Thip Samai, the best pad thai in Bangkok.
I was so proud of myself for finding this place -- that is, until I found out they have a website...
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Obligatory Bangkok touristy shit -- Grand Palace, Reclining Buddha and Wat Arun.
It seems to me that in many ways Thailand is the realm of ghosts and demons who decided the fate of this world a long time ago...
Lots more photos of Bangkok and the other stops on my trip can be seen in this Flickr set...
Bangkok by land and sea and land (YouTube vids).
Click through for videos of the Bangkok SkyTrain, the Chao Phraya Express Boat and this virtual tuk-tuk ride!
My digs in Bangkok, for $100 CAD per night (!) Thanks, TripAdvisor...
It's true... I scored a deluxe river-view room at The Chatrium Suites, the number-one rated Bangkok hotel on TripAdvisor.com -- just because one of their booking sites had a crazy-ass sale.
Check out that view, and that hot phone! : )
Rabbits in Tu-Tus
I took the other week at the weekend market in Bangkok. It was sneakily done as you're not meant to take pictures of the pets stalls. It shows bunny rabbits in little cages dressed in tu-tus. Not the way I know pets to be normally sold. Kind of distressing to see them along with dogs in cages, cats that had been born just a day earlier, even squirrels on leads. Seems strange for us westerners that they are kept and sold in this way, especially in the sprawling Bangkok heat. But I guess its just another way of doing things in an unfamiliar culture. Afterall the little tu-tus perhaps act as the fancy packaging to the product.
Pasty white director takes over Asiansploitation blog-iverse for another week or so, with good reason.
Yes it's me again, back to re-blog document my recent trip around the world -- and by "around the world" I mean mostly southeast Asia.
Read on as yours truly spends one night in Bangkok (and then three more), faces his comedy past in Singapore, meets up with Sandy Chen's parents in Taipei and sucks face with a tuna (a dead one) in Tokyo...
reality show
I tend to forget that when it rains it pours. My mom always says that bad things happen in 3's too. Ha. Well, we had to present our rough cut yesterday to the founder and mastermind behind PDA, Khun Mechai. This man has the equivalent of Obama's schedule in Thailand, so getting a 3-hour window has been in the books for over 5 weeks. So of course, Murphy would have it that the week we are editing and preparing to present to him, stuff starts going wrong:
1. ALL our equipment was moved to a van, which stayed in the northeast, while we returned to Bangkok after the shoot. We lost 2 days thanks to our wandering luggage with our laptops, camera, footage, etc.2. Once our equipment arrived, one of our external drives crashed with our new footage on it. Great. Another day lost trying to get the footage off the drive.
3. Crunch weekend: while we are pulling all-nighters and have lost all sense of time... Kevin gets food poisoning. I'll be damned. After 3 months here, now he gets sick? I guess those Peruvian amoebas didn't really make him iron-clad. That is three bad things in one week. You'd think I'd be safe right?
Yeah right, I'm not called salty dog back home for nothing. After pulling the Sunday all nighter on my own, I had to go to the dentists to get my final procedure on this root canal saga, and get back in time for the big presentation. I was falling asleep on the dentist chair (hey, maybe this is a good strategy), mouth full of cotton, and the dentist is rambling on how cool it is that I work for Khun Mechai and wants to know more. Of all visits, she picks this one to be friendly. What is the deal...can't I just take a nap for the hour you have to torture me? But then she leans over and says to me: do you want silver or gold? Ok, my mouth is full of cotton and tubes, I am delirious, and I think to myself in a half panic: I don't understand. Did she just say silver or gold?
Me: excuse me? (sounds more like: ethcoothmeeh?)
Dentist, as if I have asked a trick question: for your tooth cap. Silver or gold?
Me: can't I have white??? (omg. this is not happening)
Dentist: oh, well, your teeth are really small. If you want white, we'd have to do a procedure that involves gum surgery and will take about another 4-5 weeks of treatment.
Me: why was I not told this before? So, right now, my only option is silver or gold?
Dentist: yes. (Followed by a polite Thai smile)
Me: (internal screaming: WHAT THE FUCK!?) Ok. This may sound funny to most of you reading this right now, but it was not for me. I was so tired I wanted to throw up. I was stressed as all hell about our 1pm meeting and our video not being complete, and now this woman is telling me I have to pick between having my #14 be gold or silver?!! Where is the hidden camera?? I don't need to be punk'd right now. I will kill someone. I have about a half dozen friends that will relish in this misfortune, I know it. Sigh. Because I have no other choice, and I am truly hoping my loving parents will help me pay for a re-do in white when I go home, I opted for silver. At the very least it will match my choice of jewelry metal. If I got gold, I might officially be labeled a mexican immigrant when I land in LAX. Oh Man. If I weren’t so tired I would have cried. I have a silver molar. SILVER. Since I will be officially jobless starting January of 2010, maybe my next stop should be to audition for Flavor of Love season 234. You never know, I might get a lucky break. He can call me bling-toof (thanks EV), and we can make super gangster babies that already have grillzz. God I feel ghetto. Oh did I forget to mention that our meeting with Khun Mechai got cancelled 6 minutes into it because the Minister of Education requested his presence last minute. Awesome.
I’m going to sleep in Lucie's comfy guest bedroom. Wake me up when my tooth is white.
And if you thought I was going to post a picture of my new grin, think again. Pssh. Enjoy my Thai hat instead.
#ACRTW - Thip Samai, the best pad thai in Bangkok.
You wouldn't think that a humble establishment like this would have their own website, but here it is...
I found out about Thip Samai while flipping through my copy of Time Out: Bangkok -- my one and only opportunity to eat there fell on the night before my departure for Singapore, and it was a tough call because at the time I was across town at a busy mall and facing a very long drive through legendary Bangkok traffic.
Fortunately Google Maps and a very adroit cabbie came to my rescue. And was it ever worth it!
I followed Time Out's instructions to the letter and started off with this delicious iced coconut juice, the perfect way to cool down on a typically hot Bangkok night.
And here's the main event.
Thip Samai does pad thai a little differently, wrapping up the noodles in a layer of egg rather than chopping the egg up and mixing it in. Whatever, it was awesome.
The only possible smear on this authentic Thai experience was that I was sat at a table directly beside two other pasty white people, who had heard about Thip Samai on an Australian TV food show. They were friendly enough but I think both parties would have rather lived under the illusion that they were the only westerners ever to have set foot here. Hence, my terse Tweet from the scene...
# nine
This one took the cake... and the chef along with it. I was not prepared for it. And I truly hope it doesn't happen again.
# nine: Stranded in a foreign airport for > 20 hours because of a mysterious flight delay
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| From Bangkok Day Four Delayed Flight |
No joke. I was near-freezing in the wee hours of the morning. Our original flight was at 9.15pm, delayed to 2.40am, further delayed to 4.30am, further delayed to 5.30am and finally scheduled for 3pm later that day.
We were sent to a creepy hotel to stay for the morning despite our best efforts to book another flight home. I could have cried. When I called boyfriend after finally charging my phone, I did my best not to cry. Not that he was particularly worried anyway- he's a frequent flier so he was like, oh well, life sucks. And that was the end of it.
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| From Bangkok Day Four Delayed Flight |
Tired can't even describe how we felt that day.
# eight
I'm not sure if this is cheating. Let's pretend it isn't.
# eight: get on a tuk tuk.|
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| From Bangkok Day Two |
Being guests at a sizzling-hot hotel meant that our tuk-tuk was sizzling hot too. I loved precariously dangling inches away from certain Thai death whenever the tuk-tuk went round a corner or made a sharp turn. Woohoo!!!
