Iron Chef Bangkok

We woke up the next morning in Bangkok ready to rage. By rage, I mean a vegetarian/vegan cooking class experience with May Kaidee. I am not sure exactly how this slipped into our itinerary, but it was entertaining. We headed out to the class and underestimated the length of the taxi ride. We arrived late. Not only late, but to the wrong location. We were escorted by a nice local man (American from New York) to the correct location and walked in about thirty minutes fashionably late.

There was a table of about eight people and the four of us, along with May Kaidee—a smiley Thai woman dressed up in ridiculous clothing—and her two assistants. We were immediately thrown into some type of Thai sing-along, which had a pause to sing your own name. Because of the whole language barrier, Clayton was given the name Cray for the duration of the class. We must have sung it ten times while in the class, not only did I butcher every Thai word, I couldn’t even say my name in tune. I may look like remarkable vocalist, but I hadn’t prepared and had a tickle in my throat. It didn’t go well.

We were teamed up in groups of two, I was matched with Iron Chef Robert E Lee, and Clayton & Co. were together. (Couple names are so in) We cooked a variety of tasty dishes. When I say cooked I mean we placed the pre-selected, pre-chopped vegetables and tofu into the hot wok following the recipes we were given, under the direct supervision of Mai Kaidee and her posse. I can’t imagine anyone really messes up the dishes in the class. All I did was toss a carrot in the hot oil one time, making the oil jump from the pan and burn Sous-Chef Robert E Lee’s leg once. That was it, one time.

                       

We would return to our seat intermittently to eat our dishes. Many of them were quite spicy, and the assistant pouring out the cold water must have had a hell of a night prior. He was moving like cold molasses. So, yet again, we suffered from the spice sweats. Good thing the upstairs was nice a cool with seven burners running and minimal air conditioning. The sweaty kids at the vegetarian cooking class, good times.

I have to admit I do not support vegetarianism, seems like a fad to me. If you are going to be vegetarian/vegan, I expect hard core, home grown everything, recycle your life, and live barefoot in the forest. Maybe I just enjoy the taste of slow-tortured, industrial-farmed animals pumped full of chemicals and corn based food products. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by how tasty and filling the food was. Best food I ate in Bangkok, and not just because I cooked it. I am now an expert chef of Pad Thai, red and yellow curry, summer rolls, and sticky mango rice. Well, by expert chef I mean I can follow a recipe reasonably well. Call for reservations.

After we finished our first few courses, we watched May Kaidee and her assistant (also dressed up) perform a ‘traditional’ Thai dance. There was a lot of wrist rolling and stepping and hip stuff. I was terribly excited to try the dance as soon as I got home, and to my luck we were all told to stand and circle up to dance right in the kitchen! I half-assed the dancing of course, if she had thrown a little Thrift Shop on things might have been different. To my right Clayton was making an excusable attempt at keeping up, and across the circle Coco was dancing next to the Iron Chef General. Now this Iron Chef had somehow mastered the moves, moving his arms and hands in graceful sways, and really breaking it down. He was on fire, actually I thought he was going to catch the back of his light green apron on fire on the burner behind him, but managed to dance his way out of that one. Clayton has video of him getting down with it, and busting a move or two.

After the class we met a tour guide to see the Royal Palace. The guide was nice and spoke pretty good English. As if the guide would have been a mean old woman who didn’t speak English.. When we got to the Palace we were told that we couldn’t show our legs or shoulders because of the Buddhist temples we were entering. The crop top and short shorts I was wearing weren’t going to cut it. We had packed some clothes to put over, we were prepared—or so we thought. I uncomfortably pulled my jeans up over my shorts only to look around and see Robert pulling up his relatively tight black jeans over his shorts. Clayton did the same, and Coco had a scarf thing or shawl or whatever you call it to cover her shoulders. The guide said that wasn’t good enough and got her a very fashionable and cultural top with temples and elephants on it. I was jealous.

We saw a variety of amazing temples and palaces; I won’t bore you with that cultural stuff. You can Wikipedia it. Here is a fun picture of an Asian lady doing an epic ‘Asian taking a photo’ stance.

Ok here are a few cool things we saw, including the reclining Buddha. Google it. This was ironic because reclining was the exact position I was wishing I could be in, preferably in an air-conditioned room. The whole double pants thing wasn’t going too well in the heat. Some how we survived. Here is a Buddha statue and me getting my meditation on, you can tell how deep in thought I am by the size of the sweat stains on my shirt:

After the tours we headed back to change and shower. We then met up with Sir Samuel and headed over to Khao San Road, a world famous backpackers street of restaurants and bars. It was a lot of fun. There were guys walking around trying to get us to go to Ping Pong shows (whatever those are), there were very dressed up good looking girls (lady boys), and people walking around with trays of cooked scorpions and cockroaches. 

