. The pilsner and the seasonal “crystal” are both well hopped and session-friendly. The house character is a delicate, soft palate. They're moreish.

Nha Trang has a mellow vibe. We expected a brash, loud, obnoxious seedy seaside town but it’s not that at all. The local vendors seemed friendlier than anywhere we had been in Vietnam before that, and we ate some decent street food including seafood grilled before our eyes. Clams on the half shell with peanuts, garlic, and chili and an order of squids. Total for both about $6. We were overcharged. Once or twice we paid the locals’ price without having to bicker--such as the ban xeo (seafood pancake) at 50 cents for 3 pancakes. Not getting ripped off is pretty remarkable in Vietnam.

Something to be Thankful For

2009-11-25T21:49:00.000-08:00

Cramped into the tiny beds on the sleeper bus – well, one of us was cramped anyway – we cruised south, with the next three legs of the journey pretty much set.

We probably liked our first week in Hoi An better. The weather was brilliant, the hotel room as large as any we’ve had. We rode our bikes to the beach, drank bia hoi and chilled out in the UNESCO old town, a former trading post not unlike Melaka, which we visited last month.

I awoke at the start of our second week to pounding 4am rain. And so it was that winter announced its arrival to Hoi An. The rain came in the door and window and covered the floor. Even once we’d got that mopped up, we had a week of progressively cooler weather in front of us. I’m talking mid teens here –cold! We would see tourists still with board shorts and T-shirts and wonder if they were just stubborn or if they simply did not expect such weather in tropical southeast Asia and therefore didn’t have anything warmer. I know we weren’t expecting such weather.

The sleeper bus is full of foreigners, with a handful of locals, almost like a little backpacker slumber party. It’s strange riding through places at night, so devoid of life. We wonder what we might be missing blowing through these spots. Probably not much, but you never know.

We’re well on our way now. I think after six months on the road we’ve started to settle into our lifestyle. There is – to me anyway – a much greater sense of being a nomad. We like to take our time everywhere we go. I’m curious how that will play out in the next couple of months. We’ll be making more stops, all the while trying to maximize our happiness.

To that end, we’ve allowed a splurge – holidays in Hong Kong. We bought the ticket the other day. That city has been near the top of both of our lists for a while. As excited as we are, though, we have a few other things to take care of first.

All we know is that we’re headed south, with any luck away from the grey, rainy weather. It’s getting a bit tedious really. We rented a motorbike to ride into Da Nang to visit the brewpub. Of course it started raining. But armed with cheap plastic ponchos, hats and everything else we could think of, we managed to stay dry. Trying to get back out of the city in the rain, dark and Friday evening rush hour was another pleasure cruise altogether.
But all’s well that ends well and aside from doing a few extra loops around some of the roundabouts in the interest of safety, we were soon back at home.

We made some hot chocolate and flipped on the foreign news networks. We’ve seen BBC World, CNN International, Deutsche Weld, NHK, the French one, the Korean one and even the Australian one. So answer me this – where’s the CBC when you need it? Seriously, I want a Canucks game. Pick a Sunday morning and I’m there. I’m so hurtin’ I’ll take a Leafs game. Shudder.

End rant.

I wish, when you are reading this, that you could smell the incense burning at every shop, hear the horns from every vehicle, feel the mist and sit on the little kiddie seats at the street stalls. There’s just so much that cannot be conveyed, even with blog posts and photographs. We roll through a place like My Son, a small temple complex built for Champa kings hundreds of years ago, and we can only seen ruins and remnants. But all that’s happened here, it’s just hard to capture. Kings came for spiritual guidance and contemplation. The Viet Cong used the temples as a hideout, resulting in them being bombed. The ways in which this stuff resonates is hard to explain. But that’s why we’re out here.

The sleeper bus bounces and jostles its way down Highway 1, the main north-south highway in this decidedly north-south country. I can’t really sleep. Just like with any other bus, I’m still crammed in, albeit in horizontal format. I only start to get some rest when we finally come to a rest stop.

