We’ve covered six Asian countries now in just over four months: Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam and back to Thailand, in that order. In Taiwan I got my first glimpse of rice paddies while riding the almost sleek and very punctual Taiwanese train system. I was a little startled to see paddies between what looked like industrial buildings, the square pools of water with green shafts waving lightly in the air, covering every piece of water soaked land.

I was finally able to stand amongst the paddies, green and incredibly cool at sunset — truly splendour in the grass — outside of Phitsanulok, Thailand. I’ve since seen more paddies, varying quality of rice piled high in markets and on dining tables, and rice consumed by hand, with chopsticks and with a spoon and fork than I could have imagined.

Sunset over rice paddies outside Phitsanulok, Thailand

And that’s really the first most important thing I noticed about rice: how much rice people eat in south east Asia.

jft and I have relied on the Lonely Planet (LP) series of travel guide books for every country we’ve visited, supplemented by consulting online travel forums for more specific advice and tips the books couldn’t provide us with. Any travel guide has it pitfalls, because after all it is a book, and can easily be out of date by the time you consult it for things like prices and addresses. However, one thing I will give credit to the LP books for doing well is the introductory sections of each country guide, specifically the sections covering history, cultural norms and practices, and, food and drink, an especially important section for us as food enthusiasts. I lapped up these sections of the LP guides, because I love delving into the history and for lack of a better word, pecularities and idiosyncracies of any place I visit, and because I was curious to compare what the LP had to say with what I actually learned and experienced traveling in each country.

For the most part, I was quite satisfied with the background and preparation these sections of the LP guides gave me. I concede it certainly wasn’t the in depth tutelage and drama I have might have gotten from reading books teeming with history, biographies and fictional characters set in the places we visited. I have read my fair share of fiction and non-fiction about the places I am visiting, as well educating myself through museum visits and the knowledge of locals and tour guides. I’ve got a book list a mile long of all the reading I’d like to do about this part of the world both online and in books, perhaps in the future.

But all this grandstanding about being well-read aside, one thing that stood out to both me and jft time and again in the LP books was the oft repeated LP statistic of how much rice was consumed by the people of each country we visited. I unfortunately do not remember the exact numbers of how much rice a person in Cambodia or Vietnam might consume per day. I do recall that essentially the amount of rice consumed on average per person per week was in the neighbourhood of 1 to 3 kilograms, depending on the age and occupation of the person (i.e a young man or woman between 18 and 40 involved in manual labour would consume a lot more rice than a young child or elderly person). I believe this statistic also covers anything made from rice, such as rice noodles, which are popular in dishes in Thailand, Lao and Vietnam.

(If you are curious, a quick Google search about rice consumption per capita should satisfy with more accurate numbers. Some countries we visited don’t make the chart I have linked to, but I assure you they eat a lot of rice in places like Laos and Cambodia, they just have much smaller populations than places like Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, China and India.)

When our host during a homestay in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam asked us how many times a week we ate rice, we had to correct him and say it was more like how many times a month (we reasoned about two times a month in North America) but that our consumption had drastically increased since traveling in south east Asia (our food set photos show good evidence of this). Our host’s body spasmed and he made a retching sound when we told him this figure. This was the most intense physical reaction we received to our response to how little rice we normally consumed. When we told other people in Cambodia, Lao and Thailand who asked us the same question, they either looked a little dumbfounded or puzzled, and since we usually were telling a local this fact of our minscule rice consumption over a meal, it seemed to me they went back to eating their rice or rice noodles with a little more gusto once they heard this disturbing (to them) piece of information.

To left is our Mekong Delta host, the one who spasmed and retched when we told him how little rice we ate on a regular basis in North America

It’s safe to say that people here can’t go a day without rice. Rice consumption is so important that instead of greeting people with “how are you today?” people in Thai, Lao, Cambodian, and I believe also Vietnamese (all linguistically and historically related languages) will ask, by way of politely greeting, “have you eaten rice yet today?”

The only way I have been able to relate to this need for rice is through my hearty appetite for good quality bread, the kind with a soft center and a crisp crust (Italian, French, German, any kind will do), but even then I can go several days or even a week or more without a baguette consumed during a meal. I suppose the big difference is that in North America I get my carbohydrates from a variety of sources: bread, pasta, potatoes, corn, rice and occaisionally other grains like oatmeal. In Asia, everything is made from rice or its gluten: noodles, gruel (like cream of wheat or warm oatmeal), sweets, desserts, wine and liquor (again, our food photo set has a good snapshot of these sorts of things). As a result rice is part of every meal, paired with everything you can from fragrant grilled chicken to steamed Mekong River fish, from sweet red bean paste to heavenly ripe mango.

