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Always Pack a Runcible Spoon a round the world adventure possibly involving a pussycat, an owl and a pea-green boat |
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Categories
About this Runcible Blog (1)
About Us (2) Absurd photo du jour (4) Adding a comment (2) Asia is easy to love (9) China (48) Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty (17) Hong Kong (7) India (43) Indonesia (7) Japan (6) Singapore (3) Taiwan (3) Thailand (19) Things that perturb me (3) Travel thoughts and whimsy (10)
Recent Entries
* Bali, where paradise comes with a side-serving of the Daily Tele
* Would you have your hair cut here? * Jakarta's Cafe Batavia: Where high camp meets high tea * Visual overload and folkloric excesses * First impressions dashed, and nothing is as it seems * Two Australians arrive in Jakarta * Piggy-wig tails, King of Bananas and other adventures with phallic foodstuffs * An apology to my Grandma * Things I am partial to * Fried carrot cake - go on, you know you want it! * Hainan chicken - Asian soulfood * Wendy Koh, Medicine Woman: Portrait of a visit to a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic * Strange candy makes my heart beat faster * Sick as a dog * Staying in a luxury Singaporean dollhouse * Lost in Translation is on my TV * Blog-as-Tamagotchi * When India seems like a Larium dream * Valentine's Day - Now with extra pom-poms! * 1000 things I never did ...
Archives
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February 28, 2005Bali, where paradise comes with a side-serving of the Daily TeleWelcome 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...Read this update February 27, 2005Would you have your hair cut here?Refined style on Jalan Jaksa, Jakarta, Indonesia...Read this update Jakarta's Cafe Batavia: Where high camp meets high teaWe’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...Read this update February 26, 2005Visual overload and folkloric excessesIndonesia: 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,...Read this update First impressions dashed, and nothing is as it seemsMaybe 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...Read this update February 25, 2005Two Australians arrive in JakartaOur 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...Read this update February 24, 2005Piggy-wig tails, King of Bananas and other adventures with phallic foodstuffsFINALLY 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...Read this update Posted by Tiffany on February 24, 2005 11:53 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty An apology to my GrandmaI 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...Read this update 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'...Read this update February 22, 2005Fried 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...Read this update Posted by Tiffany on February 22, 2005 12:14 AM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty February 21, 2005Hainan chicken - Asian soulfoodSingapore 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...Read this update Posted by Tiffany on February 21, 2005 03:41 AM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty February 19, 2005Wendy Koh, Medicine Woman: Portrait of a visit to a Traditional Chinese Medicine ClinicAs 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...Read this update February 18, 2005Strange candy makes my heart beat fasterI 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...Read this update 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...Read this update February 17, 2005Staying in a luxury Singaporean dollhouseMy 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...Read this update Lost in Translation is on my TVSofia 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...Read this update Blog-as-TamagotchiBlogs 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...Read this update February 14, 2005When India seems like a Larium dreamWe 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,...Read this update 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...Read this update February 11, 20051000 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...Read this update February 10, 2005Meg Ryan, Mumbai and Pie a la modeOh. 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...Read this update Posted by Tiffany on February 10, 2005 10:35 PM
Category: Food - the weird, the wonderful, the just plain tasty February 09, 2005Mumbai by night: Plumes of fire and broken dreamsAs 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...Read this update February 08, 2005Wonderous thingsGods 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....Read this update February 07, 2005Awful thingsFor 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...Read this update Protecting your email addressHi 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...Read this update A note on using the comments featureJust 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...Read this update 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...Read this update Udaipur in pictures: Dry, Dry, DryI 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...Read this update February 06, 200524 hour party people: Weddings are in the airYou'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...Read this update February 05, 2005Udaipur 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...Read this update February 04, 2005In which Andrew's hair wins friends and influences peopleYou 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...Read this update His n hers commodes: Survive an attack of Delhi-belly in styleI 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...Read this update February 02, 2005How to build a temple using forty thousand kilograms of liquid butterOne 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...Read this update Rockstar royaltyThere 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...Read this update Show me on the doll where the bad man touched youThere’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...Read this update Rats, baby, rats: a whole temple full of ratsThe 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...Read this update February 01, 2005Internet 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...Read this update |
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