Food in South-East Asia

Com­ing from Aus­tralia, where food was expen­sive and not exactly haute-cuisine, South-East Asia was a foodie’s par­adise. First, food is cheap by world stan­dard and sim­ple meal usu­ally cost under $5. Sec­ond, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Thai­land have a “street food” tra­di­tion and numer­ous hawk­ers offer local del­i­ca­cies on-the-go. Finally, the blend of flavours was sim­ply amaz­ing, from Thai curry to Penang’s Nasi Lemak.

Signs in South-East Asia

I love tak­ing pic­tures of signs because they tell so much about a coun­try. For instance, Canada’s bilin­gual “stop-arrêt” sign is unique, and so are the many weather-related warn­ings, “ice falling” being my favourite.

Dur­ing our trip to Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Thai­land, I col­lected var­i­ous signs.

Bangkok's National Palace

So, did I fall in love with Thai­land? I can’t say I did, for a few rea­sons.
We enjoyed the scenery. The islands in the South, close to Malaysia, were great and peo­ple were really nice and help­ful. It only got worse close to touris­tic places and I must admit some tourists behave pretty badly in Thai­land where they seem to do things they would never do at home.

Say Wat?

Wat Pho, birth­place of tra­di­tional Thai mas­sage and home to the impos­ing Reclin­ing Bud­dha, Wat Traimit and its five-tons solid gold Bud­dha image, or Erawan Shrine, nested among Bangkok’s sky­scrap­ers, were all busy with tourists and locals alike.

It's A Mall World

Asian malls and mar­kets are some­what of a sur­real expe­ri­ence to most West­ern­ers. Upon enter­ing the maze of shops, peo­ple usu­ally go through sev­eral stages, notably “oh my God every­thing is so cheap”, “oh my God I have to bring that back home” and “oh my God I need to buy another suit­case to bring all that back home”.

Hello Bangkok

“We are now in Bangkok and we arrived ten min­utes ahead of sched­ule” bragged the flight atten­dant upon land­ing in the cap­i­tal. Gee, I would have rather arrived ten min­utes late and avoid the near-death expe­ri­ence when touch­ing down.

A Thai Massage Story

Along with “Taxi boat? Taxi boat?” and “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk?”, the ubiq­ui­tous call for mas­sage is the most over­heard sen­tence in Thai­land, and you will hear it even in your sleep. Mas­sage is both part of most Asian cul­tures and loved by tourists. The result? There are mas­sage joints at pretty much every corner.

Phuket

Every­body has heard of Phuket, Thailand’s most famous beach des­ti­na­tion. Some remem­ber it because of the tsunami that hit the island in 2004 while other knows it because of its rep­u­ta­tion as a sex tourism center.

Phuket is dis­con­cert­ing at first glance: it no longer look like Thai­land, you could be any­where on earth.

Krabi, Ao Nang and Railay

One of Feng’s legs was rest­ing over my left knee, his feet were on the dash­board, and I had one arm around his waist, another above his leg. Pic­ture a Kamasutra-esque posi­tion with­out the honey-get-your-clothes-off bit. That’s what it took for the two of us to fit on the pas­sen­ger seat.

Ko Phi Phi Ley

Ko Phi Phi Ley, Phi Phi Don’s lit­tle sis­ter, is a pop­u­lar day-trip once your hang­over is over. Pretty much all of the travel agen­cies in town sell a half-day boat trip to the small island for 250 baht (about $8). Still curi­ous to see why peo­ple liked the area so much, we signed up for it.