Best Unexpected Food List

These are the foods you don’t expect to find in SE Asia, but you found them, and they were delicious.

     1.     Best Waffle: Dots Café in Kuching, Malaysia

                The heavy Chinese influence in Kuching has made the food here excellent. Waffle shops are a craze, and this tasty peach special from Dots Cafe is right on par. 

2.     Best Guacamole: Yar Pyi Vegetarian Restaurant in   Bagan, Myanmar

I            I expected to find exceptional vegetarian food in Myanmar, but not guacamole! This   was fantastic, with a uniquely tart flavor and special seasoning. 

3.     Best muesli: German Bread & More in Hua Hin, Thailand

             This muesli can be found at the B&B run by a lovely German couple in Hua Hin. Usually muesli is served dry with mil or yogurt, but here it was a delicious creamy porridge with bananas and other fresh fruit. 

4.     Best airplane food: fish curry at Bangkok Air Yangon to Bangkok

            I know it doesn't look like much, but this was the best airplane food I've ever had. The curry was restaurant quality, the glass noodles were tangy and spicy. The coconut cake was moist and sweet. It really doesn't get better than this. 

5.     Best instant coffee: Luwak coffee in Bali, Indonesia

            This Kopi Luwak came from a package and was served to me at the morning market in Ubud. I love this coffee, complete with cream and sugar. Luwak coffee is $50/cup in the U.S. but in the Ubud market it's mere pennies. 

6.     Best instant tea: Sunday 3 in 1 in Myanmar

            While Bali wins the award for the best instant coffee, Myanmar does it right with instant tea. Here's a little secret: my favorite restaurant in Bagan serves amazing Myanmar sweet tea, and when I asked for their recipe, then told me they use Sunday's instant tea. Well, I found some at the market and sure enough, it was the very same. I have not seen it sold anywhere outside Myanmar, but if you have the chance, take a few packets home. 

7.     Best coffee: Marble Arch coffee, Chiang Mai, Thailand

             While Chiang Mai boasts many special coffee places, the Marble Arch Coffee at Marble Arch Cafe is surely my favorite. No need for creamy or sugar, this rich, sweet, smooth drink is perfect as it is. 

8.     Best Ice Cream: Celano Caramel Vanilla, Vietnam

                I did not know ice cream could be so good until I had a Celano bar. Vanilla ice cream covered in a chocolate-caramely sauce with almonds is just too good to pass, even though it is more expensive than a Bahn Mi! 

A Room with a View: my hotel windows in SE Asia

Throughout my trip in SE Asia, in almost every place I stayed I took a photo of the view from my apartment or hotel window. Alone, these images may not be worth showcasing. Indeed they are just rooftops in unrecognizable parts of a city, but together in this collection, they seem to each capture a certain essence, like the nose or eye of a person's face. By putting them all together in this one post, it is easy to spot the differences in each city, and in to get a sense of the identity and lifestyle of that place. 

Bangkok, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Hanoi, Vietnam

Hue, Vietnam

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Kuching Malaysia

Mandalay, Myanmar

Nha Trang, Vietnam

Ubud, Bali

Yangon, Myanmar

Hua Hin, Thailand

Funeral in Saigon

Outside my gate

I heard the funeral procession go by in the morning, just before the sun tore holes in the canopy of clouds and punctured us all with its searing gold rods of light. I didn’t know the person who died and I wasn’t supposed to. I had only moved to the neighborhood five days ago and knew not one thing beyond my four mint-colored walls. Only when the music and the voices breached my pale green box did I become aware of the outside world’s existence. 

That night there was music to signal the end of a three-day mourning period. The sounds of a brass band seeped through my thick curtains and when I went outside I found that the band was right down the alley beside my house. I  watched from a distance, standing near a graffiti-embellished tree. 

Apparently in Vietnam,  when a person dies a band of musicians is hired to play traditional funeral music for two days. The deceased person’s sons, daughters, and daughters-in-law  wear sheer white tunics and veils. The tunics cover the whole body, like giant bridal veils, though they reminded me more of the white burqas I saw in Pakistan. The deceased person’s other family members wear mourning turbans, which are pieces of white clothes tied around the head like a bandanna. Most people were wearing these. 