A really long rest stop.

When I awake from my rather fitful, cramped slumber, we are again stopped. Or still stopped. Hard to tell – I wasn’t conscious. But we’re not moving and none of the other vehicles around us are moving either. A glimpse to my right and the winding mountain highway is filled with vehicles, none moving.

We were stuck for goodness knows how long. We only got bits and pieces of information. There was an accident, that much we know for sure. Up at the pass, maybe on one of the bends…

Something To Be Thankful For

Hi it’s me Sunshine. The sleeper buses in Vietnam use recliners. Their beds stretch out almost all the way back, and there are two bunk levels. Josh and I were on the lower level, side by side. Along with the foreigners, several Vietnamese were on the bus including a wrinkly old lady. It’s true, people like me and the wrinkly old lady fit in the bed quite well. People like Josh fit in up to their knees. His legs extended all the way to the toilet. In Josh’s words, “The person sitting on the john can give me a foot massage.” I’m not sure he’d really want that.

The berths are better than seats but still not comfortable. They give you blankets but it’s still a bus ride. Sleep came in fits. After one fit, I awoke with a bad dream.

Somebody was lying dead in the middle of the road. A motorcyclist, surrounded by splatters of his own blood. In the dream I kept thinking about how this was the first accident we saw on the trip, in spite of the lawless traffic. After all, we’ve rented motorcycles several times so far. It’s scary but we’ve never seen or experienced even a near-miss. The dream was proof that shit happens. And we don’t even know what happened.

So I go back to sleep, wondering what the dream means. The next time I wake up, I discover that the bus is stopped on the side of the road. I look out the window and there is a long line of buses and trucks ahead and all around us. Something must have happened. I start to drift back off to sleep after checking the time. It’s 7:15 AM. As I drift, I overhear someone saying in English that there was an accident up ahead.

Thankfully the weather was cool. The engine was off and there was no air conditioning and the toilet couldn’t be used. There was nothing for me to do but get more sleep. Each time I woke up, I’d look outside and we hadn’t moved. Many of the passengers were smoking outside. The clock ticked. 10:30, 11:30. I heard a guy talking on his cell phone (there’s service on the top of a mountain in Vietnam?). He was telling someone in Nha Trang that we were supposed to arrive at 6AM but that he would be late. I did the math. If we were supposed to arrive at 6AM and now it’s noon and we’re still not moving but we have another 90 kilometers to go, this probably means we were stopped on the side of the road for 8 hours. We arrived in Nha Trang after 2PM. Remarkably, the driver still pulled over at a rest stop for almost an hour before we arrived. At that point we had 80 kilometers to go. Wouldn’t you think he’d just power up and get to Nha Trang—why stop an hour before the destination?

Doesn’t matter. We made it. Late and tired, but safe. I shudder to think how bad that accident must have been to have halted hundreds of vehicles going in both directions over the mountain—and to have likely infected my dreams. Somebody went out with a flourish.

Random notes

2009-11-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been holed up in Hoi An. It’s a nice place, quiet and with lots of things to do. Our room was big and cheap so we decided just to let it roll a while.

We ended up getting busy with work – freelancing comes in waves – and have stayed a long time now. We’re not quite sucked in, although we do know the real price of a bowl of noodles and know how to acquire homemade rice wine. We kind of wish we didn’t know that, all things considered.

To break things up, I shoehorned a cooking class into the schedule. I learned how to make pho, and how to fold banana leaves full of shrimp, and shred some salad. We did a tour of the market and a tour of the fields. In the fields we heard horns and drums. Apparently this was funeral music – it’s things like that you only learn from having a local guide. We came across some old palm branches on the ground. They were covering sprouts, and the guide says “It takes three days to grow sprouts. The Chinese have a chemical that makes it grow in 20 minutes. That’s why they die of cancer.”

The Vietnamese, being right beside China, you’d think would have a strong Chinese influence. Indeed, there seems to be some animosity on the part of the Vietnamese towards their northern neighbours. You can’t buy Chinese food, and that quip in the fields wasn’t the first we’ve heard.

