Steve’s Weird Food for America: the fry-fecta!

First, a bit of non-food business. I’m home. Or at least I’m in the last place I called home: Winnipeg. After traveling for 351 days I’ve finally gone so far east that it turned into west and have ended up back at the very house from which I launched this crazy adventure. It will take a while for me to formulate some thoughts on this momentous occasion, so in the mean time let’s talk about the last triumphant Weird Food Adventure.

Weird Food Steve, the world-weary traveler, and the endlessly helpful Karen in the kitchen in Winnipeg, all modeling Japanese yukata imported via San Jose.

You didn’t think I was done did you? Just because I was on my home continent? Just because the number of days left in the adventure could be counted on one hand? Ha! Not when there was a whole new country’s worth of weird food out there, and certainly not when it was a country that has given us fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a stick, garlic ice cream, and reindeer dogs. (No, really.) America’s Weird Food potential could not be ignored.

I have to thank my hosts for leading me to what turned out to be Weird Food Mecca – the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. This is a permanent carnival on the Santa Cruz beachfront with roller coasters, carnival games, and enough artery-clogging food to stain a warehouse full of brown paper bags into glassy translucence. It was perfect.

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk

Our first stop was Marini’s candy shop, famous for salt water taffy, candied apples, caramel corn and…

Yes, you read that right: chocolate covered bacon!

Unfortunately, the boardwalk outlet of Marini’s only carried the milk chocolate variety (the flagship store downtown also stocks dark chocolate) but nonetheless I went ahead and ordered three pieces, which came to a grand total of $3.16. Each piece was thickly coated with chocolate and had, as advertised, a nice crispy strip of bacon inside. It was creamy and sweet and a bit salty and smokey, but mostly just chocolaty and crunchy. And the verdict? Six thumbs up: all three of us agreed that it was definitely worth another try, and the three slices disappeared fast. If there was any criticism it was that we thought it needed a bit higher bacon to chocolate ratio, and all agreed that the dark chocolate variety would probably be more sophisticated and generally superior. Further investigation is required, which I leave to Amy and Randy who I suspect will seek out additional samples on their next trip to Santa Cruz. They’re like Weird Food Deputies!

Amy and Randy, doing their Lady and the Tramp impression over a piece of chocolate covered bacon.

Our next stop was a short stroll down the boardwalk (which was, disappointingly, all concrete, with not a board in sight…). It didn’t take long to reach this stall:

Deep Fried Twinkies! Oh yeah!

That vendor was selling two items on the must-try list, not only deep fried Twinkies (on a stick, no less!), but also deep fried Oreo cookies – 3 per serving. I got one order of Oreos and two Twinkies because Randy was man enough to join me in the grand experiment, whereas Amy pleaded that she was afraid of developing spontaneous diabetes and could barely be convinced to try a single bite. No matter, soon enough we were seated and ready to dive in.

Me and Randy with one order or Oreos, one Twinkie with powdered sugar and chocolate sauce, and one Twinkie with powdered sugar and strawberry sauce. (I recommend viewing the entire series of ten Twinkie-tasting photos as a slide show over at Flickr. Amy was diligent in her role as photographer of the event, so you can get an almost flip-book style bite-by-bite documentary, including one photo in which I appear to be pontificating with Randy about the whole experience as if we were on the Food Network, which clearly we should be. Or me at least.)

Twinkies first: Nice. Sweet, yes, but the heat from the fryer partially melted the “cream” (or, more accurately: Kreeeeem TM) and the whole thing was quite moist. Surprisingly, I preferred the strawberry sauce to the chocolate, because even my prodigious sweet tooth found the chocolate sauce added to the powdered sugar and the Twinkie a bit too sweet. On the other hand, the strawberry added just a hint of tartness that blended well. Here I have to report that Amy vociferously objected to my use of the word “tart” in the same sentence, time zone or continent as a deep fried Twinkie, but she was clearly suffering from insufficient sugar intake and so could not be taken seriously.

Close-up of the Twinkinum Arterius Impedimenta, subspecies: Common Cocoa

With Amy’s fat/sugar level dangerously low, we moved quickly to the deep fried Oreos. I declined to have any sauce with the (the same chocolate and strawberry were available) but this turned out to be an error in judgment. An Oreo cookie is an inherently dry item to begin with and the batter around it didn’t add much moisture to the mix. We all agreed that the flavour was good, but decided they’d be best with a cup of coffee.

Me and the deep-fried Oreo. Last Weird Food of the trip.

After the tasty but arid Oreos we really really needed something to drink so we stopped for lemonade at a stand near the exit. True to form Amy had the traditional variety, but Randy and I had Cherry Lemonade (which Amy pronounced to be “cough syrup” after a small taste). No matter, because it was wet and cold and had the added advantage of turning my tongue red, giving a good photo op before we piled into the car for the drive back to San Jose. Off we drove into the sunset, awash in the satisfaction of having risen to the Weird Food Challenge, and only slightly queasy.

Me, my cherry lemonade, and my red tongue, after finishing the last of 38 different weird foods on the trip

Steve’s Weird Food for Japan: the trifecta

There has been a lot of weird food in Japan. In particular, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the amount of matcha-flavoured stuff I’ve encountered. Astute GSRED readers will remember that matcha is the particular type of powdered green tea used in the tea ceremony, and for some reason it’s a popular flavour that gets added to, well, just about anything. Pretty much any food you encounter has a matcha variety, identified by a particular shade of green packaging, and a particular shade of green food. Let’s have a look:

Matcha-flavoured cheesecake. This was the only “matcha” food I had that actually had any matcha flavour at all, due to the fact that I think it was sprinkled with real powdered matcha. This gives a decidedly bitter topnote to an otherwise pleasant cheesecake.

Matcha Kit Kat. I love this. It’s a Kit Kat, but it’s GREEN. Tasted just like it was covered in white chocolate - no matcha flavour, just generalized creamy sweetness. (I also saw banana flavoured Kit Kats, and heard they have strawberry as well.)

