Where on Earth will YOU vote?

I could have voted in Fez

Right now, as I mentioned, I'm planning a trip to Djenne, Mopti, le pays Dogon and Timbuktu; that's all Mali. And a lot of it is relatively inaccessible without a camel-- or, thankfully, a 4WD. I planned my trip after the election. If I wasn't actively working for some many candidates, I didn't have to. Voting from abroad is way easier now than it used to be when McCain was young and you had to vote with cuneiform. Cheap joke; but when I was around 20 I was living in Afghanistan and I had to ride a horse down from the mountains to vote in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. It's a lot easier today.

This morning I got a message from an Obama-related group called VoteFromAbroad via Facebook. They lay out the simple steps of how you can vote from anywhere in the world... even Mali or Afghanistan. They even have a YouTube:

HOW SAFE IS MEXICO CITY FOR U.S. TOURISTS?

Short answer: very, very safe. If you're looking for trouble-- in Mexico City or anywhere else-- you can surely find it. But all the hype about Mexico City being a dangerous place for American tourists seemed to me to be completely unfounded. I had a quasi-revelation while I was there about why. There's a subway stop at the airport. It costs 25 American cents to go anywhere in the city. I took it to my hotel and it was simple and clean and took 25 minutes. A taxi takes between an hour and an hour and forty-five minutes... depending on congestion caused by road building. And taxis cost... well, that's where the hype comes in. It's an oft repeated truism in Mexico City that if you take a "street cab" you could be kidnapped and held for ransom. It has happened-- only not to tourists. It has happened to rich and upper middle class Mexicans. There appears to be a ring of kidnappers in cahoots with some elements of the police who kidnap rich Mexicans and ransom them. The game doesn't work on tourists.

I took street taxis around Mexico City frequently. No problems whatsoever, although the fine folks at the hotel, especially the door staff, were adamant it was dangerous. A metered "street taxi" from my hotel to the great restaurants in the Polanco district costs around $3. The hotel cars that are always being pushed charge $20 for the same ride and the SITIO cabs the hotels claim are safe also try getting away-- no meters-- with $20. Those numbers explain the hyped up danger stories. The motive is very significant profit. The American ex-pats I spoke to in Mexico City laughed about it. They all take street cabs.

No matter where I travel, the employees at the upper end hotels always tell me "it's too far to walk." It never is. In Mexico City they also claimed it was too dangerous for me and my two robust friends to walk from Paseo de la Reforma to a market about a mile away. The walk brought us away from the architecturally stunning Reforma and into the "real" day-to-day Mexico City. Dangerous? Not even a little.

Last week I mentioned I was going to go to El Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco. It took almost an hour by subway and then a little train ride (25 cents on each). It costs $4.50 to get in, although they accepted my L.A. County Museum of Art membership card as a substitute and they accepted a teacher's ID from a friend. (All 3 museums I went to happily accepted the L.A. museum card for free entry.) Anyway, Dolores Olmedo, who died 6 years ago, was Diego Rivera's patron (and longtime lover-- and, rumor has it, also Frida Kahlo's lover, if more briefly). Her gorgeous, magical estate in the middle of the city-- although it certainly seems like you're far from any city-- has been turned into an art museum specializing in the works of Rivera and, to a lesser, but still significant, extent, Kahlo. I had been to Mexico City many times before but had never gone there before. I'm sure I'll be back... every time I visit Mexico City.

The Tamayo Museum in Chapultepec Park was a huge disappointment. I remember it as a spectacular building housing an even more spectacular collection of Tamayo art. The building is still super. The art... no. There were no Tamayos. Instead there were 4 absolutely wretched exhibitions that had to be justified with long explanations because they were so obviously mediocre. The first one we wandered into was 3 rooms of photos of toilet paper and urine by a radical Brazilian named Artur Barrio. A few years ago I decided to stop being a member of the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. because the work grasped at trying to be art and instead was just a bunch of ugly intellectual polemics. Barrio's work was far worse than anything I ever saw at MOCA.

Canadian photographer Jeff Wall had an exhibition that wasn't offensive at all-- nor was it remotely interesting. It just filled some space with big, well-lit photos. Swedish photographer Henrik Hakansson also had a huge exhibition. It could have been called "Snapshots from my dull trip to Chiapas."
Pablo Pijnappel I would have voted to pass on but my two companions are Dutch and they were fascinated by his Dutch last name. We gave his unremarkable video a minute before leaving, a minute more than it was worth. Almost any random YouTube clip would have been more interesting and artistic.

El Museo de Arte Moderno has a kick-ass sculpture garden

Fortunately I then remembered that across the street, still in Chapultepec, was one of the western hemisphere's greatest modern art museums, the Museo de Arte Moderno. There were plenty of Tamayos, of course, as well as a spectacular sampling of Mexico's greatest contemporary artists: Rivera and Kahlo of course, and Siqueiros, Gerzco, Orozco, Galan, Costa, Carrington, etc. Between the permanent collection and the unbelievable sculpture garden, it is easy to while away a day at this beautiful oasis. We also saw a career retrospective of Remedios Varo Uranga. At first I thought the work was by some hippie in the 60s who was smoking a lot of Acapulco gold. Then I realized she was born in 1908 and had a vision way ahead of the trends. Definitely worth checking out.

The other day I mentioned I had gone to the culinary apex of Mexico City, Izote. The following night my friends wanted to eat on the roof of their hotel, the Best Western Majestic, which has a great view of the Zocolo and the National Palace but extremely mediocre food. We made up for it the following night when I got the fantastic concierge at the Embassy Suites to recommend something as good as Izote. He did: Pompano. It's not far from Izote in Polanco and, like it, it offers a modern-- and healthful-- delicious take on Mexican cooking. It's a seafood restaurant and the sampler of 3 cerviches was, simply put, the best cerviche I had ever tasted. Everything each of us ate was spectacular and I can't recommend this place too highly. It's at #42 Moliere in the old Jewish section of town (and not far from a fully functioning synagogue at Eugenio Sue).


UPDATE: BUT THINGS ARE DETERIORATING

The good news is that prices are going down on hotels and tourist-related things. The bad news is that Mexico is rated about as likely as Pakistan to disintegrate! The U.S. Joint Forces Command warns that Mexico's "government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

TRIP PLANNING: MALI, PESHAWAR AND MEXICO CITY

Djenne-- Growin' a beard so I can get in here

For several years I would wake up in the back on my VW van, crawl into the front seat and start driving wherever I wanted to go and stay for as long as I wanted to. I was just telling some friends of mine how much I loved discovering Peshawar, after too many months in Afghanistan, by just driving through the Khyber Pass til I found something that looked inviting. I loved the stately horse drawn cabs. All the horses had bright red plumes. And I never saw so many weapons for sales in one place in my life. It would be an NRA member's wet dream. (Well, not this week; I understand the Taliban has it surrounded and it may fall. It would be like the U.S. losing St. Louis or Denver.) Anyway, I'm in the middle of planning a trip to Senegal and Mali. Literally in the middle; I started planning 5 months ago and I'm leaving 5 months from now. Long gone are the days I just hop into the front seat and drive through a pass to see what I find on the other side. As part of my long drawn out preparations for Mali I've grown a beard and I'm taking Muslim lessons so I can get into the great mosque in Djenne, which was closed to non-Muslims in 1996 after a French fashion photographer from Vogue took inappropriate pictures-- soft core porn in the locals' eyes-- in the holiest house of worship in the country. Sometimes you just have to plan.

