Tarantula Supper

Remember that time I ate a cricket?
Or that time my friend Karl paid me a dollar to eat a bug that had fallen into my mocha at brunch?
Also, there was one time when I discover that there was a worm in the apple I was eating and I threw it across the room (but let’s not talk about that).

Well I went WAAAAY far past that level of craziness last week.

I had just arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the week and I figured that the best way to spend my first night in the city was to have a nice meal and walk around. My friend (and fellow intern in Timor-Leste) Andrew lives in Singapore and makes frequent trips to Phnom Penh and provided me with a wealth of suggestions for great places to eat.

Andrew especially recommended Romdeng. Romdeng was located on a quiet street off a main road. There were lights strung all around and people milling about and I immediately got the feeling my meal was going to be great.

I sat down for a romantic dinner for one and poured over the menu. Looking at the appetizer section, I saw an offering I had read about online. It was so crazy, so scary, so strange, that I knew (and you knew too, let’s admit it) that I had to try it.

Tarantulas.

I was a little intimidated by the size, I’ll admit. If I saw one of these guys in real life, I’d head in the opposite direction. It was comforting knowing that I had power over them when they were dead and that they only crawling they would be doing was through my digestive system.

Imagine me, sitting alone in a restaurant in a city in a different country. The waiter brings a plate of tarantulas for me to eat and I receive looks of equal parts shock, horror, and amusement from a nearby table of save-the-world-girls who are about my age.

And so I dug in. I started with the legs. I braced myself for the bulging abdomen but I found it pretty nutty or legume-y. The flavors weren’t very strong. The chili lime sauce these spiders came with was helpful in adding flavor. After getting rid of the mental stumbling block, the weirdest part about eating all three of these suckers was the crunchiness of all of their insides! (I know you wanted that detail). I probably had serious looks on my face throughout the tarantula eating process, as I was trying to discern the different flavors and trying to process the fact that I was eating tarantulas. I would certainly eat one again. There’s a whole world of bugs that I have yet to try.

Here’s the history lesson I will leave you with – I heard that eating tarantulas was not a common practice in Cambodia until fairly recently. Under the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, food was as scarce as scarce could be and people turned to eating critters like spiders. Now, they certainly continue eating tarantulas, but this was a nice restaurant catering to tourists who were into the idea of Romdeng’s social enterprise (they provide job training to underprivileged children) and excellent fusion food so I think it’s more of thing to shock tourists than anything else.

Good Ol’ Fashioned Light Painting

New camera, new tripod, new sparklers, new year.
Old idea, classic fun.

We repped our schools.

Or in the case of the Brown contingent, we repped Providence.

"Sawasdee Pi Mai" means "Happy New Year" in Thai. Instead of 2012, in Thailand, it's 2555! "Five" in Thai sounds like "ha" so people are always saying "ha ha ha."

Happy Thai/Chinese New Year to you all! (It’s on Monday, I think). I got back to Bangkok after being on a bus from 6:30AM to 9PM. More travel time tomorrow, when I’m back to Buriram for the foreseeable future. Pictures from Cambodia and info about my new job situation to come.

The Best of the Rest

The last month of living Bangkok was wonderfully busy. I took every opportunity to enjoy the city and to share my joy with friends who came to and came through the city in late December and early January. Abby visited on her way back home. Adam moved here – http://adamsadventuresinthailand.wordpress.com/. Sophie came with her family (Sophie and I were on the Development Studies Departmental Undergraduate Group at Brown. I took over for her as head when she studied abroad in France and she has resumed the role of fearless leader). Continuing the Brown love, Nora came! Nora is currently doing Teach for China and came through Thailand for a little r&r before visiting home for a month. Her stories about sleeping on wooden board and having to walk 10 minutes to get running water or use the bathroom made me feel awful about complaining about not having hot water in my apartment. ALSO – Nora and I took Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia together, in the days before I knew a single thing about Southeast Asia. And look where we are now.

I shall let the pictures and captions do the talking.

Standard Thai condiments for our oh-so-frequent noodle stand visits: fish sauce, sugar, chilis, and vinegar with chilis. I use all but the vinegar with chilis.

Yentafoh. More like YENTAFANTASTIC. Yentafoh is a special kind of noodle soup with pink broth. We asked why the broth was pink. We were told it was food coloring.

A sad day at Baan Suan Thon. Nina's beautiful "Made in Candy" candy jar broke.

Nina sweeping up the colored mess.

addiction. i have one.

Adam's okcupid is SO benefiting from my willingness to take glamour shots with my new camera.

Pracha Uthit, I love you, I miss you.