Matcha Oreo Cookie Candy Bar. Green crunchy oreo stuff.

Matcha Balls. Little crispy sweet balls covered in the ubiquitous green creamy coating.

Matcha and black bean donut. Again, no matcha flavour, just a cake donut that happened to be green, and studded with things that look like chocolate chips, but are actually beans. The fact that Asian cultures persist in the belief that beans are a dessert food is weird.

Matcha chocolate chip cookies. Again, chocolate chip cookies… but they’re GREEN.

Matcha mousse. Lovely, creamy, and with the faintest hint of matcha.

Matcha caramels. The weirdest of the lot. They are presented in tiny flat cellophane wrappers that you peel open like those Listerine breath-freshener sheets you stick on the back of your tongue. This reveals a square of very squishy goo that you pop into your mouth. It’s definitely caramel, but there may have been a vague note of matcha too. But really, shapeless green goo? That has to qualify as weird food.

But that’s not the weirdest food I had; that honour goes to a meal I ate in Tokyo on my second-last night there. I got some advice from the very friendly guy at the hotel desk and headed out to a local place that turned out to be quite fancy, though surprisingly reasonably priced. (This was mostly in comparison with the tempura meal I had the night before which, while pleasant and tasty, clocked in at a budget-busting ¥8778. More than $90. Ouch!). And when I opened the menu I saw right away that I was going to be able to make this a Weird Food trifecta – starter, main course and dessert. How could I not?

My started was based on an ingredient called yuba, which is soy milk skin. The LP says, “Its creation is a labour-intensive process in which soy milk is allowed to curdle over a low heat and then the skin is plucked from the surface.” Yes, first they curdle the milk, and then the nasty skin that forms on the surface? The bit you’d normally skim off the top and throw out? That’s the bit they keep. However, the way I had it prepared it was really nice. The menu described it as “baked fresh yuba and cheese”. It came in a very hot little dish, bubbling away, with small pieces of toasted baguette on which to spread it, and it was really nice. Creamy, a bit cheesy, and with no trace of skin-ish-ness.

Baked yuba and cheese

The main course was the real centerpiece – that which I’d specifically sought out as the Weird Food of the night. The Japanese call it basashi, but the English speaking world would describe it as raw horse meat. It’s a real delicacy, served sashimi-style with slabs of fat and a light dipping sauce.

It’s a delicacy, I’m telling you

The basashi was, well, sort of like you’d expect any raw red meat to be. It was chewy and a bit stringy, and the bits of fat between were tough (not like a melting lardy kind of thing). There wasn’t any strong flavour at all. I tried a few of the pieces of fat along with the meat, but decided it was better on its own. Better being a very very relative term here, sort of like you might describe the third season of “Heroes” as better than a boot to the head. Truthfully, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t really… anything, which makes me think I’ve been doing this for too long.

On to dessert, and we’re back to that bean thing again. My choice was “yam pancake with sweet bean jam and ice cream”. Among the other choices was black bean ice cream. I’m telling you, this place was a Weird Food gimme.

Dessert

It was very nice, though I still can’t get over the sweet bean thing. The flavour is sweet, but the texture is… bean. I suppose it’s not miles from carrot cake, or candied yams. Entirely cultural, I’m sure.

And to top it all off I had to try a glass of sake, which turned out to be much much bigger than I expected. The “small” glass I had was 180 somethings, mililitres, I guess. It seemed like a lot, and it was poured right at the table. The glass was set and then carefully centred in a large wooden coaster with a high lip. Then the glass was filled. And I mean filled, until the sake reached the rim. I was impossible to lift it without spilling, hence the heavy-duty coaster. It was nice enough, but by the time I got through the whole glass I was ready for bed. After all, I’d had soy milk skin, raw horse, and bean jam. What else could I do that day to top that?

Bed time

Sing Sing

Singapore was another whistle stop on the Southeast Asia Express. It had sights, weird food and a hash, but it also had one big difference. In Singapore I did not stay in another nameless hotel room. Instead I was generously hosted by friends-of-friends (well, I suppose they were actually family-of-friends) who found out I was coming and immediately offered their spare room. It was great. Jasmine and Scott, their two little kids Thalia and Luke and their live-in helper Khun Nisa were friendly, helpful, and incredibly generous. They gave me a bed and the password for their wifi, included me in their family activities, did my laundry, loaned me maps, suggested things to see and do, took me for dinner, and even gave me a ride to the airport. Like I said, it was great. I’m surprised I left.

Me, Thalia and Lukey, on the patio

Singapore has a reputation for being a straight-laced police state. And it’s true that you can’t buy chewing gum there, and stiff fines are assessed for all kinds of seemingly innocent things like spitting, jaywalking, or taking a durian on the metro.

Apparently durian-related offenses are so serious the fines need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Well I am here to tell you that Singaporeans are not the cowed and submissive automatons they’re made out to be. For instance, I personally saw genuine Singapore residents jaywalking several times, and even witnessed spitting. And several times I saw people sit in the seats on the metro reserved for the elderly and infirm. So don’t let anyone tell you that a Singaporean could not hold his own in a bar fight or something, because clearly these are not a people to be trifled with.

Despite its population of hardened criminals, desperados and queue-jumpers, Singapore is a lovely, efficient and well-run place. For instance, the escalators in the recently opened Stadium metro station run at a very very low speed until someone actually gets on them, when they ramp up to full speed for as long as it takes to complete the trip and then slow down again to a power-conserving crawl. And that metro system has proper ticket machines and allows you to move from line to line indiscriminately (Are you listening, Kuala Lumpur?). Singapore is also adept at separating its population from their money. Automatic gantries levies a congestion fee on each car that enters the downtown area, via a card reader installed on the car’s dashboard. Singapore has very low taxes (around 17%), so a lot of revenue has to come for user-pay fees like this. However they make their money, though, they seem to spend it creating a place that’s clean, safe and pleasant. I think that if they just upped the taxes by a percentage or two they could afford to build a dome over the whole island and air condition the entire country. Then I’d be lining up at the immigration counter for sure.