Even more remarkable than the amount of rice eaten is who eats rice. With virtually no exception that I ever saw, everyone in Asia eats rice, from the time before teeth begin to emerge to when the last tooth is lost (and that can be quite young in a country like Cambodia, where dental hygiene is poor). And from what I’ve seen every domesticated animal eats rice, too. In the village of Ban Sai, near Buriram, Thailand, on the farm where we volunteered for about 10 days, the young family dogs were fed puppy chow mixed with leftovers, which consisted mostly of rice. In Laos, we witnessed the elephants we rode and bathed being fed rice still in its husk. The elephants used their trunks to push the rice into a pile, curved their trunk around the pile and then scooped up a bunch and shoveled it into their mouths. To me it looked about as easy to accomplish as manouvering chopsticks with my feet.

Cows, chickens and roosters eat rice, whether raw or cooked that they find as they root around to fill their often scrawny bodies. I recall even seeing one of the many street cats that would mew to you for food, usually reliable carnivores, eating spilled cooked rice near a vendor’s cart.

I also imagine that in the field or in storage, rice can become food for rodents and other pests. I’ve seen my share of rats and cockroaches in Asia, fortunately no maggots, and its easy to imagine them infesting a poorly kept rice storage area or a field, if they are hungry enough.

All the rice consumed means a heck of a lot of rice grown, and hence a lot of work — in the form of jobs — for the population of each country. In Vietnam for example, 80 per cent of the 85 million person population is rural. Although I don’t have a statistic off the top of my head for how much of that population is dedicated to rice farming, I can guess it’s more than 50 per cent, since in rural areas I saw mostly fields of rice paddy stretching from both sides of the road to the horizon, and since Vietnam is the world’s second largest exporter of rice, after Thailand.

In our travels, we’ve seen and learned about how rice is grown in paddies, harvested, de-husked and polished, a system consisting almost entirely of manual labour in most countries we visited. Except for water buffalo, who are used to plow flooded paddy, and in some areas large mills that de-husk the rice, the planting and harvesting, and even much of the de-husking and polishing all depends on many, many Asian hands and bent backs. It’s really rather startling to see in person and learn from museum exhibits and guides in every country we visited that the tools used to grow rice haven’t changed much in centuries, perhaps thousands of years. And really when you think about, a big American John Deere tractor, plow or harvester, and many other modern farm implements, just wouldn’t get far in the flooded. muddy paddies in which rice grows, with water sometimes up to people’s knees in the rainy season.

I’ve noticed and absorbed all this information about rice, and to whatever degree extended travel lets you absorb cultural impact, I’ve sucked that up about rice as well. I’ve sampled many varieties of rice: Thailand’s Jasmine rice, considered the best in the world (and both jft and I would concur, after eating copious amounts of it during our volunteer farm work in Thailand, and both agreeing we could live on that rice alone and be quite content); Laos’s sticky rice, eaten with the hand, by grasping a clump, rolling it and eating it together with meat or vegetables; Cambodia’s rice, so precious in that country after extensive faminine in the 1980s, the result of agrarian mismanagement and exploitation under the dreadful Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot; Vietnam’s rice and rice noodles in particular, delivered in the form of pho, rice noodle soup, with veggies or any kind of meat, truly some of the best rice noodles I have ever savoured; and rice in Taiwan and Malaysian, but not as much because we weren’t there as long.

Because I’ve only traveled here, and not lived or studied the cultural impact of rice, I can only share what I fleetingly grasped of this cultural impact based on a couple anecdotes.

My first encounter with the effect of rice on the minds and customs of the people who consume it was during a performance of Khmer ancient royal court style dance by young local children. We actually saw this in Thailand, on a tour of the area not too far from where we were doing our volunteer farm work. This north eastern region of Thailand is just a few miles from the border of Cambodia, and in fact was part of the Khmer empire only a few centuries ago. The everyday language of the people in this region is actually Khmer, the Cambodian language, and some of their customs resemble closely that of Cambodia. We have 17 photos posted (the link takes you to the first photo and you can move forward from there in the Thailand 2007 set) of the performance we witnessed. At one point during the performance of fanciful hand gestures and stamping yet elegant foot movements, I realized the boys and girls were making gestures that mimed the planting and harvesting of rice bundles. Before this moment, all the art related work I had witnessed in Thailand pertained to Buddhism. But here suddenly were children, trained to move in what appeared to be seductive ways by a young man who wanted to preserve local tradition, and their moves depicted what you could witness in any rice field, if you could stand and watch a lifetime of growing and harvesting rice on fast forward. I was in awe, because on one hand it was simple, to depict everyday life in art, just as cave drawings, hyeroglyphics, painting and sculpture might do, and on the other hand, it paid hommage to such an important life cycle in the Asian landscape. I was startled that such simple yet exotic movements by children could convey so much.

It wouldn’t be the last time, however, that children in Asia taught me about the cultural importance of rice.

Ironically, it was in Cambodia that I learned much about rice, a country where we witnessed by far the poorest people in our travels. I can say this with a large degree of certainty without pointing to economic indicators, statistics or the country’s tragic history under a Communist agrarian experiment gone awry.