What else?

Veg food. Veg food is a lifesaver in Vietnam for several reasons. One, the Vietnamese vegetarian restaurants are honest. They are Buddhist, and they walk the talk. Unlike traditional Vietnamese restaurants, they don’t overcharge white people, they make you feel at home, and they smile genuinely. Great vibe. We’ve found a place around the corner from us that has a veg buffet at lunch, and do vegetarian versions of cao lau and other Hoi An specialties. We’ve gone there almost every day since we’ve been in Hoi An and the lunch buffet is 50 cents up to $1 depending on what you want. The second reason why veg food is great in Vietnam is that it’s tasty. Traditional Vietnamese street food and small local restaurants tend to have limited menus with uninspired foods. Not so with the veg! More depth of flavor, more variety, more fun.

Vietnamese vegetarian is like the Chinese Buddhist vegetarian, in that they don’t rely on tofu and they incorporate a wealth of wheat gluten products made into different “meats.” The Vietnamese do a damn fine job with the “meats.” These offer a rich array of tastes and textures. The organ “meat” tastes so rich they could almost be mistaken for the real thing. Sometimes they will use a stick of lemongrass instead of a bone to boost flavor and offer interesting appearance. These meats often taste and feel a lot better than what they are attempting to imitate. Vegetarian chicken (white meat and drumstick), salmon steak, pork, beef, shrimp, squid, venison, kidney, deli meat, etc are each modeled, colored, seasoned, and textured to appear like those things. If I look hard enough I swear I could track down a veggie balut egg. A lot of people don’t “get” the veg meat thing but I do—it’s about cruelty-free varieties in taste, texture, and appearance. In Vietnam, Buddhists eat veg at least twice a month, on new moon and full but we noticed that the veg restaurants did good business all month long in both Hue and Hoi An. Usually we were the only foreigners.

So cheers to Vietnam for that. The Hoi An food is good stuff, some of it. I like cao lau (pronounced Koh Lau), a bowl full of sprouts, broth, greens, meat, pork cracklings and the eponymous, proprietary noodle. It’s not a soup but comes with a small bit of dark soya-based broth for moisture. Mi quang is another good meal in a bowl, based on a blander white noodle than cao lau. It’s got more broth than cao lau but still without being a soup. Its broth is bright yellow from turmeric and coconut. Josh is a cao lau guy, and Sun is a mi quang girl. Fried wontons are flat fried wontons, spread out and topped with a shrimp and pork mixture.

I’m dreading having to repack my bags. It’s a BIG task. My bag kills porters like beer kills brain cells. Sunshine’s bag glorps out over the pavement like an African bullfrog. We have a lot of stuff. But you’d be amazed what comes in handy. Leaving Germany I wondered what the point of my cold weather clothes was going to be? Try cold nights in Cappadocia, rain storms at the fig house and three weeks of cool, rainy weather in Vietnam.

While most things are permanent fixtures some things are more temporary. Toiletries in particular. Right now we have deodorant from Miami, soap from Turkey, toothpaste from India, shampoo from Germany, mouthwash from Malaysia, shaving cream from Thailand and at the end of my left arm I have Abu Dhabi toilet paper.

Then there’s the street vendors in Vietnam. They have some fantastic sales pitches. “You buy here!” “You buy something in my store!” “You buy this now!”

Awesome. I wonder what it actually says in the Vietnam Handbook of Selling to Westerners that convinces them that they are your customer, not the other way around. Or that commanding someone to buy something actually works.

We are heading south after Hoi An. To Nha Trang, which we’ve heard a lot of mixed reviews on. Will be interesting to see how we like it. We’ve finalized some of our travel plans for the future, including Angkor and Hong Kong. Ramble on!

