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SE Asia (Page 17)

Malaysian food artist Samantha Lee serves up more platefuls of amazeballs

Imagine if your mom made you meals that became famous all over the world… you’d probably belong to the Clean Plate Club, right?

Malaysian food artist and mother of two Samantha Lee began by making Japanese lunch boxes (bento) in 2008 to encourage her elder daughter to eat independently. Bento boxes may be stylishly arranged and decorated to look like popular movie, TV or video game characters (kyaraben) or people, animals or buildings (oekakiben). There is some amazing bento art out there, but soon Lee was taking it to a new level on a daily basis.

Despite her lack of formal training, Lee’s creativity found an outlet in the incredibly detailed, cute and nutritious meals she painstakingly put together for her two girls, using only run-of-the-mill household tools like scissors and knives. She describes herself as “an ordinary, regular and average mom, crazy about making a mess in the kitchen.” Although she’s keeping her feet on the ground, her star has risen quickly in the international media in recent months, from Belgium to the Ukraine and all over the world. She now works as a kids party planner, doing sewing, crafting, baking and doodling in her spare time.

Check out her latest creations, including a step-by-step pictorial guide to crafting your own!

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This fish is so good you’ll literally s&#t

We can all agree that there are few things more embarrassing than sudden, public diarrhea.

If forgetting to zip your fly is a one on the scale of public embarrassment, and tripping down an entire flight of stairs is maybe a four, explosive diarrhea has got to be an 11 or 12. With this in mind, you’re really taking your social life in your hands when you eat this bizarre but incredibly delicious fish in front of friends.

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  • Oct 1, 2013

Snacking in Singapore — A Japanese visitor’s list of some favorite Singaporean snacks

In a previous article, I wrote about the amazing quantity and variety of mooncakes I encountered during my recent visit to Singapore. But of course, there are a host of other tasty treats to try in this island city-state. Now, although I’ve never lived in Singapore, I’ve made several trips to the country, and it probably doesn’t take very long for any visitor there to figure out that Singaporeans take their food very seriously.

Befitting a nation of people who are extremely passionate about food, there is no end to the number of high-end restaurants in Singapore serving cuisine of every kind, from gourmet Chinese food to fresh Japanese sushi and sashimi so mouth-watering that the quality is on par with or even surpasses anything you can find in Tokyo. But as you may expect, such fine dining is bound to be quite pricey.

Well, since there is already a multitude of information out there on well-known, smart restaurants, I thought I would share with you some treats I’ve tasted in Singapore that I thought were particularly delightful and at the same time won’t leave a huge dent in your wallet. Tasty and affordable, what more could you ask for, right?

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  • Sep 28, 2013

The Mid-Autumn Festival: It’s mooncake mania in Singapore!

Perhaps many of our readers are aware of the Mid-Autumn Festival which is celebrated each year around late September in China and other parts of Asia. The festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, and as such, the actual date varies slightly from year to year, but it is usually around the time of the autumn equinox and is timed to coincide with the full moon. Traditionally a festival to give thanks and pray for a bountiful harvest and also to worship the moon, it is still today a huge event involving the gathering of family and friends, viewing the moon and, of course, sharing the special confectioneries known as mooncakes.

As it happens, just last week, I had the chance to visit Singapore right at the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which was on September 19 this year. Now, I knew that the festival would be going on during my trip, and also that the celebration involved mooncakes, and lots of it too — I just had no idea how much! Read More

Indonesia’s Google Street View car guilty of three hit-and-runs

Last week on September 14, Jakarta’s police managed to catch up with an AWOL fender-bender felon. This particular culprit was a bit too high profile to fly under the radar for long, especially considering the panoramic mapping equipment attached to his car!

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Dunkin’ Donuts Thailand causing stir with new line of black donuts

The Thailand office of American doughnut chain, Dunkin’ Donuts, has been unrolling a unique line of doughnuts since August of this year. All of these 27 doughnuts have one thing in common: They’re black as midnight. 

But that’s just the tip of this ebony iceberg. We’ve seen black food hit the scene before but these doughnuts took a year in the making as Dunkin’ Donuts carefully selected what they thought were the best combination of ingredients. What they came up with is interesting to say the least. Some flavors will make you drool, some will make you cringe, but they’ll all make you interested.

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Horse blinders for students? Cheating prevention tool at university in Thailand met with criticism

A new method of cheating prevention at a university in Thailand has been met with criticism according to a recent report from Newsclip. The tool employs a white paper headband with two large pieces of paper attached to the sides, preventing students from peeking at their neighbor’s answers.

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Censorship gone wild: Thailand’s kids deprived of swimsuits and bare chests

If you thought America was gung-ho about censorship, wait ’til you see Thailand’s approach. As the following gallery will show, the broadcasting department’s censors have been unleashed on kids’ anime favourites with a lethal force.

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Vietnamese Arsenal fan quite literally chases his dreams, is welcomed onto team bus

To achieve your dreams, you have to really want it. You need drive, determination and, if this video is anything to go by, a good pair of legs.

Taken in Hanoi by a member of English Premier League football club Arsenal, the following video sees one young Vietnamese fan chasing after the team’s tour bus for some five miles, waving and pounding the badge emblazoned on his chest with such vigour that the team eventually decides to welcome him on board for a once-in-a-lifetime private autograph and photo session.