Both jft and I simply noticed big differences from the other countries we visited. We noticed that people and the animals, especially cows, were skinnier than anywhere else we visited. Of particular note, younger children under 5 went mostly shirtless and often naked, and it was the only country where I could see children’ rib cages so clearly, with roundish bellies protuding below. People weren’t starving to death here, but they were getting just enough to eat, barely. And as the LP guide told us, 80 per cent of their diet was made of up rice, with fish and anything green playing second fiddle.

I noted that family homes were rarely made of concrete, almost exclusively of palm thatch and bamboo, whereas in Thailand and even Laos, there was a fair amount of concrete in use to build houses in rural areas. In Laos, we noted that as soon as people had some wealth to speak of, a satellite went up outside thatch homes, even before making a move to build a house from concrete. There were almost no satellites to speak of in Cambodia, save for at nice hotels, but people in rural areas did manage to run televisions with antennas off car batteries.

In Cambodia, roads were horrendous compared to anywhere else we’d been. A mix of sealed and packed red dirt roads took us wherever we needed to go, but pot holes and flying dust, even in the larger and more touristed areas of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, reminded us we were in a developing country. From our own North American experience with government scandals, we knew corruption was a firm part of the political machine just about anywhere. In Cambodia we encountered corruption in the open with bribes exchanging hands for favours, and locals bitter with govnerment officials lining their own pockets instead of bringing prosperity to the whole nation that continues to reel from their time under the twisted leadership of Pol Pot and his cronies.

Perhaps the most jarring indicator that we were in a less developed nation, somewhere poorer than anywhere else either of us had been, were the number of children, from four or five-year-olds to teenagers, following us around and chanting incessantly for us to buy their bracelets, their postcards, their books, their water and a whole host of other trinkets. Many of these kids weren’t in school because their families needed everyone able to walk and talk to do their part to bring in much needed income. Some of these kids told us they were trying to go to school for at least part of the day, however they needed the money earned from selling us things we didn’t need to pay the bribes that would keep their badly paid teachers in the classroom.

Cambodia was admittedly hard to take, mentally and spiritually. It was also hard on our wallets. Food and intracity transportation were a lot more expensive than most of the other countries we visited, and bargaining got us almost nowhere. Whatever budget we had in mind was history here and people were happy to not sell us something if we weren’t willing to pay their price. The main problem was that as soon as locals saw they were dealing with a foreigner, the price for fruit, bread, water, a usually dependably cheap local meal — pretty much anything — went up many times the price a local would pay. So it was in Cambodia that jft and I took more time to talk to the locals we interacted with to find out their back story, because we needed to know if these people really needed to sell us a 900 mL bottle of water for $1 instead of the usual $0.25 or if the books about Cambodia sold on the street really helped a father or mother send their kids to school. In the case of locals missing limbs, it was obvious landmines, still a plight six million strong in Cambodia, had put them in the place they were, unable to work in a field, so selling books about the Khmer Rouge’s secret torture prison, LP country guides, and the history of the Angkor temples seemed to make sense.

But beyond the limbless, we were unsure what to make of people’s stories of past suffering under the Khmer Rouge and current needs only met by giving up work in the fields to come work in the tourist industries. Looking back we probably experienced some truth mixed with duping to part us from our greenbacks (The US dollar is the main currency in Cambodia, and everything is quoted in US dollars. The local currency, riel, is really only good for small food purchases) so they could find a way to rise above their tragic history and all those dusty, pot holed roads. Frankly, I don’t blame them if we were actually duped: the government wasn’t setting any example the people could live by, so why not line your pockets with the money of foreigners for who it was still cheaper to live for two weeks in Cambodia than it would be to live for the same amount of time in Toronto or Chicago?

We eventually encountered some kids saavy to this knowledge, who knew to appeal to our sense of fairness, selling bracelets, fish shapes and country flags all handmade from colourful polyster string.

We were on the beach in Sihanoukville, about five hours east of Phnom Penh, and we were happy to enjoy whatever locals were selling, if the price was fair. We indulged in a manicure for me and massage for jft. We sucked on the best mango we had ever tasted sold to us by a child carrying a basket platter on her head. We dipped fire roasted squid and fresh rolls of tofu and shrimp (rolled in soft rice paper of course) in a sweet chili sauce sold to us by women balancing baskets on a rod carried on one shoulder. At some point in all this finally inexpensive indulgence two girls approached us asking us to buy their handmade bracelets and fun string-made fish. I looked at the fish with some interest because they were pretty, and responded with a laughing “n”o but they continued to pester us. “If you buy fish or bracelet, you buy from me ok? You buy from me only. You promise?” I said “maybe” laughed again, not at them, but because I didn’t want to bind myself to them. Then they strode away.

