More food..

More food, because we like eating.

A fruit platter. The bright yellow is pineapple, much sweeter and less bitter than I'm normally used to. The apple like pieces in the upper right is guava (I think!) and the pear looking like item in the upper left is a pear, but much crisper than I'm used to.

We saw these advertised on TV, on the subway. It looked terribly unhealthy so we thought we should eat one. It's a kind of sausage with a cheese center wrapped in pastry with a spicey powdered dressing.

The item in the box didn't quite match the picture. It was quite edible, although probably not the sort of thing you should have more than one of. Suspect it is not a traditional local cuisine.

This is Auntie Annes, who do pastry style things, including the delicacy above. One of the thing that is quite noticeable is the staff levels in such facilities. This little cafe had 9 people working there, plus a waiter for the 2m x 2m area beside it for patrons to sit in. Total 10 people! The actual floor space they were standing in was about 4m long x 1.5m wide with a small island in the middle. Every one of these facilities had about triple the staff levels we are used to seeing.

Chicken satay skewers. The sauce was ace, peanut & chilli. The salad contains green chillis, onions and cucmber. It was not really my thing.

Nicole's chicken, noodle and green thing (similar to Bok Choy) dish. Both these are from another shopping center style food hall.

These are peanuts. Left to right are coconut cream flavoured, coffee flavoured and wasabi coated peanuts. It took me a while to work out why none of the prices on the goods matched the prices on the shelf.. The practice back home of placing the price on the shelf on which the goods sit is reversed here.

Kangaroo Cashew Nuts, with American Taste. For the American Kangaroo nut fancier..

Eating in Bangkok

During our trip we have been trying to sample as much of the local cuisine as possible. So far, we have not had dinner at the same place twice yet and are successfully adhering to a no hamburger rule. Our theory is that we can eat hamburgers (etc) back home, so we are not going to eat them here.

Some of the delicacies we have enjoyed:

This was a brilliant dish, simple & tastes amazing. Karaage chicken with egg chiffon & curry sauce.

Mixed beef and noodles, a reasonably plain name for a good dish. This is from a food hall in a shopping center. The food hall setup at this center involved buying vouchers to give to the vendors in exchange for food, presumably to avoid them handling money.

Some of the food preparation techniques are quite different to what happens at home. Above is uncooked meat sitting uncovered. You could ordered your food and sneeze on it. Some of the roadside sellers have food similarily exposed only a meter or two from traffic.  

Hungarian Breakfast, from downtown Bangkok. Goes for about $2 Australian. We've had breakfast at a few different places, the bacon you get for breakfast always looks like the above, they do not have the large oval shaped section.

On the 2nd day of the conference, lunch was delivered to us. Takeaway Bangkok style is done via plastic bags - it was a bit of a suprise! It is quite an efficient solution from a waste point of view. The little bag is a chili sauce, and the red/green sachet contains dried chilli and salt.

There are a whole family of items here that look very familiar but are not quite the same. Above, Lipton Ice Tea and Coke Zero. Streets ice creams are sold as Walls here. There is enough places around if you want to live on pizza, hamburgers and the like. Subway, KFC, McDonalds et al all have a presence.

Haven't been brave enough to try this..

Nicole's Ace Panorama Photos

The below were taken by Nicole from her hotel balcony on the 21st Floor. Click to expand them to full size!

The blue building to the left is the office complex that Ford Thailiand Head Office resides.

Looking down.

Traffic..

Bangkok is not for you if you like driving but don't like traffic. So far Nicole and I have only travelled via road for the trip from the airport.

This is Sunday afternoon. 5 lanes of traffic heading away, two towards. Photo taken from an overhead walkway.

One unwritten road rule: if there is no one coming from the opposite direction, you can use their piece of road! Note the cream & green coloured bus is queued up on the wrong side of the road. The silver van is about to join.

One neat thing they do is display beside the traffic lights how long until they change. Refer the lights showing 11 seconds above. This is nice, although if you just miss the lights and have to wait for a green it's pretty deflating! The light cycles are often quite long -I've seen 206 seconds!- and the amateur traffic engineer in me wonders if it shorter cycles would be better.

This is about 8pm at night. Note the stream of motorcycles running up the left hand side of the road. The bike/scooter is certainly the most efficient way to travel, provided you are happy to take a risk. I read that every hour 3 cyclist are killed on Bangkok roads.

One strategy is to put multiple people in each vehicle. Utes are popular for this.

One gets lots of opportunities to take artistic traffic photos..

Siam Ocean World

Another Bangkok must do. The Siam Ocean World. This amazing place contains some 30,000 species of (mostly) sea creatures. It's located underneath a shopping center so you can get a feed or satisfy your need for some retail therapy.

One thing quickly learnt is that photographing creatures underwater is not easy, especially when the lighting is dim. Quite romantic mood lighting actually - another good place to take a date after impressing them with the Sky Bar. 

Friendly fellow. There was also an enormous crab there, a good 50cm+ wide.

Everyone is beautiful in their own way.

Usually, if you have this view of a shark, you're about to become dinner.

Fish everywhere.

My favourite. Detailed & elegant.

At one stage you can actually walk in a tunnell with marine life beside and above you. This is amazing, you just walk around gob smacked in this area.

The jelly fish area is brilliant. Dark with piano music accompanying you as you watch the jelly fish swim (?) gracefully.

Nicole and I have been avoiding any food that we would normally have at home, but we did make an exception tonight for a little bit of desert. Before and after photos below.

Before..

After!! 

Random Things

Some oddball items that amused me.

There is a lot of advertising here.

Spotted in a bookshop at the Emporium. Rob Barassi's (Australian Rules footballer) biography!

Broccoli Pie.. Coming to a McDonalds near you.

Brembo brakes.. On a Toyota Corolla!

From the Chatuchak market - workshop manual for a Commodore!

This amused me as a fan of the French & Saunders comedy TV show.

Special Day Today..

It's going to be a special day today..

It started off by my camera battery going flat. I have a spare, but one of them is pretty weak these days so I elected to head back to the hotel and grab the charger. On the way there, I slipped and landed on my knee. I then managed to destroy a cup of coffee (How do you curdle powdered milk - what talent!) and Nicole dropped her cardigan on the way to the office and had to go back to get it.

On the plus side, we hit the supermarket on the way and I bought some of the original Red Bull (Krating Daeng). It sells here for the princely price of 10 Baht, about 30 cents. This is a non fizzy more cordial style of drink than we are used to in Australia. Should keep me awake today! I also purchased some intriguingly named Dark Secret mints. How can you resist something so mysteriously named?