My Plate or Yours?

So Long Saigon, Hello Bangkok

Everyone in Saigon still calls it "Saigon." So much more melodic and fitting than the clunky "Ho Chi Minh City."

You can really tell the French had a hand in this place. Wide boulevards, lots of green space -- an open and pretty city filled incongruously with billions and billions of crazed and overloaded motorbikes. (Really, it feels like billions.) Quite an experience.

We are tired at the point of the trip so we spent our time in the city shopping more than learning. By now we are almost numb to the details of the war, if that is possible. We saw Reunification Hall, heard the story from a South Vietnamese perspective of the American effort to disentangle itself from the conflict it had long supported, and learned about the
double whammy of becoming a suddenly socialist economy while suffering the withdrawal of the huge numbers of dollars the American soldiers spent on a daily basis. It was devastating. I am fascinated by the fact that these guys don't hate us.

We did do some excellent shopping here (doing our bit to put American dollars back into the economy. 😏) and had a couple of great meals with good new friends we made on the cruise.

Two nights ago we went to the Deck, just out of the central city, and sat by the Saigon River sheltered (mostly) from the rain. Had some great lemongrass-crusted tofu and fabulous spicy eggplant (!) on steamed rice. OUTSTANDING lime trickle cake with mascarpone. Why have I never heard of trickle cake before??

Last night we went around the corner of the Sheraton to a truly fantastic place called Xu. Kind of an old meets new Vietnam cuisine it was just delicious -- probably the best meal of the whole trip.

I started with first class vegetable spring rolls -- crisp and intriguingly spiced with a wonderful shredded vegetable salad. Jerry had a trio of spring rolls -- I only tasted the prawns, but yum! For an entree I had chili prawns on papaya pomelo salad -- an even better version of the Thai dish I had a couple of weeks ago. Sweet, citrusy and very spicy. Jer had pork belly braised in coconut milk (seriously!) and our friend Phyllis had chunks of sea bass skewered on lemongrass. All fab. Desert was tiny bites for a dollar or so served in Chinese spoons. Skipped the durian tiramisu.

At the end the maître d' came by with some small cubes of puffed rice that had been cooled in liquid nitrogen. He gave one to Jerry, had him warm it briefly in his hands and pop it into his mouth and chew. Immediately what appeared to be smoke poured out his nostrils -- he looked like a totally startled dragon. We all tried it and it was a hoot. Not at all tasty but very fun.

Said goodbye to our cruise friends last night (funny how you can connect with people over the course of a couple of weeks!) and got up early this morning for our flight to Bangkok.

Arrived starving. Had lunch at a small, homely cafe around the corner from the Sheraton we are staying at on the river. Honestly, this little place was nothing special or fancy and the food was LOVELY. We split some corn fritters that were crunchy and corny and not greasy at all. I had a spicy prawn and pomelo salad that was amazing. Sticky sweet and hot as fire, full of fresh herbs and tangy citrus. How do they do that? I have had a version of that salad four times now on this trip (counting last night) -- each exquisite in its own way. Where am I going to get pomelos at home?

Jerry had a really good green papaya salad with prawns, and then we had curry -- mussamen beef for him, green tofu for me. It should come as a surprise to no one that we waddled back to the hotel and crashed. Thinking dinner might be something VERY light from room service.

One more day left of this amazing trip.

Monsoon

Another delayed post -- this from July 20.

Yesterday was a "sea day" in Vietnam and a tummy ache day in my cabin, so not much new to report. Today was a treat, however. Up early and on the tender at 8:15, to catch a rickshaw (bicycle driven this time) for a tour around xxx. It's a small town, a little prosperous.

The central market was starting to bustle. Vendors shoved carts piled high with exotic fruits and vegetables into place -- spiky red rambutan, purple passion fruit, and the strange and wonderful dragon fruit. The funky odor of the heavily armored durian, stacked on its own separate cart, chased us down the streets.

People went about their business but the small children had already learned that tourists mean money. They lined the streets to wave madly as we went by, calling out sing-song "hel-los, hel-los" as we passed.