At some point another kid came to us, and in our exchange it came up that he could weave together a flag of Cambodia using colourful string and small hands. I requested a Cambodian flag and what I thought looked like a girl set to work. When the two girls we had enountered earlier were in our vicinity again, they saw the kid making my flag and abomished me for buying from someone else. I told them the youngster was making me a flag and not a fish or a bracelet. I defended my action, telling them I preferred a flag of Cambodia rather than a fish as keepsake. They replied, “We can make flags, too!” and flopped at my feet in exasparation at the unfairness of it all. They insisted it was only fair I buy from them, too. After some battling, I eventually gave in, and an assortment of bracelets, anklets, 3D fish weaved together from string and the flag were made and sold to us, all the work and money divided fairly amongst the three young people we encountered. It was then it occurred to me to wonder why these kids were rather tough and pushy about their bracelet business dealings. And, hey, why weren’t they in school?

In Sihanoukville, I help Lam, 12, on the far right by holding the end of a flag he is knotting for me, while the two pushy string weavers complete some bracelets for us.

The girls had gone by now, happy that everything had been done fairly and that they had made a sale. I turned to the remaining child string weaver, who was making us one last bracelet and peered at the child with a baseball cap pushing hair into big dark eyes. I realized then I didn’t know if I was dealing with a boy or a girl. I asked and found that Lam, 12, was a boy. His small, agile hands, almost shoulder length uneven hair, and a fine face had duped me to think he was a girl dressed rather like a tom boy. Lam didn’t seem offended by my error.

I then asked Lam how much business he did on the beach, and he replied not much. So jft and I both asked, almost in unison, I think, “so why do you bother?” Lam replied, “Better to try, than to stay home. No business, no rice.”

As I recall, I think I just stared at Lam with some awe after he said. What a wizened thing for such a young person to say.

His answer to me explained everything: why the girls were so pushy about being fair and making a sale, why he was so quietly determined as he knoted and weaved coloured strings, why so many of Cambodia’s children were constantly pestering me to “buy my bracelet, madame!” or pleading with their eyes to buy their set of 10 postcards of their heritage, the ancient Angkor temples, and really why everyone across Asia was eager for my baht, my kip, my riel, my dong and my dollars. Most of these people who serviced me in the tourist industries, who I photographed preparing my noodle bowls, who I bartered with for silk scarves, who I haggled with for a cheap ride to the bus station, I don’t really think they were after whatever I might have as a middle class citizen of the Western world. Really, I don’t think they could care less about how I live and what I have.

To them, rice is king, rice is gold, rice is worth more than diamonds, a BMW, and maybe, just maybe satellite television. If they don’t get any business — be it mine or their neighbour’s — then their won’t be any rice on the table for them or their families. And their families, that’s the clincher really, because ultimately most of these people aren’t in whatever business they are in for themselves. They are usually bringing home money that will support parents, children, sibilings and more often than not, extended family.

I suddenly realized that my foreign investment in Cambodia and most likely all the countries where I bought local goods from locals wasn’t about a money grab, it was simply a way to get to the gold, rice in all its forms, just a little quicker than selling things at cheaper prices to locals.

I’m not sure how much rice I will be eating when I return to North America. I told jft that at the very least when buying rice, I will be looking for the best quality, the best tasting from places like Thailand and Vietnam, because quality and taste does matter. Less flavourful, broken rice can truly break what could have been a delicious meal, at least in Asia. I know for certain that I don’t look at rice in the same way anymore. It isn’t just a simple fact that rice is a staple of the Asian.

In Asia, having enough rice to eat can make or break you. Rice on the table means someone’s efforts in the old quarter of Hanoi, amongst the colonial buildings of Luang Prabang, in the boisterous night market of Chiang Rai, on the beaches of Sihanoukville, in the hawker centers of Penang, and the alleyways of Giayi, and every rural corner of Asia, have made possible another day, and reinforced what song, dance and the mouths of babes have told me: no business, no rice.

But, while I haven’t been posting much here, I have uploaded countless (ok, well, flickr counts them) photos. And most of those photos come along with descriptions. Sometimes rather detailed ones. So, if you’re interested in what we saw, did, ate, or generally experienced in Southeast Asia, you should head over to our flickr page.

All of our time in Thailand – the first time – is now up there for you in the Thailand set.

All of our Laos adventures are in the (newly created) Laos set. We’ll even take you swinging with monks.

All the photos from our small camera, but none from the big camera, are in tThe Cambodia set is filled up with visions of Angkor, the beach and Phnom Penh. Which means you’re missing a lot of Angkor. We’ll get you templed out later on now. And show you landmines.

A few photos from Vietnam are up in tThe Vietnam set is filling up fast with scenes, people and food. This one’s still a bit of a teaser. Maybe these will serve as a teaser to get you to visit Vietnam. Make sure you go over a monkey bridge!

All of the photos are also in the Asia 2007 set, if you want to view all at once.

I’ve also created a “collection,” a new(ish) feature of flickr that I don’t know much about. A collection contains various sets, and you can create mosaics of photos from those different sets. You should be able to see our Asia 2007 collection here, but I’m not really sure if that will be a better way to look at our photos or not.

We’re off now for the weekend to visit the death railway (Bridge Over River Kwai) and the ancient capital of Ayutthaya. We should be back in Bangkok Monday night (that would be Monday morning, local time, for most of you reading), and hopefully plenty more photos and updates will emerge in the days before we go to India (which will be 17 May).