But not this week. I just got to Mexico City and it was as last minute as I can imagine travel these days. Toon, my best friend from my days in Amsterdam, e-mailed me on Wednesday and said he and his wife, Mieke, would be celebrating his birthday in Mexico City. I said I'd meet them and an hour later had found a good fare on Alaska Air and a decent deal at the Embassy Suites, which Trip Advisor rated as the #1 hotel in town. And here I am.

First off, it is hardly the best hotel in town. It basically is just a gussied up... Embassy Suites. The Four Seasons, which offers rooms at the same rate if you insist ($150/night), is way better. But the Embassy Suites is good enough and I'm perfectly happy here, despite the fact that the wireless connection is slow and costs $11/day and I hate being ripped off. I asked the concierge to make a reservation for me at Izote, one of the best restaurants in town, if you're looking for modern innovative Mexico cuisine, rather than lard and stuff that'll stuff your arteries up. This place was unpretentious and simple in ambiance and... well, I want to eat there every meal, every day. Chef /owner Patricia Quintana is a genius-- and a genius, it turns out who trained under my favorite chef in the word, Paul Bocuse. The hotel told me it was unsafe to take a normal taxi from Reforma to Polanco but that they would send me in the hotel car. That wound up costing $20. I laughed at myself for getting hustled and walked halfway back and then took a mini bus the rest of the way-- it started raining-- for 25 cents.

Oh, and speaking of raining, the one preparation I did make was to check the weather. Since it's been in the high 90s and low 100s in the L.A. area lately and Mexico City is further south, I had no intention of bringing a jacket. So I checked the Google and noticed it is quite cold-- as well as rainy. Sometimes you just gotta plan, even if just a little. Right?

When I was on the plane I asked the Mexican stewardess how to get to Reforma and she said everyone takes a taxi but that the subway was just as fast, a fifteenth the price and convenient and clean and safe and all that. I took her advice and it was just as she said. And it left me off a few blocks from the hotel. As I started walking towards it I discovered something I never had noticed before: Mexico City is the gayest city in the world. In fact, there were no straight people. I had left the Insurgentes metro stop and was walking down Amberes. It was just a colorful jumble of gays and lesbians. Then I figured I must be in the middle of an event. And although, it turns out that this is Gay Pride Weekend, that was in another part of town and this just turned out to be a neighborhood that's pretty festive all the time. I mean I knew Acapulco and Puerta Vallarta are gay havens but I always remember Mexico City as kind of staid and a bit uptight. Things sure have changed! Tomorrow: the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Xochimilco.

OUR ANNUAL NEW NEW ORLEANS CATCH-UP BY MICHAEL SNYDER

Hard to Leave the Big Easy

I’m continuing to depressurize. Trying to reintegrate right and left brains. Weaning myself off of Pimm’s cups and Ramos fizzes and Sazeracs. Occasionally shaking from gumbo withdrawal.

Of course, I already miss New Orleans, and it’s only been a couple of days since I left. I actually began to pine for the city as I pulled away from the French Quarter and headed for Louis Armstrong Airport. (And if that name ain’t a promise of good times as you arrive in town and an invitation to melancholy as you leave, I don’t know what is.)

Carnival is in full swing, dressed in the traditional green, gold and purple of Mardi Gras, and heading for its ecstatic culmination next Tuesday. (The green stands for faith, the gold for power, and the purple for justice – so decreed by the membership of the New Orleans social club the Krewe of Rex over a century ago.)

Showing up for the first few days of what amounts to a week and a half of increasing dementia allows one to avoid the massive crush of yahoos and loonies looking to get completely plastered and heedlessly bare body parts by the end of the celebration. At the start, the numbers are smaller and the behavior more civilized. Nonetheless, the spirit of revelry was in the air this past weekend. Yes, there were some remnants of what a couple of locals warily/bitterly called “that weather incident.” The French Market is being renovated and, the promise of renewal aside, its husk is a sad sight. The Lower Ninth Ward is still largely a mess.

But the people are still warm and welcoming. Construction is happening throughout the town. The Quarter and Magazine Street in the Garden District are pretty much back to speed. New businesses are opening – and a few storm-devastated old businesses are reopening. The restaurants – from the familiar and classic to the recently spawned – were, as expected, producing the delectable regional cuisine that has inspired watering mouths and rave reviews - nay, poetry! - for decades.

Certainly, the music-- particularly at the clubs on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny-- was superb and rollicking and wistful and even hopeful, just like the residents who stayed or returned, and endured.

Last Friday night, pianist Ellis Marsalis-- patriarch of the renowned musical clan-- had his small ensemble cooking on the standards as usual at Snug Harbor. At d.b.a. (the New Orleans branch of the New York City/East Village brew pub), the weekend schedule was top-notch and delightfully indigenous with torchy blues-rock chanteuse Ingrid Lucia doing the early evening show on Friday, followed by some rousing frenzy from the folk-rockin’ Zydepunks; jazz crooner John Boutte and band opening the Saturday bill, with a wild R&B/Tex-Mex-fueled late show from the roots-rockin’ Iguanas; and retro le jazz hot singer/cutie-pie Linnzi Zaorski playing a happy-hour set on Sunday, with the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio wrapping up the night.

There is no greater ambassador for genuine New Orleans jazz in this day and age than the terrific, tradition-wise singer-trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, who, with his band the Barbecue Swingers, done tore up the Blue Nile on Saturday night. Very few artists can turn a club into a carnival at will. Kermit is one of them. And Monday night’s jam session at Ray’s Boom Boom Room, led by drummer/DJ Bob French, was a wonderful, improv-heavy ramble through Tim Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook.

It would be a mistake to forget the fabulous band that played Saturday night’s annual costume ball hosted by a New Orleans artist of note. The group’s horns-and-all cover of the Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life,” done-- no lie-- Parliament/Funkadelic-style, almost shook the filled-to-the-rafters warehouse apart. Nor should I neglect to mention the amazing Sunday night all-45 rpm vintage-soul-and-rockabilly DJ set at the Saint bar in the Garden District. And the melodies that waft from legendary venues, hot spots and dives as you walk past or are produced by street performers that are far too accomplished to be relegated to passing the hat.

This is on top of the parades (raining beads and doubloons on fervent crowds of onlookers) by the krewes that roll through the area on the early weekend. And the yearly Krewe of Barkus dog parade through the Quarter, with the 2008 theme “Indiana Bones & the Raiders of the Lost Bark”-- complete with canine fashion plates and their owners in Indy fedoras, pushing along lovingly-forged Arks of the Covenant on wheels.

