Living large...

As one of friends would say, Alby and I are "Living Large"....last night Alby and I had dinner at the State Tower in Bangkok. The State Tower has a set of restaurants, bars, and lounges located at the very top (64th floor) that have most restaurants in the US beat. The tower is known for it's golden dome that you can see from pretty much everywhere in Bangkok. As a late anniversary celebration we splurged and had dinner at Mezzaluna. It is this awesome Italian restaurant on the 64th floor. The view as breath taking and the food was amazing. What a great way to remember our 3rd anniversary!

A True Melting Pot

I'm pre-dating my post for Malaysia :) Sorry it took a few days to get this up, work has been pretty hectic.

This past weekend Alby and I flew out to KL (what the Malay call Kuala Lumpur). Just a little over 2.5 hours and we had touched down. This is what is so cool about this area of Asia, you can fly to so many countries with short little flights, which makes our little weekend trips so much easier. We arrived pretty late in teh evening and we lost an hour due to the time difference. The drive from the airport to downtown KL is about 45 minutes. We were lucky that our timing was such that we were able to watch part of the firework competition being held in KL. It's about a week or so long all culminating in the celebration of Malaysia's 50th Anniversary this coming weekend. Friday was Japan's day in the competition. The fireworks were amazing, and we were happy that we were able to catch them on our drive to the city :) I'd like to say I planned it that way.


When we arrived at our hotel we were happy to see that we had booked a hotel in a very happening area called Asian Heritage Row. It was a street filled with late night restaurants, bars, lounges, and clubs :) Since this weekend trip we did want to actually see more of the night life in Asia, this was great! We quickly dropped our stuff off into the room and headed to see what was happending on the streets. We grabbed a table at a little cafe and set up to do some people watching. Malaysia is definitely a true melting pot. We saw so many people from different backgrounds all hanging out and socializing. We didn't see so much the cliques we so often see at home with races grouping up. People were definitely more blended. Speaking of blended...we decided we'd try out the sangria at the cafe, since they claimed theirs was very unique. It was unique all right, instead of soaking fruit in wine, they blended the fruits in red wine :) So you ended up with a wine smoothie...maybe we are just spoiled with the excellent sangria our friends Dani and Enrique make, to really appreciate their unique sangria.


The next day was filled with the usually shopping/siteseeing. It seems everywhere we go has a Little India and a Chinatown, nothing too new there. It was a little funny that most of the stalls in Chinatown were run by Indians :) We did get stuck in a sudden downpour, where we had to seek shelter under a bus stop till the rain stopped (about 20 minutes). I was very excited to see a sign that said San Francisco on it (since I was getting home sick) but was surprised to see it was a coffee house...when did we start making coffee in San Francisco, I thought that was a Seattle thing, anyways.


KL was a fun city, but I'm ready for the beach....and no more shopping (well at least for 1 weekend)!

Shopping into the night

Last night Pami and Neel arrived from Laos. They are in Bangkok for a couple days before they head to the beaches on the west coast of Thailand. We'll be meeting them next weekend in Koh Samui (east coast of Thailand) and can't wait!


We figured since they haven't been to Bangkok, we'd try to do something that is a must do in Bangkok, and head to a night market. There are 2 night markets that are popular in Bangkok. On is the Patpong Market, where you can get a knock off version of everything you could imagine. Its also in the red-light area of Bangkok, so there are Go-Go Bars and clubs along the market area. The other market is Suan Lum . This market has a cool open air food court and beer garden where live music is played. We decided to go to the Suan Lum since we wanted to be able to have dinner as well as shop. What a fun evening. The beer garden had 20+ food stalls around it where we all just were in awe with the number of options available for dinner. We ordered a bunch of dishes and grabbed two big bottles of beer and enjoyed the evening :) Aftewards we wandered through the shops picking up little knick knacks. Barginning here was crazy. For a purse I liked they started at 1200 bahts and ended up settling for 400 :) Definitely can't settle for less than half off here!

Today we fly out to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. More from there later!

A Tourist's Day in Bangkok

So last night our friend Neel flew in for a few hours as he transfered from his flight from home to go to Laos to meet Pami. It was a brief vist (8 hours) but it was nice to see a friend away from home :) We'll be meeting up with Pami and Neel later on during their trip in Laos and Thailand, we can't wait!!

