Teaching Jobs in Taiwan ESL EFL Jobs in Taipei.
Look for teaching English jobs in Taiwan at http://www.tealit.com/ad_categories.php?now_page=&perpage_rec=&orderby=§ion_id=29&subsection_id=3&content_mode=2&content_id=&search_mode=&chk_seed=&ad_id=&check_user=1&edit_profile_mode=&fid_locatsort=&D2=29
Read more at http://www.tealit.com
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Travel Cambodia in and Around Kep Open But Undeveloped
Travel Cambodia in and Around Kep Open But Undeveloped.
ON a sunny weekday in Kep, a seaside village about halfway along Cambodia’s coast, the crab market was heaving. Women in straw hats and rubber boots stood knee deep in the surf shouting out prices, periodically darting into the sea to pull writhing specimens out of wicker baskets. Children of all ages ran through the stalls; it seemed as if the entire town had congregated in this one main square.
Nearby, suspended over the water overlooking the South China Sea, rickety open-fronted restaurants were perched on stilts. At one of the smallest, the Seagull, I sat with my son and husband watching wooden fishing boats move slowly along the coastline as the family who owns the spot prepared what would be the finest steamed crab I had ever tasted. Even my one-year-old tucked into the white buttery meat.
It was a scene that felt quaintly out of time, made all the more novel because we were somehow able to exist seamlessly within it. No one tried to sell us souvenirs or offer to guide us around town. It was just life as it had always been and always would be.
But of course this wasn’t true.
While we sat, lucky guests in this rustic tableau, not far away new bridges and roads were being completed; luxury resorts, casinos and golf courses mapped out; shopping malls planned.
All this in an area of Cambodia occupied by the Khmer Rouge as recently as 1995.
Like so many places that have dropped from, and re-emerged in, the traveler’s gaze, this area of southwestern Cambodia is in the midst of a now-familiar cycle. First come the backpackers, lured by tales of simple coastal villages and untouched island beaches. Next come the pioneering hoteliers, establishing in-the-know outposts of taste and luxury. Finally the big money arrives and, with it, the big plans.
Right now the area around Kep is still in that traveler’s sweet spot — mostly itself, but with roads and a few boutique hotels here and there for those who want them.
Yet as I would see over the course of two weeks, change is afoot. The crowds will surely be coming, but before they do I wanted a chance to see it for myself.
JUST a few hours from Phnom Penh, the country’s capital, Kep started out as a stylish retreat for the French in the 1920s, and by 1960 was called the St.-Tropez of Southeast Asia (Kep-sur-Mer), with modernist colonial villas built along the coast and weekenders arriving in vintage convertibles. When the Khmer Rouge set up camp here in the 1970s the French beat a retreat, and the villas fell into disrepair.
In the last five years, however, a number of these structures have been turned into boutique hotels — properties like Villa Romonea, which opened in 2010, and Knai Bang Chatt, which opened a few years before.
Villa Romonea was the dream second home of a Khmer woman who built the house in 1968 with the help of a famous local architect, Lu Ban Hap. It was the last villa built before the war, and the owner and her husband, a pharmacist, were killed in the early days of the Pol Pot regime. Now British developers have taken over.
The six-room hotel with its saltwater infinity pool and tropical grounds is representative of the kind of small-scale enterprises that have been spreading across southwestern Cambodia. Many are run by foreigners who discovered the area early on and wanted an excuse to stay. Jef Moons, Knai Bang Chatt’s Belgian owner, first saw Kep in 2003 while on a vacation. He then proceeded to buy a Le Corbusier-influenced villa, which he restored initially into a vacation home and then, in 2006 — a hotel. “I first fell in love with the people in Cambodia,” Mr. Moons said, “but also with the nature. It still feels remote.”
Over the course of my stay last year, I tried out both hotels. Each, set along the tranquil rocky coast, proved difficult to leave. One could camp out for days, sitting at waterfront tables watching the boats pass by and taking brief strolls into town. They were also incredibly good spots to be with a baby; everyone from cooks to hotel managers treated my son like a visiting celebrity.
But I was eager to explore the surrounding countryside, in particular the inland region to the northwest and the beaches and islands up the coast — areas, I had been told, whose futures were already being plotted by Chinese, Russian and Cambodian conglomerates eager to make their mark.
Our first trip was to Kampot, about an hour away. One can arrange to hire a car and driver but we decided to rent motorcycles. After leaving the baby in capable hands at Knai Bang Chatt, we sputtered along, passing countless oxen knee deep in rice paddies, bustling markets and clusters of little villages made up of traditional stilt houses.
Decades-old Toyota Camrys seem to be the local car of choice (I noticed one with California plates), which shared the road with an assortment of scooters, bikes and vans that double as buses, not to mention the water buffalo, chickens and pigs that shuffled about amid the traffic.
In Kampot, a quiet city set alongside pepper plantations and forested hills, we drank coffee at one of the cafes that have sprouted in the crumbling 1920s verandas that front the lazy Praek Teuk Chhu River. Kampot was once one of the country’s most important ports, and is still the center of Cambodia’s pepper production; its streets are lined with turn-of-the-century colonial buildings, now mostly in disrepair.
As we sat watching boats make their way along the river, we were again struck by the startling lack of hawking here — especially compared with many tourist towns in Vietnam and Thailand.
Another observation: There were few people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. The reason for this speaks to the horrifying fact that between 1975 and 1979 a fifth of the population was wiped out under the regime. The Khmer Rouge endured in Kampot through much of the 90s, much later than other parts of the country, and almost every person I met lost at least one close family member or friend.
Read more at http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/travel/cambodia-in-and-around-kep-open-but-undeveloped.html?nl=travel&emc=tda1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
ON a sunny weekday in Kep, a seaside village about halfway along Cambodia’s coast, the crab market was heaving. Women in straw hats and rubber boots stood knee deep in the surf shouting out prices, periodically darting into the sea to pull writhing specimens out of wicker baskets. Children of all ages ran through the stalls; it seemed as if the entire town had congregated in this one main square.
Nearby, suspended over the water overlooking the South China Sea, rickety open-fronted restaurants were perched on stilts. At one of the smallest, the Seagull, I sat with my son and husband watching wooden fishing boats move slowly along the coastline as the family who owns the spot prepared what would be the finest steamed crab I had ever tasted. Even my one-year-old tucked into the white buttery meat.
It was a scene that felt quaintly out of time, made all the more novel because we were somehow able to exist seamlessly within it. No one tried to sell us souvenirs or offer to guide us around town. It was just life as it had always been and always would be.
But of course this wasn’t true.
While we sat, lucky guests in this rustic tableau, not far away new bridges and roads were being completed; luxury resorts, casinos and golf courses mapped out; shopping malls planned.
All this in an area of Cambodia occupied by the Khmer Rouge as recently as 1995.
Like so many places that have dropped from, and re-emerged in, the traveler’s gaze, this area of southwestern Cambodia is in the midst of a now-familiar cycle. First come the backpackers, lured by tales of simple coastal villages and untouched island beaches. Next come the pioneering hoteliers, establishing in-the-know outposts of taste and luxury. Finally the big money arrives and, with it, the big plans.
Right now the area around Kep is still in that traveler’s sweet spot — mostly itself, but with roads and a few boutique hotels here and there for those who want them.
