Blog Day 2006
Today is Blog Day. Like last year, we are once again celebrating one
of Blogophere's quirky charms, our linkiness. Bloggers all over the
world are introducing their readers to five new blogs, helping build
the ever denser web of connections in our world.
The Blog Day organizers encourage bloggers to reach out to those from cultures other than our own. But I think I'm going to do something a little different. A perpetual wanderer, I seem to have written more about elsewhere than about my own culture, so for this blog day I've decided to go back home to my roots. I'm going to introduce you to five blogs from Southeast Asia.
These five beautiful blogs not only tell great stories, but enrich them with photographs which are woven with their words to form a rich texture that is simply transporting.
Phnomenon
Phil Lees keeps a journal of his daily Phnomenon from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He won me over with his apt comment on "a strange backpacker myth that street food is the best food because it is somehow a more “authentic experience” for the traveler." He added "[e]xpecting that the food that the abject poor eat is going to be better or more “real” than the food that the slightly-less poor eat is insanity." I hear you bro. His post, Why Travelers dislike Khmer Food, displays a nuanced view and a deep understanding of foreign food culture that no amount of thrill-seeking eating will get you. Listen to him, Tony.
Eating Asia
Robyn Eckhart lives with her photographer husband in Malaysia and travels often in the region. She writes wonderfully about not only the food but the people and the culture that create it. The photographs that accompany the texts are deep, dark, rich in color and texture -simply heart-stoppingly beautiful. Robyn's blog is one of those that made me wish I could turn my computer into a well-worn leather-bound book so that I could snuggle in bed with it.
Sticky Rice
Two Australians, Mark Lowerson and Kate Henry, are the wiz kids behind this blog. Based in Hanoi, they document the food scene in that town with the kind of passion and zeal that will make you drool over the description and the photos. The kind of stuff our old Graham used to do before he got all big and famous and picked up and moved to France and all that jazz.
Rambling Spoon
By Karen Coates, an Asia correspondent for Gourmet magazine. She is based in Chiang Mai, in the North of Thailand. I've only discovered her blog recently, thanks to a link from Robyn, but her post, And We Eat the Pig, won me over completely.
Real Thai
Not a small amount of irony in the name of this blog written by a White boy, mind you. But this particular White boy happens to live in Thailand, adore the country and the food –and one girl in particular, or so I heard- and speak the language so well he was quicker to identify a tray of obscure Thai greens than even someone who grew up there –who shall, of course, remain nameless. A photographer by trade, Austin always has an eye for something visually captivating.
Check out these blogs, and give them a hello from me. Happy blogging, everyone!