After we had breakfast with Neel, Alby and I headed out for a day as a tourist in Bangkok. We started with going to see the Golden Buddha in Chinatown. When we arrived there we see this beautiful temple and walk inside and see a huge gold Buddha, so we take pictures and take in the peacefulness of the temple. When we left the temple we saw people paying for tickets and climbing up some stairs. We then realized that this was not the actualy Golden Buddha, but another one that was placed in a more accessible location. So we paid our tickets and climbed up to see the real Golden Buddha. It was amazing. I could not believe it was solid gold!

By that time it was close to lunch, so we decided we'd grab some lunch in chinatown before we headed to our second destination. We walked into a clean looking chinese dim sum place. The restaurant was packed, and we took that as a good sign. When we finally fought ourselves to a table we noticed that everyone seemed to be ordering lots of dimsum plates. All the tables had towers of the dim sum bamboo baskets on their table (another good sign). When we got our menu, we saw all the dim sum plates were only 15 bahts (that's less than 50 cents), no wonder they ordered a lot! Since we weren't starving we ordered ourselves 5 plates and figured we'd have more than enough food. When the dim sum arrived we finally understood why everyone ordered so much. The dim sum was super tiny. Anyhow... we ended up ordering more food :)


From Chinatown we went to the famous Weekend Market (off the Mo Chit Station on BTS). This was like the biggest flea market in the world. Over 34 acres of shops! I don't think we saw more than 1 acre if even that much. They had everything you could imagine there. Shops for clothes, dishes, shoes, bags, food, etc. Anything you could want was there and cheap! Since we had reserved a sunset dinner cruise for later in the day we didn't have long to shop, we'll definitely try to make another trip back here when we have more time.

In the evening we took a sunset dinner cruise up the Chao Phraya River. The pictures speak for themselves. The cruise is a great way to see the beauty of the Bangkok Temples and the Golden Palace both in the day and at sunset! Here are all the pictures!

Thai Cooking

We both love Thai food, and living in the Bay Area gives us access to some great Thai restaurants, so while we are here in Bangkok, we thought it would be great to learn how to make Thai food. Alby and I registered for a half day cooking course at the Blue Elephant. What a GREAT experience! The cooking school is on the top floors of this beautiful colonial house (the restaurant is on the first 2 floors). The sous chef greeted us when we arrived and we waited for the rest of the students to arrive. It was interesting to see the different people that were taking the cooking class with us. One lady was from Japan, and her husband was moved to Bangkok for work for a few years. Back in Japan she was a cooking instructor, so she thought while here in Thailand she could learn Thai Cuisine and take it back with her to Japan. There was another family there (mom, dad, and 2 sons), and group of friends, and another woman who has been coming to Bangkok for work for years, and had been wanting to take a weekend off and take this course for some time. The cooking class is not cheap ($80-90/person), but dinner at the Blue Elephant is much more, so we figured why not have the experience, and in the end we get to eat our meals anyways :)

Once the class arrived we headed to the Sky Train so we could go to the market and see how they pick the ingredients for traditional thai food. It was great seeing the whole cooking experience from the very beginning. They introduced us to the different spices that are used and we were able to smell them to help draw the connection to the taste later on. In the market we also go to sample some different tropical fruits. The mangosteen was pretty yummy. You twist off half of the cover and inside the fruit looks almost like a bunch of garlic cloves. The fruit inside is very sweet and sticky. Definitely a good treat.

After the market we headed back to the Blue Elephant to start class. Our class included four courses: Massaman Kai (Chicken Massaman Curry), Poo Jah (Stuffed Crab Shells), Kee Moa Seafood (Stir-fried Hot Chillies with Seafood), and Kluay Buad Chee (Banana in Coconut Milk). The chefs that taught us our lessons were great. One of them has been a chef with the Blue Elephant since they opened their first restaurant in Brussels. She even has her own cooking program on television. It was a fun experience since after each demonstration by the chef, we were able to go into the practice kitchen and make the dish ourselves. We had plenty of help from the sous chefs, which made it a lot easier to make the dishes on our own. They helped us figure out how to taste the food to see what flavor needs to be added.

