Dave's Photo & Travelblogue

Downtown Siem Reap

On July 18th I flew from Singapore to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Priority #1: relaxing to recover from a rather travel-weary state. Siem Reap was just what the doctor ordered!

My hotel (Angkor Spirit Palace) is quite nice, for the $20/night I paid via hotels.com. There were a few blips in the description: I had to argue for the complimentary breakfast, my room lacks the promised safe, and (contrary to the description) there is no whale-watching onsite. Shocker!

For the afternoon I headed into town by the hotel’s complimentary tuk-tuk. Here’s what I found around the Old Market. Cellphones are everywhere in the world, even in the poorest of nations:

You’ve gotta love some of the restaurant names in Cambodia. The fine print: “Don’t serve dog,cat,rat,wrm. Died in, 1999.”

I haven’t seen any 7-Eleven’s here in Cambodia. But they have the next best thing, the 6-Eleven! Note the blurry scooter with a whole family riding on it.

Well, just wait a few seconds and another fully-loaded scooter will come by. Then I can get a better focus on what would break about eighteen laws in most Western countries.

I’ll cap today with a shot demonstrating the short depth-of-field of the 35mm f/2 lens. Even on that first taco, only half the cilantro is in focus!

I can recommend Viva as decent Mexican. Especially considering it’s about as far away from Mexico as you can get. More authentic than anything I’ve ever tried in Germany! Plus, you just can’t beat $0.50 USD draft Angkor beer. Which is the standard price all along Siem Reap’s “Pub Street.” So far, an awesome (and very relaxing) experience!

Chilli Crab

When in Singapore, you must have a chilli crab. If you can take the heat, that is! I love ‘em, and on July 15th I headed to the East Coast Seafood Center my hosts.

Jumbo Seafood is the undisputed king in my book. They have everything known to Poseidon on the menu, and the crab is fantastic.

One of our number was not yet old enough to take the heat. He preferred the tasty (fried?) buns. Also, did I mention a few days ago that the 35mm f2 lens can practically see in the dark? 1/15s, f2, ISO 1600 on the Nikon D90.

And here’s a tasty chilli crab claw, coated in glorious chili-egg-sauce:

At this point, I was (obviously) recovered from the dumpling incident. This means I was ready to get up the next day and visit not one, but two zoos! One in the daylight, and one at night. Anyone ever been on a real safari? I’m dying to try it one day…

Yes, it’s all about FOOD

I’m sure there are more things to do in Penang, but we had our eyes on the local delicacies! Before heading back to Kuala Lumpur on July 11th, we stopped at a food fair and feasted on what the vendors had to offer. Laksa, Hokkien noodles (very spicy), satay sticks…

Here’s the spread at our table. On the far right you can see (if I remember correctly) chrysanthemum juice.

On the way out of town we stopped at Ghee Hiang, a gourmet shop that sells buns, cakes, white coffee, sesame oil, that kind of thing. The buns are awesome, but the signage is even better. I couldn’t resist…

I’m not kidding when I say all we did was eat. Here was our delicious pork-soup-stew dinner, called Bah Kut Teh (thanks, JK!).

Alright, I promise, no pictures of food tomorrow – haha!

Rotorua – Thermal Everything

I realized that a post from last month didn’t publish properly. So here’s a break between Thailand and Malaysia: a short flashback to New Zealand! On June 15th I woke up refreshed (and a bit cold) at the Cosy Cottage Holiday Park, in the thermal-spring town of Rotorua.

For those not familiar with such places, a holiday park is a combination of campgrounds, camper parking, and cabins / backpacker rooms. Like many places I’ve stayed in New Zealand, the heating in my backpacker room was not very good, so it pays to have a good sleeping bag if you travel in the winter. I didn’t, so I froze my arse off for two nights.

Cold room aside, his holiday park is pretty awesome. It has access to a beach on Lake Rotorua where you can dig a hole that fills with hot thermal water. Or you can soak in the thermal springs-fed hot tubs. For dinner you can cook food in a thermal-vent powered steam oven (more on that below).

