Bangkok: Part III of III and Other Fun Stuff

I know that I have been lacking in the blog post department and all apologies. The reason that I have been so busy lately is that we landed the catering contract for a huge Hollywood movie. I signed an NDA, so I cannot really go into the details, but if you are a smart person you can figure out where I am living and what kind of movie would be filmed there. It has been tons of fun and I am meeting a lot of the Hollywood and New Yorker types. It is actually pretty funny, everyone is in a terribly shitty mood all day and then they come to the caterer and lament their troubles while enjoying the food. As long as we keep feeding them well they are extremely happy with that. We are basically the most popular people on campus. The physical catering job is fantastic too. We are doing a great job of supplying fun breakfast and lunches for the next month. The only trouble is that I am waking up at 3 AM to get the buffet open by 530 AM…. so, as you can imagine the hours are grueling.

I have also moved into my apartment in Ubud that is in the back of the bar. It is an extremely nice set up and it is nice to be living in a much more lively atmosphere. I am really enjoying it (although I haven’t had much free time).


Back to Bangkok:

There is not a lot to do in the city if you are a tourist. The eating and the shopping is great, but the city lacks many of the main attractions (such as museums and other arts) that most other large cities have. However, there is one great attraction that is known as the temple at Wat Arun.

Wat Arun is located on the river a little west of Bangkok and is accessible by one of the city water transport boats (interesting concept). From a distance, it is your basic large temple that was built by Buddhist monks a few hundred years ago. See picture below.


However, once you get close to the temple you see something completely different: the entire thing is made out of Chinese plates and china. Back in the trading days Chinese ships would load their boats full of china for ballast for their ships and set sail for Bangkok for spices and other tradable goods. When they arrived to Bangkok they would dump the china out on the dock and load it with the tradable goods. The Buddhist monks would collect the china and use it in the construction of the temple. See the pictures of the detail below, it is quite amazing. I was really impressed with the level of detail. The temple is comparable to a huge mosaic.



Next post: things that I think are interesting on the movie set.

Bangkok Part II of III: Eating through the City

Sorry for the delayed posting. Things have been crazy here. Days turn into weeks in Bali due to the lack of seasons and the weather always being perfect every day. My host explained that is why 2 weeks turned into 26 years for her. Next post will explain why I am so busy. Also, my lovely mother is in town, so I am trying to spend time with her.

Back to Bangkok…

We flew to Bangkok for one reason: to eat Thai food and learn the nuisances of the recipes we have at our restaurant, Siam Sally. I can promise you that the three of us did not get cheated. It is actually pretty funny—we had dozens of meals at restaurants and in the street markets, but only really tried the 4 main dishes in our restaurant that we felt needed the most work and fine tuning: Pad Thai, Tom Kha Gai, Sum Tom, and some weird mushroom dish I cannot really remember the name of.

We landed at 7:40 pm, went to the hotel, dumped our bags out and went straight the lobby to try the Sum Tom. The restaurant was nice and we ended up ordering about 3-4 dishes and were writing down reminders in small books and making mental notes on how everything tasted. After the first dinner we hopped into a cab and went to a hole in the wall called “Jay-Fai.” Jay-Fai is not a hard place to miss as you are walking down a crowded street in Bangkok; most noodle shops charge 20-40 Baht ($1) for their noodle dishes. Jay Fai charges 250-400 Baht and there is a line out the door. The restaurant has absolutely zero décor and the tables are plastic lawn furniture. However, after tasting the food (which in my opinion was the best of the week, even outdoing the Peninsula), my doubts were wiped away. The prawns were the size of golf balls and the herbs and veggies in their soup stocks were fresh and bountiful.

Woke up, ate the room service continental breakfast and were out the door to go to the big 10 story tall shopping center called MBK (mentioned in the first post). At the top of MBK there is a huge food court with over 60 vendors. I know what you readers are thinking, why the hell would we go to a food court in Bangkok to try Thai food? I was also skeptical at first, and I guess the only answer is that all food courts are not created equally. The entire complex takes tokens so that the vendor stalls you get food from do not have to deal with cash. The average token sale was around 40 Baht per person. When we went to the cashier and asked for 800 Baht ($17) worth of tokens for food the lady looked at us with a look of disgust and confusion and handed us a large cup of tokens. Typical Americans.