We visited a family-owned silk factory -- 90 looms clacking away and sweat-shiny workers manning four at a time, moving back and forth managing spindles and thread. All the silk was snowy white, thick and heavy and woven with exquisite patterns. After it is woven it is dyed, dipped up to 30 times to achieve the rich black color the Vietnamese prefer.

Fun to watch, better to shop. Bought more scarves and a silk/cotton dress ($15!) and some trinkets.

Hopped back on the rickshaws and went flying off again just as the sky started to go black and the wind turned to gusts. Seriously, one minute warm sunny morning and the next I am yelling "Jerry, keep that silk dry!" Our drivers tried to outrace it but it came down in torrents and when they finally ducked into a roadside garage I was soaked to the skin.

It was great. My driver and I were laughing ourselves silly and I splashed through the mud to find Jerry, equally drenched, in the garage next door.
Fortunately, the silk was safe and dry.

From there to a mat factory -- more looms but this time weaving reeds into the mats the Vietnamese sleep on because mattresses are too hot and damp in the tropical heat. It's piecework but the workers there average about a dollar an hour, and they work every day of the week.

That was the "commercial" part of the tour. From there we walked into the more rural part of the village. The rain meant mud was everywhere, but that's a way of life there during the rainy season. At least, it is until the whole place floods and they take to their boats. In the meantime they grow fields of okra, sesame, jicama, and corn. Electric cables run to most houses, fueling lights and the TV sets (some roofs, even thatched ones, sported satellite dishes.). Big barrels near each house holds the family's supply of fermenting fish sauce, brown, bubbly and stinking.

And everywhere kids, tiny, gorgeous kids, skipping along, following us to our final destination, the well-kept house of a grandmotherly looking 84 year old whose apple-cheeked appearance made it hard to believe she was one of the early members of the Viet Cong. The kids lined up, boys and girls, and waited for "gifts" -- pencils, cheap toys and jewelry that the visitors brought.

Then a slog back through the mud to the small boat that took us back to our big boat. Another window opened on a way of life a world away.

Snapshots from Cambodia

[Another delayed post. Spotty internet. Going to try this without pix.]

From our perch in the bow of the boat we can hear the shriek of the anchor and feel the deep shudder of the vessel as they crank up for our departure from Phnom Penh. We make no further stops on land today; we will clear customs in Vietnam by mid-afternoon. I promised our editor to put in a full day on the textbook but I am carving out some blogging time this morning first.

This visit to Cambodia has gone by in a flash, much more a cultural exchange than relaxing vacation -- at once intellectually stimulating and emotionally challenging. We have gone from heart warming and uplifting to soul destroying in the course of a single day. I have barely had time to process anything. Here are some impressions, culinary and otherwise, that I'll be chewing over for some time to come.

A morning blessing by Buddhist monks in a temple glowing with pinks and turquoises. I wanted to move right in but apparently women have cooties -- our touch keeps the monks from achieving nirvana. Still, the chanting was lovely and the littlest monk was about six. Adorable. Blessed indeed.

A walk around a village, one of several we visited, truly seeing how the rural people here live their lives. At first it felt voyeuristic but the villages we visited -- most getting various kinds of developmental assistance -- were used to it. Babies stared at us with huge eyes from their mothers' hips, tiny kids ran around us showing off. A small boy chased after a friend, threatening him with an unhappy frog, clutched tightly in his hand. Just like home only so, so different.

A welcome into a family house (no more than a handful of us at a time so we wouldn't break through the bamboo floor, slatted to allow mosquito-deterring smoke to waft up from below at night.)

A peek at women being taught to extract the most gorgeous blue dyes from indigo plants. In another village they spun silk from the boiled cocoons of caterpillars (the word "silkworm" sounds much cuter than they are) and wove it into stunning fabrics.

A visit to a rural primary school. Some of the cutest kids I have ever seen in one of the most sweltering classrooms imaginable. The second-graders were precious, the older ones precocious, all eager to show off heavily accented English and to sing us songs. One class sang their ABCs and then a little girl asked Jerry if we knew a song. All the cruise passengers in our group of about 30 (of whom a crazy number are teachers) broke into a spirited round of Old MacDonald Had a Farm. (Wish we had video.) The babies sang "If You Are Happy and You Know It" to much clapping of hands and stamping of feet. It was indeed a happy, happy time, if amazingly hot and steamy. The weather broke on the way back to the boat and we rode a rickshaw through the deluge.