After we ate (real food, not the bugs), we walked around getting hassled by all the venders and promoters until we settled down for a drink. As the night progressed, we met a crazy variety of interesting people. I met a couple from Whales, tons of Australians, two middle aged Indian guys, a group of English, Pakistanis, Americans, Germans, and even a few Thai. Somehow, (beer consumption) the Australians convinced us to try the scorpions, which I could tell were fresh by the stale, flavorless crunch, and the way little pieces got stuck in your teeth for about thirty minutes after.

We managed to avoid the lady boys on our ride home, and even managed to make our flight in the morning without too much drama. We were on to Phuket, an island in the south of Thailand. It was beautiful, weather was great, and table tennis was interesting. 

Stay tuned.

Goofballs and Dumbos

After Vietnam, we arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. We connected in Malaysia on the way, which I really didn’t know was a country—just thought it was from Zoolander. It looked like a fun, tropical place; maybe next time. We found a taxi and messed around with directions. Apparently many taxi drivers cannot read English, who would have guessed? I can imagine a Thai tourist coming to New York and giving the taxi driver a note written in Thai. Better yet, can you imagine a Thai tourist going to New York knowing one, maybe two words of English? That was us in Thailand—American goofballs not speaking the language.

Anyways, the guy nods and we get settled in. At some point in the ride the driver realized he didn’t know where we were going so decided to pull to the side of the road. In the middle of the highway. We sat on the shoulder as he called random people asking them where the hotel was. We finally get going again and begin to realize just how bad of a driver this guy is. I have been in my share of taxis all over the world but this guy really took the cake. I do not know how he could possible be a taxi driver. He was either sharply breaking or gunning it all the way to the hotel and seemed to have no real control over the vehicle. He almost hit a few pedestrians and was very close to causing an accident or two, but somehow we made it to the hotel in one piece, one lucky piece. Maybe I had left all the bad luck in the hotel toilet in Vietnam.

We got settled and felt exhausted from the travel. Clayton left a few hours later to pick up a special guest from the airport. This person wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons I am not quite sure of, so I will give her a penname. Let’s go with something fun and slightly Asian… Coco. So Clayton endures another potentially dangerous taxi ride across the city to pick up his darling Coco, and then uses his body to shield her from harm as he takes yet another risky trip back to the hotel. Coco announced her presence to the hotel room by loudly knocking on Robert and my door at 1am. It was a delight.

The next day we had a big tour planned. Robert, Clayton, Coco, and I were picked up and we headed to a nearby hostel to pick up another new member on the trip. SAMUEL WYZAN, a dear friend of mine that studied with me in Valencia, who happened to be traveling Thailand the same time as us. Yea right, he stalks me.

Our first stop was the floating market, a super touristy market that is.. you got it: floating. It is sort of like a rural Venice, minus the overpriced coffee. You sit in a long, thin paddleboat and are carted from merchant to merchant all selling just about the same stuff. 

A shot from my spot in the boat, note the authentic fan Coco is rocking.

We got out of the touristy mess of things and enjoyed some local iced coffee. It was iced coffee, condensed milk, and sugar. The sweetness was almost too much, but it was certainly refreshing. Afterward, we got out and wandered around the market place, trying to bargain with stubborn venders. 

Then we headed back to the tour bus and were taken to death railroad. This was a bizarre stop on the tour. It was an obviously touristy area surrounding the railroad that was constructed by imprisoned Chinese. Many of them died of heat exhaustion and other diseases, giving the name ‘death railroad.’ 

Here is the crew, minus Coco, chilling at DEATH RAILROAD.

There were cheesy love songs playing, fruit for sale, and tons of Asians taking weird pictures. There was a young Asian girl with a photographer following her around. She was modeling and posing, throwing out lazy peace signs and dramatic looks. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but we imitated her for the rest of the trip because she looked absolutely ridiculous.

Next stop on the tour was the elephant bath. Now I know what you are thinking, how do you fit in a bathtub with an elephant? I was thinking the same thing. To my pleasant surprise, it meant you accompany your elephant and trainer into a murky river with a strong current and participate in a number of forced, awkward activities. Elephants are big--granted--and they weigh tons, or a ton, I am not sure exactly. I read a nice review of the place we went and said it was great, until one elephant had enough and threw a car down a hill.

We follow our elephants down to the river where they are standing in about three feet deep water. We are divided up, Robert got his own, Clayton and Coco together, and Sam and I had the pleasure of sharing an elephant. Romantic, I know. We awkwardly climbed on top of this massive, hairy animal with the trainer and the elephants were commanded to squirt us with water for about five minutes. Each trainer had a stick with a curved metal hook on one side it would use to prod the elephant if it wasn’t cooperating. It really calmed my nerves knowing the trainer behind me was poking the elephant every couple of seconds. At least I could push Sam down and hopefully swim my way to safety if anything went wrong.

