Food Focussed Final Flit Through Thailand

Though it was no great pleasure to swap the clear air of Paro for the smog of Bangkok, we were craving something different to eat after eight days of identical inoffensive buffets and confusing breakfasts.
A good job then that we were staying in the Metropolitan hotel which houses the Nahm restaurant (number 8 in Asia, number 22 in the world), which was rather good.

Grilled pork cheek with smoky tomato sauce, and Tamarind Prawns, in case you're asking. 

Rice Custard with banana fritters.  The custard has sweetcorn bobbing about in it. 

At the other end of the spectrum, we were in a large mall down the road to watch Deadpool (in 4D -which means you're in a chair which rocks hard enough to detach your retinas every time someone gets shot) where I found a Costa. For the Americans in the audience: Costa is a British coffee shop chain and the main competitor to Starbucks in the UK.  Anyhoo, I thought I needed some home-cooked mediocrity so I bought a ham and cheese panini.  It was every bit as disappointing as at home. I miss you, UK. 

Isn't it glorious?

Ramping things up a notch, we also went to Gaggan (Number 1 in Asia, Number 10 in the world), which offers a tasting menu with an Indian bent, but on the molecular gastronomy side of things. It was a 23-course journey through delicious weirdness.

Dewdrop - Chan's description : "It was a little bubble filled with a liquid that exploded on your tongue. It tasted fruity/bubblegummy."

Chocolate Chilli bomb, Yogurt Explosion, Edible Plastic Spiced nuts

Salli Boti

Uncooked Curry Cookie

Idly Sanbhar

Papadum Uni and Indian Tamago

Foie Gras Sundae

This next one was pretty cool: it's just called 'Charcoal', and it's a mystery meat, coated in bamboo charcoal.  You have to guess what it is, as they don't tell you beforehand.  The waiter had me convinced it was cat for far too long.  He told me eventually but I'll not spoil it for Googlers. 

Probably not cat

Magic Mushroom -  Chan's Description: "The log dish is called magic mushroom and it's made out of forest truffles and stuffed with a spicy mushroom cream. Around it is edible dirt which was crunchy spicy stuff"

This part below is called Red Matcha: a tea ceremony of tomatoes.  We were given a bowl with starfruit and tomatoes, with an oil-based dressing.  While we ate those, the chef made up a tomato-based consomme in the Japanese tea-making fashion, which was added to the oils left in the bottom of our bowls.

This next part was called 'A Story of fish called Kin-Medali', which has four "acts".  I didn't say it wasn't ridiculously pretentious.

Act 1 : Oil Poached fish with gunpowder

Act 2 : Fish head with Rice Kedigree

Act 3 - Eggplant smoked with Fish Smoke

Act 4 - Fish Bone Jelly with Orange

Rangoli - Tandoori Lamb with two types of potato formed into those thin patterns

This is called "I Want My Curry!" - which was an excellent no-fucking-around Chicken Tikka Masala. 

Mithai Ki Maki - you can't eat the twigs but you can eat the flowers. 

#Gohgan - Sake ice Cream, Miso Caramel Maple Leaf with snow made from grapes.

Roots of love - essentially a rose-candied coriander root.  Don't eat the rock.

So that was an experience.  It's not everyone's thing, but it entertained and fed us for an evening in new and demented ways.

One last tuk tuk journey

We flew from Bangkok to Krabi, a seaside town just over the bay from Phuket. There we stayed at the Tubkaak Resort to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary.  Nine years.  She'd have gotten less for aggravated burglary.  To take the edge off we had a room with a private pool and outside bath. Any illusion we are backpacking with the gap yah crowd might now have been dispelled.   The spa there was really nice too; we had a couple of oily relaxing massages to make up for those assaults on our persons in Chiang Rai.

It was hellish

We had our anniversary meal down on the beach.  I'm not sure about the Thai sitting-on-a-cushion thing, but I made do with the degradation.  I did choose the cushion option while booking it -for authenticity- but I am more accustomed to character-building discomfort with cold gruel eaten in a damp room, as is the tradition of my people.

On a different day there, we had lessons in Thai cooking from the resort's executive chef. Specifically, we learned how to make: Duck Red Curry with Pineapple and Lychee;  Beef Panaeng Curry; and the obligatory Phad Thai.  He gave me the recipes for the pastes and sauces too, so that'll be me when I get home, scurrying around the "exotic ingredients" aisle in Waitrose so that I can pay twenty quid for some kafir lime leaves.

