The Noodle Curtain

When does plain omelette cost 120 baht? Only in Bangkok

If you want an indication of how expensive it is to eat in Bangkok, try my egg test. 

 I love Thai omelettes. They’re also cheap. Street stands sell kai thiao (omelette) moo saap (with minced pork) for about 35 baht. Or you can have a plain one, with white and green onions and “stuff”, plus chillis for 30 baht. Rice is included. The rice won’t be great but it’s still quite a tasty, quick meal.

 Problem is, they don’t seem to be around much anymore on my soi. Or they come and go too early.

 I decided to skip breakfast this morning and get some important stuff done. After dealing with my embassy and the Department of Land Transportation (driver licensing), I trudged to my soi after getting off the BTS Skytrain at Phrom Pong. The DLT is conveniently located at  Bang Chak station, unlike the Thailand Department of Immigration, which I visited yesterday in Myanmar. OK, maybe it was Laos. Took hours anyway. 

 I was famished at 2 p.m. and ready to try somewhere else down my soi, where there is a very decent restaurant about 20 metres from my apartment building. But that’s way down the soi from Sukhumvit Road, the spine of the BTS system.

 A Thai omelette is what I use to test menu prices. After checking four restaurant menus on the way down the soi, omelette prices were 120, 130 and 150 baht. The 150 baht one had shrimp, which is expensive. The others were either plain or with minced pork. For the baht-inexperienced, that’s $4, $4.25 and $5 for a bloody egg. By the way, the wholesale egg price, if you buy 30 small ones, is about 4 baht each. Smallest ones too.

 The menu pictures did not show rice with them! Without asking, I’m sure rice is an extra 20 to 25 baht. So a so-called cheap restaurant breakfast in Bangkok is 140 baht or $4.60 -- at 30.5 baht to the Canadian dollar. That’s complete nonsense. And I thought another place I went to early on in my stay here at 115 baht for a Thai omelette and rice was was outrageous. By the way, three of the four restaurants were non-air-con places. 

 My soi is not what you’d call high end, what with its 20 or so massage shops and couple of dozen beer bars,  although being on the Sukhumvit Road tourist strip lends some cachet.

 My regular eatery near my building charges 70 baht plus 15 for rice. However, it’s not so nice. Most of their Thai food is not so nice, in fact, although their western food is very good. Thai staff too. As they all are, by the way.

 Maybe the expensive egg meals have better ingredients and use fresh frying oil for the price, but I wouldn’t bet on it in very case. 

 Two hours south of here in cheaper Pattaya where I lived for one year, I could get a full English breakfast for 100 to 139 baht. Yep, bacon, sausages, beans, three eggs, fried potatoes, whole wheat toast, orange juice and coffee for the same price as a couple of fried eggs and rice in Bangkok. 

 I ended up back in my local eatery. Eggs, bacon, home fries, whole wheat toast and jam, and coffee for 145 baht. 

PS Looking back on a two-year old post,  I see the current price of street omelettes has gone up, although that "foreigner-owned" restaurant, the same one I'm talking about above, has not raised the price. 

 

Breaking 17 months of blog silence

There’s no one sorrier than me about abandoning this blog in the summer of 2011 and a new, though short-lived, one I started while living in Vietnam  in 2012. That last one really hurt when I shut it down after only two months.

 But enough about that regretful silence. I will get around to explaining that in bits and pieces as the days and weeks roll along here on The Noodle Curtain. 

 Back to the present! I am living in Bangkok now, coming full circle since my arrival in the Big Smoke in the fall of 2010 -- a new member of the retiree rolls. In that three-year stretch, I lived in BKK, then Phnom Penh, Cambodia and then on to the  Mekong Delta for a few months with my then girlfriend who was from Vietnam’s Rice Basket.

 After the breakup of our business and relationship, I fled to Thailand. My apologies but I landed in Pattaya, otherwise known as Sin City. It was just easy there. Lots of good food, cheap accommodation, lots of bars and an escape from the previous stressful Vietnam campaign.

 I lost count of the number of times I considered resurrecting this blog.  But I just didn’t have the inspiration but more especially the energy to rebuild this blog. Well, soon enough the real reason I didn’t have the energy was that I fell into the hands of a very nice Thai girl. She was my first ever Thai GF -- this despite nine plus years of travelling and living in Southeast Asia. Yeah, I was that picky. Seven days a week I was running errands for my GF’s restaurant, doing this and that and generally being a Good Boy. But that ended too after about 10 months. 

 Exit. Stage Bangkok! 

 This is my third attempt to live here. It has failed. My best friends in the world live here but I can’t abide by the intense living conditions and lifestyle here. Oh, yeah, it’s bloody expensive. And just last week the Thai government increased the alcohol tax again. Cry with me . . .

