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Hahaha, what the Hell. I'll have to run that one by the special lady friend and see what comes back.
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Jan 29, 2014 10:39
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Is there any good KTV that doesn't come with women? Just want to drink beer and rock out with friends.
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Jan 29, 2014 11:30
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There are a ton of them, yeah. Any large restaurant that has separate rooms for karaoke. Pretty much every main road running out of town has a ton of these near the suburbs. In-town there are plenty too, but the center of Bangkok is so dense that they're harder to spot. Areas like Bang Na or Nakhon In in Nonthaburi or Rangsit are full of this kind of thing. Rama III, in town near Silom, would probably have a bunch. EDIT: Ah, I think Narathiwat South of Sathorn has a number of them on the left, near the university bars.
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Jan 29, 2014 11:33
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But are all the songs in Thai or do they have some English? I seriously unironically wish that Asian karaoke would become a widespread thing in the states. The way the US does karaoke is a travesty. Thank god for smoky Korean bars/restaurants in college towns.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:11
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Yeah, heh. We had a place in Houston that was for-real Asian style. Kinda fun. As for the songs. I swear to God, short of the true bamboo-wall Isaan karaoke joints that are 100% for farmers, every place I've ever been has at least Sinatra and usually a bunch of crap - John Denver, Billy Joel, Tom Jones, etc.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:38
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Are you kidding me? American style karaoke is the best. Hiding in little karaoke 'boxes' is lame. If someone's not belting (I wrote belching first) out Don't Stop Believing at a drunken disordered/disorderly chorus at some point in the night, it's not good karaoke.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:43
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We may have had different Asian karaoke experiences, heh. Mine usually involves a room full of people and having to wait 30 minutes for an incredibly drunk old man who has dressed up for the occasion to stumble off stage after 5 songs in a row.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:48
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That sounds way better. Korean style karaoke is in little rooms. Most Korean social interaction is set up so as to prohibit people from meeting each other, unless through mutual acquaintances.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:50
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quote:Hiding in little karaoke 'boxes' is lame. If someone's not belting (I wrote belching first) out Don't Stop Believing at a drunken disordered/disorderly chorus at some point in the night, it's not good karaoke.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:52
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Oracle posted:You speak as if these two things were mutually exclusive. Forgot to say "strangers" I guess. The key is that you get to meet new drunken idiots.
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Jan 29, 2014 18:01
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I quite liked the Vietnam karaoke experience, they have them in public (restaurants usually) but you also get the isolated rooms, which I prefer. I don't really enjoy making a fool of myself in front of a huge crowd so just having a bunch of friends, plates of fruits and a full crate of beers in a closed room is perfect. I've never tried the "karaoke om", where you get girls you can pet and hug in between songs, which sounds pretty lame.
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Jan 29, 2014 18:03
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eviljelly posted:Are you kidding me? American style karaoke is the best. Hiding in little karaoke 'boxes' is lame. If someone's not belting (I wrote belching first) out Don't Stop Believing at a drunken disordered/disorderly chorus at some point in the night, it's not good karaoke. This is how it's done in Finland. No one really have the guts to do it sober, so everyone is horribly drunk. It's a god drat trainwreck. 8/10 it's pretty horrible but now and again someone just shows up and blows everyone away. I have never been drunk enough to do it.
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Jan 29, 2014 18:23
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Chair Huxtable posted:Edit: My boy taught me a really great Thai phrase: Chai fun chai, ku yo chai. (That's my best approximation). It means "man gently caress man, is a great man." I thought he was making it up until he said it to another teacher's boyfriend, and he just nodded intelligently and said "Yes. Man gently caress woman is normal man." The "yo" should be "yod" (pronounced like yawd). Other than that, it sounds about right. Yod means top, in the many meanings of top. The closer translation would be like "(I am) man loving man, (hence) I (am) top/great man." and in this case, this "great man" is the giving participant.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:19
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Any HK goons on WeChat other than Caberham?