So, happy (photo) viewing!

Our circuit of southeast Asia has been amazing; a journey that was truly eye-opening and educational, both in ways we expected and in ways unexpected. And upon our return to Bangkok, our independent yet nearly identical reactions to being in Thailand were telling.

We have loved every country we visisted, and have had amazing experiences in each. The food in Laos was a bit of a disappointment, as were a few of the logistics, but we also had some of our best experiences there. Our two day boat cruise was made more wonderful with the company of a Canadian couple; our time in Luang Prabang would not have been half as good without meeting local teacher Somphet. And bathing elephants in a river, well, it doesn’t get much better.

Cambodia tugged at our heartstrings the most; that is one country in desperate need of help. The people are poor, surviving on a rice-based subsistence diet. You can’t go anywhere without encountering landmine victims and children too poor to attend school. The government would work on these things, but since corruption is the only way things happen, and the poor don’t have the money for bribes, it’s a very slow development process. Yet the people are incredible. Well, most of them… plenty of people, especially in Siem Reap, are simply looking for ways to separate us from our money (not by theft, but by overpriced everything). But the temples of Angkor, the beaches of the south and even the city of Phnom Penh are captivating. And the food, once you scratch through the surface, is remarkable.

Vietnam perhaps grabbed us more than any other country we’ve visited, and it was definitely a bit hard to leave, although we’d had enough of Hanoi. From the Mekong delta of the south to the capital of Hanoi in the north, we found incredible experiences, sights, people and food throughout. Mattieu and Marjorie, of the southwest of France, quickly became good friends and provided a week of great company. And while there was no Adrian Cronauer waking us each morning with a big ol’ “Gooood morning, Vietnam!” we were excited for what each day had to offer. Even though we found Hanoi much more prickly than the rest, our last day somehow turned out perfect, capturing all we loved about the country.

We left the hotel around noon, after packing for our evening flight, and headed out for some food. We had found an alley with some great street vendors, especially a noodle dish with pork, greens and the amazing addition of peanuts and fried shallots and I wasn’t leaving the country without another bowl of this amazing goodness. While in the alley, not only did we end up with several bowls of noodles, there were also spring rolls, fresh draught beer and fresh squeezed sugar cane juice. We ate so well, so cheaply, and left beaming. Even the noodle lady had a big smile for us since we loved her noodles so much. After that we started walking toward a tailor where we had some clothes to pick up, and found ourselves at the “bia hoi junction.” Bia hoi is fresh draught beer, made the same day it’s consumed and contains no preservatives. You can find it all over Vietnam, but especially in Hanoi, and this particular intersection has about 8 places offering the tasty brew. I decided I should sit down and have a drink, so I picked the place with only one guy drinking. He looked local, and the other places looked filled with tourists. Turns out it was a man born in Vietnam but raised and living in France. He was great fun to talk to, and instead of one beer I had three. And an incredible doner from next door. And then an incredible “soup” with noodles, greens and grilled pork that is just about the best pork you can imagine eating. If Andre had not paid for everything without our realizing it (he can speak the language, so we had no idea he had worked out paying for us and a group of French people he also befriended and had sat down after us), the 3 beers would still not have cost 50 cents. I guess I forgot to mention, bia hoi costs 2,000 dong, and it is 16,000 dong to $1US. And it’s not a small glass of beer you get. And after this, stuffed and giddy, we picked up the last of the clothes we had made and got readyto say goodbye to Vietnam.

So it was with a tinge of sadness that we departed Hanoi and flew to Bangkok. But after a super easy cab ride to a friend’s apartment and a good sleep, we were ready yesterday to walk to to the Indian embassy. It took about 5 minutes for us to find cheap water on the way, make photocopies of our passports, get some absolutely incredible corn, streetside, and to get loads of Baht from the ATM. Then, after the stop at the embassy, we had to walk all of about 2 minutes to have a delicious lunch, cheap, and then we didn’t have to walk too much further to supplement lunch with some fried banannas and fresh fruit. Our shared reaction to Thailand – the ease of everything, the deliciousness of everything – made us giddy. But we were also tired, so we came back to the apartment, popped Little Miss Sunshine into the DVD player, and did laundry while snacking on some amazing pomello.

Maybe it’s because things are so easy in Thailand. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent nearly 2 months here. Or maybe there’s just something about this country that grabs us subtlely, quietly, without any warning and makes us love it. But it feels good; it almost feels like we’ve come home.

Anyway, so somewhere while I was ruminating on this ancient history, I stubbed my big toe, bang on. It hurt, but I it shook off and didn’t think much of it. During the bus ride back to Hoi An, a quintessential Asian town where we have been hanging out the last few days, my toe continued to throb and, when I stood up to leave the bus my ability to walk normally had drastically diminshed.

