Jeffy gets his culinary groove back

A fish called Batthu. Feh.

I really hate this ugly-ass fish.

It's called batthu, near as I can make out. Vendors at the open-air San Pakoi market sell them pre-cooked and sitting out uncovered at 80+ degree room temperature. Shoppers walk by and prod the flesh for firmness with their nasty bare fingers. At least twice a week Lian buys two batthu for the dinner table, to be served with rice and soy dipping sauce. They taste as good as they look.

Truth be told, my problem isn't with just the batthu: most of the food and produce we encounter at San Pakoi is slop, pure and simple, and I'm increasingly under-enthused with our day-to-day choices.

So, perfect timing for a change of scenery: six days down south to visit Lian's family in Hua Hin and Bang Khae. Early Sunday morning we board the first Nok Air flight out of Chiang Mai. (Surprisingly, air travel for two to Bangkok is actually cheaper than the train, and 13 times faster.) We connect with a dilapidated third-class train that drops us at the Hua Hin railway station late in the afternoon. There, we are greeted by Lian's daughter, Eve, and her boyfriend ... or, friend Boy. That's really his name. Boy, as in son of Tarzan. (Go ahead, have fun with it.) Boy manages the fitness center at the tony Intercontinental Resort, which is where he met Eve when she was an accounting trainee.

Eve and her Boy toy at Udom Pochana.

For the next five days I am privileged to eat in amazing Thai places where farang rarely set foot. On our first night Boy and Eve chauffeur us in Boy's brand-new Honda sedan 30 minutes south to an outdoor oceanside seafood restaurant in Pran Buri. Udom Pochana has been serving locals forever, but it has exactly two online TripAdvisor reviews. We order plate after plate of terrific seafood and the tab comes in a shade over thirty bucks, including tip.

Shady characters.

The next day our young hosts drive us to a beach frequented solely by locals. It looks nothing like a tourist beach: whereas white folks would be splayed under the tropical sun working on their carcinomas, Thai people cover up and hug the shade.

That evening Boy and Eve want to treat us to dinner at the Intercon, where he works. This resort, I should mention, is absolutely stunning and I will save my nickels to stay there, next time we are in town.

About dinner: for some reason, Boy has selected an Italian restaurant for us, which is assolutamente delizioso for me; but for the three Thai people at the table, not so much. Lian's priceless expression here sums up the majority opinion of the buffalo mozzarella in the caprese salad. I am happy (obviously, gorge-gorge!) to make a welcoming home for it on my plate:

Me, after three days eating in Hua Hin.

For our final evening in  Hua Hin, Boy and Eve take us for a nature walk at Wat Thum Khao Tao, the colorful temple on Turtle Hill, where we climb many staircases to gawk at the big golden Buddha at the top and to take in the view of Hua Hin way off to the north.

Ascending to a higher plane.

After I am good and sweaty, it's time for a fancy sit-down dinner! Boy drives us to ... oh, who the hell knows? It is now dark as we traverse back roads to a secret outdoor destination where locals dine under rattan huts. Once more we fill the table (and ourselves) with impressive seafood entrees. A couple of hours later back in town, we cap the evening at a Thai ice cream joint.

Curiously, in the last 48 hours my trousers have shrunk at the waist. Must be the humidity.

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Wednesday on our way back north, Lian and I stop in Bang Khae, on the outskirts of Bangkok, to visit Lian's sister and their elderly flasher-mom. As always, I wai politely to her and thank her in English for not showing me her tits again.

Lian's brother-in-law, the bookie, has arranged a room for us at a nearby hotel -- very good and affordable, he assures her. It is nothing of the sort: the lobby is dank, the bellman who walks us upstairs is almost certainly casing our valuables, and, oh, the stink on that room! The bedding is threadbare and ill-laundered, the bathroom has no toilet paper or sprayer, and bath towels are M.I.A. "This room very terrible," mutters Lian, Olive Oyl-like. On the plus side, it IS just twenty-five bucks a night.

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Yui.

Meet Yui, Lian's oldest niece. At 30, Yui is a chemist for a Bangkok-based cement manufacturer that sends her on business around the world. (She aspires to a Master's degree in the UK, paid for by her company, if she can get her English skills up.) On our final night in town, Yui wants to treat the family to a special dinner at Lom Talay, a wildly popular (among Thai people) seafood restaurant 45 minutes outside town. If we can get there without dying, that is.

Fook & her mother.

The five of us -- Yui, her sister Fook, their mother, Lian and me -- are propelled at warp speed by maniacal nephew Jo-Jo, who is a 20-something male and therefore invulnerable behind the wheel. The women HATE riding with Jo-Jo, who makes the most crazed Bangkok cab driver look like a pussy. But somehow we survive the trip and are gloriously rewarded.

