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Bob, Josh and Luk In Bangkok

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Laughingnomad

My son Josh is Chef de Cuisine of “One East On Third” in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing. He was sent by the Executive Chef to Bangkok last week to check out some restaurants there. Luk, a delightful Thai girl who is married to our son Doug, had been visiting Bob at his rental house south of Pattaya so Bob, took Luk with him to Bangkok to join Josh. (Doug is currently in Oregon and will return to Thailand in a couple weeks.) This was the first time Josh met his sister-in-law, Luk.

This is Bob’s description of the visit…made me salivate reading about the Thai food!

“Josh missed his scheduled flight to BKK so arrived one day late. I extended my stay to allow for an overlap. He had hotel and culinary related meetings but we shared a few meals and today roamed around Chatuchak Market which he seemed to enjoy.

Josh let me choose the restaurants. I was the tour guide. (Although Josh has been to Bangkok many times!) He ate his evening meals with the Hilton folks first night and his second night at the Four Seasons. I think they had steaks at the Hilton as Josh’s hierarchy wants him to offer more steaks at the restaurant. Steak apparently is in demand in Beijing.

When we went out I gave him the option of streetside or upscale. We settled on Jim Thompson’s restaurant on Soi Saladang (we ate there before.) Had pomolo salad, gai with lemongrass , shrimp in a coconut curry, a fish souffle and morning glory in oyster sauce. All quite arroy (delicious) except the chicken. Second day we ate at a sit down restaurant at Chatuchak Market. Had a spicy Thai salad, fresh spring roles and sticky rice with mango and coconut milk. Josh enjoyed the cuisine.

At Chatuchak he purchased many items of Thai motif as his restaurant is going to do some things with a Thai theme. He would buy one item and then plans on having it reproduced in China. I think he wanted to buy more but was limited by what he was capable of carrying.

He appears to be doing well. Both he and Amy, (his wife did not make this trip) are apparently adapting better to cultural deviation. He says that Amy’s sudden unemployment left gaps that have resolved with her new job teaching history in an international school. They will return to Thailand in May to spend time in BKK again and then venture down to Samui where Doug and Luk live.

Luk was traveling with this huge suitcase (with wheels fortunately) that she could not lift. When going to BKK she insisted on high heels that were the stilletto variety with a single small strap across the forefoot. If you can recall BKK’s sidewalks and then picture her trying to get on and off skytrains and navigating all on the cobblestones and drains etc. Also I ended up with the suitcase as well as booking her hotel room. She remains pleasant company and generates many laughs.

Josh and Luk

Mescal And Lamb With Consumme

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Laughingnomad

10am Sunday morning, one of the mescal vendors at the Tlacalula Market latched onto Maria and I with a dozen sample cups of mescal..from Mango Crema to the rare Tuvala Agave…after which we made an imperative beeline to the food section. At a long communal table we scarfed barrega (lamb) soup while visiting with a friendly old compesino from the mountains.

We bought a bag of chivo (the prized goat meat BBQ’d in the ground) to take to Mica and Bardo’s in Huayapam…and of course a liter pop bottle full of barrel mescal.

On the way back we stopped in Teotitlan where Maria, overwhelmed by the selection of rugs, ended up not choosing any. We will have to make a return trip while she shops around and thinks on it. Before leaving, The Zapotec Gonzalez family demonstrated their natural dye process and demonstrated the weaving of some very complicated designs.

I took a picture of a forest fire in the distance. The pine forests fall victim to the dry season this time of year. I asked Gerardo, my landlord who happened to be there working on a tourism project, how they fight fires here. “No water,” he said…”just chopping the forest around the fire. We have no helicopters.” “Oh yes,” I said, “you can get helicopters from the Governor!” He didn’t think that was very funny. If you remember there were plenty of helicopters available to tear-gas the people in the Centro a few times.

In Huayapam, Mica fixed us, and Bardo’s sister, Pilar, a delicious chicken in coloradito sauce and rice with clams brought by a friend from the coast. Bardo showed us turtle eggs (illegal) but we reneged. Bardo and Mica had worked all day roasting, sorting and bagging coffee…so noticing their yawns, we exited early. But not before their architect friend, Renaldo, showed up with digital images of a house to be built on land adjacent to Bardo’s new house he is building for himself high on a hill overlooking Huayapam. Before we left, we tried to call friend Gerardo, working in Puerto Escondido now, but as usual no tiempo aero (air time) on his phone.

