Hari Raya Sweets For Sale

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Two days ago I wrote a post about being surprised to see “Christmas” lights up already, in September.  When I asked about it and found out that it was for Hari Raya, a holiday I’d never heard of, I was surprised.  I don’t remember seeing any lights up around this time last year.  I also don’t remember seeing any candies or sweets set out for sale either, but this year there are stacks of them!

I’m not planning on “switching over” any time soon, or celebrating Hari Raya myself, but I’ve never been one to let a thing like that stop me from enjoying holiday celebration goodies.  So, we picked up a container of these called “dumai chipmore”.  I’m not sure if there’s any special significance behind the names, or types, but they looked like a safe bet as far as taste would go.  They’re not bad.

Durian Is Just Disgusting!

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Before moving to Singapore I’d never heard of a particularly vulgar fruit called “durian”.  It is sometimes referred to as the “king of fruits”, though how it can even be considered a fruit, let alone the king, is far beyond me.

The first time I encountered durian was when I was still around the corner from it.  The most odious smell assaulted my nose and I stopped, near gagging.  It smelled like a whole truck load of rotting eggs had been left to sit in the sun.  I later found out that this more than unpleasant odor is typical of this offensive fruit.  In fact, the smell is so bad that it’s actually illegal to bring them onto public transportation in Singapore.

The above sign is found on public transportation in Singapore.  (Image courtesy of Ich bin ein Ausländer).

The taste of these things isn’t much better than the smell.  The smell alone had kept me from even thinking of trying them.  I mean, how do you put something in your mouth if just the smell of it makes your stomach clench?  So, I’d kept an eye on them from afar, typically afar enough way so that I didn’t have to smell them either.

One fortunate but also unfortunate night (I say that because it was my wedding night), I gleefully grabbed desserts from a buffet and sat down to stuff my face.  I bit half of a little pastry into my mouth and thought I’d eaten something that had gone bad.  Just as quickly as I had bit into the pastry, I spit out a wad of horrid stuff into a napkin and, as discretely as I could, folded it up and placed it on an empty plate that was ready to be cleared.  I had accidentally bitten into a durian puff pastry.

Ever since then I’ve faithfully steered clear of durian.  Until last night that is.  We were in the kitchen cooking dinner when the maid dropped in and handed us two wrapped candies.  She invited us to try them.  I poked it and pondered it for a bit and then asked her what it was.  It didn’t have any real name on the label, or any list of ingredients.

“Just try it,” she says. “It’s good!”

So, we carefully unwrapped them and looked them over once more.  My wife sniffed at it and she made a weird face.

“Is this durian?” she asked.  But the maid simply assured her that it was good and urged her to try it.

And, try it we did.  She said, “I think this is durian!”  I might have said something too if I weren’t trying to keep from puking in my mouth.  I quickly spit my “candy” back into the wrapper and dropped it in the trash.

The candy was gone, but the taste remained.  It was so much stronger and more unpleasant than the taste of the durian puff I had accidentally bitten into.  I had to rinse my mouth and drink Coke to get the taste out of my mouth, and even after that I could still taste it faintly.  It lingered there, on our tongues and cheeks, like a hot fart lingers in damp underwear.

I hope I never have to taste that wretched fruit again!

The Food in Phuket (Part 2)

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Nicky’s Handlebar

Pretty close to where we were staying there was a restaurant called Nicky’s Handlebar.  As you can probably guess, it was a biker type bar.  It was decorated with a ton of Harley Davidson paraphernalia.

This was my favorite item in the place:

Anyhow, the atmosphere was great.  It had the right look.  It was even playing classic rock songs and the TVs were playing sports and some Harley convention show.

The food is where the authenticity failed to deliver though.  Half of the menu was European food and half was Thai.  I figured I’d try the burger.  I’ve sort of been in search of a great burger since I left the US, along with my search for a great pizza.

I’m not sure what my wife ordered, but it looks good and tasted good too.