Next we were instructed to play ‘Rodeo’ with the elephants. Just what I was hoping for, and elephant bucking me into a shallow murky river. We hadn’t signed insurance waivers. We mounted the elephant one at a time and then were violently shaken back and forth until we fell off. I fell right next to the elephant and surfaced looking right up into his eye. He could have lifted his front leg and stepped on me. That would have been a way to go.

This is me getting thrown off the elephant, a sweet pic I think.

We then had a photo session with the elephants, the trainers told us to sit on their trunks one at a time and they would lift us out of the water for a picture. Brainwashing and animal cruelty at its finest. I am sure the elephant woke up that morning just itching to lift heavy, soggy, ungrateful tourists out of the water on their trunks. You get it by now, I felt bad for the elephants. 

Next we had a ‘water fight’ with them. We stood in a line and splashed the elephants and they were instructed to shoot water at us. I was just waiting for one of us to splash one of them in the eye and we learn the real definition of a water fight. It started raining as we were ‘playing’ with them, and it made the whole activity feel quite surreal.

After a few more pictures we were told to ride them to their camp. Camp meaning the place where they were chained in between rides. Sam and my elephant wasn’t listening very well, taking time to reach out with its long trunk for the bushes along the way. It was yelled at a few times, and prodded with the hooked stick by the handler who was walking next to it. We were about twelve feet off the ground on top of a hungry elephant that was being made to walk us soggy tourists back to the holding area. I didn’t have a worry in the world. That was until the elephant sped up momentarily to stay ahead of the elephant behind us. That was when Sam grabbed me for dear life. Or something like that.

The next day in Bangkok involved cooking class, dancing, lady boys, and scorpions. Stay tuned. 

History, Guns, and Squirts

We woke up relatively early on our second morning in Vietnam, and by relatively early I mean 5am, which is a time I haven’t woken up at for quite a while. It really made the day seem a lot longer waking up so early, who would have guessed? We headed to breakfast and stuffed ourselves, keeping up our healthy reputation as the American slobs at the breakfast table. The staff had begun to recognize us and the ones about our age had taken a liking to us. Clayton gave one kid the nickname Playboy, simply because we saw him carrying a box of glasses that had the word Playboy written on the side. He loved his nickname, but I am fairly sure he didn’t know what it meant.

After filling up, we headed to the War Remnants Museum, about a 10-minute walk from the hotel. We arrived without any real drama and paid our 15 Dong a piece to get in. We were immediately faced with a selection of different American vehicles left over from the war. I have decided to start adding pictures to this blog to give everyone stunning visuals for my vivid descriptions. I would prefer to let your minds run wild imagining what I am explaining, but I have a bunch of useless pictures on my phone, so why not post them?

Note my artistic talents in this picture of an American chopper.

We walked through a doorway into another outdoor section of the museum. This showed the imprisonment and torture techniques used by the Vietnamese during the war. Before I go too much into detail, lets confirm that this is a war remnants museum in the heart of the capital of communist Vietnam. The communists (north) were victorious, so this museum leans just a touch towards the north. To paraphrase, Americans are the devil and South Vietnamese were traitor rebels.

In this torture section they had tiger cages. These were very small barbed wire boxes where they would cram four or five Vietnamese for long periods of time. For the rest of our time in Vietnam we made sure to avoid breaking the law and get thrown in tiger cages. They showed us a typical cell of a prisoner, where the prisoner would be shackled tight to the middle of the room. I mentioned how hot Vietnam was earlier, but let me just reiterate. This was May 16^th, and it was hotter than a peak summer day in Central Florida. Humidity was through the roof. The combination of both the extreme heat and suffocating humidity really gave us a first hand idea of how ugly these prisons were. There would be numerous individual crammed in these tight cells, given minimal water in order to survive. Many would die of malnutrition and dehydration, but if they didn’t, they were put through a grotesque variety of torture techniques in order to reveal information they may or may not have known. 

Here are a few techniques that were mentioned in no apparent order. Breaking of arms and/or legs in order to stop prisoner from attempting to escape. Beating with different size sticks depending on the desired affect; the biggest was referred to as the death stick. Burning of the prisoner’s genitals or their entire body in general. Blinding and/or cutting the tongue out of a prisoner. Slowly amputating legs and/or individual fingers/toes. Shattering kneecaps and elbows. Burying the prisoner alive. 

I have to take a moment to apologize for this entry. It doesn’t have the lighthearted feel as the others. I will try my best to ease off on the negativity, but this museum deserves a real description. Brace yourselves; it is going to get a little rough.

