Cooking where no one cooks – Part 2

In part 1, I talked about why everyone in Chiang Mai should cook, even though eating out may be cheap, convenient and delicious.

Now let’s get down to the practical stuff.

This post is specifically directed toward people living in Chiang Mai, but many of these tips may be useful for others.

 

You can make a kitchen anywhere

I worked for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, in Tucson, for several years, two of which involved regular cooking demonstrations. My job often required basically carting around an entire kitchen. This isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. I had a variety of supplies available to me, but most of the time, my mobile kitchen consisted of an electric frying pan (with extension cord) and a large plastic tub filled with various other kitchen essentials (knife, cutting board, spatula, large spoon, bowls, etc.). And depending on what I was making, I sometimes had a wheeled cooler as well. I became adept at setting this up quickly just about anywhere, including on a folding table at a farmers’ market. And if I didn’t have electricity available, a propane camping stove worked great outdoors.

What I’m trying to say is that if your place doesn’t have a kitchen, it’s very easy and pretty inexpensive to set one up. Hopefully your apartment has at least a kitchen sink, small counter space, and a refrigerator. If not, I know this can all be done on a table. (If you don’t believe me, see the previous paragraph.) And if you don’t have a refrigerator, stock up on the things that don’t require refrigeration, and then just buy what you need for the day.

 

Our setup

Here is what we started out with when we moved into our apartment:

 

• small countertop
• kitchen sink
• decent sized refrigerator
• electric kettle
• 2 glasses
• 1 spoon
• 1 cabinet above the sink/counter

 

 

 

 

We immediately bought:

• electric wok (came with a lid)
• rice cooker (cheapest, smallest one we could find–only has an on/off switch–we can make about 4 servings of rice at a time)
• surge protector/extension cord (our kitchen area has no convenient plugs)
• 1 small sharp knife
• 1 wooden spoontula (thanks, Brian, for the name)
• 1 small cutting board
• 2 glass bowls (deep and large enough to double as plates)
• 1 spoon (because we already had 1)
• 2 forks
• 3-pack storage containers (which can also double as bowls for cold food and for serving fruit)
• 1 sponge
• 1 small bottle of dish soap

All of this came out to about 1500 baht (about $45 USD). We bought all of this at Central Department Store inside Central Kad Suan Kaew Mall. If you shop around, I’m sure it’s possible to find these things for less at local markets or smaller stores, but we were on foot that day and enjoyed the convenience of this option. Ours are also pretty decent quality and have held up well so far over a month of continuous use.

 

We later bought:

• 2 mugs (for hot beverages for ladling soup)
• 1 larger knife (not completely necessary but nice for mincing garlic, cutting carrots, etc.)

We purchased these items for approximately 100 baht total at Tops.

 

Food

Kitchen staples:

• brown rice
• dry noodles
• lentils
• textured vegetable protein
• dried mushrooms
• quick cooking oats
• muesli
• onions
• garlic
• spices (coriander, cumin, black pepper, salt)
• soy sauce
• cooking oil (we use soybean)
• sesame oil
• mushroom sauce

(if you’re not a vegetarian, fish sauce and oyster sauce are often used locally instead of soy sauce and mushroom sauce)

 

Other foods we like to keep around:

• all sorts of fruits, whatever looks good and is a good price
• variety of vegetables for cooking and for salads (again whatever looks good and is a good price)
• bird’s eye chilies (if you like spicy food)
• limes
• green onions (aka: scallions or spring onions)
• cilantro (or other herbs that look good)
• yogurt
• eggs
• bread
• peanut butter (no oil added)
• jam (only fruit, sugar, and pectin if possible)

To give you an idea, we spend about 500 baht ($15 USD) every 2-3 days and get about 6 meals (between the 2 of us) and several snacks from that. Those trips are mostly for fruits and vegetables and sometimes the occasional staple that ran out. We’ve made a huge effort not to let anything spoil, so we buy only what we think we can use within a couple of days, and it’s really paid off. We find throwing food away quite painful, especially since it’s not really practical for us to compost at the moment. There are some chickens nearby that we’ve considered throwing scraps to, but we’re not sure how their owners would feel about it.

In the next post, I’ll give you some more practical tips for cooking with electric appliances, as well as some of my go to recipes.

Cooking where no one cooks – Part 1

Where are we now?

We’ve now been in Chiang Mai, Thailand for just over a month this time around. It’s a haven for digital nomad expats–apparently, there are 40,000 expats living in Chiang Mai, and walking around town, I believe it. Living expenses are very low, internet is fast and widely available, and there’s lots of fun stuff going on all the time.

Yes, we cook

For those who may be unfamiliar, food in Thailand (especially street food) is cheap, convenient and delicious. So understandably, people we talk to are constantly amazed that we actually cook here (though, admittedly, most of the people we talk to are expats). They’re even more amazed that we cook daily, usually at least 2 meals every day. When you talk to expats who live here about getting a place with a kitchen, most will say “don’t bother.” But I say otherwise. If you’re planning to stay for any length of time, get a kitchen–even a little counter space and a sink is sufficient, as you really don’t need more than that, and electric appliances are very affordable. (More detail on that in the next post)

Here are my reasons.

1.  It’s also inexpensive to buy and cook food at home

Even the Western-style grocery stores by us (Rimping and Tops) are cheap if you’re careful about what you buy. Interestingly, both Tops and Rimping are inside shopping malls, one very modern, and the other…well, let’s just say its heyday has passed. You can find basically any food item you could want from the Western world, but much of that category tends to be pretty expensive, so we’ve tried to stick mostly to what the locals might buy there.

But even better–there are tons of local markets all around. These markets can either be pop-up style like farmers’ markets back home, or they can be more established in an open-air, warehouse sort of building. The latter type might require a bit more courage, and ideally, an orientation from a local. You can find everything from a huge variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, to recently butchered meats, freshly made curry paste, coconut milk squeezed while you wait, flowers and candles for visiting temples, and much more. They’re great places to find just about anything you’d want, inexpensively.