 Since moving here last May, I was quite happy for a while, having needed to escape (abominable) Pattaya and the breakup of another business and personal relationship. Note to self: Never combine a new relationship with starting a new business! Wait a couple of years! It was no one’s fault really, but that’s for another time.

 Now I have no attachments except my new-this-year iMac and my old faithful 5-year-old MacBook laptop. Oh, and my 42-inch LG LCD flatscreen TV. Oops, forgot my (recently discovered) fantastic Reebok shoes. Best ever walking shoes -- I love to walk. LOL. 

 Alas, I will leave Bangkok. There are two likely candidate locations: Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City.  Or maybe I should just say, Cambodia and Vietnam. That gives me an out if I decide on neither city!  It won’t be Thailand. Thailand is getting tired of foreign residents. Well, the feeling is mutual. That’s another topic for another day.

 During these almost four months, I think I’ve been away more than I’ve been in my Bangkok apartment, spending a lot of time in Phnom Penh and, uh, Pattaya. Strange that. The farther away I went, the closer I felt to Sin City. OK, maybe it’s just that I couldn’t enjoy or relax in Bangkok. True.

 This decision has got me thinking about all the lovely possibilities of my two favoured locations, Phnom Penh or Saigon (HCMC). I’ve been getting more and more enthused week by week, which seems to have tickled awake my brain’s blogging department. I’m feeling a growing inspiration to write, whereas Thailand leaves me cold. It’s been overdone anyway. 

 I remember when I wrote Nine Dragons Village (inactive now), the creative spirit was overflowing. I also started another blog for our bar/restaurant in the Delta. Two blogs at once and I felt I could write them forever. While The Noodle Curtain lasted three years, I knew it would end because my interest in the Thailand experience had faded away, evidenced by the two-week (and rising) intervals between posts in summer, 2011. 

 Nutshell: I’m alive and well. I’m back. I’m moving. I’m fired up. 

 PS: I will continue this blog here at The Noodle Curtain for a couple of months (since I’m still in Thailand and this was a mostly Thailand blog) until I move. That’s when I hope to start a new blog over at Wordpress. 

My 7 Links at Behind the Noodle Curtain

It must be my journalism background but once a post is in the public domain, the only thing I focus on is the next one. I do not dwell on what’s past and find it hard to think of some posts that would meet the criteria of My 7 Links, a challenge to bloggers originated by travel blog Tripbase.

The goal is to “unite bloggers  (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again.”

Well, maybe I can construct something that meets the challenge thrown down to me by my very good friend Talen at Thailand, Land of Smiles. What may help me to do this is to recall my underlying theme to this blog:  remove the veils of my ignorance about Asian culture,  Southeast Asian in particular, and more particularly, Thai culture.

For me, my time here on the blog is about educating myself. If someone else finds something useful when reading a post, that’s great too. You see, you can live in this culture and yet let a lot of things escape your notice. But if you write about something, you’d better look closer at your day to day life, which will lead you to a better understanding of your next topic.  That’s exactly what this blog has helped me do, pay attention to my surroundings, whether cultural or historical or social.

It’s a great exercise in learning to really live here.

Coincidentally, this month, July 2011, is the third anniversary of Behind the Noodle Curtain. I will have more to say about my three years of self-education in a later post.

My most controversial post on Behind the Noodle Curtain

I was in a rant mood after an extended stay in Southeast Asia in the spring of 2009. But it was some months later that I wrote Female temptations in west bring predictable endings. While I tempered my remarks -- in fact, re-edited and re-published it after removing some incendiary stuff -- I still hold to every word I wrote about male-female relations in my home city of Toronto. In short, I’ve never seen so many unattached, unhappy 30-something people, both sexes. And if there are liaisons, they appear more like business relationships: he is a graphic artist, she an interior designer and both go into business together. Oh, that sounds like fun.

Most popular post

That’s easy, all you have to do is write about bar girls, eh? However, I did not write this one but wish I had. My Bangkok friend and film director Paul Spurrier wrote all the important bits in Wise advice on relationships with Thai bar girls l, a sensitive and balanced post that may have some surprises in it. That is my current No. 1 post by far.

Most beautiful post

I decided to go to farthest Isaan, Nakhon Phanom on the Mekong River after Stickman and Talen wrote positively of the place over a couple of years. And I took to it immediately and wrote Beauty comes in many forms in Nakhon Phanom. I think it has as much to do with the view into Laos across the river (see photo at top) than any one thing about the town on the Thai said. But the town has its attractions, too, being a cross-culture of Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese and Chinese.  And maybe being as far away as possible in the northeast from Bangkok also played a role. 