Because I got to be an honorary auntie for a few days, I went with Jasmine, Khun Nisa and the kids to the Singapore Zoo on the afternoon I arrived. It’s a nice enough zoo – not too big, and with enclosures that seem relatively natural and don’t instantly make you feel awful for the animals as soon as you see them. Again, it was hot. In fact unless I say otherwise just assume that everything I did in Southeast Asia was done wearing a shirt that I’d sweated through hours before, and with my hair plastered to the back of my neck. Nonetheless, I gamely wandered around the zoo for a while until I finally gave up and joined the rest of the gang at what was undoubtedly the zoo’s best feature – the splash park! I don’t have pictures of the splash park because it was, you know, splashy, and it started raining not long after I got there. But it was GREAT, like a really creative play structure with the added fun of water. Water pooled around the base, water spraying from jets, even water dumping tsunami-like from a huge bucket that refilled and then overturned every five or ten minutes. It was the perfect antidote to a hot sticky afternoon.

Red parrots (well, red birds anyways) at the entrance to the zoo

Everyone else went home for supper at end of the afternoon, but I stuck around to see a zoo with a difference. The Night Safari purports to be the only zoo in the world specifically designed to showcase nocturnal animals during the hours they’re most active – at night. It’s home to 115 different species and covers 40 hectares of forest and doesn’t even open until 7:00 pm when the sun sets (Singapore is almost exactly on the equator, so the sun rises and sets at the same time every day, all year). It’s a very different experience from the regular zoo. Clearly aimed at an older crowd, the entry area boasted several restaurants and bars and when I wandered over the crowds were much bigger than I’d expected. It was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a zoo. (Heh. It had to be done.)

There was a short and slightly lame show performed hourly in which various trained animals performed or didn’t perform small tricks taught by their handlers. The show was preceded by a desperate, pleading appeal repeated over and over again by the show’s effervescent host - “Please please please turn off the flash on your camera”. It was a simple request, and it made a lot of sense. These were animals that live most of their lives in the dark, so camera flashes aren’t just disturbing to them, they can actually damage the animals’ eyes and in extreme cases can cause blindness. It seemed simple, but of course you know what happened. As soon as an animal appeared, flashes when off all over the auditorium. I can not understand this. Is it because people are to stupid to know how to turn off the flash or to tell whether it’s on or off? Or are they unaware that the flash from a camera seated in the back row will do everything to illuminate the back the head of the person sitting in front of them, and nothing to illuminate the animal fifty feet away? Or do they think the rules apply to everyone except them? Or do they simply not care? Whatever the cause, it was just maddening to watch it happen over and over and over again. Really, just smarten up, people.

The only remotely presentable picture I have from the show. Because, you know, I didn’t use my flash. (Ian: I know this one! Reticulated python!)

After the show I set out into the park. There was a system of golf-cart-like tram trains that would take you on a big loop around all the whole area, but it cost extra and the lineups were long, and I had no desire to be cooped up with more flash-wielding cretins. I took the walking paths, and it was fantastic. They wound through the dark past the dimly lit enclosures where you could make out the animals going about their business. It was kind of magic, because there was a sort of quiet calmness that came with the darkness that made you just want to be still and watch.

The best part was the bat cage – fully-enclosed area where two different species of bat flew free among the trees. I walked along the pathway inside the cage, and it was easy to spot the large flying squirrels hanging upside down. Smaller bats flapped around, landing on small clusters of fruit hanging in the trees. It was a bit alarming when they flew over my head, but watching them do their thing was fascinating. I stayed at the Night Safari much longer than I’d expected and got home thoroughly satisfied and, of course, ready for a shower.

Singapore’s Weird Food was a twist on an old favourite, the noble durian. This time though, it was in a more palatable (sort of) form: durian ice cream! Thanks once again to the Lonely Planet, I knew exactly where to find this local treat at one of the few mobile street hawkers left in Singapore who sell ice cream sandwiches on Orchard Road, outside one of the city’s many many many high end shopping malls. And when I say ice cream sandwich, I mean exactly that – it was a piece of multi-coloured pink and green bread folded around a block of ice cream.

Festive sandwich bread

The ice cream came in lots of normal, probably very tasty flavours like mint chocolate chip, raspberry ripple and mango. And it came in a few wacky flavours: red bean, sweet corn (!) and, of course, durian. I debated whether I should try the sweet corn, but in the end I thought that nothing could top durian, so I handed over my $1.00 ($1 Singapore dollar is about $0.75 CDN).

Proof that I actually took a bite

The smell was similar to fresh durian – hints of onion and strong cheese entirely at odds with the whole ice cream thing. And the flavour was similar too, right down to the growing numbness to the horror of it all. The first bite kind of tasted like cold and creamy onion-flavoured death wrapped in sweet bread. The second had more creamy fruitiness and less death, and by the end I could almost have convinced myself it was ok. Well, not really. What I was convinced of was that I should have tried the sweet corn flavour instead. Even in its cloaked and sweetened ice cream form, the flavour of durian lingers in the back of the throat for hours in that way that makes a stray burp particularly unpleasant.

I had a few much nicer food experiences in Singapore – the first thanks to Jasmine and Scott, who took me out to try the island’s specialty – chili crab. We went to an enormous seafood restaurant with tables that went right out near the water and ordered two chili crabs, steamed buns and beer. Being experience chili crab eaters, Jasmine and Scott came armed with packets of tissues and a large container of wet wipes which was my first clue that this would not be a tidy dining experience. The chili crab arrived chopped into large chunks and swimming in thick, spicy sauce. It was really tasty, but also a lot of work. Crab seems to resist consumption as if it’s still fighting for life from beyond the grave. I did my best, but I think I ended up with chili crab up to my elbows, on my shirt, under my fingernails and possibly in my hair. It was worth it.

