Shocking news...in Thailand I heard more Westlife on the radio than 1D! In fact, I didn't hear a single snippet of the 1D boys in my entire 19 days while I heard Westlife 3 times!
I did spot one lonely T-shirt in the distance at a market but, to be fair, K-Pop (Music from South Korea, like Psy) is very popular here and listened to much more than western acts so that may explain it....still trying to work out the popularity of Westlife though :-S
This is a photo of one of the most delicious streets in the world. The buildings aren't made from biscuit and the pavements aren't marshmallow but this road in Thong Lo (Pronounced "Tong-Low") is home to some of the best street food in Bangkok.
Anywhere you travel, street food is always worth checking out because it's always cheap and made fresh. The hostel I am staying in is on this street and I look forward to every dinner time with great excitement as I walk past each brightly-lit stall and choose something on offer as my stomach rumbles excitedly.
Tonight I had a delicious meal of crispy pork with rice (£1.00). The rice was steamed perfectly and covered with a delicious brown-coloured sauce while the many pieces of pork melted in my mouth while I crunched through the perfectly crisp crackling too. For pudding Nads and I tucked into some warm, sweet sticky-rice and mango (£1.20). The mango was so fresh and juicy and the thick coconut milk poured over the top added to the sweetness. I have read that this stall sells one of the best versions of this dish in the whole of Thailand, it's hard to disagree.
Some of the other mouth-watering dishes from this street include pieces of barbequed chicken sticks to dip in a peanut satay sauce from just 50p, gut busting fried dough balls topped with sesame seeds and served with condensed milk and Thai custard dips at only £1.00 for a bagful and traditional Pad Thai, a meal of yummy noodles mixed with fresh shrimp, herbs and fried egg priced at just at just under £1.50!
I might leave this street weighing a bit more than when I entered it but with so much amazing food to sample in such a short time who can blame me?
If New Zealand and Australia were about the wildlife then Thailand has most definitely been about the food. I went on my cooking course, ate a lot of different street food and while I certainly haven't been brave enough to try everything I have eaten insects (One thing I managed to avoid was durian fruit...it smells so much like vomit that it's banned on public transport!)!
It was also been great spending time with Reuben and Bex again. Meeting up in Sydney was fun but to experience a festival like Songkran with them over a good few days was fantastic. Thailand is also the first country on the trip where the first language doesn't use the same alphabet as the UK so it was great to have friends from home to experience this with.
I experienced a lot of Asian culture here too and as Buddhism plays a big part in many peoples lives there were so many temples. It was amazing to see how colourful each one was and the amount of time and effort that had gone in to decorating each one with colourful tiles, paint and precious materials like pearl and gold. It really has been a very colourful country and I would love to come back again one day.
For now though, next stop Cambodia!
In The Photo: This is quite literally one of the coolest ice-creams ever. In another food adventure I found a stall in a Bangkok mall that made ice-cream by taking the flavour liquid you want and adding liquid nitrogen! Liquid nitrogen is a chemical that is so cold it BOILS at -196°c and in the process freezes anything it touches! It was one of the smoothest ice-creams I've ever had.
While waiting for our bus back to Bangkok, my friend Reuben purchased a yoghurt snack for his girlfriend, Bex. He bought it thinking it was tropical flavour but it turns out that although it could perhaps be described as 'exotic' it certainly wasn't tropical. What you can see below is the unusually flavoured... sweetcorn and kidney bean flavoured yoghurt!
In other, food related news Nads and I went out for a pizza and saw a knife next to a fork. You might not think this is very unusual at all (Pretty standard probably) but it was literally the first knife either of us had seen in Asia! We have seen plenty of chopsticks, plenty of spoons and plenty of forks but not one knife anywhere since Australia.
Songkran is easily the most fun I've ever had at a New Years celebration, the whole festival is a days long water fight on the streets of Thailand!
Absolutely everyone gets involved, armed with water pistols or a bucket, and the sole aim is to get as many people as wet as possible! I have soaked and been soaked by; businessmen, little children, police, backpackers and anybody else who's about. The most amazing thing is that nobody gets annoyed, everybody is smiling and laughing with one another (Even when it's ice cold water that takes your breath away!). It's a really happy celebration.
Did You Know?: Getting wet in Songkran symbolises washing away the previous year and welcoming in the new rainy season for Thailand.
Here's a photo of me tucking into a local delicacy, a cricket! I was a little bit nervous before trying it but it actually tasted ok and I ate a second. It had a crunch to it that was no different to a potato crisp and the vendor selling them dusted them with some chilli powder and sprayed on a bit of fish sauce so they were quite tasty, if a little bit too fishy for my own tastes.
They lady that sold them did have a good laugh at the group of us that had brought them though. We were all taking photos of us trying them but eating insects here is no more unusual than seeing someone eating a packet of crisps in the UK.
Did You Know?: They say that if the world's population keeps growing so quickly it won't be many years before we are all eating insects. This is because they take up much less room than cattle etc., there are so many of them and they are actually really good for you (They contain a lot of protein).