We like going to markets, I like taking pictures of repetitive things.

The creepiest mannequin I have found yet.

Here, plants were purchased.

Nina bought a Wall Nut! He's so sweet. Plants Vs. Zombies is slowly encroaching upon Angry Birds as the most revered game in Thailand.

You can fill them with water and they chirp!

I fall in love with color combinations daily.

Temple photography prohibited - I snuck a picture. The floor evoked the South African flag.

chinatown! where else?

This was supposed to be a well-wishing for the New Year. I just had him write my name.

wat traimit floor

the largest solid gold buddha in the world, at wat traimit

with Sophie, we find Kali in a Chinatown antique store

lots of flags around Wat Pho - maybe for New Years, maybe for UNESCO?

sophie at wat pho

wat pho

I could never not sing praises of the cleanliness and efficiency of the skytrain.

cablife in bangkok

I took Nora and Adam to one of my favorite places in Bangkok - Taksura! Eat your heart out Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia!

I could've used this notebook when I was in college. Heh.

I think this is roughly the right size.

The view from my old living room in Bangkok, crazy underexposed and polarized.

vagueries

I apologize sincerely for being so vague on the blog lately. I haven’t explained where I’m currently living or what my new job is or even where I am as I type this (Cambodia!).

Here are some tidbits of information:

- After much weeping and gnashing of teeth (really – I spent the morning pouting in my guesthouse room in a way that only I know how to do) I have been approved for a new Thai visa. I will pick it up in a few days.

- Meanwhile, I am in Kampot, home to the world’s highest quality pepper. Would you like some?

- I spent my pseudo-vacation visiting memorial sites of the genocide in Cambodia. Typical (of me). Haunting.

- I’m getting addicted to coffee again. This isn’t good.

- I was yoohoo-ing around my current guesthouse, trying to find someone who knew the password to the internet. Instead, I found a Khmer family who invited me to sit down and eat sweets with them. They were the best sweets I’ve had in Southeast Asia! So much powdered sugar. (The perks of being a solo female traveler are so many)

- The matriarch (and cook) of the guesthouse, offerer of the sweets, recently professed her like of me.

- Then she told me that she had a son that I could marry.

- I told her I was tooooo young to get married.

- I found the most amazing smelling cinnamon soap this morning and I didn’t buy it. The second I am done with visa matters when I’m back in Phnom Penh, I will buy some. If this region of the world can’t produce decent cinnamon-y desserts, at least I can smell like one.

- I am not feeling especially visually stimulated by this trip, but I’ll see what pictures I come up with.

In Praise of Thai Egg Custard

By now, you’ve noticed me yammering on and on and on about my favorite road in Bangkok. I talk about Charoen Krung incessantly, in blog life and in real life. Everyone that visits me is dragged there. That’s because it has everything. It has bead shops, gun shops, Mr. Donut, antique shops, camera shops, endless food, it runs parallel to the Chao Phraya, runs through Chinatown, Burapha, and ends up right in the heart of Banglamphu at the foot of Wat Pho.

And it has egg custard.

Glorious egg custard.

sah kai yah.

It was my last week at work and I had little to do. I went to go school supply shopping with a few teachers. I was warned that we might walk a long way to get to the market with school supplies. On the cab ride there, Aon mentioned a shop with egg custard that old people loved to go to. It was close enough to where we needed to be. She asked me if I wanted to try it and you already know the answer to that.

We stopped on Charoen Krung (a part of the street I hadn’t been before) at On Lok Yun, the famous egg custard cafe.

It was both love at first site

and love at first bite.

I loved the egg custard, I loved the homemade bread, I loved the weak Chinese tea and the hot coffee.

I am falling in love with places all of the time, especially in Bangkok. And I fell hard for On Lok Yun. So if we are in Bangkok at the same time, we will go.

Christmas Cruise with Jazz Happens

We started Christmas weekend with the laziest of intentions. Have fun. Don’t think too much. Don’t compare anything to America. I think that our attitudes were successful. Generally, my life is the opposite of what I’m about to say, but – low expectations led to high satisfaction this Christmas.

Our friend, Boy, picked us up and we drove to Banglamphu, the old area of Bangkok. There, we parked and boarded our vessel for the night. The boat itself was not spectacular, but that added to its charm. We were a party of 7 people, the largest party for the night, so we got to sit at the bow of the boat, outside the enclosed area with the band and open to river views of Bangkok lit-up at night. It was perfection.

The band wasn’t really jazz. It was a lot of Stevie Wonder songs, really. Luckily, I am up on my Stevie Wonder, so I was able to sing and dance from the comfort of the bow, where people would not be scared of the crazy-looking white girl, singing and dancing to Stevie.