Admittedly, we haven’t taken advantage of local markets as much as we’d like to, but we’re going to start. This morning we tried one that’s more of the farmers’ market kind, at Baan Kang Wat, and maybe it’s just getting started, but it was rather small. We did find some delicious jam and a woman who sells hummus, but sadly she ran out by the time we got there. Frank did get a delicious grilled cheese sandwich, and we shared some nice local kombucha. But just remember, don’t shake your kombucha. I turned it upside down a couple times just to try to mix it and managed to explode it somewhat. Oh well!

 

2.  You can control what goes into it

Since it seems like all the other expats eat out for every meal, I’ve heard complaints that restaurants use MSG, too much oil, and often that vegan/vegetarian food is not actually vegan/vegetarian. The reason for that last complaint is one that I’ve personally experienced. Many Thai cooks don’t realize that fish sauce and oyster sauce aren’t vegetarian by many people’s standards. They just think of the meat itself and not the sauces. Interestingly, though, sometimes if you order your meal vegetarian, they do often ask if you want egg. Coming from the US as a vegetarian, it’s interesting that here they would be more careful about eggs than about fish sauce or oyster sauce.

3.  You’re probably tired of eating out for every meal

As much as we love restaurants, after 4 months of travel through Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, eating almost every single meal out, we were really getting tired of it. We absolutely love waking up, making some oatmeal, cutting up a bunch of fruit, making some tea, and relaxedly eating at home. This takes us maybe 5 minutes even when we’re not rushing. In the past, breakfast involved getting up and dressed, going out and often having to settle for something we didn’t actually want. If we were lucky we could find some kind of yogurt/fruit/muesli bowl, but that wasn’t always an option. Traditional Asian breakfasts are rarely vegetarian, and the “Western” alternative was often expensive and included some kind of unknown sausage, oily eggs and a couple pieces of white toast.

4.  It’s fun to use ingredients that you don’t have at home

Bird’s eye chilies, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime zest, kaffir lime leaves, Thai ginseng, passion fruit, star fruit, soursop, dragonfruit, many varieties of bananas, longan, rambutan, mangosteen, etc., etc. The list goes on and on. You may be lucky enough to have an Asian market at home, but odds are, these ingredients will never be as fresh or as cheap as they are here. And do we really want to support the importing of foods from all the way across the globe? So use them now while they’re local.

5.  You can practice new skills

How many of us have a souvenir cookbook from a cooking class that’s just been sitting on a shelf? Use it! Another side benefit is that getting used to cooking in a tiny space will make anything back home seem luxurious.

In part 2, we’ll get down to the practical stuff.

 

Some more photos from Baan Kang Wat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos from a market we visited in Bangkok in June

Kuala Lumpur – Waiting for Visas

After spending a week in Kuala Lumpur, I think we can easily say that it’s one of our least favorite cities. To be fair, that might also have something to do with the fact that we were there during the time when the haze is at its worst every year, and this year just happened to be particularly bad. There are certainly a few interesting ways to spend your time, but mostly (as we discovered), it seems to be the place where everyone is waiting for visas. The fact that it’s a capital city and is the main hub of Air Asia makes it an ideal and inexpensive place to do so. It’s just, unfortunately, not the most pleasant of places to spend a week.

Fortunate Meetings

We were fortunate that we’d connected on Facebook with Natalia, a Polish girl we met only briefly at bar trivia in Kota Kinabalu, because it turned out that she was following us enough to realize that we were all in KL at the same time waiting for visas. She contacted us, and we wound up spending a nice bit of time together over a couple days. She had already been there for a week before we arrived because her Chinese visa was denied the first time–man, they are strict! And we thought the Thai visa was challenging. Fortunately, she did manage to get the visa on the second try…yay, Natalia! Hope you’re having a great time in Beijing!

The first time we hung out we took a trip out to the Batu Caves. And our second meeting the next day was quite miraculous, actually. We’d planned to meet for a movie, but we didn’t see Natalia in time, so we instead wandered around the fancy mall a bit and then went outside to view the Petronas Towers. We eventually made our way back inside and to the food court, ordered our food at the vegetarian restaurant…and ran into Natalia! Somehow, we’d timed it all just perfectly. Apparently, her train got stuck underground, and by the time she made it to meet us outside the movie, we’d already left. It was great hanging out together both times, and I hope we meet again someday!

Here are some highlights of our time in KL:

• Delicious Indian food on Leboh Ampang, which we returned to at least 5 times and never ate at the same restaurant twice
• Einstein Cafe, where they served very tasty vegetarian versions of local favorites and The Tapping Tapir’s local, natural sodas
• Arabesque’s delicious Middle Eastern food and very friendly Syrian owner. Bonnie got to play a series of backgammon games with him while we all chatted about his life and the situation in Syria
• The cats and iguanas living at our guesthouse
• The Islamic Arts Museum, which had gorgeous historical artifacts and impressive models of mosques and other Islamic-style architecture from around the world…and a wonderful gift shop! Based on internet advice, we were excited to try the restaurant there, but alas, for lack of any salt whatsoever and being spoiled by Frank’s mom’s cooking, it was not remotely worth the high cost.
• Sri Mahamariamman Temple, just around the corner from our guesthouse
• Petronas Towers, very interesting-looking and beautiful buildings
• Batu Caves, not only incredibly beautiful geologically but also an interesting visit to see the Hindu temple and sculptural depictions of the Ramayana
• We successfully got our 60-day Thai visas! We’ll talk about this in more detail in a later post.

On our way out, we spent our last night at the airport. It’s about an hour bus or train ride away from the city, and our flight left at 7AM. It just didn’t make sense to pay for a night at a guesthouse only to have to leave at 3AM. Turns out, we weren’t the only ones. Apparently, it’s so common to do this that several restaurants are open 24 hours a day, and there are designated resting areas in the terminal. Even with that, just about every carpeted space was covered with people sleeping. It’s not exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep, but we didn’t care because we were too excited to get back to Chiang Mai!

