Filed under: Culture, Expat life, Food, media, Nightlife, restaurants, Travel, work | Tags: Amazon, Bangkok, Barnes & Noble, books, bookshops, Burma, Cambodia, crocodiles, Dasa Book Cafe, food, guidebooks, India, Japan, Jareung Restaurant, jungle food, Khlong Teoy, Khlong Toey Market, magazines, Marc Schultz, markets, Middle East, Myanmar, Nabanita Dutt, Nana, Nepal, newspapers, Phatum Thani, photography, restaurants, San Francisco, sheep, shopping, snakes, spirituality, Sukhumvit Road, testicles, Thailand, Things Asian Press, To Thailand With Love, tourism, Travel, travel writing, United States, USA, Vietnam, volunteering, writing
To Thailand With Love
Having been published in newspapers and magazines, I have now, with the release of To Thailand With Love, completed the trinity of print media.
I have been referring to it as “my book debut”, rather than “my book”, as I am just one of several contributors to TTWL. It is the latest in the “With Love” series, edited by Nabanita Dutt and published by Things Asian Press of San Francisco, which combines travel writing with guidebook-style pointers and listings. Typically, the writers provide features on travel experiences in the country and append info for the reader to visit the destination for themselves, should they wish to. Previous “With Love” books have focused on Burma, Cambodia, Japan, Vietnam and North India, while a Nepal edition was published concurrently with the Thailand release.
Quite apart from my involvement, I would recommend any of these books if you plan to travel to one of the countries covered, or if you generally have an interest in them. The “With Love” entries offer a slew of out-of-the-ordinary stories and ideas which you might not find in more traditional guidebooks, nor hear from “ordinary” tourists.
I have three stories in the Thailand book, covering a wander around Khlong Toey Market (a totally authentic fresh market with lots of weird sights and smells), a trip to Bangkok’s Middle Eastern quarter (you can be transported to Arabia for three Sukhumvit sois and eat some things you won’t find elsewhere in Thailand, including sheep’s testicles), and dinner at a “jungle food” restaurant in Phatum Thani (crocodile, cobra and much more is on the menu).
There’s plenty more to digest from the other writers too, divided into chapters covering food, must-see attractions, spirituality, hidden treasures, shopping, remote destinations and tips on local life, volunteering and more. Complementing all this is some quite charming photography by Marc Schultz.
To Thailand With Love is available at Dasa Book Cafe in Bangkok, from Barnes & Noble in the United States, and can be shipped worldwide from Amazon. If you would prefer to order a copy from a bookstore of your choice, the ISBN numbers are ISBN-13: 978-1-934159-11-8 and ISBN-10: 1-934159-11-5.
Filed under: Culture, Expat life, Food, Fun, Nightlife, restaurants | Tags: American food, Andrew Zimmern, Asoke, Bizarre Foods, coffee, curry, food, green curry, hotels, India, Indian curry, Indian food, internet, Italian food, Italy, Japan, Japanese food, Khao San Road, Laos, Manchester, MBK, Narathiwat, northeast Thailand, Not the Nation, pad Thai, pizza, Ploenchit, porridge, pubs, sandwiches, seafood, shopping, Soi Sribamphen, Soi Thaniya, southern Thailand, steak, Sukhumvit, supermarkets, sushi, television, Thai food, Thai restaurants, Thailand, tom yam, tourism, Travel, Travel Channel, Udon Thani, USA, Vietnam, vindaloo, websites, Western food
Yuck!
Thailand justifiably has a reputation for producing some of the world’s best food, and as with any national cuisine, the best Thai food can be found in the country itself. Thais who travel will often bemoan the inferior quality of Thai food overseas, while foreigners who have visited here will never look at another country’s green curry in quite the same way again. Hell, I once had the misfortune of ordering a plate of pad Thai in Manchester and finding they substituted tamarind sauce for tomato ketchup!
Yet exactly the same logic can be applied in Thailand – if you’re looking for good foreign food, you might be best off going to the country in question. Just because the local food in Thailand can be mind-blowing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the kitchens of the Land of Smiles can perform similar culinary feats with dishes from abroad.
People who grow up with a certain type of food know it best. Add in the scarcity of certain ingredients in certain countries, plus how relatively new some foreign food is to Thailand, and stir in some peculiar local twists, tastes and takes on foreign dishes, and you have…
5 FOREIGN FOODS THAT THAILAND DOES VERY BADLY
Filed under: Culture, Fun, Health, Internet, media, Miscellaneous, Outside Thailand, People | Tags: abortion, advertising, Alotta Fagina, Austin Powers, babies, Beer, bikini, blogging, Cambodian, censorship, Chinese, cigarettes, conjoined twins, disease, DIY, elephantiasis, elephants, email, expats, Facebook, family, Fred West, fried rice, gays, geography, hangover, Hua Hin, Indonesia, internet, Japanese, journalist, Kiribati, Korean, Leo Beer, occult, Pattaya, penis, Philippines, porn, pregnant, prostitution, rash, Satan, search engines, SEO, sex, sex tourism, Siamese twins, Siriraj Museum, smoking, teenagers, television, Thai, Thai architecture, Thailand, Timorese, tourists, transvestites, TV, Twitter, USA, vagina, vibrator, Viz, Watch With Mother, whisky, Wordpress, Yingluck Shinawatra
An acceptable way to wear fur
The amazing response to my last post was quite an eye-opener. Initially, my blog was just a way to share my general musings with friends and family back home after I moved to Thailand. I wasn’t bothered about page views, although I’d had some good critical feedback on some past pieces. Even so, the most views my site had had in a day previously was a little over 200. But my “10 ways expats can avoid being mistaken for tourists” post has now picked up more than 3,300 views!