Most helpful post

When you’re over 50, as I am, it’s a good idea to get the “usual” blood tests such as PSA, blood sugar, cholesterol and vitamin B12. After a six-month stay in Thailand, I returned to Canada and followed my own advice. I was deficient in vitamin B12, which comes mostly from red meat, little of which I ate in Thailand. It happened again after a recent extended stay. The first post, Keep eye on your vitamin B levels if on Thai food diet, got linked on a Russian language web site and has been popular ever since. The second one, Vitamin B12 deficiency recurs after long Thailand stay, has been picked up by many.

Successful post that surprised me

My post on a cheap haircut -- The 100 baht haircut that will last a lifetime  -- managed to draw out long-time friends and admired bloggers who have never commented on my blog. LOL. Must be something about the universality of getting old and hiding that fact as best as one can.

Post that didn’t get the attention it deserved

I got a lot of comments on my lengthy post, Canadian boys need to toughen up, but none from Canadian readers or (presumptuously on my part) authorities or other interested parties. Maybe no one outside of Thailand read it.   I am surprised that this post didn’t get linked to here and there. Did not even get any objections to my slandering of Canadian men.

Post I’m most proud of

I suppose I’m most proud of this post, Make changes and the world changes with you, because I was changing for the better. I wrote it from my home city Toronto (although Bangkok is my home now). On my fourth trip to Thailand, I resolved to look under the hood of Thai culture and see what I could see and hope to take the best of it into my soul. On that 2007 trip, I think a made a few small breakthroughs that I’ve continued to feed off of. I was chilling out.


Conclusion
When I looked at the requirement for 7 example posts, I thought it would be  real challenge and frankly, not very fruitful for readers. I looked through the headings of the 290 plus posts and realized, hey, this is an interesting list. Maybe I could find 7 if I stretched. Well, I had trouble narrowing the list down to 7.

 

I'm also supposed to nominate five bloggers for this Tripbase challenge. Some of my faves have already been nominated but I am very very happy to recommend the following:

Boonies Thailand Photos  When I want to relax, be amused and just take a break from the seriousness of world, I love visiting Boonsong Somboon and his village where he and his wife tell stories through photography with often very amusing results. This Thai writer has sure hand for a  English and Thai word play that will have you chuckling and laughing out loud. There's much to be learned about Thai culture here, too.

My Thai Village Life  The Village Farang's blog, set in Chiang Rai province, is written by an American who moved to Thailand more than 30 years ago and has made a life here and achieved wedded bliss. But don't expect a view of the world through rose coloured glasses. He doesn't write often but this posts are very thoughtful about farang and Thai cultures, and sometimes provocative.  Although recently he admits he has mellowed a bit. Always worth reading, especially if you're a motorcyclist!

LTO Cambodia There are not many blogs on Cambodia that I have found but LTO Cambodia author Casey Nelson collects news bits, photo stories, opinion pieces and amusing anecdotes on life in Phnom Penh and Cambodia.

Life in Rural Thailand - Ubon Ratchathani  Author MeMock has a home in Ubon and Australia and business in Laos, as well as a young family.  His blog mixes delightful and serious family stories with local issues, history and just life in general. You will also find much amusement as his two daughters and new son grow up.

The Thai Pirate Ben Shingleton writes a wry amusing and sometimes serious blog about Thai life in Suphanburi province, often using pictures and video

 

 

 

Thai Isaan beauty is the poetry of form

 

Once you have experience of Thailand, maybe this image is the one that forms in your mind as you wish for that perfect union of Thai girl characteristics.

Or you just like a good picture of another gorgeous brown-skinned Isaan girl.

Make your picture, so to speak.

I imagined myself back in my Toronto apartment and conjured an image that might metamorphose  into a hometown scene, with a kind of "same same but different" tone to it. 

I looked at the above Thai girl's hair and well, nothing in my experience matched that shining mane of soft, perfect black hair.

Look at the straight back and narrow waist, flaring out into two slim hips, connected by an almost concave tummy. Then there's the delicacy in the way she holds the broom.

The pretty, colourful Thai skirt adds great contrast to her brown skin, topped by the bra, in a black that seems to perfectly match her midnight hair.

The skirt falls just a couple of centimetres above the floor, with her colourful sandals just peaking out.

Really, trying to describe a Thai Isaan beauty is like trying to explain the emotion of a Ferrari when it's standing still.

I'm afraid my Canadian experience draws a blank and the conjury fades to the same white blank canvas I started with.  Which only says that I simply had a lot of mundane experiences or none at all to compare.

In any case, the photo was not posed. We have Bangkok-based mystery author Dean Barrett (Kingdom of Make-Believe, Skytrain to Murder, Permanent Damage)  to thank for this beautiful work of art, and as well, blessed thanks go out to all the good Thai genes.

