thailand . . . part 1

There is this little city known as Bangkok in a country you may have heard of called Thailand.

As it so happens, it was our second destination in our tour of the East.  Little known to anyone in America, this country is quite the culinary destination…   Yeah so sarcasm is out of fashion.  But come on, it’s Thailand! A place as a chef I was so excited to visit it was only appropriate to let slip how kid like it makes me thinking about it. 

I mean, this place is one of the biggest influences of Asian cuisine in America; which blew up at such a fast rate it made many chefs embarrassed to admit their former obsession with the food that “must not be named.” (I.e. French) Now days you’d be hard pressed to stumble on a small town that doesn’t have at least one Thai restaurant.  The food is distinct.  And beyond that it is downright good.  Not just ‘go back for seconds’ good, but rather, got food writers to loosen their neckties and start describing food as ‘sexy.’  The cuisine of Thailand is beyond how good and addicting we all know it to be.  It carries with it an ambiance.  A distinctive homeyness.  A sense of homage to family and friends.  All that which has encouraged even some of the stuffiest classical kitchens to toss out the white linen and doilies in an effort to re-identify with their roots.  Okay, a stretch to say Thai cuisine is the sole contributor to this national change in restaurant style and menus, but it did come at the right time.  As well, it reinforces the increasing hunger for simple down to earth food that is subverting the restaurants of the United States.  

Thailand brings to the modern global kitchen what so many people and restaurants have lost sight of.  That what matters most is the food.  And as single tracked as it makes me out to be, on my way to Bangkok, all I could think about was the food I was going to have!  Of course once I got my first glimpse of the country, a lot of my presumptions began to go into question.

Forgive me now for briefly stepping onto a philosophical soapbox, but there are ideas churning inside my brain I’d like to share regarding the country.  More accurately it is something I caught a whiff of as I roamed the littered roads.  Perspective.  It’s the cheapest thing I got visiting Bangkok… besides the hookers that is...  Bad joke.  Reflecting back, the country was far from the lawless destination so many people imagine it to be.  While the traffic gives a different impression, the people were some of the most civilized and smiley I have ever encountered.  What they are, conversely, is dreadfully poor.  It is this that has led them to develop a bad reputation.  One obtained because poverty has pressured many of them to adopt frowned upon methods of income.  Arguably, I, and no one in a similar economic situation as me, am in a position to judge.  I never once even saw a hooker, a brothel, a theft or even a crime committed for that matter.  The worst offence I experienced first hand was a taxi driver trying to charge me about 50 cents over.   I mean I didn’t need that money.  He probably did far more. 

 It’s easy for me to get caught up in the moment of a trivial situation and build an imaginary wall between me and other people.  To lose my… how should I put it?... human-ness: an epidemic that has infiltrated and infected most all of the United States.  But as I think back, there wasn’t one person in that country who didn’t smile and politely let me walk away when I acted that way.  I cannot stress how much of a culture shock it is for me to meet people who simply aren’t rude.  Instead they were personable.  They interacted with us.  They seemed happy we were there.  And so yes while Thailand is very poor, and Bangkok is very dirty.   And though in most all considerations, it’s far behind the times of the modern ‘first-world’ civilization I grew up in; I am tempted to admit they seemed more civilized than my own “first-world” home.  Spend a day in a city of the United States and count (if any) friendly gestures you get.  I couldn’t walk a block in Thailand without getting a smile or bow.  Go try and buy a car from a dealership and see how much money you get cheated out of.   I likely didn’t over pay a taxi more than a buck and it was instinctual to treat them like they were thieves.  Ultimately, the visit there helped me re-evaluate both my general disposition on how I interact with people and simultaneously how something as simple as a meal can bring everyone together.

That all said, Bangkok is no perfect picture.   But without a doubt the city will encapsulate your full attention as you funnel through its busy and cluttered streets.  It is a place where the extremes of the country seem to harmonize and generate a town that is simultaneously nauseating and intoxicating.  The smell of the thick air conjured both appetite and repulsion as it lined my lungs with the weight of exhaust and the sent of fresh curries and stew.