Yet as I would see over the course of two weeks, change is afoot. The crowds will surely be coming, but before they do I wanted a chance to see it for myself.
JUST a few hours from Phnom Penh, the country’s capital, Kep started out as a stylish retreat for the French in the 1920s, and by 1960 was called the St.-Tropez of Southeast Asia (Kep-sur-Mer), with modernist colonial villas built along the coast and weekenders arriving in vintage convertibles. When the Khmer Rouge set up camp here in the 1970s the French beat a retreat, and the villas fell into disrepair.
In the last five years, however, a number of these structures have been turned into boutique hotels — properties like Villa Romonea, which opened in 2010, and Knai Bang Chatt, which opened a few years before.
Villa Romonea was the dream second home of a Khmer woman who built the house in 1968 with the help of a famous local architect, Lu Ban Hap. It was the last villa built before the war, and the owner and her husband, a pharmacist, were killed in the early days of the Pol Pot regime. Now British developers have taken over.
The six-room hotel with its saltwater infinity pool and tropical grounds is representative of the kind of small-scale enterprises that have been spreading across southwestern Cambodia. Many are run by foreigners who discovered the area early on and wanted an excuse to stay. Jef Moons, Knai Bang Chatt’s Belgian owner, first saw Kep in 2003 while on a vacation. He then proceeded to buy a Le Corbusier-influenced villa, which he restored initially into a vacation home and then, in 2006 — a hotel. “I first fell in love with the people in Cambodia,” Mr. Moons said, “but also with the nature. It still feels remote.”
Over the course of my stay last year, I tried out both hotels. Each, set along the tranquil rocky coast, proved difficult to leave. One could camp out for days, sitting at waterfront tables watching the boats pass by and taking brief strolls into town. They were also incredibly good spots to be with a baby; everyone from cooks to hotel managers treated my son like a visiting celebrity.
But I was eager to explore the surrounding countryside, in particular the inland region to the northwest and the beaches and islands up the coast — areas, I had been told, whose futures were already being plotted by Chinese, Russian and Cambodian conglomerates eager to make their mark.
Our first trip was to Kampot, about an hour away. One can arrange to hire a car and driver but we decided to rent motorcycles. After leaving the baby in capable hands at Knai Bang Chatt, we sputtered along, passing countless oxen knee deep in rice paddies, bustling markets and clusters of little villages made up of traditional stilt houses.
Decades-old Toyota Camrys seem to be the local car of choice (I noticed one with California plates), which shared the road with an assortment of scooters, bikes and vans that double as buses, not to mention the water buffalo, chickens and pigs that shuffled about amid the traffic.
In Kampot, a quiet city set alongside pepper plantations and forested hills, we drank coffee at one of the cafes that have sprouted in the crumbling 1920s verandas that front the lazy Praek Teuk Chhu River. Kampot was once one of the country’s most important ports, and is still the center of Cambodia’s pepper production; its streets are lined with turn-of-the-century colonial buildings, now mostly in disrepair.
As we sat watching boats make their way along the river, we were again struck by the startling lack of hawking here — especially compared with many tourist towns in Vietnam and Thailand.
Another observation: There were few people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. The reason for this speaks to the horrifying fact that between 1975 and 1979 a fifth of the population was wiped out under the regime. The Khmer Rouge endured in Kampot through much of the 90s, much later than other parts of the country, and almost every person I met lost at least one close family member or friend.
Read more at http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/travel/cambodia-in-and-around-kep-open-but-undeveloped.html?nl=travel&emc=tda1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Educational Tablet To Be Made in Thailand
Educational Tablet To Be Made in Thailand.
Getting closer to becoming a reality, 800,000 tablets at 3,000 baht each could jumpstart Thai-language content such as ebooks and learning games.
Forth Corporation has introduced the first Thai-made educational tablet computer priced at 3,000 baht in a bid to join the government's 4-billion-baht One Tablet per Child programme.
Mr Sawat says controls on the tablet help ensure only appropriate content can be used.
The SET-listed electronic equipment manufacturer spent three months redesigning its controller board to integrate it with a base to reduce size and bring the cost down from 5,000 baht earlier, said R&D director Sawat Erbchokchai.
As well, he said, the fact that the government wants as many as 800,000 tablets means the company can achieve economies of scale to keep costs low.
"We're confident our current tablet price could easily compete with those of Chinese manufacturers, while our production capacity could serve the government's demand," he said.
The tablet programme was one of the high-profile election promises of the Pheu Thai Party. Responding to critics who said the cost would be too high, party strategists said they believed they could source cheap equipment from China.
Forth is in talks with advisers to the Education Minister and local software companies about cooperation on educational content development.
Featuring a 7-inch display and both a pen- and touch-based interface, Forth's tablets enable students to automatically receive educational content after they register their personal data and log in - without the need for downloads.
The management software enables screening of content and applications supplied to students to make sure it is appropriate. "This will facilitate primary school pupils, considered too young to download applications by themselves.
Mr Sawat said it was not easy in the past for Thai companies to make tablets, given small local demand. However, the school tablet project opens the doors to local IT and technology firms.
"If the government promotes greater use of local content and opens more opportunity for local IT and telecom firms to participate in state bidding projects, the ultimate result will be a new ecosystem and a new momentum for the industry," he said.
Mr Sawat said that if Forth's tablets proved successful, it would attract other industries to commercially adopt the first Thai-made products. As a result, he said, both hardware makers and local application developers would benefit.
Read more at http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/256904/educational-tablet-made-in-thailand
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Getting closer to becoming a reality, 800,000 tablets at 3,000 baht each could jumpstart Thai-language content such as ebooks and learning games.
Forth Corporation has introduced the first Thai-made educational tablet computer priced at 3,000 baht in a bid to join the government's 4-billion-baht One Tablet per Child programme.
Mr Sawat says controls on the tablet help ensure only appropriate content can be used.
The SET-listed electronic equipment manufacturer spent three months redesigning its controller board to integrate it with a base to reduce size and bring the cost down from 5,000 baht earlier, said R&D director Sawat Erbchokchai.
As well, he said, the fact that the government wants as many as 800,000 tablets means the company can achieve economies of scale to keep costs low.
"We're confident our current tablet price could easily compete with those of Chinese manufacturers, while our production capacity could serve the government's demand," he said.
The tablet programme was one of the high-profile election promises of the Pheu Thai Party. Responding to critics who said the cost would be too high, party strategists said they believed they could source cheap equipment from China.
Forth is in talks with advisers to the Education Minister and local software companies about cooperation on educational content development.
Featuring a 7-inch display and both a pen- and touch-based interface, Forth's tablets enable students to automatically receive educational content after they register their personal data and log in - without the need for downloads.
The management software enables screening of content and applications supplied to students to make sure it is appropriate. "This will facilitate primary school pupils, considered too young to download applications by themselves.
Mr Sawat said it was not easy in the past for Thai companies to make tablets, given small local demand. However, the school tablet project opens the doors to local IT and technology firms.
"If the government promotes greater use of local content and opens more opportunity for local IT and telecom firms to participate in state bidding projects, the ultimate result will be a new ecosystem and a new momentum for the industry," he said.
Mr Sawat said that if Forth's tablets proved successful, it would attract other industries to commercially adopt the first Thai-made products. As a result, he said, both hardware makers and local application developers would benefit.
Read more at http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/256904/educational-tablet-made-in-thailand
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Chinese Teaching and China Learning Cooperation
Chinese Teaching and China Learning Cooperation.