A hair-raising tuk tuk ride through an equally wet Phnom Penh that night, where the rain didn't discourage the colorful nightlife. The National Palace lit up and dazzling "All that for one person," noted our driver. Indeed.

Dinner at a beautiful restaurant, Malis, that accomplished a minor architectural miracle -- a dry and comfortable dinner outside despite the showers. A sheltered perimeter to an open garden let us enjoy the waterfalls and greenery and the rain-fresh air while we ate extraordinary Khmer food. The mix of herbs in my papaya salad (mint and cilantro, said the waiter, but unfamiliar to my taste buds) was strong but interesting, a roasted eggplant salad had a great sweet chili sauce (but could have used more of it), Jerry's banana leaf and beef salad was superb and a friend's scallops with green peppercorns was delicious -- sweet and mellow until the little green devils exploded with peppery flavor. I followed the appetizers with grilled prawns on more eggplant, dressed with a mild green curry. Tasty but maybe too mild? Jerry had a goby fish baked in salt and served with a tangy tamarind sauce (necessary because the fish too was super mild.) Lynn had steamed prawns that were overpowering in their garlickiness -- the one really off note in otherwise intriguing food. Not sure I really loved the flavor palate, but the meal as a whole was just delightful. Plus, excellent coconut icecream!

An agonizing decision process the next morning that ended with me deciding to skip the visit to the prison and the Killing Fields. I know the torture and killing happened, I am not in denial or avoidance about the evil of it, I just am not equipped to hear the details without falling into an emotional pit that I am not sure I can climb out of. So.

A midday tuk tuk ride (no less harrowing than the night before) to the Central Market for a sensory overload of a different sort. The sweaty heat and the fetid smell of durian were overpowering, but I did emerge with some very cheap and cool "Ali Baba pants" (as the vendors called them) with elephants on them and a breezy rayon shift (more elephants.).

Dinner last night in the tired but legendary Foreign Correspondents Club, at an open table looking over the river (and a wall crawling with tiny geckos.). The food had some unexpected highlights (lovely spring rolls, a spicy hearts of palm and watercress salad with grilled calamari, refreshing lime and mango ice cream) and the tuk tuk ride back to the boat was, once again, an act of faith.

A sad awakening to the double headlines of the Malaysian flight shot down and the escalation in Gaza. What are we coming to, a friend wondered on Facebook?

Nowhere we haven't been before, I am afraid.

Mind, Boggled

This trip is such a kaleidoscope of texture and color and emotion that I can't get my thoughts to settle down long enough to write about it.

There have been awe-inspiring moments. Two days ago we rose early for a predawn departure to see the sun come up behind Angkor Wat. It was breathtakingly lovely, and we managed our trek to the top of the temple before the heat and the crowds got crazy.

Many, many more of the moments have been heart-wrenching in a different way. The violent history of this area has kept parts of it almost in the dark ages. As we drove through the countryside from Siem Reap to our riverboat in Kampong Cham we were jolted and bounced over muddy, unpaved roads. Outside the window of our air-conditioned coach people worked desperately hard in the steamy heat with the agricultural technology of centuries past to sustain lives that looked like the next monsoon would flatten them. The roads were lined with swampy mud, broken down homes, kids, animals, piles of filth and debris.

In the next couple of days we will be in Phnom Penh. Day after tomorrow we visit the Killing Fields but to tell the truth the grim reminders of the havoc and tragedy of the reign of the Khmer Rouge are everywhere in this country, even as the people struggle to move past them.

The depth of depravity we humans are capable of brings me to my knees, even as the eternal hope and will to survive of the human spirit moves me beyond words.

It's hard to process, especially from a luxury riverboat where our two room suite is larger than many people's homes, and the food, even if it doesn't live up to its "gourmet" billing, is plentiful.

