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| Dear Food Lover |
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We know that food
is good for you,
but amazed how many spas now promote tom yum paste as a beauty aid. |
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This spicy tart soup is a mainstay in Thai cooking, like sukiyaki to the Japanese. But we can't imagine slathering its Japanese counterpart on the skin. By contrast, the essential oils of lemon grass are antibacterial, kaffir lime detoxifies the body from within plus exfoliates skin. But don't try this with the commercial paste -- its chilies cause a rash. We've also remarked on the fragrant similarity to rustic Lao saunas, which are redolent of mountain herbs. |
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 Our just-completed Tastings '08 food tour to Thailand took the group to Ploen, a 25-year old family-run seafood eatery in Bangkok's thriving Ladprao. In its newly renovated courtyard we feasted on the city's best tom yum goong, redolent of citronella, spicy with chili, salty with fish sauce and mellow with coconut milk, all bathing succulent jumbo prawns. Pure ambrosia. For Robert's recipe, click here, from his book Thai Cooking, recently republished by Periplus in the US and Asia. RECIPE CLICK HERE |
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• Cambodia Skyrockets |
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| Tourism is booming in Cambodia, with a 20% jump last year to over 2 million. Expect 3 million by 2010, making its greatest temples even more difficult to view in solitude. Visit NOW, before it changes beyond recognition. It's truly a gobsmaking experience, right up there with the Taj Mahal, Parthenon, and Great Pyramids. (Matter of fact, Angkor Wat contains as many stones as Cheops' Egyptian tomb!) Join our upcoming Mekong Epicure food tour, Dec 29-Jan12, and spend New Year's Eve along the Mekong in Pakse in southern Laos, amidst the glory of the Khmer Empire, visit Phnom Penh's heritage deco-era architecture, and an optional side trip to Vietnam's delta. http://www.globetrottinggourmet.com/go/tours/2008newYears/index.htm |
| Tourism brings Cambodia over $1 billion annually and supports a quarter million jobs. We help spread the wealth, by donating to local training projects, such as sustainable agriculture and hotel training school scholarships. Proceeds from our next tour go to the Stay Another Day project in Laos, while Khmer money goes to Shinta Mani, Sala Bai and Mith Samlanh -- the latter simply translated as "Friends." It's our way to say thank you to communities welcoming us to their lands. For more about Globetrotting Gourmet® donations CLICK HERE> |
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• BOOKS |
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| Although arachnophobic, we love these two books about the Khmer kitchen: from Spiders to Water Lilies Creative Cooking with Friends, and The Best of Friends The Restaurant Phnom Penh Cambodia, both published by worthy cause Friends International in Cambodia. www.streetfriends.org If you have the budget for only one, choose Spiders. |
Friends is a restaurant training program for at-risk youth and families in Phnom Penh, and a new sister-eatery Makphet just opened in Vientiane, Laos. We were in Phnom Penh in May to celebrate the re-opening of Romdeng, Friends' second restaruant in that city. Its charming new location is a converted colonial villa. But we couldn't stomach appetizer fried tarantula kebabs dipped in Kampot pepper sauce! Our upcoming Mekong Epicure tour over the New Year season lunches here, plus at Les Enfants Souris, an NGO restaurant training program rescuing children from plying their trade sorting through a garbage dump. |
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Some reports indicate royal Cambodian cuisine was more refined than in neighboring Siam, but considering the ubiquitous pungency of local prahok, or smelly fermented fish, we have reservations. For further reading, The Cuisine of Cambodia, by Nusara Thaitawat is still the definitive volume on the country, and The Elepahant Walk Cookbook by Longteine De Monteiro and Katherine Neustadt. The latter is recipes from a Boston eatery of the same name, and consequently, more adapted to a Western shopping palate. |