Ms. Churairat Sangboonnum, the Deputy Permanent Secretary for Education, presided over a signing ceremony of cooperation under the project of quality learning and teaching of the Chinese language in educational institutes located in Bangkok Metropolitan and networking schools, Thai - Chinese networking schools and, the Center for Chinese Language Development (Hanban), Beijing Normal University. This event took place at Ratchavallop Meeting Room in the Ministry of Education.
The Deputy Permanent Secretary informed all in attendance that the government had delivered a policy on moving forward to the ASEAN Community in 2015 through human resource development in order to provide access to quality education and lifelong learning as well as to develop innovation, research and development and ASEAN integration for all Thai citizens.
The provision of basic education is a crucial educational system in borderless communication. It must achieve educational standards in response to the free trade areas both in ASEAN and in the WTO. In this regard, educational cooperation amongst neighboring countries is important, especially as China is developing educational standards which will stimulate internationalization and international standard schools. This will also facilitate collaboration in developing teachers, students and educational administrators and an information exchange. Thus, it was a great opportunity for Thai educational administrators and distinguished delegates from the Chinese government to strengthen their close cooperation in quality Chinese learning and teaching under the support of the Center for Chinese Language Development (Hanban), the Beijing Normal University that reflects the valued friendship which exists between both countries.
Read more at http://www.en.moe.go.th/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=469:chinese-teaching-and-learning-cooperation&catid=1:news&Itemid=42
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Ms. Churairat Sangboonnum, the Deputy Permanent Secretary for Education, presided over a signing ceremony of cooperation under the project of quality learning and teaching of the Chinese language in educational institutes located in Bangkok Metropolitan and networking schools, Thai - Chinese networking schools and, the Center for Chinese Language Development (Hanban), Beijing Normal University. This event took place at Ratchavallop Meeting Room in the Ministry of Education.
The Deputy Permanent Secretary informed all in attendance that the government had delivered a policy on moving forward to the ASEAN Community in 2015 through human resource development in order to provide access to quality education and lifelong learning as well as to develop innovation, research and development and ASEAN integration for all Thai citizens.
The provision of basic education is a crucial educational system in borderless communication. It must achieve educational standards in response to the free trade areas both in ASEAN and in the WTO. In this regard, educational cooperation amongst neighboring countries is important, especially as China is developing educational standards which will stimulate internationalization and international standard schools. This will also facilitate collaboration in developing teachers, students and educational administrators and an information exchange. Thus, it was a great opportunity for Thai educational administrators and distinguished delegates from the Chinese government to strengthen their close cooperation in quality Chinese learning and teaching under the support of the Center for Chinese Language Development (Hanban), the Beijing Normal University that reflects the valued friendship which exists between both countries.
Read more at http://www.en.moe.go.th/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=469:chinese-teaching-and-learning-cooperation&catid=1:news&Itemid=42
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, March 16, 2012
Eating Your Way Through the Streets of Bangkok Thailand
Eating your way through the streets of Bangkok Thailand.
Sweet and spicy flavours - often combined - are the specialty, from pad Thai to suckling pig.
Bangkok is like your favourite e the one you carry a secret torch for, the one that could have been - should have been - the best thing that ever happened to you and was wrong for all the right reasons.
It's a city that you can feel against your skin, taste on your lips. Your clothes still reek of it weeks later when you return home. You'll smell it on your suit coat driving into work or when you open your wallet at the corner store to buy a litre of milk.
The moment I leave Suvarnabhumi Airport, it all comes rushing back to me. Everywhere I look during the drive into the city, people are eating. A girl dangling helmetless off the back of a scooter feasts on fried rice out of a Styrofoam container. A young mother and her son sip cola out of plastic bags with straws. A taxi driver alternates between smoking and gnawing on pineapple chunks.
Four years ago when I first came to the Kingdom of Siam, the food here was a gut-wrenching spicefest. All sweat and tears. Let's just say that I've come back to get my fill. Thais eat up to eight meals a day and I plan to do the same.
Before my flight, chef Angus An of Maenam fame in Vancouver made me promise to visit Nahm at the Metropolitan Hotel on my first night in Bangkok. David Thompson is expecting you, he told me. These five simple words will prove to be the blueprint for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience.
Bangkok rush hour, 30-minute traffic jams at every intersection, forgetting to ask the concierge at the VIE Hotel to write down the restaurant address in Thai - this is exactly what not to do on your first night in Bangkok, but our pilgrimage to Nahm is worth it.
In London, Thompson runs the first Thai restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star. He has been both praised and skewered as the Westerner who had enough cajones to open a Thai restaurant (also named Nahm) in Bangkok.
"When I first came here in the 1980s, Thai cuisine had become a take-away culture," he tells my business partner Steve and I during a behind-the-scenes tour of his kitchen. "You would never eat it in a fine-dining environment."
Even though he's reluctant to talk about it, halfway through dinner, it's clear that Thompson is an expert at isolating the key flavours of traditional Thai dishes and combining them with surprising new textures.
His spicy pork with mint, peanuts and crunchy rice on betel leaves is the ideal example of this - the crunch of the leaf and rice and the play between mint and spice is sublime.
His blue crab coconut curry juggles sweetness and eye-watering heat perfectly.
Thompson brings us a durian rice pudding to close our meal.
"You'll either love durian or hate it," he says.
I tell Thompson about a poet I know who wrote a series of odes to the fruit - she couldn't get enough - and then tell him that his pudding tastes like someone shat in the middle of a smoking lounge.
"Your friend, she sounds like my kind of poet," he laughs.
After dinner, Thompson joins us for a few bottles of wine on his poolside terrace. He is more comfortable joking about politics and staying out until 9 a.m. than he is talking about food. He loves what he does and lets his cooking speak for itself - in other words, the perfect chef.
He suggests we visit the twisting Yaowarat Road in Chinatown tomorrow night to "eat in the dragon's belly."
The following evening, Bangkok smells like an overripe papaya slowly roasting over a charcoal fire. The city is on edge. This is the day the flood water is supposed to break through the levies and consume downtown Bangkok. Sandbags line the fronts of businesses and the tourist districts are deserted.
Bangkok's Chinatown is located in a low-lying district close to the Chao Phraya River and Hua Lamphong Station, the end of underground MRT subway line.
We are repetitively warned by wellmeaning locals to stay away from this part of the city, but the temptation is too high.
We catch a cab, expecting to find empty streets submerged under waistdeep water.
Instead, we find a three-ringed circus of food carts and curbside diners divided down the middle by an unrelenting cacophony of honking cars and scooters. During the resettlement of the Chinese community to this district in the late 1700s, Yaowarat Road was built in a series of twists and curves - like a dragon's body. The vendors fight to sell here because they believe it will make them rich.
It's a dizzying crush of bodies and smells, the complete antithesis of North American dining culture.
Corner barbecue huts offer traditional Chinese and Thai delicacies - from bird's-nest and shark fin soup to pepper blue crab and chestnuts handcooked in steaming vats of black sand. Space here is at a premium. Long common tables are packed elbow to elbow with friends, strangers and entire families, and it's legal to drink open liquor on the street.
