PASTA: DREAMS VS REALITY

So, seven weeks on the road,  most of the time eating the cuisines of Southeast Asia: Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, fusion, and Vietnamese. We cheated once, in Bali; had pizza. But this is, for the most part, the land of rice. Every meal begins and often ends with rice. Rice in a myriad of forms, marks the day: soupy rice congee for breakfast, a bowl with a few simple trimmings for lunch, a bowl for dinner. Or maybe rice noodles, or rice paper wrapped around shredded veggies. Outside the door or down the street, the rice paddy, its green like a carpet of emeralds. Always, always, rice....

THOUGHTS ON MOSAICS

I once had a picnic lunch in Julius Caesar's living room. It was back in the day, when Rome's Forum was still a weedy field and nobody was rushing about seeing their day's quota of ruins. There were no fences and no crowds, only me and two cats and a few odds and ends: salami, buffalo mozzarella, some big dark olives, bread and some wine. It was a fall day, sunny and just cool enough. I sat on a large piece of rubble (marble, carved, 1st C BCE), laid out my feast on another stone, and fed both myself and the cats. A little sign, discrete, almost an afterthought, informed me that the mosaics under my feet were part of Caesar's floor. For the life of me I can't remember what the pattern was, only that the background of 1/2" marble tessera was white, and some dark swirls - leaves? fish? - peeked from under the dirt and weeds.
Think of mosaics and that's likely what you'll think of: small squares of colored stone carefully laid, enduring for millennia in some cases. Tunisia and western Turkey, for example, are practically paved with mosaics. Find the Bardo Museum (Tunis) site for some killer examples. Mosaics also come in tiny, detailed form, some of the stones 1/16", which allows amazing detail.
I am in Hue, Vietnam, and went this morning (on a motorbike, picture that) to see the Imperial tombs outside the city. Most of them date to the mid-19th century, and - compared to most funerary complexes - are pretty modest. Part of their beauty is their settings, which are rolling parkland and forests, with long expanses of lotus-strewn lakes. The Minh Mang complex is particularly lovely, with a series of rising and falling pavilions amidst the trees.
And then we have the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh,  (1916 - 1925, essentially a French puppet), sited on a hillside overlooking rolling hills and rice paddies. The guidebook says mosaics line the mausoleum at the top of the hill, so I climbed the 127 steps and went into the hall where the Emperor is buried. The room, centered by the gaudiest tomb ever built, is thirty by thirty, with twenty foot ceilings. There is not a square inch that does not have high relief glass and pottery figures in it: the Four Seasons, Eight Precious Objects (?), and Eight Fairies (those I wanted to see), dragons and phoenixes, clouds and peonies and plants, birds and flowers. It is in absolutely awful taste and it hangs together beautifully. There are times when nothing succeeds like incredible excess. This is one of those times.
Photos coming, when I can get to a computer that isn't blocked.

AND YET ANOTHER ROADBLOCK...

Who'd ever dreamt that the simple act of typing could be so difficult? I am in Nha Trang, a beautiful sea-front city on the central Vietnam coast. The climate is as steamy as Florida's, the golden sand beach is miles long, rocky islands dot the bay, and beyond lies the South China Sea. One òf the magical phrases òf my life hás beên South China Sea (don't ask; who knows why?). Lodging hểre ís ridiculously inexpensive, food ís even cheaper, and except for the insane traffic I have little to complain about.
EXCEPT the computer keyboard. It's set up to type Vietnamese, which ís completely understandable, after all I am in Vietnam...except that it means every single word hás to be gone òvẻr a multitude òf times to make sure it's right. Seê all thóse little squiggles over the a's and e's, i's and o's? What happens ís that when those letters are typed, the next letter doén't get entered (sê doén't? See hơ it gét typed? Í thí crazy-making ỏ what?). Hard to explain, but perhaps the foregoing sentences help ẽxplain. And thểre ís apparently no W in thís language, so a U póps up until you repeatedly hit the W key! Yikes!
The net result ís that I have messed up my Yahoo mail account so badly that Yahoo hás shut me dơwn for a whole damn week. Suspicious activity. All it is was a Vietnamese keyboard.