Hue to Go

2009-11-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

We left Hanoi in a dizzying flurry as I scrambled to get my work done before we had to leave for the airport. It was a mad scramble. We barely had time to hit the coffee shop. Vietnamese coffee, for those unfamiliar, is a small cup of very thick, almost extract-like stuff. It is sweetened with condensed milk. Most Vietnamese drink theirs over ice, but concerns about the quality of the tap water relegated us to warm coffee in the coffee shops. The backpacker places are okay, but we greatly preferred the vibe at the locals’ shops. But we mostly went to the local corner coffee. Sitting on the corner by the giant viney tree that has a mouse living in it, listening to the sounds of the songbirds and watching the world ride by on motorcycles is what it’s all about. We became regulars at the corner shop, such that we did not need to place an order, just merely sit down and they knew what we wanted.

We rode out to Hanoi airport, a little sad that the place didn’t work out. We found ways to make it more relaxed and enjoyable, but it was certainly not going to fit the bill for a two-month stand. A more complicated autumn awaits us, on the road, traveling the length of Vietnam.

We arrived in Hue after a short flight on a prop plane. I hate props. I don’t trust them very much.

We sensed the more laid back vibe immediately, much to our relief. Our hotel was friendly upon arrival and soon we were off to dinner. It was across the street, at a fairly uninteresting touristy place with the live ethnic band and things like that. We loved the beer-steamed crab though. So sweet and succulent, one of the best crabs I’ve ever had.

We then paid a visit to the DMZ. No, not the demilitarized zone, DMZ is a bar. A dive bar for expats and tourists, basically. Loud, crappy music downstairs so we sat upstairs. It was a very laid back scene. We investigated the town’s three indigenous beers - Hue Beer, Huda and Festival, the latter being the clear winner.

It started, slowly, to rain. On the way back to the hotel, it opened up for real, soaking us. Well, me, since Sun had brought her umbrella. It was the beginning of Typhoon Mirinae, which actually hit much further south, but spend two days lashing us with its tail. The next day, the rain was near legendary. We got a break long enough to get dinner and get back to DMZ. We sat on the upper balcony under the tin roof and the skies opened once again, pummeling down on the defenseless city. Winds were gusting and the power went out, but the show went on. Stay and drink in a dark bar or go outside in the middle of a tropical storm? Not a tough choice, really.

After two days of storm, a minor lull allowed us to take in the Citadel under drizzly skies. Hue was once an imperial capital of the Nguyen Dynasty, which lasted for 150 years or so, albeit half of them as a vassal to the French and later the Japanese. The Nguyen “Kaisers”, as we keep overhearing from German-speaking tour guides, left a handful of monuments, none more impressive than the sprawling citadel with its own forbidden city, modeled after the one in Beijing.

When the emperors died, they were interred at special tombs, which are park-like complexes devoted to their well-being in the afterlife. Each of these is an attraction unto itself. They’re a bit outside town, so we rented a scooter and went to visit.

We picked the wrong day. You see, even without a typhoon Hue in November is a wet place to be. The city gets 3.6 times the amount of rain in November as Vancouver does. And 2.7 times the amount that Miami gets in June, that city’s wettest month. Basically Hue combines the tropical storm downpours of Miami in June with the constant grey and showers of Vancouver in November. Rock on.

So we were armed for the rain. We had ponchos, like everyone else in Hue. We had one bag under the seat with plastic bags around our valuables. Sun kept her purse under the poncho. She had an umbrella as well and a hoodie too. I had my jacket, a spare shirt and a hat. We did our best, but it wasn’t enough. WE GOT SOAKED. The rain poured all day.

We saw the Minh Mang tomb – very peaceful and impressive grounds – but could not get the scooter through the mud road to the Kai Dinh tomb. We tried. I crashed through puddles and powered my way out of mud pits. But a dip in the road provided a mud pit too much for a mere scooter to handle. I gave it a go but realized it just wasn’t going to work. So we turned back. In town, we caught some sites, including a pagoda.

The Thien Mu Pagoda is on a pleasant grounds with Buddhist gardens. Monks and nuns chanted in one of the main buildings. On the grounds was also the car that took monk Quang Duc to Saigon, where he burned himself to death in protest against the government – an event best remembered by its iconic photograph.