Only the first course: Many more to come.

Situated in the middle of a small lake, the hut-like Lom Talay is accessible by a covered footbridge. We settle in for two hours of the most splendid Thai cuisine -- wave after wave of soups, grilled sea bass, huge river shrimp, seafood salads, and more, and more.

I am almost to Heaven. Then the soup tureen arrives and I see my old nemesis:

It is Batthu.  Otherwise, a perfect evening.

We've heard that Songkran before

Party-loving tourists from around the world converge on Thailand in mid-April for the three-day nationwide water fight that is Songkran, the Thai new year celebration. The streets of Chiang Mai are awash, literally, with water-gun-toting revelers and curbside hosers,  everyone hooting and hollering and spraying and getting sprayed. To venture outside is the same as saying to the world: drench me.

Lian and I watch most of Songkran at home on TV.

Going to work during Songkran is problematic for Lian: she cannot run the gauntlet and then arrive soaking-wet for customer appointments, nor is it safe to ride her motorbike while being sloshed with bucketfuls of water. As for me, three consecutive nights of 2 a.m. teleconferences with West Coast clients leave me stupefied with sleep deprivation. Oh, and Lian complains: "Have pain my stomach." And then I remember that I really can't shoot action pictures for fear of frying my not-waterproof iPhone battery. We manage two or three additional lame excuses apiece for being pathetic old farts.

So we plop ourselves down in front of Thai TV channel 3 for wall-to-wall Songkran coverage -- only the finest in broadcast journalism here, folks -- and promise ourselves that next year, by golly, next year ...

Oh, and the above video? Shot it two years ago. As Lian says, "Songkran same every year."

"Hello, Burma!"

Last week during a project kickoff teleconference with a brand-new client, a team member perks up at the mention of my whereabouts. It turns out that his very good friends, fellow Portlanders, have just embarked on a one-year family adventure living in Chiang Mai. Without so much as a reconnaissance visit they up and relocate themselves and their 8-year-old son halfway around the planet, because why not? My kind of folks!

The next day email introductions are made and we arrange to meet up for a welcome dinner Saturday night at a Burmese restaurant near Thapae Gate, in the old city. Saturday also happens to be Lian's birthday, so we have another reason to celebrate.

But Lian is less than enthused to learn where we are dining. She makes an I-smell-poo face and says: "Food Burma maybe not good. I think I don't like." Never mind that she has not actually tasted Burmese cuisine before.

Lian pronounces "Burma" the way Jerry Seinfeld used to seethe: "Hello, Newman!" At the sight of a grubby beggar in the street, she's apt to speculate: "I think he not Thai -- maybe from Burma." The smoky haze that hangs over Chiang Mai this time of year? Slash burning from forests in the north ... "from Burma." When I inform Lian that much northern Thai cuisine such as khao soi has Burmese origins, she is horrified and refuses to believe it.

Andrew & Pati Goodell with son Ethan.

Finally I play the "polite" card: our new friends have chosen the restaurant, so we can be gracious and enjoy ourselves -- which we do. The Godell Family is perfectly delightful (although still a little jet-lagged) and the restaurant turns out to be a real find -- over the course of two hours we work our way through plate after plate of skillfully prepared dishes, and the tab for five is just over thirty bucks, including tip.

A few days later Lian asks: "We can eat in that restaurant again?" So maybe there's hope for this girl.

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A previous post last week was something along the lines of: "Golly, this Buddhist monk sure sounds a lot like Dave Matthews." But now I'm entertaining the possibility that he might actually BE Dave. I was seated behind an enormous stone column in the temple when I recorded the chanting, so I never got a good look at him. Supporting this theory is the following mashup created by bro-in-law Brian, who reported: "Strangely, no pitch correction at all."

Monks Marching

Wat Chedi Luang

It is pick-any-day-of-the-week, and therefore a Thai Buddhist ritual is happening somewhere in Chiang Mai. On my first day back in town I accompany Lian to Wat Chedi Luang, the ancient and immense temple in the heart of the old city, for some kind of robe-upgrade ceremony for child monks. I am thrilled to attend because, hey, free buffet!

Children-monks receive their new colors.

By noon hundreds of the faithful are gathered on the temple grounds to watch their freshly shorn little dears receive spanking-new saffron robes. After strafing the food tables Lian and I take our seats under a huge outdoor canopy. Soon the temple assistants drop sets of neatly folded robes in our laps. Moments later, the white-clad youngsters file in and kneel before us, palms pressed together in respect. I feel a little sorry for the kid in front of me who's stuck getting his new duds from some big goofus farang. The prayers drone on and this nervous boy and I really don't know where to look, other than down. Finally the children-monks are allowed to go change into their new robes while the audience moves inside to sit cramped and cross-legged on the granite floor of the temple. It's time for the requisite chanting -- the Buddhist version of the sermon with the supper.