My last evening in town featured an orgy of exquisitely delicious food shared with three friends Uptown at Jacques-Imo’s restaurant-- cornbread muffins, stuffed shrimp, fried green tomatoes, onion rings, succulent glazed duck, blackened redfish, collard greens, and strawberry shortcake, washed down with Abita’s Mardi Gras Bock. We topped it off with nightcaps at La Crepe Nanou, where we talked music and the beauty of Southern Louisiana with Vicki and Debbi Peterson of the Bangles who were in town for a couple of shows.

Like Vicki and Debbi, I harbor an inordinate amount of love for the city of New Orleans. Call it what you will: Nola, the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the City That Care Forgot. Its socio-economic problems and precarious, post-Katrina condition notwithstanding, it’s like no other place in America-- a cultural cauldron rich with history, art, music, culinary delights, and the joy of living. I encourage everyone to visit and drop a little cash there. The Jazz & Heritage Festival is coming up in the spring-- and, judging from schedule, it looks like it’s gonna be one to remember. So go. Or visit some other time. Help the regeneration of this national treasure. You will be repaid a thousand times over with peak experiences that will linger in your memory long after you return to your everyday biz.

A VISIT TO THE TOMB OF SARMAD-- A GAY, NAKED (AND BEHEADED) SUFI POET AND MYSTIC

When I arrived in India for the first time, in 1969, I immediately gave up my dependence on drugs. I've been-- excuse the expression-- "clean" ever since. The trip to India, through India and back to Europe from India took a little over 2 years. I saw a lot and I missed a lot. I've been back to India 3 times since, most recently just over a week ago. My trip was actually to Thailand and Myanmar and I was just stopping in New Delhi for about 10 days before and after. I had no business, no appointments, no agenda, no pressure. So I went out of my way to really spend some quality time at the best sites in Delhi, sites I had seen in the past but never really immersed myself in.

I spent a whole day at Lal Qila (the Red Fort), for example, a place I probably gave an hour to previously. And I'd go spend another day there without a second thought. I also spent some time at Old Delhi's other stunning-- equally stunning-- tourist attraction: Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque. The Moghul Emporer Shah Jahan started it in 1650 and the red sandstone and marble house of worship-- not far from his palace-- look six years to complete. It's truly awe-inspiring and I guess that was the point. We sure don't build 'em like that any more!

I had heard about a Sufi poet and saint, Hazrat Sarmad being buried in a tomb at the Jama Masjid. He was actually a Jewish Armenian from Persia who converted to Islam-- perhaps to Christianity for a spell before that-- and became a peerless Sufi mystic of great renown in his day (1590-1661). Somewhere along the way he fell head over heels in love (ishq) with a young Hindu boy, Abhai Chand-- so head over heels, in fact, that he renounced all worldly possessions-- including his clothes-- and became a naked fakir. This (nudity) wasn't that weird in India but the Moghuls weren't into it and Sarmad was pals with Dara Shikoh, the heir to Shah Jahan's throne. That didn't work out and when Aurangzeb staged a coup and took over the joint it was hard times for Dara Shikoh's friends. He had Sarmad beheaded for blasphemy (although historians have always sensed some politics in the mix).

I decided to go visit and pay my respects. I didn't have my camera so the picture above is of me in front of an entirely different tomb, Humayun's, which is in New Delhi, not even Old Delhi, although it's just as old. I stopped there on my way to another tomb the Hazrat Nizamuddin Darga, which is very much a lively scene in an living medieval community and in front of which-- and the reason I went-- qawwali singers do their thing in the evenings. I love that music and the video below in front of the darga should give you an idea of what it's like. Anyway, back to Samad; I never did get to take any photos and it was very difficult to find, since everyone claims to know where everything is, even if they don't. And even when I found it... well, how do you know he's really in there anyway? And if he is, is his head?




UPDATE: NY TIMES DOES DELHI IN 36 HOURS

Don't try it... but there are some useful tips... about art galleries and sitar shopping. They agree with me that Swagath, though not in the center of town, is worth the trip for a delicious south Indian (especially otherwise unavailable Mangalorean) seafood meal.

LUNCH IN THE SAME BANGKOK RESTAURANT EVERYDAY FOR A MONTH-- BUSSARACUM, THE BEST RESTAURANT IN THAILAND

I've been visiting Thailand for nearly 30 years now. It's a lot easier to find great food in Bangkok now than it was when I first started going but, ironically, the very first Thai restaurant I ever fell in love with, is still my absolute favorite: Bussaracum. When I first found it, in the 80s, it was in a beautiful free-standing traditional house. It's where I learned what Royal Court cuisine is and how different it is from the 99.9% of other Thai restaurants. A few visits later it moved to the elegant Dusit Thani Hotel, now home to a runner-up Royal Court cuisine restaurant, Benjarong, and then soon after to the ground floor of an office building between Silom and Sathorn, right down the street from the Hindu temple complex at Silom and Pan Road.

[UPDATE: Bussaracum Moved To Sukhumvit 55

I've been visiting them for years and years and through three changes of address. Next time I'm in Bangkok-- in a couple of months-- I'll be at the new location too.]

The restaurant is a special event kind of place with incredible and unique dishes on the menu. By Thai standards it's moderately expensive, though not over the top like the restaurants at the big hotels or the exclusively tourist places like the Blue Elephant. But the 7-day a week buffet lunch is the absolute best deal in town. The food is stunning-- pretty much the same stuff you get on the menu-- and the price (240 baht, which is like $7.30) is mind-bogglingly low. Everyday they offer a different assortment of dishes. And everyday the assortment is very wide. I'm a picky eater. I never had a problem finding lots of delicious, relatively healthful food to eat.

With the exception of an international seafood buffet lunch at Lord Jim's in the Oriental Hotel (expensive by even western standards but really excellent), I had lunch at Bussaracum every single day I was in Bangkok-- and that was nearly a month. Normally I love going around and trying all the good places in Bangkok-- and that was my intention when I first arrived in early December. I've written about the best Thai restaurants in the past and I was eager to get back to Patara, for example. Unfortunately when I got to it, it was just a big hole in the earth. They're supposed to be re-opening in the Sukumvit area... soon.

I always have my first meal in Thailand at Bussaracum and, as usual, it was so delicious that when I found Patara demolished on day 2, I went back to Bussaracum. Every dish they were offering was different. That's when it dawned on me that it didn't make sense to eat anywhere else. The food is the best and so are the prices low (for quality food) that it's actually mind-blowing. Everyday was a wonderful culinary experience. Each day there were 5 or 6 tables laden with food: salads, soup, appetizers, desserts and main courses in chafing dishes. I was thrilled when I realized that aside from the white rice and fried rice, they also have brown rice.

Like I said, each day there were different choices. Over the course of the month, the offerings included this list. I eat fruits, vegetables and seafood but I'm including the meat dishes as well so you can get a good idea of the variety and breadth of their meals.