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In Thailand there is a chain of conveyor belt sushi and shabu shabu restaurants called Shabushi, operated by the company Oishi Group. Shabu-shabu is a Japanese dish similar to fondue, where vegetables and wafer-thin slices of meat are cooked in a pot of boiling broth at the table. One week ago, on July 4 at the Central World trade facility in Bangkok, Oishi Group held the opening ceremonies for their second annual Shabu Lympics, a shabu-shabu eating contest taking place at select branches of Shabushi nation-wide.

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Japan is of course not the only country that experiences crowded trains and subways during rush hour. Over the last 10 years Singapore’s population has increased by 30 percent, putting pressure on its public transportation system, especially during the morning rush. Though Japan is trying to alleviate overcrowding with wider trains, Singapore is taking a different approach to the problem; free fares until 7:45 a.m. for anyone getting off at one of 16 stations in the downtown core.

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A chance encounter on the roads of Thailand led Mike Swift to take a video of a biker so awesomely weird that he put it out on YouTube as soon as possible. At first you’ll notice the pet bird which obediently flies alongside the woman as she rides, which is wild enough, but you’ll soon find that this little half-minute clip is deceptively deep.

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【Recipe】Better than KFC?! We recreate a fried chicken favorite of the Philippines

When it comes to fast food, most people may think of McDonald’s. But actually, if you happen to talk to someone from the Philippines, they might mention Jollibee.

More popular than the golden arches, more sought after than the Colonel’s secret recipe, Jollibee is the go-to joint for a quick bite in the Philippines, particularly if you’re craving some lip-smackingly good fried chicken. We here at RocketNews24 have obtained Jollibee’s secret fried chicken recipe and it tastes 90 percent like the real thing. But considering it’s homemade and doesn’t require you to order from a greasy-faced teenager, we’d say that’s a pretty good.

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One brave young woman’s fight to replace shark fishing with ecotourism – We talk to Kathy Xu

Born and raised in Singapore, 31-year-old Kathy Xu had been a secondary school teacher all her adult life, including a brief stint in Japan in 2009. Despite her love of teaching, Kathy recently made the bold decision to dedicate herself full-time to helping stop the exploitative shark finning trade in Southeast Asia, having visited the island of Lombok three times and witnessed the grim situation first-hand. She is now working to provide those same fishermen with an alternative form of income: ecotourism.

With the long-term goal of replacing shark fishing with environmentally friendly tours operated by locals, Kathy hopes to change the way we think about sharks, as well as help maintain the delicate ecosystem that exists in the seas surrounding Lombok, potentially saving their sharks from extinction.

We sat down with Kathy to talk about her inspiring venture: The Dorsal Effect.

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Small, fast, and ‘crazy rickety’ – Cambodia’s breakneck bamboo train 【Video】

Shot by a couple during a visit to Cambodia and uploaded to YouTube just last week, the following video treats us to a ride on one of Cambodia’s “bamboo trains” — worryingly shaky, home-made bamboo pallets balanced on a pair of train wheels and fitted with a disconcertingly large engine.

After all, what trip abroad is complete without experiencing some potentially perilous activity that you’d never dream of doing in your own country?

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While travelling in Thailand, I was surprised by the large number of unattended dogs roaming about town. Much like the country’s citizens, though, they’re generally good-natured, and you’ll often see the laid-back pooches sleeping peacefully in plazas, next to temples, and along riverbanks.

Thai society appreciates the value of a good nap, but one canine in the city of Ayutthaya has more than just cultural justification for taking a snooze. Pui the Bangkaew dog has earned himself a little bit of rest and relaxation by saving a baby’s life.

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Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox One console will not be released in Asia until late 2014, despite the fact that it will launch in the West in November this year, it was revealed last night.

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Go to jail, learn to… dance? 【Videos】

Going to jail is, regardless of the country, never fun. Between wardens forcing you to do their taxes for barely a bottle of suds, and the food, it’s got to be a horrible way to spend a few years of your life.

That said, some prisons certainly are better than others. For example, the dancing prisoners in the Philippines sure do seem a lot happier than if they were forced to do manual labor. And while a visit to a prison might not exactly be on the top of your average holiday to-do list, this is one jail you would want to go out of your way to get into! (At least for the show.)

Here’s RocketNews24 Japan‘s Sekai no Shogo with the report!

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Changes are expected to be made to the Vietnamese constitution this October during sessions of the country’s National Assembly. The current constitution was ratified in 1992 as part of the doimoi political movement that relaxed many of the government’s economic controls, and was a major departure from its previous incarnation.

Although minor revisions were made to the constitution in 2001, far more extensive alterations are expected in the next round. Among the many points to be discussed is the possibility of altering the country’s official name.

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Hope you didn’t plan on eating this week: we try duck fetus eggs in the Philippines

So it’s come to this, has it? Rocketnews24, after eating pretty much everything under the sun, has reached the last bastion of disgusting culinary curios.

Of course, we’re talking about Philippine balut, or duck fetus eggs. We’ve been here before, but somehow we felt this needed revisiting.

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