title>Always Pack a Runcible Spoon: February 2005 Archives - BootsnAll Travelogues
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February 28, 2005

Bali, where paradise comes with a side-serving of the Daily Tele

Welcome to Bali! We've been in the taxi from the airport for perhaps five minutes, and our cabbie slows as we approach a set of stoplights. As is common in all Indonesia, a young guy is weaving his way through...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 28, 2005 08:28 PM
Category: Indonesia

February 27, 2005

Would you have your hair cut here?

Refined style on Jalan Jaksa, Jakarta, Indonesia...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 27, 2005 10:08 PM
Category: Absurd photo du jour

Jakarta's Cafe Batavia: Where high camp meets high tea

We’re sitting in the opulent recesses of Cafe Batavia, deep in Jakarta’s old Dutch colonial quarter. Not much remains of the colonial legacy in this defiantly modern city, but this café-cum-bar-cum-time-warp is a delectable exception. A and I are discussing...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 27, 2005 10:07 PM
Category: Indonesia

February 26, 2005

Visual overload and folkloric excesses

Indonesia: this country is beautiful; sumptuous; stunning. It's one of those places where you wonder how so much raw physical beauty got concentrated in the one spot on earth. If you haven't been here, you should come. If you have,...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 26, 2005 11:48 PM
Category: Indonesia

First impressions dashed, and nothing is as it seems

Maybe it was the weirdness we experienced at the airport when we arrived, or maybe it was just my preconceived idea that all Indonesians were going to regard us as ‘Ugly Australians’ and treat us accordingly, but ever since we...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 26, 2005 11:34 PM
Category: Indonesia

February 25, 2005

Two Australians arrive in Jakarta

Our arrival in Jakarta last night couldn't have offered a greater contrast from our final interactions in S'pore if we'd tried. This was how it happened ... As we checked our luggage in for our Cathay flight to Jakarta, the...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 25, 2005 12:08 AM
Category: Indonesia

February 24, 2005

Piggy-wig tails, King of Bananas and other adventures with phallic foodstuffs

FINALLY I got to try something I've been hankering after since learning of its existence several months ago ... drum roll, please ... yes, it's Pigs' Tail Soup! Prior to going to stay with Andrew's Uncle Ronnie earlier on this...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 24, 2005 11:53 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

An apology to my Grandma

I got to speak to my Grandma the other morning, as our room in Singapore had that rarity - an actual phone. She expressed concern that every time she checks the blog, 'it seems to be all about food!' This...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 24, 2005 11:34 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

Things I am partial to

'NO DURIAN' signs on the Singaporean MRT system. The little cartoon picture of the durian with a big red cross through it is too cute! Reminds me how much I love that airlines in India list 'pickles' and 'chilli items'...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 24, 2005 11:24 PM
Category: Asia is easy to love

February 22, 2005

Fried carrot cake - go on, you know you want it!

Welcome to the ongoing culinary tour of Singapore's hawker stalls, cheaper restaurants and night markets. We're approaching eating here like it's some kind of extreme sport - it's all very much '2 Fast 2 Furious Goes Edible', so buckle up...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 22, 2005 12:14 AM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

February 21, 2005

Hainan chicken - Asian soulfood

Singapore is a veritable treasure trove of delectable eats. We are in sampling overdrive at the moment, trying to cram as many tastes and flavours into the day as possible. But when we arrived a few days ago, there...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 21, 2005 03:41 AM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

February 19, 2005

Wendy Koh, Medicine Woman: Portrait of a visit to a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic

As I mentioned the other day, my lungs are in a state of near-collapse thanks to this crazy trip. What with pollution, the cold weather of a Northern Indian winter, and us scampering from place to place, the net result...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 19, 2005 04:38 PM
Category: Singapore

February 18, 2005

Strange candy makes my heart beat faster

I am constitutionally incapable of going into a supermarket and buying JUST ONE THING. That is never going to happen. Raised in part by my Depression-era grandparents, I have picked up all their hoarding tendencies and therefore approach stocking the...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 18, 2005 07:23 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