Melaka, Melacca, Tomato, Tomaddo

First thought I have to get off my chest….Chinese tourists….Chinese tourists everywhere! Oh and second thought, Indonesia’s haze is still the worst thing ever. Seriously, burning rainforests to make room for palm oil plantations affects every single person’s day, all day, every day, in a palpably, uncomfortably negative way. Don’t buy anything with palm oil unless you want to participate in ruining millions of people’s day! Including us, at the moment!

We actually had some pretty good days in Melaka, despite the haze, though

Our main reference for hearing “Melaka” was a restaurant we enjoy going to in Tucson that used to be called Seri Melaka (after several name changes, it’s apparently now Neo Malaysian Kitchen). To my chagrin, I had no idea that Melaka was even a city, though, until recently. And more than that, it was even possibly founded by a fugitive Hindu prince from Java, was the center of a trading empire that became a vassal state to Ming China in a local power struggle with Siam, was visited by the famous Admiral Cheng Ho, was later inhabited by the Portuguese and then the Dutch and the British and the Japanese and phew–there’s quite a history to read about!

The part of Melaka that we were in – Chinatown, on the edge of Little India – seemed a lot like a compressed version of Georgetown, to us. That is, while Georgetown had a lot of restaurants and hostels and quirky hipster gems of cafes, they were all spread out because of the thing we’ve noticed all around Malaysia: there are closed, rundown, or even abandoned-looking places interspersed in between. In this part of Melaka, though, there was hardly any of that kind of non-space, so it all seemed a lot smaller and even more walkable. Some of our favorites included:

• Calanthe Art Cafe, which serves coffee from all thirteen states of Malaysia, artfully made breakfasts and laksa, and has innumerable pretty and snazzy coffee drinks (coffee and passionfruit? yes please!)
• Cheng Ho Tea House, which is in a four-hundred year old building, has an all-vegetarian menu (including fake goose!), and a giant 3D sort of map of Cheng Ho’s travels made out of stone and concrete
• Inside Scoop, which had some local flavors we enjoyed (gula melaka, kopi and teh tarik), and some local flavors we…opposite-of-enjoyed (cempedak and durian) Well, Bonnie doesn’t mind them so much, but she still wouldn’t order a whole one.
• Selvam Restaurant – a banana leaf-style restaurant, which means they serve the Indian food on a big banana leaf and spoon out whatever you order from a limited menu, and may or may not give you utensils (hint: lean over the leaf if you’re eating with just your hand unless you want food in your lap)
• Chin Hua Vegetarian Food is a little hole-in-the-wall place that had a vegetarian buffet where…well, we honestly had no clue what we were eating. But it was pretty good, incredibly cheap, and vegetarian, so we were happy.

And there were also some sites to see

For one, we were staying directly on Harmony Street, which…has its ups and downs, besides being conceptually interesting in having the major religions of Malaysia all peacefully worshipped on the same block. The ups include getting to see:

• Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, which is dedicated to Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism and dates back to 1645
• Sri Poyatha Moorthi Temple, which is one of a couple Hindu temples claiming to be the oldest in Malaysia, and is mainly dedicated to a variant of Ganesh
• Kampung Kling Mosque, which is a beautiful mishmash of architectural styles ranging from Moorish to Asian to European to Indian, and, obviously, is a Muslim place of worship

The main downside was related directly to that last, the mosque, and partially was due to the fact that our second-story guesthouse room was directly in line with the mosque’s loudspeakers. Now, being woken up at the crack of dawn for a really LOUD call to prayer isn’t actually the worst thing, as annoying as it was after multiple days’ worth, though this youtube I found is a vastly better singer, and–unlike the one we heard–is standing a proper distance from the microphone, admittedly:

 

[kad_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe8qRj12OhY” ]

 

But being in our same guesthouse room for Eid Al-Adha and getting to hear the entirety of the holiday services on LOUDSPEAKER was flatly physically painful after a while, thanks to all those decibels. Bonnie put in earplugs, and it was still too loud to sleep.

We also saw some of the remaining fragments of A Famosa, a Portuguese fortress that once guarded the city, and the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, which was started all the way back in the 1500s, and was used as a base by St. Francis Xavier for his Asian travels. It’s a gorgeous ruin but is unfortunately filled with tchotchke-sellers, terrible would-be buskers, shrill pseudo-birdsong whistles and even graffiti in parts.

And, we saw just a little bit of Melaka-proper

Which was, honestly, mainly in service of getting some nice Indian food and seeing a movie to relax. The movie in question, offhand, was Sicario, which while being extremely violent, is also a very incisive social commentary and is gorgeously shot by Roger Deakins to best display some of our favorite desert from back home!

Georgetown/Penang

In some senses, Penang was a bit similar to Singapore: there’s a great diversity in the local population and culture (a mix of Chinese, Malay, and Indian), and it’s a small island connected to peninsular Malaysia by bridges. It’s not a sovereign city-state, though, and is of course a part of Malaysia; it’s also not an economic powerhouse, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its own charm and history, naturally. We stayed mainly in George Town: the capital of the state of Penang, a quite old city founded by the British East India Company, and also in part a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We should note, our very first impression of the city was the Chinese festival occurring in almost every street and alley around us, which included things like incense logs eight or nine feet tall, ad hoc streetside temples, LOUD Chinese opera, piles of burning paper oblations, and Chinese pop singers (also LOUD) in glam-rock outfits. While that did, to the chagrin of our poor ears, color our first few nights, George Town itself was actually generally quiet and laid back, really.

The other thing that colored our experience: the haze

Colored everything a faint, smoky grey, that is. Also, this particular aspect of the environment was more to the chagrin of our respiratory systems, namely: an extending of colds that we already had, scratchy throats and coughing, and a persistent feeling for Frank that someone had given him a nice black eye, thanks to sinus pressure. It was a bit like being inside that moment when you’re by a campfire and the smoke keeps blowing in your face, but perpetually.

