NOV
25

baipai_cooking.jpgImmerse Yourself In Local Flavours By Attending Cooking School

Travelers to Asia often emerge from their journeys telling tales of mouth-watering gastronomic experiences. Each destination in Asia offers its own unique blend and fusion of flavours and there may be no better way to assault the senses and the palette than taking a class at a local cooking school.

That's exactly what well known bloggers, Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke did on their first day in Bangkok. They attended the Baipai Thai Cooking School for a half-day class.

Though it was our first day in Bangkok, we dove right into the action by heading to the Baipai Cooking School for a half-day of Thai cooking classes. A friend of Jason's from Minneapolis recommended Baipai and I whole-heartedly second her recommendation! It was simply a wonderful experience.

It was a great class. Not only did I learn how to prepare some traditional Thai dishes, I also learned about new ingredients and I'm now inspired to incorporate some of the new flavors into the more traditional "American" dishes I like to prepare. And I can't wait to locate and buy Thai ingredients back home and recreate these meals again for dinner. My only wish? That I could go back every day for cooking classes at Baipai!

Meg is no rookie chef, so that is a pretty big endorsement. Sounds yummi!

Learning To Cook Like A Local [Megnut]

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JUL
27

asia_grace_bali.jpgAsia Grace: An Incredible Photographic Journey Through Asia Told By Wired Co-Founder Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly is best known for helping kickstart Wired Magazine in 1993. However, before becoming a driving force in magazine publishing, Kelly was a wandering photojournalist. Kelly spent most of the 1970's photographing Asia for national publications. He later would act as publisher of Whole Earth Review and Whole Earth Catalogs (over a million were sold). Steve Jobs recently called the original version of Whole Earth Catalogs one of the bible's of his generation "It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions." After serving as Executive Editor of Wired for almost 7 years, he's now Editor-At-Large, a title that probably helped give KK the breathing room he needed to create this stunning book of photos from numerous jaunts to Asia in the 70's, 80's and 90's. A noteworthy collection, definitely worth a perusal.

(photo from 'Asia Grace')
Temple festival
Bali, Indonesia
This gathering is a fairly typical honoring at a local temple. There are piles of fruit and food offerings. Tiny umbrellas. Colorful skirts. Incense. Music. And kids running around. This particular one occured in Ubud. Despite the high volume of tourists that Baii sees (and has seen over the past century) these festivals are not displays for tourists, but for thed Balinese, and there are enough happening each week that they don't draw many tourists.

On the book's production...
While the order is roughly west to east, country by country, the book's sequence occasionally departs from that constraint. Since I would often dash back and forth across borders to follow the weather or to game the visa requirements, sometimes the images in the book will jump from one country set to another, not to follow my travels but to fit into a visual rhythm. In general, though, they continue to drift eastwards - which has been the general drift of my heart.

My method of shooting was simple: smile, shoot first, ask questions later. It seemed to work. I spent enormous amounts of time hanging around places waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it did, often it didn't. Further years were spent in the back of local buses waiting to leave. I learned a lot, but the truth is, a lot of what I photographed I have only a vague notion of what was really going on. Asia is complex, infinitely deep, and I was just a kid with a camera. I slept in local inns; I ate whatever was being served, and yes, I drank the water anywhere the natives did. I got sick only once, in Katmandu - hepatitis A.

Asia Grace [Amazon]
Photo of the Day: (7/25/05) [Gadling]
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says [Stanford]
Temple Festival: Kevin, Kelly - Asia Grace [Photo Credit]

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