NYONYA COOKING

For starters, take a quick look at a map of southeast Asia, present-day Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia. Use Singapore as the center reference. North of Singapore, along the western coast of the land mass, just to the left (west) of Kuala Lumpur, you will find the island of Penang and below it the Straits of Malacca, once a pivot point and major focus  for trade, exploration and exploitation. Any country interested in this area has instantly recognized that the Straits were a strategically-priceless choke point, giving or denying access to the South China Sea and points east.
In the 15th C, the Ming Emperor of China sent one of his daughters to wed the Sultan of Malacca. The Princess brought 500 retainers with her, all of which were commanded to wed local Malays. The culture of the so-called Straits Chinese is an amalgam of Malay, Indonesian, and Chinese that began with the Princess and continued for centuries.
The cultural melding best shows in their vibrant cuisine, called Nonya, which is the affectionate word for woman, or mother, or even auntie, in Malay (baba is father). You'll hear more than a few references to this style of cuisine in the months to come, so I thought I'd give a little historic background. Why? Because history always affects food: how it's grown, prepared, and eaten.
I know this first hand (and so do you, just cast your memory back to those old days before the creation of the international theme restaurant consortiums). When I was a kid, Italian immigrants to New York made the best pizza in the world; Sbarro's high-sodium fake Italian would've gone bankrupt overnight. When you were a kid, any variation on your local food theme usually came from immigrants, whether they were displaced people of color bringing fried chicken to the north, the Portugese bringing linguica to Rhode Island, or Polish immigrants bringing pierogis to Pennsylvania. And for the ultimate American example, check out Brooklyn, New York, where the melting pot even now is bubbling merrily away.
But, as always, I digress, so...back to Asia. Nowhere is historic influences on food more true - and more visible - than in the area in and around Melacca, and north to Penang. Here, you can easily trace through ingredients the tides of various cultures and how they added their touch to a cuisine. Read on for more history, and a new way of preparing rice...

MEET RITCHIE

We went to Kuching, Borneo, because we had two days left before we went to Singapore and we wanted to see the orang-utans. There are a number of primate rescue centers here, but Seminggoh was reported to be one of the better experiences, as the animals - most of whom had been caged by private collectors, or orphaned when their mothers were killed - roam free in the preserve. We took a car (with driver, nobody in their right mind would try to drive in this neck of the woods), and in forty five minutes were walking from the parking lot down the road to the feeding center. The animals are fed twice a day, and morning is supposed to be the better time. But what we saw exceeded even our non-stop imaginations.
MEET RITCHIE: one hundred kilos of attitude, this 32-year old bad boy is the undisputed leader here in the preserve, and comes down to feed only rarely. We got lucky; he showed up a half hour before the scheduled 9AM banana-fest. The caretakers were amazed as he hadn't come in for two weeks, plus they could see Ritchie wasn't a happy camper, and they kept telling us to step back.

Apparently, the Big Guy doesn't like visitors; he kept his back to us, and made no eye contact at all. We were all within thirty feet of him when he swung down off the feeding platform and headed right toward us. The guards were freaking out, pushing people (we are such silly creatures, wanting our photos at any price, not realizing this guy would happily and very easily tear off a hand or arm). I was less than ten feet when I took this photo, but at least I had a railing between us. Ritchie continued on down the path, then swung onto the road, projecting that menacing, I-can-tear-you-limb-from-limb attitude with every ponderous step.

This, it turns out, was not the 9AM feeding, this was a bonus. We had been among the first to enter the center, and had a front-line view. What happened next...

SINGAPORE!

I have read that Singapore reinvents itself every five years. Our taxi ride, along a wide, immaculate boulevard lined with trees and meticulously-clipped planting beds, from Changi Airport into the city was a marvel of ooohs and aaahs. Once leaving the long boulevard and soaring over the bridges leading into the city, the amazing sight of Gardens by the Bay and Marina Center stunned us. The first, two billion dollars worth of horticultural excess housed in two enormous greenhouses, is right on the Singapore River. Facing it, is what we came to call The Boat, a sixty story triple-tower extravaganza topped by what looked like an airplane fuselage, its prow jutting out a hundred feet into thin air. The photo at right hardly does this massive tour de force justice. All around these architectural wonders were many other

buildings of fanciful shapes. I would think Singapore is an architect's dream-come-true. Just about anything goes here as long as it's different.
Once we'd checked into our Chinatown hotel, we went for dim sum (they call it yum cha here, but it's still one of my faves). Then we took the sparkling clean MRT across town to Gardens by the Bay. Two billion dollars built these immense greenhouses, marvels of construction with outer cladding that looked like pleats. One houses a garden with various climates from around the world, the second a cloud forest with six story waterfall. Outside, a forest of artificial trees (see left), about 15 of them,

house photovoltaic cells and exhaust chimneys; underneath the whole thing is an extensive green biomass converter, part of their much-touted commitment to going green (although that did not extend to commenting, on the signs under the silly airplanes, on how air travel is a major pollutant). The trees were the best part as they weren't jammed with visitors, all of whom took endless photos of each other amidst much shrieking and giggling. With a tourist entrance fee of $28US, this was no cheap exploration (locals pay maybe five dollars Singapore). But a lovely gentleman from Cairns had said it was an epic construction full of marvelous gardens, that all his Aussie friends made special trips to see it. So...we forked over the money, joined the mob, and...