Thanks Obama! Actually, no, internet memes aside, it’s really more, “Thanks, Indonesia! You jerk of a country.” Granted, the wholesale burning of rainforest to clear it for vile palm oil plantations isn’t directly sponsored by the government, but it’s not exactly prevented either, and the complaints of neighboring, coughing and hacking countries are pretty much shrugged off. So, moral of the story: don’t buy or use or eat products with palm oil in them! Not only does it lead to massive destruction of important and rare ecosystems, it affects millions of people in the region negatively, to say little of the health of the people consuming it. It’s the devil’s oil!

*the Chinese cultural practice of burning gigantic piles of paper oblations in the middle of the already-prevailing palm oil funereal pall certainly didn’t help anything either. Thanks, Chinese locals!

The weird, omnipresent polarity in businesses

That is, every single storefront was either one or the other of two contrasting things: very successful, trendy and hip, or closed, falling apart, and abandoned. We never really did figure out what the deal with that dichotomy was, or why neighboring businesses could be so wildly different so consistently. In any case, here are a few places that did stand out for us amidst all the other end of the spectrum squalor:

• the nameless restaurant next to the big mosque that was only open from 10pm to 4am, and served tasty Indian-influenced Malay food…thanks for that one dinner when we got really hungry at midnight!
• Wheeler’s Coffee (we know you secretly own it, Jason!) for its rose-flavored latte and The Safe Room (though we never did try the liquid-nitrogen cooled popcorn) and the Moustache Houze for breakfasts and hanging out and using the WiFi – long and short of it, many of the cafes wouldn’t have seemed the slightest bit out of place in Tucson or Portland.
• Campbell House, for being a hotel waaaaay out of our price range and yet with an affordable and delicious restaurant where we could class it up
• Purrfect Cat Cafe for being the first cat cafe we’ve been to, though it’s interesting to note that while the Bengal cats they had were a great idea in being hypoallergenic, they’re way more playful than even slightly cuddly.
• Sushi Kitchen for having delicious vegan Japanese food. We actually went to both their Georgetown location and their super-outside-the-tourist-area location with our Grass Van friends (more on that later).

*honorable mention: the tacky jewelry stores with the lackadaisical security guards toting very sawed-off shotguns, because that’s not someone you want to cross, you know?

The Malaysian street food

Really, there’s two main sorts that we went to repeatedly. One was a particular fried noodle guy who looked like he’d been selling the same noodles for about 60 years. He had three types: flat and wide, medium and round, and tiny and round, all with the same savory flavor, sometimes with chili sauce, sometimes with fried onions. And: super incredibly affordable. It wasn’t enough for a meal unto itself, but it made for a fantastic snack. One of the nice things we’ve noticed with street food in Malaysia (and in Singapore) is that most things are ordered by size and have a corresponding price. You basically order by telling them how much your want to spend.

In a similar sense, we snacked for many days in a row at a stand that consisted of two continuously boiling pots of water and a smorgasbord of skewered bits of veggies, meats, mushrooms, sausages, and dumplings for curbside cooking. Then there was the large selection of sauces (spicy, salty, sweet and tangy, etc.) to spoon on top. So, basically, hot pot where you spend cents at a time on each color-coded-for-price skewer – it’s good stuff, and we’ve even pondered doing it for a party at home.

Penang’s Jewish Remnants

Although the places we’ve traveled so far aren’t exactly Jewish heritage hot spots, upon some research, we figured out that Malaysia once had a notable Jewish community, with Penang at its center. At one point, Penang had one of the only Jewish communities in Malaysia. Although there’s some evidence that Jews existed in Malaysia all the way back to the 9th century, it’s thought that Penang’s Jews arrived mostly from India in the 19th century. Some also came from Baghdad. When the Japanese invaded during WWII, many were evacuated to Singapore but some were imprisoned by the Japanese during that time. After the war, the majority immigrated to Australia, Singapore, Israel and the US. Only about 20 Jewish families remained in Penang by 1963, and Mordechai David Mordechai, the last Jew in Penang, died in 2011. Here are some other articles of interest: a visitor’s blog post, a news article about the last Jew, Jewish Times Asia article, article about remnants, and an American woman’s reflections.

After a bit of a trek outside of the tourist area, we managed to find the Jewish cemetery. It’s in a pretty out of the way spot, but it made us wonder what it must have looked like while the Jewish community was thriving in Penang. The cemetery is in decently good condition and is still open for burials.

When we first arrived, we were awkwardly followed around by a young Indian boy who didn’t seem to speak English. Eventually, a man whom we assumed to be his grandfather walked up to speak with us. He showed us a few notable graves, and we asked him a couple questions; it turned out that he had known  He said that he known Mordechai David Mordechai (the person mentioned above), but we wondered if maybe they had been good friends, both from the way he talked about him and because he had been recruited to take care of the cemetery after Mordechai’s death. In a less personal sense, it was interesting to see a Hindu family conscientiously taking care of a Jewish cemetery, both in it being a tangential reflection of our relationship and religious cooperation in general.

Synagogue Building

Articles that we read referred to a synagogue in Georgetown, but it actually took a bit of research to figure out exactly where it once was. Nowadays, it’s mostly forgotten and has been converted into a photography studio, but the new owner purchased the building knowing the history and supposedly has worked to maintain the historical integrity of it. Knowing that, it’s somewhat strange to note that there’s no plaque or anything of the sort to denote its history. Unfortunately, the studio was closed the day we visited, so we didn’t get the opportunity to speak to the owner or see the inside. A circle near the roof had been painted over, so we wondered if maybe it was once a star of David or another Jewish symbol.