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Jan 30, 2014 00:57
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Fine, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to  China group has 51, hk group from 15 ~ 20
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Jan 30, 2014 01:07
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spittoon posted:Looking at 10ish days in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo) in mid April, does anyone have any tips? We mainly want to get in a couple of dives and peep some terrestrial wildlife. Anyone climbed Mt. Kinabalu? I nearly made it to the top, but the enormous head cold I thought I was fighting off combined with minor altitude sickness and I wasn't allowed to go any higher than the overnight rest house. In hindsight, it was pretty stupid of me to even attempt the walk. Pro tip: spend a night at the base of the mountain to acclimatise to the altitude, rather than go from sea level at Kota Kinabalu straight into the climb. Other than that, it's not too difficult. It's a long uphill walk on some pretty imaginatively constructed stairs, and it takes a while, but anybody who is reasonably fit should be able to handle it. My training was playing golf three times a week (I walk and my course is kinda hilly) and that's it. It does get cold so take a jacket and climb in pants (  ). Don't take hiking boots - they're too heavy and are largely unnecessary. I used cross trainers. Make sure you have enough grip to handle wet and slippery rocks.From memory you begin the climb around 11am in order to get to the overnight rest house by about 4 or 5pm, and eat there before going to bed early. You then start the push to the summit around 3am in order to get there for sunrise. Guides are mandatory, porters are optional. I'll do it again one day. In fact I was supposed to be doing it this week but life conspired to keep me from Borneo for a little longer. Borneo is awesome. I'm not a big fan of Kota Kinabalu (mostly aesthetically - the history is interesting and the food is great but nearly the entire city was destroyed in World War 2 and was rebuilt in unimaginative concrete slab style) but if you get a chance to go to Sarawak, Kuching is a great city. Other things worth checking out are Gunung Mulu, Niah caves, the Kelabit Highlands, and hanging out with some Iban at Belaga.
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Jan 30, 2014 01:44
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So I'm looking at one way flights back to Bangkok and I can get a long layover in Taipei for not too much over the cheapest flight (which has 4 hours in Manila and I know how much Manila sucks because of this thread). Is Taipei worth visiting for a day to see the city? I'd be there during the day.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:11
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I'd do it. I don't recall anyone saying Taipei is amazing, but no one complains either. You can get a picture in front of the Takeout 101 building.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:13
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SEA goon in wechat, I will be out with friends for lunch. not sure if you are up.Finch! posted:I nearly made it to the top Man I really want to do that, but somehow I end up going to cities all the time  Tomato Soup posted:Is Taipei worth visiting for a day to see the city? I'd be there during the day. The bus to the city centre takes an hour, but Taipei is decent. A bit of a sprawl like LA but still accessible. Of course HK is the cooler city  I will be in anime land  from feb 3- feb 9.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:18
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spittoon posted:Looking at 10ish days in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo) in mid April, does anyone have any tips? We mainly want to get in a couple of dives and peep some terrestrial wildlife. Anyone climbed Mt. Kinabalu? I did, a bit over 5 years ago now. Finch! largely nailed it. The mountain is not a difficult climb, but you should have good treads on your sneakers, and be warned that it does get quite cold up there. When we started out at the overnight lodge before sunrise, it was 3 celsius, IIRC, and it only got colder as you went closer to the top with still no sunlight. It was totally neat and I'm very glad I did it but god loving drat was I unprepared for how cold I would be (we all rented fleece jackets, gloves, and facemasks), and that made it pretty miserable. We waited til sunrise, took a dozen pictures, and then scrambled right the gently caress back down. The other thing I might add is that a lot of the mountain has been cut into stairs. This is helpful on the way up, but on the way down, beware if you have any knee problems and maybe be sure to bring a knee brace or pop some Aleve before hand or something. But, again, it's really not a very difficult climb. While we were going up, we were getting passed by local porters who were doing it in flip-flops toting 70+lb burdens. The only thing I might disagree with Finch over is the need to stay at a lodge at the base on the night before. We took a van from KK the morning of and none of us had any issues. The overnight lodge at Laban Rata is only slightly above 3k meters, so you got a good chunk of time for acclimatization if you start at a decent time in the morning, and it's not like you spend very long at the peak anyhow. Also, just remembered an important bit of information. I don't know if April is high season, but if it is, you need to call ahead and make a reservation for Laban Rata (the lodge) as soon as you know what dates you'll be there. Don't wait until a few days before. We didn't know we had to and tried to make a reservation a day before and were told that there was no chance of getting a bed and we'd have to wait to see if we could even get a spot on the floor. It ended up working out but we almost couldn't go. Don't put that part off. We followed up the climb by going to a hot springs resort in the jungle at the base of the mountain. The hot springs (constructed by the Japanese during occupation in the 40s-- can't go for long without their onsen I guess) weren't really anything spectacular but it was a nice bit of rainforest, canopy walks, nice scenery, etc. We didn't get to do any diving, but we did go snorkeling at some of the islands off the coast of KK. It was a holiday so things were pretty chaotic out there with locals, but we walked around and found a few quieter beaches and it was nice. Also agreed that KK's food is a whole lot better than its architecture, though.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:36
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Tomato Soup posted:So I'm looking at one way flights back to Bangkok and I can get a long layover in Taipei for not too much over the cheapest flight (which has 4 hours in Manila and I know how much Manila sucks because of this thread). Is Taipei worth visiting for a day to see the city? I'd be there during the day. I lived in Taipei for a few months and it's a really cool city. Much less open to tourists than Bangkok but really where isn't. The night markets are great, the world's best museum of Chinese art is there, the nightlife is really nice and starts really late. There are also always a bunch of goons in Taipei. It's a night and day contrast to Mainland China, and if you're interested in Chinese fine arts it's where all of that stuff resides (well, there and Hong Kong, but Hong Kong has always been money first) -- and most remarkably resides with an unbroken connection to China's past. Excellent modern movie scene there too. Eat a stinky tofu.