Ice cream social.

It turns out that the young monk on lead vocals is ... pretty good! He mixes up the usual droning monotone with some thin but confident falsetto riffs that sound strangely familiar. And then I place it.

These things creep me out.

"This guy is absolutely a Dave Matthews fan," I whisper to Lian, who has no idea what I'm talking about. At least he sounds kind of Dave-ish to me. What would you say?

All-new Thai adventures begin April 2

Come on along as we dodge Red Shirts, Yellow Shirts, wet T-shirts (during Songkran) and no shirts (Lian's mother).

A man, a ... plan?

Nothing like starting a 10-day Panama adventure with a colossal screw-up.

I inadvertently booked my flight into Tocumen International Airport for one day later than the rest of my group. The result is that in the dead of night after 8 hours of flying coach, carrying no map and speaking no Spanish, I am fumbling and stumbling my fool way 160 km to the west of Panama City to a place where I don't even have the address.  I know only that it's "near San Carlos."

After 10 o'clock I finally clear customs and surrender myself to the airport taxi sharks -- my sole transpo alternative unless I care to walk to Albrook bus terminal, many miles distant.  (Cheap bastard that I am, I actually consider it.)  Thirty-five minutes and $35 later, I am standing in the cavernous and all-but-deserted bus terminal, with no earthly clue what to do next.

My correct-day-arriving friends, who rented cars and are already at our Dream Destination, are expecting to fetch me from San Carlos.  But Albrook terminal's San Carlos ticket window is dark and a paper sign taped to the window says: "No have bus." Not knowing what to do next, I wander aimlessly until I find an information booth ... but the info girl speaks no English.  She keeps saying "Santiago, blah-blah-blah, Santiago" and I finally realize she means San Carlos is on the way to Santiago.  I race to the Santiago ticket window and purchase a bus ticket, making the gate with five minutes to spare.

But the ticket master neglects to tell me the part about Metrocards.

To ride a bus in Panama, you need a ticket and an electronic Metrocard, which you buy separately and carry with you. At the gate to the buses, you swipe your Metrocard to release the turnstile that lets you out. But at this moment all I know is that for some reason this turnstile is not letting me reach the bus that I just paid three dollars and fifty cents to ride. Luckily, the gatekeeper takes pity and uses his own Metrocard to be rid of the dithering, panicking gringo-stupido.

At close to midnight our coach rolls out of Albrook, leaving the lights of Panama City behind us.  An hour and a half later we pull off the highway and the conductor points to me. The next moment I am standing alone under a streetlight at a wide spot in the road with no place to go, and it is 1:30 in the morning.

---

My roadside salvation.

But it turns out I am not alone: just a few steps up the road I see two semis parked alongside the highway, their drivers standing before a brightly illuminated food trailer that is open for business ... and a booming business it is.  All night the cart lady serves a steady stream of customers as nearly every other 18-wheeler parks for food and coffee. Famished, I order a pollo asada platter with what looks like a Velveeta-stuffed pot pie and take stock of my situation.

No way am I sending email to the gang at this hour: everyone is probably asleep and they've almost certainly been drinking. So I settle in on the cement bus bench to wait for sunrise. What I have no way of knowing is that the Internet at our rental house is nonfunctioning -- I cannot contact my friends, nor they me.

I proceed to sit, stand and pace for the next seven hours.

Two or three times I take my iPhone out of airplane mode just long enough to send progressively more desperate emails to the group.  Are they all still sleeping?  Did they go somewhere?  Do they just not care???

By 8:30 I'm sweltering in the tropical sun and must go in search of an Internet cafe.  The first person I ask about "in-ter-net" nods knowingly and shows me to a bathroom.  Finally I happen across an English speaker who points me to a side road off the highway just 200 feet from where I was standing all that time.  I turn the corner and there is the actual town of San Carlos: stores, food, connectivity, a bathroom. D'oh!

At the San Carlos internet cafe I proceed to send more agitated emails to the group. The noon hour approaches and at last I get a reply:  "Jeff, where are you?"  My friends finally found a way to download my multiple pleas for help. Thirty minutes later I am rescued!

Here's where I am now.  Worth the bother, I'd say.

No hobo

No more sleeping under bridges or shouldering a bindle: I am off the rails and back in the Ladd's, a respectable, mortgage-paying, lawn-mowing homeowner once more.

Well, almost. There's this one more trip ...

New adventures start next week, this time in sunny Panama.