-Deep-fried shrimps
-Deep-fried Chinese sausage wrapped in omelet
-Deep-fried wonton
-Minced shrimp on toast
-Fried breaded Thai sausage
-Deep-fried crabmeat with minced pork
-Spicy sour sausage salad
-Spicy tuna fish salad
-Cowslip creeper flower spicy salad with shrimp
-Soy bean dip with vegetable
-Fish balls in green curry
-Stir-fried grilled pork with chili paste
-Baked glass noodle with pork
-Fried boiled egg in tamarind sauce
-Fried pork cake
-Fried filet of fish with celery
-Stir-fried bean sprouts with pork
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & long beans
-Deep-fried minced vegetables wrapped in bean curd pastry
-Spicy minced duck salad
-Grilled pork neck spicy salad
-Grilled duck in red curry
-Steamed crabmeat curry
-Deep-fried filet of seabass with chili sauce
-Fried mixed vegetables
-Clear soup
-Deep-fried breaded marinated chicken
-Deep-fried breaded marinated chicken
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & eggplant
-Stir-fried Tuna fish with chili
-Chili paste dip with yellow eggplant & omelet
-Fried rice with tamarind chili paste
-Deep-fried filet of fish with celery
-Stir-fried pork with cashew nuts
-Stir-fried spring onion with pork liver in oyster sauce
-Stir-fried long bean with squids
-Stir-fried pork with black pepper sauce
-Spicy crabmeat salad
-Spicy pork sausage salad
-Spicy squid salad with lemongrass
-Vegetable spice-dip with shrimp
-Thai noodles with curry fish sauce southern style
-Catfish in green curry
-Pork in red curry Northern style
-Baked pork with vegetables in brown sauce
-Fried pork with garlic & peppers
-Steamed mushroom curry
-Stir-fried fish fillet with celery
-Fried pork with sweet pepper
-Stir-fried vegetables with crispy pork
-Spicy-dip fried rice with salty egg
-Barbecued marinated pork on skewers
-Variety choice of salad with ham
-Thick curry with chicken
-Shang Hai noodle soup
-Deep-fried eggroll wrapped with carrots and peas
-Spicy grilled catfish salad 
-Thai noodles with chicken curry sauce
-Grilled pork in curry sauce
-Stir-fried white lettuce with shrimp balls
-Stir-fried Shanghai noodles with pork and basil
-Minced shrimps & pork in mashed taro
-Pork leg in spicy soup
-Fish & banana bud cake
-Tamarind soup with Sesbania flower
-Fried glass noodles with salty egg
-Asparagus & carrots in oyster sauce
-Deep-fried minced vegetable wrapped in bean curd pastry-Baked glass noodle with pork
-Stir-fried squash with carrot
-Sweetened lotus stem custard
-Stir-fried bean sprouts with crispy pork & soft beancurd
-Spicy lotus stem salad with shrimps & chicken
-Baked chicken with vegetable in brown sauce
-Tuna fish curry with Thai noodles
-Chicken leg in soya soup
-Stir-fried chicken with bamboo shoots in chili paste
-Stir-fried squid in chili paste
-Chicken wings in soya soup
-Traditional Thai noodles with coconut milk sauce
-Lotus stems in coconut milk with mackerel
-Mackerel in thick curry
-Chicken wings soup with pickled lime
-Three kinds of mushrooms in oyster sauce
-Stir-fried chicken with lemongrass
-Quail egg salad
-Deep-fried crabmeat & minced pork sausage
-Dried shrimp spice-dip with vegetables
-Baked shrimp with glass noodles
-Steamed squid curry
-Stir-fried Taiwanese vegetable with oyster sauce
-Papaya salad with coconut cream rice
-Spicy straw mushrooms salad
-Deep-fried breaded fish balls
-Deep-fried bean curd
-Stir-fried pork balls in curry with bamboo shoots
-Noodle soup with pork
-Deep-fried breaded fish sausage
-Spicy wing bean salad with mint leaves 
-Stir-fried macaroni with crabmeat
-Fried rice with pork
-Lotus seeds with coconut cream
-Stir-fried pork with oyster sauce
-Spicy chicken breast salad
-Thai noodles with peanut curry sauce
-Grilled pork in green curry
-Roasted chicken in red curry
-Stir-fried squids and green bean in chili paste
-Pork noodle soup
-Pork spare rib spicy soup
-Fried boiled egg in tamarind sauce
-Thai noodles/ fish curry sauce
-Steamed fish
-Spice-dip fried rice with salty egg
-Spicy squid salad
-Thick fish curry
-White bean sauce dip with vegetables
-Northern-style spice dip with mince pork & tomato
-Bitter squash salad with minced pork and shrimp
-White mushroom salad
-Ground pork & pork skin salad with peanut
-Fried spicy noodles
-Stir-fried kale with salty fish
-Chinese sausage salad
-Bussaracum spice-dip with salty egg & crispy catfish
-Stir-fried cauliflower & carrot with oyster sauce
-Pork ball green curry
-Chinese herbal leave salad with pork & shrimps
-Spicy shrimp balls salad
-Vegetable spice-dip with fried pork
-Fish ball green curry
-Fried Cha-om in tamarind soup
-Shang Hai noodle soup with pork
-Fried glass noodle with pork
-Stir-fried pork spare with chili paste
-Deep-fried sun dried pork
-Pork noodle in bitter squash soup
-Fried pork with chili
-Ginger, shrimps, pork & chicken salad
-Crab meat & minced pork sausage
-Deep-fried chicken with cumin
-Fried noodle
-Sweetened coconut in coconut milk
-Fried mackerel salad
-Fish’s maw, crispy squid and peanut salad
-Chicken green curry
-Deep-fried E-San sausage
-Pork cake brochette with lemongrass
-Spicy-dip with salty egg & crispy catfish
-Broccoli, mushroom & carrot with oyster sauce
-Crispy yellow noodle with pork in gravy sauce
-Pork noodle soup
-Tuna in brown sauce
-Stir-fried pork stuffed pepper
-Steamed chicken curry with coconut milk
-Thick curry with chicken
-Mussel salad with lemongrass
-Traditional Thai vegetable soup
-Egg noodle soup with roasted pork
-Eggroll with minced pork and green peas
-Stir-fried pork spare ribs with chili paste
-Sweetened tapioca with corn kernels & young coconut
-Sa-rim
-Mango salad with anchovies
-Minced pork & corn cake
-Stuffed squid with minced pork in green curry
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Spicy sausage salad
-Fish balls green curry
-Three kinds of vegetable in brown sauce
-Fish’s maw, crispy squid and peanuts salad
-Crispy chicken salad with lemongrass
-Pork leg in brown sauce
-Drunken pork with coconut sprout
-Spice dip young peppercorn with omelet
-Sweet crispy noodles
-Mussel salad
-Stir-fried squid with chili paste
-Fried noodles with chicken
-Steamed crabmeat with coconut curry
-Stir-fried chicken with yellow chili & bamboo shoots
-Fried squash with egg, pork and shrimp
-Spicy cockles salad with Lemongrass
-Cockles salad
-Stuffed chicken wings in thick curry
-Omelet with pork & vegetables
-Fried rice with ham
-Fried soft bean curd
-Minced shrimp on toast
-Stir-fried lettuce with shrimp balls
-Pork skin salad with deep-fried rice balls
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Spice dip & boiled egg
-Shrimp sauce dip with vegetables
-Chicken in pandanus leaves
-Sweet & sour fish
-Stir-fried chicken & mushrooms in chili paste
-Pork masaman curry
-Minced pork stuffed chicken legs
-Rice balls
-Spicy mixed salad
-Chicken sausage & pork salad
-Fried rice with pineapple
-Stir-fried pork in green curry sauce
-Spicy minced chicken salad
-Combination mixed spicy salad
-Baked chicken with vegetables
-Shrimp-stuffed fish cakes
-Yellow chicken curry
-Stir-fried crabmeat with curry powder
-Stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts
-Fried beef with oyster sauce
-Fried pork with basil leaves
-Fried pork cake
-Stir-fried grilled pork with curry paste
-Stir-fried young kale with oyster sauce
-Finger crab salad
-Minced pork, bean curd & bean sprout wrapped in large noodle
-Spicy seafood salad
-Stuffed minced pork & condiments in tapioca balls
-Stir-fried kale in oyster sauce
-Filet of fish in green curry
-Spicy crispy chicken salad
-Fried chicken with garlic & pepper
-Stir-fried pork with chili paste & mushroom
-Sweetened taro in coconut milk
-Crabmeat & pork sausage
-Boiled egg spicy salad
-Spicy morning glory Salad with shrimps
-Tuna salad with lemongrass
-Salty fish dip with vegetables
-Stewed chicken legs
-Mushroom & fish cake
-Fried chicken salad
-Spicy Tuna fish salad
-Crispy rice with minced pork dip
-Spice dip with green mango & Thai omelet
-Stewed duck noodle soup
-Stir-fried asparagus with crispy pork
-Sticky rice
-Stir-fried chicken with soya bean sauce
-Fried fish with basil leave
-Tamarind spice dip with omelet
-Chicken in red curry with green melon
-Fried rice with crabmeat
-Stir-fried Taiwanese vegetable
-Pork noodle soup
-Cowslip creeper flower in tamarind soup with shrimps
-Deep-fried fish in tamarind sauce & fresh ginger