I decided it would be a good idea to ice my toe and elevate my foot while jft fetched us some lunch because the pain in my toe by this point, wow, it was bad. And I didn’t want to think too much about the fact that perhaps I had either sprained or fractured my toe. The ice was good for numbing the pain and that sort of thinking.

We had some things to do after we ate, including a fitting for a coat being made for me by one of the dozens of local and inexpensive tailors, a trade Hoi An is known for. We also wanted to head to a lithe and easy going seamstress who had caught our attention to look into getting some things made for jft, including dress shirts and perhaps a suit.

Since I was still hobbling about and in great pain whenever my toe was even remotely flexed, I decided the only way I was going to be able to walk was to immobolise my foot by taping my big toe to my second toe, then wrapping my whole foot with a tensor bandage. Nothing extraordinary really, a lot like what you would do in North America if you had sprained an ankle. Once this was accomplished with jft’s help, I wedged my well-wrapped foot into my croc and we set off, sort of.

While jft made good time, I hobbled several metres behind him. Locals passing by on bicycles and motorbikes started noticing my slow, hobbled progress, as well as my overbandaged foot, and several stared with mouths gaping. As I passed people whiling away the heat in the shade of their storefronts and homes, some asked me what was wrong with my foot.

A little surprised by their vocal curiousity and what appeared to be genuine concern, I simply just said, “I’m ok. I just hurt my foot. I will be better soon.”

When the seamstress we stopped to see noticed my foot, she insisted I come into her shop without taking off my shoes ( it is custom to take off your shoes before entering many Asian establishments, especially a home). The concern I saw in her face as I explained my injury reminded me very much of the reaction I’d see on my own mother’s face if she could have seen my bandaged foot right then.

When we left the seamstress, a woman at the shop two doors down from her cradled her face as her eyes bulged and she asked me about my foot. The HORROR and PAIN of my predicament continued in the eyes and exclamations of locals until we reached the tailor shop where I was going to try on the coat being made for me. As we entered, the woman working there noticed my bandaged foot, pointed and exclaimed, “WHY?”

Taken aback by her loud and somewhat odd question, I simply told her what I had told the others.

After this point, the pointed cries of “WHY?” followed me through the afternoon and early evening, as we sought out a place for dinner and then made our way slowly back to our hotel.

The final “WHY?” came as I looked to soothe my chocolate craving at a convenience store across the street from our hotel. As I approached the store, the young men seated in front began staring, gesturing and talking amongst themselves. As I turned into the store, the woman working there pointed at my still-bandaged foot and with great force and alarm she cried “WHY?”

Although her initial cry startled me, I explained calmly that I had hurt my foot but that I would be ok.

Today my big toe is much better, thank you, and I have not needed to bandage it or immbolise it any way. Fears of a sprain or fracture were, it would seem, unfounded.

I still can’t figure out why exclaiming “WHY?” has become the English way for local Vietnamese we encountered to express what appeared to be genuine concern and curiousity about my predicament. I am curious to know if the Vietnamese equivalent of asking someone “What happened to you?” literally translates to “WHY?” in English. Even more startling, I suppose, is the fact that everyone who saw me seemed concerned about my injury, and perhaps by extension, me. Although the attention was startling, I can admit their concern was just a little bit flattering, especially since every where we go being a Westerner — a white person to be specific — often means haggling me to buy a t-shirt, a book, a motorcycle ride to my hotel, dinner at a restaurant.

I will say, although jarring, the “WHY?” moments are a great way to meet and strike up a conversation with locals, even if the horrified crying of “WHY?” follows you into your slumber.

For example, while living in Chicago we rarely ever drank bottled water. We went all “fancy” by filling a container with tap water and putting it in the fridge so we’d have nice cold water all the time, but it was the rare occasion we had bottled water. Now I can’t really remember the last time I’ve had a sip of tap water. Must have been L.A. Maybe an airport drinking fountain?

Water here is cheap, though, and plentiful. Even in the most remote locations you can find water. The cheapest local brands cost less than 20 cents for nearly a liter. There are also western brands for a bit more. But no matter the day, when it comes to water, we never leave home without it.

It’s also normal here to drive a motorbike. The streets are packed with them. The motorbike is just like the car back in the US or Canada. It holds the same amount of stuff and people. Family of 5? No problem. 50kg sack of rice? No worries. New refrigerator? Simple. We have been on motodops (motorcycle taxis) where the driver keeps our big pack between him and the handlebars and we ride on the back with a small bag. And that wouldn’t even be considered a full load here!

People here eat rice. By the kilo – literally. An average man will eat .5-1 kilo of rice per day. Per day! In the U.S., most families of 4 or 5 would buy a 1-pound bag (or box) of rice. For one meal no more than half the bag would be used (1-2 cups max, typically) and it would be more than enough rice for all. And that would be the only rice anybody in the family would have that day. By contrast, the same family in Vietnam would need at least 2 of those packages of rice for just the Dad (for the day). The Vietnamese family would need probably 2kg of rice per day, or 2.5 typical American packages of rice.

