Unless you count pouring hot water over a pack of instant noodles, I haven’t prepared a single meal at home since moving back to Bangkok in February. If you figure a minimum of two meals per day, add a handful of small, snack-sized meals in every few days, multiply by an average of 30 days per month, then subtract… ah, whatever: that’s comes out to helluva lot of eating out.

It’s not just that it’s easier to pick something up, or that it’s easy for one to be as economical (or not) when dining out: there’s just too much good food to waste a meal on my sufficient, but decidedly rudimentary home-cookin’. There are times when we literally have to plan out where we’re going to eat for the next week, like secretaries scheduling doctor appointments.

“Well, if we’re going to do our pad thai guy tonight, sushi sounds good tomorrow… wait, when was the last time we ate sushi?”

“Uhh… shit. Yesterday. Remember, Yaki-Ten? We probably shouldn’t have anymore sushi until at least Thursday. Don’t want to pull a Jeremy Piven…”

“Oh, right, yeah… he is such a douchebag. Anyway, okay, so pad thai and Chang beers tonight, tomorrow… well, I’ll probably go to the food court for lunch, so maybe bimimbab for dinner? Sushi on Thursday, then… Jae On on Friday? Grilled squid sounds amazing.”

“Hmmm… yeah, sounds good. But I thought we said Victory Plaza for sure this week? We haven’t been back there in awhile. Maybe we could have a drink and fish cakes there, then go to Taksura for that disgusting crab and squid curry? Also, I’m kind of craving udon and sesame greens at Ootoya again…”

Yes, we’re spoiled for choice.

For obvious reasons, we tend to eat Thai food more than anything else. Som tam, like this perfectly prepared one that I recently polished off in about three minutes flat, below, is my standard go-to dish for either lunch or dinner, and as one of the bartenders at Hansar Samui said last weekend, “is probably Thailand’s number one food.”

As I’ve said before, the som tam at Jae On is reliably delicious, as is everything else on the menu… plus, they know us well enough by now to believe it when we say phom chap phet phet (“I like it really spicy”) or prik ha met (“put 5 chili peppers in it”). After years of babies tourists complaining about the spiciness of their food, many restaurants in Thailand, by default, leave the spice out no matter what you say (or in which language you say it).

But our diet here doesn’t strictly consist of Thai. In fact, sometimes we’ll eat it just a few times a week. Bangkok has a number of spots serving excellent sushi at mostly reasonable prices, like one of our favorites, In the Mood for Love, located just off the Thong Lor station on the BTS Skytrain. The vibe here is, as you might guess, romantic, but their fun, innovative list of signature rolls are the main attraction.

Like the popular Sweet 16, below, which is stuffed with eel, avocado, strawberry, and tamago and topped with spicy tuna and more fresh slices of strawberry. Yes, strawberry–gross, right? You’d be surprised. Thais are obsessed with food that strikes the perfect balance between salty and sweet (and spicy), and this one serves that need perfectly.

Lately, we’ve also been fighting, unsuccessfully at times, not to eat Mexican more than once every few weeks. Mmmhmm, that’s right, Mexican food in Bangkok–and some of the tastiest, most authentic Mexican food I’ve ever eaten at that. Owner of the city’s best burrito according to CNNGO Bangkok, La Monita Taqueria has this niche absolutely cornered.

Located down an anonymous soi right off the Phloen Chit BTS Skytrain station, past a number of translation and visa service shops, La Monita has a fish tacos with beans and rice combo that has me practically licking the plate clean; my fiancee can’t stop talking about the double-cali tacos (like Taco Bell’s Double-Decker Taco). So far I’ve not given in to the Nacho Fries temptation (essentially a mound of deliciousness with french fries instead of chips), but I’m not… sure… how much… longer… I can… resist.

Ironic, though, that the best meal I’ve had this time around in Bangkok was home-cooked. It didn’t come from Kitchen de Brian, of course: one of our good friends was kind enough to invite us over to her adorable apartment this week for dinner. Despite the fact that she’d gotten up at 4am that morning for work, and only had a few hours to shop for and prep everything after work, and had to get up at 4am the next day too, we arrived to an elaborately conceived feast, with a table perfectly set on her breezy balcony overlooking the Chao Phraya, a chilled bottle of white wine, cold bottles of Chang, mojitos, Brazilian-flavored jazz on the stereo, and all the ingredients for our indulgent four-course meal prepped and ready to rock. So, so cute.

She put an apron (and slippers) on my fiancee, and together with another Thai friend she turned these final preparations into an impromptu Thai cooking class. First, it was a Thai-style shrimp salad, with finely minced and chopped galanga, lemongrass, Thai basil, coriander, lime, a heaving handful of chili peppers, sugar, fish sauces, and just-boiled shrimp.

Readying the tofu fish cubes, flash-fried in vegetable oil, was a more straightforward process, but served with a side of sweet sauce, they were predictably delicious.

I normally don’t eat clams, but I happily made an exception in this case. Steamed on the stove with Thai basil, garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and chili peppers, these fresh clams were unbelievably flavorful.

We’re lucky to have the means and accessibility to try so much great food in Bangkok. We’re even luckier to have good friends to enjoy home-cooked meals with… even if I’m not the one cooking them.

