Night-life entertainment in Pattaya, Alcazar Cabaret Show is a legend in Asia and worth to visit. It is been said or compared to Crazy Horse Cabaret although the dancers in Alcazar and Tiffany’s only exist of Katoi’s or Lady-boys as performers. Never been to Crazy Horse or any other saloon, can’t confirm whether it is or is not, but the show is entertaining and delivered in American musical-style. Drag queen extravaganza with transvestites, but in Thai culture Katoi is seen as a third gender in transition.
But before entering the Theatre we had to grab a bite first and further down the road I remembered a section to have hawker-food stalls. We walked a bit and were nicely surprised, this section is modernised and covered. Now the next difficult thing was, choosing what we were going to order for our dinner.
Hereunder just an impression of the Cabaret show, you can buy tickets through a ticketing shop, travel agent, on-line or purchase directly at the cashier as we did. We were just lucky to get tickets and still reasonable seats with good view.
On the way to the Schiphol airport I arrived far too early and after having a coffee, strolled around in the shopping area at Departure Hall 3. From a distance you could hardly miss the electronic display of the Time-zone digital Globe at Schiphol Airport, it is a “big” blue balloon. While approaching you can not help yourself but imagining you are on board of your plane and actually counting the minutes till take-off.
In just a few hours we will be flying to a different time-zone in Asia, our destination Bangkok,Thailand. Flying eleven hours into a time-zone seven hours ahead of our current position Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Goodbye rain, hello Sunshine!
Time, before the invention of clocks we used position of the sun to measure time by using sundials. As the sun moved across the sky, its shadow aligned with marking lines etched on a surface. These sun dials have become antiquity. On the Internet accessible World Clock or handy mobile apps with time-zone and cities for work and social contacts have become clicks in a blink.
Being here and working five days a week, from nine-to-five or different hours, the week, months, quarters and whole year being ruled by a calendar and time-schedule, tick-tack, tick-tack. To know that as soon as I am board I will change the time on my tablet, take off my watch and wiggle my toes in anticipation of sand, sea, sun and freedom of not being ruled by time. For a short period I will rule my day as I see fit…..well that’s what I want to believe, so bear with me for now.
Calculating time in places at other countries or parts of the world than your home-base used to be a hassle. The website everytime zone makes it so easy viewable in a glance, just as the digital globe object placed at shopping area at Schiphol Airport.
Time and distance for travel sure have become digits on a sphere. Question: Where are you know?
While relaxing your days at the beach or sightseeing you might consider to visit the local Thepprasit Night Market, just hop on one of the local transport Songtel bus-taxi (song=two and tel=benches). They will drive and drop at the intersection where the street begins for transfer. From this corner (near bus station & Foodland Market) it is still a long stretch so this is where you switch over to another Songtel, or if you like the exercise it’s about 5km walk (could easily be more).
However on the left side about 30mtrs from the corner is “Boon Guer” a very good local casual food place located with a garden/al fresco kind of dining, as soon as you sit down they will bring over fans to cool you down. Instead of me pronouncing it wrongly, thought it might be best to post a picture of their neon street signboard easy to find and use.
Authentic Thai food restaurant
We’ve frequently enjoyed our dinners here it still services the same quality as our very first visit. We brought company along friends who decided to join us on this trip to get up close and personal encountering Thai flavours and hospitality. Alas too much chilli and not yet settled, they took it down a notch however Thai food is not always spicy, so we ordered different dishes easy on the palate and tummy. The menu; stir-fried Chicken with Cashew, minced meat with Thai fragrant basil, Dou-Fu soup with glass noodle, stir-fried greens with oyster sauce and we were waiting for our steamed Fish in Lemon Sauce. It is their dedicated fish and seafood preparation where they have build a solid reputation on, loyal customers even us holiday visitors keep coming back for more.
Thai-style stir-fried dishes and dou-fu soup
Well this picture doesn’t need any under-script, another “Happy Meal” with cheerful dinners!
On my list of favourite hawker food you will find the simple Thai Chicken Noodle Soup as mentioned in another blog post, followed closely by Som Tam, Thai Papaya Salad and Gai Yang Gai known as barbecue chicken. The last two items are often combined together for lunch as snack.
