Quotations
Posted on April 17, 2008
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The scanner blog pointed me to the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks yesterday. Fantastic. Mum is a particular hater of poor punctuation. She loves to correct servers in restaurants regarding stray apostrophes on their menu or even their website.
New Look
Posted on February 28, 2008
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I gave the blog a makeover last night. What do you think? I even cloned one of the sheep.
Send Mexican Food
Posted on February 27, 2008
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What would you miss the most if you left home (or your adopted home) for a few years? Any list, for me, would almost certainly lead off with Mexican food. Most of the rest of any list would also be types of food, with a few beers and spirits mixed in there (Racer 5, aaaaaarggh you bastard.)
So tonight we made Fish Tacos, Baja style. Deep frying is par for the course here in Scotland’s capital, so that part was no problem. Salsa and Tapatio were provided courtesy of Matt and Maya who bought it at their local mercado in Oakland, and made a hand-off to us in NYC a couple of weeks ago. Cabbage was straightforward, and avocado is readily available over here these days (though the quality is very volatile.) Cilantro is no problem, as long as you know it’s called coriander.
Corn tortillas can be found at Lupe Pinto’s in Tollcross (the UK’s first mexican grocery,) as can many of the other essentials. Cod steaks and some flour, eggs, salt and pepper round out the main ingredients. Caitlin also made a great white topping sauce, from sour cream, mayo, cilantro and lime.
Throw in a bottle or two of Sol (thank you ASDA,) crank up the radio, sit back and dream of cacti, or in my case of a couple of hours spent broken down in the Baja desert with Mike and an old dude, followed by a tour of the taco stands of Todos Santos, accompanied by a six pack.
So I knocked that first one off my list…
Two Months On…
Posted on December 10, 2007
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It’s over two months since we arrived in Scotland, concluding our trip. We still haven’t written a blog post about Singapore and Malaysia, and I don’t think we will, so I’ve included the photos in this post. But here are some thoughts on our trip, with the perspective that comes with time.
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Australia
Posted on October 14, 2007
Filed Under SE Asia Trip | 1 Comment
The ‘anchor’ of our trip to SE Asia was a couple of weeks in Adelaide to attend the weddings of Jamie and Gavin, two brothers that are friends of mine from when we were very young. We connected through Kuala Lumpur airport on budget airline AirAsia and headed down to Adelaide on Air Malaysia.
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Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
Posted on September 25, 2007
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We gave Cambodia the short shrift on this trip in order to have more time in Vietnam. In retrospect, this was kind of a bad decision as we felt that we spent a little too much time in Vietnam and certainly did not spend enough in Cambodia. As it was, we went to Cambodia for 5 days and focused the trip entirely on the ruins at Angkor Wat, staying nearby in the town of Siem Reap. What you can you say about Angkor Wat without sounding cheesy and starstruck? Nothing really. It was life-changing, incredible, something everyone should do, amazingly beautiful. Does it convey the magnitude of awesomeness to tell you that we took over 600 photos of the place? Maybe and maybe not. Just take my word that if you have any amount of time in your life that you could possibly meld into a trip to Cambodia to see the ruins, DO IT.
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Phu Quoc (+Photos)
Posted on September 15, 2007
Filed Under Vietnam, SE Asia Trip | 4 Comments
As we were heading down the coast of Vietnam we were trying to figure out whether to go to Nha Trang or Mui Ne. They are both beach towns. Nha Trang is heavily developed, and pitched as a top class tourist resort. Mui Ne has more of a backpacker and windsurfer / kite boarder scene. We weren’t too excited about the reports from either of these places, and the logistics of getting there and out again were a little daunting.
Then we read about Phu Quoc island. It is off the south-west coast of Vietnam, in the Gulf of Thailand. Famous for its fish sauce, a laid back beach vibe and cheap return flights from Saigon. It sounded perfect.
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Still in Saigon (+Photos)
Posted on September 6, 2007
Filed Under Vietnam, SE Asia Trip | 3 Comments
Saigon holds somewhat mystical proportions for me due to its role in the Vietnam war and thereafter in U.S. popular culture. Much more than Hanoi, Saigon for some reason seemed to represent all of the chaos and foreignness that the war evoked in the American psyche. Maybe it had something to do with repeated watchings of Good Morning Vietnam and listenings to the lesser-known Charlie Daniels hit, “Still in Saigon.” Whatever the cause, I expected Saigon to be a dramatic experience for me. I was kind of surprised when it turned out to be a fairly comfortable and familiar (somehow!) place.
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B’ Lan the Best Little Tailor in Hoi An
Posted on August 26, 2007
Filed Under Vietnam, SE Asia Trip | 8 Comments
When we were planning our trip months ago we read a lot about custom clothes tailoring in Hoi An. We were interested in the idea, (c was very interested) but had heard lots of stories about shoddy work and unhappy customers so were a little worried. As it turned out we had a wonderful experience with a tailor called B’ Lan, who became a friend and a guide during our time in Hoi An. She was one of the nicest and most special people we’ve met during our travels.
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Canine Cusine
Posted on August 26, 2007
Filed Under Vietnam, SE Asia Trip | 9 Comments
It’s a well known fact that people in Vietnam eat dog. In fact, despite the practice being essentially at the level of taboo in the West, other Asian cultures (particularly Korea and China) also enjoy dog meat as part of their traditional and modern cuisine. Needless to say, this fact was on my and Gregor’s minds the first time we sat down at a Hanoi street stall to tuck in to a bowl of noodles with a meat we were told was beef. Judging by the jokes and uneasy comments we’ve heard from fellow travelers, I think this enters the concerns of many newcomers to the east. After the umpteenth time scrutinizing the Vietnamese words on the side of a food cart trying to make out any permutation of the words “thit cho” (”dog meat”) before I would eat there, I decided I couldn’t live this way…
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