Khun Dean posted this on his Facebook page the other day and I just had to have it for the entertainment of my  readers -- you three know who you are!!! (Permission to republish asked and granted.)

Before you ask, there are no other related photos, I don't know who she is or where she lives exactly and any republication must be accompanied by the copyright owner's photo credit, Dean Barrett who can be also be reached at his book pages.

 

 

 

Hot season back for re-run in already sultry Bangkok

Right now in Bangkok it is 36 C that, when humidity is factored in, feels like 47!

That’s what meteorologists at the old Don Meuang airport were reporting around 4 pm.
 
I have never experienced a 47 degree humidex. That is until having just returned from a restaurant outing on Sukhumvit  soi 23 -- in the height of the day’s heat.

So, that’s 47! Wow! So that's why my cigarette spontaneously lit itself! It definitely feels hotter in the round-the-year oven that is the City of Angels.

Back home, newspapers would be filled with stories of, not just extreme weather, but just everyday weather, such as “it’s going to be a hot one this summer” or “get out yer long johns early -- this going to be a cold one”. Here, it’s hardly worth publishing: it’s either hot, hotter or hot and wet -- unless there’s a drought (bad for rice) or floods (bad for rice).

Yesterday, around 4 o’clock, it was 36 and felt like 45, according to the Weather Underground web site, which uses the  forecasts and current conditions reports from two airports and a third weather station.

Expat and Thai friends are exclaiming surprise at the recent heat. This is supposed to be the rainy season, which I have never experienced before. It’s my first rainy season in Thailand or anywhere else.

Well, the monsoon period seemed to have arrived months earlier (some surprising downpours at the end of February), then petered out (as hot season commenced for March, April and some of May), came back last month and now, looking at this weeks’ forecast, seems to be on hiatus again.

The rainy or monsoon season usually brings extremely high humidity but slightly lower temperatures. And it’s always a bit cooler after a rain, as evidenced last weekend after some evening and afternoon downpours.

As I write this, now around 7 pm local time, the temp has plunged to 43 humidex (33.9). Woohoo!

If you don’t believe it can get that hot, check out the hottie Thai university student fanning herself while waiting for the Ratchadapisek Road bus heading north in the top picture. In the middle picture,  motorcycle couriers always wear jackets, even in the 40-plus heat. In the picture below, uni students wait either for the delights of the third-class open-windowed city bus or maybe  for the slightly more expensive air-con city bus because they seem to be ignoring the a/c meter taxi.

Fans and air con are going full tilt everywhere. Last month my electricity bill soared to over 1600 baht ($50 Canadian), when the previous month of May it was only 600 baht (about $20). And I don’t use air con during the morning and most of the afternoon!

I have got used to using a fan. It’s quite adequate as for cooling, I think, as long as your body acclimatizes to tropical temperatures. Which doesn’t mean you’re immune to sweating! On the contrary, I’ve recently bought “wife beaters” for wearing under my dress and casual shirts. They’re quite effective for preventing those embarrassing wet spots across your chest and underarms, which most definitely mark you as a wimpy foreigner.

The 100 baht haircut that will last a lifetime

I walked by Easy Cut dozens of times, tucked as it is in Metro Mall, within view of my daily walk to the Asok MRT station below and the Interchange Building above.

I always thought it an odd place. I always thought Metro Mall an odd place, an underground collection of shops offering coffee, internet terminals, hair salons (what mall in Bangkok doesn’t have 19 salons!), a Family Mart and not much else.

Easy Cut is  like an express barber shop. Put 100 baht in a machine, it spits out a ticket receipt and number, hand it to the young barber and presto!, 10 minutes later you have a hair cut.
   
Ugh! I imagined cuts with lopsided sideburns, patchy trim and misaligned neck line. Then I found out a friend of mine, Khun Miken, goes there monthly. But he gets a close trim. I have long hair. (Well, I did.)

I inspected the place a number of times, seeing what kind of people get their hair cut and it seemed like the barbers did all kinds of lengths. But, really, I couldn’t imagine sitting outside the three-pod setup, in the middle of a semi-busy corridor, waiting to join the assembly line of  hair-cutting stations. It's like I canot afford anything better, like the salons across the hall.

I was spending 250-350 baht for barely acceptable cuts. Just what would 100 baht get me. If it was really bad, I’d have to stay home for a couple of weeks to let my ragged hair grow back.

Then one day, after some subtle and not-so subtle pressure to get rid of the comb-over I was charged with having (er, um, maybe . . .), I just got fed up with my screwed up hair. I thought if I paid lots of money for a cut, it might get fixed properly.