Somewhere Over the World

As we walked back to our hostel after a long day, we happened to see a van covered in fake grass parked on the street and remarked at how interesting that was. We saw who we assumed to be the owner, but he looked busy with a project, so we kept walking. Upon further discussion, we decided to turn around and introduce ourselves, and we were glad we did! We met Tobi, Carolin and their son Max from Germany. Tobi and Carolin have been traveling the world together for something like 4 years, and Max was born along the way in Australia. They’re now on their way back to Germany in their grass-covered van. We’ll be very interested to hear how their journey goes!

We wound up spending quite a bit of time with them, which included an evening of walking around town and dinner at Sushi Kitchen, and then the next day, they drove us in the grass van way outside the tourist area to find Cloud Dreaming Vegan Cake House. Sadly, it was closed the day we went, but Sushi Kitchen’s second location was right next door, so we had another delicious dinner there. We eventually did find baked goods, but instead from street vendors, including funny-colored sticky rice and funny pink turtle bread. We already had plans to head to the Cameron Highlands, so unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend more time with our new friends. Someday, somewhere over the world, we’ll meet again!

Chiang Mai Highlights (So Far)

Ahhh, Chiang Mai, Thailand’s northern gem, aka one of our favorite places to have visited so far. Barring, you know, something exploding or the city flooding or the Burmese repeating one of their historical invasions of the region.

Speaking of history – see what I did there? – Chiang Mai was founded all the way back in 1296 as the capital of the Lanna Kingdom, which was an influential Buddhist kingdom in SE Asia for several centuries. Eventually it was subsumed into successive Thai kingdoms, but there are still markers of that ancient past visible even just walking around.

For one, the center of Chiang Mai is a pretty obvious big square ringed by a moat. This is the original city boundary (and the first actual moat I’ve ever seen – I very much get how daunting that would be to a medieval military, now), though modern Chiang Mai spreads a good way beyond it. There are only a few fragments of the city wall and gates left, but even in their crumbling state, there’s enough to help imagine the city as it might once have been.

Nowadays, Chiang Mai’s old city is full to the brim of vegetarian restaurants, guesthouses, cafes, shops and more temples than you can shake a stick at – seriously, it makes it sometimes pretty confusing to get directions: “No, you have to go to the next temple over.”

East side of the square: stick to that side.

It’s been the best side of the square we’ve seen so far. We stayed in a great little hotel, for example, Lantern House, that was right around the corner from a tiny restaurant, Hideout, where we had some mindblowing food. Followed by a house-made fudge brownie drizzled with orange-cardamom syrup, but seriously the sandwiches were delicious, too.

We went out with some folks from Lantern House (the usual international mix – this time it was English, American, German, and Canadian) to a cabaret show, which had some pretty great acts, including spot-on renditions of Rihanna and Tina Turner. As to the transgender/ladyboy/cross-dressing aspect, a few people from our group seemed extremely uncomfortable, which startled us – upon reflection, although we were impressed by this show, we realized our main reaction was to feel homesick for the burlesque and LGBT stuff we enjoy at home.

In any case, we ended the night at a nice little courtyard that had a different bar for every genre of music that one might dance to; our group picked Roots Rock Reggae and their killer live band. Man, reggae is just the best for a bar.

Center of the square: museums and temples.

Lots of temples. Lots and lots of them. All over the place. Yep. I’d love to wax on about how beautiful they are, and it’s nice to see such a concentration of quiet spirituality, but aside from one silver-plated building we saw south of the city, there isn’t a lot of variety in Buddhist temple design. They’re nice, though.

The museums we’ve checked out have been of varying quality. On the lower end of the scale is the Chiang Mai Historical Centre; it was a bit like a rundown, lackadaisical, smaller version of the amazing Museum of Siam in Bangkok. Bonnie’s favorite was the Lanna Folklife Museum – she thought it had a really nice variety of artifacts and great explanations of everything from the shape of traditional Lanna water-serving jugs to temple architecture to medieval mural painting techniques, traditional textile weaving, embroidery, and wood carving. My favorite by a nose was the Chiang Mai Arts and Cultural Center, purely on one count: it had miniatures to display the different ways people have lived in the region in centuries past. I love miniatures so hard.

South of the square: well, we did it again.

That is, we accidentally ended up staying in the middle of a Thai neighborhood where no one spoke any English, and it was prohibitively far from where we actually wanted to hang out. The Airbnb ad and reviews said it was a 10 minute walk to the old city, but it was more like at least 20, and that’s just to the edge of the old city–probably another 20 minutes to where you want to be. It did lead to the usual learning about local living just by observing as we walked around, though, and some funny experiences.

For example, I got a haircut for a little over a dollar, and it came with free mini-bananas, and about as much joking as we could all create with nominal language overlap. Also, we had more fun times with the pan-Asian cultural practice of the locals never saying “No” – ie, cab drivers saying they knew exactly where we were going. And then going the opposite direction. Then going the opposite direction again while spinning around a tourist map and looking perplexedly at our phone map. They may or may not have known how to read a map. It led to some pretty funny discussion between us about asking them next time to take us to “Funky Town” or “Paradise City” and see if they claim to know where those places are.

Anyway, while exploring the south side of the city, we did manage to have some interesting food. Namely, there was one vegetarian buffet – a very local sort of place. It took some doing to figure out how to get our food and where to wash our own dishes – that was simply one of the worst meals I’ve ever attempted to have. Seriously, I felt physical distress while trying to eat it – each new thing I sampled was almost painfully worse than the last; I think I know what it would feel like to be poisoned, now. Even the different drinks we got were so inexplicably smoky in flavor that we couldn’t take more than a couple sips.

On the other hand, Khun Churn, while a little out of the way, was one of the best buffets we’ve been to – it is all you can eat fresh vegetarian food with a beautiful salad bar, fresh fruit and coffee, and both cold and warm varieties of delicious breakfast and lunch options spread over two floors. Moreover, they had plenty of drinks that actually tasted good, like roselle, bael, and lemongrass. One of the very kind servers used “I’m sorry” when he probably meant “excuse me,” so we kept thinking we were doing something wrong each time he stopped by our table to see if we needed anything, which was often. According to the American ex-pat who gave us a little orientation when we first arrived, we just needed to remember that’s it’s all you can eat but only for 3 hours. He said he’d petitioned for them to extend it to 4 hours and to hang some hammocks outside so people could take a nap in the middle and then start again. Although his tone was extremely dry, we’re pretty sure he was joking…nice idea though!