Thai hawker food – Gai Yang Gai
Early bird hawker food, every morning when we crossed the road to get a songtel ride for the beach, this food stall was grilling rows of Gai Yang Gai and before noon he would be sold out.
Gai Yang Gai – Thai barbecue chicken
Isn’t this just mouthwatering just by looking at it? Well smelling Thai rubbed spice chicken on the grill makes it even more tantalizing, such a shame we kept on missing out. We were either going for breakfast or coming back from the beach looking at an empty grill.
Som Tam Papaya salad
The slightly tart flavour of the young and green papaya combined with the heat of red chilli, saltiness of fish sauce and tamarind juice, with a little bit sweetness of palm sugar mixed all together is just gob-smacking good! Passing by one of these stalls I saw a pot filled with salted small black crabs, apparently that’s a popular local version, while I never tried the fried bugs I sure tried the black crab Papaya salad and if you like saltiness this is the one.
Tropical fresh fruit with full flavour
Fresh cut tropical fruits, explosion of taste and fruitiness and so many varieties to choose from it is just hard work :-). Here you can and should eat loads of Rambutan, Mangosteen or Jackfruit to name a few. These are hard to get in Europe and taste not even half as good when you have the chance to have them almost freshly plucked into your mouth.
Welcoming friends into our home and sharing their first Thai entertaining dinner. They heard many stories about Thailand, which stirred their curiosity for exploration. Between drinks and meals, we shared a lot about Thailand`s culture, food, sights, and places. It didn’t take long for our friends to decide and book airtickets for their very first trip to southeast-Asia. Together, we travelled from the south to the north of Thailand. Sightseeing and sampling a wide range of Thai flavours and local culture.
Hawker stalls
Our friends agreed that even the best pictures, writings, or talks will never be as good as firsthand experience. Curious and excited, they have taken a leap by joining us. Off the beaten track, we enjoy strolling along hawker stalls and trying our favourite food snacks. With a ★Big Smile★: Sit with Thais, do as Thais, and eat as Thais do.
First food trail dish: a popular hawker stall selling Thai Noodle Soup, ‘Guay Tiew Gai’. A simple, soul-satisfying comfort food dish. This is a big bowl with flat-rice stick noodles in chicken broth with fragrant fresh herbs. This stall in Pattaya has all the fresh herbs and vegetables presented as a buffet on the table. Next are traditional seasoning’s of fresh chillies in vinegar, sugar, fish sauce, and dried chilli flakes. You can choose and add the accompaniments, mixing and matching them to your own liking.
Thai Chicken Noodle Soup, Guay Tiew Gai
Food stall dishes
Second, I just stumbled upon Mark Wiens100 Thai Dishes to Eat in Bangkok: The Ultimate Eating Guide . Featuring beautiful food images and dish names in Thai script. With the danger of phonetic translations being incorrect, this post is a great help. Going through his list made me very happy to see listings of my favourite dishes too. Just reading brings back many fond memories of places and eateries. Vist Bangkok and do use his post as a reference. Give him a thumbs up!
The heart of all soups is the broth
Third, the heart of all soups is the broth, or stock. I often make a big pot of chicken or beef broth with the Instant Pot cooker. This broth is true golden liquid; pour it directly into glass canning pots. For canning, transfer the filled pots into a 23-quart Presto high pressure canner. After the pressure time you have your own batch of healthy broth without the need of a freezer. It is ideal and easy to pull the canned broth out of my pantry.
Tips preparing noodle soup broth
Final, tips for making your own home broth for a Thai-style version use a base for noodle soups (without salt). Add seasonings into the broth:
2 tbs soy sauce, 1tbs fish sauce and 1/2 tps sugar or to your taste.
Next, cook the rice noodles, sprout beans and shred chickenmeat. Fry garlic crispy and save the fragrant oil to pour on top as a finish. The secret to make it authentic is adding finely diced dried radish. This specific ingredient goes by many names; Mandarin Luo bo gao, Cantonese Choi poh, Hokkien Chye poh. This brings umami with a crunch, it is salty, sour with a little sweetness. For greens next to sprout beans add some stalks of chopped Morning glory (water spinach), chili, and sliced green onion.