This is the burger I got.  It wasn’t quite up to par.  First off, they served it with the bun put together, with the veggies inside already, but with the meat pattie sitting off to the side.  So, I had to take the whole damn thing apart and put it back together.  Presentation is only important if it doesn’t create hassle for the customer.  Also, the meat looks a little pale to really be beef so I wonder if it was mixed with pork.  The taste was decent, but not great.

The search continues.

The following morning we dropped by there again, because it was convenient, and we had the Thai omelets.  They were actually pretty good.  The filling was mostly ground pork and it had a sweet taste to it.

The above image is a glass of sweet tea that I ordered.  The orchid along the rim was a nice touch and it tasted good.

Overall, Nicky’s Handlebar is a 7/10.  The atmosphere is nice, most of the food we ate is nice, and the drinks are nice.  I would just recommend sticking with the Thai menu though.

Street Vendor Crepes

We found this guy along the road that fronts the beach.  In the top right of the shot you can see the ocean.

He was selling crepes for 30 baht.  Some might have been a little less or more.  I don’t recall.

This was a great snack to munch on while walking down the road … looking for dinner!

Mama Mia’s

I can’t really say much for this place.  We totally weren’t impressed.  We both decided to try local dishes and got yellow curry.  I had the chicken and my wife had the shrimp.  The overall taste was bland.  If bland were a real ingredient, I would say they used too much.  Isn’t curry supposed to be spicy?  Plus, the food had no texture to speak of and you couldn’t taste anything except the bland curry.

The only thing good about this place is that the beer was cheap:

San Mig Light is a popular beer both in Thailand and in the Philippines.  I think in Thailand it’s #3 and in the Philippines, where it originated, it’s #1.

Pizzaria Fresca

This is another restaurant that was on the road fronting the beach.

This place was great!

This is the dish my wife ordered.  It’s a traditional pasta from Italy called Putanesca (Whore’s Pasta).  The story behind it is that Putanesca was a cheap dish prepared in Italy by prostitutes.  It was served to ‘clients’ after the deed.  Now that’s customer service!  Over time, the dish became a national favorite and is now served in many restaurants.

Ham, mushroom and green pepper.  It cost about 13 SGD I think and was the best pizza I’ve had since leaving the US.  It still doesn’t hold a candle to New York City pizza, or even to fast food pizzas like Papa John’s, but it beats out anything I’ve had in Singapore so far.  I think the cheese was a bit off though, or maybe something in the sauce?  My stomach was going nuts later that night.

Goodies!

The last two items aren’t anything special or specific to Thailand.  They’re just things that we really enjoyed eating.

We found an Au Bon Pain at the mall in Phuket.  Imagine that!  I’ve only ever seen one and that was in New York City.  I got a poppyseed bagel with Philadelphia Cream Cheese and my wife went nuts over it.  Apparently she’d never had a bagel before.  It’s interesting how we keep introducing each other to new foods.

Muay Thai, not just a boxing event!  I’d never had one before and decided to try it for the first time while sitting at the bar at the Simon Cabaret while waiting for the show to start.

Dunkin’ Donuts!  Until a week or so before we left on our vacation to Thailand, Singapore didn’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts.  So, we really enjoyed this chance to buy and eat a few.  We bought some a few hours before our flight to take back to Singapore with us.  The only Dunkin’ Donuts in Singapore is located in the downtown area and I have a feeling it’d be a lot more expensive.

Old Man At Esplanade KKJ Concert Gets Dancing Fever!

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This video came to my attention through Twitter via a friend (@LaiSan_C (sorry, locked profile!)).

Apparently, this older guy got so into the music by this local Singapore band that he jumped up in front of the stage and started dancing.  The short of it is that none of this was organized or choreographed and just goes to show that being cool and having a good time doesn’t have an age restriction!

Here’s the information excerpt from the YouTube page:

That’s the spirit! A senior audience got up and jumped in front of KKJ’s stage at the Esplanade and started dancing to their original composition ‘Lemonade’. The choreography and the dancing was all improvised as he grooved to the song, to much cheers from the crowd of more than 500.