Our final destination is Tang Jai Yoo, a restaurant at the intersection of Yaowarat and Yaowa Phanit. Its signature dish is roast suckling pig, which to me represents the kind of gluttony and gastronomic excess I've dreamed of since I was boy. After all, who in their right mind would settle for a mere pork chop in place of the whole pig?
This dish is served in two courses, beginning with the roasted skin sectioned off into two-inch squares and the fat removed. Served with green onion, cucumber, hoisin sauce and flatbread, you can opt to make crispy pork skin tortillas or try crunching on the cartilage and soft skin from the ears, nose and feet.
When finished, we asked the kitchen to deep fry the moist meat and bones with garlic and black pepper. The end result is similar to pub-style dry ribs - make sure to have this last course with a local beer.
On our final day in the city, we have enlisted a Thai guide, Sam Doungpraton, and a driver under the guise of a city tour, though we really just want them to take us out for lunch. We ask them to take us to the best street pad Thai in Bangkok. It's the one Thai dish that every westerner knows, but Sam tells us that it didn't become popular locally until the 1930s or '40s.
He takes us to Pha Tu Pee, a fourtable open-air restaurant next to Wat Saket in the Pom Prap Sattru Phai district.
After parking the car, our driver asks Sam if it's okay to join us. Sam translates, "He has heard of this restaurant from friends and has always wanted to try it."
The pad Thai is prepared out front over a charcoal fire by a young woman in flip-flops and shorts.
"The charcoal fire is the key," Sam explains. "This is the best in the city because of the way they cook the noodles."
We order the Super Special with Egg and Prawns for a whopping 70 baht - roughly $2 Cdn - and it's served with bean sprouts, green onions, limes and something unexpected: banana flowers. This bitter garnish tastes like Lily of the Valley and helps combat spice and heat. The pad Thai arrives plain and we are expected to customize it individually with chilies, sugar, peanuts, fish sauce and vinegar.
Sam didn't lie.
The noodles are so soft it's like eating a mouthful of butter. Mid-meal, a cat chases something up and down the aisles, but nobody seems to care. There's even an elderly man snoring in the back, shifting every few seconds to follow the cool breeze from a rotating fan. Our driver admits that it's the best he's had in Bangkok before shyly vanishing across the street. I have to agree.
The most rewarding meals in Thailand are usually small and simple. There are chicken/pork noodle soup and iced Thai tea stalls on nearly every block in Bangkok-and it's in these places that you really get to know the city and the people who live here.
On the way back to the airport, I can't help but feel a sense of accomplishment, the same kind you have when you meet an old ex again for the first time in years.
I've grown up and so has Bangkok - the skyline is dotted with construction cranes and new buildings and communities have sprung up everywhere, rendering parts of the city virtually unrecognizable.
Sure, I'll eat anything nowadays, but I still feel like I'm about to return home, hungry for more.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/Eating+your+through+streets+Bangkok/5883093/story.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sweet and spicy flavours - often combined - are the specialty, from pad Thai to suckling pig.
Bangkok is like your favourite e the one you carry a secret torch for, the one that could have been - should have been - the best thing that ever happened to you and was wrong for all the right reasons.
It's a city that you can feel against your skin, taste on your lips. Your clothes still reek of it weeks later when you return home. You'll smell it on your suit coat driving into work or when you open your wallet at the corner store to buy a litre of milk.
The moment I leave Suvarnabhumi Airport, it all comes rushing back to me. Everywhere I look during the drive into the city, people are eating. A girl dangling helmetless off the back of a scooter feasts on fried rice out of a Styrofoam container. A young mother and her son sip cola out of plastic bags with straws. A taxi driver alternates between smoking and gnawing on pineapple chunks.
Four years ago when I first came to the Kingdom of Siam, the food here was a gut-wrenching spicefest. All sweat and tears. Let's just say that I've come back to get my fill. Thais eat up to eight meals a day and I plan to do the same.
Before my flight, chef Angus An of Maenam fame in Vancouver made me promise to visit Nahm at the Metropolitan Hotel on my first night in Bangkok. David Thompson is expecting you, he told me. These five simple words will prove to be the blueprint for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience.
Bangkok rush hour, 30-minute traffic jams at every intersection, forgetting to ask the concierge at the VIE Hotel to write down the restaurant address in Thai - this is exactly what not to do on your first night in Bangkok, but our pilgrimage to Nahm is worth it.
In London, Thompson runs the first Thai restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star. He has been both praised and skewered as the Westerner who had enough cajones to open a Thai restaurant (also named Nahm) in Bangkok.
"When I first came here in the 1980s, Thai cuisine had become a take-away culture," he tells my business partner Steve and I during a behind-the-scenes tour of his kitchen. "You would never eat it in a fine-dining environment."
Even though he's reluctant to talk about it, halfway through dinner, it's clear that Thompson is an expert at isolating the key flavours of traditional Thai dishes and combining them with surprising new textures.
His spicy pork with mint, peanuts and crunchy rice on betel leaves is the ideal example of this - the crunch of the leaf and rice and the play between mint and spice is sublime.
His blue crab coconut curry juggles sweetness and eye-watering heat perfectly.
Thompson brings us a durian rice pudding to close our meal.
"You'll either love durian or hate it," he says.
I tell Thompson about a poet I know who wrote a series of odes to the fruit - she couldn't get enough - and then tell him that his pudding tastes like someone shat in the middle of a smoking lounge.
"Your friend, she sounds like my kind of poet," he laughs.
After dinner, Thompson joins us for a few bottles of wine on his poolside terrace. He is more comfortable joking about politics and staying out until 9 a.m. than he is talking about food. He loves what he does and lets his cooking speak for itself - in other words, the perfect chef.
He suggests we visit the twisting Yaowarat Road in Chinatown tomorrow night to "eat in the dragon's belly."
The following evening, Bangkok smells like an overripe papaya slowly roasting over a charcoal fire. The city is on edge. This is the day the flood water is supposed to break through the levies and consume downtown Bangkok. Sandbags line the fronts of businesses and the tourist districts are deserted.
Bangkok's Chinatown is located in a low-lying district close to the Chao Phraya River and Hua Lamphong Station, the end of underground MRT subway line.
We are repetitively warned by wellmeaning locals to stay away from this part of the city, but the temptation is too high.
We catch a cab, expecting to find empty streets submerged under waistdeep water.
Instead, we find a three-ringed circus of food carts and curbside diners divided down the middle by an unrelenting cacophony of honking cars and scooters. During the resettlement of the Chinese community to this district in the late 1700s, Yaowarat Road was built in a series of twists and curves - like a dragon's body. The vendors fight to sell here because they believe it will make them rich.
It's a dizzying crush of bodies and smells, the complete antithesis of North American dining culture.
Corner barbecue huts offer traditional Chinese and Thai delicacies - from bird's-nest and shark fin soup to pepper blue crab and chestnuts handcooked in steaming vats of black sand. Space here is at a premium. Long common tables are packed elbow to elbow with friends, strangers and entire families, and it's legal to drink open liquor on the street.
Our final destination is Tang Jai Yoo, a restaurant at the intersection of Yaowarat and Yaowa Phanit. Its signature dish is roast suckling pig, which to me represents the kind of gluttony and gastronomic excess I've dreamed of since I was boy. After all, who in their right mind would settle for a mere pork chop in place of the whole pig?
This dish is served in two courses, beginning with the roasted skin sectioned off into two-inch squares and the fat removed. Served with green onion, cucumber, hoisin sauce and flatbread, you can opt to make crispy pork skin tortillas or try crunching on the cartilage and soft skin from the ears, nose and feet.
