An ordinary life in an extra-ordinary place
Archive for June, 2011
I lived for seven years in Malaysia and developed an addiction for the food. A multi-ethnic country may lead to political and social problems; but it does wonders for the choice of food and I was completely besotted with Chinese char kway teow, Malay desserts, and Indian roti canai. The latter was a particular favourite and every Saturday I would pop down to the local roti shop for a couple of roti canai and a bowl of chicken curry. The absence of this dish in Thailand has been a constant source of heartache, so any chance to indulge is always welcome.
The Son and his girlfriend made a trip to Penang as part of their recent Asian tour. Five minutes after checking into his hotel, he sent me a mail to inform me that there was a roti restaurant right over the road. Oh, and the hotel was very good too.
Driven more by the former fact than the latter, I therefore booked a trip for a couple of days, emphasising to she who must be obeyed that it was all about soaking in the culture and not about eating roti.
The hotel was indeed most pleasant. Only opened a few months ago, it is the result of an extensive refurbishment of a block of old Chinese shophouses.
The rooms are what the guides would call “tastefully furnished” and the bathrooms have both a jacuzzi and a shower with jets that are permanently set to “stun”. Best of all, the hotel is situated right next to a roti shop the World Heritage designated part of Georgetown.
Unfortunately, the room rate included breakfast; so the first morning we felt obliged to partake. But the next two mornings it was over the road for roti canai, curry sauce and a mug of teh tarik (or cha chak as the Thais call it).
I then did my Oliver Twist impression and asked for some more. Then I did it again. Much to the surprise of the shop owner, I wolfed down three roti canai each morning as an excellent start to the day. Unconnected to this consumption, I also appear to have gained some weight in the last couple of days.
There wasn’t just the roti of course. There was a banana-leaf vegetarian meal, cendol, cendol with ice cream, gula melaka ice cream, ayam laksa, and more than one plate of char kway teow. Perhaps most charmingly, there was lunch in a tea house, where sun shone through the open courtyard inside the house and everything was served with a measured calm and stern instructions on how to prepare and serve the tea.
The man in the white top is keeping an eye on me to ensure I serve the tea properly. Doesn’t he realise I am British?
Some eateries were stumbled across by chance; but our main guide was Beyond Sustenance, a site maintained by The Son’s better half and extensively updated during the tour around Asia. We were also pointed in various directions by Michael, the barman at the hotel.
Michael, like most Malaysians, has an obsessive interest in food and mixed recommendations of places to visit with recommendations of which food to eat when we were there. He borrowed our map and wrote little messages, like “eat laksa here” against various landmarks. A grandson of one of Penang’s pioneers, he has had an interesting life and regaled us with stories every evening whilst knocking out the best of cocktails. I can only fault him for the promised “no kick” gin and tonic he made for me as a gift from him on the second evening. As I attempted to stand and leave the bar, he admitted it was actually made with four shots of gin. As a result, I didn’t enjoy my last morning in Penang; even after (especially after?) three rotis.
And what of the culture? Yes, there was that too; but that’s another post.
Penang, Malaysia
Fuji X100, ISO 1600
Yes, we’ve been on a short trip to Penang. Expect more photos.
Going to be without internet access for a few days. The massive enterprise that is Pattaya Days is closing down for a while. Toodle pip!
I have no problem with people using my photos, provided they ask first, and provided they don’t then bugger them up.
These two things don’t always happen. If I am not asked, then of course I probably will never know that they have been stolen. There is the occasional exception; but you just have to accept that if your put photos up on the internet, people are going to steal them and you are unlikely to find out.
But the real pain comes when you provide the photos, and the photos are abused. It’s almost, but not quite, like seeing your children being tortured.
The most painful example arose from a request from the windsurfing club for some shots that they could use for advertising. We set up a special shoot and captured some great images. The light was right, the wind was right, and the camera was pointing in the right places at the right time; fantastic. Really happy with the results which could have been printed at A2 or higher on laminated plastic and would have looked amazing. Instead they were printed on cheap corrugated junk and looked utter shit; the photos might as well have come from an ancient phone camera. I die a little inside every time I pass them.
And now I have been pierced through the heart again; and it’s another windsurfing shot. You may recall this from a few weeks ago:
A magazine in Bangkok asked if they could use it. No problem; good to publicise the sport and the club, what could go wrong? Well, this:
Not content with trying to make the sea look bluer than it was via a ham-fisted Photoshop assault; they decided to black out the face of the rider. The less charitable might conclude that; given that the target readership of their magazine is middle class Bangkok Thais, they didn’t want to show a suntanned face on the cover. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and conclude that they are useless wankers that have ruined my photo.
They promised to credit the shot to Pattaya Days; I am hoping that they didn’t bother.
In a bid to tempt consumers, camera manufacturers have built all manner of crap into their products. Pet recognition, an option that will only take a shot if people are smiling, baby galleries. If you are mildly serious about photography; all of these are a complete waste of time. But one gizmo which I wouldn’t mind having is GPS tracking; so that each photo would be marked with the location where it was taken. Not for me of course, but for the wonderful readers of this organ who frequently often occasionally once asked where it was that I took some photos.
In the absence of such facilities in my cameras, I turned to my phone. Not so long ago you only used you phone for making phone calls; but nowadays you kill pigs with angry birds, read the news, fuck around on Facebook and generally waste your life on a three inch screen. Turns out you can also use it to geotag your photos.
