Dienstag, 2. März 2010

Photos online

Now we are back and so are plenty of fotos, raw and uncommented:
Bangkok
Chiang Mai
Koh Chang

More Stories will come here, comments and maybe gift are only available in person

Samstag, 20. Februar 2010

Food - Pt.2

Street food is everywhere, literally. Food stalls on the market, food stalls on the street.
Actually it's quite good, although I discovered my limits in pork intestines, colour: grey.

Almost a vegetarian look-a-like I mistook the most wide-spread snack as tofu on a stick.
Either in a 3x7 cm slice or in small balls, pale in colour, looking rather juciy, Thai must love steamed Tofu, I thought. Well, FAR AWAY.
Minced meat, mainly minced, then meat it is. Haven't tired it so far, as there were more attractive alternatives.

Don't worry, we will get to delicious stuff soon enough!

From an visual point of view, banana leafs play a significant role in selling food.
Either as wrapping for e.g. sticky rice (cooked with coconut milk, wrapped around mango or sweet potato) or undefinable disgust with soybean, decoration for plates. Sometimes it is used to grill stuff, like aluminium foil wrapped around potatoes. Nevertheless, my creative favourite were small boxes or ships, filled with scrambled egg. Placed on a teriaki-style grill, the omlet forms slowly and you can add shrimp, mushroom or small rings of squid. Yum.

The logical step after fast food is a food-o-mat, e.g. for instant noodle soup. For those who know, a Prosi-o-mat. In case you don't wanna be filled (and saturated with MSGs), a lot of pre-cut fruit is available as well. However, sometimes you get strange ones, too.

White, firm, a little bit like an apple, but bigger. No taste at all, unless you dip it into the additional small bag, with suguar, no suprise, and chilli, big and disgusting suprise. By lucky coincident, some tastless fruit was left over. So, in the end we could get rid of the disgusting remainders in our mouth.

Another, even more comfortable way to "eat" fruit are fresh smoothies or fruit shakes. No need to know the Thai names of the fruits, just point at the ones you want in it, a dash of salt, a lot more sugar syrup. Will it blend? Oh yes, with ice, a shot of condensed milk and your dose of vitamins is done.

Montag, 8. Februar 2010

Food - Pt.1

One of the things here I was really looking for on this trip is all the food to try out. Not that I haven't eaten Thai food yet, but the "real thing" is probably different.

The first opportunity is just in front of you, more or less on every step you take. Small street kitchens producing stronger smells than flowers. Sometimes even Bangkok's or Chiang Mai's traffic is outsmelled by stir-fry, deep-fry, normal grill or charcoal grill. Pork, chicken and beef is by far dominating and some vegetarian friends have had quite a hard time finding their food.


Well, dominating is actually something else: fish sauce. Instead of salt it is used everywhere and in everything, only the explicit vegetarian stuff comes without. If it is just veggies, that doesn't mean that there is no fish sauce. This example here is called morning glory, although it was for lunch, with fish sauce.
Pete even blamed it on the bad quality of the street kitchens, since our only restaurant until yesterday was completly vegetarian. However, The Good View proofed is theory wrong. Red Curry Prawns and Prawns with lime and chili. All with the market taste, all with fish sauce.
Mine was veal sausage and cashew salad with chili and lime, no fish sauce.
It's weired to have a salad with just nuts, but suprisingly the spice / lime works out fine. We ate Thai style anyway, all in the middle, it was just a small rearangement on the table to comfort his taste buds.

A real new thing here in Chiang Mai are the sausages. In Thai-English this would be same-same, but different. From the outside, they look like a Austrian bratwurst.

However, they are a little bit more complex in taste, since you find spicy chilli, lemon gras, koriander and other tastes within the wurst. Even the aforementioned veal sausage, as homogenic it looked, had more spices that its similar looking friend Knackwurst.

Mittwoch, 3. Februar 2010

So, los gehts!

Not even an hour to go, but no signs of nervousity either. Good news reached us today in the morning, as we can stay with a CouchSurfer in Chiang Mai. Peter has already experience with old, well traveled ladies from his apartment in Vienna, so we will see how his charm works in SE-Asia.





The last folks to say goodbye were Petra and Christl. Here our charm didn't work, so the decided to travel to the other end of the world. VEGAS BABY! YEAH.

Just for documentation: 10 EUR on red, no cheating!!!

I'm still puzzled how little luggage made it into my backpack, thinking back to 20kg in Columbia (see pic) or 17kg in Turkey. Let's see in 3 weeks, whether there was something missing or dispensable.

For sure there will be some space for presents, so post any wishes to the fairy here.

Dienstag, 2. Februar 2010

The Beginning of the Journey

Hi to everyone who is going to read this blog.

Tomorrow Moritz and me are leaving for 3 weeks to Thailand.
Kathi will join in a week.

Here we will (try to :-)) post up to date information and some nice pictures about our journey.

Since, I have not started packing yet I am a bit stressed. So I should better start now....


Peter