A Thai friend recommended a pricy place in Siam Paragon, figuring a cut would be about a 1000 baht to fix my mess. Yikes!  But before I could get up the courage to go to Paragon, I had a Really Bad Hair Day.

Sick, I tell ya! There were some hairs so long they hung down the side of my head, completely mismatched to its neighbours. Some stringy hair flopped on top of my bald patch. In fact, it looked like my hair was merely parked on my head.

I was outside Fortune Town IT Mall when I’d had enough of this hair disaster. I marched downstairs, where I knew there were some salons, and told them in halting Thai and Thinglish to take it all off with a Number 2. They didn’t have a Number 2. So the “stylist” proceeded to freehand trim my hair down to a couple of millimetres off the scalp.

Shock!

No there were no pictures of the clumps of hair on the salon floor. Only my SMS to Miken announcing the demise of my “Power”. That message reached him at the Londoner Brew Pub momentarily. He said I must go there right now to show it off.  When I reached the top of the exterior stairs to descend to the smoking area outside the bar entrance, four or five friends spontaneously applauded and shouted  approval. Huh?

I felt like a superstar. Little did I know my friends were, to be kind, disapproving of my alleged comb-over. People couldn’t believe I’d done it and said the hair looked so much better. I swear I detected looks of  relief, but all was forgotten when they said I looked much younger. I’m a sucker!

Anyway, this is a long story to get to Easy Cut. I went back to the Fortune Town salon one more time a month later but never liked their job. I took the bit in my mouth and went to Easy Cut next time. I’m still going there.

First, what a great location, at Asok MRT and Sukhumvit BTS interchange station. They also do very good regular haircuts, too, from what I could see of other clients.
 
As I said, you give the barber your ticket, sit in the chair, they take your glasses and put them on a tray in the cupboard and take your backpack/briefcase and lock that in the cupboard in front of you. Then they proceed very professionally.

In the end, they vacuum your head and away you go.

Apparently, according to other forum posts and web pages, Easy Cut used to be called QB House, a Japanese outfit that has dozens of shops in Hong Kong and Singapore. None is listed for Thailand now. Other reports put Easy Cut shops in big Bangkok malls. But I could not find an Easy Cut web site.

I conquered two fears: getting a brush cut after an entire life of long, at times, very long, hair and going to a 100 baht assembly-line barber.

I’d got an atrocious 80 baht cut in Pattaya last fall and regularly had 250-350 baht barely acceptable cuts in Bangkok so price is no guarantee of a good haircut in Thailand. 

PHOTO NOTES: Picture of waitress was taken (by Khun G) in Saigon a couple of years ago. I've been waiting to find an excuse to use it. And look at that field-size bald spot and what looks like a dangerously close comb-over. Side picture is of me with a fresh cut this week.

Breakfast in Bangkok: Why so bloody expensive?

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in cities other than Bangkok over the last five months and breakfast became a bit of an obsession. The day’s first meal became important to, uh, orient myself after “the night before.”

Call me delighted. I found breakfast -- English or American or Continental or Thai -- to be quite cheap. In my world, that’s a good way to start the day, cf., “the night before” and expenses incurred therein.

The following statement is not based on exhaustive research, otherwise I’d have reclaimed those 15 kilos I’ve lost over the last four years. It appears to be that the best value for expat money in Thailand or Cambodia is to be found in Pattaya.

Pattaya must have the best collection of farang breakfast offerings, in quality, portion and price.

First though let me say I’m not a big fan of English breakfast. Too much food! And too many beans, which is to say one bean is one too many when they taste like the can they came in. You just can’t warm up some beans and slop them on the plate.  And the sausages, at least those to be found in Thailand, are more herbal pate than meaty.

A sausage exception that leaps to mind can be found at the Pig & Whistle in Pattaya. Outstanding pork sausages! Outstanding breakfast! Two sizes, by the way.

Some foreigner-owned restaurants offer American breakfast (stay away from Thai American breakfast: see below). That would pretty much be the simple combo of eggs, bacon, home fried potatoes (sometimes optional) and toast. Just my style (I’m not American).

And of course, you can always grab a bowl of 20-30 baht Thai noodle soup, which is not a bad alternative to spark the day. Thing is, not all noodle soups are made equal so I found this a bit of a dice roller when sizing up my morning/afternoon choices.

I searched for “good,” “breakfast,” “bangkok” recently. Got some recommendations in the lower Sukhumvit area of BKK, where many expats and tourists gravitate either because of brand name hotels or bars and their special companionship services.

I popped up soi 4 to the huge Hanrahan’s restaurant. Gulp! 300 baht. The most expensive I had seen on a menu price list was 280 baht at the Robin Hood. I have not sampled the food at either place. If I wanted to spend $8 to $9 plus, plus, I’d have stayed in Canada. (Frankly, I can get a fantastic full-on breakfast in Toronto for the same or much less!)

