grim

...christmas was spent on a canal boat. it was cold but sunny. the canal froze. hahahaha!
now i'm in yorkshire - pretty place - cold, and rains alot though...

i have, strangely enough, adjusted to the cold...the lowest it has gotten down to is -3, which isn'treally that cold. usually it hovers around 5 or 6 degres...

but, as i suspected, it has been nice to remember cold, but i like the heat more.

oh yeah - if anyone reading this doesn't know, i wasn't in thailand when the tsunami hit. woulda been on phuket probably if i hadn't been here, so that was a good choice... will go to phuket when i get back...if i can't actually help out, i can at least support their businesses. thinking of starting a drink a pina colada for the victims' campaign - sell pina coladas on the beach and give all profits to people who lost their homes...


yorkshire

cold and wet...

its cold, its wet, the post office is shite, the trains don't run on time...

yes - ingerland is whingerland...nothing so popular as having a good moan!

hahahaha - gotta love the poms - only they can make themselves so completely happy by being miserable!

beer is good, cold is really cold (have remembered cold all too well - have to say, its fun for a bit, but bangkok heat is gonna be glorious when i get back) we may even have snow for chrissie - bookmakers have dropped the odds to 2-1 for a white xmas...

huzzah!

don't try to throw up in a tesco's bag...

so, was a little hung over yesterday morning after a night of boozing in some of london's finer establishments... it was the shot of mekong when we came home that did it to me!

was feeling woozy, so went into the kitchen to get a plastic bag in case needed to throw up...every single tesco's bag had small holes in the bottom (good thing i checked, huh?)

cultural tip for the unwary!

Ingerland...

...so, i'm in ingerland!
it's cold, and it's grey, and the people are twisted...
looking out the window, i see tiled roofs, bare wintery trees,
no coconut or mango trees in sight!
ahhh - ingerland...

vertigo

...on the 61st floor rooftop of the banyan tree hotel in the center of downtown bangkok is "vertigo" - apparently the highest open-air rooftop bar and restaurant in the south pacific...

pretty fine place to watch the sunset with a cocktail or two...

cocktails about B300, beer around B250... free bowl of cashew nuts...

damn but bangkok's grown up!!


vertigo

xmas...

...in my family, the tradition at xmas has always been to drink champagne and open xmas crackers. then we sit around with our silly paper hats on laughing at the bad jokes in the crackers...
...this year, as we will be o/s for xmas, we had a mini-xmas yesterday. of course, there was champagne and xmas crackers...
the joke of the day:

"who invented flavoured chips?"
"sultan vinegar"

hahahahahahahah!

merry xmas!

sunrise

so, recently, it doesn't matter what time i go to bed, i've been waking up at 6am...
turning into a farm granddad...!
means i get to see lots of sunrises though...very 'apocalypse now' at this time of year...except instead of jungles and swamps, i get bangkok in the foreground...

two nap-per day week...

this week has been tough...
one nap per day just hasn't cut it, so i've moved up the napping to two naps per day.
had to go out this afternoon, so only managed one - just not enough for the international man of leisure... but what today's nap lacked in quantity, at least it made up for in quality. a good outside nap on the balcony wrapped up in the hammock. i discovered when i was talking to the hammock man at the market on the weekend that it is possible to actually wrap myself up in my hammock, not just lie on it! all these months, i never knew!
ah, life in the swamp is tough...

mantis

cool preying mantis that was hanging around ouside our bungalow on koh samet... this guy was BIG...

fish

...so, been doin' some pretty wicked cooking lately...
every time we go to the islands, we eat the best fresh fish bbq'd or steamed or fried.
last weekend, went to the supermarket, and found out that when you buy fish here, they'll gut it and scale it for u! i don't gut fish, 'cos it's kinda gross, but if they're gonna do it for you, well, hey, i'm happy with that. Fish is also really cheap, we paid about $2 for a big fresh sea bream...
so, here is the swamp's baked chilli and ginger fish recipe:

ingredients:
one big ass fresh fish gutted and scaled - i like sea bream
2 hot red chillis
4 garlic cloves, chopped
a bit of fresh ginger, chopped
one quarter of a stick o' fresh lemongrass
juice from 2 small limes
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil
salt

method:
1. dump the chilli, garlic, ginger and lemongrass in the blender. blend it. put paste into a bowl and stir in oil and lemon juice. add salt if u like it.
2. wash the fish. slice three gashes down each side. then put a bit of the blended mixture inside the fish where the guts were, smear the rest over each side. jam the paste deep down into the gashes u've cut so the flavour gets in. whack it in the fridge for a coupla' hours
3. preheat the oven to about 180C. whack the fish into a baking tray on some foil, chuck it in the oven. give it 10 minutes on one side, then turn it over, smear on the remaining chilli paste, and leave it for almost half and hour.
the top will get all crispy with the garlic and stuff, and the bottom side tastes even better 'cos the juices have seeped down!


This is what it looks like before u cook it

damn that's good stuff!