Served at the table you always will find extra condiments container. Just as shown in the image all nicely displayed. Use more herbs like cilantro, basil and squeeze of lemon. Enjoy!
Don’t we all just love finger food, all time favourite chicken wings in a soy-chilli marinade, whether it is as a snack at a party or a nosh with beer and wine. It means happy time!
We had friends coming over to enjoy dinner together later tonight, but since we hadn’t really had lunch I prepared some appetizers with other snacks. These chicken wings are juicy coated in a sticky sauce, finger licking good with a bite!
After marinating (3-4 hrs or preferably overnight) I transferred the chicken wings on a grilling rack into a hot air grilling combi-oven, 220°C for 20 min. Next slowly reduce the left-over marinade in a pan into a syrupy consistency and poured that over as sticky sauce (or you can choose to serve it in a separate bowl as a dipping sauce).
Preparing the dipping sauce
Chicken wings soy-chilli marinade
Easy does it, give Chicken wings in soy-chili marinade recipe a try and be warned it becomes addictive, let me know your results. Leave a comment on how your wings turned out.
My Apps (1) – Lets not kid ourselves our society has been transformed the moment mobiles entered our life-style and made slowly but surely changes especially games, mobile applications and widgets. The possibilities in here has avalanched the way we read and made influential changes how we spend our time according to latest researches. I will not dive into scientific areas or technical description far from it even, for me as end-user I am only interested in convenient and efficient.
Simply said, are apps & widgets easy to operate and handy. Do they deliver any time and anywhere access, supporting tasks and retrieve latest updates. As social media fan and enthusiastic user, who loves to find out best practices with nifty gadgets and/or apps. I retrieve and exchange answers also from user groups, twitter feeds with search #hashtag for advice on the why’s, dont’s, do’s or just what is fun.
Since there are so many and only frequent usage will reveal whether it serves it purpose or not and I have my favourite free Android mobile apps. This is the first post of a series featuring “My Apps” list in categories starting with visual apps.
Photography
Instagram – Iphone most talked and raved application, now acquired by Facebook because it was the first photo-sharing experience on mobile phones! I installed the android version right on my Samsung S3 because it’s connected with other social media applications. For Iphone & Android users have a look at post mentioning other apps for even more possibilities and effects by Mashable Tech 10 Photo apps that enhance Instagram Tumblr post Instagram Apps unofficial catalog of cool apps or Lifehacker Five better alternatives for Android No need to explain why it turned immensely popular, it was fun to play and connect with friends and groups but I wanted more photo Fx (effects).
PicsArt Android – Now we’re talking this is a complete photo editing tool and super easy to use, once you start playing around with its features your hooked! I’ve downloaded this app also on my Samsung Tablet P1000 and if you like Photoshop this comes quite near.
Streamzoo Android – After Picsart this is my second best favourite because of its thriving community, members are prompt to tag their photo’s with hashtag as in Twitter, which makes it easier to follow and to find both people and interests. Since I’m a of Foursquare fan too I like the game reward element collecting points and badges. Photo’s I uploaded were instantly picked out and liked, sharing is also appreciating efforts of others so yes this app is a keeper.
Photo Grid Android – I’ve just recently added this and signed up for Beta-version testing, I like it as an addition to PicsArt making photo collages, single photo’s can be powerful but at times a collage can be as entertaining to want to see more.
Add watermark – Android I downloaded this after positive referral, easy to set-up and use. Sign your pictures with text or logo as protection for your digital and intellectual property, but also serve to advertise your company, website or other information at the same time.
Daily Mugshot Android – Is a fun app to take daily photo’s and upload instantly, some users have found an entertaining way to change their snaps by altering head wear, color lipsticks or just yourself as you. The only thing is I keep forgetting to take snapshots so I have one with big gaps but still fun when quickly flipped through to notice changes as an old film/cartoonbook.