My other classic Singapore food experience was one that simply had to be ticked off: drinking a Singapore Sling in the very bar where the cocktail was invented. Raffles Hotel is a colonial Singapore institution that first opened its doors in 1887 and is still one of the more exclusive hotels in the city. Rooms start around $750 a night, so I was happy that all I had to do was put on my cleanest dirty shirt and try to look respectable enough to be allowed entry to the Long Bar, home of the Singapore Sling.

Raffles Hotel

And I suppose, considering the price of a room, that I shouldn’t have been surprised that a single Singapore Sling clocked in at a wallet-lightening $29.45 SIG (about $22.00 CDN). Still, it had to be done. At least it came with a generous measure of ice, and was served in a room with air conditioning.

Here’s a crummy shot of me and my $22 drink. I made sure to eat LOTS of the free peanuts.

Still on the theme of food and drink, I also tried a traditional Singaporean breakfast – coffee and kaya toast. The coffee comes strong and black in Singapore, with a dollop of thick sweetened condensed milk on the bottom of the cup. It’s a perfect accompaniment to kaya toast. Kaya is described as “coconut jam” but it seemed more like a smooth, rich spread to me. Caramel brown in colour, it looked like peanut butter and tasted a bit like butterscotch. It was served on a light sweet roll that had been split and toasted. Each half was slathered with kaya, and a pat of butter was added before the halves were stuck back together and served. Needless to say, the combination of coffee, caramel-iness, butter, sweet bread and crunchy toastiness was an instant hit, and compared to the Singapore Sling it was a big bargain at $3.10 SIG in total.

What’s not to like?

If it seems like a spent a lot of time eating and drinking in Singapore, well, that’s kind of what you do there. That, and shop. And since I’m not a big shopper, I had to fill the time somehow. I did do some proper sightseeing – I wandered Little India and Chinatown, I hopped on and off a double-decker tour bus, and I cruised on the river. And of course I went to a hash. The Singapore Sunday Hash was the perfect foil for my extreme hashing experience in KL. The start of the trail was easy to get to, the run was fun, interesting and possible to complete without bloodshed, and the group was small and friendly and sang lots of familiar songs. It was the most homey hash I’ve been to in a while, and it was great.

Too soon though, my time in Singapore was over. I was sad to say good bye to Jasmine, Scott, Thalia, Luke and Khun Nisa, but incredibly excited to be moving on to the almost-last stop of the trip – Japan! And when Jasmine dropped me at the airport and I made the last dash through the steamy Southeast Asian night into the air conditioned airport, I breathed a sigh of relief and bid a fond farewell to a part of the world that showed me some amazing sights, introduced me to some great people, and caused me to lose my bodyweight in sweat every two hours.

Me on the river cruise. There’s really nothing really “Singapore” about this shot, but it’s the best photo of me I’ve had in a while. Enjoy.

KL

That’s what the cool kids call it: “KL”, not Kuala Lumpur. This is probably because everyone in Malaysia pretty much always has their mouth full, so they don’t want to have to pronounce extraneous syllables. It seems that eating is the national sport in Malaysia. That, and shopping.

Inside one of the seven gajillion malls within a ten minute walk of my guesthouse.

I’m in a bit of a “whistle stop” phase of the trip right now where it feels like I just fly in to a city, see the big sight, attend a hash, eat something weird and move on. Tick, tick, tick the boxes and off I go. I suppose it’s my own fault – I could have chosen to visit fewer places and stay longer in each place, but as my travel time winds down I feel like I need to cram in what I can. Whatever the reason, I only had about two and a half days in KL, so I tried to make the most of them.

KL is the first big, properly “Western” city I’ve been in since Hong Kong, so it was nice to see old friends like 7-11 and Starbucks, and have access to a mass transit system. On paper the transit system in Kuala Lumpur looks like a pretty good set-up. They’ve got a fast train from the airport, underground metro trains, even a monorail (sing it with me, “Simpsons” fans!). The transit map is properly spidery with many multi-coloured lines flinging themselves across the city, such that you think it’ll be no trouble at all getting around the place. Ha! The problem is that each of those different lines is owned and operated by one of five different companies that do not play well with each other. This means that when you get off the monorail and on a metro train you have to pay a new fare. And the interchange stations definitely stretch the definition. In particular, the change from the metro to the monorail at KL Sentral involves leaving the building, walking two blocks, and entering a whole new station, and paying another fare. It’s hardly the friendly, efficient system I left in Hong Kong. I managed to get around, but it was frustrating, sweaty work.

My “must do” activity for KL was to see the Petronas Twin Towers. Once the tallest buildings in the world (surpassed by Tai Pei 100 and then the Burj Dubai, the current record holder), the towers are an icon of KL. At 88 stories and 451.0 metres high, the top floors offer an unparalleled view of the city.

The Petronas Twin Towers

Yes, that would be a sight to see. Unfortunately, the highest part of the towers that tourists can see is the “Skybridge” the catwalk that links the two towers on the 41st and 42nd floors, about 170 metres up. Tickets to visit the Skybridge are free so they’re very popular, and only 1200 are issued every day. As a consequence you have to line up early because the tickets are usually gone by about 10:00 am. I got up at 6:30 am and walked to the basement ticket office, a thirty minute trip. On the way I stopped at one of many food hawkers set up on the sidewalk selling food to people on their way to work. There were simple folding tables covered in food – trays of sweets, tupperware containers filled with fried eggs and curries and noodles and other unidentifiable stuff, and big vats of rice. I picked out a few interesting skewers and some donut-like things, and for the grand sum of 1.75 RM (Malaysian Ringgit, about $0.55) I had breakfast on the hoof.

Breakfast!

I got to the towers by 8:00 am and the lineup for tickets had already snaked back on itself countless times. I stood in line until 9:25 am and snagged the last ticket for the 1:00 pm visit to the skybridge. By this time, frankly, I was ready for a nap so I hiked the 30 minutes back to the hotel and slept until it was time to walk back to the towers AGAIN. It seemed hard to believe that the whole business would be worth the effort.