I headed out of the torture section slightly light-headed—partly due to the torture techniques and their accompanied pictures, and partly due to the wicked heat I was enduring. The first floor of the museum was a general overview of the war and how horrible the Americans were. There were propaganda posters shooting down Nixon and honoring Cuba. There was a picture of a woman and a child crying in a damaged building with the following caption:

During the war, schools became targets of the US air force. On 25th September, 1965, bombs were dropped on Quynh Tien Primary and Secondary School, Quyhn Luu village, killed and injured many pupils and teachers. 

The caption was clearly biased. Well, at least I hope—there was plenty of shady stuff that happened during the Vietnam War. As soon as I finished reading this caption I heard children’s voices behind me, and a field trip of thirty or more Vietnamese six year olds headed into the museum. It was a strange experience.

After walking around the first floor reading horrible things and sweating my butt off, it was a relief to enter the air-conditioned second floor. The room was full of pictures of dead Vietnamese and remains of American uniforms and weaponry. The third floor was the worse; it was the Agent Orange section.

I am no history buff so bare with me here. Agent Orange was a form of chemical warfare used by the Americans in order to kill the vegetation that the enemies were hiding in, as well as kill the enemy in mass quantities. The side effects of Agent Orange were devastating: causing future mental illnesses, as well as extreme birth defects in the years that followed the war. There was even a section showing how these side effects affected American soldiers and their families after the war. The pictures of the physical deformities in Vietnamese children were horrifying.

The museum wasn’t packed; there were a variety of individuals of all ages and ethnicities. I did have this strange sense of individuals looking down on our group when they heard our American accents. Although understandable to an extent, the accusing looks were quite misdirected. First of all, technically I am British—a country that was not involved, and secondly I am in my twenties—not exactly an influence during the war. Also, although the Vietnamese call this the American War, there were plenty of other players involved that supported the South: Australia and New Zealand, Republic of China, Thailand, and the Philippines, amongst others.

I am not trying to defend the atrocities of this war, just expanding my knowledge on the subject. It is interesting that the group I was traveling with all went through the public education system in the US and barely knew anything of the details of the Vietnam War. There was a clear bias in the subject matter of the museum as well as a obvious bias in the way the war was taught to us—my idea of the war is now a blend of the two. History is fun.

After the war museum we departed on a journey to the Cu Chi tunnels, about fifty kilometers outside the city. The trip took about an hour and a half with all the traffic of the city. Our tour guide a tiny man—mid twenties—and our driver was an older Vietnamese guy with the craziest beard I have ever seen. It was very scraggly and long, a mix of grey and black, and he flipped it over his ears when he was hot. He also didn’t speak a word of English.

We arrived at the tunnels and walked into the forest. Our tour guide made us look for the entrance to the tunnels, I saw nothing. Suddenly a guy popped out of a small opening in the ground that was covered by leaves. It would have taken me 10-15 minutes to find this opening if I was looking for it, and I was given a small area to search in. I can’t imagine how the soldiers in the war found these invisible entrances. Here is a snap of Clayton squeezing into the entrance:

 

The next section was a variety of booby traps set by the North Vietnamese, either randomly in the forest or inside the tunnels. All were designed to maim a soldier, not kill. Many were designed so that once a soldier stepped on it; they couldn’t get out without seriously damaging their leg/torso, so the trap had to be carried with the soldier to the hospital.

We were next allowed to fire a gun of our choosing. I have never fired a real weapon before, and I fired an AK-47 in the forest of Vietnam. Felt like Rambo, minus the hundreds of bullets. Ten bullets to be exact; cost about a dollar per bullet. Tremendously powerful weapon, it was super loud even with our ear protectors. I can only imagine the hearing loss the soldiers must have endured.

Next we were led through a small section of the tunnel, I would say about fifteen yards. We had to hunch to almost crawling and be led through the near pitch dark tunnel. It was wicked hot down there—again, I can only imagine how hot it was to stay down there for long periods of time during the middle of a Vietnamese summer. We emerged after about one minute drenched in sweat, I guess only slightly more drenched than we already were.

We headed back to the car and rocked out with the driver to old school Santana on the way back. About an hour into the ride I started feeling a little funky in the belly. Wouldn’t you know; I made up the squirts competition, and I lose the squirts competition. It would have gone right through the screen door (sorry, my favorite euphemism). I should have knocked on wood and slapped a leprechaun. Ok, let's all laugh at Freddie, he got the Hershey Squirts first. Just keep it on the down low, I know most of my friends are borderline illiterate so they won't have read this far anyways. To those that have, congratulations.

The next day Robert and Clayton went to the Mekong Delta, I stayed home and hydrated myself back to health and ate Vietnamese mashed potatoes. The travelers sickness tablets we got before leaving did wonders. Thank goodness for them, don’t know if Pepto would have done the trick. The next day we were off to Bangkok to reenact the Hangover 2. Scorpions, monkeys, lady-boys, and Ping-Pong shows were all in the mix.

Until then..