Posted by Shady Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:50:55 GMT
I wonder if the same company prints both amtrak seatback pouch safety cards and airline seatback safety cards. They do look remarkably similar. I wonder if just one company makes all of them? Can I order my own custom ones for, say, my car? You know, for the lulz?
More research is needed.
Posted by Shady Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:06:59 GMT
Finally made it to Chicago, and the longest leg of the trip is over. Passed through most of Kansas at night, and Iowa, Missouri and Illinois today. For me, the "cool" part of the trip is pretty much over. I really wanted to see the southwest and the rockies the most, and it was very impressive to see all the scenery. The rest of the route is pretty much your standard, boring east coast route and while I'm not really excited about it, I do look forward to finally getting home.
Posted by Shady Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:43:00 GMT
It's been a great trip so far been through California Arizona New Mexico and currently colorado. Seen some amazing scenery and towns. The amoung of stars you can see in the arizona sky at night is simply amazing. I really wish I brought my digicam but the iPhone camera will have to do. We topped out at around 7000 feet passing through Raton Pass into Colorado from Arizona. I definitely want to do this again. Next time I'll spring for a sleeper car. My back demands it.Posted by Shady Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:33:50 GMT
Well not really driving the train. Just riding it. But I've always wanted to take a train across the whole country and now I get the chance. San diego to buffalo. 52 hours. I'm really looking forward to it.
Posted by Shady Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:43:21 GMT
Arrived in New York City last night. I'm officially back in the USA. It's good, and bad to be back. I still have a bunch of articles t post about Thailand, so look forward to those.
Posted by Shady Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:06:00 GMT
Thailand has, like any other country, a large variety of restaurants. You have the huge trans-national conglomerates like KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King of course, but you also have some local chains, or country wide chains that you won't find anywhere else. We'll cover the interesting changes the trans-nationals have made at a later date.
We're going to start with my second favorite of the local chains I've tried so far. I've been to this place 3 times since I came here. It's called MK Restaurant. It's Jibs favorite restaurant, and was my favorite until I discovered the restaurant I'm going to talk about below. MK restaurant is essentially chinese style hot pot. If you're not familiar with hot pot, it works like this: you have a hot plate at each table, on top of which is a pot filled with water. When you sit down, you can order from a huge variety of raw items, that you get to put into the hot water to cook. Of course you have sliced beef, pork and chicken, but you also get to choose from such delicious items as shrimp, fish tofu, squid, seasoned fish balls, pork balls, liver, and tripe. You also get some tasty vegetables to add to the mix. Nothing special here (lettuce, etc) with the exception of Morning Glory, which the Thais apparently consider to be a normal vegetable and eat all the time. I was skeptical at first, but it's actually really good. But I digress. So you put all your raw ingredients into the pot and wait for them to cook. You also get a brown sauce that is similar to hoisin sauce. You also get a small bowl of chopped chili and garlic that you can add to the sauce to adjust the taste to your liking. When everything is done cooking, you fish it out, put it into your bowl with some of the water that everything has been cooking in, as as much of the sauce as you want for flavor, and enjoy. It's tasty, healthy and surprisingly filling.
Although the focus of the MK Restaurant experience is the Hot Pot, they also have a nice selection of dim sum, and pre-cooked appetizers that you can munch on while waiting for your soup to finish. These appetizers come with signature green noodles. They're just regular old rice noodles, that have been turned green via food coloring. It's a strange gimmick and unnerving when you first try them, but they taste like plain old noodles. Another interesting gimmick is the receipt you get from MK contains a list of the nutrients your meal contained, and the percentage of your RDA that those nutrients made up.
Next up on the Thai chain restaurant list is my personal favorite: Bar B Q Plaza. Originally, MK was my favorite. I was only lured into trying BBQ plaza by on of their advertisments on TV. I like to think of myself as not the type who is swayed by advertising (don't we all), but this particular ad was just too good for me to not want to try the place out. The concept is similar to MK (communal cooking) the execution is different. Instead of a hot pot type cooking method (i.e. boiling) BBQ Plaza uses a thai style grill on top of the hot plate. For the details about thai barbecuing and the style of their grill, check out the pictures in the gallery here. You can also see a short video here. Essentially you have a hot metal cooking surface at the top, and around the sides you pour in water to catch the drippings and flavor of whatever you're grilling. You eat this soup along with the grilled items and fried or white rice.
Although you can order individual a la carté items such as ham, bacon, and squid, like at MK, the main focus is combination dishes. You pick a selection of dishes with names like beef economy pack and ultimate family pack, each of which contains slices of either a single type of meat (beef family pack) or a selection of multiple different kinds of meat (ultimate family pack). The ultimate family pack, for example, comes with beef, ham, bacon, sliced pork, chicken, squid, shrimp, narutomaki (japanese style spiral fish cakes), udon noodles, cabbage, baby corn and carrots. You dump the veggies in the water at the sides of the grill, slap the various meats at the top to cook, and wait. The end result is simlar to MK restaurant but you get the added flavor that comes from grilling the meat. After the first or second round of grilling, you have a nice brown crust on the top of the grill, that you can deglaze with the water to add incredible flavor to the soup at the sides.