Our cruise line, AmaWaterways, has a job on its hands, catering to western tourists who expect luxe first world standards in a region where many of the people paid to provide them have never, ever experienced them. Our cruise director keeps issuing pleas to his flock (us) -- remember that these people are only a couple of decades from soul-destroying war and they are doing the best they can to catch up.

For the most part our fellow travelers hear exactly what he is saying. They are great people -- interesting, compassionate, curious, smart, adventuresome and fun. There are some though who can't stop whining about the shortcomings of the service ("Why isn't the cold bottled water provided to us at temples iced, for Pete's sake?") I am surprised the crew hasn't thrown some of them overboard.

Overall I think the AmaWaterways cruise/tour experience is terrific. Super comfortable facilities. First rate tour leaders. The excursions are carefully designed and every effort is made to educate and entertain. My only complaint, ironically, is the food, which is why I haven't blogged about it lately. Before we left a friend said of her own trip to Vietnam that it was a perfect place to be both a vegetarian and a foodie. Not my experience, and especially not on this boat where the vegetarian options are more western than Asian. Last night's was vegetable lasagna but I talked them into stir-fried bok choy on fried rice. I love Vietnamese food and was looking forward to that aspect of the trip so I am keeping my mind open. Maybe it will improve and maybe it is what it will be.

My personal rebellion against arranged timetables and scheduled activities means I am on a near empty boat at the moment while my fellow passengers, including my husband, are off to see how the timber industry works and visit another temple. I am struggling with textbook work, fighting a dodgy internet connection and enjoying the solitude. And feeling pretty damn lucky.

The Inestimable Value of a Good Tour Guide (or Two!)

[Delayed post, sorry. Written July 11]

No Internet on the refurbished junk we are on so I can't look up the origin of this kind of wooden boat that we spent the night on in Ha Long Bay, but I am pretty sure the average passenger experience wasn't air conditioned cabins with marble baths and jetted tubs. So I wouldn't chalk this up to authentic experiences, but it has been a pretty interesting side trip in unexpected ways.

The first half of yesterday was spent in a bus, transferring our small crowd of 47 from Hanoi to this increasingly upscale Vietnamese holiday spot. The bay itself is lovely -- something like 2000 rocky islands spike out of the water like so many craggy dragons teeth in desperate need of braces. I imagine it is terribly perilous in a fog.

It is a beautiful place, but there are many, many "luxury junks" out here and rich Vietnamese have been building condos and small mansions in the town where the boats launch. All the wealth is really incongruous with some of the hard scrabble areas we passed through. I hope it trickles down. I know a two dollar tip here is received with real gratitude, which makes me feel both glad and guilty.

And that brings me to the really fascinating part of the day. Our guide and our tour manager are both excellent and neither deserves to have his name mangled by me as I am about to do, but let's call them Tang and Son. Sounds like a family business, but Son's name really is Son. It's Tang that I am not sure about. (Ed note: turns out it is Thanh. I think.)

Thanh was born in 1975, Son is somewhat younger. Their English is perfect and easy to understand (though he's never been out of the country, Son's accent is a fun-sounding hybrid of deep south US and Australian.). They are both incredibly well read and have heads full of data. Listening to them is an education and a joy.

It wasn't so much what was in their heads that impressed me yesterday though, as what was in their hearts. Terribly trite, sorry, but both these young guys exposed their feelings and emotions in an effort to help us understand what it was like growing up in post-war Vietnam and it was remarkable and touching.

In both cases it was the story of boys who grew up poor, sometimes desperately poor, and frequently hungry, in the command economy of socialist Vietnam. Their circumstances differed but Son remembers being a hungry child running his finger inside the rim of the jar of cooking lard for a forbidden treat ("it was a beautiful thing") and Thanh's extended family lived crammed on top of each other in a couple of rooms in a neighborhood in old Hanoi where everyone else lived the same way.

There is no question that these kids had tough, tough lives. The US had bombed and abandoned them and they were pawns in a larger battle between China and the (then) Soviet Union. Space, money, food, and education were at a premium. And yet Son says that knowing no different at the time, they were sure they lived in the best country in the world. Thanh says the other families that lived cheek by jowl with his became his family too: cherished aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers. They did not have easy times but they didn't live in constant dissatisfaction with what they didn't have.

