I want to go to Vietnam for the food.

               Yeah, I know, I’m thinking with my stomach again.  But blogging about food has so many fewer calories than actually eating it, so it’s worth it.  Plus, this keeps me on my Jillian Michaels meal plan (that I’m following loosely, with emphasis on the “loose”, but that’s another blog altogether).  So anyway, back to the topic at hand: I have a craving for Vietnamese Pho, and I’m tired of settling for the yummy westernized stuff they serve in Vancouver.  I want real Vietnamese food, and the only way I can get it is to actually go to Vietnam.  There it’s just called food.  Alas, I am still in saving mode after the last trip, and am already paying off the next (California in September – stay tuned!), so my Pho craving will have to wait until next year, at least.  Big pout.  In the meantime, lets all take a moment and fantasize about that cuisine you love and can’t wait to try the authentic version of, or that plate of steaming awesomeness you once had and wish you were back there again. 

                   One of my clients told me, which is probably why this is on my mind in the first place, that he was once in Texas and had a steak so good he actually cried.  I, of course, told him he was a lunatic.  Kidding.  I just thought it.  He had a point though, global cuisine can transform a vacation into an experience.  The local delights are as much of a cultural experience as a dance performance or a museum, but they can be much easier to find and, depending on your tastes,  either way cheaper or waaaaayyy more expensive. 

                Some of the best food in much of southeast Asia can be found at street carts for next to nothing, but it’ll keep you coming back for more.  When I was in Bangkok there was this cart on the corner near my hotel that was little more than a single burner run by jumper cables hooked to a car battery, and there was this real and very dead rooster head hanging from the side, but every morning the line up was practically around the block for a container of their stir fry.  I never tried it, the combination of the line length, the rooster head, and my weenie Canadian palette made me chicken out, but I still think about it, and vow that if I’m ever back there I’m totally eating from the rooster guy’s cart.  If the locals like it, it has to be good.

                  What’s the deal with Korean Kimchi, anyway?  It’s just fermented cabbage buried in a vat underground for like six months, but every time I’ve been out for Korean food, they use it on everything.  I have not acquired the taste for it.  To me it’s like sour… something nasty… but I can’t help but wonder if the stuff you’ll get on your plate of braised short ribs in Seoul would be so much better.  Does the shipping process make it nastier?  Is it less pungent straight from the ground?

            Mmmmm… chicken tikka masala…. another of my faves.  Admittedly, the BF does cook one hell of a home version, but it blows my mind thinking of the layers of rich flavour that can only come from a spice mix hand-ground daily by the women of the village.  Yum.  Just wait until I find myself in India one day and all the spices are ground by your standard coffee grinder, but in the interim I will happily allow my mind to wander to the romantic fantasy I have created.  Besides, I’d go to Vietnam before India, the flight is shorter

              So tell me, what foods would you love to try fresh from the source?

Tags: eat, Food, interesting, kimchi, rooster, stomach, Texas, Thailand, travel, Vietnam, weird

I totally just ate under a plane! – Costa Rica days 6 & 7

I totally just ate under a plane.  I know I said that in the title, but that doesn’t take away from the awesomeness of it.   El Avion, a plane turned restaurant in Quepos/Manuel Antonio, is quite possibly my favorite place to eat on the planet, right up there with the seafood restaurant in the middle of Temple Street night market in Hong Kong.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for ambiance.  And this place has it in spades, because IT HAS A FRIGGIN PLANE in it! 