Now that Alby's been trained, I'm just waiting for us to get home so he can make me dinner ;)

A Totally New Movie Watching Experience

Today is Friday!! And its our first Friday here in Bangkok (since last week we flew away to Singapore). Alby and I decided we wanted to have a date night tonight and headed to Siam Center. This is where that crazy, unbelievable mall, the Siam Paragon is (the one I think I wrote about a week or so ago). This mall has the entire basement dedicated to food and restaurants. So we picked out what we wanted for dinner and enjoyed a very chill evening at the Paragon. We had booked movie tickets already for later in the night at the Paragon Cineplex.

Check out the theater's home page, seriously our theaters back home are nothing compared to these! I'll upload a picture later, but what an experience.

For about $10-12 we had our own alcove with recliner seats, silk comforter and pillow so that we could recline and watch the movie all comfy. There were only about 50 seats in the theater, and since you get to pick out your seat when you buy your ticket, there is no rushing to get into the theater to get a good seat.

We watched Rush Hour 3 :) Which was silly funny, and a nice way to end our date. We did see up on the same floor as the movie theater this cool retro bowling alley that we'll have to try out for a future date night.
Well time for bed...we have a cooking class tomorrow morning :)

Where the Wilds Things Are

(Posted by Alby)
On our second day, we got up early and headed out to the Jurong Bird Park. It's a big tourist attraction out here, so my fears of aggressive and screaming parakeets everywhere quickly left me. Luckily it was nothing like that, AND we didn't get pooped on. Sharon and I love penguins, and there was a whole feeding session where I used up an entire camera battery. Sharon wanted to take a penguin home but I told her it was illegal and that Risa would walk like one soon.

There was also this big show of the day where these goofy looking birds were shaking their hips to "I Like to Move It, Move It..." and "Whoomp! There it is". They were trying to get the crowd excited, but it made us laugh instead. After seeing a huge waterfall and few more flamingos, toucans, pelicans, ostrichs, we were "birded out" and headed for...yet another noodle meal. After some more shopping downtown we headed to one of the more renowned high-end restaurants called "Chatterbox". They make this Singaporean special Hainanese Chicken and rice that is AMAZING! (If you're into the Chinese white chicken and green onion ordeal.) It was one of those meals where you almost want to cry--it's THAT good! Rice cooked in fresh chicken stock, YUM!!!

Singapore is also known for this Night Safari--like Jurassic Park, but in the dark, no animal cages, and on a trackless tram (so the tram can speed away if a lion comes
running)!!! J/K. So the animals are scattered throughout the park, with dim lights shining on them. Otherwise you are in the dark, on a tram, and not allowed to shine a flashlight or anything! I don't know how they do it, but the only thing separating us from the animals was a rather LOW wall of bushes, and occasionally a very small river. But we were able to see elephants, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, hippos, rhinos, zebras, lions, cheetahs...and eventually the imprints of Sharon's nails on my arm. Too bad it was too dark for any of the pics to turn out. The next morning we checked out the Raffles hotel, a REALLY fancy colonial style hotel named after Singapore's founder, Sir Stamford Raffles.

Then back to Bangkok! (Thank you Mrs. King of Thailand for being born Sunday so that we would have the Monday off for Mother's Day).

Visiting Our Towns

Our first day in Singapore and we did what most Singaporeans seemed to do, we headed out to do some shopping! Right outside our hotel (Le Meridian) was a tailor shop that had some great choices in fabrics. Alby was quickly drawn in, and before we knew it he was getting measured for a pair of pants and shirts...with his order placed, we walked down to the subway station to take the train over to Chinatown.

The walk down to the station really let us get our first impression of Singapore. WOW! What a clean and well organized city! Here is the sign outside the station....notice they even spell out that you can't bring any durian into the station.

Chinatown was amazing! It was plopped right in the middle of the city, it was like we had entered a different country when we left the subway station. We had a great time shopping up and down the little roads. We grabbed lunch at this awesome dim sum place called Teahouse which was really a great find!! And after lunch we went to a famous bakery where we sampled some fresh hot egg tarts.

We had done so much shopping in Chinatown, we found ourselves needing to buy another carry-on suitcase just to bring everything back to Bangkok.