Sick as a dog

[Just FYI, when I typed the title of this entry in intially it had a significant typo. Yes, you were almost treated to an entry called 'Sick as a Dag'!] I got a bad bug in India, and it doesn't...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 18, 2005 12:02 AM
Category: Singapore

February 17, 2005

Staying in a luxury Singaporean dollhouse

My mother emailed me the other day mentioning, among other things, that she hoped we would splurge on hotels at certain stages of this trip in order to alleviate the stresses and privations of budget accommodation. Maybe she wished too...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 17, 2005 11:11 PM
Category: Singapore

Lost in Translation is on my TV

Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" is playing in our Singapore room right now. Even though I can't see it from where I sit typing, its soundtrack alone - all haunting, meditative notes and off-key karaoke and disjointed snippets of dialogue...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 17, 2005 10:42 PM
Category: Travel thoughts and whimsy

Blog-as-Tamagotchi

Blogs are voracious, hungry beasts when it comes down to it. No sooner have you written a post than it goes cold, and your blog needs yet another top-up. On endless loop, your blog develops a demanding persona, ungenerously demanding...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 17, 2005 11:14 AM
Category: Travel thoughts and whimsy

February 14, 2005

When India seems like a Larium dream

We are back in Bangkok - just briefly, mind you - where we will attend to some mind-numbingly boring 'housekeeping tasks' before heading to Singapore, Indonesia and then China. Amazing how when you ostensibly shed your 'house' for the year,...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 14, 2005 10:58 PM
Category: Thailand

Valentine's Day - Now with extra pom-poms!

Just more fuel for the fire that is my Bangkok addiction: we were stuck in gridlock today during a long cab-ride across town, only to discover that a partial reason for the hold-up was a Valentine's Day Parade wending its...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 14, 2005 10:46 PM
Category: Thailand

February 11, 2005

1000 things I never did ...

1000 things I never did in Mumbai. Never chewed paan at a streetside corner. Never bought gold sandals from a chappal vendor. Never got around to drinking fresh sugarcane juice, that pale green nectar rich with froth, sold by the...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 11, 2005 08:06 PM
Category: India

February 10, 2005

Meg Ryan, Mumbai and Pie a la mode

Oh. My. Lord. Forgive me, because I have sinned - actually, no. That just seemed to come out when I was typing. There's been no sinning (nothing that needs noting, anyway), but a helluva lot of eating! Fellow food-a-philes, I...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 10, 2005 10:35 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty

February 09, 2005

Mumbai by night: Plumes of fire and broken dreams

As I might have mentioned, I love cities. I love them with a kind of blind fervour that shrugs off their pollution and their vices. I get kind of antsy when I'm in a particularly isolated, tranquil destination. I find...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 9, 2005 07:58 PM
Category: India

February 08, 2005

Wonderous things

Gods that are pot-bellied elephants, gods that are blue-skinned. The smell of nag champa incense. Bright, shiny things. Over-the-top, unashamed decoration. Peacocks. Babies' hands with tiny bracelets....

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Posted by Tiffany on February 8, 2005 01:45 PM
Category: India

February 07, 2005

Awful things

For some reason, the sheer reality that cows here are eating plastic bags and other rubbish has only just begun to hit me where it hurts. Maybe your first few weeks here are spent riding such a whirlygig of sensory...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 7, 2005 10:14 PM
Category: India

Protecting your email address

Hi Beloved Commenters, I know many of you probably fill in the email address field with a 'disposable' hotmail account or the like, so this won't apply to you. However, if you are using a work or student account that...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 7, 2005 10:12 PM
Category: Adding a comment

A note on using the comments feature

Just so you know, comments that are overly hostile, inflammatory or vilificatory will be removed from this website. People who come here to read and enjoy should be able to do so without wading through a cesspool of vitriol. More...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 7, 2005 10:10 PM
Category: Adding a comment

The emperor has no clothes (a travel experience)