The plane itself is perched on the cliffside so that your table along the railing looks out over nothing but lush trees far below and the uninterrupted Pacific ocean.  We were even lucky enough to have a pair of Spider monkeys dine parallel to us on a tall tree limb, but that’s just de rigeur in Costa Rica   The building (if you can call it that, it has no walls, so it’s technically more of a roof) is constructed over the fuselage itself, complete with a little bump up for the tail fin, and you eat at tables around the engines and cargo hold.  Inside you’ll find the bar (I can just imagine the conversations that occur when people wake up the next morning: ”Dude, I was so wasted last night I thought I was drinking in a plane in the jungle” – “You were drinking in a plane in the jungle, Steve” – “Woah”), and the kitchen is downstairs.  In what I think is an ingenious space-saving technique, the kitchen is downstairs, and all the orders are lifted to dining level in a giant dumbwaiter constructed from parts of old, much smaller private planes.  Now you’re getting why I love this place, right?  The food is good, and not any more expensive than your standard meal at Applebees, but I’m honestly not paying any attention to the food when I’m here.  And I have a sneaking suspicion I may be back here again to eat before leaving Quepos.

Were picked up by Interbus for another life-altering drive down the “holy crap I’m going to die” roads from Monteverde to… well, pretty much everywhere from there, but we ended up in Quepos.  This is our longest stay of the trip, 4 nights instead of the 2 in the other cities.  It’s also the largest city we’re spending any amount of time in, although when we drove in I found myself thinking, “this is it?  Isn’t it supposed to be bigger than this?”  The other cities had grown up so much in the past three years, but Quepos really hadn’t.  It, as I discovered later, had grown out, so that the suburbs were larger and more developed, but the city center was the same two-hundred-foot square of shops and services as before. 

Our hotel, the adorable and friendly Hotel California, is nestled up in the trees, and, since it was low season and there was tons of space available, we got upgraded to an oceanview room.  That was pretty damn sweet.  I may be a travel agent, but I’m still too cheap to pay for something as trivial as a view, although getting one free rocks.   

OMG, it’s hot here.  After the chill and dampness of Monteverde, this heat is oppressive.  Came back into our room this afternoon and it felt freezing – we thought we’d left the AC on too cold until we checked it and discovered it was a chilly 27 celsius in our room!  It had to be at least 40-45 outside for 27 to feel that cold.

Spent the first afternoon wandering town, shopping and trying to get aclimated to this heat again.  This morning it was a very early wake up call for our Manuel Antonio National Park walk.  When in Manuel Antonio, this is a must - it’s called the most-photographed place in Costa Rica for good reason, it’s stunning.  Plus, there are so many animals that no two hikes are the same, and you never know what’s going to pop up.  The guides carry a big-ass telescope, and when they spot something (god knows how they do it, some of the frogs and lizards are so small you can barely see them after you’ve stepped on them, but the guides can do it at a hundred feet) they focus in and get you a great view.  Plus, digital cameras take pretty sweet pics through the telescope lens, so  you can get your pics home and tell everyone you really were that close to a sloth, eventhough it was sleeping forty feet over your heads!

Immediately following the tour and a quick lunch, it was on to tour number 2 – the Villa Vanilla spice plantation.  Cannot recommend this place highly enough (www.rainforestspices.com) the guide explained to us all about vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, turmeric, oregano, and whatever I’m forgetting – holy crap these things are super labour intensive to produce.  It’s no wonder they’re so expensive.  And who would have thought that the second layer of bark on a tree would taste so good (cinnamon)?  Did they just decide one day to start gnawing logs?  After walking through the fields we were taken to a hut with another great view and given samples of all sorts of decadent desserts prepared with their spices by their own pastry chef.  Heaven.  I then proceeded to spend USD$40.00 in their gift shop and it was so totally worth it! 

Tonight we’re going to recover from all the walking today, because tomorrow we’re ATV-ing!!  I’m the girl who gets in trouble for her driving on Disneyland’s Autopia, so this is going to be interesting.  And awesome!

Tags: awesome, BlogSherpa, El Avion, Food, Manuel Antonio, national park, Quepos, Villa Vanilla

Back from Ontario at Christmas!

       I did it!  I managed to fly to Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario and back without becoming a strangely dressed popsicle.  And I didn’t freak out/scare off/offend any of the bf’s family as I met them all for the first time.  High five to me.