I spent the night taking glamour shots of friends and gushing about what a wonderful time I was having.

It was a very merry un-Christmassy-but-nonetheless-wonderful way to spend the night and it was one of the very best times I’d had maybe ever. To see a such a vibrant city (that I love so much, have I mentioned that?) from the Chao Phraya River, all lit up at night, was its own special occasion, indeed.

Christmastime in Bangkok

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Bangkok were sort of strange occasions. While all of the malls (the cornerstone of Thai culture – just kidding. But really…) were DECKED OUT for the Christmas season, the decorations seemed to be little more than photo ops for fussily made-up Thai girls to have their pictures taken by their DSLR-toting boyfriends. (As a side note – all of the best Thai boyfriends buy expensive cameras so they can take profile pictures for their girlfriends).

It was a new experience, seeing how hollow all of the decorations and preparations for Christmas really are, when they are presented as a purely commercial interest.

Anywhoo…our modus operandi for Christmas weekend in Bangkok was simple. Don’t treat it like an American Christmas, don’t compare it to an American Christmas. Comparison could only lead to major disappointment. Instead of dwelling on anything, I had a great weekend and I had the warmest, snow-free-est Christmas I’ve ever had.

We started out the weekend with somewhat of a bang. Nina, Adam, myself, and 3 teachers from school went to the Saxophone Pub, which is one of the older music venues in Bangkok. We went to listen to more Thai ska. I still can’t figure out why ska is so popular here. We saw T-Bone, Thailand’s premier ska band, perform. I have now seen the top two ska bands in Thailand and I think I’m set. T-Bone is the more popular one, but the band I saw my first night in Bangkok, Teddy Ska, played a lot of strange covers (like “Mambo No. 5″ and “Crazy in Love”), so I think I liked Teddy Ska more. This is just a reference, in case you ever happen to get into an argument with someone over the best ska band in Bangkok.

Before going to Saxophone Pub, we ate at Greyhound Cafe, which is a chain around Bangkok. Adam and I were dying for pasta and Nina was craving a burger, so we ate to our heart’s content. The decor, the waiter’s uniforms and the menus had poorly translated English all over them.

We moved on to Saxophone Pub. Adam ordered the world’s smallest drink, which was lit on fire. He had to drink it through a straw when it was still on fire. Redonk.

The next day was Christmas Eve. Normally, I wouldn’t have changed out of my pajamas all day. I would have watched Christmas Vacation and alternated between making and scarfing cookies. Then I would have remembered that we have to go to Christmas Eve service at church and I would have dressed up. Then I would have consumed a crap-ton of Welch’s sparkling grape juice and given myself an awful stomachache (it happens every year, I never learn).

This Christmas Eve was different. The Dear Leader had passed away when I was at Smile Camp and I was absolutely beside myself that I didn’t have access to media at that time. Everyone is allowed to have strange, unexplainable obsessions, and I am obsessed with North Korea. Lucky lucky for me, so is Nina! The North Korean government has a few North Korea restaurants all over Asia, meant to be money-making ventures. They feature traditional North Korean food and singers and dancers from the best arts university in North Korea. It sounds like a real treat to me. There was a lot of internal debate going on in my head, whether or not I wanted to go to a restaurant, basically just to give Kim Jong-Il pocket money for his Hennessy. Then he died and I felt better about going! We scanned message boards and read news articles to see if the Bangkok branch of Pyongyang Restaurant, as it is called, was still open. There was no consensus, so we hopped into a cab and hoped for the best.

We found this when we arrived. Heartbreak. Anguish. Dear Leader, why have you forsaken us?

Luckily, we are easily placated by bagels at Bangkok Bagel Bakery, one of my favorite places to go in Bangkok and our back-up plan for Christmas Eve lunch.

The rest of the day was pretty average, as far as days out in Bangkok are concerned.

Central World (Bangkok’s hugest mall that keeps on getting blown up and rebuilt) was stuffed to the gills with Christmas cheer.

We are guilty. Of course, we took advantage of the photo opportunities too.

Am I wearing a bear head? Yes. Did I really just make this college? You better believe it.

Onto MBK, where I had a big purchase to make.

I BOUGHT A NEW CAMERA. A BIG, BEAUTFIL, ALMOST PROFESSIONAL ONE.
She is a wonder.

Adam figured out what he wants to start collecting in Bangkok

We had an oh-so-elegant dinner at the MBK food court. I had noodles and made Adam take a picture of me.

ho ho ho noodles

We took too long at MBK to do anything else we wanted to for the evening – no Chulalongkorn University concert, no Christmas Eve service for me. We found comfort on the 75, just like we always do.