Hue is a peaceful place, an easy place to spend time. There’s a day or two’s worth of tourist stuff to do, but for the most part we worked and relaxed, happy to get a taste of the Southeast Asia we love. We’ve eaten a lot of Buddhist food, which is strictly vegetarian. One place has a pretty good menu and we’ve gone back. We found a lunch place with simple, excellent food including the most complex example of bun bo Hue I’ve found – the city’s iconic noodle soup. It’s got beef, pork ball, congealed pig’s blood and the whole thing.

The clouds parted as we left for Hoi An…d’oh!

Hanoi Eat/Drink

2009-10-31T03:54:00.000-07:00

Hanoi Eat/Drink

FOOD:
First bit of advice is to check ReidOn. The author is a Lonely Planet writer and knows his stuff. We didn't get around to all his tips but we can certainly vouch for some. The SavourAsia page is also very helpful.

1. Quan An Ngon is a must. Especially if you are in Hanoi for a short time you will want to try as many different "street food" dishes as possible and that is only possible at this concept restaurant. Basically they took a bunch of "food stalls" and put them in the courtyard of a beautiful colonial mansion. The food is great, atmosphere is stunning, and the prices are actually not much more than what you would pay on the street. The quality here is often better too, not to mention the hygeine. SavourAsia has a brief description of where/what it is.
2. Highway 4 turned out to be my favorite place in Hanoi. Read Reid's review here. The Old Quarter location is the one we went to and loved it. The rice wines can be sampled for .50 to $1.00 per shot and some of them are tasty. The food is quality fun, we tried a lot: the catfish rolls, the cricket rolls, and the fried locusts with lemongrass (great beer snack). The 8 types of mushroom and anything else you order will be good too.
3. If you're up for a splurge, and happen to be around on a Friday night, there is an expat joint called Brothers. Brothers has a solid seafood buffet including free-flow wine (the wine was Argentinian when we were there) $20/pp. Pricey for Hanoi but we bit the bullet and were happy--you can get all manner of briny creatures grilled before your eyes. Had the best grilled anchovies I've ever had and this is coming from someone who just spent 7 weeks in Turkey where all they eat are fresh anchovies!
4. Street food is fun and cheap but we were very disappointed with the lack of visual displays and lack of variety. Also, places have spotty hours. You really have to know where to go and when. Most vendors are honest but some will rip off foreigners. One reliable joint for us was eel soup at DONG THINH MIEN CUON address: 83 Hang Dieu St, open all day and into the night, too. The main thing they serve is soup with cellophane noodles and fried eels but they also make a decent eel congee (called chao in Vietnamese). We ate here 5 or 6 times at least.
5. I don't care much for pho, but if you do then supposedly the best is PHO GIA TRUYEN on 49 Bat Dan St. They open at 6AM and are usually done by 9, 10 AM latest. Sometimes they reopen at night but I wouldn't count on it. Josh said the pho in Vancouver was better, which accounts for the fact that northern Vietnamese pho uses a clear broth whereas southern pho is richer and more filled with the characteristic ingredients (tendons, lots of herbs, etc).
6. I'd call this a "must" if you have the time: CAFÉ PHO CO. Better known as "Secret Coffee" because it's hard to find. The entryway is behind a store, and the store is at 11 Hang Gai St. Just walk through the store and then you will see a lovely Asian courtyard. A lady will hand you the menu, you place your order and then go up 3 flights of stairs. When you reach the rooftop you will get the best view of Hanoi and Lake Hoam Kiem.

Honorable mentions: Cafe Stop and Luna d'Autumno for Western food. You're traveling long enough that you might want some Euro eats and these are both decent (but different). Cafe Stop is owned by a French expat and it's a great place for omelet. Has a coffee shop atmosphere, and is not expensive. Luna d'Autumno is full-on Italian and very good quality. Pastas are all made in-house. I had an extraordinary ravioli stuffed with eggplant and walnuts with sage butter sauce. Good wines. Prices are a little less than what you would pay at home.

