Results tagged “thai”

            

While most of the Hengshan Lu bars spend their time trying to attract customers with Thursday night offerings of "little girls and little boys" (no joke), The Melting Pot has been putting on a weekly show of Inner Mongolian country bluegrass blues players named Tom and Jerry. The musical super duo mix authentic guitar chops with mandolin, fiddle and a pleasing Chinese drawl to warm even the most frigid of nights. With the help of talented local musicians, Tom and Jerry recreate anything from Johnny Cash's "Cocaine Blues" to a convincing southern-style take on Nirvana's "Something in the Way". While the bar could use a price check (we're not there to show how rich we are--or wish to be), the setting is both comfortable and spacious. Come check them out at The Melting Pot on Thursdays, starting at 9:30 PM. Definitely not your average Shanghai (or Kentuckian) Thursday night.

DONGPING ROAD: DOOMED OR REDISCOVERED? As some readers may know, the strip of Dongping Road on the south side from Hengshan to Yueyang Roads is leased to the bars, restaurants, tailors etc by the music college behind them. Most of the leases are coming up for renewal over the next 2-12 months.There has been some concern that the music college may decide to reclaim their land for their own expansion purposes, rather than renew the...

Southeast Asian pact exposes rifts [NY Times] Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter here today that was drafted as a watershed document to bind the region together as a European-style economic community but has instead exposed the sharp divisions over Myanmar and other issues among the signatories.Malaysia busts DVD lab in its biggest raid in 2007 [Reuters] Malaysia has raided a laboratory capable of churning out $52 million worth of pirated DVDs a year in...

A prominent former Thai senator accused of sex crimes against four underage girls was sentenced to 36 years in prison on Tuesday, when an appeals court stiffened the sentence of a lower court.

A record number of more than 10,500 Chinese Muslims are expected to fulfill their pilgrimages to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to the Islamic Association of China (IAC) Sunday.

The art of vegetable carving has been used widely in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai cuisines, but this chef takes it one step further. Watch how he skilfully and masterfully carves a peony — China's national flower — out of a tofu. It is not mentioned in the programme where he is from or which restaurant he works at, but yes, it would be interesting to know how the peony tofu is actually served — and, of course, how much it costs.

More than a dozen prominent Singapore celebrities have come out in support of a new parliamentary petition to repeal Section 377A in the city-state's Penal Code which outlaws “acts of gross indecency” between men by appearing in a Youtube video uploaded recently.

Coming up on a year since Berdymukhamedov took power, the Internet is not really any more accessible than it was under Niyazov. There are only a handful of government-run Internet cafes in the capital, Ashgabat, which opened in March.

Video of Thai pen-spinning club in action [h/t to Asian Offbeat]

Malaysia will help train Thai Muslim religious teachers and provide scholarships for students in southern Thailand as part of an agreement signed between the country's two leaders aimed at curbing violence in the region.

What's happening now: The Thai Food Festival is currently running in Shanghai through September 9th at four Thai restaurants that have received the official "Thai Select" designation from the Thai government. Organized by the Commercial Section of the Royal Thai Consulate General, Baan Thai, Lan Na Thai, Ma Boon Krong and Simply Thai will aim to present dishes that represent the four regional cuisines of Thailand.

Shanghaiist has been feeling very French of late. After wondering when Paul was going to re-open and hanging out at Bar Rouge's "Excusez-moi" party... well, we had dinner in La Crêperie - Shanghai's new and so far only eatery devoted to crêpes from the Brittany region.

Image from China Daily.

Tamil Nadu, India - Officials in southern India are investigating claims that a couple, who are both doctors, let their 15-year-old son perform surgery to get into Guinness World Records as the world's youngest surgeon.