While doing a homestay in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam our host asked us if we ate rice back home. We said yes, but not like people here eat rice. So he asked how many times per week we ate rice. Our reply was that we could not answer that question; it needed to be per month, and that a typical family may have rice two or three times per month. No words came from our host’s mouth. The look of shock, horror, disbelief consumed the jaw-dropped face. In general, we can estimate how “westernized” a restaurant is by how much rice they give us with one serving. Local joints give you practically a whole pot!

Internet cafes are plentiful and cheap. Most locals cannot afford to have a computer at home. Not only is the computer expensive, but so is the electricity to run it and the programs they’d use. Although pirated software is plentiful. Anyhow, most locals do their computing — often it’s children playing games on the network — at the internet cafes. And, of course, foreigners are doing their thing. The going rates are anywhere from about 20 cents to $1.25 per hour, with most around 50-60 cents.

Guesthouses and hotels vary dramatically in quality, and price, but we always seek out something clean and relatively comfortable. The standard stuff is a bed, fan and light. The bed usually isn’t much to brag about, and we’ve slept on more than a few things that seemed pretty much like rocks. We prefer a private bath (although shared can be ok), which would have shower, sink and toilet. We are enjoying Vietnam because for about the same price as Thailand or Laos we get extremely comfortable beds, nice blankets, tv (with cable or satellite), a fridge, a table and a private bath with a very nice shower, including hot water. Even has a tub. But never a shower curtain. Wet bathroom floors are par for the course.

It’s also typical for small children to go around naked, or at least pants-less. It’s comfortable, less clothing to clean, and it’s not like they’re using diapers around here. Of course, it’s also typical for grown men to take a leak just about wherever they are. At one place our bus in Cambodia stopped, all the guys just walked out back (essentially a back yard) and just found a place to do their thing.

Lastly (for now, at least), people just throw their garbage wherever. In most places there are people who have the job, which seems endless, of sweeping the street and collecting the garbage. We’ve had bus operators who, as we’re driving along, will just chuck any garbage they have out the window or door. This littering, though, is one thing we won’t partake in. We always seek out garbage bins, even if it means carrying some trash with us for a while.

While we want to try to live life somewhat more like the locals, we draw the line at certain places. But for the most part, we really admire the local way of life. It’s pretty remarkable.

Anyhow, the latest edition linked to a Slate article by Neal Pollack, who visited the Dodger Stadium All-You-Can-Eat Pavillion. And while I won’t spoil the end, I’ll say that it is worth reading to the end.

“Tonight,” I [Pollack] wrote in my notebook, “represents everything that’s wrong with America. Then again, this is one of the most multicultural experiences of my life. All branches of the human family are slowly poisoning themselves happily, together, communal. I’m privileged to be witnessing the mass suicide of a species.”

This post may not be about Asia (we are in Vietnam; visited Saigon, now beachside in Nah Trang), but it does remind me of a very good reason we are here.

Not that I’m completely igoring the fact that the Cubs are again starting ’slow’ and have too many players injured…

Tale #1: Muang Swa By Night
The cool towel, rather soothing on this warm evening, is placed on my neck. The older man moves around the towel. Then I feel his firm grip, on the back of my neck, and the massage begins. His hands knowingly and strongly begin to work the tension out of my neck. This is the sort of treatment you can expect to pay a few dollars per hour for in the countries we’ve visited.

Of course, normally I am expecting the massage. Normally, its relaxing, soothing and much appreciated. What’s different this time, you ask? Well this time I’m standing. And I don’t really want a massage. But I can’t turn around. At least not without making a bit of a mess.

Because I’m standing at a urinal in a Laos nightclub.

Muang Swa By Night, the disco portion of the Muang Swa hotel in Luang Prabang, Laos, looks, on the outside, like a place Al Capone would frequent. There are two discos in town, both must close at 11:30pm sharp, and at least this one only serves Beer Lao (at heavily marked up prices). The servers are dressed sharply and are attentive while a local band plays Lao hits with the occasional western song. As it turns out, there’s even a bathroom attendant.

Tale #2: Welcome to Phnom Penh
We are in Cambodia now, and after nearly a week in Siem Reap, visiting amazing ancient temples, we decided to take a bus to the beach. To get to the beach requires changing busses in Phnom Penh, and the changing process involved about a 90 minute wait at a Phnom Penh bus station.

The scene that unfolded surely could happen anywhere. Imagine you head to your city’s transit hub. Perhaps you arrive at Chicago’s Union Station and head up the stairs to Canal Street. You are waiting for a bus, and while you wait maybe one or two busses arrive and unload passengers. Plus there are other people already waiting, maybe some cars dropping people off, and plenty of taxi drivers trying to pick up a fare. The small, confined space is packed.

And then, in the midst of the hubub, a somewhat portly fellow with dark sunglasses and a bus company uniform, starts whacking people with a stick.

Yeah, we could be anywhere.