DRINK

1. We visited 11 of Hanoi's brewpubs and there are still more. The brewpubs exist for Vietnamese, not expats or tourists (surprisingly). Hanoians like beer! If you aren't as into beer as we are, Legends is the easiest one to visit and it's in all the guidebooks. The beer isn't great but it's not bad either. The view from the outdoor patio is excellent, as good as the "Secret" coffee I told you about. It's an even better place for gawking at the traffic.
2. If you like Czech beer, I would strongly recommend Hoa Vien brewery. It's not that far out of the Old Town and has a great atmosphere and the best beers in town. Their food is good too, I could have put it in the restaurant list.
3. Highway 4 (mentioned above) for the rice wine. Don't know much about these rice wines. The ones at Highway 4 are made by one manufacturer/distiller. Some of them are mild, some are potent, and most are tasty. The best ones are complex and herbal.
4. Bia hoi! If you don't know what bia hoi is, then you will as soon as you plan a visit to Hanoi. It literally means "fresh beer." It's a communist principle: beer for the masses produced in large quantities and costs so little that everyone can afford it. Each glass is 3000-6000 dong (10-30 cents) depending on where you drink it. The quality of the beer matches the price but it's more about the experience. All bia hoi is drank on the sidewalk in the child-sized plastic chairs. There are lots of bia hoi vendors but if you feel like meeting other travelers or being in a bustling environment, then you must go to Bia Hoi corner. It's a corner of the Old Quarter with 3 bia hoi vendors that have attracted a loyal backpacker crowd but some locals drink there too. Bia Hoi corner is a unique experience, memorable, and quintessentially Hanoian. If you feel like a more Vietnamese crowd then there are lots of places you can go around town, just look for the signs and pick a spot.
5. If you really love beer and are dying for a quality quaff, then My Way is the way to go. They have a solid list of Belgians including Trappist ales. They use proper glassware, store and serve their beer properly. They have a number of different locations, the one across from the Opera House has a great atmosphere and view. If you are staying near Opera House that would be the one you check out. Prices are what you would pay at home.

Hanoi Hopes, Dashed

2009-10-31T00:33:00.001-07:00

Some places feel like home as soon as you get there. Hanoi wasn’t one of them. It’s too bad because we wanted to get into an apartment and live there for at least three months. After just three days both of us knew we weren’t going to be happy. That was after we gave it a solid chance and looked at half a dozen apartments.

Looking at apartments was bizarre. One landlord showed us several suites in his building. All the suites were supposed to be ready in a matter of days but none of them had furniture, a kitchen--or four walls. The building was being renovated and it didn't have an outside wall. He showed us three suites, I think they were four, five and six stories up. None had the wall, and none had furniture or a kitchen installed either. The landlord--who was very kind--said he'd give us sheets for the bed and any other "nuts and bolts" we might need. Oh really? What was even funnier was the way Josh was pretending to be interested, asking all these other questions but avoiding talk about the wall.

I digress. We found Hanoi to be so radically different from what we had read and heard about that it felt like we were in the wrong place, or in a parallel universe Hanoi. People whose opinions we trusted raved about the city. Guidebooks heralded it as "one of Southeast Asia's most beautiful cities." It is so not.

Nevertheless, we made the best out of our 12 nights in the city. During our apartment hunting and especially brewpub touring, we saw neighborhoods that most tourists don’t go to. None of them were that nice, it was just fun being stared at by wide-eyed children and smiled at, instead of accosted by vendors.

It’s too bad we didn't like Hanoi, because there is so much beer to drink. One of the best things to do in Hanoi is drink coffee or beer on the street. There are some good spots to sit on the sidewalk and watch the world go by. The dozen or so brewpubs are fun to have around.

One of the things we really didn’t like was the total lack of nightlife. There is nothing to do at night! All the bars and bia hoi stalls shut down by 11PM and unless you have a private party to go to, you're out of luck.

Another disappointment was street food. It's monotonous and often of mediocre quality. It took a lot of work to figure out where to go to get what. We did get some food tips so I wrote a whole Hanoi food/drink post about the highlights.