       I left Vancouver Boxing Day at 8am – if you want to get a great parking space at YVR, get there at 530am on Boxing Day.  The place was a ghost town.  So much for those holiday crowds.  This was the day after the underwear bomber in the US, but my plane was half empty and there was no increased security or anything.  My carry on backpack (I’d always wanted to travel with nothing but a backpack and fulfill that Amazing Race fantasy of mine – it was totally worth it!) was probably a little oversized, but there were no questions and I was still able to cram it into the overhead with a slight running start.

          Arrived in Ontario to 5 degree weather, actually warmer than Vancouver when I’d left.  You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.  I was wearing a down jacket (that’s like wearing a hug, it’s the best purchase ever!) and god-awful snow boots, and it’s warmer?!  I was vindicated the next day when it started snowing, and the snow continued off and on for the rest of the trip, so that was good.  I love watching snow, anyway.  When we get it in Vancouver it’s an event, so here, with everyone being so blase about it, I was the only one stupidly happy.  Whatever.  I was on vacation, if you’ve got one time to be stupidly happy, that’s it.  And the snow in Ontario is so different than what we get out west: dry and fine, it can snow all day and barely accumulate, and it doesn’t stick to the roads too much – the ground temperature must be freakishly warm or something.  It was cold, though, one day it was minus 14 Celsius before the windchill was factored in, and there was an extreme weather warning issued.  Sweet.

        Saw a movie (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – weird shit, but my odd art film loving bf was all over it), went go-karting with some of Eric’s friends, wandered around a mall without buying anything (because Canada has the same crap in stores on either side of the country, so there was nothing to get excited about), went to a Kitchener Rangers hockey game and watched his little sister’s jumping lesson on her gorgeous horse Romeo, but aside from that it was all family gatherings.  This was totally new territory for me - I’ve never gone on vacay to just visit with people before.  If I’m on vacation and someone I know happens to be nearby I’ll totally hang out with them, but it wasn’t the purpose behind the trip.  It was an enjoyable experience.  His family is all incredibly nice, and I was welcomed right off the bat.

           Of course, the Rockband didn’t hurt, either. 

          Let me explain.  I officially met everyone in one big shot as the second day I was there was the big family Christmas dinner on the 27th.  His Grandparents (who we were staying with) held it, and they bought a full Rockband/Guitar Hero 5/Beatles Rockband set for everyone to play.  Very little bonds people like some bad singing and crazy drumming, and we had already started when most of the relatives arrived, so their first impression of me was rapping out the Beastie Boys’ “So Whatcha Want”.  Clearly it was my most shining moment.  But it served as an awesome ice breaker!  I highly recommend it.  Thankfully they didn’t arrive ten minutes earlier when I was killing dogs with my fantastic take on Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer”.  That could have led to an entirely different outcome

           The days flew by and before I knew it we were flying home, back to the tropics of Western Canada.  I could have stayed longer, although I’d need to find a better mall to shop in…  It was a great adventure.  I like his family a lot, and I’m not just saying that to kiss ass if any of them read this!  I discovered that the bf and I can travel well together – that’s a test of any relationship, and from what I’ve seen as an agent, it can go either good or bad very, very easily.  Thankfully we passed with flying colours - and that down jackets are a gift from the Gods.  I’m really glad I got to go.  Maybe next time it’ll be warmer…

Tags: animals, boyfriend, Canada, Christmas., Cold, family, Food, friends, fun, Go-Karts, Hamilton, horses, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Rockband, snow, winter

If you won the lottery…

           So, tomorrow’s Lotto Max draw is worth CAD$50 million.  With a carrot like that dangling in front of me, I can’t help but start daydreaming.  If I had that money, what would I do with it?  I’ve been asked this question tons of times over the years, and my standard answer is “I don’t know, but I’ll send you a postcard when I get there.”  I’d be on a plane so fast my clothes wouldn’t even have had time to crease in my suitcase.  But that poses the bigger question, if you had unlimited funds, where would you go?

