Behold: the Mangosteen

I have fielded a few questions regarding the mangosteen, namely, qu'est-ce que c'est? I feel it to be a kind of community service to enlighten readers of this blog as to the true nature of the mangosteen for it is truly an extraordinary fruit. Unfortunately I think its relative obscurity is a function of its price in markets outside the growing region.

Exhibit A.
Mangosteens en masse.
Purplish fruit, a bit smaller than a tangerine (the green numbers on the right), but larger than a grape.

Exhibit B.
Scale photograph.
Nothing makes sense without a standard reference point. I chose the queen of hearts because Queen Victoria died with her appetite for mangosteens unsated.

Exhibit C.
The Heart of the Mangosteen.

The flesh of the mangosteen is quite hard and to pierce it, a forceful prod with the thumb and a strong set of fingernails are required. If you’re lucky, your thumbnail will be stained scarlet.

Once the skin is off, the flesh of the mangosteen is revealed in its nondescript glory, resembling nothing so much as an undersized bulb of garlic. If things are as they should be, the flesh is opaque and as firm as a ripe peach. But what, I suspect you wonder, does it taste like? My friends, I can do no better than this: a mangosteen tastes like a mangosteen.

Other points of interest
Mangosteens and mangos have nothing in common but the letters m-a-n-g-o and a place in a tropical fruit basket. The botanical name of the mangosteen is Garcinia mangostana whereas the mango is uncommonly known as Magifera indica. Obviously.

The grandmother of a friend who I consider a Great Authority on Many Things warned him against guzzling too many mangosteens in his youth on account of the heat in the stomach that they could induce. I have eaten many mangosteens in the one sitting and haven’t found the heat in my stomach to be any more noteworthy than that hanging heavily in the air around me.

National Glory Sold Out

This man is called Mick. He is living in his own version of the fields of Elysium. I somewhat spontaneously accepted an invitation to play pool with a random chez Mick at the Kangaroo Sunset Bar in Vang Vieng.

I’d been on a bus for a number of hours trying to tune out of the clamour created by the proximity of a trio of nineteen year old lasses to a solo young male adventurer (not pictured) wearing a very impressive collection of plaited bands on his ankles and wrists.

Although this ragged young man was no doubt seeking to project the twenty first century sense of the term adventurer, overflowing with derring-do and swashbuckling devil-may-care-dom, I am deeply immersed in my nineteenth century reading program and so use the word adventurer in the derogatory manner that one of Trollope’s drawing room ladies might; that is, to denote a slightly opportunistic and unscrupulous player of scenes and people. The bus trip from Vientiane to Vang Vieng was not a long one, but listening to three scraggamuffins from the north of English squeal to gain their knight’s attention, giggle to retain it, and then simper on his every inane word took its toll on my patience. I may have huffed a little. I may have allowed my glasses to slip a little down my nose to as to facilitate a schoolmarmish glare over the top of the frames. In a moment of compassion, I wondered whether the kindest thing to do might not be to avail the young ladies of my worldly wisdom as to the evils of the patriarchal romance conspiracy. Cold detachment won out and I kept my own counsel.

I digress but only to demonstrate why I de-bussed in a mood of no small befrazzlement. Once my bed for the night was assured, I betook myself for a stroll in search of a meal with a view. Vang Vieng is famously viewy, being a small town perched on two rivers and surrounded by limestone cliffs and caves.
My book of travel guidance, as well as a couple of random articles I had read, told me that Vang Vieng is also famous for scores of bars and restaurants constantly screening reruns of Friends. I had dismissed this information as unreliable travel apocrypha. As I made my way through downtown Vang Vieng, I was dismayed to discover that there were in fact scores of bars and restaurants constantly screening reruns of Friends. Of all idiotic TV shows of the last decade to have on perpetual show, why Friends, the most idiotic of them all, the one responsible for the fame of Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer? Why not vary the pain and screen a selection of late-nineties mediocrities? A bit of Dawson’s Creek, a bit of Party of Five (hisssss), a bit of Gilmore Girls? There is much in this world which I do not understand.