A Typical Sunday in Oaxaca

Posted on February 12, 2007 by Laughingnomad

Made another trip to the Tlacalula Sunday Market last week with my next door neighbors Ana, Steve and little Oscar. Bought some carved coconut shell halves made for drinking our wonderful Mexican chocolate and then in my impending senility just walked off and left them on the table…not the first time this has happened. But with my new telescopic lens I did get some nice long shots of some of the colorful women vendors that come down out of the Sierra mountains to sell their turkeys, baskets, vegetable produce etc. They don’t like their pictures taken…not respectful. And they often feel that to have their picture taken means that their spirit is stolen…so have to be surreptitious.

Then we tried to find the little town of San Marcos high on a hill west of Tlacalula. After wending back and forth through Maguay, vegetable fields and pastures on dirt paths (could hardly call them roads) and with a little direction from a shy old campesino in a checkered shirt and white straw hot and with a wooden stick in his hand for herding a few cattle, we finally see before us a large green sign: “Servicios de Salud de Oaxaca. San Marcos Tlapazola, Tlacolula.”

As we slowly enter the tiny town we see an older guy sitting on the steps of a tienda…seemingly asleep with his head draped down his chest…but we think it was the tranquilizing effects of his afternoon mescal. Winding our way up a hill above the town for a few great pictures we come across a group of giggling women and girls standing in their Sunday best in front of a covered plaza. “Get their picture,” I urge Ana but when she pulls out the camera they all run back through the gates laughing…ignoring the exhortations of a group of men and boys on the roof above. Shyly peeking around the corner they tell Ana there is a wedding that day. On the way back through the town we see another plaza full of people. I stop to look. Two cute young girls walk up to the car and ask our names and where we are from. They were also celebrating the wedding…their primo (cousin). A couple of men drinking mescal next to them joined in on the conversation…in English. It is not uncommon to find old men speaking the English they learned during their norteno migrations. The young ones are all up north…the small villages nearly empty. It was a Sunday and all the vendors were in Tlacalula so we will have to return one week-day to buy some unglazed pottery that the women are famous for in this town of San Marcos.

On our way back to Oaxaca City we stopped by Mica and Bardo’s in Huayapam armed with beer and the makings for white russians. Mica cooked up a great cena and I gave her a cd I burned of an Italian singer that is popular in Brazil…Ornella Vanoni. I had used one of her songs, “L’Appuntamento” (also made popular in the US by the soundtrack of Oceans 11) in a video I made of our trip to Hierve el Agua and Mica had asked for more of her music. Later four men friends from Puerto Escondido stopped by…a typical Sunday at Mica and Bardo’s.

Oaxaca Villages

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Laughingnomad

After getting back from Hierve el Agua last Sunday, I holed up in my apartment for two days. It has gotten really cold and windy. There is no heat in the apartment so I turn on the oven and open the oven door.

A couple nights ago, three friends and I went to a restaurant/cantina for great seafood soup with crab and shrimp and a beer. Then we sat on some bar stools in Max’s favorite bar next to the restaurant for an ultima (last one for the road) mescal where he had had an interesting “conversation” with a Mexican deaf-mute the night before…neither one knowing what the other one was intending. Max’s account was hilarious. I was the only woman there besides the female bar maid…and was introduced all around to the regulars…working class middle aged men…unlike the other cantinas I had been to where the patrons were hard-drinking young machismos.

Yesterday Sharon and I went to the Tlacalula Sunday Market…busy and full of brightly dressed indigenous people as usual. I bought some small carved coconut half-shells to serve my mescal and we both bought a petata…a large woven mat that people sleep on in the villages…from a tiny old woman with really rought hands from San Leandro…a town near Hierve de Agua. I will use it for a floor cover. We stopped in Huayapam on the way back to see Charlie and Bardo. Mica had gone to a movie.

Saturday I will go to a mountain village,San Pedro de Cajonos, (be careful how you pronounce Cajonos) to visit a family that carves Alebrijes…small painted fanciful animals. Thursday is Thanksgiving in the States.