And it wasn’t. Yes, the skybridge is interesting, but it’s less than half way up the towers and we were allowed a grand total of ten minutes to look around and take pictures. So let’s do the math: 30 minutes to walk there, 90 minutes waiting in line, 30 minutes walking back to the hotel, and 30 minutes walking back to the towers. That’s 3 hours of “prep” for ten minutes of activity. I think I could have spent my time better. Then again, it was a pretty good view.

Here’s me, pretending it was worth it.

One off-beat thing I did in KL was to visit the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory – something that was recommended by one of the people I met on my cruise of Halong Bay in Vietnam. The factory offers free tours of their facility, but real drawing card was an associated activity they called the “School of Hard Knocks” where you get to bang out your own small pewter bowl, which sounded like a lot of fun (though that bit wasn’t free). The tour itself was a bit odd – I called ahead to get the details and they actually asked me to pick a specific time to visit so they could assign someone to show me around. Sure enough, when I arrived at the appointed hour Michael was there to give me a short guided tour of the pewter displays they had and of the factory itself. It was kind of cool having a personal guide, but also a bit weird.

Weirder still was the “School of Hard Knocks”. It took place in a large, purpose-built room that could accommodate up to a hundred pewter-banging tourists. I had the whole room to myself, and a whole other personal guide/instructor to help me through the bowl-shaping process, though I got the distinct impression that she was not entirely consumed with a passion to teach me how to pound my little pewter disc into a bowl. In fact, the whole business felt quite rushed, which is too bad. I was expecting there would be other people participating, which would have been a lot more fun. Still, I did manage to create a reasonable little dish which I’m now carting around Asia with me.

Here’s me, punching my name into the bottom of my bowl blank

While the School of Hard Knocks (you really have to give them props for coming up with that name) was a real rush job, they certainly encouraged you to take your time when viewing the gift shop. I really didn’t want to buy anything, but I was dogged by such a persistent sales person that I finally relented and bought a tiny hand-hammered picture frame fridge magnet. I hate it when they do that.

My next stop that day was unplanned. When I hailed a cab on leaving the Pewter Factory I planned to go back to the hotel and get some lunch, but the cab driver misunderstood me. He thought I wanted to go to the monorail, and suggested I just get out at the closest station – Chow Kit. I looked a the map and the LP and figured that Chow Kit was as likely a place as any to have some lunch, so I agreed. And here’s one for the Improbable Coincidences File: When I told the cab driver I’d come from Winnipeg he told me his wife had left hat morning to fly to Winnipeg and visit their daughter, who lives there. So off all the cabbies in KL, I got the one with a daughter in Winnipeg. Wild.

Chow Kit turned out to be cool too. There was a big market with the requisite dead beasts and weird veggies and there were lots of hawker stands selling prepared food. I had some Indian style fritters and a really good folded omelet kind of thing with chicken in it. And I got some sweets and some really weird fruit. In fact, I think that fruit - buah salak - deserves to be KL’s Weird Food, mostly because it looks like a cross between a mutant strawberry and a snake. The shape of each fruit is like a big upside-down strawberry, but the whole thing is covered in a dark brown scaly skin that looks decidedly reptilian. (And no, Ian, I don’t know what species… Malaysian Brown Fruit Viper or something.)

Here’s a partially peeled salak, along with some untouched others, displayed in my hand-hammered pewter bowl.

The white flesh inside was in very firm sections that clung to a large pit in the middle so you had to gnaw at it with your front teeth. The texture was quite nice - juicy and a bit crispy, sort of like an apple. The flavour, on the other hand, was not so nice. It was green and harsh like an unripe banana, and left that funny puckery feeling on my tongue. Sadly, I think buah salak will languish forever (along with black jelly) in the pantheon of foods that will never be “the next big thing”.

Besides the towers and the weird food, the other box I simply had to tick off in KL was the one marked “Hash”. The Hash House Harriers were formed at the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur 1938, and that original group – the Mother Hash - still runs every Monday night at 6:00 pm, and has done so since 1938. I actually went to visit the Royal Selangor Club while I was in KL, but let’s just say that, like the Skybridge, it wasn’t worth the trouble. And I couldn’t run with the Mother Hash because it’s a men-only group (don’t get me started….) Instead I got in touch with one of the 37 (no really, thirty-seven) other hash groups in the greater KL area. I chose the Batu Hash House Harriers because they were running the night I was there, and they answered my email.

Me and the GM of the Batu Hash, posing before the run when I was still blissfully unaware of what was to come.

I suppose I should have guessed that hashing in birthplace of it all would be serious business. I just didn’t think I’d be stumbling out of the jungle an hour and a half after starting out, cursing, completely drenched in sweat, utterly exhausted, fed up, and bleeding (not badly, but the scratches on my legs did excite comment for several days after). It was the last twenty minutes of crashing through the jungle that really did me in – until that time I’d been having fun. But just as I was getting tired and it was getting dark the trail veered unexpectedly into much denser growth, up and down several more hills, through ankle-grabbing vines and leg-scarring thorns, and across one very small stream before finally spitting me out where we’d started.

I had to take a few minutes to calm down when I finished, and after doing that, and quizzing a few other people, I was amazed to be told that the trail I’d just run was considered by most to be on the wimpy side of average for a Batu hash. Well that’s just mental. I guess I’m just not KL hash material.

Despite the er… challenging nature of the trail, all the festivities after were definitely worth attending. There was a table of food set up when I emerged, and I had something to eat after I’d calmed myself and scraped off the top layer of grunge. Then I was informed that this was only the “warm-up” food – there was much more coming later. Remember how I said that eating is the national sport in Malaysia? Well this was a good example of that. There were snacks before the run, a respectable assortment of dishes immediately after, and a big buffet of home cooking after that. It’s like the evening was one big meal interrupted by some pesky interludes of running and drinking beer. Perhaps in Malaysia life is what happens to you in between eating.