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| 25 degree Celsius When last in Singapore, visited the brand new 25 degree Celsius, run by Sally Tsai and Karin Chan. www.25degreec.com Located on Keong Saik Road in that city's Chinatown district, this street has always been one of our favorites haunts, despite is former ill repute. (In its former heyday, for brothels, but no more.) Today it houses trendy boutique hotels behind picturesque shop house facades, and progressively more restaurants -- so it's worth the detour. 25 degree Celsius is named after the optimum room temperature for cooking ingredients, and is Singapore's unique cookbook-only store, featuring local Asian editions you won't find on Amazon. |
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Also a small café cum restaurant and test kitchen. (Each month they profile a recipe from a new cookbook.) Perfect for book signings and cooking demos, so when there, we autographed the latest re-release of Robert's
Thai Cooking , from Periplus. |
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• BURMA DONTATIONS |
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| The Kalayw-Tawya monastery is home to some 2000 orphans. It costs the monastery $800 per day to feed and house its student lodgers, and while numbers dropped precipitously last October, they are rising again. We mention this to remind everyone that if we had boycotted tourism here, the monastery would have done without our latest donation. |
Donations to victims of Cyclone Nargis are desperately needed, especially as reluctant donors fear money will support Myanmar's military government. With up to 200,000 dead or missing, 2.5 million survivors without proper food , shelter, drinking water and sanitation, and 30,000 young children facing acute malnourishment, click here on how you can help: http://www.vision6.com.au
It cost Globetrotting Gourmet just $125 to rebuild a roof in Yangon/Rangoon -- equivalent to 4 months salary there!
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• HOTEL RAVES |
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Siam@Siam: With over a 96% occupancy Bangkok’s Siam@Siam is doing something right. The lobby hosts a vintage Nissan Figaro, and its naked concrete and burnt russet/orange is a throwback to the 70s. But cutting edge it ain’t. Inconvenient swipe cards, square analog tv boxes, and the hotel insultingly charges for ice…
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Tivoli: Its location is in a labyrinth of back streets of Bangkok's embassy area, But staff are friendly, the spa great value, and wide flat screen televisions and convenient touch/swipe cards. But breakfast was indifferent, and airconditioning overpowering.
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The Oriental: Bangkok's Oriental regularly rates as the world's finest hotel. Credit for its stellar reputation goes to Kurt Wachtveitl, who just celebrated 40 years there. Now, front page headlines again feature Wachtweitl, but on the wrong side of the story. Rival lebua hotel (sic -- it's always spelled lower case) is shouting defamation. Reportedly, he accused lebua of poaching his best employees, as well as teams from other esteemed Bangkok hotels. Seems The Oriental was piqued over loosing many favored workers, only to have them slink back to their former employer months later, caps in hand, begging for their old jobs back. But the lebua antics are likely to backfire, with people now asking 1) why it has such high staff turnover rates, and 2) the source of lebua's seemingly unlimited budget.
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• RESTAURANTS: Singapore |
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| Pu Tien is one of the best value seafood eateries we've found in Singapore. And that’s no small feat in a city renowned for its food. Better yet, it's within minutes walking distance to the meandering/labyrinth-like Mustafa department store in Little India. We revelled in the tiny straight-razor like bamboo clams -- here simply steamed in rice wine. www.putien.com |
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• FLYING HIGH |
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Pink Flights for Mardi Gras: Australia's largest outdoor celebration and the country's biggest tourism money spinner, Conde Nast Traveler lists Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras with the world's 10 most spectacular costume events. Some 600,000 cheered the March parade, and another 16,000 at the post dance party -- this year headlining Olivia Newton-John and Cyndi Lauper. Air New Zealand chartered its first “Pink Flight” from SF to Sydney, but The question arises, how did the Kiwi mascot pip the Flying Kangaroo?