It was not without difficulty that I found a lunch venue with a view and without Friends. I made several circuits of the town before I settled down and I couldn’t help but clock the league paraphernalia outside Mick’s bar. Finding a Rabbitohs supporter in the middle of Laos provoked a little twinge of wistful homesickness, I suppose, and my eyes rested on the exterior of the bar for just a few moments longer than they should. As is reasonably well known, I do not follow any code of football so this vaguely emotional response to the green and red of the South Sydney Bunnies can be taken as a sign of vulnerability.

My defences were clearly down and before I knew it, I found myself playing pool with a shell-shocked ex-army dude from Brisbane via Kabul, drinking beer, listening to the Divinyls and Australian Crawl with footy reruns screening in the background, shooting the breeze with Mick, and feeling considerably bemused. Under other circumstances, it is possible that I might have had troubles finding common ground with Mick – a man who left Mt Druitt a few years ago to marry a Lao woman and set up a bar for tourists, a man whose bar, biceps, and chest were covered in the various insignia of the Australian state – and Charles – a man devoted to all things military, passionate about the security business, and unconvincingly owning to a great regard for the teaching profession. Anyway, Mick and Charles behaved very graciously towards this refugee from the Friends crowd with no pool-playing skills and we all managed to get along quite nicely. For such, thankibus muchibus. There did, however, come a time when I thought it prudent to leave and I was only able to do so upon pledging that I would return expeditiously. I am sorry to say that I made this pledge with no intention of keeping it and thus sacrificed both personal and national honour. Had I returned, I might have been inducted an honorary Hero of the Sunset Bar, a Deadset Aussie (Expat) Legend.

just two links

It is pouring with rain outside. I don't have an umbrella and wound up knee-deep in mud trying to cross a road under reconstruction. I had to fish my trusty Birkenstocks out of the mud before they were sucked to oblivion. Fortunately, the internet cafes of Vientiane are mud-free dryzones. Two links.

a) Self explanatory. Deeply narcissistic.

b) Someone asked me to define postmodernism. If I could have, I would have sent them here.

No incommodality

Should my mortal form be less than ineluctable, should my immaterial side have to face up to the murky business of metempsychosis, I think I could cope with safe passage into the body of a Mekong catfish. This, hounds and harlots, is how I passed much of Bloomsday.

Of course, today, it’s back to the grind. And enough with the Joyce references.

Vegetables I have loved

Some people get up before sunrise to take photographs of temples in exactly the right light. I’m as snap happy as any Lonely Planeteer and so, for example, I was theoretically ready enough to get up extremely early in order to catch the Schwe Dagon pagoda in Yangon at sunrise. I set my faithful alarm clock for five am but unfortunately didn’t make it there till mid-morning. It probably would have been in my long term interest to have wandered around the Schwe Dagon complex a little earlier in the day. I’m convinced that permanent retinal damage was caused by the light reflected from the huge golden central pagoda and its bejewelled umbrella, not to mention the surrounding bevy of gilded stupas. This pattern – good intentions to rise early thwarted by a certain languor and succeeded by a mild and easily palliated regret – has been repeated enough times to make it a habit. It would seem that I am able to rise early only to make transport connections and then, perversely, usually find myself rising at least half an hour too early. So it is, however, that many golden photo opportunities have been lost. When slide night eventually ticks along, the section devoted to sweeping vistas of the sun in transit will almost solely be devoted to the setting of the sun. For this, I apologise in advance.

On the upside, those looking forward to photographs of vegetables in the raw will not be disappointed. Whilst my dedication to early morning shots of Significant Monuments (better left to the professionals, I say) can legitimately be questioned, I do lay claim to a surfeit of diligence when it comes to photographing fresh produce. So much so, indeed, that I predict I will have sufficient material to allocate an entire evening to an exciting display of Fruit and Vegetables Around the World. Here’s a preview of what’s in store. If only I had a fixed return date, you could book front row seats.

Eggplants of Phnom Penh

A feast for the eyes! Would that I had been schooled in the Dutch still life painting of the seventeenth century, then could I render with radiant dignity these deserving aubergine orbs.