When finished, we asked the kitchen to deep fry the moist meat and bones with garlic and black pepper. The end result is similar to pub-style dry ribs - make sure to have this last course with a local beer.
On our final day in the city, we have enlisted a Thai guide, Sam Doungpraton, and a driver under the guise of a city tour, though we really just want them to take us out for lunch. We ask them to take us to the best street pad Thai in Bangkok. It's the one Thai dish that every westerner knows, but Sam tells us that it didn't become popular locally until the 1930s or '40s.
He takes us to Pha Tu Pee, a fourtable open-air restaurant next to Wat Saket in the Pom Prap Sattru Phai district.
After parking the car, our driver asks Sam if it's okay to join us. Sam translates, "He has heard of this restaurant from friends and has always wanted to try it."
The pad Thai is prepared out front over a charcoal fire by a young woman in flip-flops and shorts.
"The charcoal fire is the key," Sam explains. "This is the best in the city because of the way they cook the noodles."
We order the Super Special with Egg and Prawns for a whopping 70 baht - roughly $2 Cdn - and it's served with bean sprouts, green onions, limes and something unexpected: banana flowers. This bitter garnish tastes like Lily of the Valley and helps combat spice and heat. The pad Thai arrives plain and we are expected to customize it individually with chilies, sugar, peanuts, fish sauce and vinegar.
Sam didn't lie.
The noodles are so soft it's like eating a mouthful of butter. Mid-meal, a cat chases something up and down the aisles, but nobody seems to care. There's even an elderly man snoring in the back, shifting every few seconds to follow the cool breeze from a rotating fan. Our driver admits that it's the best he's had in Bangkok before shyly vanishing across the street. I have to agree.
The most rewarding meals in Thailand are usually small and simple. There are chicken/pork noodle soup and iced Thai tea stalls on nearly every block in Bangkok-and it's in these places that you really get to know the city and the people who live here.
On the way back to the airport, I can't help but feel a sense of accomplishment, the same kind you have when you meet an old ex again for the first time in years.
I've grown up and so has Bangkok - the skyline is dotted with construction cranes and new buildings and communities have sprung up everywhere, rendering parts of the city virtually unrecognizable.
Sure, I'll eat anything nowadays, but I still feel like I'm about to return home, hungry for more.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/Eating+your+through+streets+Bangkok/5883093/story.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Travel Trends in 2012
Travel trends in 2012.
I can see it now. The travel crystal ball for 2012 shows amazing destinations, interesting price trends and, wait, is that Myanmar? Here’s a look at where travel is headed this year - what’s hot, what things will cost and must-dos for people who want to be on the cutting edge.
Hot destinations for 2012:
Uganda
Myanmar (Burma)
Ukraine
Jordan
Denmark
Best deals:
Costa Rica - still cheap
Japan - needs visitors
Mediterranean - ship glut
Orlando - many deals
Thailand - still cheap
Don’t go here:
Syria. Danger and conflict destroyed fragile tourism efforts
Or here, either:
Republic of South Sudan
Cote d’Ivoire
Afghanistan
North Korea
Iran
Iraq
Trending up:
Indonesia
Ghana
Malaysia
Nepal
Romania
Iceland
Abu Dhabi
Lodging fads:
Women-only hotel floors
Renting out your backyard to travellers
In-crowd hangouts:
Sri Lanka
Toronto
St. Vincent / Grenadines
Guimarães, Portugal
Abu Dhabi
Costa Navarino, Greece
Xishuangbanna, China
Cost of U.S. travel:
Coach airfare: Will go up 2 percent-5 percent
Business class: Will go up 5 percent-7 percent
Car rentals: Will go down as much as 1 percent
Hotel rates: Will go up 1.5 percent-6.5 percent
We plan most trips:
4 or fewer weeks ahead: 21 percent
5-7 weeks ahead: 15 percent
8 or more weeks ahead: 64 percent
Be the first on your block:
Try this tour: "Forgotten Corner of South America" - Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, 19 days, Geographic Expeditions (www.geoex.com)
On the horizon:
Toronto: Construction of a rail link between Pearson International Airport and downtown’s Union Station starts in the spring and should be complete by 2015, when Toronto hosts the Pan Am Games.
Las Vegas: Construction of an entertainment complex, Linq, featuring the High Roller (a 550-foot wheel like the London Eye) is supposed to get under way any day now on the Strip near the Flamingo. It’s expected to be finished in 2013.
Splendid but few tourists:
Russia. Despite the Hermitage, palaces, incredible history and architecture in Moscow and St. Petersburg, tourism is lacklustre. Visit now before the Winter Olympics in 2014 makes it a hot destination.
Travel trends for this year:
"Ends of the Earth" journeys to remote destinations
Personal growth trips
Ancestral travel - discover your heritage
Boom! In 2012:
It’s the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, plus the continuing Civil War sesquicentennial in the U.S.. Look for trips and commemorations galore.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/Travel+trends+2012/6002526/story.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
I can see it now. The travel crystal ball for 2012 shows amazing destinations, interesting price trends and, wait, is that Myanmar? Here’s a look at where travel is headed this year - what’s hot, what things will cost and must-dos for people who want to be on the cutting edge.
Hot destinations for 2012:
Uganda
Myanmar (Burma)
Ukraine
Jordan
Denmark
Best deals:
Costa Rica - still cheap
Japan - needs visitors
Mediterranean - ship glut
Orlando - many deals
Thailand - still cheap
Don’t go here:
Syria. Danger and conflict destroyed fragile tourism efforts
Or here, either:
Republic of South Sudan
Cote d’Ivoire
Afghanistan
North Korea
Iran
Iraq
Trending up:
Indonesia
Ghana
Malaysia
Nepal
Romania
Iceland
Abu Dhabi
Lodging fads:
Women-only hotel floors
Renting out your backyard to travellers
In-crowd hangouts:
Sri Lanka
Toronto
St. Vincent / Grenadines
Guimarães, Portugal
Abu Dhabi
Costa Navarino, Greece
Xishuangbanna, China
Cost of U.S. travel:
Coach airfare: Will go up 2 percent-5 percent
Business class: Will go up 5 percent-7 percent
Car rentals: Will go down as much as 1 percent
Hotel rates: Will go up 1.5 percent-6.5 percent
We plan most trips:
4 or fewer weeks ahead: 21 percent
5-7 weeks ahead: 15 percent
8 or more weeks ahead: 64 percent
Be the first on your block:
Try this tour: "Forgotten Corner of South America" - Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, 19 days, Geographic Expeditions (www.geoex.com)
On the horizon:
Toronto: Construction of a rail link between Pearson International Airport and downtown’s Union Station starts in the spring and should be complete by 2015, when Toronto hosts the Pan Am Games.
Las Vegas: Construction of an entertainment complex, Linq, featuring the High Roller (a 550-foot wheel like the London Eye) is supposed to get under way any day now on the Strip near the Flamingo. It’s expected to be finished in 2013.
Splendid but few tourists:
Russia. Despite the Hermitage, palaces, incredible history and architecture in Moscow and St. Petersburg, tourism is lacklustre. Visit now before the Winter Olympics in 2014 makes it a hot destination.