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Jan 30, 2014 04:28
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Taipei is absolutely worth it. The food is mediocre to bad, but it's got some great temples, museums, and of course 101. Depending on weather and polution, the view from the top is really cool. I checked out the KTV in Mega Bangna and they seemed to have a decent selection of songs, not as good as Korea (Korea had a disproportionate number of European power metal bands in every song book). I prefer the KTV with a large group of friends because you can still get the drunken chorus of Piano Man going and you don't end up with that one rear end in a top hat who came by himself hoping to be "discovered".
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Jan 30, 2014 04:30
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The food in Taipei is awesome man what are you talking about.
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Jan 30, 2014 04:39
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Jan 30, 2014 04:47
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Sorry, it's just when comparing Taiwanese cuisine to the likes of Korean, Thai, Indian, etc, it comes off as just being fried crap with a pile of salt on the side. Yeah, there is good food to be had in Taiwan, but it typically isn't "Taiwanese". Meat on a stick is the same everywhere and a lot of the noodles are explicitly Japanese style. If you asked the average Taiwanese person what they ate on a daily basis, it would be "便當“ or "lunch box", which is an over-cooked piece of fried meat on a bed of rice with a side of boiled vegetables. It's about 50NT a box and tastes like how much it costs.
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Jan 30, 2014 05:07
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Taipei is worth a day, though the airport is out from the city so be prepared for a bit of a bus ride then MRT or about $30-35 USD for a taxi to the centre. The National Palace Museum is probably what I'd do if I just had a day and wanted to do something touristy, since the nationalists loaded up all the good art from the mainland and brought it over. Just don't judge the Taiwanese by the Chinese people you run into (literally) in the museum, there's a lot of mainland tourists. And the food is great in Taipei, with just one day I think most people would agree you should have dumplings for lunch at Din Tai Fung. Wait, no, goons will want you to eat stinky tofu and congealed pigs blood. But Din Tai Fung is nice just for the novelty of 'service' in a restaurant in Asia. There's also a Taiwan thread if you decide to look into it more.
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Jan 30, 2014 07:36
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Taiwanese food is the worst type of food in Malaysia. I like Din Tai Fung though but that's not really Taiwanese, it just comes from there. Taiwanese is typically fried spam with noodles or weird toast with white sauce, sausage and weird almost plastic vegetables mixed into it or loving weird cheese and rice mixtures of fried turds. Seriously it's loving horrible fried poo poo. I don't know why those type of Taiwanese restaurants are so popular here but they have queues outside them all the time. It's bizarre. Never been to Taiwan 
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Jan 30, 2014 07:51
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Thanks guys! I think I'll definitely pay the little bit extra for the stopover in Taipei and I'll swing by the Taiwan thread when I book the ticket (hopefully the price doesn't shift too much).
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Jan 30, 2014 08:01
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Horatius Bonar posted:And the food is great in Taipei, with just one day I think most people would agree you should have dumplings for lunch at Din Tai Fung. Wait, no, goons will want you to eat stinky tofu and congealed pigs blood. But Din Tai Fung is nice just for the novelty of 'service' in a restaurant in Asia.
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Jan 30, 2014 10:40
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I think what we can take away from this at this point is that Taipei is basically Topeka or something and the food is so mediocre that people there are recommending you to go to Olive Garden or Applebees.
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Jan 30, 2014 10:59
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For years my friends and I have joked Taiwan is the Iowa of Asia. 新年快樂，恭喜發財，紅包拿來！謝謝洋鬼子
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Jan 30, 2014 12:09
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Horatius Bonar posted:But Din Tai Fung is nice just for the novelty of 'service' in a restaurant in Asia. Ooh, a friend brought me to Din Tai Fung in Kuala Lumpur, he couldn't believe there was one in that city. He had lived 6 six years in Shanghai and swore by that place. It was pretty loving good too! I had no idea they were even in the US, wow.