//

Christmas morning!

I went to a church service (luckily no speaking in tongues that day) and met up with Adam and Nina at Central World, where we would have lunch with Nina’s friends from UCLA.

I had some time to kill, so I thought I’d indulge in a white chocolate cranberry mocha from Starbucks.

While sipping my mocha and not-so-cutely trying to pick out the cranberry topping to make sure that none of it had gone to waste, I noticed a creepy looking, fat, older dude. Normally, this is no big deal. They’re a dime a dozen in Thailand and I take delight in scowling at them all, as the vast majority of them are here to taken advantage of Thai women. This man, however, freaked me out. He was wearing a Brown sweatshirt!

I was giving him strange looks and I think he noticed that I was looking at him too. I was trying to decide whether or not to say something. In all honesty, I would eat it up if some random Brown alum came up and started talking to me. So despite his schlumpy demeanor, I walked up to him and said hello.

“Hi! Merry Christmas! Did you go to Brown?”

He looks down at his sweatshirt. The nice brown one with the red, stitched-on letters. The same one I have in my closet at home. He looks surprised, as if he just noticed that what his sweatshirt read.

“Oh. No. It’s a good school though. Did you go there?”

“Uh, yep. I just graduated this year.”

“What college? The college of liberal arts”

At this point, I didn’t really know how to answer, since undergrad at Brown isn’t organized into colleges. I didn’t even feel like correcting him. He was far and away the most depressed-looking person that I had seen in a long time.

“Uhh, yeah. The liberal arts college. Have a merry Christmas.”

And I left, feeling a little unsettled and weirded out.

I had people to meet and dumplings to eat though!

We all had lunch at Din Tai Fung, which the New York Times named as one of the world’s top ten restaurants. How could I not say no?

Adam and I had hibiscus tea at Din Tai Fung

Din Tai Fung is famous for their small, steamed buns that are filled with soup. They did not disappoint. And look how cute they look.

Unfortunately, we ate them so fast that I didn’t even think about taking more pictures.

We couldn’t spend too much time at lunch, because we had a Christmas cruise to attend!

Hiking in Khao Yai National Park

Whoa, whoa, whoa. For making a big move to the boonies (as I affectionately call it to my family and friends), life has been more than hectic. I kept on meaning to edit pictures and post my now-intimidating backlog of photos from snippets of Christmastime, New Years, friend visits, and the like, but work has gotten in the way (in a good way of course).

So here are pictures from our hiking trip to Khao Yai during Smile Camp (which was toward the end of December). I got to be the token farang (foriegner) in a group of about 10 boys, along with P. Duj, P. Aon, and a hiking guide/photographer. The hike was about 3-4km long, but we would stop every so often to admire nature or point out elephant poop on the trail, so it took us the better part of the morning.

I enjoyed myself immensely. One of the best parts about hiking in Khao Yai is that everyone has to wear leech socks there, as the leeches are bloodthirsty and ferocious. I don’t own leech socks and I didn’t bring long socks with me. Luckily, there were some to borrow before the hike started.

I’ll continue telling the story through pictures…

Welcome to Khao Yai, one of Thailand's UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to ferocious leeches!

A big thank you to P. Duj, who let me borrow his argyle socks before I wore the leech socks

The older students and the chaperones loaded up into two buses

See what I mean about dslrs being so prevalent in Thailand?

Magic kept on trying to start fires with the magnifying glass he brought along with him

This was the day I learned how to say "elephant poo"

Bam stands in an elephant track

leech socks and chacos, a winning combination

Lunch by and wading in a cold mountain stream. The perfect end to our hike.

Fare-thee-well, Bangkok

Bangkok is such a strange place, full of contradictions.

And I am such a strange person, probably stranger than I realize.

I think that’s why we go together so well.

Bangkok has such a horrible reputation, but in the past four months, I’ve come to love this city like none other. I think that it’s been made fairly apparent through the blog, and certainly if you’ve talked with me. A lot of people have thought me brave, to move here, but I think that in truth, it’s the only thing I know how to do. I fling myself into new and challenging situations. How will I grow if I don’t continually push myself in new environments? At least for now, I’m young and I can get away with doing things like moving to the other side of the world.

I am not leaving Bangkok because I want to, but because I have to. I suppose that part of me wants to, to engage in my new job. My brain has been a bit idle lately. I haven’t actually taught since October, due to flooding. I have more or less been given a 4 month (paid) period to explore this city and I partially feel guilty but I also feel as if I lucked out. Most of my spare time has resulted in hundreds of unedited, undeveloped, unposted photos. My love of photography blossomed in 2011 like I never would have guessed it did.