Udaipur has really captivated me - lake or no lake. In a way, I think its task has been made easier by the fact that its chief charm has gone AWOL. It seems a bit of a leveller somehow; the...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 7, 2005 10:04 PM
Category: India

Udaipur in pictures: Dry, Dry, Dry

I wasn't exaggerating when I said that Udaipur had run dry. This post is really just to provide some pictures of the somewhat incredible phenomenon - though I imagine these will have most impact if you have previously seen Udaipur...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 7, 2005 08:58 PM
Category: India

February 06, 2005

24 hour party people: Weddings are in the air

You've gotta love that India has a 'wedding season'. I like that - take a social concept and elevate it to the level of seasonality. What's perhaps less loveable is the never-endingness of these weddings in the flesh. It's taken...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 6, 2005 11:19 PM
Category: India

February 05, 2005

Udaipur without water (think Vegas without casinos ...)

Udaipur is one of the many places in this world that's liable to be described as 'the Venice of the East'. Okay, fine. Hackneyed perhaps, but we get the point. Besides which, Udaipur's unique combination of sapphire lakes and ornate...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 5, 2005 07:45 PM
Category: India

February 04, 2005

In which Andrew's hair wins friends and influences people

You might say that that for Andrew and I on this trip, two roads diverged in a yellow wood ... yaddah yaddah ... His hair went one way, and mine another. As my locks get scraggier and scruffier and more...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 4, 2005 10:32 PM
Category: India

His n hers commodes: Survive an attack of Delhi-belly in style

I was recently asked what our experiences of the dreaded 'Delhi Belly' have been whilst in India. I really wanted to reply to this question in a bit more detail than the teeny-tiny comments box allows, so here is my...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 4, 2005 10:07 PM
Category: India

February 02, 2005

How to build a temple using forty thousand kilograms of liquid butter

One Jain temple, forty thousand kilos of ghee. This is Bhandasar Temple in Bikaner, and I am in love. In love with the idea that anything so wacky exists. In love with the fact that when the foundation stones were...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 2, 2005 11:42 PM
Category: India

Rockstar royalty

There are moments here in India when, as a simple foreigner, you feel like rockstar royalty. People are jostling to get close to you, gossipy chatter catalogues your every move, and small children are liable to be thrust into your...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 2, 2005 10:55 PM
Category: India

Show me on the doll where the bad man touched you

There’s a lot of talk about sexual harassment of women travelling in India, so I wondered how this issue would play out while we were here. In most places we’ve been, I’ve encountered no problems at all. Of course, I...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 2, 2005 09:02 PM
Category: India

Rats, baby, rats: a whole temple full of rats

The renowned Karni Mata ‘Rat’ Temple in the countryside near the town of Bikaner is dedicated to the ‘Goddess of Scuttling Things’. But our personal pilgrimage to it was dedicated to another entity entirely - namely, TV’s The Amazing...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 2, 2005 08:20 PM
Category: India

February 01, 2005

Internet cafes or pornography parlours?

Aaargh! I have lots of stuff to say about the crazy things we've seen in the last few days (plus photos of the craziness!) - let's just say, there were rats, there was 40,000 kilos of butter-oil, and there was...

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Posted by Tiffany on February 1, 2005 09:08 PM
Category: India
Latest Comments
Madhu: Envy, Envy Japan and going to the Swiss alps is m... [read]

Tiffany: Hmmm ... maybe it all depends where one goes. Porn... [read]

UnspecifiedGender: You're pretty hilarious...but I must tell you, I d... [read]

Tiffany: Hey Bianca! So happy to hear you're enjoying Hong... [read]

Bianca: Hey Tiffany, I am sitting here in a hotel in HK on... [read]

Tiffany: Hi Tammy! Thank you for your lovely comments - i... [read]

Tammy: You guys are my heroes! I've been following you al... [read]

Andrew: Ah, yes, that fish floss... It's the one in the li... [read]

Tiffany: Yup, it's *at least* as fast-growing as grass in C... [read]

Bill: Thanks Tiff - worth the wait - and not nearly as s... [read]



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