Sometimes eating can be surreal. Once a soup vendor dumped my leftover broth into another patron's bowl after I picked all the good stuff out of it. Waste prevention, I guess. Oh, and street markets can be freakish and unappetizing unless your name is Andrew Zimmern. Maggots, entrails, hooves, that sort of thing. Surprisingly few veggies.

In general Hanoi combines some of the terrible aspects of small town life with the worst of big city life. It has the noise and traffic of the city but without its buzzing nightlife, and it has a compact urban core that's a drag to walk in. There isn’t much green space to savor, and architecture is poorly maintained, under-appreciated, and hidden. Hanoi must have been nice ten, twenty years ago. Now it’s just another loud obnoxious mercenary Asian city. If we return it will probably be on our way to somewhere else. Sorry! Hanoi is overrated. Hanoi is...

ready for it?

Hannoying.

Hue we like. I think Oakes will take that on in the next blog post.

the Kuala Lumpur story

2009-10-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to post as we’ve been incredibly busy. After an epic two day multi-leg extravaganza we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. Why KL? Why not. Sun’s always wanted to visit and we knew that the food would be incredible. It was.

I was totally out of it when we landed and barely remember a thing about that first day. I guess it was Thanksgiving in Canada but for me it was about five hours long. Our hotel was very centrally located on a big intersection in between the bus station and the stock exchange. Around the corner was a Hindu temple and we popped into the restaurant next door, Sri Ganesh, for dinner. Mega yum. The cost for two people – under $5. Damn I love Asia.

I only made it as far as 9pm before passing out, and I stayed that way for 13 hours. We dealt with getting our Vietnam visas and proceeded to scope out the city. Give us the t-shirt: WE LOVE KL! There are three cultures there – Malay, Chinese and Indian. Straits Chinese originally come from the south of china but are their own entity by now, having been away from the motherland so long. Most of the Indians are Tamil-speaking Hindus from the south, as opposed to the Punjabi-speaking Sikhs back home. The Malay have a few minority groups. All this lot gets along. They work together, eat in each other’s restaurants and you’ll see temples and mosques on the same street. The food sometimes mixes cultures, as with laksa, the curry-based noodle soup. Seriously, laksa could not be better if I ate it in a dream. Noodles, sometimes multiple types in the same bowl. Coconut curry. Random stuff – could be egg, tofu, meat, beef balls, veggies – it’s never the same twice and it never matters.

KL is also a mix of classes, too. Lots of money here, with modern malls and office towers. The Petronas Towers are beautiful, for the record. But still the city has run-down apartments and sidewalk restaurants. It is ridiculously easy to transition between the two worlds.

So what did we eat? Glad you asked. A range of delicious noodle soups of all descriptions. There was a sort of a cioppino in a tin foil bag thing cooked over coals. Uttapam, roti Chennai and masala dosa for breakfast. Fried pork. Roast duck. Stuff we couldn’t identify. In the midst of all this blur of textures and flavours we realized that Malaysian/Singaporean food is among the greatest cuisines on earth and KL’s street food is some of its most defining cultural highlights. Mega yum indeed.

There’s not that much else to do. You can visit old growth (100 million years) jungle at Bukit Nanas, a small nature preserve in the middle of the city with hiking trails. You can go up the TV tower and get a view over the entire Klang Valley. Lots of shopping. Go buy some expensive stuff and then hit Chinatown for the knockoff version.

It’s a heck of a town and we didn’t want to leave, but we’re going to Hanoi so it’s off we go!

Ungespundetes in Malaysia

2009-10-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

The saying “Know Thyself” is etched on a lintel at the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi. You can still read, “γνῶθι σεαυτόν" while marvelling at the evolutionary leap in consciousness such self-awareness represented.

We have become complacent. We think we know ourselves and assume so while affirming our existence with material belongings, shoes and clothes and hobbies that represent who we really are. Yet knowing thyself takes quite a lot of time and trouble. It requires what is best known as Wisdom.