GPS4Phone runs on the iPhone. Start it up and you get this:
For general shooting you can capture your location every five minutes. If you are walking around a large temple site and want to record the exact position of every photo, you can capture a point every 30 seconds. If you only want to capture the occasional point, you just give the phone a shake while it is in your pocket. But be careful, you can get thrown out of temples for apparently masturbating via your pocket.
Once you have finished your photo session, you end the capture and can review a map showing the capture points:
Then you generate a QR code which you photograph for future use.
Back home and you place all the photos you want to tag (RAW or JPG) into a directory, along with the photo of the QR code. Then you run a piece of software downloaded from the GPS4Phone site and it reads the QR code and magically alters the exif of all your photos to include location information.
I was going to try this out with our recent visit to the bat temple. But I discovered a fatal flaw with the concept; if you forget to run GPS4Phone before you start taking your photos, it doesn’t work…. In fact, I remembered I had forgotten when we were driving home from the temple. Luckily, there was another temple stop on our way home, the pretty place near the service area on the Bangkok-Chonburi motorway. So I tried it and it worked a treat. When I loaded my photo to Flickr, the location of the shot was shown on a map.
See the map in Flickr here.
Since then, I have been trying to find a working WordPress plug-in which will display the map in a post with controls so you can zoom around; so far without success.
But never mind, the next time you want to know where I took a shot, I will be able to tell you; provided I remembered to turn on the iPhone app.
One of the many joys of living in Thailand is that you never really understand what is going on. The whole country operates in an alternative state of reality, like a bad sci-fi movie. As an outsider, all you can do is observe, bemused and amused, while weird stuff happens. And it doesn’t get much weirder than a general election.
You can tell there is an election on the way when the verges at the side of the road are crammed with banners bearing photos of heavily Photoshopped thugs. Most seem to offer the unsubtle message “vote for me or else I’ll break your nose”. The thug fashion parade is currently in full swing, so I know an election is coming.
I don’t know the exact date, sometime in July I think; but if there is no beer available then that is probably the day. It is necessary to ban alcohol on election days, otherwise the Thais would be so depressed at the appalling candidate choices that they would turn to drink to null the pain. Another sign that it is election time is when we experience a coup. If there is a coup, then count back about four days and that will have been election day, with the “wrong” winner.
There are a zillion parties contesting the election. Only two have a realistic chance of securing substantial votes; the remainder will tag along and offer to join a coalition with one of the main parties in exchange for their detailed manifestos for improving the country being adopted by the government cash.
Each party has a number. This is because the names of the parties sound depressingly familiar. Choose any three words from “Thai democracy nation united love motherland social people” to form a jingoistic phrase; and that is probably a party name. Easy to get confused, so just pick a number.
Party number 1 are Phak Puea Thai.
What they say they will do if they win the election: A plethora of unsustainable handouts to all sections of society.
What they will actually do if they win the election: Steal as much money as possible.
Chances of success: Short term; high. Yingluk (top left in the photo) is Taksin’s puppet sister and therefore has support from the red shirts. Long term; doomed. If Puea Thai win then watch out for them being disqualified on a technicality, or by a coup.
Party number 10 are the Democrats
What they say they will do if they win the election: A plethora of unsustainable handouts to all sections of society.
What they will actually do if they win the election: Steal as much money as possible.
Chances of success: Short term, low. Abhisit (top right in the photo) is a puppet of has the support of the miltary and has been an insipid prime minister. Long term; high, manipulated back into power once Puea Thai have been shoved out of the way.
Party number 6 is…. I have no idea; and they seem pretty vague too with no thug to show on their poster.
What they say they will do if they win the election: No real idea so just sticking up some posters with pretty pictures of water on them.
What they will actually do if they win some seats in the election: Offer the seats to a coalition in return for favours (e.g. cash).
Party number 5 are Rak Prathet Thai.
What they say they will do if they win the election: Join the opposition and monitor corruption.
What they will actually do if they win some seats in the election: Join the opposition and monitor corruption; whilst garnering maximum publicity.
At last, a party that might actually do what it says it will do. No Photoshopped faces and staid stances here, for the ugly mug on the poster is the legendary, loveable oaf; Chuwit Kamolvisit.
Chuwit made his money in the massage parlour business. Up-market massages for up-market Thais where the prices were high and a happy ending was guaranteed. Not entirely legal, but Chuwit paid off the police and everyone was happy.
Then, in 2003, a plot of land near where I was living was violently transformed overnight from an area of hawker stalls to barren land, so that the land could be redeveloped. Chuwit was accused of organising the raid and spent a month in jail. Once released, he was so pissed off with the police for daring to arrest him that he went public with the bribes he had been paying to police, and named names. Also identified were police who had been given free happy endings in his massage parlours.
Now the police were pissed off too, so they started raiding Chuwit’s establishments on a regular basis and he eventually sold off some of his businesses and turned to politics. He ran for Bangkok governor twice, without success. His campaign was not helped when he decided to beat up a journalist who described him as unmanly.
And here he goes again. In spite of having admitted to building his business on the back of bribery and corruption; he is running an anti-corruption campaign with the intention of being in opposition and annoying the government with corruption claims.
In the crazy world of Thai politics, Chuwit seems like the most amusing and, sadly, the most honest, choice. Vote for number 5!
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