My pleasure. She's one of my favourites -- raw and honest, but always beautiful writing.
Thanks Ethan. Vela is a great online mag and they continuously tweet interesting links from other sources too. Lauren shut down her personal blog about a year ago but she is happily still publishing on Vela.
She wrote about this on her own site awhile ago.
I haven't been since 1988 -- suspect it has changed quite a bit since then ;)
Thanks James! Hope others have some suggestions so I can keep adding to the resource page.
Thanks Belinda! I figured I'd put a bigger post together instead of splitting it up, since I get annoyed when people are all "come back for part 2!" Of course, every time I try to do a shorter post it gets to 2000 words anyhow but whatevs....I know my limitations - no short form for meeeee! ;)
I love how they do general narrative pieces and always add another post, dense with resources, to round out their coverage.
Of course! It's a series from Roads & Kingdoms partnering w/ SI -- they have another one with Slate for politics/news. Hope they make it to the World Cup to cover it from there as well.
Thanks for sharing! My readers contributed most of those restaurants, and they were great fun to try.
Would definitely recommend against Thai Visa as it's repurposing of info is historically not so accurate. Siam Voices is good, as is the same site's Bangkok Pundit column (also at @bangkokpundit). New Mandala is another good place for the history of the region / geopolitics - http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/category/thailand/. I've got a Thailand list on Twitter with all the journalists I met when I was there in 2010 (it's under my Twitter profile --> lists --> Thailand). For those interested, happy to send longer pieces to read for a much more thorough background via email.
It's giving me an 'authentication required' pop up to view. Anyone else?
Wow, what an absolutely terrible piece. Sure, there is a veritable culture of street eating there, so to Thais it's not so shocking, though to Westerners without a culture like this -- and one that's highly regulated when it is allowed to exist -- it's quite a treat. It's not different because for many it's just "the way we eat". (Many Thais will grab street food on the way home, taking them to go, in bags, as it's convenient and cheap to do so too -- it's still street food if you're not sitting and eating it at the stall, non?) There are some great non-street cart restos in Bangkok or elsewhere of course, but not sure what that has to do with anything. Part of what makes street food fascinating remains its ability to feed you cheaply (and deliciously) but also provide a wonderful place to watch the chaos unfold around you. Just because there's no translation for our label of what it is, it remains a great way to see how people eat with an open air view -- not a mythical one either ;)
Not an indictment of you Jeannie in any way -- I know you're all about observing too! But I found this shoddy at best, with a linkbait headline.
I don't mean that the premise is bad, just that the headline was linkbaity and the piece had no core argument to it. Yes, Thais will view food differently to Westerners, just as Westerners view our food differently than visiting tourists. (What tourists call Quebec food we just called "Thursday poutine".) But while I agree that both on and off the street restos are worth frequenting, especially because some fabulous food is coming out of BKK, the article doesn't actually make an argument for anything, and the title doesn't match the piece.
Not TMI! I actually posted the question on my fan page, to hilarious results :) Dustin, thanks for sharing my post here!
This is great! Hadn't seen it when it first came out.
Lovely photos, though I wish I could see them all on one page. Like the layout of the site too.
Glad to hear Kash! Happy to see they've got a bunch of other guides on that page too, all for free.
Love Lauren's writing, and this piece is no exception.
Thanks for sharing my post. Doctors who have read it have written to say they agree with the update midway through the piece, that I had a combo of dengue and chikungunya, given how prolonged my symptoms were. Either way, glad to be on the mend!
They just discovered chikungunya (affectionally known as "chicken" now from friends who have given up pronouncing it) in the Americas for the first time. I've been sent lots of resource material from doctors too. Apparently the "chicken" is actually a huge problem and often misdiagnosed as dengue; symptoms are similar.Difference being dengue consequences generally last less time, whereas with chikungunya it can last up to TWO years (!)
Whoop, that's Discover, NOT Discovery. My bad!
Thanks Sonja! Glad you enjoyed the post :) Was worried about it being so long but seems people appreciate the detail so that's good! Hope you get here one day soon.
She wasn't there yesterday when I walked by and I was like "WHERE DID GRANNY GO OMG NOOOOO" and her son just looked at me like I was insane (rightfully) and said "she's in the toilet".
*cough*
Carry on.
Thank you for posting James! Sadly some of my faves -- snails, chao long, sup cua, etc -- didn't make it, but I had to stop somewhere! :)
Hey Jonathan. The spices are not in the dish itself, like in Thailand or India. You get chilli with every meal, you just add in what you want, or you add it to your fish sauce on the side. I love the basket of herbs, that perfect balance of warm meat and cooling mint or perilla. It's great. Condiments less prevalent other than many different sauces served with the dish, but they come with it when ordered vs. just being on the table. Pickled garlic one of the best options for pho soup though!
(Crap the title was supposed to read the "description of colour shifts" -- the descriptions have changed; vanilla's colour has not. Sorry!)
It's a bit over-written but I did find it an interesting counter-perspective to many of the "go out and see everything" pieces out there. I don't think the world will turn into her predicted global salad bowl either, but I liked her focus on local, and how exotic doesn't mean "somewhere that has no cell phone service".
Well, I'm a bit biased since I wrote a long love letter to Saigon and then 10,000 words about where to stuff your face there, but I disagree. The piece seems to funnel one person's (bitter) experiences versus writing something that actually extrapolates to the majority. While there is the required "but here are the good parts" the headline seems hyperbolized. I've never been charged more when pulling out a wad of Dong; every time a moto taxi tries to charge more, I'd just keep smiling and insist on the real price, and they would almost always agree with a smile too, laughing at my persistence (this was based on instructions from another traveler who loves Vietnam -- "keep smiling, keep saying your price, then wait."). Sure, there were times when people tried to charge more, same as there were times in every other country I have visited. But in meeting other travellers along the way, or in the emails I've received, I've never had anyone say that they won't return. To the contrary, they are always sad to leave.
Perhaps that's merely a confirmation bias of my own writing, but with the exception of Nomadic Matt's post a few years ago, most long-term and short-term travellers I have come into contact with loved it there. Sure, it's different from other SEA countries, but each have their own history/culture, and I found Vietnam to be lovely. The piece seems to have been built around the headline vs. the other way around?
No I completely agree. (Also, description of his partner as "city-branding pioneer JT Singh" was nausea-inducing)
It's a fabulous hyperlapse, as are all of his videos, but my first reaction in reading the description was how inaccurate it read in comparison to other videos and pieces coming out of the country that were not permitted to be published. (e.g. http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/the-photos-north-korea-didnt-want-you-to-see/story-e6frfqai-1226919844504)
I wish he hadn't gotten involved in this one.
@matthew: related (in the apple sense) and also fascinating --> http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/heritage-apples-john-bunker-maine