             For me, someone who plans her own vacations on a daily basis (I’m not sure this is healthy anymore…) it’s a tough decision.  Of course, I eventually want to go everywhere, but you have to start somewhere, so you might as well start off with the important places on your to-see list (the ones underlined and bolded with the little stars scribbled beside their names). 

              Tokyo.  Definately Tokyo.  If you’ve read my other blogs you know that I love me some Asia, and nothing looks more incredible than Tokyo.  The colours, the people, the food.  I want to get lost at the Shibua Scramble crossing.  Plus, they have a Disneyland.  With that checked off, I would only need to go to Florida and I’d have seen them all.  And since I was already in Asia, might as well hop on down to Vietnam and Cambodia, two places that not only look cool, but that I’ve heard nothing but incredible reviews about from clients.  Everyone says without fail that the people are just so unbelievably friendly.  And Angkor Wat’s there.

            And for something completely different, I’d go to Rio.  Climb Sugarloaf mountain, visit with Christ the Redeemer, learn to samba and wear feathers on my head.  Then down to Iguassu falls to see one of the most incredible waterfalls.  Another skip and I’d be in Buenos Aires, tango-ing away and eating at the restaurant where a bar code tells you exactly what cow your steak came from (that’s right, specific cow, not just farm) so you know it’s perfect.

          And Venice.  Gondola-ing along the canals and wearing amazing masks as I watch Murano glass being blown.

            And finally, topping my must-see list is Cairo.  I love Egyptian history and archaeology, hell my cat’s even named Cairo.  I want to stare in awe at the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Karnak temple, the crazy cab drivers. 

         So basically, I still can’t decide where I would go first if I win that jackpot tomorrow night, but you can bet it’s going to be fantastic! 

 Where would you go?

Tags: amazing, Angkor Wat, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Cambodia, dance, Disneyland, dreams, Egypt, Food, glass blowing, Iguassu Falls, masks, money, pyramids, Rio de Janiero, Sphinx, Tokyo, travel, Venice, Vietnam

Road snacks

                I’m thinking with my stomach again.   On my bus ride to work this morning I found myself watching a little kid eating goldfish crackers with little faces drawn on them, and started thinking about food that travels.  With airlines no longer offering free food on shorter flights, packing enough to sustain you so you’re not gnawing off your seatmate’s arm is becoming increasingly important.  So I post the question: what is the perfect road snack?  

             Personally, I can’t call it a vacation unless I’ve treated myself to a bag of wine gums.   Love those things.  Small, non-gooey, easy to stash in pockets and they don’t go bad if you don’t finish the bag in one seating (like that ever happens, really).  I love them  to the point when I discovered light wine gums in Hong Kong I stockpiled them (customs must have thought I needed to go to Wine Gums Anonymous or something) and now only break them out for travel or road trips.  They’re my ultimate treat.  And with the light ones, they’re like treats without guilt!   And slurpees.  Nothing makes a trip happier than the icy goodness sliding over your tongue…  I’m starting to think I need to reduce my sugar intake…  oh well, they’re vacation calories, they don’t count anyway.  These are reserved for road trips though, something with a cupholder and no restrictions on liquids and gels.  I somehow don’t see splitting your slurpee into little 100ml or less bottles and putting them in your airline-approved Ziploc baggie working out too well.

               On the other hand, my BF is all about cookies.  Specifically chocolate chip cookies.  Sometimes he’ll just space out, and when I ask him what he’s thinking about, it’ll be cookies.  Those little individually wrapped ones are like gold to him.  It makes his good vacation even better, though they do have a slight tendency to get crushed in carry on bags.