PENANG, A FOODIE'S DREAM

Singapore, that internationally-known foodie mecca, has got a neighbor that says it's better: Penang, an island off the west coast of peninsular Malaysia that's home to a vibrant cultural mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Burmese and Tamil settlers. A strategic trading post since the 1500's, Penang was "discovered" by Englishman Francis Light about the time America declined to be ruled by George III. As the English did in those days, they soon took over, and what came to be known as the Straits Settlements were part of the Empire until World War II.
Penang's main town, George Town, is today a World Heritage site, which puts it on my bucket list. The historic district is crammed with two-story Chinese shophouses that once held a store on the ground floor and housing upstairs and in the back. Today, these narrow, deep shophouses are being converted to hotels and elegant, trendy private residences. Their teak floors and beautiful woodwork, and the thick second-floor shutters on the street side, plus the inevitable architectural flourishes so beloved by the Chinese, make these a photographer's dream. The photo at right is a fairly typical street scene, one of the thousands of area trishaws backed by one of the many temples - this one Chinese - George Town sports.But...hey...this is supposed to be about the food.Turn the page!

BOROBUDUR

The Global Foodie Visits Borobudur!

Twenty or so miles to the east of the city of Yogyakarta, Java, is the ancient Hindu site of Prambanan, which I've written about previously. About twenty miles to the west of Yogya, on a slight rise, lies the once-lost ruins of Borobudur temple. While Prambanan is a grouping of temples, Borobudur is a massive pile of over two million pieces of grey stone. How it ever got "lost" is beyond me, but this enormous site was known only to the locals who canibalized it for their own building for a millennium. "Discovered" in the mid-1800's, it was a ravaged pile of tumbled stones. Talk about your tough jigsaw puzzles!
We stayed in the hotel adjacent to the site, so had easy access across a field to the site. The first photo shows our view from the gardens of the hotel.

PHOTO WORTH A THOUSAND DONUTS

Dunkin Donuts is all over the world. When I was in Bogota, Columbia, several years ago, I noticed everyone who got on our plane for a domestic flight was carrying at least two boxes of Dunkin Donuts. I asked about it and was told that particular outlet, in the Bogota airport, was reputed to ahve the best donuts in the country. When people visited friends or relatives and they flew from Bogota, Dunkin Donuts were de rigeur as a hostess gift.
We were in Solo, Indonesia, where there are also Dunkin Donuits. The photos below, however, are from the bakery department of a Carrefour (a French chain of hypermarches). The other trays were colored brilliant oranges and reds, and a third tray held lime green with orange polka dots. The muffiins were equally brilliant.
Would you eat one of these things?

PRAMBANAN, INDONESIA

A thousand years ago, about the time William the Conqueror arrived in England, long before Marco Polo went to China, maybe about the time Vikings reached North America, the kings of central Java were building these massive stone temples. This elaborately-carved, hundred twenty foot tall tower, the centerpiece of a group of five (four are smaller but still impressive), has survived the fall of dynasties, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and hordes of tourists. As recently as 2005, an earthquake knocked some of the stones loose. Today, if you go inside the main temple, you must wear a hard hat. A half mile away, another temple complex is still mostly piles of rubble, and it should be years before they can piece it back together again. The lower photo of me and Deb was taken in front of the partially-reconstructed north temple, which was hard hit by the same catastrophic earthquake. Given that this site is on the edge of the Ring of Fire, and that the island of Java has about one hundred active volcanoes, its condition should be no surprise. The effort it takes to sort out the thousands of stones, most about 19" square and perhaps carved on one or two sides, is hard to calculate.
The calm temples are perhaps twenty miles east of the frenetic city of Yogyakarta, and inhabit a park-like area with acres of lawns and trees and - of course, as this is Indonesia -  karaoke near the children's playground. Indonesians seem to love noise, particularly music played at levels that will deafen in no time flat. Apparently, being totally tone deaf is no deterrent, and listening to someone who couldn't carry a song in a suitcase is no big deal.
In the States, having a food concession at a major tourist attraction would lead to twelve dollar hamburgers and six dollar French fries, but here at Prambanan the open-air restaurant served the usual Indonesian lunch of rice, stir-fried water spinach with prawns, and a tall glass of iced tea...for less than two bucks. No tipping expected, the waiter delighted to do anything he could to make us happy, and lots of wais when we left.
I guess I'll put up with the karaoke.