I cannot even count how many dishes we had there, but to give you some perspective, we were there for over 2 hours. If I would have to give a ballpark figure, I would say 13 dishes. This food court is where I discovered my favorite Thai dessert of all time, “NahmKai Sai.” Nahm Kai Sai is shaved ice with coconut milk, pandanus leaves, and a variety of “tidbits” that included jellied fruits, nuts, etc. See the picture below sothat you can see all of the lovely and colorful ingredients that you can throw in this dessert. It is basically like a creamy snow cone with natural candy in it. I had about 6 the entire trip.

The food court and the first day were the most memorable experiences of the trip. It is pretty funny when you look back at vacations like this—we ate at the Mandarin Oriental and the Peninsula as well, but the experience did not resonate as strongly with me in comparison to the street markets. Bangkok is also a strange town, as you get very very bored after about 3 days. There is really nothing to do there besides shopping and eating. We hopped on the plane and started preparing for the big catering project that we are doing. I arrived back home the same body weight! I guess it is because we walked a lot and Thai food is a lot of fish and stocks...not a lot of saturated fat.

Next post: Monuments in Bangkok, and what I have been doing with myself.

Bangkok Part I of III: Initial Impressions

I recently just arrived back from Bangkok in order to discover the nuisances of Thai dining. BGF just opened up an amazing Thai joint and we also took the head chef so that he could also learn the correct flavors in a Tom Yum and a Tom Gah Gai. Bangkok is one of the strangest places that I have ever been to on earth; it is an interesting mixture of hilarious Asian customs and a very modern city with advanced transportation systems that would rival any city in the USA. One thing that was great is that the food is dirt cheap and delicious. Thai food is so good because it is known for using the freshest ingredients and top-notch seafood and made to order. I would have to agree—the produce that was available was incredible and the prawns and seafood lying around in the markets were the cheapest and freshest that I have ever seen.

Who is to thank for all of these wonderful ingredients available to the Thai people? The answer is the King, and in Thailand, the King is the most revered and respected people on the planet to an extent where it is almost comical. One of the policies of the royal family in the 1970s was to build a vast infrastructure of rail to connect farms and fishing harbors to major cities in Thailand. Interestingly enough, Thailand was also the only country to resist the perils of Western imperialism that Hong Kong, Japan, and all of the colonies in the 19th century fell victim to, making it very unique in comparison. The Thai people must be very grateful because every store, restaurant, and corner market all have pictures of the king proudly displayed in the open. When dining with a couple of ex-pats a conversation about the king arose and they told me to be careful. They explained that they have heard stories of people lamenting about the king in public and then the next day they would be visited by royal officials and asked politely to stop.



Above is a picture of the king that resided in the 10-story shopping mall called MBK. Just to prove that I am not making this king thing up. Another really surprising thing in Bangkok is how little English that all of the people were able to speak. Even at five star resorts such as The Peninsula and The Mandarin Oriental (which have both rated the best hotel in the world at some point in the last decade) lacked English speakers. Not saying that this is a terribly bad thing, however it made for some interesting conversations and a lot of bargaining to be made by writing numbers on paper or in calculators in the markets. Bangkok is also known for its terrible traffic. The city is completely accessible by overhead trains (Sky Train) or underground subway, but taking a taxi is usually unbearable. In fact, if traffic gets too tough and you are in a cab, the taxi driver will kick you out and leave you stranded. This happened one day when the cab driver did not feel like driving us to a restaurant that we wanted to go to. We ended up having to walk to the subway.

Part II talks about our adventures in the markets and eating copious amounts of Thai food. Part III will show some of the touristy stuff we did. Stay tuned.