            That’s what makes trail mix so wonderful.  You can customize your own blend, as healthy or crappy as you want, and then stuff it in assorted bags and pockets, all the little individual pieces malleable enough to be packed around other objects without breaking.  You can do almost anything to a bag of trail mix (playing catch is always a big hit) and it’s still perfectly edible.  And the action of eating all the little bits is good for you, too, as it takes more brain power than just popping one stick of gum into your mouth, and helps pass the time on what can be a mind-numbing travel day.  For my Mom, a smoker, this helps her a lot to fight off the cravings, and she’s incredibly pleasant to fly with.  Just don’t stand between her and the smoking lounge when we land   Love you, Mom.

                       Granola bars are another popular choice, as they’re healthier than Snickers bars and individually packaged and portion-controlled, though I find they have a tendancy to squish or break (depending on if you bought the chewy or crunchy versions) as I shove everything into and out of my giant purse.

             So what does it for you?  What is your ultimate road snack and why?  I’m looking for suggestions, I’m almost out of light wine gums and airfare back to Hong Kong isn’t in the budget!

Tags: BlogSherpa, carry-on luggage, cookies, Food, granola bars, slurpees, smokers, trail mix, travel, wine gums

Grocery stores as a tourist attraction?

              Think about it.  Have you ever walked around your local supermarket and stopped at the ”international food” section, looking at all the different uses for rice or the cool/odd/disgusting/unpronounceable sauces on offer?  It’s fun, right?  Or at the very least, interesting.  Possibly even enlightening.    Multiply that by fifty and you get why I always try to swing by a grocery store in every country I’m in.   

             Doing  a bit of your own cooking (and by “cooking” I mean mainly buying bread and meat and making sandwiches or pouring your own bowl of cereal, unless you have a kitchenette) is always a great way to save money.  Even if it’s just snacks, bringing your own granola bar and water bottle can easily save you $5-$10 a day, depending on your destination and appetite.   That’s valuable souvenir money!  So while you’re at the grocery, you might as well take a few minutes to walk the aisles and see what culinary treasures you can unearth.  You never know if that brand of beer you had once ten years ago and could never find again is hiding around the corner, or if the chili lime chicken bouillon you find in aisle four is going to become the centerpiece for your new signature dish back home.  And when someone asks you where you got it, you can be all mysterious and say “it’s imported.”

           When in London, I’m all about finding the cool flavours of crisps.   We have your standard salt and vinegar, ketchup and nacho cheese in Canada, they have roasted lamb and mint, chargrilled steak, pickled onion, seafood mayonnaise, crispy duck in hoisin sauce, turkey with paxo sage and onion… if you can braise, boil or bake it, they probably have chips to match.  Southeast Asia is also good for this, though they have substantially more seafood options and their packaging usually involves more google-eyed animated characters.  One of my coworkers in Spain said the prawn cocktail is great, though I’ll have to take their word for it.  On one trip I actually kept a list, and found no less than 25 different flavours in one country in the space of a week.  Think I tried two of them.  And these flavours are, for the most part, incredibly accurate.  The chargrilled steak I tried smelled like nothing, but once on the tongue, you were just looking for the side of mashed potatoes and steamed veggies.

            I’m always drawn to snack-type foods, like chips, gum (oooh, there’s this applemint Dentyne in Thailand I loved so much I brought like 10 packs home with me) and candy, mainly because they’re cheap and small, so you can try something really experimental and, if it’s totally revolting, you can throw it out and you’re only out a buck.  Meat always intimidates me (especially since you can’t always read the label), but one day I’ll have a place with a stove in some far-flung destination and I’ll go for it.  It’s all about embracing the local culture.  In Singapore this past march we discovered pea cheezies (for lack of a better comparison).  They were made entirely of peas, green and shaped like a pod,  but puffed up, deep fried and lightly salted to the cheezie consistency.   Sounds strange on paper (hell, it looked strange in the bag, too, that’s why I bought it), but these were surprisingly good.   In Costa Rica, tamarind drink, once you get past it’s industrial-waste brown colour, is incredibly sweet and yummy.  I got all excited here when, on a day trip across the boarder to Seattle, I found some Tamarind Kool-Aid, but when I tried it back home it tasted kind of like cardboard.  Total let down.  Oh well, it’s a reason to go back to Costa Rica! 