I'd already spotted the Dynasty Inn on the way up soi 4, a place I had specifically gone to eat at in the past because it's inexpensive and good -- though not until recently. It was to be my fallback. Well, the fallback won since Hanrahan's was so pricy. Good breakfast, good price (Canadian bacon, eggs, toast, plus fruit for 110 plus 70 for the potatoes), good service. The 10% service charge on the check led me to ask if staff get the cash. Nope, the hotel company does! Tip money does go to staff.

Other places checked and rejected because of the price (for English breakfast equivalents) were Queen Victoria (310 bt) on soi 23, Londoner (320 baht) on Sukhumvit at soi 33, Robin Hood (280) on Sukhumvit at soi 33/1 and Dubliner at soi 22 (400 baht for full Irish brekkie). All these places are huge operations on prime locations with big staff. I imagine the costs must be much higher, especially if some foods are specially imported, so prices reflect some of that.

My two favourite breakfast spots are Silver Dollar on Washington Square (130 baht for nicely done American breakfast meal) and Soi 8 Pub (185 baht for a substantial plate of greasy glory).

For pricing contrast, take Pattaya. Best full breakfast price I saw was 85 baht. Buffets are common, where you’ll get English, American and Thai delights for 105 baht (Diana Dragon), as much as you can eat.

I wish I could remember the small breakfast price at the Pig & Whistle (soi 7) but I think it was 130 baht. Price a bit high for Pattaya but well worth it for the quality of all the items on the plate.

As for why Pattaya is inexpensive, eateries are definitely situated in cheaper shophouses but some of them are no less big than BKK leading names. I doubt the Thai staff salaries are much different between the two cities. The cost of doing business (deliveries, sourcing foods and repair works) may be cheaper in Pattaya. Certainly there’s more competition in the more compact area of Pattaya that keeps prices down. I also think the tourists who throng the beach city fit in a lower average income level, which would tend to restrict restaurateurs to non-gouging practices.

But it seems to me that little of this explains the 100-300 baht differential between pricier Bangkok and reasonable Pattaya -- double to four times Pattaya menu prices. Maybe the real reason is that BKK businesses are largely dealing with the kind of Bangkok expats and business visitors who work at a higher income point and therefore can handily pay the freight. So those of us not boasting a surplus of money will just have to deal with it -- by shopping carefully. Which is exactly what Thai folks do.

This devine Thai omlette on rice is only 20 baht on the street.

And this "nutritious" breakfast on a train trip is far more preferable to this below . . .

Here's the kind of  "American breakfast" (in Roi-Et, in this case) you will find in many a Thai rural city.  What is described as "sausage" looks and tastes like weiners, and sandwich ham is as tasteless as it looks, not to mention the mass production egg. And then there's the cloying, sweet salad dressing common on salads that  almost makes me, uh, you know . . .

Chilly Canadian spring a shock to my Bangkok blood

The sun has reappeared in central Canada! This is news to this home returnee because for the first 18 days of my visit, I saw the sun once!

We’ve had virtually nothing but straight days of cloud, overcast and rain. And it was cold, most  nights dipping to low single digits Celsius. Daytime highs were barely in the teens, running mostly 10 to 12 -- a good 4 to 5 degrees off the 2010 temperatures.

I wore four layers of clothing -- every day. I had to borrow an insulated vest and never gave it back during the first 3 weeks.  The three short-sleeve dress shirts and three hot weather pull-on shirts never left my suitcase. I wore my heavy rainproof shoes everyday. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring  my Bangkok umbrella, mostly because I had been using it as the rains started early in Thailand, really early.

When I arrived in mid-April, I stepped out into the damp, cold of the airport and was struck by snowflakes. Snow!?!?!? Argh! I was freezing. It was only 2 or 3 degrees. I just came from Bangkok where it was 34C and three days previous, from eight days in Phnom Penh where  it was 35-37 degrees (photo: steamy Phnom Penh street where even the moto rider has sun awning). I've gotten used to the heat, or at least my blood has. I wore a jacket when BKK temps fell to 17 overnight.

People are saying it’s been the worst Toronto spring in memory. Most here believe we’ll just go straight from winter to summer! That may be true.

This weekend -- I’m writing this on Sunday -- it’s been sunny all day both days. You don’t realize how much that means to body and mind until you step out onto the deck of your friend’s family home, with coffee and cigs in hand and feel those truly warm beams that (finally) reach below the skin surface. From there the comforting signals go to the brain and make everything all right.

In April 2010, the mean daytime maximum temperature was 16.2 and mean overnight low was 10.5. This year those numbers were: 11.8 and 6.9 -- 4.4 degree and 3.6 degree differences respectively. The mean daily temperature for April 2010 was 10.5C, this year 6.9C -- an almost 4 degree difference over the 30-day month.