Since I’d only posted it on my own Facebook page and sent an email to a few people I already knew, I was very pleasantly surprised by this. It was my own experience of something going “viral”, and while 3,300+ views is a pretty modest stat in modern internet terms, it was achieved through the branch of “shares” on Facebook, Twitter and the link being posted on various forums. While technology has changed a lot in recent years, the adage remains that the best kind of advertising is a recommendation, so for my work to be publicised by people I don’t know whatsoever is a nice seal of approval.
As I hadn’t had particularly big numbers before, I hadn’t looked much at the referrers, search engine terms, and so on, but when I got the huge spike in views, I had a look at the WordPress stats page to see how people were finding their way to the site. I had a few surprises and laughs at some of the search engine terms that had directed people here, but one word in particular stood out because it cropped up over and over again.
Vagina. Continue reading
Filed under: News, People, politics, Thai news | Tags: Abhisit Vejjajiva, Adolf Hitler, airports, America, Bangkok, Bumrungrad Hospital, cake, cancer, Charles Bronson, Chatuchak, Chatuchak Market, comedy, conflict of interest, cookery, cooking show, corruption, coups, death, economy, exports, Fawlty Towers, food, foreign investment, government, Government House, Health, high farce, hospital, journalists, liver, liver cancer, markets, media. Thaksin Shinawatra, mosquitoes, motorbikes, obituary, PAD, People Power Party, People's Alliance for Democracy, political demonstrations, politics, Potjaman na Pombejra, PR, press, press intrusion, prime minister, protests, psychology, public relations, public toilets, reporters, Samak Sundaravej, saving face, Somchai Wongsawat, spin doctor, Thai, Thai economy, Thai politics, Thailand, toilet, tourism, USA, yellow shirts
Samak finds food and politics don’t mix
Former Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej died yesterday. He succumbed to liver cancer in Bangkok’s Bumrungrad Hospital, aged 74.
Samak was PM when I moved to Thailand in April last year. He was quite a character and his presence – along with the movements of his rivals and his interactions with the press – could at times be quite comic, if not downright farcical. Before Thai politics turned sour with mob protests, airports seiges and coups, it could even be quite fun to read about Samak’s exploits.
He was the first of three PMs in my time here (three leaders in 19 months in itself is an indictment of the state of Thai politics) and by far the most memorable. He was nowhere near as photogenic as current PM Abhisit Vejjajiva, nor was he anything like as polite as his successor, Somchai Wongsawat, but that is precisely why he made his mark. He behaved aggressively, he was beligerent to the media, he sulked in public, he was unafraid to belittle people if he felt they deserved it, he was stoic in the face of political pressure – and his hardened appearance matched these, ahem, qualities.
Filed under: Culture, Film, media | Tags: abortion, America, Art of the Devil 2, Asian film, black magic, Britain, censorship, children, China, cigarettes, English, farangs, Film, foetus, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, genitals, gore, guns, hate crimes, Hollywood, horror movies, inciting hatred, Long Kong 2, media, media censorship, movies, occult, pornography, pregnancy, prostitution, smoking, teenagers, teens, Thai culture, Thai film, Thai people, Thailand, the arts, True Film Asia, UK, USA, vable TV, vagina, websites
DIY abortions on Thai TV
I don’t subscribe to the idea that all censorship is bad. As much as I appreciate freedom of speech and expression in the media and arts, I do believe in sensible censorship of the most extreme opinions and/or images. For example, I think it’s quite right that distributing material which incites hatred is a crime in the UK, and that the USA’s Freedom of Speech law, which allows for the same to go unpunished, is a little lax.
But if censorship is to be enforced, it has to be done with common sense, and it must also treat the public with a modicum of respect for its intelligence. Continue reading
Filed under: International news, Outside Thailand, Travel | Tags: 2004 tsunami, America, American Samoa, Apia, Australasia, Australia, BBC, beaches, bottled water, Boxing Day, Boxing Day tsunami, CNN, coral, coral reefs, countryside, disaster, earthquake, expats, flying foxes, food, holiday, independent Samoa, India, Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean tsunami, Indonesia, international aid, International news, jungle, Krabi, Maldives, native cultures, natural disaster, News, Oceania, Ofu, Phuket, rainforests, resorts, Samoa, Samoan islands, South Pacific, South Pacific tsunami, Sri Lanka, subsistence, Thailand, Tonga, tourism, Travel, trekking, tropical beaches, tsunami, US Samoa, US territories, USA, Western Samoa
Ofu beach, American Samoa
Again, a part of the world that is dear to me has been devastated by a tsunami.
Last time was the 2004 Boxing Day disaster which wreaked havoc on several Indian Ocean countries, most famously Thailand. This time the Samoan islands have borne the brunt of killer waves resonating from a huge earthquake in Indonesia – also the epicentre of the 2004 catastrophe.
Phuket was worst-hit in 2004, while Krabi also suffered extensive damage, and scenes of the damage there were poignant for me at the time, as I had only two months earlier enjoyed my first trip to Thailand, spending half of it in Krabi, a dramatically beautiful province which remains my favourite place in the kingdom.
Last week the Samoan islands – both independent Samoa and the US territory of American Samoa – were hit by a tsunami of a similar ferocity, with reports of waves of anything between three and seven metres high washing up to a mile inland, devastating the southern coastlines and in some cases destroying entire villages. Tonga, too, was hit.
