Helping the Homeless Children on Bangkok’s Sukhumvit

Rebecca and I spent a few nights in Bangkok at the end of the trip. But instead of taking in the sights and reveling in its legendary nightlife, we met up with a friend and spent an hour feeding the homeless on Bangkok’s popular Sukhumvit Road. The experience was eye-opening and better explained to me the intersection of human trafficking, organized crime and homelessness in Southeast Asia.

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Mini-Post: Visit the Unrest-aurant!

We have a few days in Bangkok before we begin the long journey back to the US. Unfortunately, this is a weird time to be here. Every time we have tried to visit Thailand on this trip, there has been civil unrest. This time, the city is under martial law, as the military successfully executed a coup d’etat two weeks back. Nothing seems to be happening on the ground, but we thought it might be wise to speak with our hostel owner about the situation in case there was something we needed to know. Her response:

“This happens all the time here. There have been like 20 coups that I can remember. It’s too bad the military has stopped the protests; I usually send guests there to get free street food!”

So next time you’re in Bangkok during some kind of uprising, don’t be afraid. Just look for the best snack cart you can find and chow down!

Life Lessons from a Sandwich

I was so excited to come to Vietnam and have bahn my, what I thought was an authentic Vietnamese sandwich. At home, it is essentially a baguette with meat, cilantro, a spicy and sweet sauce, and other sandwich ingredients like lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, carrots, and more. Every one that I’ve had in the US, at Vietnamese-American restaurants, was delicious. So it must be better in Vietnam, right? Wrong. In buying it, and setting my expectations so high, I had made a very rookie tourist mistake: seeking authenticity from a tourist experience.

An Ongoing Tally of Strange Things I’ve Eaten

A great deal of the fun of travel is eating different foods. Maybe foods you never dreamt you’d try or it would never occur to you to eat. Animal, vegetable or fruit, trying new things is, in my opinion, critical to staying happy in life. And what better way to experience another culture than to eat what they do? So here, in this entry, which I will update regularly, I will keep an ongoing list of interesting things I’ve eaten and how I liked them.

Ideas: Photography Matters, or, I Want to Make That!

Just found this blog post from America’s Test Kitchen, which by the way, is by far my FAVORITE cooking recipe site. Their recipes are flawless. And though they are a little labor intensive, trust me: it’s definitely always worth it.

But I’m writing this today because they posted a photo that literally made me go, “WOOOOOOOW.” That, in case you don’t speak Danielle, is a mix of “WOW” and “OOOH.” Which is to say, I got excited.

Now if that doesn’t make you want to EAT THOSE MUSHROOMS, then you are a samba step away from crazytown, my friend. Get it checked out. Because this is an awesome photograph.

K now I’m going back to work.