Back in Bangkok, temps are roughly in the low 30s, some days hitting mid-30s as this is the hot season.

The early part of the winter was actually quite cool, relatively speaking, with daytime temps hovering in the 28-30 range occasionally. Sometimes, the overnight lows dipped to 18 or so. We got some really hot days, 35-37, but there have been few of those.

However, the rainy season seems to be intruding early. I can remember some heavy rains in late February. March occasionally would bring rain showers. I see now for April and May forecasts of thunder showers.

But I miss the heat and yes, even the humidity.  I’ll be back in the warm womb of Bangkok in a week. 

Bangkok magician puts tricks in your hands

Before you enter the door of the Londoner Brew Pub on soi 33, look up to the ceiling where you will see the calling card of magician Michel Potts. There's a playing card  (three actually, as of April 2011) seemingly "lying" on the ceiling 4 metres above, where he whipped it one night while demonstrating one of his slick routines.

Under that ceiling, he has entertained on demand  many an awestruck pub goer.  During the Londoner’s 2-for-1 night one March evening, he was at it again. He was easy to spot, handling his beloved cards with an ease and nimbleness that immediately caught your eye.

People are drawn to playing cards. But Michel adds the magic. I’ve seen the wide-eyed reaction of his audience many times and on this night, it went much the same: two European girls are rapt in attention as Michel effortlessly shifts seemingly solid elastic bands “through” one girl’s hands and the elastic she’s apparently holding. When he does it for the third and fourth times, they are speechless and have that “I can’t believe my eyes” look.

I remember him performing this trick to my girlfriend at the time. After doing it two or three times, she screams and falls through my hands. It’s that Thai girl trick of falling to the Thai sitting position on her heels -- for lack of a chair. It’s done so rapidly it’s as though she’d fainted. Phew!

Michel later showed a visiting Englishman and several friends his four aces trick, which he had just added to his repertoire. No matter how many times he showed two aces face-up and two face-down, right in your face, they always ended up face down. A simple trick yet always a mind-boggler.

Michel doesn’t take the easy path. You see, he does all his tricks right in front of your  face, without shadow and distance hiding the workings. His sleight of hand is damned invisible when dealing with elastic bands, sponge balls and his trademark routines with playing cards.

The easy-going American expat retiree moved to Thailand about a year and a half ago after meeting a Thai lady online. She’s a professional working for the national government in environmental matters. To keep busy, he resumed his magical practice and study, a lifelong love. He’s been polishing his tricks for that entire time and hooking up with other Thai and foreign magicians.

His entertaining personality and winning technique have gathered a following. His little pub demos have won him invitations (not to mention free drinks and tips) to entertain at private functions. This weekend, for instance, he will participate in a language school fundraiser for Japanese tsunami relief. The event will be held at 2-3:30 p.m. March 26, at Siam Tower, 16th floor, between Siam Centre and Siam Discovery. Last year, he gave his time and artistry for a fundraiser for a Bangkok abused women's shelter.

Otherwise, you can frequently find him Wednesday nights at the Londoner. Look for the knot of people with the stunned looks on their faces. Michel is the one with the big (Me? What did I do?) smile.

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Disclosure: Michel Potts is a very good friend of mine, which means on the surface I'm hardly a neutral observer. But I wouldn't have written this if he weren't as highly talented as he is.

Get used to biting your tongue in Bangkok

There are things that happen in Thailand that just defy belief. Mostly, your only choice is to bite your tongue. Or make an amusing (and instructive) story out of it among your foreigner friends.

The resident expats have seen most of it before. But tourists have not. So with this in mind, don’t be surprised when . . . in Bangkok . . .

Two or three Thai friends approach a door. The first one opens it and lets it fall closed right in the face of his or her friend. I kid you not. I’ve been this many times. Few seem to accept the idea that you could hold the door open to your following friend. Of course, in Canada, the custom is to hold the door open for the following person, friend or stranger.

Hold or not hold? I sometimes hold the door open. It’s such an ingrained habit. Still, there are times I don’t, probably depending on what happened last time I held the door open. Frequently, following Thais don’t even look at you, never mind thank you. Don’t think it even enters their mind that someone did them a favour.

Another way to look at the issue is,  there’s about 15 million folks  crisscrossing paths in the City of Angels each day. Our co-operative customs don't seem to exist.

A friend picked up his custom made shirts the other day. The four shirts were all long-sleeves. He had ordered two short-sleeved versions. What can you do?