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Jan 30, 2014 13:30
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What the gently caress. I loved Taiwan and I like to think I'm a food enthusiast (I'm a sometime food writer, wine writer, wine judge, and restaurant writer (not critic) published in national publications and not just some random Wordpress blog with 4 blood related readers ) and I thought the food in Taiwan was excellent. There's a lot of fried junk but disregard that and it's a great place to eat. It's not on the same level as Malaysia, Thailand, or Singapore, but it's certainly a rival, in my experience, for Hong Kong.... but it's also completely different to Hong Kong. I think the main difference is that I found good food more accessible in Taiwan, mostly because it was a very friendly place - much more so than I found Hong Kong. But I was mostly drunk, so who knows? A good insight to eating in Taiwan is given here: http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/taiwan/ I really did like Taiwan, and Taipei in particular. It's a smaller and less ultra modern version of Tokyo, with much more of a Chinese influence, and some really retro poo poo like some of the subway stations and occasional pieces of architecture. It's well worth a day or three. I had no plans and stayed for a week, mostly eating and sightseeing, and I can't wait to go back. CronoGamer posted:The only thing I might disagree with Finch over is the need to stay at a lodge at the base on the night before. We took a van from KK the morning of and none of us had any issues. The overnight lodge at Laban Rata is only slightly above 3k meters, so you got a good chunk of time for acclimatization if you start at a decent time in the morning, and it's not like you spend very long at the peak anyhow. Yeah, in hindsight I think the only reason I have recommended this to people is because I was unwell before I tried to climb the mountain. Most people should be fine, but I still think it wouldn't hurt to acclimatise a little more than the usual minibus -> climb thing allows. Depends on time and money budgets, I guess. I'll do it when I go back, but it's probably unnecessary. A head cold combined with the altitude meant I was not a very well man.
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Jan 30, 2014 13:45
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I assume you guys are skipping Vietnam in the food comparison because it's so far above the rest
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Jan 30, 2014 13:56
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While I think Thai food is objectively better, somehow I miss Vietnamese food a lot more (food and coffee are the only good things about Vietnam)
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Jan 30, 2014 15:16
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Anarkii posted:I assume you guys are skipping Vietnam in the food comparison because it's so far above the rest At least compared to any Chinese food, hell yes.
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Jan 30, 2014 15:28
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ReindeerF posted:I think what we can take away from this at this point is that Taipei is basically Topeka or something and the food is so mediocre that people there are recommending you to go to Olive Garden or Applebees. I knew goons would have opinions about Din Tai Fung, but seriously it's good. And it's better in Taiwan. I had DTF in Hong Kong, Kowloon side, and it was not even close to the quality of the Taipei Dongmen location. Anyways, eating at the original Olive Garden is still bragging rights There's great food, but because I can't read Chinese I have no idea what the names of places are, when they even have names. My directions would be "get off the metro at exit 3, go past the 7-11, turn left, take the next alley on the left, then you'll see a dude with some kind of Taiwanese pulled pork sandwich out of a steaming bucket on the side of the alley, so point at him and say 'one'. It's the best in the city." The night markets are great for food but only at night, so no good for a layover visit.
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Jan 30, 2014 17:11
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The flight I was looking at leaves Taipei at 10:15 PM so I might be able to catch the beginning of the night market if I'm lucky before I have to rush back to the airport. And now I'm craving Vietnamese but yelp says the places near me are pretty much meh 
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Jan 30, 2014 17:52
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Tomato Soup posted:And now I'm craving Vietnamese but yelp says the places near me are pretty much meh Ugh you know what the worst is? I was craving Thai food so I went to the Asian store and bought some green curry paste (I know, it was prepackaged so I should've know... but it has pretty much all just the regular ingredients, no MSG or poo poo like that) and it's just not at all the same. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Did I mention I live in a country/region/city where they're so unable to differentiate between different Asian foods that they have a SUSHI joint called "Same Same" and where the least worst Thai food I've had was at a food court restaurant called Thai|Curry|Delhi? 
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Jan 30, 2014 18:06
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eviljelly posted:Ugh you know what the worst is? I was craving Thai food so I went to the Asian store and bought some green curry paste (I know, it was prepackaged so I should've know... but it has pretty much all just the regular ingredients, no MSG or poo poo like that) and it's just not at all the same. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Oh god, I feel for you. I went to school in DC and most of the Asian places in the city were fusion crap (there were some decent ones way out in the burbs but too much effort). I'm in SF bay area so I only really need to go a bit further out for some decent stuff. There's apparently a decent Thai place in my city and a Lao place with larb like 20 minutes away in Oakland with some other decent Vietnamese places nearby.
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Jan 30, 2014 19:38
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