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| Luggage Loads: Checked-in baggage allowance is fast becoming the lost battle of consumer rights -- perversely as carry on restrictions mount. Baggage weights were just lowered from 32 kg/70 lbs to 23 kg/50 lbs, and as of May 8, United Airlines charges for checking in a second bag. Insultingly, an airline press release explains this as "Out of its dedication to offer customers 'choice, flexibility and low fares.'" As these new imposts also apply to international carriers flying to and from North America, this results in a potential decrease of 12 kg/28 lbs. Considering that some airlines charge $30 to $40 per kilo excess, that's potentially a whopping $500 payable at check in! United Airlines, alone, expects to profit some $100 million annually from these new weight charges. READ MORE>>>> |
Fear of Flying: How safe are discount carriers? A spate of crashes by these carriers in '07 put safety in spotlight, yet across Asia, fares have dropped so low that analysts question viability. Others contend new carriers cut expenses to the bone, with minimal turn around time resulting in longer aircraft flying hours per day. Even more worrying is paring back routine maintenance and safety inspections. But worse is yet to come, with an imploding pilot shortage. MORE>> |
| Airports: There has been a run of new airport terminal openings this season. Heathrow V flubbed it -- badly; Singapore T3 won raves; Bangalore's new aerodrome delayed a month; and Hyderabad's off the map all together -- infamously causing a KLM pilot to skip the destination and Shanghai's Pudong and Beijing just passed the mark in time for the Olympics. So which is the world's best today? SKYTRAX ranks Hong Kong tops in passenger surveys, but it's a tight race with Singapore's Changi. Inexplicably, its new T3 business class lounge lacks showers, and unlike T1 and T2, security check is per terminal, not per gate, a problem when rushing late to a plane. (That is one of our pet peeves about Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi!) We also like Seoul's Incheon, and give Sydney A+ for its immigration clearance speed -- it's right up there with Singapore! READ MORE>>> |
| Gin Rummy: To coincide with Heathrow's new Terminal 5 launch Bombay Sapphire unveils five limited edition gin bottles -- all handmade Baccarat crystal dripping with diamond and sapphires by jeweler Garrard, designed by Karim Rashid, and selling for a mere £100,000 each. |
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(Coincidentally, in 1870 Gerrard made the crown Queen Victoria wears in her image on the Bombay Sapphire bottle.) Following its Heathrow debut, the other four bottles will premier at New York, Dubai, Singapore and Sydney airports. (Let's hope they don't get checked through as BA baggage!) All profits from their sale directly benefits The Smile Train, providing cleft surgery for underprivileged children.
www.SmileTrain.org |
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| Fuel Surcharges on airline tickets are an absolute disgrace. Indeed, it is subterfuge to avoid paying agents commission on the total fare. "Fuel, like maintenance, taxes and labor costs, is obviously an integral component of air travel expense, so it is difficult to see why it should be treated as a separate surcharge,” notes one tour company mgr. Australian wholesaler Flight Centre recently compared this surcharge flying Sydney-London. The worst offender was Japan Airlines, with a round trip A$803 slug, compared with cheapest Emirates who charged nothing, and second best Korean at $204. READ MORE>>> |
| Air Ticket prices are fraught -- especially with questionable extras and taxes. Recently, we heard of one airline automatically billing a credit card slug, even when payment was in cash! So bravo to Singapore Airlines for its world-wide policy of advertising air ticket prices on an all-inclusive basis, effective Jan '08. This means SQ lists the full price payable by the customer at the time of sale, inclusive of all taxes, surcharges and fees. (However, they still cost in a fuel surcharge!) |
| Surprisingly, there is no travel agency jargon to describe an all-inclusive airfare. "Gross" applies to fares including commission, while "net" means a small transaction fee may or may not be levied on top of that fare, and even more confusingly, "net net" is totally non-commissionable. None of these fare terms include taxes and surcharges. |
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• IN BRIEF |
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| Passport Tampering: Our write up last issue about passport security tampering elicited the following advice from a reader in Vancouver: I had already marked this in the Magellans catalog… MORE>>> |
| Visas: Most tourists do not require short-stay visas to Thailand, but not so for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. In a bid to streamline regional tourism, Cambodia and Thailand have now signed a deal for a single Visa, with Laos and VN in tow. So consider this as an alternative, if a local Thai consulate is closer than the others' embassies. www.globetrottinggourmet.com/visa |
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• ON THE A380 |
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| As the world's largest aircraft, the A380 boasts impressive statistics, but boarding this behemoth is like a cattle station, with serpentine queues at check in and again at boarding (inspite of the specially-construted two-tiered sky bridges). But inside, the plane is a marvel… On the negative side, there's not enough toilets, and seat signing is hard to locate. If flying coach, go for the upstairs, as seating is only 2-4-2, versus 3-4-3 below. MORE>>>> |
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• CHEETING COUPLES |
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Couples beware: there's a one in four chance your partner cheats while traveling. That's the surprising Valentine's Day poll result by Expedia.com.au The poll of some 5,000 Australians showed that partners should be particularly wary when their other half announces a solo holiday to France, where (34%) of respondents believe they would strike it lucky, so to speak. Paris also came out on top as the world’s most romantic city. Survey respondents named a sunset dinner cruise (45%) and a fancy candlelit dinner (27%) as the most romantic activities (51%).