            Also in Costa Rica I discovered my beloved coco pops (there is not a breakfast buffet worldwide that doesn’t have coco pops) are endorsed there by a space elephant named Melvin.  That was just funny.

            International grocery shopping can be a fun thing to do if you’re traveling with kids, too.  While you’re picking up the necessities, you can challenge young Jimmy to find the craziest looking fish in the seafood department or weirdest-sounding product name (this one can be particularly fun if you can’t speak the language).  Kids usually seem to gravitate to the gross, or what they think is gross, anyway, and this is where the cheaper options like candy come in handy.  Treat them to one small thing, but make it the grossest they can find, and hear the giggles start.  This can also be done locally, just check out the various ethnic food stores around your area and keep the kids entertained on a rainy afternoon.

          For me, I think this all stems back to my Grandparent’s travels when I was a little kid.  When they’d come back from driving across the US or touring Europe they’d bring me something we couldn’t get in Canada, like Barbie breakfast cereal, or Swiss cow-shaped chocolate, so now I always want to see what other surprises the world has to offer.  This can also be a good way to buy a gift for that impossible-to-shop-for person on your list.  Nobody ever turns down food, especially if it was brought into the country especially for them and you know it’s something they’ll like.  The one exception to this was when my BF got a bag of dried bean and anchovy trail mix from Hong Kong.  It’s been months and that’s still sitting unopened on his desk, but I can’t really blame him, the fish are dried whole in there, complete with the little dried heads and eyes.  But still, because we got it at a grocery store as opposed to a souvenir place, the cost was low enough that I don’t give him a hard time about *sniff* rejecting one of my gifts.

            Ever found anything spectacular/weird/memorable in the food aisle when on vacation?  Let me know.  But if not, try spending an hour of your next vacation at the supermercado and see how much culinary trouble you can get into!

Tags: Asia, BlogSherpa, budget, chips, coco pops, cooking, Costa Rica, Food, grocery stores, Hong Kong, kids, London, odd, souvenirs, Spain, tamarind

Concert night in Vancouver

       Tonight I’m taking a chance to enjoy some of the best that Vancouver has to offer:  Japanese/Korean BBQ and Rod Stewart live at GM Place.  There is a vibe in downtown Vancouver that I just love, an electricity that comes out when the sun goes down, and when you combine that with some classic rock, I’m getting ready to party! 

               The plan is to hit one of my favorite downtown Asian eateries, Shabusen, a place where you can cook your own Korean BBQ right in your table while also having thirty types of sushi to choose from.   This is what makes Vancouver so much fun, with so many ethnicities, in a geographically small space, you get a plethora of this awesome  fusion to choose from.  And, with our large Asian population, my addiction to all foods Asian gets easily satisfied.  There are so many options.  Had an Indian/Malaysian/Thai combination once and it blew my mind.  The big question is whether or not tonight I’ll order off the menu or be too overloaded with the options and go for the all-you-can-eat again.

            Then a short walk’ll take us to the Garage (I mean, GM Place) for the Rod.  I hear they’ve been doing some renos in preparation for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in a few months, so I’m interested to see if it’s any different.  For a hockey stadium, the acoustics are pretty good, so it’s going to be a night to rock out and remember.  As the BF says, they should totally make a Rod Stewart Rockband game, because I’d love to be belting out “Hot Legs” in our living room! 

            This I’m looking forwards to.  Now I just need to figure out which shirt to wear.  I need something not too low-cut (when eating wih chopsticks, there’s always the possibility of dropping something on yourself – maybe this is just me, but I can be clumsy from time to time – and it’s awkward fishing some edamame out of your cleavage), but stil something that says Rock and Roll.  Any suggestions?

Tags: asian, culture, Food, music, vancouver