anna_wing

On a recent trip to Bangkok to get my dengue vaccine (Qdenga, from Japan), I was delighted to find two of my favourite shops, which I lost when the mall they were in closed for renovation. And as a bonus, both of them are within walking distance of each other and the BTS!

Piklik, on the first floor of Ploenchit Centre on Sukhumvit Road sells what I can only describe as incredibly gorgeous, neo-Edwardian cotton or silk nightwear, overflowing with lace, ruffles, ribbons and embroidery.


https://www.piklik.net/women-s.html

They also have in the shop but not on the website, a selection of relatively plain but also gorgeous caftans in pleated Thai silk, which only need a bit of lace trim at sleeve-cuffs and neckline to pass for a tea-gown by Lucile.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy,_Lady_Duff-Gordon. )


GREEN COTTON, on the other hand, which I found on the ground floor of The Rich Walk (a shopping-centre attached to The Rich condo on Sukhumvit Soi 4), sells plain, very reasonably-priced, undyed cotton casual clothes of excellent quality, like light and largely unadorned cotton pyjamas, nightgowns, T-shirts, knickers, skirts and drawstring trousers, i.e. everything one would need for hot-climate informal wear. They also have really good, thick cotton socks, which I was glad to be able to stock up on in quantity, after buying one pair years ago on spec.

Both Ploenchit Centre and The Rich Walk are in between Ploenchit and Nana BTS stations, and as a bonus, the huge Siam Pharmacy is right next to Ploenchit BTS station, for all your medical needs. A terrifyingly large number of serious medicines are OTC in Thailand (most of them are manufactured there, which makes many generics particularly good value).

There is also a very good cat cafe on Sukhumvit soi 19 near the Asok BTS station, called Asok Pethouse Cat Cafe. Nice healthy rescue cats in a comfortable room to themselves with many cat-walks and sleeping places high up if they don't feel like socialising, a big window onto the street for constant amusement and a cat wheel for exercise. The cafe also has cats and kittens for adoption, and the cafe side has its own dedicated cat, who is basically the queen of the entire establishment.

The other day, Housekeeper made leftover stew i.e. from all the bits and pieces left over in the freezer and the fridge from previous dishes - frozen scallops, prawns and pork sausage, all braised deliciously together with garlic, carrots and barley. I ate it happily with brown rice and the local spinach-equivalent, stir-fried, but puzzled over the familiarity of the taste. And then I remembered.

In July 1997 I happened to be in Puerto Montt, down in southern Chile, on my way to the island of Chiloe for a short break to get away from the hideous air pollution of Santiago in winter. I was strolling along the shore (one of the many, many nice things about Chile was how safe it was for a lone woman wandering about), and found a curanto restaurant on one of the quays, just in time for lunch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curanto

They served curanto en olla, in a pot, rather than the classic hole-in-the-ground-lined-with-hot-stones, but properly done with all the layers, and even the pots were pretty exotic - huge black cauldrons keeping warm over the classic tiled charcoal/firewood stoves, each with a different combination of ingredients. I had the tipico - mussels, clams, pork, chicken, chewy flat dumplings and potatoes, all ladled into a big bowl with the fabulous broth on the side, lovely fresh bread and a bowl of pebre (the standard tomato-garlic-herb sauce you get everywhere in Chile). There was dessert too, something involving crispy dough with an orange sauce. I looked up my Chilean cookbook (I try to buy at least one local cookbook whenever I go somewhere new), and it was definitely sopaipillas with chancaca. It was a nice cloudy day, not too chilly, a great day for walking, which I really needed to do after stuffing myself.

Obviously what I've just been eating decades later and on the other side of the world was not the same, beyond the general concept of a surf-and-turf stew, but it was close enough to trigger the memory.

Best of all, Housekeeper made enough for at least two more reasonably sized meals, and the re-heating process will at least approximate the original's hours of simmering. It should be good with toast, too.

We might even try making the sopaipillas.

I don't often get to thrift/charity shops, since very poor developing countries rarely have the level of widespread affluence required to support this genre of shop. So when I got to Australia recently to visit friends and family, I indulged myself with a few fun days out with aunt, cousin, and old friend from univeresity. The Aussie versions are 'op-shops', short, I understand, for "opportunity shops". The range of charities involved is very wide. The Salvos (Salvation Army) and Vinnies (St Vincent de Paul, a Catholic charity) seem to be among the most widespread, but one can find random op-shops for all manner of causes. We visited one for epilepsy, one for animal protection, and a couple for cancer charities. I love them. They scratch the shopping itch for not too much money, and they have that essential element of uncertainty and excitement. And they're very good for training one's decision-making muscles, since it's "buy or buy not, there is no "think about it and come back tomorrow'".