There is so much more and available that actually having all these choices it just makes it harder and you may not like my choices, perhaps this post Top 20 Android Photography apps will enlighten you with more options of photo effects.
As an avid user I have these devices as my personal kit and like to keep them at hand, functional and protected. Choosing a cover can be as simple, a fashionable or technical requirements as to one’ s liking or preferences, most brands offer choices of accessories as in slides, hard and soft covers but they are either butt ugly, not always practical or a short-lived life-cycle that makes it just pricier. It is here were all the merchandising for accessories has found its way to owners and buyers to pimp up the hardware and apps for user convenience, I am a big fan of apps and will dive in a separate post with a list of favourites, most used etc.
The black keyboard cover (incl. USB cable) as shown in the picture is a nifty Bluetooth gadget lightweight covering all applicable language character sets, this item is available at various online-shops in The Netherlands. I’ve purchased this model for €30 and enjoyed using it but carrying other devices along over time in my purse does get bulky and heavy. It wasn’t for long that I started looking at other possible functional accessories in China.
The fun of this 7inch tablet is the very convenient size, it’s big enough to read and hold comfortably. The Samsung GT-P1000 included apps with a pre-installed skin. But I opted to download Kindle and FBreader to use as favourite e-reader apps, read my post on apps & widgets for smartphone and tablets with more information.
Unfortunately no more examples or stock at the moment for 7inch Tabletphone covers, new models are on the way leave me a comment or send me an email if interested.
Smartphone covers for Samsung SIII model, I am using the green croco-print and am selling the other colour & models as shown.
The black croco model – €18,50 | White model with strap €15,00 | The red swivel model €12,50
Fashionable and functionality accessories for your smart- & tablet-phones
Tabletphone cover Samsung model GT-P1000
Samsung model GT-P1000
Tabletphone cover for Samsung model GT-P1000
Samsung S3 cover, lightweight, stainproof
Black & green cover models both have a pocket and slides for ID, cards
Over the years our family has gathered hundreds of books, spread in age groups, various interests and languages. If we would have kept everything it would have been a small library but with every move my better half insisted to thin out our book cases. Some were easy to pile up for donations, coffee mornings or move-sales.
However there are always books you just can`t let go, collection of cook books, knowledge, humour and children books remain treasures everytime I unpack when setting up home.
Months have past since my last blog entry, while amidst all planning what to do next, sad news came around the corner which made me halt and reflect on my life. News, images, stories it all came along my minds eye at odd moments, randomly thoughts thinking it were just moments in reality it had taken much longer as in weeks of not being very productive on my time-line. It finally turned around after cleaning out a large storage cramped with stuff of a decade ago, while throwing out almost everything we only kept heirlooms and memorabilia of a family business long gone. Taking charge we finally have a large space free of junk and it feels good, the next is actually our shed but that’s at another time.
Finally having the luxury to avoid school breaks, we combined work with vacation to fly off to Thailand next week accompanied by curious friends and family to meet former colleagues who have chosen Thailand as their retirement home thus becoming locals. The creative buzz of travel, working on new projects with trial and errors is always challenging but never boring. While initially preparing to get a website live in native Dutch, finalizing proof-read e-cookbook, in between cooking up a storm before it gets buried underneath new fun’s, want’s and on-the-road goodies.
We turned everything upside down by choosing a new template multi-language encouraged by my social media followers to reach out and me not ending up translating by individual request as I did previously. So English to start of in combination with handy apps to post live while on-the-road. Working on new discoveries, transferring information, geeky gadget tips and musings with something to munch, share and hopefully enjoy reading all together.
Sharing tips and information comes natural to me with a huge passion for diverse communities and people, immensely enjoy networking. The hobby got a bit out of hand and now it’s work but fun work, bringing me to new places, following trends and great finds.
Taking charge being back up, having everything ready and good to go Asianfoodtrail website with content growing a-live. Started typing this post on the fly on a new editor app thinking it would load-up directly, that was the whole idea of being mobile and connect whenever, wherever. Well the last part as in wherever is promising but the whenever as in wireless connected and functionality hopefully earns its worth soon and fast.