Just like home

The colour differences were down to spiciness - the dark one was mine, after the chef  gave me extra-big spoonfuls of curry paste while cackling maniacally. 

It turned out pretty well.  What I'm supposed to do with the palm frond garnish is anyone's guess, however. 

Breaking our number one rule, we went on a group tour to see James Bond Island - Scaramanga's hideout in the 70's Bond film "The Man with the Golden Gun".  It's got its own name, but not even the locals care what it is.   The tour was a godawful experience and the island itself was a crowded tacky mess. Here's a couple of photos so you don't have to get them yourself:

Countless American girls in bikinis were getting their friends to take pictures of them walking out of the water like Ursula Andress, even though that's the wrong fucking film.  I am getting better at haggling though, as I talked one of the tat vendors down on a small gaudy tuk-tuk ornament to a price just below armed mugging. I'm so street.

And then we were done in Thailand. I preferred the frontier north to the bustling of Bangkok, but everywhere we went we found smiling people and something else to astonish or bemuse. It's been an adventure.

Now, off to Malaysia.

White Temple, Black House

We got off the bus in Chiang Rai and did what we did last time, which was show the address of our accommodation to one of the songthaew drivers lurking about.  This time it transpired that this was an imperfect means to get there as his songthaew was something of a tuk-tuk hybrid, our resort was 30 km up a hill and the driver patently had no clue where he was going.  After half an hour of him pulling over and asking passers-by, and me impatiently pointing at the GPS blob showing us and the marker showing our destination on my phone (which is never any use as they invariably have forgotten to bring their reading glasses) we arrived at our destination.  The lady at the resort looked bewildered: "You should take taxi" she said.  I agreed that I should take taxi.

 We were staying  at the Bura resort, which is a family-owned collection of villas up in the hills, outside of Chiang Rai.

As you can imagine, it was hellish.

We had a couple of nights there. The combined bus and tuk-tuk experience left Chan wanting to chill for our first evening, with the intention of then getting around a couple of local curiosities the following day.  We asked the staff there whether we could rent a taxi to take us around and wait for us in between sites, but they said one of their people would do it for less.   So the following morning we set out to see two different shades of fucked up: Wat Rong Khun (The White Temple) and Bann Dam (The Black House).

Wat Rong Khun was a traditional Buddhist temple that had fallen into disrepair. A local artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, took ownership of the building and imposed his own rather individual vision on it.  He says that it is his gift to Buddha and therefore it is his guarantee of eternal life.  If you say so.   Rather than just one building, it is a series of structures depicting the evils and man and the path to heaven.  Looking over the bridge entryway you'll see grasping hands and tortured faces representing the desires that should be overcome on this metaphorical journey to salvation.

I'm not sure what this guy is for.  He looks like Turkish Iron Man.

I couldn't take pictures inside the main building, but the walls are full of apocalyptic imagery - nuclear bombs, oil pumps, fire, etc. - as well as various contemporary western icons like Freddie Kruger, The Terminator, Neo from the Matrix, Harry Potter, some of the robots from the (*spit*) Star Wars prequels, Hello Kitty and at least one Minion.  I think the message got a bit muddled in there.

Oh and there are numerous scary heads hanging from trees featuring characters from horror films, Batman and an angry na'vi from Avatar.  I don't understand either.

On the other side of the city lives Baan Dam, known also as the Black House Museum.  It is the work of another artist, Thawan Duchanee, who is a student of Chalermchai Kositpipat (the guy from a minute ago, if you're not paying attention).  If the White Temple was an artistic representation of heaven, this is a counterpart vision of hell.

Again, it is a series of buildings. only this time they are black, in the Thai temple architecture style, and adorned with decorations and furnishing made from dead animals - bones, skin, teeth etc.  There is a full elephant skeleton and a bear skin turned into a bed.  Apparently everything died of its own accord though, so we don't have to feel bad about anything.

And some of it was just a bit odd. Well, more so.

It's a blessing and a curse

Smash means mash

And with that weirdness experienced, we caught a flight the following day back to Bangkok, where we stayed overnight at the airport hotel to catch a ridiculously early flight to Bhutan.  Which, don't say it too loud, is where we are now. So I've actually caught up with reality.  We're coming back to Thailand after Bhutan for a couple of weeks more, so we're not done here yet.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: In Chiang Rai haben wir ein paar sehr seltsame Museen besucht.