This hash was one of the few I’ve attended that was predominantly local people; of the large group (about 90) only me and two others were not Malaysians. This meant that the circle was conducted almost entirely in Cantonese, which was very strange. I got some interpretation but mostly I just let it wash over me. Sitting there in the dark with a succession of bottles of Guinness, tuning in and out of what was going on, and chatting with the incredibly friendly people around me it really felt like this was the kind of thing I’d hoped to experience when I conceived of this whole crazy trip. Lots of people came up to talk to me like I was a bit of a celebrity for having traveled all that way. And it seemed they were all genuinely pleased and proud that of all the groups in KL, I’d chosen to run with them. I got home a little after 2:00 am that night, exhausted and convinced that hashing in KL is not for the faint of heart, but happy that I met those people and ran and ate and drank and talked with them.

I was also desperately, profoundly, extravagantly happy to go to sleep.

Procrastinated thoughts on Cambodia

Cambodia already seems like a hundred years ago. Here I am in Singapore, and I’ve already been through Kuala Lumpur, so it seems weird that I still haven’t finished telling you about Cambodia, which was two countries ago. Perhaps I need to be a bit more disciplined about the blogging, or I’ll end up writing about Singapore from Karen’s deck in Winnipeg. So, here follows a few thoughts about Cambodia.

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I know I said that the only reason to go to Siem Reap is to see Angkor, but there was a lot of time when I wasn’t out clambering around temples, and I did manage to fill the time somehow. For instance on my first night in Siem Reap, I went out to find dinner. I wandered around in the centre of town which is packed with restaurants and bars catering to tourists – I could have had pizza, Mexican, pasta, French, burgers, Cambodian BBQ, ice cream, organic sandwiches, and of course lots of Khmer food. This is the case in a lot of places – you think you’re in some tiny backwater town, and across the street will be a joint advertising Spaghetti Bolognaise and American breakfast all day. Sometimes it’s depressing and sometimes it’s comforting.

But before I had dinner I ran into this place:

Dr. Fish massage!

Here’s the deal – there’s a big tank of water filled with tiny, hungry fish, surrounded by a bench-like platform around the edges. You sit on the bench and dangle your feet in the water, and hundreds of tiny fish eat your feet. The idea is that they nibble away all the dead skin and bacteria and stuff that coats your feet. It is weird, but cool. For $3.00 I sat and let fish eat my feet. At first it felt ticklish, but eventually I got used to it and it felt more like the pins and needles feeling you get when your foot has fallen asleep and is just waking up. It was not altogether unpleasant. I sat for fifteen or twenty minutes, and when I pulled my feet out they did feel softer – almost like they’d been moisturized. I’d recommend it.

Yet another in the continuing series… Pictures of Pam’s Feet

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At the entrance to each of the temples at Angkor Wat there were always lots of local people selling books or trinkets or cold drinks and food. Sometimes they were even inside the temples themselves – there they mostly try and sell books about the history of the site or small woven bracelets or trinkets, or cold drinks. There were also groups of musicians sitting by the side of the road playing music, selling CDs, and soliciting donations. They were the most heartbreaking because the reason they were sitting is that they were all victims of land mines – missing one or more limbs. They usually had signs declaring that they’d become musicians so they wouldn’t simply have to beg. This way they could use music as their livelihood. It was kind of heartbreaking, partly because the landmine problem was and still is so huge.

The other hawkers of note were the little kids. Some just pestered until they made me crazy, but others were more clever. One little girl asked “Where are you from?” When I said “Canada” she rhymed off: “Canada. Capital Ottawa. Canada very large country but not very many people. Speak English and French. Lots of Snow. Now you buy something.” Other kids could recite the numbers one through ten in about seven different languages, which they’d do at the drop of a hat.

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Of course there was weird food in Cambodia, though I’ll admit right away that I did not go visit the Russian Market in Phnom Penh to try the fried spiders. Sorry Steve, but I have limits and chowing down on a three inch wide crispy tarantula is so far beyond those limits that I could travel faster than light and still not reach those limits in my lifetime. What I did try, in Siem Reap, was Cambodian BBQ. It was one of those cook-at-your-table affairs, sort of like the hotpot in Chongqing, except this one had a soupy part and a grilling part. There was a sort of clay pot full of burning coals that sat in a hole in the table, and then the cone-shaped bowl/grill sat on top of that, all brought by an attentive waiter who actually hung around for my whole meal, tending the grill. (That was a bit weird.) The donut-shaped part around the outside of the grill was full of boiling water, and the waiter stuffed that full of a load of veggies so they could cook into a soup.

Here’s the set-up

Ok, so where does the weird part come in? Well, the weird stuff is what went on the grill. I ordered the “degustation” menu, which came with an assortment of different meats: chicken, (yawn), beef (yeah yeah) and… frog legs, crocodile and snake! So that’s the weird part, ok? The frog legs went on first, because they take the longest to cook. The chicken and beef went on after that and were cooked first and were tasty. There were also four different dishes of sauce to dip the meat into when it was finished. As each piece was cooked, the waiter would pull it off the grill and put it onto my plate. They were small bits – just a few pieces of each, but enough to get a sense of the flavour. I’m not sure I needed a whole lot of snake or anything anyways. (How would you order a lot of snake, do you think? By the foot?)

And how did it taste? The frog legs were my favourite of the three weird meats. They were like tiny little drumsticks and they tasted, well yeah, they tasted like chicken, but with a finer texture. The crocodile was a bit tough, with a texture similar to beef but a flavour more like pork. The snake was my least favourite. It was python, it turns out, and it was really really chewy. There wasn’t a lot of flavour, and it was a real workout getting it down.

All in all it was a very successful Weird Food experience. It was fun and interactive, and it was tasty, and it was weird. I can’t ask for more than that.

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I noticed something a bit odd on the roadsides in Cambodia. Like all over Southeast Asia (and China, and India and Africa…) there are always little stalls selling things along the roads inside cities and towns and on the roads between them. Often it’s fruits and vegetables, or street food, or drinks and snacks, or, well, just about anything: foil helium balloons, car parts, underwear, whatever. But there was one thing I couldn’t readily identify. At first I thought it might be some kind of blindness-inducing homebrewed alcohol. This was at least partly because (though it’s not shown in this picture) a lot of the time the containers involved were recycled Johnnie Walker bottles.

