Friday, January 11, 2008

chain restaurant thai food (plus bonus pic)

black canyon coffee & international thai cuisine
- udon in chicken and galingal in coconut soup: 70 baht
- northern (thai style) sausage: 70 baht
- iced green tea with milk

i've been getting tired of all the predictable thai food and wanted to find something that was less classic thai and more modern thai. i'm not sure that i succeeded, but i think this came close. as far as i can tell black canyon coffee is a big chain restaurant, and it's menu tries to be a bit more modern

IMG_0118

the udon in coconut soup was really quite delicious, however thai cooking has an unfortunate habit of putting lots of really delicious, but inedible, bits into the soup. the result is a tasty but very difficult to eat dish (unless you like to spend half your time chewing woody pieces of lemon grass). someone needs to import the idea of a bouquet garni =P still really tasty

IMG_0121

what can i say, it's sausage and it's tasty

special non-food bonus pic: sunset over the river kwai

IMG_0176

i visited the bridge over the river kwai yesterday, and it is indeed a weird mix of solemn and plastic touristy crap, but i didn't bring my camera so you'll just have to take my word for it.

i also visited hellfire pass today, a site along the thai-burma railway, the deepest cutting with a very grim story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Pass

war tourism makes me feel uncomfortable, on the one side it's important to remember, on the other it seems to demean the events and the lives lost the way it's all commercialized.


[edit: damn flickr is being super slow to upload, you're going to have to wait for the other two pics]
[edit 2: fixed]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great pictures - really liked the bonus pic.

So apparently galingal is _both an aphrodisiac _and a stimulant (so goes without saying that it's likely 'good for sex').

Black Canyon coffee motto is 'A drink from paradise...available on earth', so it must rival the coffee at MacDonald Block cafeteria.

War tourism can be, in right circumstances, a moving and emotional experience that endures in memory and (hopefully) teaches us much. Per your River picture and experience at Hellfire - The Buddha (aka The Enlightened One) once said: "Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace."

Peace to you on your journey - Brady

Cara said...

I struggled with the same questions when I went to Rwanda. You want to bear witness, but at the same time is feels highly voyeuristic (there's not a lot of plastification in Kigali yet). I guess it's related to your earlier qualms about visiting the hill tribe peoples.

Good comments on this topic, Brady.