King Kong Jane was named “Best English Local Act” by The Sunday Times in 2008. In the same year, KKJ was crowned the Champion of Power Jam, one of Singapore’s biggest band competitions. In 2007, the band was chosen to perform for Baybeats, the largest indie music festival in Southeast Asia.

KKJ is: Jianping (drums), Renquan (bass), Colin (vocals), Ian (guitar) & Ruishen (guitar). For more information, email the band at kingkongjane@gmail.com or follow them at

Twitter: Kingkongjane
Facebook: King Kong Jane
http://kingkongjane.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/kingkongjane

And here’s the video itself!

The Food in Phuket (Part 1)

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One of the best parts about this trip was running around town finding different foods to eat.  While we were there we ate at quite a few different restaurants, not all of them Thai.  I think we probably could have found better food if we’d gone to a less touristy part of Thailand, but we made do with what we had available to us.

We weren’t sure where to go on the first day we were there so we wound up walking around quite a while.  We finally wound up eating in the restaurant where we took the cat photos in the previous post.  I still don’t know the name of the place.  We couldn’t find it again.  It was nice though:

The sad thing is that the food from this place was great, and I’d liked to have gone back.  Here are some pictures of the dishes:

This one is yellow curry chicken. It was a lot better than I expected. In the photo, the chicken somehow came out looking crisp, but it was actually tender. There was no coating, other than the curry sauce. I think it looks like that because it was torn by hand before being cooked. The noodles were al dente. I liked that. I can’t stand mushy noodles. Oh, and she let me choose how spicy I wanted it, so I went with ‘medium’ to be on the safe side!

This dish is called sukiyaki.  My wife says it’s actually a Japanese dish, but she wanted to try out the Thai version of it.  She didn’t have any complaints.

Later that evening we were looking for a snack when we saw something familiar.  It was a hawker style eating area.  There were only two stalls and a seating area, but they were serving chicken & rice and roast pork & rice.  We decided to give it a try to see how it compared with what we were used to eating in Singapore (those are very common dishes in Singapore but in Singapore the names exclude the ‘&’).

It seems to be pretty much the same, except there are two choices (though extra small portions) of vegetable and a quail egg.  Instead of a broth soup, there was a dip for the meat.  The table also had other sauces, chilis, and dips to choose from.  It was significantly cheaper though at 40 baht (1.17 USD / .82 EUR / 1.69 SGD).  The same meal is about twice as much in Singapore, probably due to import fees placed by companies and the government.

Even later that same night, we decided to go out for a late dinner (at midnight) and some beers!  So, we stopped at one of the street restaurants.  These places set up every evening and pack up everything when they close, including tables, chairs, and cooking equipment.  The food was better than I expected it to be.

This is chicken, pork, and beef satay with peanut sauce.  It was hard to tell the difference between the three meats, and I teased my wife that maybe it was all cat.

This was grilled squid and was really really good!  It came with a spicy dip that I wish I knew the recipe for.  I would go back to this place just for this dish.

We topped our meal off with two Heinekens and then called it a night.

I would say our first day, as far as meals go, was a success.

China Kills Its Own Citizens

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Back in April I wrote a post about China and how it sold poisoned gyoza to the Japanese.  I then went off on a rant about how China is ruining its world image, because here lately everything that comes out of China is poisonous or defective.  If you’re wondering why I’m so pissed off about China doing this stuff, it’s because most of those products wind up on the shelves of United States grocery stores and department stores, just waiting to poison some unsuspecting person or child. Not to mention that it’s just stupid, and I don’t like stupid. China’s economy relies on exports to other countries, and they’re causing people all over the world to not trust and to not want to buy their products. They’re killing off their livelihood, one screw-up at a time.