And then Vietnam decided that the command economy wasn't working and they loosened the rules against independent business and property ownership. Bill Clinton opened trade relations and international money flowed in. Work began to pay off and people could buy homes and open a shop below, and have a little more than they did before. And they saved and their kids went to college and they got better jobs and accumulated more stuff and more space to out it. There was a new world of possibility and growth and improved quality of life.

It worked for Thanh. He is smart, educated, well-dressed, very good at what he does. His circumstances have clearly improved and he now lives in another part of the city, but when he tells his story his voice is raw with the loss of the cramped but well-loved urban village he grew up in.

It worked for Son who is in charge of keeping this whole tour/cruise running smoothly. Sharp, personable, good looking in the business suit he puts on to greet us, he is doing well too. He's proud of his family story -- his father went to college after he was injured in the war and was able to send his kids to college too. He is a comfortable member of Vietnam's growing middle class, but he cherishes his memory of a stolen moment with the family lard supply and his conviction that he lived in the richest country ever.

Both men told us where they'd come from so we would know their country a little more deeply than the average tourist who oohs and ahhs at gorgeous scenery and ancient temples and sleeps easy at night in high thread count sheets.

I am incredibly grateful to both of them. This is a complex and wonderful country where everything is in flux and they helped me see it through their eyes as well as my own. It's been a truly amazing tour so far.

What? This is a food blog? Oh, right. Well as far as the food on the boat in Ha Long Bay, no one was too impressed, although their efforts to accommodate the vegetarian in their midst were endearing (if peculiar.) Jerry called it "junk food" -- not so far off. But it will get better.

Rain storm out the window now. Lovely! Time to pack and get out. We fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia, this evening. More adventure ahead.

Civilized, Scmivilized

Today we head out to Ha Long Bay. A little late in reporting yesterday's food adventures because truth to tell, there weren't any.

Got up way early (hello World Cup, on at 3 am Hanoi time) and had breakfast with the slow-rising tour group. Breakfast was fine. Jer had another fantastic pho and I had miso soup and a bunch of pastry and fruit. Not my finest moment. Jet lag jumbles my hunger signals.

When the group of 47 finally got its act together we left en masse, walking, to a water puppet show. On the way I remembered that I have hated group activities since kindergarten and once we were there I discovered that I also hate water puppet shows. The musicians singing and playing instruments in the shadows with reflections of light on their faces were truly beautiful. Wooden toys bobbing around in a kind of dank pool, not so much. Other people enjoyed it though, so just put me in the curmudgeon column and let's move on.

We left the puppet theater (thank you God!) and got into rickshaws. Every single one of the 47 of us into 47 rickshaws. The better to pretend I was not in a group activity, I hopped into the first one and away we went. Keep in mind it is excruciatingly hot and humid in Hanoi right now. I tried to pretend some poor guy wasn't propelling my weight through the insanely crowded streets and sat back for the ride.

The main method of transport in these parts is motorbike. Whole families will hop aboard a single bike and go roaring off, and really, the whole thing has a random crazy feel. Our tour manager says crosswalks are just there for symbolic purposes and that's about right. The way you cross the street is to step out and walk at a steady pace, slow enough that all the motorbikes have time to take evasive action and miss you. Barely.

In this sense, the rickshaws are like pedestrians, with wheels. They just go on their way and bikes whiz by in all directions and somehow no one hits you.

It was kind of fun. In fact, I didn't know it at the time but it was the highpoint of my day. Which says something.

Our destination was the former prison nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton where John McCain spent something like 6 years of his life. Before that it was a French prison for the incarceration, torture and murder of Vietnamese who didn't like the French taking over and exploiting their country. There were small rooms that held 300 dysentery-wracked prisoners at a time, shackled at the ankles to hard benches. A guillotine (imported!) graced another room, one of several, apparently.

I know history is never neutral and everyone who tells it has an agenda of sorts. I don't care. That human beings did these things to each other and continue to do them today makes a mockery of the idea that all our fancy ideas of democracy and our symphonies and old masters and iPhones and haute cuisine make us "civilized." We are til we aren't, and I am afraid that's as good as we get.