Elsewhere - Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal - the fifth richest man in the world - has emerged as a contender to buy Birmingham, while Arsenal faces a takeover bid from an Arab tycoon Mohammed Al Hashimi who was a partner in a £450million bid to buy Liverpool. In the meanwhile, ousted billionaire Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, is reportedly poised to buy English football's Manchester City, although the Bank of Thailand said it has not received a money transfer request from Thaksin. Are Asians going to take over the English Premier League someday?

Shanghai. It is all happening. Here's the proof:

Spago is a new fusion restaurant located opposite the Fenshine Plaza fake market on Nanjing Xi Lu. Spago's proximity to a knock-off market is ironic in light of an apparent and blatant trademark violation by this Shanghai 'branch'.

Shanghai Flickr photographer Shanghai Sky[1] just posted an interesting a photo set from the ongoing 2007 Shanghai Auto Show. What makes it interesting? There are almost no cars. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has ever attended the auto show (there are showgirls everywhere) or to anyone who has viewed Shanghai Sky's photos (the man likes photographing women ... candid street shots mostly, nothing smutty).

On a recent stroll near the Bund, Shanghaiist chanced upon a curious joint that was billing itself as a restaurant, design house, hair studio, live music joint, and art gallery. Ma.Design, it was called. We were intrigued.

After almost half a year, Shanghai’s iconic “alternative lifestyle nightclub”, Home Bar, officially reopened last week under its new brand, Pinkhome. It has been transformed from its previous existence into what is China’s first gay multiplex including a dance club, restaurant/lounge, and hotel. As some readers may remember, there was a pre-soft (is that a word?) opening last October for the bar, after which the establishment was closed again until renovations were completed. For those of us privy to that event, the ground floor décor looked much the same as it did in October, though, vastly different from the old, gritty, but lovable Home.

is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour.

As you probably have heard, a military coup in Thailand has seized power from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. We are not going to pretend to have a solid grasp on Thai politics, so we will direct you to the thousands of stories about this over at Google News for the latest.

This past week featured an appearance by two very special ladies, drag queens Gwen and Bling (see photo). Their website describes them as follows:

We SMSed a member of Shanghai's Gaelic football team -- they were known to frequent the Spot Bar -- to get the lowdown on what happened. His take: "There's an old building behind it, they wanted a garden front to it so they ripped it down." Indeed, tearing down the building that housed the restaurant and bar exposes a really nice old villa that we hadn't noticed before. While the house likely doesn't have a bar (and if they did have a bar, they probably wouldn't allow drunk Irish guys to dance on top of it), we have to admit the house is a little more aesthetically pleasing than the Spot Bar was. But our guess is that they will probably block it from street view with a concrete wall of some kind.

The prize package for best 80s outfit at our Happy Hour this Friday sure is heating up. In addition to a bottle of Solid XS Vodka donated by our host Freelance Bar & Grill, the lucky winner will also get two items kindly donated by the self-described "sexiest menswear store in Shanghai" -- MANifesto. (We will force the winner to take a couple Shanghaiist T-shirts off our hands, as well.)

Did you realize that July 28 is the 20-year anniversary -- to the day -- of July 28, 1986?!? We're glad we noticed it when we did -- because that gave us just enough time to throw together an 80s-themed Shanghaiist Happy Hour at Freelance Bar & Grill (we are cool with the place now) to mark the momentous occasion. Here's all you need to know:

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system.

Photo by captainvideo taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

A couple of weeks ago, Shanghai was beset by rumours of UFO sightings. According to a story in the Shanghai Daily:

We think we can safely say that SLICE is Shanghai's best English-language magazine about golf. This is, of course, not a difficult title to lay claim to -- kind of like saying Acropolis is the city's best Greek restaurant. (It's the only one, and we still have nightmares about our only visit there three years ago -- sometimes the nightmares are about the "moussaka," other times they are about the roach that crawled across our table.) But SLICE, which debuted in October, isn't playing the game like it's the only game in town. It's a slick little magazine that, style-wise at least, gives all the local English language rags a run for their money. This week, TIME Asia even gave SLICE a nice plug.