fried chicken

This is the fried chicken sold on the street. The sticky rice is on the right side of the plate and toated garlic is sprinkled on top. The plastic bag on the right is filled with a sweet vinegar chili sauce.

Cheap Trek

I finally purchased a mountain bike! After asking numerous people and following a few false leads, I found a cheap Trek just 20 kilometers north of town. While I was riding back to Phuket Town, I realized that I now had the means to tour across the countryside.

FOOD!

Donuts - There's a few kinda donuts here. Chinese donuts are sold on the street for one baht apiece. They are fried in a wok and come in two-inch pieces shaped like a 'H'. Each donut is crispy and filled with big air-pockets. Oddly, they are not sweet. I had to add lotsa sugar and it was like a sugar donut back in the States. Dunkin Donuts has a presence on the Island. Each donut there costs seven baht. They have the same variety as American Dunkin Donut shops, with the exception of a donut-on-a-stick. It is a yellow cake donut that is smothered with icing and has some cute HelloKitty-like design.

Pan-fried fish with crispy herbs - a whole fish, possibly a red snapper, that is lightly breaded then fried. It is topped with very thin stips of basil, Thai chili peppers, garlic and a few other leafy-green herbs that have been flash-fried and crisp. A thick, caramel-coloured sauce is added.

Deep fried chicken - sold on the street, the chicken is cut up and fried in a wok with a batter containing slices of garlic, served with a spicy sweet/sour sauce on side. Each piece costs about 25 cents. The Colonel has a very strong presence. On one major street, there are three KFCs. An interesting note is that the Thais eat fried chicken only with a fork and knife, never handling them.

Red curry paste - purchased from a neighborhood corner store. Very spicy. Eric combined the paste with coconut milk and added to cooked squash, onions, potatoes and carrots.

Chicken with cashews - a standard Chinese dish. Carrots and onions are added in this stir-fry. There is a sizable Chinese population on the island with a considerable amount of political and economic power. Our neighbor made their money thru ownership of five jewelry stores and a few factories.

Crab with coconut curry - yellow curry with small crab pieces (usually unshelled). The crabs are slightly larger than blue crabs, but nowhere near the size of the west coast dungeness crabs.

Black pepper fried rice - an enormous amount of black pepper is added to the rice, for a plate-sized portion I would guess a whole tablespoon is added. It provides a nice punch.

Shrimp with tamarind sweet-sour sauce - nice and tangy, shrimp stir-fried with onions, garlic, ginger and carrots. The shrimp are of medium size (probably around a 50-count per pound size), but I have seen large sizes in the market (20 count).

Roti with chicken - bread dough that is flattened and pan-fried into a square pocket with a layer of chicken in a curry sauce. Served on the side is additional sauce with a few pieces of chicken and potato and a bowl of finely sliced cucumbers, shallots and Thai peppers soaked in a sweet white vinegar. Served only for breakfast. I like to keep the roti crisp and dip each piece into the curry sauce.

Muslim curry - a yellow curry with heavy tumeric flavor. This curry reminds me most of my first tastings of any curry in life. Served with potatoes and chicken.

Chicken on a stick - more street food. The breast is flattened, dark meat is sliced into pieces and other parts are marinated in a soy-ginger sauce. The dark meat and misc. parts are skewered and grilled. The breast is wedged between two bamboo sticks then grilled. A thick, brown sauce is glazed on as it grills to caramelization.

Thai (Iced)Tea and Coffee - costs 20 - 30 baht. The iced tea tastes just as it does in America. The hot tea is a nice touch. A pot of tea is served alongside a 6-oz cup, half filled with condensed milk. As more tea is consumed, the tea gets stronger because the milk-ratio drops and the tea brews within the pot. I really like the Thai Coffee. It is a nice strong brew, that reminds of Vietnamese coffee.

Fruit shakes/smoothies - the island is rich in tropical fruits. Coconuts, bananas (various types. all are less than five inches long and vary in width), pineapples, oranges, mangos, papaya, guava and many things I've never seen before in America.

Sodas - Coke and Pepsi are the major players, with Schwepps being found in stores catering to foreigners. The sodas are sweeter and go flat upon opening.

Frito Lay potato chips - I've had a couple of their flavors, but there are many weird flavors to try: Mexican BBQ, Shrimp, Basil, Lime to name a few. What I did try was "Extra" BBQ - a sweet BBQ flavor and Grilled Lobster. The first taste session of lobster was pleasing, though further tastings got grosser and grosser. Within the bag were huge boulders of flavor crystals that never made it on any chips.

Wrapped crabmeat - thin "cigars" filled with lump crabmeat and deep-fried like an eggroll. Served with a chili-pepper and sweet vinegar sauce.

Oysters on the halfshell - served with sliced chili peppers, toasted slivers of garlic and lime. Each cost 40 baht, $1 US.

Shrimp with chili pepper sauce - Red curry paste is fried in a wok before throwing in onions, chili peppers and garlic. Shrimp is added in the end.

first all-nighter in Thailand and, man, it was action-packed!

