McDonald's Made Our Day

A little over a year ago, we were asked by a McDonald's (Mumbai) employee to fill out a customer comment form. We have been asked so many times to fill these things out that we had little expectation that things would change. Despite this, we decided to comment on the fact that Chicken McNuggets were not on the menu. This seemed to us an obvious crossover menu item from the US since they don't allow any beef products. Why these things hadn't made it to the menu here is beyond us.

Finally, our foresight had paid off. We walked into a McDonnald's yesterday and sure enough, a bright new sign read: "Introducing Chicken McNuggets." The barbeque sauce leaves quite a bit to be desired, but hey, we now have an alternative to "Maharaja Macs"!

Hua Hin

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Our next stop in Thailand was the small beach town of Hua Hin. Besides the beach, the best part of this town was the night market. This was a street devoted to knock-off clothing stalls, kitschy craft stalls, and an assortment of food stalls. We spent every night wandering up and down the street, looking, smelling and tasting; the food was incredible — we felt a little like Anthony Bourdain.

Bangkok Part 1

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A few weeks ago Hannah and I took a trip to Thailand and Malaysia. It was an amazing trip. We started in Bangkok, traveled down to the beach town of Hua Hin, and went further down to the extremely beautiful Thai island of Koh Tao. We crossed the border into Malaysia and landed in Penang, then down to Kuala Lumpur for a few days, and then back to Bangkok.

Stepping off the plane from Mumbai, Bangkok felt like stepping into the future. The new airport in Bangkok was clean, super modern and — god bless them — totally efficient. We spent our first day wandering around the area surrounding our hostel and then attempted to find our way to Chinatown. We are still not entirely sure if we made it, but the buildings were definitely decorated with chinese writing and there were roast ducks hanging in windows — who knows. Bangkok had some really great public transportation and we utilized just about all of them. We took taxis, buses, rickshaws (tuk-tuk), boats, and even the two-level sky train.

Our second full day in Bangkok we spent going to the various religious sites. We went to the Wat Phra Kaew home of the Emerald Buddha; the entire complex was unbelievable. Before entering the complex we were stopped by the king of Thailand's motorcade leaving the Grand Palace. We walked to the Wat Pho where the Reclining Buddha was, and after some wandering around lost a bit we found the Solid Gold Buddha. That night we made our way to Siam Square which is basically Bangkok's shopping mall epicenter. There must be something like eight, hyper-modern malls in this little area of the city, it's crazy. Let's just say, we enjoyed the air conditioning, a few Starbucks drinks and beef (finally!)cheeseburgers. Later that night we walked around our hostel and snacked on, what we think was the best thing about our trip: the street food.