Market In Tlacolula

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Yesterday my friend Sharon and I hopped a diesel-spewing bus for the hour ride to Tlacolula, southeast of the city, where vendors from multiple little villages around the Oaxaca Valley come on Sundays to buy and sell. The market is huge and we haven’t managed to cover it all by 4pm when it begins to close.

Crispy Rendered Pork Fat When Broken Up Into Pieces Is Called Chicharones

On the way out I buy boiled goat meat in a delicious sauce for my dinner. We stand in the aisle of the bus on the way home. I will return to buy a rug for my bedroom.

El Pochote Market & Cinema

Posted on June 4, 2006 by Laughingnomad

North and east from my apartment on Fiallo St., through the Zocolo, under tents and guy-wires, I walked to meet my new friend, Sharon, at an organic market called El Pochote, just north and east of Templo Santo Domingo. It had rained hard the night before and on the way I got drenched with at least a bucket of water. I looked back to see where the water came from and saw a woman poking a stick upward to release the water collected on top of a plastic tent. As I looked at her, she seemed to bear a silent look of terror on her face. She’s afraid of “susto,” I thought…afraid I would caste an evil spell on her. But that was just my interpretation, of course, having had very limited experience with health care for Zapotec and Mixtec migrants in Oregon. Unhappily, I continued on.

The market is very small and no one seemed to know where it was except a western-looking guy with an eastern European accent carrying some books. So an hour late, I finally caught Sharon leaving the market. We walked across the street to a bakery and bought some deep-fried peppers stuffed with chicken, nuts and I don’t know what else but it was fantastic…juicy and the flavors just kept coming and coming. Then she took me to see her roof-top apartment where, as a master gardener, she will raise plants and herbs. Nearby we visited the the Oaxaca Cultural Center that offers free art, music and photography classes within a beautiful old nunnery. I loved the feeling inside…children making art, practicing the piano…

Then we returned to the market where I bought some lead-free Mexican kitchen pottery for my apartment. We shared some mole enchiladas and a tostada “sandwich” and then watched part of the International Indigenous Film Festival (on extremely uncomfortable seats) that is being held at the Cine Pochote at the market site. Exhausted, we trudged home.

The next day Sharon visited me to see my apartment and then walked east to the nearby Mercado 20 de Noviembre where I bought a plastic shopping bag, some grapes, green beans and some perfectly formed green onions and cilantro to make salsa. Sharon was tired and getting a cold so she left for home, while I stopped and had a bowl of delicious menudo (tripe soup) before leaving.

Sharon says she will soon go with me to Mercado Abastos, so huge she says I can easily get lost, to the Women Artesans Of The Regions of Oaxaca cooperative for shopping and will take me to her favorite coffee shop.

When I returned to my apartment Gerardo’s cousin who lives downstairs, was delivering a set of T Fal cook-ware, some glass mixing bowls and a big bottle of purified water. I had only emailed Gerardo asking for those things that morning! Incidentally everyone drinks bottled water here. A young guy from Texas sitting next to me on the plane to Houston had been at the University of Oregon delivering a talk on toxicology. He told me the water here was full of arsenic. Incidentally, he said the water in the Willamette River in Oregon has a high level of arsenic also.

Hector, Sharon’s apartment manager, told her about a very good curandera (healer) so this week we will visit her and have a healing, sauna and massage.

Meanwhile, Gerardo, who wants to get a masters in tourism, has offered to drive me to nearby villages while we practice 30 minutes English for him and 30 minutes Spanish for me.

Later, checking email, I excitedly discovered that my old friend, Patricia Gutierrez, who married a Mexican national and lately moved to Mexico, will be driving here next week with her husband “to give me a hug” and get her mail that I brought from Oregon.

Someone else in an email asked if I thought the next president, at the upcoming election, will be good for Mexico. I know nothing yet about Mexican politics, and have to search out some good sources of information.

I have been making open pot “sheepherder’s coffee, in my new T Fal french “milk pot” like my dad used to make in sheep camp. I had forgotten how good it can be. (Whatever is a milk pot?!) But I need to find some coffee filters for my new coffee pot. People in Mexico drink Nescafe. Ugh! Never got used to it even after visiting Asia off and on for nearly four years. Also, I am having a hard time remembering to put TP in the basket instead of flushing it…

Now if I could just learn to use the buses!