Travel trends for this year:
"Ends of the Earth" journeys to remote destinations
Personal growth trips
Ancestral travel - discover your heritage
Boom! In 2012:
It’s the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, plus the continuing Civil War sesquicentennial in the U.S.. Look for trips and commemorations galore.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/Travel+trends+2012/6002526/story.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
A Tour Group Cycles from Saigon Vietnam to Bangkok Thailand
A tour group cycles from Saigon Vietnam to Bangkok Thailand.
In March, my partner and I cycled from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Bangkok - a memorable two-week holiday that took us through three distinct countries in hot and humid South-East Asia. The trip was both more, and less, daunting than it sounds.
So don't stop reading. You can do it, too, if you are reasonably fit (if you can easily cover 60 kilometres in a day) and don't mind traipsing through strangers' chicken coops to get to the outhouse. You don't have to be a buff 30-year-old, in other words.
Nor did we cycle every single kilometre: we covered some distance in river boats, an air-conditioned backup van and even an antique "bamboo train." We also enjoyed regular rest days swimming in the hotel pool - when we weren't drinking icy beer at cheerful bars, or poking through glittery, local markets filled with dollar-store junk and all manner of mutant fruits and vegetables.
But the cycling, about 570 kilometres in all, was the highlight. The road is often bumpy, but the terrain is mostly flat. The heat can be draining, but the reward - as with every cycling trip - is an intimate encounter with the culture (including the barnyards, convoys of orangeclad monks who studied us gravely, scooters nearly buried under their cargoes of live chickens, smiling toothless women in cone hats and some very excited children.)
In fact, we rode so close to people's simple thatch homes on the twisting paths through Vietnam's Mekong delta, it felt as if we were pedalling right into their daily lives, disturbing the mid-day siesta, or the friendly curbside cockfight. We thoroughly disrupted recess at countless country schools, and caused a sensation on rural backroads, as squealing kids ran to greet us with high-fives and exuberant cries of "Hello! Hello!" (This must be what it's like for Justin Bieber.)
In the company of our genial tour group - more on that later - we swooped, like some species of exotic bird, through villages buried in jungle, past dusty farmlands, spring-green rice paddies, remote hamlets and into damaged and depressing regional hubs, like Battambang, Cambodia, that look as if they haven't seen a tourist since Pol Pot was mercifully defeated in 1979.
Yet people were unfailingly warm and curious - although I did notice the odd amused smile. No wonder; it isn't every day a peloton of red-faced foreigners, dressed in their colourful native spandex, speeds past your shaded hammock in the noonday sun. Chased by the mad dogs.
Our route also hit the main tourist draws: the sombre temple complex at Angkor Wat in Cambodia; the thriving nearby service town of Siem Reap, where fishes will nibble your toes in giant sidewalk tanks; and Phnom Phen, where a seedier form of massage is widely offered. Only $4. We stopped at a touristic silk factory (practically mandatory on an Asia tour, but fascinating), at stone carvers' yards and smaller, out-of-the-way, rice paper "factories" in simple bamboo sheds.
While cycle touring has become popular, especially in booming Vietnam, it still hasn't spoiled the region - in fact, in 14 days we saw only one other western cycle tour, and, in many places, we were the only foreigners.
On a bike, you get to places those giant tour buses can't manage (and there were many buses; Asia is packed with western visitors). That includes potholed country lanes, or narrow scooter paths weaving through the Mekong delta - not to mention the 10-person "ferries", made of rough planks roped together, that traverse the delta's thousands of rivulets.
Several companies now offer cycle tours of varying duration and ambition, with excursions along Vietnam's scorching coastal highway and in the mountainous interior particularly well-subscribed. (And more demanding than our ride, which only rated three chilies out of five in level of difficulty.)
We wanted to see three countries - Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - and major attractions like Angkor Wat, along with a "quiet" Thai beach, so we chose a trip offered by SpiceRoads, a Scottish-owned outfit with good reviews and reasonable prices. Our tour cost about $2,500 each and included sumptuous meals, inscrutable snacks, adequate-toexcellent hotels, an air-conditioned support van, rental bikes - serviceable Trek hardtail mountain bikes - and three guides. (That didn't include airfare between Canada and Saigon.)
SpiceRoads turned out to be an excellent choice; the tour was well-staffed and the route well-chosen. The main guide, in particular, a 32-year-old American called Jonathan, was well-informed, professional and endlessly helpful. (So encyclopedic was his knowledge of local customs, languages, history, pharmacology and cuisine, he earned the tag WikiJon.)
We were 12 cyclists altogether, ranging in age from 27 to 63, from Australia, the United States and Canada - including a young American working in Afghanistan. No thanks to me, we were an unusually speedy group: a combination of young riders and some seasoned veterans. Any pressure to keep up was mostly self-generated; ordinarily, Jon assured us, this particular trip proceeds at a more stately pace.
We stopped for picnic lunches at park-like Buddhist temples in various states of disrepair; at ramshackle roadside cafés that, in one unforgettable instance, offered deep-fried tarantulas and crickets; at open-air, but well-shaded restaurants where we watched, slack-jawed, as servers paraded out trays of South-Asian specialties, each dish more enticing than the last. (The salty, tasty Vietnamese chicken noodle soup pho ga turns out to be perfect fuel for a sweaty ride through the tropics.)
The longest day was 92 kilometres (long if you are on a mountain bike), but more often we rode 35 to 65 kilometres, or not at all. Sometimes we were on corduroy dirt roads, sometimes on pavement, sometimes cutting across a rice paddy on a hard mud path, occasionally on busy city boulevards.
It was the heat, rather than distance, that was daunting. It was pushing 38 degrees at Angkor Wat, with intense sun and wilting humidity. In the Mekong delta, we were mercifully shaded by coconut and banana fronds, but on open roads the sun beat down relentlessly. Fortunately, on the longest day - through dusty and impoverished farm country in Cambodia, approaching the Thai border - it was unseasonably cool at 26 degrees, and overcast.
No matter when you travel in this region it is going to be hot, but December to February may be the smartest choice. We also took care: we stopped every 20 kilometres for salty snacks, fresh pineapple and watermelon, soft drinks and water. When it got to be too much - sore knee, bad tummy, imminent heat stroke - there was always the air-conditioned van trailing discreetly behind, equipped with water and yet more pineapple.
If you don't want to do the whole ride, you might consider a shorter trek through the Mekong delta, to me the most fascinating part of the trip. The delta is a lush maze of thatch homes, mango farms, temples, banana groves and hamlets that is home to 17 million people. It isn't the sandy, flat farmland, interspersed with broad Amazonian rivers, that I imagined. (It looks like an inhospitable venue for a war, by the way.)
A hundred spidery trails lead through this jungle - many paved and wide enough to accommodate two scooters, which, along with local cyclists and pedestrians, are the only traffic.
The twists and turns force you to slow down; so do the many small bridges, that rise suddenly, over chocolate-coloured, slightly menacing currents. One day, we crossed 51 of these little arched bridges; it felt like a tropical skateboard park. On top of one such bridge, we had to ride over drying rice while dodging young boys eager to show us the live mice they had dangling from strings. We momentarily lost one rider in the swamp, but she had never been on a mountain bike before.
Best of all are the small ferries - which are really just rafts with tattered canvas coverings. Sitting on the plank floor, crossing a turbulent channel the width of the Rideau Canal, eight bikes leaning on the flimsy bamboo railing, the driver operating the small submerged engine with a string tied to his bare toe, I thought to myself: I can't imagine a more exotic destination.