The rural area will be both unfamiliar and familiar. I will be a real workin’ woman again, using critical thinking skills I hopefully honed as a Development Studies major. I’ve lived in Isaan before but I never would have guessed I would move back. I will have the opportunity to learn Thai and I will have the solitude to read like I was never able to during school. I have enough drawing pens to make any second-grader jealous. I’m excited about the move and the ways in which I will learn about the world and grow as a person in this new job. I’m torn though – I don’t know if I’m a city person or a country person. I won’t even live in a town – I’ll be living 8km from the nearest town! I think that I am maybe a city person who likes to go to the country.

Above all, I suppose, comfort is terrifying. How am I growing as a person if I’m not challenging myself and not learning how I can help others? There is such danger in contentment. I personally feel like if I’m comfortable, then I’m not doing something right, I’m not engaging with the world around me. I love Bangkok, but I’m exceedingly comfortable here and it’s time to learn more.

And so I am where I often find myself. It’s late at night. I’m moving shortly. I haven’t started packing. I will spend tomorrow going around the city with friends, because that is more important sleep anyway.

I want to close with these two quotes I found during my first visit to my favorite (and Bangkok’s only) photo gallery, Kathmandhu. Sorry, I know it’s cheesy to include quotes but they rang so true when I first arrived in Bangkok. And they still hold truth now.

“I experienced Bangkok as a city in which the mixture of extreme contrasts, of peace and chaos, cleanliness and defilement, shadow and light, creates a completely self-contained, new, unbelievably interesting and over-powering entity” – Rui Camilo

“Bangkok is loud. And quiet. Bangkok is dirty. And clean… And still, each alley is a village unto itself. Bangkok is perhaps not exactly beautiful, but a pleasure and an experience for the senses. And that really is fascinating.” – ???

And I will close with this – Adam arrived and quickly made the observation that while in Bangkok, every one-hundred breaths you take in, one will be foul. I spent most of my time here stuffed up from allergies and once I could smell that one-hundredth breath, I was more in love all over again. From the brightness of the cabs to the one-hundredth breaths, Bangkok really is a complete assault on the senses, in the best of ways. I love Bangkok all the more for everything it is and will always love the time I spent here.

Smile Camp at Khao Yai

Every year, the school hosts multiple-day camp for the younger students called Smile Camp. I’m not exactly sure why it’s called Smile Camp, but I figure that reflects poor and awkward English translation/word selection more than anything else. Anyway, I volunteered to go and be a “babysister” for Smile Camp from the 19-22. (I tried patiently to explain that the word they meant was “babysitter,” but I don’t think it ever sank in.)

I wanted to go because this would be the last time that I would see many of my students. The camp was also held near Khao Yai, which is a beautiful national park in Thailand and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of our activities during camp would be hiking in Khao Yai (“Khao Yai” translates to “big mountain”). Plus, I had spent all of December in Bangkok so I thought it would be a good (& free, & paid) chance to see more of Thailand.

The activities of the camp were varied. There was a walk rally (I wasn’t so sure what this meant, but it was basically six stations with different fun activities to participate in and teams went around to each one and competed against each other – I was an official part of the green team). There was meditation and praying. There was art therapy. There was singing. There were skits. There were copious snacks and delicious vegetarian food (since the retreat space we used was mostly used for Buddhist meditation retreats, the food was vegetarian). There was even a wonderful puppy named Bomb who the kids took great delight in teasing and feeding. I forgot to take a picture of him! I surprised the kids on the first day when they were all standing around looking at him but not touching him. I scooped Bomb up into my arms and began rubbing him. Ohh, puppies.

Onto pictures! I only brought my Canon S95, but a fair amount of the teachers at the school are really into photography. At least 5 brought DSLRs and snapped pictures the whole time. Usually, 3 or so teachers would be looking over the kids and the rest of the teachers waited around and took glamour shots of each other. It’s funny to witness.

Student-teacher relationships in Thailand are totally different than they are in the US. We all stayed in rooms with our students and everyone hung out in their pajamas together. Strange stuff.

This is the game where I learned and was told that I can use chopsticks better than most Thai people. Points for me!

Bobbing for apples, Thai-style. O is soaked.

We all love how spacey the little kids are.

where I got my "chocolate-flavored milk product"

I teach the kids the silliest faces I know.

pouty during meditation time

We did art therapy - the mushroom is mine.

I was roped into being the elephant in a skit. I didn't understand the whole jist of it, but "bad boys" threw plastic balls at me and a danced to a song at the end while everyone else sang in Thai.