Road South To Vang Vieng

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Slash & Burn! The mountains here are obscured by the smoke from slash & burn fires as in Chiang Mai so unfortunately the sunset over the Mekong isn’t as clear and beautiful as it was when I was here two years ago.

The road south from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng is reputed to be incredibly beautiful but you would never know it as our minivan chugged around five hours of consecutive curves in smoke-filled mountains!

Stops along the way gave us a chance to swallow, get some air relieving car sickness and to take some pictures of village life.

Meat Market

BBQ Pork Fat

Sticky Rice in Banana Leaves

Mystery Eggs

Phousi Market

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Laughingnomad

I discovered today that the Talat Dala Market that used to be up the street toward the river has moved to the outskirts of town and is now called the Phousi Market (pronounced “poosi I say it carefully.) After a short ride in a Tuk Tuk, I watched the women from the countryside sell their fruit, vegetables, palm sugar, sheets of seaweed and other items, many unidentifiable, while having a leisurely Lao Cafe…strong Lao coffee in a little glass poured over sweetened condensed cream…served traditionally, as in Viet Nam, with a glass of green tea on the side.

Mystery Message

I haven’t been able to figure out what happened in Lao in 1983…anyone have any idea?

Then after a breakfast of delicious noodle soup I purchased sweet dried beef, lao cookies, seaweed and a bag of cherry tomatoes for snacking.

Market-Going

Posted on March 15, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Tired of the Night Market for tourists, this week I walked to the Warorot Day Market…a market for the local Thais.

I bought delicious garlic flavored BBQ chicken for lunch with custard filled squash for dessert. Then crossing the footbridge over the Mae Ping River I walked back past upscale craft and fabric shops stopping for a mixed fruit shake at the Riverside Bar & Restaurant. There is supposed to be great live music there at night but I feel weird going by myself so I don’t.

Chiang Mai Thailand

Posted on March 4, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Flew from Koh Samui on Bangkok Air (the only airline off the island because Bangkok Air built the airport) and then on to Chiang Mai on budget Air Asia.

I guess Bob is in Bangkok, but I am in the Galare Guesthouse in a cozy Thai-style building on the Ping River that runs through the city. A broadband internet cable is plugged into my laptop. I am drinking real drip coffee made in my little Starbucks coffee maker on this blessedly cool morning and listening to Leonard Cohen on my tiny speakers.

I am mid-way through “All That Matters,” a lovely book by Wayson Chow about Chinese immigrants in the 1930’s in Vancouver B.C. Most of the Chinese those days were from the Pearl River Delta of Canton China who came as merchants to Chinatown in Vancouver or as workers on the railroad.

I catch up on the news in the U.S. on BBC TV…much better coverage than we get from US media. I am following the political crisis in Thailand in the English-language Bangkok Post in the downstairs open-air restaurant at breakfast each morning. In the streets of Bangkok thousands of people have been demonstrating for constitutional reform and an end of corruption…calling for Prime Minister Thaksin to step down. And that is really something for a culture that generally disdains confrontation. Locals are hoping there will not be a repeat of the military coup in the late 90’s that left scores of students dead in the streets.

I am walking distance to the Night Market (actually a street market) that bustles with open-street cafes until midnight. I usually don’t take the Tuk Tuks in Thailand because I am tall and the ceilings of these things slant downwards making it difficult to see ahead but they are the best way to get around in this city because they can dodge through the smooth-paved alleyways avoiding all the one-way streets. I like this city. Much quieter…even the Tuk Tuks don’t sound like weed-eaters…and the traffic isn’t as nuts as it is in Bangkok and on the islands.

More farangs (White westerners) in this town than I’ve seen anywhere in Thailand (even the islands because most tourists there just stay within hotel compounds) so Chiang Mai seems to be quite the tourist destination. Tour companies offer trips to places like the national parks, elephant training camps and to the Golden Triangle where Thailand meets the Lao, Chinese and Burmese borders that is famous for the opium trade of years past. I am thinking I will take one of these trips…maybe to the Golden Triangle…and to Chiang Rai through colorful Akha, Karen, Lisu and Palong hill tribe villages.

How long can I stay in my room, I ask the smiling girl at the reception desk. Until way next month, she says laughing. Maybe I will.

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