Every intersection or corner is a stand selling the brightest colored fruits and vegetables you could imagine.  Street venders, twenty to a block, are cooking customers breakfast to order in woks overtop buckets of hot coals. 

 

Stray cats and dogs, piles of garbage spewed about and women selling Buddha figurines on blankets fill in the gaps between the food carts and lawn chair seating.  

The streets themselves are a current of mopeds, taxis and ‘tuk-tuks’ – a rickety three-wheeled golf cart looking vehicle providing the accommodation for tourist to taxi around town for twice the amount of time it should take. And then there was us.  Just watching.  Taking in a world unlike the one we knew… and getting hungry while we did it.

Thailand: objective one: eat everything!  Oh man did I eat.  Obviously not everything the city had to offer, but it’s hard to be hungry in a place where there is a new option of food every five feet.  So continual snacking was as much a right of passage as it was my priority.  Not to worry for you health conscious folk, the amount of walking combined with the hot humid weather made it seem a chore to gain any weight in this city.  What did come across note worthy was that only the Pad Thai I had tasted like the Thai food back home.

It’s always interesting to see how different truly authentic food tastes from the restaurants in America that have the word ‘authentic’ somewhere on their menu.  Overall, the food was always good, and always hot.  Not cardiac arrest spicy, but my breakfast ‘khao tom’ (a spicy rice soup) was what set off a nice first wave of sweat for a long and sweltering day in the sun.  

Fortunately everyone is sweating mid-summer in the subtropics of Southeast Asia; so I only stuck out because I was tall and white.  The tattoos helped a lot too but fact of the matter is me being warm was not weird.  After all, everything was outside.  We did not eat a single meal inside.  Everywhere you go are sidecars fixed to mopeds outfitted with camping stoves and fryers.  You buy your food from these venders and watch them cook it in front of you for no more than the equivalent of a U.S. dollar. 

Then you take your plate and eat in communal dining areas of lawn chairs and a tarp roof.  Some nicer areas might be under tin roofs with siding.  Nevertheless it’s outside, it's with 30 strangers, and its fantastic!

The first few days were dedicated to exploring some of the main attractions of the city.  That is, other than the street food…  We managed to navigate right from the start by walking, which was a lot of ground to have walked, but it got us to a large temple. 

Giant Buddha statues in every room was what we saw.  I’m slightly curious what all goes on in these temples considering every room seems just to harbor a larger statue then the next.  Regardless, we continued on to the outside of the Imperial palace just as it began to rain.  A lot.  We took a cab until his engine died.  I helped him push it off to the side of the road and figured that was payment enough considering he was driving the wrong direction.  We took the rest of that day easy and made it back to our stereotypical crummy hostel ran by a guy from Georgia, but with an Australian accent.  Not sure what to believe as for that.  By the time he invited us to a roof top party on a helipad, we realized he was one to distort reality to sound a little more interesting.

The next days we did our research to find out the way locals get around town.  Boat taxis!  We found the nearest stop just down some railroad tracks full of garbage and stray dogs.  Standing by a river cutting straight through Bangkok provided a good sense of the city and how just the bare minimum required to make something work is what they had.  The dock is just a platform with tires tied to the side to cushion the landing.  And I mean landing.  This thing came in fast.  

And saying it stops is a reach.  The driver slows down and men lasso the boat to the dock just long enough for people to jump on and off.  Maybe 5 seconds when there is a lot of people.  Blink and you’d miss what happened.  Fortunately we made it on with no struggle.  There are tarps on the sides to pull up and keep the water from hitting you.  It hit me once and I understand why.  Smelled like sewage.  Likely was.

However with the tarp down the view was very nice.  I found it amusing to watch the floating garbage surf the wake of the boat next to me.  Just above eye level where houses and shacks lining the river with clothes out to dry.  Yes this was definitely the way to get around in Bangkok.

Thailand Part 2 next...

 

 

tokyo . . . . .