So I was in a pretty frivolous mood after that. Skipped the last few rooms of the prison. Was so hot I was almost nauseous and felt ashamed of my inclination to whine about it given the agony those walls had seen. Got back to my air conditioned coach, drove to my air conditioned 5 star hotel, and took a nap.

Woke up feeling worse. Went to our tour briefing and decided to skip the afternoon trip to view the outside of Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, fun as that sounded. Jer and I took off solo (yay, no group!) to explore the old town. It was fascinating. Road devoted exclusively to shoe shops, automobile repairs, clothing or food stores, all crammed higgledy piggledy into a warren of ancient streets. Motorbikes zipping everywhere. Noise bouncing off every surface and the constant, overwhelming humid heat.

It was fascinating but I was hot to the edge of nausea. When we finally made it back to the hotel I sat in a tub of cold water until my body temp regulated, then crawled into bed. That was about 4 pm. I slept through our dinner reservations, through turn-down service, through everything until Jer got up at 3 am again, to watch the World Cup.

I feel fine now, except for a man's-inhumanity-to-man hangover. Bags have to be outside our room in an hour. Time to hop into the shower.

Better days ahead. Ciao.

Hanoi

Should be asleep but the World Cup fan in the room thought getting up at 3 am to watch the game was a good idea. Plus, jet lag.

Arrived Hanoi last night. Easy peasy flight from Bangkok. Since it was late and I knew we'd be in unfamiliar territory I booked a hotel limo. They met us in style. Black 7 series BMW with a bar and some of the best macarons ever. Normally I soak up luxury like a sponge, but this felt very, very odd.

Being driven to the lovely Sofitel Metropole Hotel, which is where Amawaterways, our river cruise line, puts us up, was a study in contrasts and cognitive dissonance. Western comfort, luxe treatment and an unmistakeable French air warred with signs of acute poverty out my window, an entire generation escaping imminent death on motor scooters, and my high school memories of refusing to say the pledge because I so deeply disapproved of our government's actions over here.

[And it's one, two three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam. And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates. Ain't got time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die.]

And as I sank into the hot bath water in our beautiful room, after a simple room service meal of a sandwich for me and extraordinary beef pho for Jerry, I was haunted by this young man's piercing eyes. He never came home -- gone within a year of this picture being taken. War is indeed hell. How do we pretend to wipe the slate clean and carry on?

Tomorrow is a full day tour, including such landmarks of the "American War" as the Hanoi Hilton. Don't know why I am up in the middle of the night. I am going to need all my inner resources for this

Dinner by the River

Sitting in the Bangkok airport, WAY too early for our flight to Hanoi. They won't even let us check in for another hour and a half and the business lounge is located on the far side of security. So, to entertain myself I can count all the bug bites on my legs that are starting to itch, or blog last night's dinner. Blogging it is!

We ate at the hotel's gorgeous Thai restaurant, Thara Thong -- all dark polished wood and soft colorful cushions on the floor. Had we sat inside, perhaps I'd have fewer bug bites to count today.

But, the outside was beyond lovely, and worth a scratch or two (or 24.) The patio is alongside the Chao Phraya river and the air was like the softest whisper on our skin. The lights played across the water, and it was gorgeous and peaceful, barring the occasional discordant note (like the live Thai band blaring out a heavily accented version of "YMCA" on a floating dinner cruise while dozens of tipsy diners bopped around and managed not to fall overboard.). One of the many good things about dining riverside is that those discordant notes, when they appear, float right on by.

The food was classic Thai, beautifully, if a tad too cautiously prepared. Possibly that was my fault, as the memory of having my head explode with the heat of the afternoon's Som Tom was still fresh in my mind, and I asked for medium spicy.

But our first course, Mieng Kam, was spectacular. Simple, but perfect. It's an array of ingredients in tiny dishes -- peanuts, thin-skinned lime chopped fine, ginger, shallot, dried shrimp and toasted coconut. You take a tiny bit of each and roll them up in a cha-plu leaf with some dark sauce, sweet and savory, that seemed to have tamarind in it, though I wouldn't swear to it. Wrap the whole thing up and pop it into your mouth at once.