-Deep-fried catfish salad with lemongrass
-Fried pork with pineapple
-Chicken curry puff
-Fried chicken with lemongrass
-Stir-fried chicken with chili paste
-Fried pork with basil leaves
-Chicken fried rice
-Spicy soft bean curd
-Fried Cantonese vegetable with oyster sauce
-Deep-fried spring rolls
-Fried potato Thai style
-Pork salad with eggplant and lemongrass
-Salty egg dip with vegetables
-Stir-fried squid with basil leaves
-Fried macaroni with chicken
-Fried kale with oyster sauce
-Stir-fried squash with pork & egg
-Fried rice with crabmeat
-Stir-fried chicken with fresh ginger
-Sesbania flower salad with shrimps
-Spice dip young peppercorn with Thai omelet
-Fish balls in wonton pastry
-Spicy black mushroom salad
-Shrimps dip with vegetables
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Stuffed crescents with mung bean fillings
-Fried chicken with condiments
-Chieng Mai sausage salad
-Grilled pork in green curry
-Masaman chicken curry
-Steamed fish curry
-Stir-fried kale with crispy pork
-Sweet and sour chicken
-Fried fish balls with chili paste
-Pork in red curry
-Fried mixed vegetables
-Stir-fried bitter squash leaves with oyster sauce
-Stir-fried fish in brawn sauce
-Stir-fried cabbage with oyster sauce
-Three kinds of mushroom salad
-Spicy Shang Hai noodle salad
-Chicken noodle soup
-Fried fish & mushroom cake
-Stuffed sweet pepper with pork in brawn sauce
-Fried fish cake
-Deep-fried bean curd
-Stir-fried chicken & long bean with chili paste
-Fried egg topping with green peas & minced pork sauce
-Squids in green curry
-Fish balls noodle soup
-minced shrimp and pork in mashed taro
-Spicy fresh ginger salad with pork, chickens & shrimps
-Gravy noodle with pork
-Gravy noodle with chicken
-Steamed fish with ginger
-Stuffed bitter squash with pork in brawn sauce
-Cauliflower & broccoli with oyster sauce
-Kale & Chinese sausage fried rice
-Stir-fried squid with basil leaves
-Papaya salad
-Stir-fried pork spare ribs with chili paste
-Fried squids with curry powder
-Stir-fried chicken with basil leaves & coconut sprout
-Egg noodle with roasted pork
-Egg noodle with pork
-Egg noodle with chicken
-Boiled egg salad
-Deep-fried taro with black bean
-Deep-fried fish with chili paste
-Fried steamed fish in chili sauce
-Shrimp paste dip with vegetables & fried fish
-Sour soup with pork, potato & basil leaves
-Stir-fried mixed vegetables
-Grilled pork with spicy dip
-Flower tempura
-Stir-fried chicken with chili
-Fried chicken in pandanus leaves
-Green salad
-Salty fish & kale fried rice
-Fried fish cake with glass noodle
-Egg custard
-Steamed fish with plum
-Stir-fried roasted duck with chili & basil leaves
-Combinations of jelly
-Crispy rice cups
-Spicy fish balls salad
-Drunken pork with bamboo shoots
-Stuffed chicken wings with pork
-Deep-fried chicken with cumin
-Green mango salad
-Spicy dip fresh chili with deep-fried pork skin
-Deep-fried catfish with chili paste
-Baked pork with honey
-Steamed fish curry with fresh bamboo shoots
-Deep-fried breaded mackerel
-Stir-fried pickled vegetable with crispy pork
-Yellow noodle soup with chicken
-Stir-fried pork with chili
-Stir-fried pork balls with chili
-Deep-fried vegetable spring rolls with condiments
-Fried eggs topping with minced pork & green pea
-Fried rice with egg
-Fried Cha-om spicy salad
-Steamed mussels curry
-Three kinds of mock ark shells
-Stir-fried tuna fish with chili sauce
-Boiled quail eggs salad
-Deep-fried breaded fish balls
-Fried mackerel Hor d’ oeuvres with lemongrass
-Stir-fried fillet with celery
-Pork curry with morning glory
-Pork skin salad with deep-fried rice balls
-Fried fish spice dip with boiled eggs
-Baked chicken legs with kale
-Fried noodle Thai style
-Stir-fried vegetables with crabmeat
-Egg bean curd with minced pork, carrot & green peas
-Chicken fried rice
-Fish spice dip with boiled egg
-Spicy sausage salad
-Spicy chopped duck salad
-Grilled pork salad with kale
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Spicy squid salad with Lemongrass
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Spicy catfish salad with green mango
-Spicy crabmeat salad
-Glass noodle salad
-Mussels salad with lemongrass
-Spicy shrimp balls salad
-Spicy Shang Hai noodle salad
-Glass noodle salad with shrimps, pork & chicken
-Grilled pork salad with lemongrass & eggplants
-Spicy coconut sprout salad
-Spicy banana bud salad
-Crispy chicken salad with lemongrass
-Spicy wing bean salad
-Grilled pork with spice dip
-Fried fish salad
-Spicy mussels salad
-Stir-fried chicken with long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried pork with long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried chicken & bamboo shoots with chili
-Stir-fried chicken & long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried squids with chili paste
-Steamed Seabass with lime sauce
-Stir-fried fish balls with yellow chili
-Stir-fried catfish with yellow chili
-Minced pork in cucumber soup
-Fish stuffed bell peppers in dry curry
-Rice pastry with minced pork
-Spicy bean sprout salad
-Vietnamese pancake
-Deep-fried wanton pastry
-Tuna fish in dried curry
-Ham dips with vegetables
-Deep-fried breaded crab finger
-Pork & chicken sausage salad
-Chicken cake
-Pan-fried chicken with lemongrass, garlic & chili
-Deep-fried pork with salty fish
-Steamed Seabass in herb soup
-Grill fish spicy dip with boiled egg
-Cowslip creeper flower salad with shrimps
-Deep-fried eggroll wrapped with carrots & peas
-Spicy minced pork salad
-Stewed pork soup
-Royal Thai sweet crispy noodle
-Spicy-dip with salty egg
-Fish balls in green curry
-Deep-fried filet of fish in tamarind sauce
-Heaven dish
-Stir-fried pork with long bean in chili paste
-Deep-fried whole banana wrapped with soft sticky rice mixed
-Chicken in thick yellow curry
-Chicken wing in brown sauce
-Fried fish cake
-Stir-fried kale with salty fish in oyster sauce
-Crabmeat fried rice
-Steamed jasmine rice
-Minced pork toast
-Crispy cup with crispy noodles
-Deep fried spring rolls
-Deep-fried catfish with garlic & pepper in chili paste
-Deep-fried minced pork with salty egg
-Asparagus, baby corn & carrot in oyster sauce
-Deep-fried taro
-Spicy seafood salad
-Finger crab in wonton pastry
-Pork in thick curry
-Spicy glass noodle salad
-Shrimp paste dip with green mango & omelet
-Green curry with chicken
-Spicy chicken soup with mushroom
-Fried egg in brown sauce with minced pork & green peas
-Fried fish cake
-Fried chicken with cashew nuts
-Deep-fried filet of Seabass with black pepper
-Vegetarian fried rice
-Thai noodle with mushroom curry sauce
-Egg noodle with mock roasted pork
-Stir-fried vegetarian glass noodle
-Pineapple fried rice
-Crispy rice with vegetarian sauce dip
Deep-fried banana bud
-Spicy white mushroom salad
-Spicy black mushroom salad
-Soy bean dip with vegetables
-Mock baked pork with kale in brown sauce
-Steamed vegetarian curry
-Stir-fried green bean with chili paste
-Stir-fried Macaroni
-Deep-fried pumpkin stick
-Spicy pomelo salad
-Soft bean curd in thick curry
-Bean curd in soy bean soup
-Stir-fried vegetable in soy bean sauce
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Bean curd yellow curry
-Stir-fried asparagus with crispy pork
-Pan-fried Seabass with lemongrass, garlic & chili
-Stir-fried chicken with fresh chili
-Filet of Seabass in green curry
-Spicy chicken soup in coconut milk
-Spicy anchovy, chicken & crispy pork salad
-Chicken with cashew nuts
-Steamed egg with tomatoes and garlic
-Squid with curry powder
-Sun dried shrimp spice-dip with vegetables
-Salad with pork sausage
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & eggplant
-Bean curd with minced pork
-Sea food fried rice
-Fried fish fillet in red curry
-Deep fried fish spicy salad
-Stir-fried chicken with bamboo shoots in chili paste
-Bean curd and seaweed soup
-Bake squid with glass noodle
-Stir-fried sausages with oyster sauce
-Fried rice with egg and kale
-Mango salad with crispy fish
-Stir-fried spicy sour sausage
-Vietnamese pancake soup
-Mango salad with shrimp
-Fish ball in red curry
-Spicy mango dip and crispy catfish
-Stir-fried bean curd
-Dauk kae-flower stuffed with minced shrimp and pork
-Shark fin soup
-Chicken, crispy fish & pork salad
-Crispy fried squid
-Fried fish chili curry
-Pork spare ribs in thick curry
-Stir-fried cabbage, broccoli and carrots with pork
-Mackerel Fish in dried curry