Many years ago I heard about Kuala Lumpur like most people do: because the Petronas twin towers were the then-tallest buildings in the world. They’re not anymore, but I heard other descriptions of the city that gripped me and placed KL close to the top of my list of Cities I Want to Visit.

Those descriptions include, "It’s a multicultural mecca." "A food haven!" "A grittier version of Singapore.”

I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been to Singapore. But what I’ve heard about KL comprises a vision of a City I Like.
Incidentally, Unplanned, Serendipitously, we are here. And I love, I absolutely love, Kuala Lumpur.

I want to visit Singapore too. Who doesn’t? But KL was higher on my list than its glossier counterpart. Why? Maybe it’s the contrarian in me. How many times can you hear ‘Why go to KL? Singapore is better!’ before you want to visit KL instead? Maybe it’s my rudimentary knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia, which is somewhat similar to Bahasa Malaysia, which in turn makes me feel happy to form simple sentences like “I like food,” and “I want to eat THAT!” Partly too it’s because I have happy memories of Penang, a chilled-out town in northern Malaysia.

The underlying reason is simple: I know myself. I know what I like. I know what I don’t like. I like taro ice cream, durian, food stalls every block, a melange of cultures, vibrant smiles, and vivid colors. I like the tropics. And KL is an extraordinarily pleasant place both to walk and to take public transport. I can't say I've found anything I don't like yet.

In our first 24 hours alone we ate Indian, Chinese, and Malay meals. Including a stop for ice kacang and Josh's extra bowl of noodle soup--we spent $14.

To my beer-loving friends, I’m ungespundetes in Malaysia. KL is about as underrated, as tasty, as colorful, and as fun as an unfiltered, unadulterated ungespundetes Franconian lager. I know I’ll get another great beer again, and when in a city as great as this one I can wait a lot easier. The two tasty domestic stouts smooth things out considerably!

A Single Step

Grasslands, horses and thunderstorms - the Mongolian Experience in a nutshell

The Ride to Mongolia

Calm Before the Storm

Into the Land of the Omul-Eaters

The Krasnoyarsk Story

Rolling Through Siberia

Day One...slow and easy

The Blog is Back

Year in Review: A Superlative List

Berliner Mauer

*SCAM ALERT* Be smart.

Roots

"Muslims go to Mecca. Swedes go to Islay."

Farewell, Sun

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

Our Take on Brunei

Leaving KL

Cat City, Borneo

Langkawi - Dry season, huh?

Beerfest Asia Puts the Pour in Singapore

A brief note on Kyrgyzstan

FOUSs (not ROUSs): Fruits of Unusual Size

Low Expectations Yield High Results

If MSG doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger: Penang Day 2

The Good Thing About Chinese Food is that You're Hungry Again Two Hours Later: Penang, Day 1

Ikan bilis = ikan bliss

Visitor Shows Up to Brewery Wearing Shorts

Josh Oakes Apprehended by Guinness Fashion Police; Free Beer Palliates

Lost and Found

Our First Malaysian Road Trip!

Feeling Bitter

The Other Oakes Just Isn't As Cool as Ours...

Banana Blossom!

My Makan Malay Part I: Tempeh

And we become mall rats

Breaking down Malaysia's Beer Barriers

Move over chai!

Between Bayernhaus and Brussels Cafe, We've Got KL Covered

Al-Amar

"Little Penang"

Return to Asia

What's Inside My Bag (In case you were wondering)

GOLD, GOLD, GOLD! The Women's Gold Medal Game USA vs. CANADA

Olympic Fever!

Olympic Countdown Begins

Tearing it Up

Taking the Subway to the PRC!

Beyond the Killing Fields: Cambodia's heart and soul

Vietnamese Coffee

Some Nha Trang Notes

Something to be Thankful For

Random notes

Hue to Go

Hanoi Eat/Drink

Hanoi Hopes, Dashed

the Kuala Lumpur story

Ungespundetes in Malaysia

SCAM ALERT Be smart.