Rotorua is all about bubbling, steaming hot thermal features – beaches, hot water, and boiling mud.

By the way, try taking a picture of something that’s boiling. It’s not so easy! Boiling is all about motion, seeing bubbles rise and burst. A still frame of anything boiling is about one tenth as interesting as you might think.

Besides Rotorua town, I checked out two attractions: the Skyline area with a gondola, a tires-on-cement luge, and several other adventure activities; and Rainbow Park, a forest conservation area that helps raise kiwi birds and release them into the wild (among other things). Here’s a green tree gecko, a native of New Zealand:

To be honest, Skyline was a disappointment (seeing as I live near the Alps). The view was nothing spectacular. And I didn’t realize I could have hiked to the top of the gondola in about 15 minutes, rather than pay >$20 to ride in the (painfully slow) cabin. The luge was pretty cool – I would have done it a second time to try the “advanced” course if my gloveless hands hadn’t been nearly frostbitten from the cold.

I went back to Rainbow Park at night to get pictures of the kiwi birds. Unfortunately, just one was out and about, and he stuck to the darkest area in the whole enclosure. Since using the flash on nocturnal animals is strictly out, and I’d forgotten my tripod, here’s the best I could do. It’s a crop of a hand-held 2s exposure of a frenetic pecking bird. But it is a photo of the elusive kiwi!

It strikes me that “kiwi” can refer to a fruit or a bird, and is a friendly nickname for New Zealanders. So if you say “I had a kiwi last night,” it’s not certain if you ate fruit for dessert, broke a conservation law by eating endangered animals, or got lucky with a local hottie. Hmm…

Now, on to steam ovens! Here’s the rack of lamb before cooking:

The lovely steam oven itself:

And finally, the lamb after four hours of steaming in a volcanically-powered oven:

It’s very tender and moist, with a texture just like pulled pork barbecue! In fact, I’d recommend to use a lower grade of meat than prime rack of lamb, because I suspect this oven would make even the toughest pork or beef flake apart in moist tidbits. By the way, the cost of this hunk o’ lamb in New Zealand: $5 USD! I love this country.

Tomorrow, (a.k.a. 4 weeks ago) I’ll relate my visit to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. It definitely lives up to its name!

Penang – Culinary Paradise

On the morning of July 10th, we took in this great view of Penang from the lighthouse at Fort Cornwallis (an old British fort).

Here’s a taste of the local cuisine. Laksa is a noodle dish mixed with some greens and fish paste, with a dose of chilis on top. This small outdoor restaurant is renowned as the best place in Penang to eat this regional specialty! Man, was it good. If you’re a chilihead, ask for it extra spicy.

After lunch we headed to Kek Lok Si – the Temple of Supreme Bliss! This is crowned by the majestic Ban Po Thar, or Ten Thousand Buddhas Tower.

There’s a great view of the temple complex (and the city of Penang) from the top of the tower, if you don’t mind six or seven flights of winding stairs.

Definitely a lot of Buddhas (and their related statuary) in this place!

For dinner, we went to a nice seafood market restaurant in Penang. My hosts chose some interesting dishes. The barbecued stingray was really tasty:

And the female horseshoe crab, well, let’s just say it’s an acquired taste. Definitely worth trying once, for those with a sense of culinary adventure!

What’s the strangest seafood you’ve ever eaten? Leave a comment and share your crazy food stories!

Street Buys and Santa Condom

Some of the people I met in Thailand were very nice, and the Thais I know in Germany are fantastic people. But if you’re a tourist in Bangkok, be very careful whom you trust. This basically means no one who drives a taxi, tuk-tuk, or motorcycle; and absolutely NO ONE that approaches you on the street with “helpful information.”

• The attraction you want to see probably IS open, right now.
• Unless it’s the palace, they probably WILL let you in with shorts/sandals on.
• There is no “diamond buddha” at a special temple that’s only open one day a year (TODAY!).
• The traffic always sucks; it won’t get better in an hour if you stop somewhere for shopping.