It's a mouthful of Thailand. Sweet, sour, tart, salty, every good and amazing flavor exploding in your mouth with crunch and texture. I've had a version of this in the States, but usually with lettuce -- never with an actual cha-plu leaf that adds an herby, chewy bite to the thing. It's brilliant. Just brilliant.

Which made it okay that the Som Tom was a little flat, both chili-wise and lime-wise. Good but missing the magic.

The other salad we had was amazing, though. I wish I had better pictures but it was so dark out there the menus came with little lamps clipped on to them. It was stunning: a pomelo (a green, sweet grapefruit type of citrus), shredded up so that the little cells of juice stayed whole, mixed with coconut and chilies, stuffed back into the rind and topped with prawns. What a fabulous combination of sour, sweet, and savory. But that's what's so great about Thai food.

After that we were pretty full. Jer had stir fried prawns with black pepper which were great and I had fried corn cakes, mostly because I make them often at home and wanted to see how theirs were. (In a nutshell, they were better. Fatter, crispier, and cornier. Back to the drawing board.)

I finished with coconut ice cream with fruit salad and Jerry had an egg custard in a pumpkin shell that sounds odd, but think pumpkin pie.

And because we were staying right there in the hotel, all we had to do was stumble upstairs to our room. I didn't even notice the bug bites til morning.

Bangkok Food Tour!

Food tours are a brilliant idea -- there is no better way to get a window into how other people live than to see what's on their plates. Often we are do-it-yourself food tourists, hanging out in grocery stores and markets, but sometimes it's a bit more organized than that. On our trip to Israel last November we asked our guide to plan around food and it was one of the top trips of our lives. Food matters.

Because Thailand has such a phenomenal cuisine, food tours abound. I picked Bangkok Food Tours on the basis of its Trip Advisor reviews and it was a smart plan. We did a three and a half hour tour of the Bangrak area -- full of tastes and restaurants I would not have tried on my own.

First a word about Bangkok. We have been here once before -- for a three day weekend (we were young and had more energy then, what can I say?) We didn't have time to do much but hit the tourist highlights, but what really stuck with us was the utter sensory bombardment of the city.

Noise, everywhere, bouncing off the buildings and the pavement. Chatter and friendly faces, some anxious to help and some anxious to make a buck off our disorientation. Speed -- scooters, motor bikes, buses whizzing by close enough to ruffle the hair on your arms.

And smells! Bangkok is all about smells. Some of them are terrible. The city is on a river and there are damp and fetid places. People live on the river and their plumbing, well, best not to inquire.

But on top of the squalid there is the savory and the mix is disconcerting, at best. People cook EVERYWHERE in Bangkok. There are tables piled high with strange and exotic fruits and every street is dotted with grills and fryers. Running water and refrigeration are rare sights but the scent of grilling food is so tantalizing you almost don't care. Almost.

Usually the food stands are supplemented by a small city of food carts, but Monday is street cleaning day (really?) and the carts have to stay home.

Our food tour was NOT street food, for which I was grateful. We have a long trip ahead of us and sick is not how I want to start. But there was plenty to focus on. Most came from small bites in sit-down restaurants and cafés. Everywhere we went was mom and pop and almost everything was tiny and sweltering.

So in this kaleidoscope of noise, motion, and smell, what did we eat?
First stop a Chinese Thai place -- sample: roast duck. The sauce was truly amazing, full of five spices. I had rice noodles with bamboo shoots, which have quite a distinctive taste when divorced from the can we get them in. Good, not great, but an A for effort in accommodating the veg among them.

Next was a Muslim Thai-Indian place. The carnivores had roti (Indian flatbread) stuffed with chicken and eaten with a cucumber salad. I had curried soy beans on chunks of roti. Not a grain of rice in sight there, and what a delight. The roti absorbed the great sauce and the chewy texture was fabulous. I am totally making curry this way when I get home.