FOR THE FULL POLL >>>> |
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• IN MEMORIAM |
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| Our March Globetrotting Gourmet® tour group to Myanmar/Burma planned a reunion with U Kiaw Myint, affectionately known as "Winston." Unfortunately, that was not to be, as he died just weeks prior. He was well and truly a "character" in the best of all senses, and always managed to laugh in the face of any difficulty. His joviality is typified by a request for a Christmas hat when we traveled there last year, and we responded with an entire Santa suit. A devout Baptist in an overwhelmingly Buddhist land, Winston strived to delight his children over the Christian holidays. |
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| Winston was raised overseas in the rare life of a diplomatic family, but returned to the homeland he loved devoutly. He was passionate about food, and ready in his knowledge of new and diverse eateries. Moreover, Winson was forever patient with us when we confused a puree and a prata. As a trained gemologist, he relished haggling to help our members get the best prices. We will miss his ready laugh and wit. |
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• MEKONG EPICURE |
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The Mekong is Southeast Asia's gateway, and longest river, running from Tibet through China, northern Myanmar/Burma, through Laos and Thailand, Cambodia and finally Vietnam. This vast river way is also home to the mis-named Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris). Alarmingly, it is at risk, but hope rests with ecotourism projects. READ MORE>>>
According to local mythology, the dolphin is a fair maiden with the body of a fish. Forced by her parents to marry a magical python, she rejected her suitor by casting herself into the Mekong, and was magically transformed, and is today regarded as sacred. This is just one of many fascinating tales from this magical region. |
Our next food tour features Mekong locations, plus a quick rendezvous in bustling Bangkok. Join us in Dec. '08 and Jan '09 to toast in the New Year along the Mekong in Southern Laos. We visit magnificient Wat Phou, dating from the 7th to 12th centuries, plus the ancient royal capital Champasak & hub city Pakse. Continue with us to Siem Reap for the riches of Angkor Wat and its teeming ancient metropolis, then to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh and its wealth of colonial deco eco architecture. Afterwards, fly to Saigon and Vietnam's delta region, and the idyllic island of Phu Quoc, which produces the country's finest fish sauce as well as red-ripened peppercorns. Naturally, we'll be visiting all…
www.globetrottinggourmet.com/go/tours/2008newYears |
| Mekong Epicure Dec. 29 2008 -Jan 13, 2009 |
| Bangkok, Laos, Cambodia Dec. 29-Jan 8 |
| Vietnam Delta & Phu Quoc island Jan 8-13 |
For our article on Phu Quoc in last year's Traveller magazine
CLICH HERE
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| Join us in Bangkok on 29 Dec, or Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon on 8 Jan on our Mekong Epicure tours to former French Indochina. Pre- and post-tour extensions, accommodation and private guide can be easily arranged through us. |
| further details on www.asianfoodtours.com |
Cheers,
Robert & Morrison |
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