First off, Tokyo. Returned to my favorite ramen place in the entire world, So Kan To.

I don’t think I really need to talk again about the attention to detail to making a simple pork broth noodle soup – I mean there’s entire movies which state it more eloquently than I can in my simple blog. But the pork toru buta ramen is reason enough to move to Tokyo.

Of course, some katsu-don was eaten.

Cyndi Lauper is coming! (to Japan)

It was SNOWING in Tokyo

Then we headed up to Nagano – Hakuba where it was snowing even more!

Evan at lunch

The water was delicious.

The Japanese face mask – very useful when it was snowing.

Then we had some yakitori – which was amazing

And then the second night, we had an amazing chanko-nabe meal. That’s right sumo wrestler food. This was so unbelievably tasty, and yet an under-represented portion of Japanese cuisine. I mean I had only heard of it via Tony Bourdain’s book – but I’ve never seen a chanko-nabe restaurant outside of Japan, but now I’ll be on the look-out. It’s basically Japanese hot-pot, with a heavy focus on vegetables, chicken and more vegetables. Then the post-cooking broth is used to make soba and the diner finishes off with a big bowl of soba noodles. During a sumo tournament, wrestlers only eat it with chicken, but since neither Evan nor I were in line to complete in a sumo tournament, there were also pork meatballs.

More snow.

A return to Tokyo meant a return to Hina Sushi as well as Komen for more ramen.

Not really a whole lot of conclusions to draw except how much I enjoy Japan!

Normally I would have done something similar – however back in June, I had attended Habitat for Humanity’s Brick-o-lage fund raiser in Shanghai. My friend Eric who was head of the Shanghai office of Habitat had mentioned that if I was going to go on a Habitat trip, that the project in Yunnan was really the one to go on, so several months later . . . I went to Chahe, Pu’er, Yunnan to work on a Habitat Build.

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So on the Monday of the holiday week, I flew into Kunming and joined the 44 other volunteers (mainly from Hong Kong, but a good number from Shanghai as well – and a few other cities, including New York, Chengdu and Beijing). From Kunming, the village we were going to was a 6 hour bus ride south.

So once we reached the hotel in Chahe – it was time for bed. Then the next three days were filled with building (and demolition). The area where we were was extremely poor, with a per capita income of around 1500 RMB per year (a little bit over $200 USD). I did feel a bit guilty using a camera (and cell phone too) both of which were over 3 years of income for these families. Because the houses in this area are under threat by earthquake and also because they’re mainly built of mud brick, Habitat is working with the partner families to replace the unsafe housing with more sturdy concrete and brick based housing, and to that, us volunteers needed to build house foundations.

Normally in developed areas, foundations are poured concrete, however, up here in the village, foundations were made by hand (er, shovel and hoe actually) mixed concrete and very large river stones, on top of packed dirt. Making foundations by hand is a lot of muscle work, especially in the sub-tropical Yunnan sun.

But I had fantastic time, made lots of friends and will endeavor to go on another Habitat trip as soon as possible. In spite of the hard work – or quite possibly because of it, the trip was as rewarding and interesting as any vacation I’ve ever been on. Despite some organizational hiccups and a less-than-stellar hotel, I would wholeheartedly recommend a volunteer stint with Habitat to anyone. It was well worth the donation of time and money, and I hope know that the partner family will really be appreciative of presence.

Here are some photos:

Building foundation by hand (pay no attention to the concrete mixer in the background – we didn’t use it)

This gives you an idea of what kind of area the village (and build was located in)

As part of the build, we also met and interacted with a lot of the villagers.

Here are the homeowners of one of the build sites:

The village was a Hani Minority village and on the second day lunch, the women came dressed in Hani traditional clothing so they could teach us a Hani dance.

This was my small team:

and the entire build with the villagers

Habitat also brought a celebrity ambassador – Hong Kong pop singer (yeah, I’ve never heard of him) William Chan

They made sure everyone got a certificate:

On the last day, we went to the nearby county seat and watched a Hani Cultural performance, however the most fun was after (and during to be honest) the performance we hung out and played with the village kids.

Also, we sang, er, Jingle Bells

If you’re interested – the rest of the photoset is here

Don Wai was about 30 minutes outside of town, behind a large temple located on the Nakon Chaisi River. And it was full of Bangkok residents all eagerly going to the suburbs to get a taste of market food.

The Nakon Chaisi

The famous duck soup on the floating restaurant

Celia getting Thai Iced Coffee

Big Wok Curry

Doremon and Nemo

After walking around the market, taking a boat ride and snacking for an hour – we then got in cars and went to a restaurant near the Bangkok Police Academy (yeah. I don’t know where that is either. But it was on a river) and had lunch. Wonderful! Full of giant prawns, fish cakes, a pork knuckle, sour soup.

This last aspect is highly recommended. Find yourself some Thai family and have them take you out and order food.

[It would be cliched and trite to use the Dead Kennedys song title for this post - besides I used all those references on Twitter and Facebook when I was actually there.]

About 1.5 years ago, my friend Brian emailed me – Southeast Asia. May 2011. Be There.