Yum Saap (no website, sadly) is a restaurant that I think could only ever be created in south east Asia. That's not to say that it couldn't do well in, say, Hawaii or California, but the overall taste and menu items are geared specifically towards this geographic region. The focus of Yum Saap is the Thai style papaya salad, and its ilk: beef salad, pork salad, etc. The salads served at Yam Saap are quite spicy, in the tradition of a lot of Thai food. It's very good, if you're used to that sort of thing, but even the Thai people I ate with commented on how the papaya salad was "ped mak mak" (really spicy). Of course, simple papaya and other type of salads are not the only items available at Yum Saap. They have the usual variety of a al carté items available, but even these are geared more towards veggies and present a seemingly healthier option for consumers of fast food.
Posted by Shady Mon, 28 May 2007 03:33:00 GMT
We have been royally gypped when it comes to chip flavors. Read more...
Posted by Shady Sat, 26 May 2007 08:54:00 GMT
Went to pattaya for a night before leaving for Koh Samed this weekend. Pattaya is what most people who tell you about Thailand are talking about when they tell you about Thailand. Most of Thailand isn't like that at al, but Pattaya and Phuket pretty much give the rest of the country a somewhat questionable reputation. It's loud, kind of skeezy, and is the nexus point for every single Creepy Old Guy in the known universe.
Truth be told, not all of Pattaya is like that. When you come in from Bangkok, it looks more or less like any other place in Thailand. As you get closer to Pattaya City proper, however, you notice an increase in three things:
The walking street is filled with foreign tourists going bar hopping, to come visit their particular go-go bar, and hundreds of Creepy Old Guys walking around with women who were, at best, old enough to be their daughters. In several cases, granddaughters was far more likely. Even the younger tourists have this kind of sleazy aura about them.
Each bar seems to have it's own house band composed of either 1)expats living the dream of being in a rock band (and sucking) or 2)Thais doing covers of english songs (and sucking). At one of the bars I visited with my friends, I had the privilege of witnessing a very white, very jewish expat living his own personal dream (apparently) of being a rapper. Yes, he rapped live with a backup band, and his partner for some duets was a real, live ladyboy. It was the sort of thing you read about in travel guides (or some tools blog) and wonder if it really happens.
On the whole, I really didn't care much for Pattaya. It was loud, expensive, and there were way too many Creepy Old Guys and Hos. The shopping isn't so bad, but everything else can take a running jump. I much preferred Koh Samet, Ayutthaya, and pretty much anywhere else I've seen to Pattaya.
Posted by Shady Mon, 21 May 2007 04:05:00 GMT
Went to Ayutthaya over the weekend. It's only about an hour and a half by bus from Bangkok. The ride itself isn't too bad; nothing special scenery wise, and at some of the stops they'll let vendors into the bus to sell you food and drinks.
The first stop of the trip was to see Wat Mongkolbopit, a unctioning Wat not ruined near the entrance to the ruins of Wat Prasisanpet.
Ayutthaya was the capital of thailand in the past, and it was also sacked by the Burmese twice during the many, many wars Thailand fought with Burma. As a result, you can find lots of ruins in Ayutthaya, in addition to the usual plethora of Wats. The primary ruins are the ruins of Wat Prasisanpet which was the private chapel for the royal family back when Ayutthaya was the capital. It also houses the ashes of three previous kings of Thailand, in three huge stupas, which you can see in the gallery Ayuttaya, inside the Thailand gallery.
Although Wat Prasisanpet was destroyed by the burmese, Wat Yaichaimongkol was built after Ayutthaya was reclaimed a second time, and as a result is in much better over all shape. You can still see the buddha statues made of stone, and they are still a fully functioning temple to this day. You can find a reclining buddha here, as well as some other large ones.
The third and final Wat that I visited today was Wat Pananchueng. This wat is a mix of Chinese and Thai styles, and for the Chinese, the buddha here is considered to be the protector of sailors. The buddha here is simply huge, and at one point it was exposed outside, where it could be seen for quite a distance. At this wat one of the things that you can do, is to pay 10 baht and get large bag of fish food. You walk out onto a dock, and feed the huge numbers of catfish that congregate here.
Although you can ride elephants around in Ayutthaya, I didn't get the chance to do that. I did however get some pics taken with the pachyderms, and I recommend that anyone who goes to Ayuttaya do so. They're pretty smart and who doesn't love elephants?
Finally, I had the pleasure of a river dinner cruise around Ayuttaya. Ayuttaya is surrounded on all four sides by river, which is why it was originally chosen as a capital. You can order a wide variety of delicious foods (Fried Boar with Curry Sauce!) and watch the scenery go by. There are several companies that offer this type of dinner cruise, but the one I went with is the Pasak River Queen. It's he biggest boat, a dual level ship with the first level enclosed and air conditioned. The second level is open on all sides. The only down side to this is having to sit through some rather appalling karaoke (seriously, you don't know bad karaoke until you hear the engrish version of Zombie by The Cranberries). However, bad singing aside this really is an awesome way to end the day.
You can see all the pictures from Ayutthaya here
Posted by Shady Mon, 14 May 2007 08:59:00 GMT
You can find them in the gallery named Thailand.Older posts: 1 2