I’m also kinda pissed off at the US government for not doing better pre-screening on items imported from China.  They have a proven track record of producing bad quality items.  If a man has a record of sexual offenses against children, appropriate measures would be taken to make sure he didn’t do it again right?  So why is it that a country is producing and exporting bad products to the US, some of them potentially lethal, and we just keep on letting them do it?  Can we fine the country as a whole?  Can we do anything to let them know that this behavior isn’t welcome? How about a 1 month embargo on all China-made products? If they won’t listen to common sense, maybe they’ll listen to dollar sense.

On the other hand, what can we really expect from a country that not only poisons the world, but poisons its own citizens as well?  The following video is about Yunnan province, where factories are producing massive amounts of pollution that are causing near lethal levels of lead blood poisoning in the region’s children.

There’s pollution in every country, but within acceptable limits. This is just blatant and damn near disgusting, as it shows a lack of respect for human life. Not to mention that it’s killing children.

Good job China.  Not only do you try to screw over the rest of the world, but you’re stupid enough to shoot yourself in the foot as well.  I guess when you’re citizens have no freedoms and no way to protest or affect change it doesn’t matter, right?

(Image Source: Vegetarian Organic Blog)

Livita Energy Drink in Singapore

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Livita Energy Drink
Livita Energy Drink

I saw this Livita on the shelf in the drink section of the grocery store at Whitesands (Fairprice I think) and at first thought it was medicine that had been misshelved. My wife glanced at it and told me that it’s an energy drink that’s also sold in the Philippines under another name. A quick look at the label and ingredients told me she was right.  I asked her how it tasted and she said it was good.  The packaging just seemed a bit off to me, though.

So, instead, I bought a can of Red Bull. I drank that a lot when I was in the Army and it seemed to work well, except when I was doing that leadership training (aka PLDC, aka WLC) anyway. I was only getting 4.5 hours of sleep per day for weeks back then.  I could have slept standing up!

Another reason I bought the Red Bull is that when I pointed it out, my wife said she’s never had it before so I’ll let her have a taste.  She asked me if it’s good and I had to admit that it’s something of an acquired taste.  I hated the stuff when I first started drinking it, but it sort of grows on you.

Thai Ladyboys At The Simon Cabaret

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One of the main attractions of the Phuket area is the Simon Cabaret’s Ladyboy show.

Yup, ladyboys.

We’d seen a few of them walking around the town.  We even saw a white guy walking down the street holding hands with one.  I don’t know if the guy knew he was with a ladyboy, but he was on the other side of the street, and I wouldn’t have burst his bubble anyway.  If he didn’t know, imagine how exciting it was for him to find out that night!

Anyhow, the Simon Cabaret raises the bar on ladyboys and presents you with a show of fancy sets, fancy costumes, and dancing.  The singing is all pre-recorded and lip synced.  I imagine at some point it was all authentic, but they do multiple shows per night, every night, so it’s probably more practical to just lip sync it.

I went into this with an open mind but I wasn’t expecting a whole hell of a lot.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to be impressed, laughing, or leaning forward in my seat to catch all the details.  Not that I was looking for those details, but most of them did just about have their boobs falling out.  I suppose that’s just part of the show’s appeal.

I thought of taking photos while in the cabaret, or taking video, but there are signs everywhere saying that if caught you can be prosecuted and fined up to 50,000 USD.  It wasn’t worth that much to me.  Apparently some other people thought it was worth the risk because there’s plenty of clips on YouTube.

Here’s one act, which we saw when we were there, of the ladyboys ‘singing’ Nobody, by Wondergirls:

And here’s a clip from YouTube of the official Simon Cabaret promo DVD:

Keep in mind that all of the ladies on the stage were born men. Most of them take hormone supplements and inhibitors and have had their … junk whacked off. That’s why there’s no tell-tale bulge. There’s nothing there to bulge.

