“Sawahdee krup. Pie Isaarn Teud Teung, Thonburi?”

One, two, three, four, five. We flagged down five cab drivers on the corner of Thanon Petchaburi and Ratchaprop: all five of them shook their head no when told where we were headed. It was 8:30pm on a Saturday night, traffic was at a stubborn standstill, and Bangkok’s always-fickle cab drivers were in no mood to jockey their way across town, over Pinklao Bridge, and beyond the Chao Phraya River to Thonburi.

The sixth time was the charm, as it oddly often is on busy nights like this. The driver chuckled when we told him Teud Teung and agreed to take us, but for a flat fee (200 baht), not on the meter. Roadside robbery, to be sure, but we had no bargaining power and he knew it. The evening was tick, tick, ticking away, and we feared this old beer/performance hall would be packed by now and that we wouldn’t get a table, so we ceded and were on our way.

As it turns out, there was no need to rush.

It was our first visit to Teud Teung, and though we’d heard this was a late-night joint and that the show didn’t get started until around 10pm, we didn’t expect to be the first patrons there, on a Saturday. Dark, dank, and smelling like a urinal that hadn’t been flushed in a week, the hall was deserted except for the staff.

Server girls were dressed in pink tops and short skirts colored in a glossy wash of blues, yellows, purples, and pinks. Performers buttoned up green shirts and straightened white suit jackets (guys), or primped their hair and affixed sparkling tieras or earrings (girls, ladyboys) in front of a large mirror off to one side of the twinkle-lit, ramshackle bar. On stage, a five-piece band rehearsed the same 4-5 minute sequence once, twice, a third, a fourth time. The sound was deafening, like where-are-my-f’ing-ear-plugs deafening.

Indeed, though Isaarn Teud Teung offers a somewhat similar concept of food, beer, and performances, Tawandang German Brewery this is not. This is a decidedly local’s-only joint.

Fortunately we speak a little Thai because the staff speaks little to no English, and the only English-language items on the menu were whiskey and vodka brand names. We ordered two som tams, a plate of grilled squid, and two bottles of Leo, no problem, then tried to pantomine an order of fish cakes (successfully, in the end, but they weren’t actually on the menu).

A few small groups of Thais straggled in. Beers were poured. Food was served. Given that lovely smell of piss and the massive spider crawling up its web stretched between two legs of the table in front of us, we were a little nervous about the food, but it was fine… though something about the roach we spotted crawling across the table ruined our appetites halfway through the squid. We stuck to Leo for the rest of the night.

The Thai-style variety show began with all of the performers solemnly lining up in two rows across the stage while one of them sang a short, somber tune. Shortly after, the parade of one singer after the next began, each of them going through renditions that ranged from off-key to commendable of what I assume are well-known Thai songs; I recognized some of them.

The hall filled up some as the performances wore on, but would have still felt fairly empty if not for the singers and their friends taking up four tables in front of the stage and a few more towards the side. Their tables were stocked with bottles of soda and bottles of whiskey; at times it felt like they were performing for each other, at a private house party, and we were just allowed to peek in. It was sweet; it was a little sad.

Most of the songs were sung as solos or duets, but there were also two “dance routines” before a break at 11:30pm, when we left. We’d been warned by friends to expect “really bad dancing”, but this was something else entirely: a true comic spectacle.

The first featured six guys with disinterested body language wearing tight white pants and sleeveless blue-and-white satin tunics (so foul) half-heartedly spinning their way through a routine that could only optimistically be called “choreographed”. We loved every minute of it. They added two more guys and donned body-length, black-and-white tunics for the second routine; my fiancee noted that they were “putting a bit more minge into it”, with at least half of the dancers twirling and spinning at about the same time and tempo.

Yes, Teud Teung is rough around the edges, but in all the right ways. That’s what it makes so special.

Isaarn Teud Teung is located at 63/192 Phra Pinklao Road, Bangkok (Thonburi), +66 02 883 4434.

An entire wing of the City Palace Food Court now stands vacant, collecting dust under dim lighting. Where there’d once been a vegetarian food stall, there’s nothing but an empty napkin holder on the counter; the Indian stall is gone and the som tam food stall is gone too. Ditto the overpriced packaged dessert stand and what used to be nearly a quarter of the entire dining area.

While the food court across the street at Platinum Fashion Mall–City Complex’s sister (and more modern) wholesale shopping center–enjoys a major boon in visitors and is packed every day during the lunching hours, City Palace is experiencing the exact opposite: an exodus of customers that’s begat a curtain call on many of its food vendors. Frankly, it felt a bit depressing when I walked in from the fifth-floor stairwell and I considered turning back and writing this place off for good, until a piercing off-pitch serenade wafted through this cavernous emptiness and assuaged my concerns that all was lost at City Palace.

Much of the liveliness may have been sucked out of this always rough-and-tumble food court, but the bizarre lunchtime karaoke that has always lured me back was still in full swing. Awesome.

My e-coupon loaded up with a 100 baht balance, I browsed the 15 food stalls lining the wall that still remained, all of them offering slightly different versions of fried rice, noodles, soups, and som tam for 30 – 75 baht. Staffers and diners alike have always been somewhat surprised to see me, a farang, wandering through this untouristed court that’s mostly frequented by seniors and wholesalers who work downstairs in the maze of shops. The seniors seem to come for the karaoke, and the sellers probably come for the convenience: the vendors probably think I’m lost, though as with most restaurants in Bangkok it usually only takes a few return visits before the staff recognize you as a regular.