And although I stuck to the delicious fresh fruits-- including some I had never had before-- for dessert, Roland tried everything-- and liked most of it. Here are some of the desserts over the course of the month (plus ice cream):
-Pandanus flavored taro in sweetened coconut milk
-Apple Salad
-Rainbow jelly
-Chinese dumplings, filled with minced bean
-Sweetened white potato in coconut milk
-Dates in syrup
-Sweetened tapioca in coconut milk & sesame seeds
-Pandanus rice and Thai melon in sweetened coconut
-Steamed coconut pudding
-Taro custard
-Palm fruit in syrup
-Sweetened taro
-Palm fruit in syrup
-Mixed fruit compote
-Mock Fruits
-Two-tone layer cake
-Steamed tapioca cake
-Candied banana
-Coconut jelly
-Grass jelly and palm fruit in syrup with crushed ice
-Colorful Thai desserts
-Tapioca pearl in sweetened coconut and longan
-Black glutinous rice pudding with taro
-Coffee jelly
-Mock fruits jelly
-Sweetened tapioca with corn kernels & young coconut
-Sweetened water chestnut with coconut flavor
-Potato in palm sugar syrup
-Sweetened black beans in coconut milk
-Water chestnut, palmfruit & lentils in syrup
-Sweet tapioca & coconut with pandanus flavor
-Fruit juice jelly
-Sweetened tapioca
-Fruits jelly
-Sweet-mixed banana with coconut
-Sticky rice with custard topping
-Tapioca & pumpkin in coconut milk
-Black bean jelly
-Guava salad
-Fruit salad Thai style
-Coconut balls in coconut milk
-Glutinous rice fingers
-Job’s tears in sweetened coconut syrup
-Job’s tears with lotus seeds in sweetened coconut syrup
-Sweetened Ruby chestnut in coconut milk
-Sweetened pumpkin in coconut milk
-Sweet steamed pumpkin
-Sweet steamed banana
-Ruby in syrup
-Sweetened banana in coconut milk
-Jackfruit in syrup
-Green tea jelly
-Sticky rice topping with sugar & coconut
-Traditional Thai dessert with ice & syrup
-Chamomile jelly
-Watermelon jelly
-Rambutan in syrup
-Palm sugar rice balls
-Traditional Thai dessert stuffed sweet coconut
-Steamed melon cake
-Pineapple juice jelly
-Glutinous rice finger
-Mango sherbet
-Pandanus coconut jelly
-Sweetened tapioca in coconut milk
-Three colors rice balls
-Basil seeds jelly
-Black glutinous rice pudding with taro and coconut milk
-Rice balls with poached egg in coconut milk
-Taro balls in coconut milk
-Rice balls with young coconut flesh
-Mock ark shells in coconut cream
-Corn pudding
-Rice pudding with longan
-Mung beans pudding
-Sweetened hornnut in coconut milk
-Longan jelly
-Steamed butterfly pea cake
-Steamed pandanus tapioca pearl cake
-Steamed taro cake
-Sweet golden net
-Sweetened pumpkin
-Taro custard
-Sweetened taro with coconut flavor
-Sweet potato in coconut milk
-Sweetened sticky rice in bamboo
-Sweetened Durian with sticky rice
-Coconut custard
-Sweetened palm fruit with coconut flavor
-Rice balls in coconut milk
-Wild mangosteen in syrup
-Carrot custard
-Sweet soft sticky rice
-Mung bean Thai custard
-Steamed coconut milk cake
-Glutinous rice fingers in coconut cream
-Rice pudding with longan
-Mung beans cake
-Pineapple in syrup
-Custard Salee fruit
-"Five Thai Treats" in coconut milk
-Taro, potato & pumpkin in coconut milk
-Tapioca pearls in coconut cream
-Pandanus fingers & Thai melon with crushed ice
-Sweetened tapioca pearl with corn kernels
-Steamed sweetened coconut milk with water chestnut
-Steamed tapioca pearl
-Sticky rice pudding with longon
-Wood Apple (Kathorn) in syrup with crushed ice
-Mangl Mangluck Jelly