Cambodia was immediately different: poorer than Vietnam, drier, less forested and still haunted, somehow, by the memory of Pol Pot's brutal social experiments of the mid-'70s. I will always associate the country with human skulls and fanatically insistent child vendors.
We cycled to and through some of the famous killing fields - park-like, mass graves of the victims of Pol Pot, with glassed towers of skulls arranged according to gender and age.
The roads in Cambodia were mostly packed dirt and we shared them with water buffalo, scooters and luxury SUVs bearing Phnom Phen plates - evidence of a deeply inequitable society. We passed wooden houses on stilts and many, many children with torn, dirty clothing and poor teeth - but wide, excited smiles.
Despite the obvious poverty, we encountered few beggars. Instead, children swarm tourists like killer bees at every temple, or roadside attraction - thrusting their scarves, T-shirts and trinkets right through bus windows or into your face. They set up an irritating drone: "One dollar. Only one dollar, madame." (They don't get much education, but speak a confident English, tailored to ingratiate. One bright nine-year-old identified "David" Harper, as prime minister of Canada, when we quizzed him. Not bad.)
For many visitors, the celebrated rubble of Angkor Wat - the largest complex of religious buildings in the world, dating from the 12th century - is a historic and spiritual highlight. Maybe, but it was a fiendishly hot 30-kilometre cycle around the sprawling sight.
We arrived before sunrise - along with a few hundred other international tourists and early-rising coffee vendors - to watch the gloomy temples emerge from darkness in the rosy dawn. (Its one of those tourist fetish things.)
We breakfasted, wandered around, but by the time we got on our bikes at 10 a.m. to see the rest of the complex, it was already unbearably hot. Fortunately, it was only seven kilometres back to the hotel pool in Siem Reap.
What I will remember just as vividly is the less exalted "bamboo" train - a removable bamboo raft attached to rail wheels that whistles down a crooked track between two remote villages, an easy 10-kilometre cycle outside of Battambang. When you encounter a similar contraption coming the other way, one "train" stops, the driver moves the platform and wheels to the side, lets the oncoming "train" pass, then reassembles his own rolling platform.
There is no bug screen, no sides, no seats - just boards on wheels, travelling at bone-jarring speed. It was particularly exciting when a wandering cow got her rope caught in the track right in front of us and jerked free only moments before collision.
Travelling from this forgotten part of Cambodia to Thailand was like journeying from the Third World to the First. The moment we traversed the rural border crossing, the roads were better (than here, actually), the food exquisite, the mango groves lush and the bathrooms much fancier - even rivalling those in chic restaurants in Toronto. (We used all manner of toilets on our journey, mostly ceramic stand-ups in sheds behind cafés, temples or farmhouses. They were basic, but, unlike in India, did not smell.)
Our trip ended with a couple of days at a Chantchalao beach resort, mostly frequented by residents of nearby Bangkok and relatively free of the sex tourism so common throughout this part of the world.
A final easy cycle ride around the sleepy resort (including a visit to the King's mangrove swamp, a restoration project) and a magnificent, final moonlit banquet on the beach - featuring a stunning array of Thai seafood and yet more beer and pineapple - and our trip was over.
As I watched a rosy sunset over the ocean fade to black in the company of convivial new friends, sipped my Thai beer and felt the cooling breeze, I had to admit: that wasn't really daunting at all, as cycle tours go.
Susan Riley is a freelance political columnist for the Citizen and enjoys cycle touring. Email: smiley.work@gmail.com
IF YOU GO
Tour company: Spice Roads
Cost: About $2,500 for the cycle tour, accommodations, meals, support van, rental bikes and guides, but not airfare to Asia.
When to go: December to February may be wisest in terms of temperature.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/tour+group+cycles+from+Saigon+Bangkok/5605601/story.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
In March, my partner and I cycled from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Bangkok - a memorable two-week holiday that took us through three distinct countries in hot and humid South-East Asia. The trip was both more, and less, daunting than it sounds.
So don't stop reading. You can do it, too, if you are reasonably fit (if you can easily cover 60 kilometres in a day) and don't mind traipsing through strangers' chicken coops to get to the outhouse. You don't have to be a buff 30-year-old, in other words.
Nor did we cycle every single kilometre: we covered some distance in river boats, an air-conditioned backup van and even an antique "bamboo train." We also enjoyed regular rest days swimming in the hotel pool - when we weren't drinking icy beer at cheerful bars, or poking through glittery, local markets filled with dollar-store junk and all manner of mutant fruits and vegetables.
But the cycling, about 570 kilometres in all, was the highlight. The road is often bumpy, but the terrain is mostly flat. The heat can be draining, but the reward - as with every cycling trip - is an intimate encounter with the culture (including the barnyards, convoys of orangeclad monks who studied us gravely, scooters nearly buried under their cargoes of live chickens, smiling toothless women in cone hats and some very excited children.)
In fact, we rode so close to people's simple thatch homes on the twisting paths through Vietnam's Mekong delta, it felt as if we were pedalling right into their daily lives, disturbing the mid-day siesta, or the friendly curbside cockfight. We thoroughly disrupted recess at countless country schools, and caused a sensation on rural backroads, as squealing kids ran to greet us with high-fives and exuberant cries of "Hello! Hello!" (This must be what it's like for Justin Bieber.)
In the company of our genial tour group - more on that later - we swooped, like some species of exotic bird, through villages buried in jungle, past dusty farmlands, spring-green rice paddies, remote hamlets and into damaged and depressing regional hubs, like Battambang, Cambodia, that look as if they haven't seen a tourist since Pol Pot was mercifully defeated in 1979.
Yet people were unfailingly warm and curious - although I did notice the odd amused smile. No wonder; it isn't every day a peloton of red-faced foreigners, dressed in their colourful native spandex, speeds past your shaded hammock in the noonday sun. Chased by the mad dogs.
Our route also hit the main tourist draws: the sombre temple complex at Angkor Wat in Cambodia; the thriving nearby service town of Siem Reap, where fishes will nibble your toes in giant sidewalk tanks; and Phnom Phen, where a seedier form of massage is widely offered. Only $4. We stopped at a touristic silk factory (practically mandatory on an Asia tour, but fascinating), at stone carvers' yards and smaller, out-of-the-way, rice paper "factories" in simple bamboo sheds.
While cycle touring has become popular, especially in booming Vietnam, it still hasn't spoiled the region - in fact, in 14 days we saw only one other western cycle tour, and, in many places, we were the only foreigners.
On a bike, you get to places those giant tour buses can't manage (and there were many buses; Asia is packed with western visitors). That includes potholed country lanes, or narrow scooter paths weaving through the Mekong delta - not to mention the 10-person "ferries", made of rough planks roped together, that traverse the delta's thousands of rivulets.
Several companies now offer cycle tours of varying duration and ambition, with excursions along Vietnam's scorching coastal highway and in the mountainous interior particularly well-subscribed. (And more demanding than our ride, which only rated three chilies out of five in level of difficulty.)
We wanted to see three countries - Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - and major attractions like Angkor Wat, along with a "quiet" Thai beach, so we chose a trip offered by SpiceRoads, a Scottish-owned outfit with good reviews and reasonable prices. Our tour cost about $2,500 each and included sumptuous meals, inscrutable snacks, adequate-toexcellent hotels, an air-conditioned support van, rental bikes - serviceable Trek hardtail mountain bikes - and three guides. (That didn't include airfare between Canada and Saigon.)