Last weekend was spent down at Debbie and Eric's weekend house in the southern tip of the island. They just rented it the weekend before; the place was just renovated days before that. They will be using it as a weekend place, spending most of their time in the city, closer to their work. It is located just a few minutes from the first beach that I visited - Nai Harn. It is also along a row of four other houses that also house farangs.

Friday marked the end of the workweek for the other farangs. (It seems that every foreigner except me works as a teacher, usually teaching English as a foreign language.) I greeted the first to arrive, Devlin, with a taste-test of the local beers while playing video games off of a bootlegged Sony Playstation 2. The beers were Leo (a low-brow version from the Thai-owned Singha brewery) and Tiger (not sure who owns it). Both had aftertastes that were not objectionable... but won't be winning any awards.

Devlin was starving and suggested to go to the Rawai Mini-Golf Course for a buffet. Hmmmm, eating at a mini-golf course? Is this like eating at a mini-country club? But with a price tag of 120 Baht ($3), I figured that I could get my fill. What a great move it was! BBQ ribs! fried chicken! Grilled asparagus wrapped with bacon! Grilled pork chops! Potatoes au gratin!

After dinner, we went back to Farang Alley to hook up with Devlin's neighbor. We sat around and caught up on current events, daily activities and the like. Once it got sufficiently dark outside (Phuket gets about 12 hours of sunshine, from 6ish to 6ish), we headed out to explore the Thai-nighlife.

The first stop was a quaint bar along the waters in Rawai. There was only one customer, a Brit who was talking to one of the bar girls. I was happy with the pool table. (Thais have a weird rule after a scratch - the other player gets two shots.) We only stayed for a couple beverages and moved a few doors down to this interesting bar with lotsa bar girls. As far as I can tell, bar girls do tend bar, but are there more for eye candy. Here we met up with many other teachers and eventually closed down the bar.

We went to a few more bars and it hit me... The music here has something to be desired. Western pop music is fully embraced here, but only a select song list is in heavy rotation. Boys II Men - "I'll Make Love To You", Black Eyed Peas' latest hit, Madonna... ughhh! The same music is played in every club!

Slowly, our posse thinned out, until it was down to me and three other people, Logan, Nate and Nick. I've hung out with Logan a few times already (he's from Sacramento); Nate, I've seen one other nite; I just met Nick that night. It was late (probably towards 3AM, but I wouldn't know - I don't have a watch or a cell-phone) and the only place that would be open was in Patong, halfway up the coastline (which is only 20 minutes away). We took three scooters and followed each other into the night. Nate took the lead and actually lost us past a hill.

Halfway there, upon our descent down a hill, we saw one oncoming headlamp just fade as it drifted left at the foot of the hill. At the same time, we see another headlamp dart towards and eventually pass us. Not sure what to make of this, we continue ahead, and after dipping to the bottom of the hill, the scene unfolds. Logan and I get off the scooter to tend to a scooter that was run off the road. Nick turns around to chase down the other scooter, but to no avail.

The fallen scooter contained a Frenchman, apparently sauced from the bars. He was trapped on the scooter, pinned beside the hill. His face had a few scrapes and blood. He had a Thai companion who was already off the scooter. She appeared fine, except for some bloody knuckles. I helped the man off his scooter. In his drunken state, he claims that the other scooter knocked him off the road. We suspect he was partially right and that his altered state didn't make things better.

By this time, it was well into the 3 AM hour and pitch black in the middle of nowhere. The Frenchman's scooter was in working condition, though the headlamp was not working. It was decided that Nick would take the Frenchman and taxi him to his home. Logan would follow in the blind scooter. The Thai girl said that she called her friends and that they were going to pick her up on the side of the road. I stayed with her at the scene until this happened.

With my limited Thai-language skills and her lack of English skills, there wasn't much to talk about. By the time Logan and Nick arrived, the girl's friends failed to pick her up. Logan found out that she lives along the way to Patong, so we insisted that she come with us. This was a good thing, since no cars passed us since the incident first began.

She took us to a bar (she's a bar girl, of course... what would a twenty year old be doing with a 50-year old Frenchman?!?) where we were greeted with a hero's welcome. Ten other bar girls cheered us as we rolled into the bar. They wanted us to stay, but we had other plans. (Memo: we must go back some other time ;)

We finally arrived in Patong at 4ish and the bar, The Jungle, was jampacked with revelers in an open-air setting. Thoughts of Spring Break come to mind! Loud music and lotsa bodies shaking. We made our way thru the crowd and ran into Nate. Figuring the night was just too crazy, we found a building that had a totally different vibe. It was very mellow and allowed for actual conversation without screaming. Eventually, the time caught up with us and the Jungle anounced that it was time to close. We left the dark bar and realized that the sun was peeking thru the mountains. Outside the bar, across the street, people were washing elephants, starting a brand new day.

thoughts about New Orleans

I've been reading about what's been going on back at my old town of New Orleans. It seems that I'll never be able to go back to the same place again. It looks as though my old neighborhood is still intact; I have only seen photos of downed trees and some crushed buildings, but haven't read any reports of serious flooding. The rest of the city, though, wasn't so lucky. It was gut-wrenching to see the areas along Lake Ponchatrain. My thoughts go out to everyone in the area.