Next stop was across the river to an Isan (northern) Thai restaurant. We sampled tom som, a spicy green papaya salad that is one of my all time favorites. It's shredded green papaya that has a terrific supple but crunchy texture, carrots, green beans, and tomatoes with herbs, peanuts, chilies, lots of line and fish sauce. Normally it has those tiny dried shrimp on it that the Thais use as a salty condiment/seasoning. This stuff was fire engine hot -- blew the top of my head right off. I loved it. There were also fried chicken nuggets (no, not "chicken nuggets" but the bite-sized bits of chicken that the words used to refer to before McD's got ahold of them) buried in a drizzled nest of fried lemongrass. I am told it was swell.

From there back across the river to an air conditioned shop (cue sounds of angels singing) that served us wonderful, orange colored Thai iced tea that almost tasted like a milkshake. Also buns filled with a green-colored egg custard (if I understood correctly, the green comes from a kind of palm leaves.). Yummy, but, well, green. While we were there we also snacked on fried bananas, bought off the street. I figured the boiling oil would kill off anything I was worried about ingesting. They were super but more like fry than fruit. Crunchy and sweet. Went well with the tea.

Final stop was a huge and popular restaurant where we had a room to ourselves upstairs. Thai green curry, spicy but sweet with coconut milk on rice was wonderful but we were pretty full by then. Not too full for the homemade coconut sorbet, however. The perfect, cool refreshing end to a morning food marathon.

And on that note we hopped a cab back to the hotel. Got to our room about 1:30 and I thought a short nap before a dip in the pool would be lovely. Set my alarm for 3 and woke up at 6, just in time for a bath before dinner.

And that, my friends, is another post.

One Night in Bangkok

On the flight into Bangkok from Tokyo, having food fantasies.

Food memories are funny things -- like dreams they sometimes have a blazing intensity that can make real life feel like it's the ephemeral shadow.

One of my best food memories of all time was many years ago, arriving in Bangkok in the middle of the night, sleepless from an agonizing series of flights crunched into claustrophobic hell and as hungry as a person can be whose fear of flying has kept her from eating for 24 hours. We got to our hotel after endless waiting for a transfer and when we arrived I was a crazy mix of nauseous from lack of sleep and ravenous from lack of food. The room service menu was filled with American food I recognized and didn't want and strange Thai food that tantalized my foodie brain even as my stomach said "nooooo!

But "when in Thailand," and all that. I ordered a vegetarian dish that arrived full of fat rice noodles, gorgeous vegetables and delicate herbs and spice. There was a small dish of pungent fish sauce served on the side with slices of teensy chilies floating benignly on the surface. I had done enough Thai cooking to know that beyond that funky fish sauce smell there is a world of umami, so I held my nose and mixed it in, chilies and all.

And wowie kazowie!! I can still taste how wonderful that dish was, some fifteen years later. I've eaten some mighty fine Thai food since then but I've never been able to replicate whatever made it so fabulous.

I know that the chances of lightening striking twice are slim (a phrase I use with caution as I can see lightening is in fact striking somewhere outside my airplane window as I write) and the conditions are somewhat different, but my reptile brain is still convinced that what happened once could happen again.

I am tired, though not as exhausted as I was 15 years ago. Age and experience have taught me that upgrading to business class is worth its weight in gold. I am still claustrophobic but at least I can enjoy my panic and anxiety in a flat bed. Plus, drugs. So I have slept. But I AM starving, and it's the middle of the Asian night, even if not my own, and I can see Bangkok out my window.

The stars are aligned. So I've skipped both meals on this 6 hour flight from Tokyo. Room service, here I come.

2 hrs later:

And here were are. The taxi ride was quick and scam-free. Check-in was painless. The view out our window is stunning -- at night the darkness makes the river a picture of sparkling mystery.

And the room service was good. Not magical, not over-the-moon, but good. We had prawn laksa, a Malaysian noodle curry soup with coconut milk (and shrimp), and pad Thai, wrapped in an "egg nest," complete with tiny dish with fish sauce and chilies. It was delightful, but it doesn't match my memory. Which just goes to prove that melancholy truth, that you can't go home again. Not even just for dinner.

Early morning Bangkok food tour. Got to get some sleep!

'night!!