So through some not-so-careful planning, I ended up flying to down to meet him and Ashley for what was supposed to be dinner and breakfast, but ended up just being breakfast, but I was in Siem Reap!

Spoiler alert: Siem Reap is now my favorite chill little backpacker town in South East Asia. For some reason the parade of backpackers looking ridiculous in their white-guy dreadlocks or Thai fisherman pants didn’t annoy me like they usually do. For some reason the streets full of urchins trying to sell you cold drinks, postcards, magnets or Khmer scarves weren’t so annoying. I think its because the town was so charming – but I think also the temples were the greatest thing I’ve seen.

So, temples. Siem Reap is rife with them. Angkor Wat, everyone has heard of. The largest religious complex in the world. Next to that is the royal city of Angkor Thom, the jungle complex of Ta Prohm (featured in the Tomb Raider movie with Angelina Jolie), Pre Rup – let’s just say there are a lot of temples. Surprisingly, despite the abundance of temple hopping, I did not get temple’d out.

Here are some photos:

Bayon:

Ta Prohm (which was my favorite temple)

Angkor Wat:

Beng Mealea

Preah Kahn

Pre Rup

There are over 350 photos here.

Still to come, your humble author talks about Cambodia food (thumbs down) and taking a helicopter ride (thumbs way up)

Meeting down in Newport at the Bear Flag Fish Company, Bryan took charge of the ordering, making sure to get the poke. From wikipedia, poke is:

Modern poke typically consists of cubed ?ahi (yellowfin tuna) sashimi marinated with sea salt, a small amount of soy sauce, inamona (roasted crushed candlenut), sesame oil, limu seaweed, and chopped chili pepper.

It was friggin’ delicious. And everybody on Yelp! rightfully recommended it highly.

Bryan getting ready to enjoy the poke before the fish tacos arrived.

But the main event? The fish tacos? Absolutely fantastic. Fresh fresh fresh ingredients. Plentiful avocados, fresh tortillas, and enough of the freshest fish this side of tsukuji market.

Bear Flag Fish Company
407 31st St
Newport Beach, CA 92663
(949) 673-3474
About $10 USD/person

one of the joys of going back to california is the huge variety of food from all over the world available. authentic food.

but sometimes, sometimes, you are just craving some dumbed-down american version of that nation’s cuisine. me? i love cheesy, big plated mexican food – the type you get from chevy’s or el torito or similar family style tex-mex places.

the week after new year’s, i was in berkeley with my cousin and her husband to watch my university take on the stanford university cardinal in a game of basketball. after a super satisfying beatdown, we worked up an appetite. i had mentioned i wanted mexican food – actually i wanted a burrito – but my cousin was horrified when i said that i had never heard of juan’s, which has apprently been around forever.

so celia and joe’s explained juan’s as what a restaurant like chevy’s aspired to be. so, i readily agreed to the divergence away from burritos and we headed to juan’s.

first thing – it was crowded, which is a great sign. the faux-wood paneling and random decorations dating from the 70s and formica tables were reminiscent of the mexican food places i ate in growing up in la – where menus were in spanish first. and lots of sizzling plates – it spelled good things ahead.

i ordered the carnitas which is pork fried in lard (well, if done traditionally), my cousin got the enchiladas and my cousin in law got the taco plate.

i love mexican food, but sometimes, the presentation on tex mex food makes it look like a gigantic mess. here are my carnitas:

and the enchilada:

i’ll be honest. the carnitas were not a winner. they were expensive ($16 if i remember correctly), tough and stringy. and really, not great. but what was great was the atmosphere (loud and drunken), the chips (freshly fried flour AND corn tortilla chips with two types of salsa – a salsa roja – a cooked red salsa, and a pico de gallo – which is more raw tomatoes, onions and chilis. and of course, horchata, which is my favorite – it’s a drink made of ground rice and almonds.

horchata and TWO types of chips:

so yeah, juan’s place. great atmosphere, but only so-so follow through and expensive. but it’s apparently a berkeley institution.

941 Carleton Street
Berkeley, CA 94710-2636
(510) 845-6904

gregory and christie were kind enough to invite me over for pizza and watching the rose bowl on new year’s day. it was good to just hang out in someone’s house and watch football.

spinach, half ham and cheese on trader joe’s homemade garlic pizza crust with vodka red sauce. thanks chris!

one of the great things about being back in california for the holidays is that i got to attend my cousin celia‘s annual crab feed.

crab might be my very favorite food of all time. i like it prepared hong kong typhoon style, or chinese style with ginger and oil or in fried rice (in the philippines, or the thai restaurant in rat alley in hong kong) but what i like the best is dungeness (off the north american pacific coast from san francisco north to vancouver) straight boiled and eaten plain. really. it’s the best, and celia’s crab feed is the best opportunity to fill myself full of crab.

not crab, but prime rib – for those non-crab eaters.

cleaning the crab

crab death is in the near future:

chinese sticky rice with chinese preserved sausage

crabs!

prime rib

dinner table

actually since i’m here, i’ll get to take in another crab feed in two weekends. yum yum yum.

#3 by [Terence], on Flickr”>

these cal seniors reminded us just how old we were. they were born when we were in high school.

post game – we’re obviously broken up about the loss to the utes.