On July 7th I determined that almost no taxi wants an “honest” fare. One guy complained constantly about traffic after I refused his offers to stop for shopping, and tried to guilt me into leaving the cab. I persevered, and it took a whopping 15 minutes to reach my destination (not 1-2h as promised).

A second taxi was actually nice: took me right where I wanted to go with no complaints, for the metered fare, and actually HAD correct change. The third just wanted the flag drop (35 Baht, or about $1), then persuaded me to take the Skytrain to my destination. I took the Skytrain after it was clear he had no idea how to get to my destination, a small hotel in Nana.

Aside from taxicab craziness, here’s a selection of what I saw today. First, the Golden Mount (where the first cabbie didn’t want to take me). Great views of the city from the top of all these stairs.

Second, here’s a lovely image from Wat Suthat Temple:

Now a street photo from my walk around the center of town. The small 3-wheeled vehicles are tuk-tuks, named for their annoying 2-cycle-engine noise.

After being hassled by several dudes on the street (“Don’t go to that temple! It’s closed today!”), I went to the farmers’ market. Mostly veg (for cooking) and flowers (for shrines), with a smattering of other stuff as well. Great local color!

Here’s where I ate lunch. Finally found something moderately spicy, although from what I found so far, the average Thai food (or what they serve Caucasians) is not nearly as hot as what I expected.

For dinner, I tried out a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It promotes the use of birth control, in order to bring the skyrocketing population into check. Apparently seven children per family in a developing country is too much. The prices are much higher than restaurants the locals frequent, but the service and food are fantastic. Since the profits go to a very good cause, I was happy to splurge and spend $13 on my meal.

Plus you get to see lamps made of condoms, and great statuary at the entranceway:

Yes, Santa Condom. I think I have a new theme party idea for Skydive Orange! What do the jumpers think?

Japanese Packaging – Dry Ice, Please

I walked out my hostel door June 25th on a mission to see gardens, visit temples, and take in the atmosphere of Kyoto. My first stop was the Shosei-en gardens, which have a small (500 yen) entry fee. Quite reasonable; so far nothing in Japan was more than 600 yen entry, about $7. The lake at Shosei-en was particularly scenic and peaceful, even on a cloudy & rainy day.

I tried one of these small plums (one that had fallen on the ground). It was really sour. But they certainly look nice:

Next I saw the big temples in the middle of Kyoto, each of which is part of a spiritual complex occupying a whole city block. The temple on the east side is the biggest wooden building in the world – my lens wasn’t wide enough to get it all in one shot! Here’s the slightly smaller west temple, Hongwanji, in a 12-photo panorama.

What surprised me most about the day was this cream puff. They cost 126 yen, or about $1.40, so I ordered one. Before I knew it, the puff was packed in a fancy bag and sealed with a metallic foil sticker. The saleswoman then filled another small bag with dry ice chips, placed that in a cardboard box, taped it shut, and put it in the bottom of a third bag, with the cream puff bag on top. They said something about three hours, which I suppose is the time this thing would keep before getting home to the fridge.

I ate it five minutes later.

The green tea cream puff was divine, just like everything made with green tea here. In case you want less packaging, try some waving and hand-motions. That worked the next time I bought a slice of cake, and I got away with two less bags. Long live the environment!

There’s almost no end to what I saw today. Here are the vermillion gates of the Inari shrine. I thought it was going to be just one row of these gates. Actually it’s about 4 kilometers of them, with shrines every few hundred meters. Local businesses donate money for the gates; I suppose it brings good fortune.

Here’s one of the hand-washing pools at Inari. Drooling Dragon!

I’ll have to do more articles about this day after my return to Germany. The raw chicken on rice (with an uncooked egg yolk on top) is something that many Japanese I spoke to hadn’t even seen! Anyone ever eaten raw chicken?