After dropping off our goodies, we headed over to Little India (get the title now?) Now Alby and I have often thought about what our children would look like, would they look Thai, more Indian, more Chinese....well right when we came out of the station we were confronted with our answer...they would be be CHINDIAN!!!
Well in Little India we got ourselves some fresh gulam juman off the street and ventured into Mustafa's...this mega shopping center that transported you to Bombay. While we looked at all the cheap deals, I was drawn to the CD and DVD section where they had great deals on all the newest Indian movies and cds :) We rushed out of the store when we realized we were getting late for our dinner reservation.

Dinner was set for a recommendation from my friend at work, Jenny, who grew up here in Singapore. We headed to 'No Sign Board Restaurant' for their famous chili crab. Alby and I are huge crab fans, and thought why not splurge and each get our own crab. Well when we ordered, the waitress thought we were nuts, so we scaled back and shared a crab. YUMM-O!! What a great dinner! After dinner Alby and I walked along the river until our feet really could not take anymore. We finished the night off with a Singapore Sling at the hotel bar!

To see all our pictures from Singapore click here!

what to do on a 3 day weekend in bangkok....SINGAPORE!

Lucky us, our first week in Bangkok, and already a day off! The Queen's birthday is on August 12, so August 13 was made a national holiday - Mother's Day, and we all got the day off! With a 3 day weekend ahead of us, we decided to to jump countries and head over to Singapore!

A Sea of Yellow....Shirts that is!

So an interesting thing about Thailand is that it still has a King and Queen (its still a Kingdom). And it seems to be a very popular royal family. This was very evident on Monday where the entire country seems to wear yellow shirts in honor the King being on the throne. Just imagine walking into a building and seeing yellow everywhere. Alby and I almost lost each other in the cafeteria because we blended in so much. We'll definitely take a picture next week, it's something to witness.

There are some other quirks with working here in Bangkok, or maybe it's just the bank we are working at. But at lunch time they play music to remind the workers that they should stop working and go get lunch. The music comes on 3 times: 12pm, 12:30, and 1pm. Again at 5pm the music comes on and the lights dim telling the employees it is time to go home. But in the evening the music doesn't turn off, it continues to play so either you have to block it out or go home. Unfortunately most of our co-works choose the first option and just learn to ignore the music.

At our last client (boeing) we used to say someone had to declare lunch so we would all get up and go get food, maybe they should try doing something like they do here in Bangkok, and start playing a go to lunch song :)

A City that Loves to Shop!

Our first weekend in Bangkok left a lasting impression on me....it seems that everyone here loves to shop! Saturday we decided that we needed to pick up some basic groceries and household stuff, and ventured out to a supermarket that we were told was down the street. Little did we realize that the supermarket was on the basement floor of a massive shopping mall.

This was just the start of our mall adventures, which really got me to start thinking....why do our malls just suck in the US :) Sunday we went to the Siam Center, where there were a series of malls taking up blocks of central Bangkok. One of these malls was called Siam Paragon. Now this was the most amazing mall ever. The ground floor was a never ending food court along with a Whole Foods-esque grocery story in the center. The next four floors were broken up by categories, with very high end stores filling up the mall. The very top was the entertainment floor, with a new wave-like bowling alley, movie theater, and a lounge movie theater. We are going to have to go back and try out a movie at the theater.

The interesting thing with these malls was that it seemed to be a central spot for the the thai to socialize. The floors were filled with restaurants and clubs/lounges. The food courts were open and filled with students. Maybe since it is rainy season, but it did seem like all of the city was shopping this weekend, must be part of the culture :)


So after all our shopping, this is all we brought back :) For those who have seen our Brazil pictures will understand our obsession with coconuts...we were very pleased with the fact that you could buy them for $0.25 at the grocery store. I wanted to buy a cart full so we could be fully stocked, but realized they would be too heavy to carry back to our apartment :(

BANGKOK!! We have arrived!!!

Hi! So many of you know that Alby and I have gotten a pretty sweet deal! We are on assignment in Bangkok for two months! It's exciting and scary at the same time, since neither of us really has lived away from home before.

Well....after a lot of talking about it, and planning, we finally made it to Thailand!! We have arrived! Let me just say, after flying here in Business Class, I really don't think I can ever fly in coach again! Anyways, we are off to explore the area, we'll update soon!