_{All photos copyright Brian Spencer}

This is US President Woodrow Wilson’s original AAA (American Automobile Association) membership card.

You can see it at his Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton, Virginia, in the same room as his restored Pierce-Arrow limousine.

I wonder if he ever had to call for a tow?  Having just used my own membership for that benefit recently, I’m a fan of getting a tow when you need it, that’s for sure.

Yes, AAA is still around, as are their iconic TripTik road trip planners, which you can now do electronically as an iPhone app.

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The crackling sound of burning fire, the smell of wood smoke rising, the shadows of people quietly tending the fires,the flicker of firelight reflected in water: all these are elements of Waterfire, a combination of event, art, and celebration that takes place in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The summer season of lighting has begun, with dates to come in July, August, September, and October.

At first conceived as a one off event in 1994, artist Barnaby Evans’ idea of creating art from the place where water and fire meet caught the imagination of the people of Providence and visitors as well. Waterfire lightings now include festivals along the riverfront with music and food.

As it has been from the outset, though, the focus is on the inspiring dance of fire and water, meetings which create interactions both lively and contemplative. Visitors from across the world have come to share the experience.

Waterfire is a non profit organization, so the number of lightings each year depends on the support it receives. So far, several evenings across the summer months and into early autumn are planned for the lighting of the fires. For schedules, and to get a taste of what the lightings are like, take a visit to the Waterfire website.

photograph courtesy of waterfire.org

It’s worth leaving the house.

That’s one of the basic premises of travel, that it’s a far better thing to go somewhere yourself, than to read about someone else’s travels (or watch them on television or some other filmed media) from the comfort of hearth, home, routine.

I’ve  totally bought into this premise, as you might expect — my life is structured around regular travel, and has been for some years now. And I can’t help but notice that a great deal of travel is…well…incredibly dull.

It makes for terrible stories. A good story, whether you see it in a movie or read it in a novel or a memoir , is just like real life, but with the boring parts removed. Travel is just like a movie with all the boring (and confusing and contradictory) parts left in.

Think about it: If you were watching a movie, you would not experience minute after cursed minute on an overnight flight, you would see maybe one shot of the main character staring at the fasten seat belt sign — and then the plane touches down.  One or two revolutions of the baggage claim carousel, but not the fifty it takes to spit out your bag.

It is my theory that this is why so many Americans behave badly when they travel, quick to revert to petulant, demanding toddlers* –  we’re not hip to the boring truth of travel, because we get very, very little vacation time in this country.

This is a fact oft-asserted and not oft-backed up, but it is actually true. Vacation time is traditionally awarded based on years of service, with longer-serving employees receiving more vacation time.  Only 17% of private sector U.S. employees with five years on the job receive at least three weeks worth of paid vacation days a year. Bear in mind that the median amount of time that people spend in a job is now 4.4 years, so many employed Americans aren’t even going to get that much. Among employees who have been on the job for a year, eight in ten are getting less than two weeks of vacation time, most are getting less than nine days.

Given all this, the vast majority of the average traveler’s experience comes from vicariously living through someone else’s journeys, via travel narrative–whether it’s Paul Theroux, Anthony Bourdain, Eat Pray Love (book or movie), or even the Sunday section of the local newspaper. Fiction or nonfiction, for these purposes it doesn’t matter — there has never been a travel story published that gives a second by second account of a journey, and for good reason.

So little wonder that we get so impatient when we’re off on our long-awaited holiday — nothing creates rage like unmet expectations, and the idea that everyone’s having a better,  or at least a more interestingly disastrous time, than Y-O-U.

Travel is boring, annoying, confusing, at least some of the time. You’ll like it more once you realize it’s supposed to be that way. So embrace the truth, and then, when you’re good and calm, go ahead and leave the house.

_{*Despite being well into my childbearing years, I’m not a parent and so am not by nature an apologist for children travelers, but I will say that I have never seen any bad behavior from a child on an airport or airplane that matches the tantrums I’ve seen thrown by the fully grown — uncontrollable fits of pique and rage that have even occasionally led to arrest.}

The Contemporary Cruise by Iwein Maassen is a perfect coffee table book that not only captivates you with it’s stunning photographs but also provides you with plenty of information about the various forms of cruise travel, past and present.

The first few pages provide a detailed overview of the history of cruising, starting back in the days when P& O was known as the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company and only the well-to-do could even consider ocean journeys as a leisure activity. The poor, on the other hand, saw ocean journeys in a much more practical light – as a means of immigrating to a new country.

The author continues to hook you into the fascinating world of cruise travel with an intimate look inside legendary ships such as the Sea Cloud and the Queen Elizabeth 2 before tackling alternative ships such as the Norwegian Hurtigruten and tall ships such as the Star Clipper.

No type of cruise travel is missed. Thereís a chapter on nature and expedition cruises around the Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, and South Pantagonia. Another chapter looks at river cruises along the Nile, the Rhine, and the Yangtze. Plus thereís a chapter on interesting ports of call – Barcelona, Miami, and St Petersburg – and one on the  worldís most fascinating sea routes.

But it’s not all stunning photos and fascinating narrative. The final chapter provides plenty of practical information of use to anyone dreaming about or planning their own cruise travel.

This is definitely one of those coffee table books guaranteed to start you dreaming about cruise travel.