After the show, the ladyboys all line up outside for pictures. You can stand back and grab a few shots, but if you want to get your photo taken with them, be prepared to pay. I read a blog that said the ladyboys asked for 40 baht each for photos. I should’ve checked the date. They tried to stiff us for 100 baht each. I checked the internet later and saw that was the ‘standard’ pay-off, so I didn’t feel so bad afterwards. Oh, I heard that if you’re not careful, they may just grab whatever you’re holding, so be careful how much you take out of your wallet around them.

Here’s someone else’s video of the ladyboys lined up outside for photo ops:

And here are some pictures I took:

Hanging Out on Patong Beach

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It wasn’t a total loss when it came to the beach.  We couldn’t sunbathe, seeing as how it was overcast for the whole trip, but that didn’t stop me from splashing around in the ocean like a fool.  I hadn’t been to the beach since I was a little kid, so bad weather or not I was damn sure gonna take a dip!

Luckily, my wife has a waterproof camera so I was able to get these kick-ass shots while out in the ocean.  I’m just glad none of the murky underwater photos showed a big eye or something.  That probably would’ve freaked me out.  I’m always worried about going too far out where there might be sharks and who knows what. It seems like some new weird fish from the depths of the ocean is turning up on shore and being discovered every week.

As far as beaches go, and I’m basing this mostly on what I’ve seen on TV, Patong Beach is average.  It might be great when the sand is dry.  Also, the storms churned up a lot of the silt from the seabed along the shore so the water wasn’t very blue, except on the far right side where we were when we took these photos.

The weather kept us from going to Phi Phi Island to check it out, which we’d planned on doing, so it looks like we have an excuse to go back.

After I took a short dip we walked along the beach for a while and as we got closer to the middle of the bay the water turned an ugly brown and there was trash on the beach.  I can only assume that during better weather that’s kept clean for tourists.  There weren’t too many people on the beach while we were there.

A few interesting things to note are that the beach chairs provided aren’t free.  Someone will come along and try to charge you 100 baht to sit in the chair, so just bring a beach towel.  Also, be wary of the guys renting out jet skis.  I didn’t deal with them but heard they try to rip off tourists, especially with supposed maintenance requirements at the completion of a rental.

The last cool thing about the beach is that it’s literally right along the road.  You step off the sidewalk and onto the beach for most of its length, so when you’re done you can walk to a restaurant in just a few minutes.

Thais Love Animals

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The first time my wife and I walked around Patong looking for a place to eat we happened on a nice restaurant on a side street.  There’ll be more on that later, but when we were seated we looked around and realized that we were surrounded by cats.  It was kind of funny that the first place we would eat would be owned by a cat lover, given my wife’s love of cats.

Ya, the cat in the last photo hopped up onto our table and had a look around.  She seemed particularly interested in the plastic bag we had carried bottled drinks around in.  The cat was very friendly so I didn’t shoo it away until it was almost time for our food to arrive.

After seeing all of those cats we kept our eyes peeled and we saw quite few more pets and strays in the area.  Strangely, I never saw another cat.  I don’t want to make any guesses as to why that might be, but there were plenty of dogs around.  It seems like dogs are much more popular in Patong and you can see them alone or in groups roaming the streets.

I can’t say they were the cleanest looking animals, but not a one of them was in danger of starving.  We saw places where food was put out for them and, like the guy in the last photo shows, they were given attention not just from tourists with cameras, but by locals as well.  Not a one of them ever so much as growled at us, even as we stepped around or over them, or dashed across the road behind them.

More than anything, these dogs (and the cats from the restaurant) added flavor and liveliness to the scenery of Patong and were sometimes even a cause for a good laugh, like with the first dog pictured.  His balls are huge!

Not all of the dogs we saw were strays, though.  There was a booth with a girl who had her dog sitting on the counter.  I don’t remember what she was trying to sell, because I wasn’t interested.  I just stopped to look at her dog.  It was friendly, and I guess very obedient.  It wasn’t leashed.  It could’ve hopped down and ran off, but it was perfectly content to just sit there and watch the tourists.

I kinda want one for myself now.  Maybe in a few years!