So as you may be able to imagine (or tell from our photos), one of the things rIAm and I are focused on during our travels is food. And perhaps we’ve talked about food a bit on this site; we’ve definitely shown photos and made commentary on flickr. But when we had a question come in about food, it seemed to make perfect sense to write a bit more about food, and how we approach the culinary adventure that is Asia.

The question was posed by good friend Eric, and went about like this: “what’s been your experience with varying food quality? I’m sure Thailand, like any other country, has its greasy spoons as well as great little finds, and am curious whether you’ve had good instincts for selecting eateries so far or have run afoul of anyone.”

Well, one thing is for sure, we impress locals with our (ok, especially my) willingness to try most all the food. Admittedly, some things are simply not appealing — just about any form of protein is consumed here, and just about every part of the animal is considered edible. So while I’ve tried fried bug and had parts of animals I normally don’t eat included in some dishes, I perhaps haven’t stretched as far as I could. Even though I say we impress the locals, it’s more like bonded with locals. And we’ve definitely eaten at a full range of food serving establishments, from ramshackle to swanky.

The photo above is from a night market in Phitsanulok, Thailand, at a vendor that sells many different dishes, most of which are some kind of curry. As you can see, I blend right into the scene and have become so darn local you can’t even pick me out of the crowd. Or not. But you can, plainly, see that this vendor is frequented by many Thai people. This doesn’t make it more authentic than anybody else, but it is a good indication that it’s tasty food. So that’s one thing we do — go to a place that’s busy, because then it must be good. And if its locals eating there, then locals must think it’s good (and it’s probably not pricey).

But the other benefit of a busy place is that it’s also a safe place to eat. We could pick any old vendor, but if we pick a non-busy person, then we run two risks. One is that the food isn’t as tasty. The other is that the food may have been sitting for a while and now is full of not-so-tasty bacteria that cause not-so-pleasant reactions. The vendor pictured above refilled several dishes while I was waiting to order and then waiting for my food. So the result was extremely tasty, fresh, safe food.

I should add that it’s really easy to pick these vendors. Often, many (or all) vendors are busy. And it’s fun to check out the market before buying, although in Nong Khai we bought at the first four or five vendors we got to (but it was also a relatively small market). The other thing is that with many vendors, things are made up fresh (and quickly) for each patron. This is the case for somtam, fried rices and fried noodles. In other cases, foods are partially or mostly cooked, but then reheated or finished upon ordering. The other way to get fresh food is to eat at normal meal times; there’s more food turnover, and in turn, safer food.

Of course, we also don’t eat at vendor stalls all the time. Restaurants give us a great opportunity to sit down and relax and also try some dishes that maybe don’t lend themselves to being street food. Some of these restaurants look pretty shabby, but crank out great food. Others look great and serve ok food, and others still look great and serve great food. (We try to avoid the places that look bad and probably serve bad food!)

We have a guidebook, traveler recommendations, local person recommendations and our own instincts and sense of adventure to help us. For the most part, we’ve been very happy with our food choices. One thing we learned in Thailand was that even though many guesthouses serve food, and that those places are often in guidebooks, the “Thai” food tastes about like it does in North America. Which isn’t to say it’s bad, but, well, we came here to eat Thai food the way Thai people would eat it. So we figured out how to assess a restaurant or at the very least find much more satisfying meals. Meals that had the chance to “wow” us.

The big shift to consistently better meals happened in Nong Khai. In the south it was hard to avoid tourist food (even if it was Thai food) and on the farm we ate most of our meals on the farm, which was good food for sure. In Prakonchai we ate well, too, but then when we got back out on the road we were feeling underwhelmed. But we figured it out in Nong Khai, righted the ship, and ate really well (and usually really cheap) the rest of our stay in Thailand.

In Nong Khai it started with a place serving local specialties alongside the Mekong and quickly accelerated at the night market, especially with the grilled chicken and somtam. In Phitsanulok and Sukothai the night markets and restaurants we chose were more than satisfying, and then in Chiang Mai we pleased our palates regularly. The noodle soups were consistently fantastic, sometimes from a streetside cart and other times from a sit down place. And the very best Thai food either of us has ever had the great pleasure of consuming was at the most wonderful of restaurants just outside Chiang Mai.

The restaurant outside Chiang Mai had many private nooks outside where you could dine in privacy in the open air — even ring a bell to beckon your server (who would otherwise leave you alone). There was also aircon indoor seating, but really, who wants that? Each dish we had, which will have pictures up on flickr eventually, with detailed description, was one of the best things we have ever had. I can still taste the garlic fried spare ribs. And if only green curries tasted like that everywhere…

So in my rather roundabout way, I have tried to sum up that there are all manner of ways to eat here, and rarely do they disappoint. You cannot go by looks, although peeking at the kitchen isn’t a bad idea. We toss in the occasional western food place, and while we can taste a difference at different places, a good noodle or curry dish isn’t wildly different from place to place. The local people we interact with while ordering or dining love that we’re trying local foods, and they love that we try to speak their language, and we love seeing their smiles.