Palm Sugar, Spice & Everything Thai: Cooking Thai In Bangkok

Mmmmm. Spicy Thai peppers that are used in a variety of Thai foods.

We enter the dining room at Silom Cooking School. Immediately, the smell entered my nostrils and gave me a euphoric sensation. "What is that smell?" I asked the cooking instructor. The instructor, Nusi, a petite Thai woman with curly auburn hair, a neon green polo shirt with matching geek glasses, answered, "It's lemongrass." With a Thai smile, she said after, "You'll be cooking with that later." I smiled in return. Introduction to Silom It's one thing to love eating a certain type of cuisine. It's another to learn how to properly make it. That was the appeal of taking a Thai cooking course for me. This trip would mark my ... [Read More]

The Lone Cherry Blossom At Mt. Fuji

A view of Mt. Fuji from Chureito Pagoda in Fujigoko.

  Prior to August 2009 when I arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, to serve my three years here with the U.S. Navy, I had not been much of a world traveler or travel blogger. A few months before that August, I got my international feet wet by taking a cruise to the Bahamas and then flying to Frankfurt, Germany; and then taking trains to Bruges, Belgium and Paris, France. In those days, I was still buying Lonely Planet, Frommers, Fodors and Rick Steves' guidebooks to tell me what I should be seeing, where I should be eating and sleeping, and how to get around. Of course, I ... [Read More]