Practical Asia travel: currencies, VPNs, food you must try, cross-border logistics.
A field guide to the 15 noodle dishes of Thailand, from 20-baht boat noodles at Victory Monument to northern Thai khao soi in Chiang Mai. With Thai names, noodle types, stall-by-stall picks in Bangkok, baht prices, and honest notes on which ones to detour for.
Patong Beach is one Phuket. The Old Town twenty minutes inland is another: Sino-Portuguese shophouses, moo hong pork belly braises, 1946 Hokkien noodles, and the spicier end of the southern Thai kitchen. Named restaurants, baht prices, honest opinions.
The smell of the Omicho fish market at nine in the morning, a bowl of jibuni in a black lacquer dish at a 1580s samurai home, gold-leaf ice cream in the old teahouse district, and the dense, two-hundred-and-eighty-year Maeda-clan food culture that holds it all together. Two days in Kanazawa, eating.
Kobe, Matsusaka, Omi, Hida, Miyazaki, Yonezawa, Sendai, Saga. A regional map of Japanese wagyu traditions, how they actually differ, and why the BMS grade matters more than the brand name on the menu.
Which of Japan most Japanese-feeling foods were actually invented somewhere else? Fifteen answers, ranging from Portuguese missionaries in 1543 to a naval cook improvising British beef stew for a homesick admiral.
A bowl of ramen in Sapporo looks like a completely different dish from a bowl in Fukuoka, because it is. A regional field guide to fifteen styles across Japan and where to try each at its source.
Layered okonomiyaki built cabbage by cabbage on the teppan at Okonomimura, Miyajima oysters grilled on sticks by the ferry pier, and the anago-meshi at a counter that has been slicing grilled sea eel since 1901.
I went to Sapporo for two days and stayed a week, and this guide is what I learned. Miso ramen at a standing counter in Susukino, soup curry that took me ten years to try, jingisukan over a dome plate, and the seafood market that opens at seven. Yen prices, subway lines, queue behaviour, a few ‘skip this’ takes.
Tokyo whisky bars with prices in yen, what to order (highball, mizuwari, neat), the big-name distilleries from Yamazaki to Chichibu, and when it is worth booking a tour. A practical guide for anyone who wants to drink Japanese whisky in Japan without getting ripped off.
Sake, decoded , grades explained in plain English, breweries worth a detour in Fushimi and Nada, Tokyo and Kyoto sake bars with yen prices, etiquette that matters around the cup, and why the best bottle you find in Japan is the one you can’t take home.