A Veritable Cornucopia of Healing Greens, Phnom Penh

A banquet for the soul! Forget echinacaea! Is there any ache or pain, any whinge or whine, any cough or sniffle that could not be eased by immediate recourse to such a dazzling collection? Limes! Oyster mushrooms! Coriander! Shallots! Ginger! Assorted leafy greens! Paging Dr. Love?

Cheap Mangosteens, Chiang Rai

A balm for the racing humours! An unguent for the over-salted temper! If nothing else, this photograph memorialises the fact that you can buy a kilo of my new favourite fruit, the mangosteen, for less than a dollar in Chiang Rai. Queen Victoria offered a great reward to any Britisher who could cultivate a mangosteen on the bleak isles. As far as I know, she died a disappointed woman.

Pineapple Slices of Chiang Rai

Strangers in strange lands, be ye soothèd. Solid proof that thrills which are sweet and cheap do not need to be nasty.

Barbequed Bananes de la Vientiane

Superior snacks! Forget about fried bananas and baked bananas and banana splits and banana pancakes. When short sweet bananas roll over a slow grill, their sugars caramelise and ash adheres for vim. I do declare: the barbequed banana is the new sundried banana!

Laotians and Potions, Vientiane

It is as you suspect. I took this photograph of medicinal herbs and whatnots solely for the sake of a weak pun.

A regression only if we are speaking alphabetically

Significant news, chaps. Steel yourselves. Faced with this beastly tropical heat, I have been finding myself disinclined to drink martinis. In fact, to lay it bare, gin without tonic and loads of ice is a bit much for me to handle in this dashed climate. I’ve ordered a couple of martinis along the way but they have all turned tepid far too quickly. As we all know, apart from a hefty dose of alcohol, there is very little to recommend a warm martini of any variety. With or without an olive, shaken or stirred, wet or dry, clean or dirty, no matter how you mix them, martinis should not be served at room temperature, nor should they be consumed at blood temperature.

I have instead developed quite a taste for the margarita, a drink far more suited to the climate. Until not so long ago, being a little suspicious of tequila, I had characterised margaritas as a drink most suitable for squeal-ridden hen’s nights and had openly scoffed at the concept of the pre-made margarita slushy as – forgive me – a plebeian drink. In my ignorance, I equated margaritas with shonky Tex-Mex paraphernalia and its symptoms: stodgy nachos, sombreros, cacti, paunchy blokes, gluey burritos, bad Mexican accents, the shedding of inhibitions better kept intact, frosted blondes, regrettable dance floor scenes induced by even more regrettable tequila slammers and so on. You all know what I’m talking about.

In spite of all this, at some point during 2006, I became interested in both tequila and margaritas; I found myself suddenly able to appreciate the glorious synergy of tequila, lemon, and salt. Wise and wizened as I am now, living the starspangled dream of my new Twenties, I find the margarita to be an excellent cocktail for the tropics. Gin Fizz, Gin Schmizz; Mai Tai, Schmai Tai. Tequila is tremendously enlivening; lemon girds the immune system and protects against scurvy; salt replenishes electrolytes shed all too easily in the heat.

I arrived in Vientiane after a mighty long bus trip and was overcome with the desire for a margarita, so much so that I darkened the doors of an establishment called, wait for it, Tex-Mex Alexia, in order to satisfy my craving. The proprietors were no doubt laughing on the inside when they named their bar after a CNS disorder that causes the loss of ability to read. Hmmm, I wondered, is that a cactus I see struggling to maintain its dignity on the bar, or is it some straggly indigenous succulent previously unknown to me? The exposed clay detail on the bar, no doubt designed to take me back to my adobe hacienda, was pasted on, not entirely successfully. Kenny and Dolly were singing to each other overhead. These, my friends, are the perils of being a single woman fixated on a single drink. You find yourself alone in very dodgy bars in cities like Vientiane where there is no-one to call for company. It wasn’t till after I’d ordered my drink that I realised that I was in what seemed to be a girly bar. By that, I mean that I was the only girl paying for her own drink, and indeed the only girl not getting paid. Sigh.