Well what would you think?

Finally I got to ask a Cambodian about it – Ricky, my moto driver who ferried me all over Phnom Penh for three days for only slightly outrageous rates. It turns out that the stuff in teh bottles was gasoline, which made me feel much better. I guess there aren’t many proper gas stations in Cambodia, and the ones there are tend to be on the outskirts of the city. So vendors buy gasoline in bulk and re-sell it in small amounts. I suspect most of the customers have motorcycles, so they don’t need 50 litres of gas at a time. And the smaller amounts – one or two litres – are probably much more affordable for the average Cambodian. My Angkor Wat guide told me that the average yearly wage in Cambodia is $250, so it’s no wonder they like to buy gas a litre at a time.

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An open letter to every tuk tuk driver in Cambodia:

Dear Mr. Tuk Tuk,

No, I do not want a tuk tuk. I am walking down the street to my hotel, or to a restaurant, or to the convenience store, which is approximately 23 feet away. I think I can manage without motorized transport. Calling out “Tuk tuk lady?” will not make me change my mind. I will not suddenly realize, because you asked, that what I really need to make myself truly happy and fulfilled at this moment is to hire your tuk tuk. And if I were to have the sneaking suspicion that a ride in a tuk tuk would bring me great joy, I would have hired one of the 739 tuk tuks that I’ve just passed, all of whom also called out to me, and all of whom were rejected, with decreasing politeness, as I walked by. No offense, but please, for the love of God, shut up.

Yours sincerely,

Pam

P.S. For future reference, here are the other things I do not need: a massage, a book about Angkor Wat, a bundle of bracelets, a cold drink, an artfully carved pineapple, or any other knick knack or gew gaw that you happen to be selling. Sorry.

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Bonus weird food: Palm fruit. On my second day at Angkor, my tuk tuk driver convinced me to try some local fruit that women were selling outside of one of the temples. It was palm fruit, and came in a little plastic bag that was kept marvelously cool in a bin of ice. Here’s what the palm fruit looks like when it comes off the tree:

Palm fruit

Inside the palm fruit are little white segments of white flesh. They’re sort of like jelly-ish little bags full of a mild, sweetish liquid, and they burst inside your mouth when you bite them. The juice was refreshing, especially while it was cold, but I wasn’t wild about the flesh. Still, chock up another new fruit.

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And that’s all I have to say about Cambodia, except to show you this photo of me while I”m having my feet eaten by fish in Siem Reap. I’m telling you, it was cool.

More Chiang Mai, including: Weird Food!

Previous blog to the contrary, I did not spend all my time in Chiang Mai lounging around the pool and having massages. As I mentioned, I did go see a big temple, and I hashed, and I even did a bit of shopping. And of course there was weird food. Read on for the details.

The old part of Chiang Mai is a tidy square bounded by a moat and the remains of the city walls that once surrounded it. Both my posh hotel and the not-so-posh-but-still-damned-nice-for-$23-a-night place I moved to were within this area, and it made for easy navigation – both of them were on the main road running from Tha Phae Gate, right in the middle of the eastern side of the moat.

The moat near Tha Phae Gate. There were fish in that moat. Big, big fish.

The Chiang Mai Hashers are a well-organized bunch. I’d been in contact with them ahead of time, but even if I hadn’t been it wouldn’t have been hard to find them. Their website is decent, and they have a fixed pickup point (well actually two) that never changes from week to week. All you have to do is find the closest pickup to your location on the handy Google map provided, and show up at the appointed hour. And it doesn’t hurt that the pickup point I chose was a bar called the Hash House, and was conveniently located on the moat near Tha Phae Gate. There was also a big notice board on the wall too, so there was no chance I could think I was in the wrong place.

The CMSH3 notice board. Damn, I just realized I forgot to sign it!

I rode out to the run in a sawng thaew - a local mini pick-up with bench seats and a canopy – that had a weekly gig just for the hash. Along with me went a couple of local hashers and two gigantic coolers full of water, beer and big blocks of ice. The run was set in a rural area, but unfortunately there’d been a big downpour in between the time the trail was marked and when were were to start. This washed away a lot of the markings, and made the first half of the run a muddy mess, but that’s what hashing is all about, so off we went. Luckily, the hares had the foresight to mark the trail not just with flour but also with small bits of paper weighed down by rocks, so all was not lost.

Once we were through the muddy bit and across a small stream (which served nicely to wash the 7.3 pounds of mud off my shoes), the run turned into a forested area that must recently have been the subject of a controlled burn, because we ran over a lot of charred remains, and even a few bits that were still smoldering, which was a bit eerie. And once again, I chose to run the “Rambo” trail instead of the “Wimp” trail, and once again I regretted that choice almost immediately. I haven’t been feeling in top form for a while now, and had been slow and wheezy for the first half of the run, so in an uncharacteristic fit of lucidity I actually changed my mind and turned back for the Wimp Trail. But of course there was a load of other people heading towards me, Rambo-bound, and I couldn’t really go backwards past all them… So back I went, Rambo all the way. I will not learn.

The scenery on trail. Not exactly Hyde Park.

The circle after the run was pretty standard – lots of beer, lots of in-jokes, and lots of people going on too long about lots of things. Much much later we went off to a seafood restaurant and had food and more beer, and it was all lovely. The Sunday “Happy Hash” was much the same, though the run was shorter and the circle was more relaxed. All in all, the Chiang Mai hashers were as friendly and fun a bunch as I’ve met so far, and I was happy to chalk up hashes #22 and 23 with them.