UPDATE: July, 2009

I found the new Bussarucum, way down Suhkumvit and then up Thong Lo. It wasn't hard to find at all. It's in the back of a Chinese restaurant owned by the same folks. They still have the all-you-can eat buffet lunch for about $7 and it's pretty good. I couldn't not try it again but... I'll be sticking with Rasayana here on out.



UPDATE: November, 2011

Last trip to Bangkok I pretty much ate all my meals at Rasayana, which is both delicious and healthy and has a peaceful vibe. But it's far from where I stay. Had Bussarucum been back in the old neighborhood, I can tell you for 100% I would have eaten there a few times at least. And today I got an e-mail from them telling me that they HAVE moved back to the old neighborhood. I must have eaten in this restaurant in half a dozen locations over the years. But now I can't wait to go back. The new address is 1 Sri Wiang Road (off Soi Pramuan, which is between Silom and Sathorn). It's perfect for walking from where we stay on the river. And here's the map:

DECEMBER IN YANGON, PART II-- AND HAPPY 60th ANNIVERSARY, MYANMAR!

Roland finds 2 monks the junta didn't murder

One thing I found all 3 countries-- India, Thailand and Myanmar-- that I've been visiting this winter have in common is that each is a society with starkly different and parallel worlds coexisting in tandem-- each seemingly occupying the same physical space but not much else. Each has a noticeably growing middle class-- rapidly growing and growingly confident in India and Thailand-- living alongside masses so deplorably impoverished and in such primitive circumstances that they hardly seem to be living in the same epoch. At Down With Tyranny a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that 700 million people in India-- 700 million-- have no sanitary facilities. But the rich are getting richer... much richer-- and more and more people are walking around with cell phones.

Myanmar, potentially just as developable as India and Thailand, is in a world of its own-- and a world of hurt. There is definitely a Burmese middle class in places like Yangon and Mandalay, even if every aspect of the society is held back and hampered by a severely dysfunctional and oppressive tyranny. The junta holds back development as a product of ideology and as a tactic in maintaining its own dominance through brutal authoritarianism. After the recent violent crackdown on peaceful human rights demonstrators-- a crackdown which included the military slaughtering hundreds of peaceful monks-- the regime suddenly increased the cost of satellite TV access to make it inaccessible to the middle class. I mentioned a few days ago that the junta had already banned the BBC and other western news sources, leaving people with nothing but the always inoffensive and tepid CNN-- cookie recipe shows and breathless news reports on Britney Spears latest foibles threaten no one-- on which to depend for outside news. But now, even that will be out of reach for the Burmese middle class.

In Thailand people eat out. I was looking at condos for sale while I was here and noticed all the kitchens had two-burner stoves. When I asked an agent why hat was he said that most Thais rarely prepare meals at home. Food is cheap, varied and incredibly abundant. You see mountains of food everywhere you look in Thailand and you see Thais eating... everywhere. Their cuisine is one of the best-developed in the world, extremely sophisticated... sublime. Myanmar, next door, is a slightly different story. Food, though hardly scarce, isn't nearly as plentiful or as varied. And the cuisine, though good, isn't n the same level as Thailand's. Nor are there the plethora of restaurants in Yangon that you find in Bangkok.

Burmese food, naturally enough, is greatly influenced by Chinese and Indian cooking. It's far milder-- some might even say blander-- than Thai food. We tend to avoid Italian food, French food, Chinese food, and especially "American food" when we're traveling. Eating the native food is a crucial art of the travel experience for me, as it is for Roland-- although he goes to extremes, eating insects and dogs and snakes and God knows what. (I'm happy as a clam when I discover a new fruit, like pomelo or lamut.) In Yangon we stuck to the Burmese restaurants. And we avoided dinners, concentrating on lunches-- something I always do when traveling but which is even more important in a place like Burma where preparation takes a long time and it's fresh at lunch and, basically, left over at dinner.

The best restaurant we found in Yangon is Sandy's right on the shore of Lake Kandawgy (in the Kandawgy Palace Hotel, a hotel as shabby as its restaurant is spectacular). The setting is serene and gorgeous, basically an immense veranda right on the shore overlooking a superb park. The menu is overwhelming and just goes on and on and on. You'd have to spend months there before getting a fair sampling. And the very reasonable prices are in dollars. Their salads are amazing. I went crazy for the tea leaf salad and the pomelo salad. But everything we tried was very good. A close runner-up was the Green Elephant, which is pretty far from downtown-- about a dollar taxi ride. The food was also very good but eating there was basically the only time we were in Myanmar when we were aware that there were other tourists in Yangon besides us. We only saw one other westerner at the Swedegon Pagoda, the most famous site in the country, but the Green Elephant was filled with westerners. There were far less westerners at the bountiful, and relatively cheap, buffet offered at Traders (Shangri-La) Hotel downtown, a place you can get decent Burmese food and a whole hodge-podge of international cuisine.

And the Happy 60th Anniversary referred to in the title? Burma gained its freedom from the British on January 4, 1948-- after a hard-fought struggle led by that country's George Washington, Bogyoke Aung San, father of the currently imprisoned legitimate elected head of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi.

CAN YOU FIND A MASSAGE IN BANGKOK?

Counterintuitively, Bangkok hasn't always been the best place in the world to go for a high quality massage. Well, Bangkok, of course, is infamous for one type of "massage"-- the kind you get at joints like Lolita's and the Kangaroo Club in Pat Pong, the Johnson-waxing or pole-smoking (with or without icecubes), which inebriated German and Australian tourists seem to prefer. Me... I go for the old fashioned, legitimate, therapeutic massage where "happy ending" means limber muscles and a relaxed frame. In Bangkok that kind of massage hasn't been all that easy to find, at least not really great ones. Well, I have always liked the omnipresent foot massages. The bending and twisting stressed out ones you get at the wats... eh... not so much. And up at the traditional Thai massage school in Chiang Mai... you can definately get a first class legit massage there. And one year we even spent a week at a posh resort in Hua Hin called Chiva-Som and they had decent enough massages (in an uptight, creepy, over-priced spa atmosphere). But here in Bangkok, I always found the massage scene kind of seedy and... well, not serious or professional.