I know all the ways to order drinks “straight” or “neat” in Thai. “Mai sai naam keng” and “pio pio,” sometimes reinforced by “mai soda, mai Coke, mai ice.” After going through the list, I am asked “on the rocks?” I reply negatively. I get a whisky on the rocks. Sometimes, as if to take pity on someone who drinks whisky straight, the waitress brings a water and ice. No one can believe someone drinks whisky straight so they refuse to “hear” it when taking the order. The crap quality of local whisky might explain the reluctance to allow anyone to drink it without pop or soda or juice. Have to agree.

Every neighbourhood has motorcycle taxis (the guys in dayglow vests) to take you from one end of your soi (side street) to the other or the transit system or local mall or other feature. It’s a 15-minute walk to the MRT subway for me, but sometimes I’m in a hurry so I grab a “motocy taxi.” There are three parallel routes to Pra Ram 9  station. One is behind and under the Fortune IT Mall and is the quickest path but only open in operating hours; a second is pockmarked, potholed, broken, full of mismatched asphalt patches, narrow but it is slightly shorter, maybe by 30 metres than No. 3. The last is smooth as a baby’s butt and wider. Perfect, in fact. Two riders have taken me on that route; saves the machinery and spine. But when I suggested the route a couple of times, I got waved off by a firm head shake. It must be said though that a moto taxi is the surest way to get where you are going in your local area. And inexpensive. And a touch dangerous!

I usually order an Americano coffee at my fave caffeine joint at Fortune Town IT Mall. Last week, this being the (mostly) hot season, decided to have one on ice. They brought me out a giant 24-ounce cup and I said it wasn’t mine. The clerk said ice Americano. Oh, oh. It was, but it would be no good after 3-5 minutes of being diluted by that much ice in the 30+ night temps. So the next time I said, holding a big empty cup, “only put ice here,” halfway up the cup. Understood. The longer-lasting Americano arrives and it is still filled with ice. “Americano ron”, which means “hot” in Thai, from now on!

In a city with hugely intense taxi competition and cheap fares, it’s hard to believe you can be refused by a driver. I’ve been refused my destination many times. First, I always take into consideration the timing and what is likely to be going on toward my home or other destination. Yet, day or night, I’ve been rejected. All friends tell the same story. Some drivers can’t believe others say no, when a fare is a fare and you’re taking in income instead of cruising the streets burning gas or diesel and other consumables. However, they might take a tourist on a flat rate basis. Not cheap! Oh, and never ever take a stationary taxi parked in front of your hotel, mall, public event, or nightlife or bar area. You will pay five to ten times the meter rate. Walk away from the area and catch a moving taxi. Two exceptions are  the taxi lineup outside transit stations and in mall parking lots.

Five sparkling new east-end BTS Skytrain stations, fully ready to operate,  remain closed and locked since last year when they could have begun operation and saved tens of thousands of commuters the daily headache of taking non-air-con buses into the farthest operating station at On Nut. Why? A city official in charge of opening bids for the signalling and other systems feared that his forthcoming retirement might be adversely affected if something were to go wrong.  So he refused to begin the bidding project, which should have begun in late 2008, and put the entire 5.2 km system opening on hold, according to a knowledgeable poster on Thaivisa.com. 

I had a shockingly good espresso in a Korat shop one evening near our hotel. So next morning I headed to the shop at 5 minutes to opening. The shop clerks were standing at the open door. By now it’s 1 or 2 minutes to 10. I asked politely as possible for an espresso. One pointed to the sign on the open door and turned it around to show me the shop is still closed and refused to make an espresso. Huh? I walked on incredulously to the next shop, which was just opening and the owner was happy to get the espresso machine running. Difference: employee clerks versus owner.

Many low to mid-range Thai hotels will offer free American breakfast. Menu will say eggs, sausage and toast. Before you say Cool!, let me warn you those sausages are no better than hotdogs and look like them (photo, below, of real thing). You rarely get bacon, the eggs will be pre-fried and piled in a pan, the “sausages” will be floating in some salty warm brine and the toast will be the worst kind of white bread. Worth little more than 30 baht overall. It’s no deal.

 

Continuing on the food theme, never, ever try to ask for a modification of a menu item. I remember, although this was in Vietnam, I wanted just a plain hamburger in a restaurant that catered to foreigners. So on a bacon and cheese burger, I said I didn't want the bacon and cheese. When I got the order, the buns were empty. Turns out it was strictly a bacon and cheese with no "burger." Yikes.

So this comes across as a rather pissy post. Well, it's because all these things happen/ed in Bangkok and continue to occur. Just fair warning to those who don't see it coming. Well, I've been in a pissy mood lately. Maybe it's one of those phases an expat goes through. Thing is, I only get in these moods when I'm in Bangkok. I didn't get these moods before. Could be a pattern relationship there. More investigation required.