After a quick pit stop in Los Angeles for some asada fries and a nap on the floor of my very generous friends Matt and Melissa’s house, we were off to Tokyo.  First time airplane food was good as far as I can recall.  And perhaps it was my excitement for the trip, or my anxiety, but I couldn’t sleep for a moment.  I instead played chess against the airplane computer for something close to 9 hours.  I won’t go into who won all the games because it’s not significant.  What is significant however is the city of Tokyo.  Like, largest metropolitan area in the world significant.  

There are over 30 million people in the greater area and 13 million in the city, which apparently grows in population by 3 million people on business days.  The shear mass of the city became obvious the moment we tried to navigate to our hostel on the subway.  Tokyo's subway map alone illustrates the size of the city. I have never experienced such a thing.

Frankly, I have never been to a place that was completely overloading my senses in the way this city did.  The entire place swarmed with people yelling at you through megaphones about their stores sale.  Every surface that can be seen with your eyes has an advertisement on it. Odds are that it also is flashing or glowing with neon lights.  Its hard to focus on just one thing when your brain is flooded every direction you look.  One thing I could focus on however, was food...  and it was everywhere.

As you might suspect from such a big place, Tokyo is home to the largest number of Michelin starred restaurants in the world.  Unsurprisingly to anyone knowing the unreserved dedication and painstaking grind that is required to be “honored” with such an esteemed award as a Michelin star, I instantly had a large list of restaurants to avoid.  Not to take away from the talent of any of those chefs, I simply didn’t have room in my bag for my designer suit or the budget for French technique in Japan.  The plan was instead to eat what Japanese people really eat… whatever that might be.

We stayed in a dormitory style hostel in an area called Asakusa.  Just 3 blocks from the largest Buddhist temple in Tokyo and known for the ‘senbei’ shops. 

Senbei is a rice cracker that’s cooked over fire and dipped in soy sauce.  A food that seems undeserving of as much hype as a town being known for it. But these shops where easily 4 to a block and the rice crackers were pretty good and came in every possible style and combination hundreds of years of experience has thought up.

Past that and a giant market (I soon realized is the theme of every Asian city) the area of Asakusa was more a tourist hotspot than anything.  But it was my first taste of the country.  And after seeing beer vending machines...

24 hour curry bars, noodle bars, conveyor belt sushi bars, every sea creature caught earlier that day for sale in a market, pastas polyurethane coated and glowing under neon lights outside restaurants….

I realized I had arrived in a country that was anything but the United States.  Just what I was after.  

The concept of noodle and curry bars everywhere is probably the most convenient part about eating for cheap whenever you want in Tokyo.  You put about the equivalent of 4 US dollars into a vending machine and choose a picture (unless you read Japanese, then I guess you read what youre actually getting) and it spits out a ticket at you.  You grab a seat and hand the ticket to the kitchen and in the amount of time you would suspect they just scooped it out from under a heat lamp, you’ve got yourself a world class meal! Genius!

And as you can see I was all about it!  Seems to be the equivalent to our fine staple fast food establishments in the states.   The Japans got the idea better from a food point of view, but you can still hand it to ‘drive throughs’ for being a celebrity business model in our alarmingly profit driven homeland. Japans not far off in a post WWII society however.  I mean it very well might be the only country where businessmen still wear suits.  Common knowledge though.  Speaking of common knowledge, sushi is pretty serious in this town.

And there is no limit to the type of raw meat they will lay over top of scrupulously prepared rice.  I took a stab at a few on the more bizarre side of foods to an American. Herring row with crab innards was surprisingly delicious.  Free wild tuna - good as expected.  The welsh onion with unidentifiable fish egg - fantastic! My least favorite however was the horsemeat on the fact that it was quite the jaw workout. 

You’re probably judging me right now for eating horse… but how often are you on a different continent with such an opportunity?  As majestic as horses maybe, can you really watch an episode of Mr. Ed and not think that horse would probably feed more starving children then the amount of people that ever found that show funny?  Like all our issues its really television that is to blame.  And it wasn’t shark fin soup or a unicorn after all.  I also had a lot of fish.  More American households own fish than horses but I guess they just aren’t as cuddly.  Back to Japan.  Kind of badass how fluent these chefs were with seafood.  We watched this guy butcher a whole tuna down using a samurai sword and a spoon.