After that Sunday Hash, I got dropped me off right at Tha Phae Gate for the short walk back to the home. (Yes I do think of the hotel, any hotel, as home. Not Home, mind you, but home, at least. You’ve gotta have somewhere.) On Sundays that area is transformed into what’s called the Sunday Walking Street, which is essentially another night market. There are lots of different foods stalls, and people selling local handcrafts, t shirts, knock-off Rolex watches, you name it. (Strangely, there always seem to be a lot of stalls selling men’s underwear in these kind of markets. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think I’d want to buy underwear on the street at eleven o’clock at night on a Sunday.) I wandered happily through the maze of stalls, generally heading in the direction of the hotel, when I had one of those long-term travel weird coincidences - I ran into a load of Danes! Two from good old Tree House 7, and two from way back on the China tour! It turns out that the Danes from TH7 – Christina and Cecilia – were friends with two of the Danes from China – Ditte and Simone – and they’d found each other by chance there in Chiang Mai. And then they found me. It was bizarre and fun, so I wandered with them a bit, and also met up with Todd from the tree house, who was bargaining for a cheap knock-off Rolex for his mom. Very odd, but also fun.

After my weird encounter with the Danes and Todd, I continued towards my hotel. Ever alert for the possibility of weird food, I knew I’d found it when I saw this sign:

Don’t you just say to yourself sometimes, “Damn, what I really want is some vegetable jelly made by Chinese plant. I hope they have black. And throw some sugar on that baby!”

I lingered long enough in front of the stall that eventually a young couple who were sampling the product urged me to try it, so I did. My normally immaculate financial record-keeping has let me down here, but I’m pretty sure it was about ฿20, so less than a dollar. And it was… well, it was definitely weird. There were three parts:

1. Black jelly. A very very firm jelly, black, that was scraped off a big sort of disk of the stuff yielding spoon-sized shavings that went into the bottom of a styrofoam dish.
   
2. Ice. In large chunks – bigger than crushed, smaller than cubed, placed on top of the jelly
3. Sugar. Very coarse dark brown sugar - sprinkled on top of the ice

Some assembly required

The friendly couple told me you were supposed to mix it all up, so I did that with the spoon provided. Well I could have mixed that stuff until I got off the plane in Winnipeg on Day 350 and I don’t think it would have helped. The sugar part was ok – sort of like blackstrap molasses in crystallized form. The ice was great; ice never goes amiss in Southeast Asia. Nope, it was the jelly that soured the deal. I’m not sure how to describe the flavour… it was sort of… black. Not blackberry. Not black currant. Just… black. I didn’t realize black had a flavour, but I guess that was it. And rest assured that black is not set to take the flavour world by storm. Do not look for Ben & Jerry’s “Burstin’ Black Beauty Ripple” in your local grocer’s freezer case any time soon. In fact, the whole concoction was so distasteful that it brought on a brief relapse of the vague stomach trouble I’d been having for days. I’ve just started to compile a few “Top Five” lists for the trip – most and least favourite cities, hashes fondly remembered – that kind of thing, and it only took a few spoonfuls for black jelly to secure a firm place on the “Bottom Five Worst Weird Foods” list along with pig ears and worms. And that’s enough said about that.

But fear not! There is also good news on the Weird Food front, because on Monday afternoon I found the Holy Grail that I’d been seeking since Luang Prabang. Yes, kids, I found the eggs-on-a-stick!

See what I mean? They’re eggs. ON A STICK! Am I the only one who finds this whole concept bizarre and fantastic at the same time? I mean if you had to name one food that manifestly does NOT lend itself to being skewered with a stick, wouldn’t it be an egg?

Ok, yes, the eggs are hard cooked, but I don’t think that detracts from the pure brilliance of the form, which revealed itself when I got back to the hotel room and cracked open my first skewered egg, still warm from the vendor. As you can (I hope) see in my crummy photo, the interior of a skewered egg is not like that of a regular hard cooked egg. There was no separation between white and yolk at all, leading me to guess that the egg had somehow been scrambled inside the shell before it was cooked. (PPon, these are just made for you!) Tasting further strengthened this determination, because I could swear that the eggs had also been seasoned with salt and pepper. Or perhaps these were just some kind of magical egg that never had a yolk to being with, laid by a creature with salt and pepper running in its veins (anyone who knows anything about these eggs, please chime in). Whatever the source or method, the result was really tasty. Definitely Top Five material.

Crummy photo, but you can see what I mean. And yes, they were that sort of greeny-bluish colour.

My last evening in Chiang Mai was spent doing something I haven’t done much of on this trip – shopping! I walked all the way to the main Night Market (not the tetchy Sunday variety) which turned out to be absolutely massive, running for blocks and blocks and blocks. I had my eye on some table-top lantern/lamp thingies that I’d noticed the night before, so it was fun to wander the stalls knowing that eventually I was actually going to buy something, for myself, to keep! After I scouted around a bit I zeroed in on a place that seemed as good as any other. I’m total rubbish at bargaining, but I did manage to get two matching lamps for ฿220 (less than $7.00) not including the light socket. (I figured I’d rather do my own electrical work than rely on potentially dodgey weirdly-plugged, oddly-socketed stuff). I think I got a good deal.

One of the many many many stalls selling the type of lantern I bought

Then I wandered around some more, and had a nice mango shake, and wandered some more, and even thought about buying some more electrical stuff, because I these were really neat:

They’re covers for twinkie lights that look like little multi-coloured balls of string. I thought they’d be fun to string up out on a deck, if I still had a deck…

And that’s about it for Chiang Mai. On Tuesday morning I was off to the airport for my flight to Siem Reap, which was a bit of a balls-up because Thai Airways took the liberty of canceling the flight I booked and rebooking me on a flight that arrived in Bangkok too late for me to get my connecting flight to Siem Reap. However they cleared it up when I checked in, and got me on a later connecting flight, so I was left with a few hours to kill in International Airport Land (Bangkok), which was just fine. I did some more shopping to replace my headphones, the last half of which had died on the four hour drive to Chiang Mai (great timing). And I bought a hard copy of the LP Japan, and the LP Japanese phrasebook. It’s the last LP of the trip, folks; the end is coming fast.

But not before I see Angkor Wat, which is next on the list, so don’t touch that dial!