Though her former stand in the now-empty wing has been abandoned, the somewhat surly woman I used to favor for som tam is still here. I’ve learned to order this dish in Thai since I eat it four or five times a week (phom tong-gon som tam, prik sam met, my ow goong-hang, let kow knee-ow krup), which surprises and amuses both her and the other woman waiting next to me.

Her som tam is always delicious, but it’s hard to foul those up in Bangkok and I can get one anywhere: there aren’t nearly as many spots to enjoy one while listening to ear-splitting, completely care-free karaoke, though. One by one, a steady stream of Thais make their way into the spotlight of the twinkle-lit stage located at the head of the dining area, grab the microphone, and belt their way through somber, traditional Thai songs.

Lyrics are displayed on a 40-inch flatscreen TV running slow-motion nature videos in the background, and during each song a young girl in her mid-20s works the small crowd, signing up willing participants and marking down their request. As the karaoke supervisor, she also joins in on a few numbers, singing a duet with one gentleman and, yes, banging a tambourine for another woman’s song.

Like so many things in Thailand, lunchtime karaoke at the City Palace Food Court is as sweet as it is bizarre. Nevermind the screeching and wailing that fills the dining room from concert hall-sized speakers: polite, sincere applause follows every tune, and the singers seem genuinely happy as they exit the stage. There’s no pretense here: this is a purely therapeutic exercise. Despite the food stall closures, the occasionally surly service, and the puzzled looks, it’s an exercise that keeps me coming back.

Photos © Brian Spencer

Past the food court, down a long, carpeted corridor, and behind drawn black curtains that stretched from floor to ceiling in the Fallsview Casino Resort’s Grand Hall, cameras were click, click, clicking as the chairman of the Wine Council of Ontario ran down a roll call of Ontario winemakers who, one twosome at a time, took turns joining him onstage to pour four bottles of icewine each into a comically oversized wine flute.

Today, the start of the region’s annual Icewine Harvest Festival, this group of 30+ Ontario winemakers gathered in solidarity under one common goal: to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest wine flute filled with icewine. That, and to stake their ceremonious flag firmly into the global wine industry as producers who no longer have anything to prove. “We’re always comparing ourselves to somebody else, and I think it’s time to stop doing that when we break this record today,” said chairman Ed Madronich. “We make amazing wines right here that are uniquely Ontario.”

Fitting, then, that the last drops of icewine were poured by Donald Ziraldo and Karl Kaiser, the founders of Inniskillin Winery and godfathers of Canada’s renowned icewine industry; that’s them pictured above, along with current Inniskillin winemaker Bruce Nicholson.

A round of applause rose as they emptied their bottles, and soon after they were followed to the podium by a Guinness World Record Adjudicator, whom I imagined would resemble the Monopoly Guy, top hat, cane, and all, but in reality looked strangely, disappointingly, like a normal guy wearing a suit; Alfred E. Neuman he was not. He gave a brief overview of Guinness, then did what any good Adjudicator does: he adjudicated, and now it’s official.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark your calendars and remember where you were on January 14, 2011: the day that the world’s largest wine flute was filled with 18 liters of icewine in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

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When a small watch museum opened recently in the garage of a house just a couple of blocks from where I live in a quiet tree lined suburb, my first thought was ‘why in the world would anyone open a watch museum?’

But that was before I read Hunter Davies book ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans.’

Turns out that opening a ‘hobby‘ museum’ is pretty commonplace, with more and more collectors coming out of the closet, so to speak, and showcasing their collections to the public in privately owned museums.

An avid collector himself, Hunter Davies, a British author, journalist, and broadcaster probably best known for having written the only authorised biography of The Beatles, spent months traipsed around Britain searching for Britain’s most oddball and bizarre single topic museums.

Meeting with the collectors and curators of these museums, Davies sought to discover how they evolved from dream to reality, all the while mulling over the idea of opening his own museum to showcase his own collections.

The resulting book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans, focuses on 18 of these museums, each of which features a truly oddball collection ranging from lawnmowers to baked beans, from pencils to packaging, from Laurel and Hardy to Cars of the Stars.

Davies, however, has only really scratched the surface of the various ‘mad’ museums out there.

Who knows,  there might even be one hidden in plain sight in your neighbourhood.

During the four days that that the Titanic sailed the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912,  she was the largest passenger steamship in the world. From keel to funnel tip, she stood 175 feet tall.

After the iceberg collision, it happened that Halifax, Nova Scotia was the closest city with rail links to the rest of North America. The city became the center of the recovery effort.  Some 150 unclaimed bodies and various ship debris that came to Halifax remained  there — the bodies buried, the debris destined to become the most popular permanent exhibit in the city’s Maritime Museum  of the Atlantic.

The Halifax Public Gardens are somewhat inland from the harbor, but also boast a water feature, called Griffin’s Pond.  There, in the late afternoon sun, Titanic plies water once again.

She seems complete in every way — her four funnels proudly pointing towards the sky, tipped with a black stripe, and her gleaming white hull, reflected ripplingly down towards the depths.

Titanic shares the pond with about a dozen American Black Ducks. From bill to webbed foot, they typically stand about 20 inches tall. These particular ducks looked shorter than that, but next to the ship, their height was still impressive.

The ducks dipped their beaks into the water, preened, wiggled their tails and flapped their wings.

A breeze turned Titanic broadside. Reeds, dead ahead.

The ducks cackled, a boisterous barnyard quacking that sounded like laughter: ha ha ha.

Tourists approached the pond with digital cameras extended in front of them,  a gesture of offering.  A black-clad young French couple wandered over to the banks.  “Titanique! Ha ha ha.” Without another word, she posed, within view of the ducks and the ship. Her partner, bearing a large backpack, snapped her photo.

They ambled away towards the bandstand, erected in 1887 in honor of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.