Categories
in thailand

perpendicular parking

on our first full day in bangkok, our friend joy drove us to a mall (i’ll tell you why later!). we were driving around the parking lot looking for a spot and noticed something weird: most of the cars were parked in rows like here, but there were other cars parked perpendicularly in front of them! how did that work? well, we were about to find out:

so, step by step:

– move perpendicular car out of the way
– park your own car in the spot you’ve found
– move perpendicular car back to where it was before

whoa! turns out, all the perpendicular cars are parked out of gear, so that they can be easily moved back and forth. it felt weird for us to move other people’s cars, and i’m not 100% convinced that it actually saves space. plus if you’re parking alone, it’s quite a bit more work… but still pretty cool! :D

Categories
in thailand traveling

riding a scooter

“seriously ana… did you do nothing but eat in thailand?!”

pretty much — but let’s give it a break and talk about something else for a change. in between meals, temple-hopping and other shenanigans, i discovered my love for riding on the back of a scooter!

these were practically the only way to cheaply move around the island (€5/day, gas not included), so we decided to give a try, and lo and behold, it was a blast. the first rides were scary, sure, holding onto the boy for dear life… but the strangeness of it quickly gave way to delight as we zoomed around with our friends. after a few rides, i could already navigate with one hand while taking pictures with the other! :D here’s a 10 second clip from the gopro:

the village roads are chaotic, with people and traffic coming in from all sides, but my favourites were the small roads between the coconut plantations, where water buffaloes grazed and birds did their thing.

the videos do a poor work of showing the pure joy that was riding then, and we found ourselves making excuses to ride just a bit more each day. i even (briefly) considered getting an electric vespa for our trips to the butcher or into town back home… but the traffic on the 125 is still way too scary for me to venture out like that. well, who knows — maybe someday! :)

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foooood in thailand

unicorn ice-cream and other delights

i think sampling different ice-cream flavours is one of the requirements of traveling in a hot country. there were lots of them to try in thailand, so of course we had to test them all. for science!

the trio above was a mixed bag. taro is okayish, its squashy/jelly bits are definitely fun to bite into, but i found the flavour a bit underwhelming. durian is… well, durian. “tastes like fruity onions”, said our friend G who complained that he still had the flavour in his mouth hours later! if this had been jackfruit instead, i would have been all over that.

and the unicornetto was a thing of beauty. i had no idea this thing even existed in the world, but what a brilliant stroke of marketing! the boy wasn’t impressed with the flavour, but who cares about that when an ice-cream is (probably) made of unicorns and looks like this?

not pictured in my crap photo: the red wafer and the “strawberry jelly”-like core. it’s like it was made by (for?) teenage girls and i cannot stop looking at it… whoa. :D

moving on, one boring ice-cream on top, and one more exciting “black sticky rice with taro” option below, which was great. they put bits of chewy black rice on it, that popped up as you made your way through the ice-cream. i approve!

my favorite was this corn and coconut milk creation though:

putting coconut in anything is practically a guarantee that i will like it, but i don’t understand why corn is not more commonly used in desserts everywhere. it has three things going for it: nice color for food, naturally sweet (but not too much) and it has a nice bite to it. i vote for more corn! :)

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foooood in thailand

all the pocky!

we ate a bunch of pocky (the coated japanese sticks) while in thailand, so many that by the end of the trip i was starting to get a bit sick of them… but thoroughly schooled on all the different flavours available. there are so many of them!

i think that’s part of what makes it fun, as it feels like there’s always something new to try. plus, they’re bite-sized and coated with just enough sweetness that one stick is sometimes just the right dose. here are some of my favourites:

choco-banana and mango had such irresistibly cute drawings of monkeys and elephants on the package. although… what is the elephant doing on the mango package? :|

the matcha flavoured pocky look a bit more serious, but this was probably my favourite flavour. i don’t think i’ve ever met a matcha-something i didn’t like :D

and the original is always nice. in hindsight, i wish we had discovered “glicode” (glico is the name of the japanese brand that makes pocky) before we had left thailand though — we could have had fun playing with it!

Categories
in thailand video

walking in thailand

for a change of pace (ah!), here’s a short video of thailand’s grounds and floors. cliché as pictures of feet have become, i always notice how sidewalks look like in different countries, and thailand has a nice variety of them.

this trip was my first time using a borrowed gopro and i loved the convenience and versatility of that little camera — i only wish i had remembered to clean the lens more often! also, i’ve been watching meteor garden for a while now, and the soundtrack seems to be permanently stuck in my head… sigh!