Tomorrow marks the official start of Thailand's New Year celebrations, or Songkran as it known here. Traditionally Thailand used a different calendar to what we use and the New Year according to the old calendar is still celebrated to this day.
To join in with the celebrations Nads and I are travelling up to Chaing Mai on a night bus tomorrow with our friends Reuben and Becky from uni. It should take 8-12hrs to make the journey but it is supposed to be the top place in Thailand to celebrate.
In Bangkok things have already started with places like family businesses and post offices closing until the 17th. We visited Wat Pho today and saw the world's largest reclining Buddha which is 45m long (You can see that it wouldn't all fit in one photo!) and has a smile that's 5m across! With Songkran approaching, the Wat Pho site was crammed full of stalls selling foods and souvenirs and there was even a traditional Thai band playing music, it feels very exciting to be in Thailand at this time of year.
Look what I spotted on the way out of a train station! Since spotting this one I've seen a couple more plus some 'Boots' chemists and a 'Body Shop'. Could almost be like home.
Currently trying to decide whether to go up to Chaing Mai or down south to the beaches after sampling a bit of Songkram this weekend (Will blog about that in the coming days) but, first, off to visit some friends from home. They're travelling longer than Nads and I but our trips overlap slightly, we last saw them in Sydney so it will be good to catch up.
Today Nads and I delved into the world of Thai cooking by going on a cookery course with a Thai lady called Angsana. We started off visiting a market to pick up all the fresh ingredients and there was so much happening, lots of colours and smells.
After that, we went to Angsana's house to prepare our food. Before we got there we had to pick three different meals from her generations-old family cookbook and we went for a chicken massaman curry and two noodle meals; pat mii gatii and the famous pad thai. It was great learning to cook authentic Thai food with someone who was actually Thai and you can see me pounding chillies ready for the curry in the photo.
I learnt lots too and before today I didn't know that if you have phad thai outside Thailand and the noodles are a reddish colour it means they have used ketchup or too much chilli paste and that means it's not been done in the authentic Thai way (The noodles should be a brownish colour because of an ingredient called tamarind). Now I can look very knowledgable next time I'm out for a Thai at home and you can too!
Did You Know?: Most people think that they should use chopsticks when eating rice meals but in Thailand that isn't the case. Thai people only use chopsticks with noodles and actually use a spoon to eat rice. Angsana said it makes Thai people laugh to see tourists thinking they're doing the proper thing when they're struggling to pick up the rice with their chopsticks!
This is the largest, solid gold Buddha on the planet. It measures over 4 metres tall, more than 3 metres across and it weighs an impressive at 5.5 tonnes!
It's over 700 years old and it's said to be worth £28,500,000 but they only discovered it was made of solid gold in 1955! It turns out it was totally covered in plaster to hide it's value from those invading Thailand at the time and it was only after it was moved from it's original home to this newer one in Bangkok that the plaster cracked and the discovery was made.
Ever since I was little I've always had a slight obsession with having to try flavours of brands from home that aren't actually available at home. I remember just having to buy a coke flavoured Calippo I saw for sale on my Y6 trip to Belgium, for example. I don't know why, maybe I just want to see if what we're missing out on is delicious or disgusting!
Here are two things I had for my lunch that I picked up from a supermarket; a fruity fizzy drink and some seaweed flavoured crisps. The drink, apart from being very green, was just 'alright'. It was pretty much a fizzy banana drink and it's no loss to you guys at home but the crisps were actually pretty tasty...possibly one for the British supermarket shelves.
Challenge: Even though they are written in Thai, can you work out what the brands are from their logos?
Forget those boring paper train tickets you normally get, why not have plastic counters instead? These are what you're given when you pay your fare in the machines near our hostel in Bangkok (We got blue ones back in Kuala Lumpur too).
Today I set an alarm and got up early to meet some Buddhist monks. The monks live a very peaceful and quiet life in monastries and don't do 'mortal' activities like cooking as they are trying to seek enlightenment. Each each morning they will walk around their village to be given food by the local people, this is called Tak Bart.
Around 95% of Thai people are Buddhist and believe that if you treat people nicely you will go to a better place when you die. As monks are very important and respected people, giving them food so they don't go hungry is a very good deed indeed.
To thank us for our offerings of curry, rice, fruit and water the monks blessed us in Thai and it was very humbling to see such respected people that seemed to be at so much peace.
(Normally it's not considered 'proper' to take a photo of Buddhist monks without their permission, but here they had given their permission to everyone at the resort making offerings)
My feet got punched, my body got twisted and if I was pressed any harder I think my face would have popped through the other side of the pillow. That was my Thai massage experience and I chose the 'soft' option out of 'soft', 'medium' and 'hard'! I can only guess that the hardest option sees you getting put back together after being twisted into the shape of a human slinky.
However, I have to say that although it was firm, really firm, it wasn't ever painful. It was actually really good, it relaxed me and cured the bad back I've had for weeks too. Thai massage is supposed to be a 'must-do' while in the country and I have to say I agree.