What I’m discovering, however, is that the margarita is a very forgiving drink. By that I mean when I drink them, I can forgive a scene as sketchy as Kellett Lane at four on a Sunday morning, I can forgive décor as appealing as the Broadway carpark, and I can forgive a barman even klutzier than I am. Unlike many cocktails, provided all the basic ingredients make their way into or onto the glass, margaritas are hard to mess up. If your margarita is a bit warm, the lemon and salt cool things down. If it comes with ice, the tequila can soak up the melt. If it’s too strong, balancing the glass is a nice distraction. If one ingredient is poured with a heavy hand, it’s no problem as both tequila and triple sec (or cointreau or blue curacao or whatever) are palatable enough straight. Even the dodgiest bars just fade into the backdrop as you consider the niceties of the margarita in the abstract and the niceness of the margarita in your hand. Once I find myself in a cooler climate possessed of more powerful refrigeration systems it is likely that I’ll return to the chilly embrace of the martini but for now, amigos guapitos, cansámos juntos, Viva! Viva La Margarita!

tantara

Tantara and tirra lirra. I'm smiling my best golden toothed smile because 'tis Bloomsday in Vientiane. I've swapped the Mekong for the Liffey and soon will be exchanging Beer Lao and sticky rice whiskey for Guinness and Jamesons: rejoycing by means of cross-cultural alcoholic translation.

Alas, I'm having trouble uploading photos so my very exciting shots of tanks and barren plains and vegetables will have to wait a day or two.

Tanks for the memories

Making my way from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, I took a detour to Phonsavan to have a squiz at the Plain of Jars, Laos’ answer to Stonehenge. Hundreds of very large, two thousand year old jars are strewn across a bleak, high plain. They look like stone but they are actually made of some sort of cement mixed from ground animal skins and sugarcane and sand. No one is quite sure what they are doing there or how they got there: the locals are adamant that the plain houses a large collection of ancient whiskey jars and the archaeologists are equally insistent that they are sarcophagi. It’s a very odd place, not in any way spectacular but certainly disconcerting.



The Plain of Jars is situated in Xieng Khuang Province in the east of Laos, an area which was clusterbombed beyond oblivion during the war years. There are craters all over the hillsides and unexploded ordnance still being slowly swept out. A roaring trade in post-military scrap metal supplements the incomes of subsistence farmers, and old artillery shells get recycled as troughs for animals, as flowerpots and as decorations to impress naïve young ladies. This is a fragment of the munitions collection at my guesthouse, apparently all gathered in the area.

Whilst the philistine Americans were pouring bombs out of the sky, splitting the venerable whiskey pots and spilling the remains of the venerables into the fields, the Rooshians were doing their bit for the Laotians and adding to the artillery jetsam. Plenty of the war detritus collected is marked by the Cyrillic alphabet but nothing is as impressive or as large as the Russian tank lodged in a hillside near one of the Plain of Jars sites.

Many years ago, my father was, allegedly, in a position to buy a retired Leopard tank (large, WWII vintage) from a military museum not far from Albury. He was extremely eager to take up this opportunity, as I recollect and based his case on the fun my sisters and I would have playing in and around a backyard tank. I note that the Pike hermanas were not consulted as to the fun prospects of a tank. My mother sensibly vetoed the purchase, perhaps taking the very large dimensions of a Leopard tank into account and that was that, I grew up without a tank in the backyard.

When I got up close to the Russian tank, I could see Dad’s point a bit better. Hours of fun for the inquisitive and imaginative child here!

In fact, I felt compelled to shake off the weirdness of the Plain of Jars by means of a little tank clambering. Et voilà: fun!

adrift in the borderlands

All round, the transition from Thailand to Laos was pretty painless. I took a barge across the Mekong from Chiang Khong, Thailand to Huay Xai, Laos smiled at an official, got my passport stamped, changed some money and was in business, in Laos. I had hemmed and hawed a bit about the best way to tackle Laos. The romantic in me, generally repressed, and for good reason, was twittering that a two day boat trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang would be a suitably poetic entry into the country. The romantic in me did, however, take a bit of a battering after driving me to undertake twelve days of silent meditation on planks in Mandalay. Sitting on wooden planks on a boat in the sun surrounded by god only knows what companions could actually be a version of hell. Would it not be more sensible to take a one-hour flight from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang? The romantic won out and I booked a berth on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. Incidentally, I could have lived the lyrics of another vintage song by catching the slow boat to China from Chiang Saen.
Come to think of it, though, I was cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon.

