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January 2006

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• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  I Love Pai

  01.29.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  After a longer-than-anticipated stay in Chiang Mai, we hopped on a minivan to Pai. The treacherous mountain journey there, careering around hairpin turns, belied the peaceful hippie-ness of the town. We (or rather, Nazma) had our doubts about hitting a village reputedly overrun by yoga- and health-food-loving vegetarians. But soon we were totally sucked in, [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Whatch Me Bounce My Melons…

  01.23.06 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  A couple of days into our stay in Chiang Mai, we resigned ourselves to the impracticality of venturing out to Burma as we had hoped. Turns out that the visa process has become even more difficult as of this January, and it’s both illegal (and extremely foolhardy) to cross overland and move into the country, [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  See elephant dance!

  01.22.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Another common thing to do here is to go on a “trek”. I’ll post about my crazy Thai-Army-survival trek later, but for Nazma’s sake, we opted for a sanitized, don’t-get-your-feet-wet tourist special. Note we got a discount; otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have done it. The tour-guide even pulled us aside and told us not to [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  If Yan can cook, evidently so can we

  01.21.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  So it’s almost a cliched thing for people to take a Thai cooking course when they come to Chiang Mai; of course we had to, to shore up our macaroni-and-cheese repertoires. A full day of training, including foodstuffs (i.e. aforementioned trip to Severed-Pigs-Head Market), cost us CAD$23 a head (haha).
  We received our expert instruction from [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Panda porn and diesel fumes: a miscellany

  01.21.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Playing catchup with the blog again; hence, some random bits about Chiang Mai:
  Went shopping for our cooking class at the local non-farang market. Loads of goodies: these handy froggies in a bag caught my eye. There were a bunch of big pigs’ heads on display also, but Nazma won’t let me post the photo for [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Thai hospitality

  01.18.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Our buddy from the bus, Boonjan, had left us his contact information, having suggested we go for dinner. Boonjan works in Quality Control with Chevron in the south of Thailand, and after working 14 straight days he heads up north to his wife and two sons for four days, before making the trek down to [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Welcome to the north

  01.17.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  We escaped the heat, pollution and general chaos of Bangkok for Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second-largest city situated about 10 hours by bus north of the capital. We decided to forego the many Khaosan Road companies advertising bus fares for cheap, having heard they were total scams where people have been gassed and mugged during the [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Eating some most delicious bugs

  01.16.06 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  One last post on Bangkok. Finally found our crispy-fried bugs – at a street vendor outside a 7-11 (in case a Mars bar just isn’t enough). As far as we could tell, you had your choice of mantises, grubs, locusts, crunchy-ant garlic stir-fry, big meaty beetle/cockroaches, and a few more I was too busy retching [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  Smile like you mean it

  01.15.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  On the weekends, north of the city centre, Chatuchak Market opens up. We spent 5 hours there and barely covered a sixth of the sprawling mess (the long green section in the lower-left-hand corner of the map). There’s a thriving T-shirt industry here, and pithy, iconoclastic down-with-the-man chest-statements you’d pay $30+ for on Main Street [...]

• 2006 SE Asia, 2006 Thailand, Quixotic Notions

  You’ll find a god in every golden cloister

  01.15.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Bangkok is a big noisy, polluted city and we haven’t been terribly impressed. Even the vaunted red-light streets are full of knockoff-Rolex dealers and touts for “hockey” played using what Nazma calls (in whispered tones) “lady’s private parts“, which I have to say sounded pretty intriguing, if nothing but from a purely mechanical point of [...]

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project: eggplant

if you don’t like it, eat around it

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Junkies for that feeling you get just before you board a plane, train, or automobile for somewhere other than here, we're seeing as much of the world as we can, staying one step ahead of the trifecta spectre (trispectre?) of security, progeny and mortgages.

We also love a good meal.

Project: Eggplant will track as much of that as we feel like putting fingers to keyboards. At times we'll get lazy and just take some purdy pictures. And sometimes it may sound like we're just moaning. In the end, if we don't write it with a smile on our faces, it doesn't get posted.

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