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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3499 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I like that you gave the example of India. It is filled with instances of "place vs place". If anything, Kashmir is the more recognized version of 'place vs place' within India. Kashmir is well known, but the political instability around the region has made it difficult to recommend as a tourist place.

Kolikkumalai India vs NaPali Hawaii.

The western ghats, eastern 7-sisters and Himalayan areas are seriously underexplored.

I especially see the 'place vs place' phenomenon with food.

Pate, Escargots, Foie Gras & Caviar are all seen as delicacies. On the other hand, goat brain (bheja), frogs legs, tripe, gizzards, etc. are all seen as disgusting offal eaten by barbarians.

I see a similar trend in American Carnival food vs east-asian street food. Indulgent street food vs shitty gas station food. Korean street food gets praised to high heaven, while the exact same stuff in the USA gets made fun of for being hill-billy food.

I'm going to leap to the defense of frog legs. I've had them in America and in China and they were good both times. If you like eating chicken meat off the bone, it's the same thing.

I am much less enthused about the pig kidneys and intestines that I ate. No thank you. That should be fed to dogs.

Fully agree on frogs legs.

Objectively a better chicken and wont be convinced otherwise.

Dunno about pig offal, but chicken liver takes amazing. It's my home town delicacy. I also cook really great gizzards, but theyre admitedly work.

Haggis is the mosy disgusting thing in planet earth and i really did give it a fair try.

Chicken liver mousse is great. I can't recommend it enough.

I was quite surprised years ago to find what we used to call corn dogs at the local (Japanese) convenience store, just up the aisle from the riceballs and sushi.

They're called American Dogs here.

The cheesy (meaning, made of mostly cheese) Korean Hattogu is a bizarre twist I would expect from the shittiest of the state fairs of my youth. But there people are, eating them for Instagram likes (or BeReal likes, that seems to be the newer thing.)

India is kind of like a mini US in the fact that it contains so many biomes ranging from deserts to rainforests to alpine tundra all within its borders.

The mountainous regions of South India are especially overlooked relative to the beauty of the landscapes and how much people pay to travel to similar or worse destinations elsewhere in the world. Kodaikanal looks like its a different planet.

Hardly any good beaches I'm afraid, and I've been to most. In contrast, my recent trip to Thailand had me blown away by how picturesque the beach and emerald waves were, it's like they threw a photoshop filter on reality there. The closest could be the beaches on the Andaman islands, but they're within spitting distance of Thailand anyway.

That's entirely ignoring the maintenance of most beaches, they're not usually clean.

I've seen enough nature documentaries to reflexively avoid all water features in the tropical Indo-Pacific. I like not having to worry about if that pretty seashell on the beach will kill me thank you very much.

To be fair, Thailand seems to have some of the best beaches in the world. The part that surprises me most about India is how many beaches we have, and how almost all of them are heavily 'used' (abused?). (to put it politely).

1.4 people and nature do not go well together.

In Thailand I’m always surprised how, even in tourist shitholes full of drunk Russians in Phuket, the beaches are pristine. They’ve made a real effort and it’s paid off in spades, to have such beautiful and clean beaches even in cheap tourist destinations in a country much poorer than, say, the Greek islands or Florida (where authorities can brute force things by using huge tourism revenue to hire huge numbers of staff to keep things clean-ish) is impressive.

I'm starting to think you have a story to tell us about Phuket, given that you bring up multitudes of drunk Russians every time the topic of Thailand comes up.

I love Phuket and go almost every year for a few days on the back half of a roadshow we do in Asia. And, really, the drunk Russians are unavoidable (but often very charming). Less loutish than the Brits, typically.

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