One afternoon, as we started our trek back to our apartment, we decided to get takeout for dinner and luckily stumbled upon some delicious Indian food, Taj Mahal. While we waited for our food, we had a nice conversation with a British guy here on holiday and a very opinionated older ex-pat. When Bonnie asked where he was from, he said something like “I lived in Hawaii once.” She decided not to press further. We wonder if some of the older ex-pats are here trying to forget their past lives or something. Ooo! Maybe he used to be a gangster.

Also south of the square but this time very south of the square, we found a nice clinic that caters to English speakers. Although we had some confusion finding it initially (mostly because the name is so generic and Google was confused), we received great service. This was the second of our 3 rabies vaccination shots, which each cost about $25. In the US, we figured out that it would have cost over $800 for each of us, so we’d decided against it. We’re starting to think we should have gotten all of our vaccinations here in Thailand. Apparently, India still has quite a problem with rabies, so we decided to go ahead with the pre-exposure vaccination before going.

West side of the square: is…fine, I guess? The good stuff is far away?

Well, wait, let’s see. There’s Mixology, which was recommended to us by Jody – thanks Jody! – which had a unique burger with sticky rice instead of buns and a spicy ground pork patty, and a colorful tower of grilled veggies with pesto marinade for Bonnie. Then there were some lackluster attempts at breakfast and some interesting Chinese style buns…but then we tried Amrita Garden, a tiny restaurant run by an adorable Japanese family, which had tasty vegan food. But then we were really hungry again inside of half an hour.

There was also our favorite temple so far, Wat Suan Dok – it’s big and beautiful and has pristine white secondary mini-temple sort of things and a meditation retreat that we signed up for (the main reason we decided to stay in this part of the city). And, we ran into a sweet Spanish girl that we’d originally met in central Vietnam – small world! Sadly, she doesn’t use Facebook–maybe we’ll meet again someday anyway!

The trick with that temple is that it’s well outside of the old city square – and so is Ninah…Ninnyhamin…Nannahymar….that other neighborhood that’s west of the old city, that has a lot of expats and university students and feels like California. Nimmanhamein. We’re going to go back tomorrow, but let’s see, today we had:

• Loose leaf vanilla rooibos tea, a dark chocolate passion fruit shake, house-cured duck prosciutto crostini, and a huge open-face roasted pear, mushroom, and garlic-creamy spread sandwich at Rustic and Blue–delicious!
• A haircut for Bonnie; there are a lot of salons in that area. It turned out well enough, especially considering the lack of English. A picture of Anne Hathaway on the phone was helpful.
• An utterly gorgeous glass of butterfly pea tea, traditional Thai flower tea, spicy tofu and mushrooms, and a richly creamy Massaman curry at Anchan

Oh, also, the weather is pretty fantastic.

It’s much cooler up in the mountains than in the rest of Thailand’s tropical savannah, and so while we’ve been doing a ton of walking, it really hasn’t been as onerous as in other places. That said, it does rain a lot – almost every day – but rarely more than a light misting, and so it’s an easy fix to pause for a coffee and wait it out, or just toss a rain jacket in a backpack.

Overview of Vegetarian-Friendly Restaurants (thus far)

Although Southeast Asia is not generally known for its vegetarian food, it seems as though the demand from Western tourists, combined with some vegetarian Buddhist communities, has certainly increased the number of options in many places. You just really have to look for them sometimes. That being said, vegetarian food was pretty much nonexistent in some of the less touristy places we’ve spent time. Interestingly, our host at Little Farm Friendly Project (in Chat Pa Wai) is a vegetarian, so he helped me with the lingo a bit. “Kin chay!”

 

We had tried using the website/app Happy Cow once in a less touristy part of Bangkok but were discouraged when we couldn’t find the place listed. And then the majority of the rest of our time in Thailand was spent in some more touristy areas–vegetarian options galore! I guess we still did use it a few times though. It wasn’t until we arrived in Vietnam that it has proven to be extremely helpful at times. It definitely doesn’t list everything, and it’s a pretty annoying process to add a new place, which seems counterproductive on their part. Also, some of the places listed just don’t seem to deserve to be on that list, but oh well!

Another interesting thing to note is that we’ve found in the more touristy areas of both Thailand and Vietnam, there’s a culture of servers standing outside and calling to you, often holding the menu and trying to get you to come into restaurants. I guess it’s the same way they talk to you on the street to get you to buy things. It’s an interesting practice to get used to. When we find places online and go directly there (as with most of these places), the servers are almost surprised when we walk in. I guess they’re used to having to convince people to come in.

Here are some of the places we’ve tried. We’ll list approximate prices and their conversions, to give you an idea.

 

Cafe des Amis, Nha Trang, Vietnam

We had a two-hour stopover between buses, so we decided to wander a little to find dinner. We actually found this place while walking to look for a different restaurant that was listed on Happy Cow (one in the category of those that doesn’t really belong on that website). This place does, however, deserve a listing on Happy Cow. They had about two whole pages of vegetarian options, so needless to say, we were a bit overwhelmed. Frank ordered the cauliflower and garlic, and I ordered the lemongrass tofu. When the food arrived, it was actually broccoli, which we were completely happy about, the tofu looked great too, and we were even happier when we tasted it. This was some of the most flavorful food we’ve had on our trip! I’ve found that you can get meat-free food many places, but you’re really lucky if it actually has any flavor. Both of these dishes were delicious and different from each other. Additionally, it was obvious that this is a family-run place, and they seem to take great pride in providing good service. The owner actually tried to talk to Frank in both French and German before realizing that we speak English.