Since Melbourne is an old, rich city, with several very rich suburbs, pickings are generally quite good. In previous visits, I acquired a beautiful 1950s Autumn Haze mink jacket for A$150 (though getting it cleaned cost a bit more, it was still a lot less than a new one), a gorgeous beaded collar for A$25 and a sweet Clarice Cliff soup-bowl for A$8. The latter was particularly satisfying because this time round I saw a side plate in the same pattern ('Corolla') in a veritable antique shop for A$150... over the years I've also picked up many metres of vintage lace trim, and a lot of exquisite handwork - doilies made from very delicate tatting and fine-thread crochet etc, presumably from people's deceased grandmothers, usually for a couple of dollars at most.

I don't usually buy clothes, but this time round, I was looking for old jeans to chop up and make into my own boro jacket (with sashiko and all). It was surprisingly hard to find good quality denim without stretch, even in the men's section, but with a bit of perseverence I got three large pairs for under A$10 each. And lots of old books, including things I'd read from my childhood (Richard Carpenter's novelisation of "Robin of Sherwood', that sort of thing etc), CDs (because I like to own my music, and if you're living somewhere with dodgy internet connections, streaming is not a viable thing) and DVDs, (ditto). I also got a couple of good leather men's belts, strong enough to hold a waist-bag, and a new-with-tags viscose sundress from a Fijian brand, in a beautiful red stylised leaf print, which will probably be turned into an office hot-weather dress by my dressmaker at some point (it was 2X, and turned out to be more than 2 metres of very nice fabric!).

If I were a young person starting out, I'd get at the very least all my crockery and cutlery from op-shops, and probably a lot of kitchenware too. The Noritake dinner service for six for A$150 was distinctly tempting, even now...

In most rich Asian countries, public benches divided into individual seats with armrests are not "hostile architecture" aimed at driving away the homeless, as perhaps they are in other countries. They are assistive technology for the elderly, who generally far outnumber the homeless, and quite often need arm support to stand up easily.

So go bugger yourself with the pineapple of your assumptions, youthful and ignorant (pre-COVID) tourist, desperately trying to show off how enlightened you are (I refuse to use 'woke', the grammatical horror of which makes my teeth hurt).

Mine is oden, which I first came across on a wet, rainy evening in Kyoto, when my companion and I were starving and had been shopping and sightseeing since lunch (it was only about 6 pm but felt much later). We fell into a tiny little neighbourhood bar run by a nice lady and her elderly mother, with three people in it, and room for five. We ordered shoju (friend) and tea (me), and after a while, noticed that there was a pot of broth simmering on a stove, and plates of random stuff sitting around. So after a bit of pointing, we each got a nice dish of assorted Things, with a ladleful of broth, and it was fabulous.

Specialist oden places have long menus of Things that can go into the broth. This place had the standard home-made Things: stewed white radish, soy-hard-boiled eggs, minced-pork stuffed cabbage rolls and assorted kinds of gluten, konyaku and tofu, which is more than good enough. It's not something you get a lot in standard Japanese restaurants outside Japan; I was told that this is because it's considered home cooking, and cheap, working-class food.

If you do it at home, the broth can be anything: dashi stock, made from either bonito flakes or dried mushroom (for vegetarians, and my own preference since I don't care for bonito flakes), pork-bone soup or chicken soup, even. For Things, I like big chunks of carrot and white radish, minced pork and bamboo dumplings (pork and mushroom dumplings are good too), and some tofu, either soft or the dried sheets, and some chopped spring onion. If you want some carbohydrate, you could add some noodles to soak up the last of the broth. Or crackers, or a rice-ball, or whatever.

Filling, savoury, comforting, healthy and delicious.

I've never bought anything from Etsy but I am Very Seriously Tempted by this:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/AisteAnaite?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=198571191&page=2#items

https://www.aisteanaite.com/en/collections

Each outfit can be made to measure, which is good, since I am probably a lot shorter than the average Lithuanian. This designer did inspire the random thought that perhaps the "Clothes that make you feel safe" thing may be a psychological effect more prevalent in cold climates, where wearing a lot of clothes does actually make you physically safer. It then occurred to me that literal safety clothing is mostly only worn in intrinsically hazardous environments. A bullet-proof vest would not actually make me feel safe in any environment where I actually had to wear one (safer, perhaps, but that's not quite the same thing...).

On the other hand, there is a definite sense of psychological comfort when I know that I'm both well and correctly dressed for the occasion and milieu (I can cope if I'm not, but it does require a bit of mental energy).

I spent a few days in Vilnius in winter, for work some years ago. The whole centre of the old city is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the nice thing is that it is still alive - there are shops and offices and flats and restaurants, it's not just a museum and tourist area (I have nothing against tourist areas, they are usually better policed). And Lithuania has lovely linen and very beautiful amber, so the shopping was good too. Food was a bit iffy, local cuisine-wise because of course Lithuanians eat Lithuanian food at home, not when they go out. I think the best meal we had was at an Uzbek restaurant... I did manage to buy some very nice honey-mead at the airport (my housekeeper used some of it to make a truly spectacular tiramisu), and some very tasty tinned venison.