Five days in Khota Boru
Posted from: Khota Boru, Malaysia
We leave tomorrow, and Khota Boru has left a less-than-favorable impression on me. While food prices are slightly less than in Hua Hin, the city’s generally bland disposition and mediocre cuisine significantly detract from the novelty. Poverty abounds. Meat tends to be of questionable quality, lots of ill-prepared curry and badly steamed rice. Stands selling icy drinks sit on every roadside, but it seems the Malaysians can’t produce anything in liquid form without adding pounds and pounds of sugar – I believe the sweetness helps fend off the heat, but even my formidable sweet tooth can’t keep up. One sweet milky drink is afloat with soft green noodles and pink flecks of gelatin, and ordering tea will get you half a cup of tea atop half a cup of condensed milk. (more…)
The Train to Khota Boru
Posted from: Khota Boru, Malaysia
We arrived in Khota Boru after a sixteen hour overnight train ride, a short walk across the Malaysian / Thai border and a 45-minute taxi trip into town. (more…)
Preparations for Christmas in Malaysia
Posted from: Hua Hin, Thailand
Christmas approaches, and I hardly notice its coming. This is my second year blissfully removed from the commercialization that is the western holidays. The only real run ins I’ve had with the X-mas spirit have consisted of a decorated tree at the Hua Hin Hilton and a wince-inducing tape of some Thai girl band singing Christmas carols over the loudspeaker of the local grocery store. (more…)
First Month in HuaHin
Posted from: Hua Hin, Thailand
Thailand has taken me, as I felt that it would, as it has so many others.
Nights here are far superior to days, I think; residential streets are swampy and dully silent, wet silent. When the air seems so close to your skin temperature and the wind is dead, you may as well be walking on the bottom of an aquarium.
I’ve recently discovered the night markets – a hundred vendors or so all crammed together selling their wares under strings of mustardy lightbulbs that attract so many bugs out of the humid air that you have to keep your mouth closed and your eyes squinty. (more…)