• cauliflower with garlic
• lemongrass tofu
• steamed rice (yes, you basically always have to order it separately, sorry, Dad!)
• jasmine tea
• mango smoothie
• Total cost: 100,000 VND = $4.65

 

Hoa Sen, Dalat, Vietnam

This one got great reviews on both Happy Cow and Trip Advisor, and it was walking distance from our hotel, so we figured it was worth a try. The food overall was pretty decent, especially the “braised gluten,” which was delicious! Fortunately having made it myself at home, I knew that “braised gluten” is seitan, and used in the US basically anytime a menu lists mock duck, chicken or beef. We also got bok choy with mushrooms, which again, was decent. The fun thing about this place is that it gave us the opportunity to try some things of which you can’t generally find vegetarian versions: fresh spring rolls and dumplings. Both were good, but honestly, we like Becky’s spring rolls way better! The rice paper was pretty papery, and the peanut sauce wasn’t even close. It was watery and not super flavorful. If we’d had more time, though, I would have come back here for another meal to try some of the other things.

• braised gluten
• bok choy with mushrooms
• steamed rice
• bottled water
• dumpling
• fresh spring roll
• large bottle of water
• total cost: 150,000 VND = $6.98

 

Quan Com Chay Binh, Dalat, Vietnam

We’d been to a place like this earlier in the trip. All the food is already prepared and in a display case, and the staff don’t really speak English. We thought we were supposed to choose 1-2 items, which we then pointed to, but they only gave us a few bites worth of each on top of a large plate of rice, so we just kinda indicated that they should give us whatever. What we ended up with a plate full of all sorts of random things. The couple things that stand out in our memory were intensely bitter slices of bitter melon that looked like bumpy rings of squid, and chilled sour soups. If you’re looking for fine dining, this was not the place. One of the reviewers on Happy Cow complained that the food was cold, but we’re pretty sure that was intentional. Also, it seemed like this might have been some kind of monastery (the server was wearing robes, and the music was a chant), but with our lack of Vietnamese language skills, we couldn’t exactly ask.

• food, including rice and soup
• total cost: 20,000 VND = $0.93

 

Sen Quan Chay, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This place was right around the corner from our hostel, so we actually went twice. The first time was with Amy, so it was nice to be able to share the experience and have more options. At first we weren’t sure the place was still there because the storefront opened into an empty space. We then realized that it was up some stairs in the back, which was great because it was nicely sheltered from the ridiculous street noise. We removed our shoes (which seems less common in Vietnam than in Thailand) and sat on cushions on the floor. They menu was impressive, and were were somewhat confused at first because it appeared to have many meat items, but we were reassured by the server that they were meat substitutes, as the restaurant was fully vegetarian. Amy ordered a cold noodle dish with spring rolls that was remarkably similar to one my mom had ordered at Loving Hut in Phoenix. It was unflavorful at first, but then I remembered that we were instructed by the server in Phoenix to pour the sauces on and mix it, rather than using them as dipping sauces. Frank ordered a mock goat dish, and I ordered braised jackfruit. Both were delicious, but we all especially liked the jackfruit. (We had the opportunity to sample it fresh while in the Mekong Delta, and let’s just say I’ll stick to it cooked and savory.)

Frank and I returned just the two of us the second time, and it was still good but less so. I’m sure it was just the items we happened to order.

Our portion:

• sauteed mock goat
• braised jackfruit
• steamed rice
• soursop smoothie
• avocado smoothie
• Total cost: 192,000 VND = $8.93

 

Tanh Tinh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

We found this place in a completely non-touristy part of the city while walking back from our visit to the Bitexco Financial Tower. We definitely wouldn’t have found it without Happy Cow. It was one of those experiences in which the server sort of speaks English, we we couldn’t really understand what she was saying. We thought she said something about rice and about soup, so we just nodded. The place was completely vegetarian, so why not? We ended up with a plate of rice that included a few bites worth of a whole bunch of different things, with varied tastiness, and a soup. The server was very enthusiastic, so we tried to be the same. I can’t really remember any item in particular, but it was a decent meal.

• rice with all sorts of things
• soup
• Total cost: 95,000 VND = $4.42

 

Art Cafe, Koh Phangan, Thailand

We’d passed this place on our walk to the northern part of the island and then also found it online. The reviews were pretty stellar, so we were excited to try it. The setup was almost like a tree house, and it definitely seemed like a place you could sit and drink tea and read all day. Unfortunately for us, either the server was particularly enamored of me or is just like that generally, it became a pretty uncomfortable situation. He couldn’t stop complimenting me and kept looking at me with these very hopeful eyes. We realized later that maybe he was trying to emulate the floofy, effusive, hippy-type expats that live on the island. Either way, a great experience just became uncomfortable. I kept thinking he’d stop eventually, but he didn’t. Anyway, aside from that, the food was ok but less exciting than we were expecting, given the reviews of the place. Frank ordered the falafel and hummus (which was unlike any we’d had before), and I got a vegetable soup.

• falafel and hummus
• vegetable soup
• total cost: 300 THB = $8.87

 

Royal Indian Food, Hua Hin, Thailand

After lots and lots of Thai street food, we were excited to be in a place that had all sorts of other options. However, those options definitely come with a more touristy price tag. Although months away, anytime we eat Indian food on this trip, we both start to get super excited for our time in India, and this was the first Indian food we ate on the trip. Hua Hin is more of a weekend destination for people from Bangkok, and we were there during the week, so it wasn’t surprising that we were actually the only people in the restaurant. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but our server was very attentive, almost too attentive. While we were eating, he sat at the table next to us and basically watched us eat. Once we got past the awkwardness of that, it was a very enjoyable meal. The food was less flavorful than some Indian food that we’ve had, but adding the chutneys made it super tasty. Even just having the option of eating chickpeas made me super excited!

