Best of South East Asia's food Vlog

Check out these two videos of some awesome food experiences we've had. 

First is dried squid that you buy on the street at night. You choose your squid, then they grill it, flatten, and tear into bite size pieces. This is best accompanied with hot sauce and multiple beers. Notice the helpful mobility of the woman's cart!

Second is Ngoc's favorite papaya salad from Laos. Made with the very pungent shrimp paste(mam ruoc), it brings new definition to acquired taste.

Enjoy!

Some stories

Apologies to my loyal readers to have deprived you of my literary gift. I've been reflecting on my final moments here in Asia and did not want it to end. I also was thinking about content so as to not bore you as Jamie have been. I'm supposed to talk about Bangkok, that happened like 3 weeks ago, but this will bore you. Instead, I'll make Bangkok brief and talk about a few funny and unfortunate moments we've encountered on our travel thus far.

Bangkok did not disappoint. It really is as wild and as crazy as you've seen on tv...if you want it. Coming from new york, nothing really surprises us anymore about these big cities. Bangkok had a skyway system, subway, skyscrapers, etc. English is spoken widely and people have enough money to dress nice and drive nice cars. It is also very gay! We went out partying a couple times with a friend that we met through a mutual friend. He was great and showed us the in's and out's of Bangkok. one night, we went to dinner beforehand and had some seafood followed by a dance club that the gays frequent. This was when I started feeling woozy. I tried to toughen it out and just thought it was because of the smoke in the outdoors patio. We proceeded to move inside and after 5 mins later, I started projectile vomiting [luckily] in my dark corner! "okay, let's go home!" said Jamie, and as I took a step, the rest of my dinner came out. Luckily again, we only live 5 mins walk away. That night, I got a fever, and it lingered till the next morning. It was my first time getting food poisoning that caused vomiting and it was traumatic. It also delayed our plans to travel to Cambodia. Till now, I haven't had any seafood, but the craving is resurfacing!

Thailand still had a lot of sandbags around from the flooding. They were just for precautionary, and the flood did not make its way to the center of the city. People were cautious and a lot of business were closed.

Our trip to Cambodia is a blog on its own which includes riding in a Camary sedan packed with 7 other people and a live chicken! In one of the picture, I got to fed a wild monkey which was pretty tame. We were in Siem Riep visiting Angkor Wat when all these monkeys just appear begging for food.

On another trip riding around Angkor Wat (because it's so big, one would need 3 days), our tuk tuk driver had to fix and secure the carriage to his motorbike and accidentally dropped us. Neither one of us got hurt, just rattled, but we all laughed about it during and after.

We've encountered many accidents on our trips of cars flipping over! After awhile, it becomes normal to see a group of people sitting in the shade while the men strategize a way to flip the vehicle over. On this particular accident, it was a truck coming back from the circus that flipped, sending metal carousel and some bananas overboard. I don't think anyone got hurt, and to them, it's just a minor setback on their travel.

We hope everyone in the states is enjoying the holiday season. I'm sure everyone is busy with family and Christmas shopping. We miss you and we will see some of you very soon.

Koh Kong Island

Pictured :

Our private beach excursion today, spring water that come from who knows where, our lunch, "Crabby" that Ngoc caught and now has in a bottle in our room, and a great view of the mangroves.

Airborne in the Gulf of Thailand

Today we embarked on our last big adventure. Boarding an actual modern looking plexiglass boat, with a modern engine, we took off at full speed. What a pleasant surprise after the aging spare part wooden "boats" that sound more like helicopters we have grown used to. Or so we thought...

The ride to the island was fast and fun. Our guides spoke no English so we were left to figure things out as we went. The beach was beautiful and our guides grilled us whole fish and chicken kabbobs for lunch which they served on banana leaves. After eating, Ngoc hunted (and trapped) little spider crabs and I got burnt in the sun.

The excitement came with the ride home. The tide had moved in bringing large waves. We fought to get the boat off the shore and to even get inside without soaking our camera bag. Once on the water the driver needed to push the speed ahead to get us out to sea. We fought 6 foot swells moving most of the boat above the water only to slam back down once off the wave. At one point the wave was so high we became compeletely airborn, slamming back into the water with great force. Ngoc and I screamed and laughed like it was the last time we may do so. In the back of our minds we were also aware the boat had no preservers and Ngoc can't swim! Luckily for us, the captain knew what he was doing and after stalling a few times later in the journey, he got us home shaken, but safely.

Tomorrow we head back to Phnom Penh super early in hopes we can connect to a Saigon bound bus in the afternoon. This will give us a full week to wind down in the city were it all started for us.

Koh Kong trek part 3 (video)

Our guides creating the structure to hold our 6 hammocks in the jungle. They created this in about 30 minutes with only simple tools and the materials from the jungle. Let's hope we remember how to do it for our next camping trip!

Koh Kong trek part 2

Yesterday we took on a big challenge and signed up for a 2 day and 1 night jungle trek. This was not accomplished without a large amount of strong arming on my part to convince Ngoc. In the end I told him he had no choice and stuck to my guns. I harnessed the strength of talking Candace into going white water rafting in Costa Rica, where I had to endured hours of her telling me how horrible of an idea it was only to end up loving it!

Well, I don't think Ngoc loved it, but he really held it together concidering what we endured. Leeches, super humid conditions, raw meat being cooked on the open fire that had been with us un-refrigerated the entire day, the threat of death by mosquito bites over night, or just simply being attacked by a wild boar.

In the end we had a great time and were extremely impressed with our guides who drove us everywhere and built our camp structure from only what the jungle offered. The only damage done was being covered in dust and a slight lack of sleep. For the experience, this was well worth it!

Koh Kong Jungle trek