Add that to your culinary techniques to learn.  Quite the party trick!  Beside loving sea-creatures, Japan has a bit of a sweet tooth.  We had some sweet rice dumplings on a stick that were rolled in peanut flower.  There was green tea and pumpkin ice cream, sweet rice crackers, a sweet potato pancake stuffed with a sugared bean paste. 

I guess it turns out just like in America, the Japanese figure that sugar makes most things taste good.

We also did in fact do things other than eat.  We walked around… a lot.  Took the subway to several parts of town.  Cheapest way to get around hands down.  Makes sense why everyone uses it, and every stop we got off on felt like a completely different place. 

The whole city has somewhat of a divided feeling between the calm and traditional lives of some amongst an increasingly busy and westernized population zooming from work to karaoke and back again.  The fast pulse of the city was noticeable by the number of locals asleep on the subway as they came too and from work.  Seems like there isn’t enough time in a day for people in Japan just like the states.  Given the short amount of time we succeeded at visiting a significant slice of the area and getting a feel for life in the city. 

We saw the imperial palace, a few temples, the Harajuku girls, every kind of market imaginable, the neon district and some very old parts of town.  We even managed to find the Hyatt hotel Bill Murray filmed Lost in Translation in.  Nice bar and view of the city at the top if you are into $40 dollar soda waters.  If you want food or wine, be sure to hand off the check to whomever you are accompanying with the lowest over draft fees.  But the view did make it nearly worth the outrageous prices.   There is however a civic center with a free and much better panoramic view.   No photo can do it justice.  Sky rise buildings to the horizon every direction you look.
 

Quite the site, but it did have me missing grass and trees by the time we were leaving, and the food had my companions missing a good American breakfast.  So we had the closest thing before we headed to the airport.  Buttered Texas toast, scrambled eggs with A-1 on it and of course what would an American breakfast be without onion soup. Right?  Nice change of pace though, and they had coffee.  Had to wake up for the journey after all.  Which proved to be a challenge getting to the airport following an inaccurate map, but we made it with time to spare and reflect back on what a sensory overload Tokyo had been.

Next stop... Bangkok!

an asian invasion . . .

So I went to Asia!  It's impact on me or my perspective of food?  Hard to reduce so much experienced into words.  Or for that matter come to a conclusion about something still spinning in my brain.  I suppose what I can say first and foremost is that Asia eats well… now I realize that is quite the inaccurate statement depending on your point of view.  (And perhaps vaguely distasteful bearing in mind the vast majority of the continent suffers from poverty and malnourishment.) What I mean to have said rather is that there was not a meal I was disappointed with on this journey.  The closer to the local, cheap staples eaten in each town, the better tasting and more satisfying the food ended up being.  

As for the over all encounter with each destination: well I tried to record that all in a journal.  I didn’t try very hard regrettably.  To my credit, the writing surprisingly lasted 5 days, which is about 4 days longer than I expected.  But the little bit of writing done isn’t much of a help.  More so a journal jam-packed with embarrassingly enthusiastic and useless adjectives than the formatted notes we all were taught in school to take. “The restaurants here are wild!” in retrospect provides no clarity to what happened where or when.  Fortunately, each country and city visited bore a unique personality from the rest.  Each destination professed its own quintessence that I still smell and taste days after.  

Recollecting the trip is not the defeating task set ahead as I had begun to assume when I first tried to write out the trip.  Alternatively, it’s possessing such a vivid imprint from these places, and hoping to articulate the experience in any sort of worthwhile way that I am finding to be the real challenge.  How can anyone actually summarize witnessing the product of thousands of years of cultures, traditions and methods materializing in person? I’ll tell you what I saw, and I will stress to everyone, go see for yourself someday.  Nothing else can do these people and places justice.  

In an attempt to give accurate descriptions of each country I saw, I will be posting each of them individually throughout the next few days.  First on the list: Japan...