When I felt that I was lingering too long I began walking around the back alleys. I looked up at the purple Saigon sky and could make out the dim lights of Orion. So stars are visible in the city after all, I thought. The images I absorbed walking through that  alley after dark  still haunt me. Those stoic concrete walls, lit up in white light, with sky-purple draperies overheard, and the faint sound of funeral music wafting through the air, potent as a smell.  A woman eating a bowl of noodles in her kitchen, her silhouette framed by the edges of a glass-less window. Maybe these were the impressions Graham Greene had when he wrote about Saigon. Though they look different in the twenty-first century, they still exist.

- January 15, 2015

Post-Saigon Blues

The hardest thing to do in Cambodia is wake up. 

Once you can get past the desperate clutches of a jealous sleep, you can handle anything the day will bring you. Sleep is especially greedy in a windowless room, where you both can be tricked into believing that the morning hasn’t started yet. 

You give into sleep’s seduction at first, letting it keep you longer and longer, making you feel worthy and important in its arms. But then you realize - this can’t go on forever. And when you pull your body out of that darkness, go down the long winding steps to the front door, where just outside the sun is strong enough to break a lover’s courage and the growling of moped engines threatens to send you screaming back up the stairs, you know only then that you’ve been tricked by sleep. It can fool anyone into believing that it more important than any sun any day. And you hate yourself for believing its lie.

Now we are at Jay’s Diner and I have a To-Do list of nothing I want to do. I don’t want to write emails, translate, or even leave the hotel. But I don’t want to be in my dark room either. Maybe I am just having post-Saigon blues….

- January 30th, 2015

Bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh

After some extensive research, I decided to get from Saigon, Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia  by bus. This seemed to be one f the easiest and safest land crossings in SE Asia, and the bus ride was only 7 hours. I booked my tickets on the Mekong Express through Sinh Tourist in District 1.

I had to arrive at 6:30 in the morning for check in, and was told the bus would come at 7:00 to pick me up. Sinh Tourist is a popular travel agency, and there were buses coming to drop off and pick up people every few minutes. Soon, the small sidewalk outside the shop became chaotic.

Boarding the bus in Saigon

The Mekong Express bus I rode was a themed bus, and the theme was Mariah Carey. The entire bus was decorated like an 8-year-old girl’s bedroom, complete with a television covered in glittery stickers, which played a Mariah Carey music video complication lasting over an hour.

By the tme Mariah Carey finished singing, it was time to cross the border. The bus attendant collected our passports and $35 USD from each passenger and we all got out of the bus. This border crossing is a bit weird. Instead of waiting in line with your documents, everyone stands in a massive group in front of an immigration officer, who processes each passport, then calls the name on the passport. When your name is called, you go to the window and pick up your passport and visa, then hand it back to the bus attendant. We did this twice, once to get the exit stamp from Vietnam, and once to get the entry stamp from Cambodia. It was weird, but easy and brainless. It looked like a total clusterfuck but somehow worked out. After everyone had their visas we were on the Cambodian side of the border, which is full of sad-looking Chinese casinos, and people selling jackfruits.

A decorated bus

The first half of the journey was brutal. I finally experienced the horribly bumpy and unpaved roads that bloggers all over Asia have been writing about.  It was probably the worst bus ride I have had on this trip, with the exception of our epic delay from Kuala Lumpur to Penang.  The AC barely worked, our seats were cramped, arms and shoulders all over each other. We sat in the front row and had no leg room. But worst of all were the unpaved roads and the way the bus creeped and crawled over them.  I can still hear the wheels grinding against the rocks, like teeth gnawing on sand. I thought it was impossible to be going over such a road without shredding our tires. Mostly the roads made the bus jiggle and vibrate, but occasionally we would sway from side to side and one or twice we flew over a bump that made me leap from the seat. Our seats were on the south-facing side of the bus, which meant that sunlight beat against the window for the entire ride, making it hot as a frying pan. I kept the curtains closed the entire time, and wasn’t sorry one bit.

My view for seven hours

After the rest stop, the remainder of the roads seemed to be paved, and the ride passed enjoyably by watching The Interview. I remember thinking this was especially funny, because the North Korean government had recently asked the Cambodian government not to sell or distribute the movie, a request the Cambodian government shrugged off. They have no way of enforcing it. So we watched the movie on the bus. 7.5 hours later, we arrived at the bus station in Phnom Penh.

Tuktuk from Mekong Express station into the city