Biggest Fish Market in the World

Before I left for Kyoto on June 24th, I headed to Tsukiji, the largest fish market in the world. Every day, more varieties of seafood are sold here than most people have ever heard of. Nowadays, they only let two groups of 70 tourists view the famous tuna auction; I decided not to get up at 3:30 to try and catch it. BUT I did see a lot of those tuna being carted around and sliced up, after my 7:00am arrival at the market. I think these are tuna?

Here are the unlucky ones responsible for my favorite sushi – eels:

Are these scallops? I’m not sure.

A varied assortment:

These crazy carts drive around everywhere loaded with the day’s purchases, trying (not so hard) to avoid running over tourists.

As this cart drove by (while I wanted 2h in line for Sushi Dai), a block of this frozen fish (I think tuna) fell off, skittering across the pavement. You can be sure, it was recovered FAST.

Since I spent the rest of the day getting to Kyoto, I have some nice shots from there as well. I’ll just throw in one: a beef okonomiyaki, Kyoto style, at the homey Kawa restaurant. It’s north of Syomen street, just east of the Takase river (a tiny canal). Very nice cook, and the first time I sat Japanese-style for a meal on tatami (straw) mats, with no pit under the table to sit “western style.” And the okonomiyaki was good.

In real life, you can see the fish flakes bending back and forth as the heat rises from the okonomiyaki. It’s almost like the dish is alive! If you want to read about this Japanese delight, check out my prior okonomiyaki post. Have you ever found one in a restaurant in your town?

Fancy Schmancy Beef

Everyone’s heard of Kobe beef. There are other similar varieties like Wagyu as well, which I think are more readily found in Tokyo. I didn’t go to a restaurant and drop $150 on a steak meal, but on this rainy June 23rd I did try a bit of it in a department store. Vegetarians: you may want to skip the next few paragraphs – heh.

As I understand, the genetics of this type of cow allow the fat to form inside the muscle tissue, in a way that doesn’t occur in normal cows. I do wonder just how unhealthy Kobe/Wagyu beef is! Perhaps the cows being massaged daily and fed wine makes their meat healthier…?

The piece I got was probably Wagyu, and was about 1000 yen ($11) per 100 grams. It was on sale though, so I paid a bit less. I just had a small steak, plus some little cubes of cheaper stuff (660 yen per 100g, the taste wasn’t really that impressive). Here’s the good piece of meat:

I cooked the steak for about a minute a side in a hot pan. It was VERY flavorful, the fat melded perfectly with the meat, and the steak was extremely tender. I can only imagine having Kobe, which probably costs 3-5 times as much in the store (and 10-15 times as much in a restaurant).

Now, today’s got to be all about food, because the other sights I saw were “no photos allowed.” So here’s my favorite sushi, Unagi (sea eel). They have so many kinds of eel in Japan that I haven’t seen before in any sushi restaurant: conger eel, freshwater eel, sharp-toothed eel… all delicious!

I’ll round out this food-oriented post with a very expensive cantaloupe. Like yesterday’s cherries, these are meant as gifts. At an exchange rate of 90 yen per USD, that’s well over $100 of melon:

What’s the most costly food you’ve tried, or most expensive restaurant where you’ve eaten?

The $175 Cherry

On June 21st, I headed to the famous Senso-ji temple/pagoda complex in Asakusa. I particularly liked the temple where women pray for things important to them (meeting a good husband, having strong children, etc).

What was interesting today food-wise: green tea donuts. Seeing Baumkuchen (German “tree cake” with layers like the yearly rings of a tree), with the German name printed on the package. Then there was this:

This small box of cherries (meant as a gift) is $175 at today’s exchange rate. Yes, that’s about a pound of cherries. For $175. This is Japan!

I’ll leave you today with this shot of a street performer in Ueno Park. I did actually give him some change! Okay, it was mostly one-yen coins (I think made from aluminum?) and some fives, but a good handful. Thanks for the music!

What do you think about street performers? Do you ever give them change or a couple bills?