SpiceRoads turned out to be an excellent choice; the tour was well-staffed and the route well-chosen. The main guide, in particular, a 32-year-old American called Jonathan, was well-informed, professional and endlessly helpful. (So encyclopedic was his knowledge of local customs, languages, history, pharmacology and cuisine, he earned the tag WikiJon.)
We were 12 cyclists altogether, ranging in age from 27 to 63, from Australia, the United States and Canada - including a young American working in Afghanistan. No thanks to me, we were an unusually speedy group: a combination of young riders and some seasoned veterans. Any pressure to keep up was mostly self-generated; ordinarily, Jon assured us, this particular trip proceeds at a more stately pace.
We stopped for picnic lunches at park-like Buddhist temples in various states of disrepair; at ramshackle roadside cafés that, in one unforgettable instance, offered deep-fried tarantulas and crickets; at open-air, but well-shaded restaurants where we watched, slack-jawed, as servers paraded out trays of South-Asian specialties, each dish more enticing than the last. (The salty, tasty Vietnamese chicken noodle soup pho ga turns out to be perfect fuel for a sweaty ride through the tropics.)
The longest day was 92 kilometres (long if you are on a mountain bike), but more often we rode 35 to 65 kilometres, or not at all. Sometimes we were on corduroy dirt roads, sometimes on pavement, sometimes cutting across a rice paddy on a hard mud path, occasionally on busy city boulevards.
It was the heat, rather than distance, that was daunting. It was pushing 38 degrees at Angkor Wat, with intense sun and wilting humidity. In the Mekong delta, we were mercifully shaded by coconut and banana fronds, but on open roads the sun beat down relentlessly. Fortunately, on the longest day - through dusty and impoverished farm country in Cambodia, approaching the Thai border - it was unseasonably cool at 26 degrees, and overcast.
No matter when you travel in this region it is going to be hot, but December to February may be the smartest choice. We also took care: we stopped every 20 kilometres for salty snacks, fresh pineapple and watermelon, soft drinks and water. When it got to be too much - sore knee, bad tummy, imminent heat stroke - there was always the air-conditioned van trailing discreetly behind, equipped with water and yet more pineapple.
If you don't want to do the whole ride, you might consider a shorter trek through the Mekong delta, to me the most fascinating part of the trip. The delta is a lush maze of thatch homes, mango farms, temples, banana groves and hamlets that is home to 17 million people. It isn't the sandy, flat farmland, interspersed with broad Amazonian rivers, that I imagined. (It looks like an inhospitable venue for a war, by the way.)
A hundred spidery trails lead through this jungle - many paved and wide enough to accommodate two scooters, which, along with local cyclists and pedestrians, are the only traffic.
The twists and turns force you to slow down; so do the many small bridges, that rise suddenly, over chocolate-coloured, slightly menacing currents. One day, we crossed 51 of these little arched bridges; it felt like a tropical skateboard park. On top of one such bridge, we had to ride over drying rice while dodging young boys eager to show us the live mice they had dangling from strings. We momentarily lost one rider in the swamp, but she had never been on a mountain bike before.
Best of all are the small ferries - which are really just rafts with tattered canvas coverings. Sitting on the plank floor, crossing a turbulent channel the width of the Rideau Canal, eight bikes leaning on the flimsy bamboo railing, the driver operating the small submerged engine with a string tied to his bare toe, I thought to myself: I can't imagine a more exotic destination.
Cambodia was immediately different: poorer than Vietnam, drier, less forested and still haunted, somehow, by the memory of Pol Pot's brutal social experiments of the mid-'70s. I will always associate the country with human skulls and fanatically insistent child vendors.
We cycled to and through some of the famous killing fields - park-like, mass graves of the victims of Pol Pot, with glassed towers of skulls arranged according to gender and age.
The roads in Cambodia were mostly packed dirt and we shared them with water buffalo, scooters and luxury SUVs bearing Phnom Phen plates - evidence of a deeply inequitable society. We passed wooden houses on stilts and many, many children with torn, dirty clothing and poor teeth - but wide, excited smiles.
Despite the obvious poverty, we encountered few beggars. Instead, children swarm tourists like killer bees at every temple, or roadside attraction - thrusting their scarves, T-shirts and trinkets right through bus windows or into your face. They set up an irritating drone: "One dollar. Only one dollar, madame." (They don't get much education, but speak a confident English, tailored to ingratiate. One bright nine-year-old identified "David" Harper, as prime minister of Canada, when we quizzed him. Not bad.)
For many visitors, the celebrated rubble of Angkor Wat - the largest complex of religious buildings in the world, dating from the 12th century - is a historic and spiritual highlight. Maybe, but it was a fiendishly hot 30-kilometre cycle around the sprawling sight.
We arrived before sunrise - along with a few hundred other international tourists and early-rising coffee vendors - to watch the gloomy temples emerge from darkness in the rosy dawn. (Its one of those tourist fetish things.)
We breakfasted, wandered around, but by the time we got on our bikes at 10 a.m. to see the rest of the complex, it was already unbearably hot. Fortunately, it was only seven kilometres back to the hotel pool in Siem Reap.
What I will remember just as vividly is the less exalted "bamboo" train - a removable bamboo raft attached to rail wheels that whistles down a crooked track between two remote villages, an easy 10-kilometre cycle outside of Battambang. When you encounter a similar contraption coming the other way, one "train" stops, the driver moves the platform and wheels to the side, lets the oncoming "train" pass, then reassembles his own rolling platform.
There is no bug screen, no sides, no seats - just boards on wheels, travelling at bone-jarring speed. It was particularly exciting when a wandering cow got her rope caught in the track right in front of us and jerked free only moments before collision.
Travelling from this forgotten part of Cambodia to Thailand was like journeying from the Third World to the First. The moment we traversed the rural border crossing, the roads were better (than here, actually), the food exquisite, the mango groves lush and the bathrooms much fancier - even rivalling those in chic restaurants in Toronto. (We used all manner of toilets on our journey, mostly ceramic stand-ups in sheds behind cafés, temples or farmhouses. They were basic, but, unlike in India, did not smell.)
Our trip ended with a couple of days at a Chantchalao beach resort, mostly frequented by residents of nearby Bangkok and relatively free of the sex tourism so common throughout this part of the world.
A final easy cycle ride around the sleepy resort (including a visit to the King's mangrove swamp, a restoration project) and a magnificent, final moonlit banquet on the beach - featuring a stunning array of Thai seafood and yet more beer and pineapple - and our trip was over.
As I watched a rosy sunset over the ocean fade to black in the company of convivial new friends, sipped my Thai beer and felt the cooling breeze, I had to admit: that wasn't really daunting at all, as cycle tours go.
Susan Riley is a freelance political columnist for the Citizen and enjoys cycle touring. Email: smiley.work@gmail.com
IF YOU GO
Tour company: Spice Roads
Cost: About $2,500 for the cycle tour, accommodations, meals, support van, rental bikes and guides, but not airfare to Asia.
When to go: December to February may be wisest in terms of temperature.
Read more at http://www.canada.com/travel/tour+group+cycles+from+Saigon+Bangkok/5605601/story.html
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