Having installed myself on the boat, there was little to do but gaze at other boats, stare at the clouds, take in a bit of scenery and read. Charming, picturesque, etc etc.

There were two boxes of goon perched on the bar of the boat and whenever we stopped, kids would jump aboard with pineapple and beer for sale. My co-passengers were, for the most part, reasonably inoffensive human beings although I did notice that a higher concentration than normal of self-help books was weighing down the boat. Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway! The Present is a Present! Ditch Unnecessary Ballast! On board, there was also a large basket full of chickens which would not have passed muster with the R.S.P.C.A. They kept pretty quiet. The night was spent in a village called Pak Beng and of course when I saw this sign, I knew where I was going to eat.
Nothing like a clear delineation of domestic duties. The food was excellent chez Sivilai and I was very happy to discover that Beer Laos deserves its reputation. When we met the wife of the very loquacious owner, she seemed pretty quiet. It wasn’t until we had ordered that the owner merrily confessed that the cooking tonight was going to be done by his sister-in-law. His wife had gone into the hills with her mates, they had taken lots of beer with them and she was now too sloshed to cook. The arrangement almost struck me as egalitarian.

Laung Prabang rolled along easily enough. Adjectives like charming and quaint attach themselves to Luang Prabang pretty readily; so much had I heard of the delights of this town, I was getting ready to be the naysaying voice of reason and hate the place. Tough job, etc. Alas, I must bray with the herd. The town is beautiful, the guesthouses are cheap and clean, the food is excellent, the pace is relaxed… I twitched with delight when I was served this dish by the Mekong.
It’s posing as tofu with ginger but this is not at all the case. What it is is a handful of garlic cloves and loads of ginger stir-fried in rice wine with a little bit of tofu and a few token greens thrown in to add colour and movement. And the margaritas are delivered pint-glasses. In sum:

Things are notoriously laidback in Laos such that it would be a violation of the national ethos to try and convince this photo to rotate. Anyway, in spite of these ready delights, tomorrow I head south to Phonsavan bear witness to the Plain of Jars (sounds exciting, I know) before looping back through more scenery and faded colonial splendour to return to the charms of Luang Prabang.

Carbohydrate update

As is well known, I’m a committed consumer and defender of carbohydrates and have a particular interest in bread. As I readied myself to travel through South East Asia, I readied myself to forego effectively this dietary staple. Substituting rice and noodles for bread is no particularly arduous task and it is one to which I resigned myself without much fuss. After all, I’ll be in France in the not-too-distant future and there able to eat my body weight in baguette and fromage on a very regular basis. The bread in Burma was beyond awful: so sweet that it required salting to be palatable; so soft and aerated that it crumbled to nothing in a second and often mouldy. It was a great relief to discover the excellent breakfast soup, mohinga, and thereby obviate any need for bread. Thai bread was better than Burmese bread and it was possible in the big cities to find some decent loaves. Still, the default sliced bread wasn’t anything to get excited about.

Laos, however, has distinguished itself immediately by virtue of the available carbohydrates. Even though the current state of Laos didn’t exist in the colonial era but the area was the centre of French Indochina. Finally, we can isolate one unambiguously positive bequest of the colonial masters: the baguettes are spectacular! Bread which is chewy and salty and crusty and hearty all at once! I hadn’t realised that I had been so sorely deprived. Even better is that they are available everywhere and that butter seems to mean something beyond sweet margarine. I am very happy about all of this.

I cannot abandon myself completely to bread, however, as sticky rice, as opposed to plain old steamed rice, is a ubiquitous accompaniment. I am very partial to sticky rice. Some call Laos the Land of Lemongrass and Ginger. Me, I name it the Paradise of the Twin Carbohydrates, a title which sounds far more exotic and mysterious in Laotian.