In Bali...a Day Late

I have safely arrived in Bali after a pretty arduous 35 hours of travel. The first snafu occurred when I was dropped off at LAX and went to the ticket agent and was not in the computer to check in for the flight. After insisting that I was going to Tokyo that day, I pull out a copy of my itinerary and find out that I was a day late for my flight. The mistake was made because I glanced over the ticket too fast and saw that I arrived in Tokyo on the 29th...thinking that I was also leaving on the 29th as well. I guess I forgot about a thing called the international date line and forgot that I lost 14 hours of my life once I crossed it. Luckily, after a $100 fee, I was back on track--only a day later. I am glad it did, because I was without a cell phone and being stranded at LAX did seem like a good time after a whole summer of anticipation of leaving.

I really don't feel like writing about the air travel because there is nothing interesting to talk about sitting in an airplane for 12 hours and being miserable. The one observation I would like to share is that they feed people entirely too much for how little calories that they burn while sitting in the air. I was offered over 5 meals in all of my travel, none of which were of note.

I am still getting acclimated to the area and the time change. The Internet here is also pretty spotty so I will try to post 3 times a week. I went to a few of the restaurants with Karen over the past few days and have met some of the locals. I start cooking next week and I am very excited to get in the kitchen and start learning!

The picture is of a town called Ubud, which is a very hip tourist location in the middle of the island. It is where 3 of the restaurants are located. My next entry will be a write up on Cinta Grill and how I will be starting at that location.

Driving and the AAA International Drivers Permit

I went into AAA today to apply for my IDP (International Drivers Permit) and I was a little stunned by the application process. I basically walked in, showed the lady my CA drivers license, handed her 15 dollars and 2 passport photos, and I walked out with a permit to drive in over 160 countries. The permit itself just contains a translation of about 40 pages in many different languages to what my license in the United States allows me to do--drive a motor coach that weighs less than 7,000 Lbs.

However, after seeing firsthand how people drive in Bali when I was there back in 2001, I cannot see my driving skills learned in the States translating directly over to being able to drive in Bali just because I now possess this magical piece of paper that AAA issued me. Cars drive on the left side of the road (usually) in Indonesia and the steering column is on the right side of the car. Add the round-a-bouts and the twisting jungle roads, and I might see a steep learning curve.

Lonely Planet Writes:

"Driving as a tourist"

"Tourists often comment that the roads in Bali seem a madhouse, and this frightens people away from driving. Most local people in Bali have never had a driving lesson. They don’t need to, as you can get your driving license without taking a test (but its cheaper if they take the test). The road skills people have, are earned by ploughing headfirst into traffic, and muscling their way through, like everyone else is doing. This can be a hard concept to learn, putting the western idea of ‘road rules’ aside, and taking up a ‘law of the jungle’ approach, but that’s how it is."

My only saving grace is that speeds in Bali rarely go above 40 km/hr and the people are friendly. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Tickets are Booked!

Well it is official. I have a confirmed flight to Bali. Here's the Itinerary:

• Departing: Los Angeles on Thu, 27 Aug 2009, 1445 hrs.
• Arriving: Tokyo(NRT - Narita) on Fri, 28 Aug 2009, 1810 hrs

Layover 1 Hour

• Departing: Tokyo(NRT - Narita) on Fri, 28 Aug 2009, 1910 hrs
• Arriving: Singapore(SIN - Changi Intl) on Sat, 29 Aug 2009, 0115 hrs

Layover 12 Hours 30 Mins (that will hurt)

• Departing: Singapore(SIN - Changi Intl Terminal 2) on Sat, 29 Aug 2009, 1340 hrs
• Arriving: Denpasar (Bali)(DPS - Ngurah Rai Intl) on Sat, 29 Aug 2009, 1610 hrs

Be In Bali for 6 MONTHS

Then Back to LAX the same way with basically the same layovers. Back in the USA on Feb. 28, 2010.

Some fun facts about flying:

• LAX to Singapore is the 2nd longest commercial flight in the world.
• On the way home, with over 20 hours of flying, I will land 2 hours after I took off from Bali.
• I am sitting in a window seat for the longest leg of the trip. I plan on sleeping for 8 hours, but will have 6++ hours to have to keep busy.