Today was in hiding as the sun is quite fierce and I was feeling indolent. I made the mistake of having a rather large breakfast, of the crab with chilli and herbs from last night, with added egg and broccoli to slightly temper the heat for an breakfast. It didn’t really temper the heat, but […]
Smashed
Nothing much to report today. I was out of food and a bit under the weather so went to get supplies and also went a bit further afield to what was reputed to be one of the best smash burger places in Bangkok. This was up a street I hadn’t yet been, one lined with […]
Happy day
Yesterday was the day my big contract came to an end, oh happy day. As it happened today, though May Day, was spent working on work for that contract, and I even had a call about it. Still, at least I was on my own time. Not much else to tell, really. It was a […]
Godly sights and one ungodly one
This morning, after tea, I went to Wat Arun. Although I went in the morning I dawdled somewhat so didn’t leave till around 11 and it was very, very hot. Wat Arun shone fiercely white in the sun, its ornament bleached to pastel, and the scores of people who’d rented traditional Thai clothing from the […]
Intensity of youth
I’ve just read Elif Batuman’s two novels, one after the other. They are very good I must say, or so I think. For all the mannered-ness and the somewhat terrifying literariness of the protagonist. I found it hard at first to tell if the first one was good because I started reading it without knowing […]
Unimpressed
With the great burden of my life these days being the GF’s arrant vegetarianism, I decided to do something unprecedented and signed up for a food tour. There is an entire industry of these in Hanoi, but the one I picked was one of the oldest and definitely the most expensive, with ecstatic accounts in […]
Longing for laksa
Took a car down to an old haunt, to Limapulo in Chow Kit, which was once a step away from my flat. I arrived just as it opened and placed my favourite order, a bowl of their nyonya laksa with barley water. There were were any number of other things I’d have liked to have […]
Ill-gotten gains
Met someone who works in the palm oil industry and is very dismissive about biodiversity loss – not that it’s unimportant but that it doesn’t happen. Not so sure myself. They had just returned from a reception hosted by a major European palm oil user and returned with two large gift bags full of their […]
Back to KLCC
This afternoon, my hosts drove me down to KLCC, itself a dislocating experience as we, the GF and I, went about it on foot so nothing seemed quite recognisable, even aside from the five years away. The Petronas towers themselves were instantly familiar though – among my favourite, perhaps my favourite skyscrapers, and well positioned […]
Back to KL
I landed at 3.15 in the morning at KLIA2, which in itself was unfamiliar as these early morning arrivals had always, in the past, been to KLIA on my trips back from Pakistan. Familiarity returned, though, with the passage through immigration, collecting the luggage (as always arriving commendably fast) and walking out of the terminal […]