• chana masala
• navratan korma
• basmati rice
• garlic naan
• total cost: 490 THB = $14.48

 

I Love Salad, Koh Tao, Thailand

After signing up for our dive course, we went to check out this place. Jesper said something like “people love that place,” kinda implying that he didn’t love it himself. But we figured it was worth a shot. Up until this point on the trip, and as much as we normally eat a lot of them, we’d really shied away from eating raw vegetables. Some say they need to be washed in drinking water. But we figured we’d been brushing our teeth with tap water for a few weeks by this point, so hopefully our bodies were used to it. Frank ordered a chicken Caesar salad, and I got a beetroot burger that came with a side salad. Both were tasty but not super memorable.

• beetroot burger and salad
• chicken Caesar salad
• total cost: 350 THB = $10.34

 

La Carotte Qui Rit, Koh Tao, Thailand

Fortunately Frank knows French, so were able to figure out the cute name of this place translates as “the carrot who laughs” or “the laughing carrot.” The owner/server was French and spoke English well, but unfortunately, his tone made it sound like he was making fun of us even when saying innocuous things. Whether he actually was or not, I guess we can’t know. He did give us glasses of drinking water, which was nice, because we tend not to order bottled water unless we really need to. Restaurants all seem to have giant jugs of bottled water delivered every day, but maybe they just usually reserve it for washing produce.

Anyway, I ordered the Panang curry, and Frank ordered pad see ew. Mine was delicious, but unfortunately, Frank hasn’t been able to find a pad see ew that he’s liked as much as ones back home. It does seem like they’re just made a bit differently here – instead of the drier noodles in a dark soy sauce, it’s goopy noodles in a brown gravy. Overall, we enjoyed our meal and would have liked to go back, but we were moving to the southern part of the island for the remainder of our stay.

• Panang curry with tofu
• pad see ew
• rice
• total cost: 240 THB = $7.09

As Frank’s mom would say, Happy Turkey! And the hikes to work off all that food.

We had an early Thanksgiving dinner at Frank’s mom’s – it was just our little family, nice and quiet and with way too much food. Bonnie and Wyatt had one of the most productive conversations about politics she’d ever had, and we also set up the Christmas tree in record time, which – between that and the food – led to a funny tableau:

Wyatt had the great suggestion of getting some holiday season exercise in Sabino Canyon. We took Bonnie to the dam and checked out the water flow, which was nostalgic for the brothers – there’s just something special about a riparian area. We also got a little bit lost, aka, had an adventure.

 

 

Day-of Thanksgiving was at Bonnie’s parents’ house in Phoenix. They had most of the usual crowd, including Uncle Michael and Aunt Carol all the way from Arcata, California, and lots of old friends, but a few of the usuals were missing this year. It was still a nice crowd of about 15 people, and it was baby Ronen’s first Thanksgiving! Bonnie made a delicious new recipe, a vegan shepherd’s pie. Although it didn’t taste much like a shepherd’s pie, it was delicious in its own right and was quite the crowd pleaser!

The hike to work off those calories was at North Mountain, a hike on one of those mountains that pop up like islands out of the ocean of city that is the Phoenix metro area. You can take an asphalt walkway all the way to the top, like Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, but there’s also a nicely challenging rocky route part of the way up from an alternate parking lot at the base. At the top of this mountain, though, there’s a power station of some sort instead of ecological science stations.

 

Boston!

So far, Boston has been a nice mix of hanging out with friends, relaxing, eating good food, and with only a tiny bit of getting lost. Considering it’s Boston, we feel accomplished! The roads here are ridiculous! But you already knew that…

We arrived here by bus Saturday night and were completely famished because we hadn’t had time to stop for lunch before getting on the bus (lesson 15 would have been good to remember). The first place we passed after getting off in Davis Square happened to be Snappy Ramen, and even though we’d already had ramen twice on this trip, the mix of hunger and chilly weather made it sound delicious–and it was!

After dinner, Andrea and her boyfriend Andreas (it’s cool, guys, we know two Emilys dating each other in Tucson) picked us up, and we stayed with her for a couple days. Monday was spent apple picking with Xuemei, Phil and their friend Minjee at Honey Pot Hill Orchards. It was fun even though Bonnie was hobbling around a little after having attended a bootcamp class in Brooklyn with Josef the day before. For an early dinner we got way too much delicious Chinese food at Dumpling House then tried to get back to Andrea’s house. The combination of no street names and friendly strangers who give bad directions led us about a half mile out of our way, but we did eventually find out way back.

Monday we hung out with Kevin, got a nice Indian buffet lunch at India Palace and attempted to go to Taza Chocolate Factory and Bantam Cider. Alas, many things are apparently closed on Mondays, so we just had a nice walk instead. Fortunately we managed to go on a chocolate factory tour the following day. Their chocolate is apparently made in the traditional Mexican way, and their cocoa is all purchased through direct trade, which is apparently even better than fair trade as it cuts out the middleman and the farmers make much more money. Even though the chocolate was amazing, the absolute best part of the day was randomly running into Bonnie’s old friend Lauren, whom she hadn’t seen since Adamah 4 years ago! After some seriously surprised faces and lots of hugs, we decided to meet for dinner the next day.

In between, we met up for dinner with Sam (from Nativ, Bonnie’s year in Israel before college) and her husband Ben at Veggie Galaxy. It’s basically and old style diner but one where everything is vegetarian. Then of course we had to have dessert at Sam’s favorite ice cream place, Toscanini’s. She has apparently taken an extensive sampling of Boston’s ice cream shops, and this is the best one. It was remarkably good, and Bonnie liked that they focused on the flavors rather than the sugar.

After our visit to the chocolate factory, we went rock climbing with Carolyn and Jason at their rock gym. Although we were both rusty, it was super fun, and now we want to join one when we get back to AZ. It seems like the best all around workout that’s also mentally stimulating.

The next day, after a low key day of trip planning and a quick trip to see Carolyn’s lab, we met up with Kevin, Lauren (from the day before) and Erin (also from Adamah) at Highland Kitchen. The food was good, but unfortunately, it was a little too crowded to stay as long as we needed in order to fully catch up. We’ll make sure that gets planned for a later date!