This year I came across a sparkling clean and new massage house on Silom Road just a few blocks down from Charoen Krung, Silom Bodyworks. I've had half a dozen massages there (so far) and I found the masseuses uniformly serious, knowledgeable and effective. The place features "modern Thai massage," especially the full body massage and the back, head and shoulders massage. No twisting you into a pretzel either. There are more exotic treatments as well, from ayurvedic massages, jurlique facials, crystal treatments, and Swedish aroma therapy to a "tropical fruit body treatment." I stuck with the more conventional hour and a half long full body and back, head and shoulders when ever I got the opportunity.

While I was traipsing around the Irawaddy Delta southwest of Yangon in Myanmar last week, the shock absorberless cars and the severely pot-holed roads conspired against my lower back. By the time I got back to Bangkok I was a (barely) walking disaster. A well-trained and intuitive masseuse at Silom Bodyworks had me all fixed up in just 2 sessions.

DECEMBER IN YANGON, PART I

A little subtle Myanmar propaganda across from the U.S. Embassy

I loved driving through Bulgaria in 1969, and not just the bit that was on the "Hippie Trail" between Nis and Istanbul. I took the better part of a month and drove from Sofia to the Black Sea, met up with some fun-loving Bulgarians and drove all over the country with them. Earlier I had decided I liked Budapest more than Vienna; it seemed freer and more... romantic, less uptight and stuffy. I was blind to the oppression and tyranny in Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria even though it pervaded these places. I just didn't notice. Years later I was living in West Berlin. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the wall dividing the city was coming down. There were already holes in it and most of the guards looked the other way-- at least when West Germans went back and forth. I persuaded some West German friends to take me across one night. It didn't look free and romantic; the oppression, tyranny and decrepitude were apparent and tangible... and chilling. It scared and repulsed me. I was happy to get back to West Berlin.

A few hours ago, decades later, I just returned from a place like that, a place you read about in books by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley: Myanmar.

Myanmar was Burma when I was a small boy (and avid stamp collector). I remember there were military coups when I was in elementary school. It was one of those closed off places-- exotic, mysterious, impenetrable, vaguely dangerous, like Albania, Mongolia, North Korea... places no one ever went. In the 80s the military junta took the name SLORC (an unfortunate-sounding acronym for State Law and Order Restoration Council). It sounds like something from a James Bond movie. For the people there, I just discovered, it doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like a nightmare that never ends. Paid Republican lobbyists and operatives in DC got the military dictators to ditch the SLORC moniker for SPDC (State Peace and Development Council, which sounds far less ominous-- like Bush's Clear Skies Act).

One of the first things I noticed is that the oppressive, paranoid tyranny in Myanmar exists in a parallel world next to a beautiful traditional Buddhist culture. The gentle people, predisposed to kindness, seem a little nervous-- hundreds of beloved and revered monks were brutally and ruthlessly murdered by the regime a few weeks ago after peaceful demonstrations-- but when you shoot anyone (except some of the soldiers) a mengalaba (hello) their wariness invariably breaks down and they smile. They are friendly and the reserve often vanishes quickly and, at least in Yangon, more of them spoke English than anywhere else in Southeast Asia I've ever been.

The whole city seems to be rotting and breaking down, although it may also be a work in progress of sorts. The city is immense-- but kind of slow and quiet... kind of left behind as the rest of the region rushes headlong into the 21st Century and globalization. Roland says Yangon reminds him of Havana in many ways.

It is easy, fast and cheap to get a visa directly from the visa section of the consulate in Washington, DC-- way smoother, quicker and far less expensive than working with the outsourced visa company India now forces you to work with to get a visa for that country. We flew Air Asia from Bangkok, a kind of Southwest Airlines for SE Asia. It is cheap and only takes an hour and a 15 minutes. (The flight back was delayed for a few hours and they gave us a signed chit so that we can get our money back, an Air Asia policy for flights that are delayed for over 3 hours. (The guy who runs it, Tony Fernandes, was the head of our Malaysian company when I worked at Warner Brothers. He learned a lot more about customer service than most music industry execs ever did.)

The currency exchange system in Myanmar is a real mess. If there even is an "official rate" it's around 500 kyats for a dollar. But dollars are the preferred currency in Yangon-- as long as the bills are new and crisp and have no marks or tears-- and even taxi fares can be paid with them. The street rates of exchange vary between 1,000 and 1,500 per dollar (depending on your bargaining ability)-- a very wide disparity. The whole thing is kind of shady and bizarre and, for a normal tourist probably pretty disorienting. Few places accept credit cards and the ones that do, charge an exorbitant fee. When you leave the country you pay a $10 airport exit tax. They want it in dollars. If you insist on paying it in worthless kyats (which can't be exchanged outside the country for any real currencies), they charge you 16,000-- not just far more than the "official rate," but more than the best black market rate!

On the other hand, we found the December weather absolutely fantastic-- warmer than Delhi and cooler than Bangkok. Bangkok is hot and steamy, never under 90 with lots of humidity. Yangon is dry and in the 80's. It gets hot in the sun in the afternoons but it's pretty comfortable and without the hellish man-made weather of Bangkok.

Part II next time I get to a computer.

THERE ARE STILL JEWS IN YANGON, MYANMAR!

I travel with my pal Roland a lot and he loves going to strange and exotic places, as I do. He also likes checking out weird scenes like synagogues in bizarre countries. Recently I wrote a post about the remnants of the Jewish community in Cochin in Kerala, India. In 1991 we were traipsing around Egypt and Roland talked me into getting on a Sinai bus for a dusty drive to see the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem. A few years later he even managed to find an Iraqi synagogue in Singapore and 3 days before it was blown up, a synagogue in Istanbul. He's an atheist whose distant ancestors he thinks were Catholic (he's unsure).

Anyway, now we're in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar (formerly Burma) and a less "Jewish place" you could never imagine. I thought about looking into it and thought, "Nah; not a chance." I was wrong. We were wandering around in a squalid Muslim neighborhood this morning when all of a sudden we see a star of David and Hebrew writing on a building.

It isn't "officially" a synagogue any longer. There are only 8 Jewish families left in town, most of them having fled when the Japanese took over in 1942 and the rest when the nationalistic socialists got control in the early 50s. The last rabbi left in 1963. So officially the synagogue is a museum and community center. There's a trustee instead of a rabbi, Moses Samuels, who helps keep the joint going and he has a son in NYC, Sammy who graduated from Yeshiva University and says he plans to return to Yangon and run it after his father. The official name is Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue and it' on 26th Street, not that far from the Bogyoke Market.

There weren't any Jews around, just a Burmese caretaker. Later a Canadian Jewish tourist from Thunder Bay wandered by. We saw pictures of Sammy Samuels and he looks Burmese. Outside I asked a couple of guys lounging on the street who looked like Al-Qaeda recruits if they were Jews and they giggled.