Green.

Roasting your own coffee beans is to be recommended. All you need is a pan. Only minutes between roasting and making it to the cup. And an unbeatable aroma wafting through the house. Superb.

Without warning.

I’m not a smoker, but if I were, I’d move to Indonesia.
No health warnings, or distasteful pictures of diseased body parts to spoil the design of the pack.
This black pack of menthols is my favourite.
When in the archipelago, I have been known to buy a pack and smoke a single tab after a meal: purely for aesthetic reasons, of course.

Ginger approach.

Kopi jahe. Ginger coffee.
Delicious. Warming. Overwhelmingly gingery.
Perfect for a chilly, misty morning in the hills of Ubud.

Audio of interest.

Sometimes Monocle’s radio output doesn’t translate as well as the print – but this audio series is excellent. The Entrepreneurs. Interviews with inspirational people from around the world. Booksellers in Toronto. A brewer in Beirut. The guy resurrecting Polaroid in Holland. We’re often familiar with the stories from Monocle’s print edition, but the audio format allows us to hear the entrepreneurs speak for themselves. Satisfying and well worth a listen.

Bangkok Evacuation.

New Year’s week.
Bangkok.
Deserted.
A good time to shoot a zombie movie.

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Deliciousness from the north.

The peppery, vinegary, spicy flavours of northern China are hard to come by in the Thai capital. So when Dalian restaurant opened in Soi 33/1 there was much rejoicing – particularly among the area’s Japanese population whose native cuisine is not a million miles in taste from their mainland neighbour’s.

Fluorescent lights, superfast service, Tsingtao from the fridge, steaming plates ferried rapidly from the kitchen to your table, the pleasing barks of Mandarin from fellow diners, always packed. Just the place for these chilly December nights.

Best in cat-egory.

Eat at a street stall in Bangkok, and if you order a beer to accompany your meal it will invariably be a near-freezing Leo, hauled from ice and popped open with a bottle opener attached to the ice box in a single well-practised movement. It’s a great beer. A kind of old school lager, strong in flavour with a bite at the back of the throat. Perfect for Thai conditions, and with Thai food. There are plenty of Asian beers with big cats on the label – Tiger, Singha – but Leo is the best. These days the beer section of the fridge at home contains nothing else.

Redo.

A couple of years ago this was a forgotten, run-down old 60s block in the Thonglor labyrinth of sois which seemed certain to be pulled down to build a new condo without anyone batting an eyelid. Now it’s been renovated to its original Miami-inspired glory. Bangkok’s Vietnam War-triggered building boom was just at the right time: at the height of the tropical modernist era, the city’s new residential inner suburbs would once have been a vision of a cool modernist paradise rising out of the rice fields of Thonglor, Ekamai and Bangkapi. It’s less so now, but there’s still plenty left. On my runs around the back sois of Thonglor and rides around Ekamai there are still major stocks of gorgeous, airy houses and low-rise apartments. Some of them are in poor repair, their owners waiting for Sansiri to come knocking with an offer for the land. Some of them have been converted into cool Thai bars and restaurants where hipsters sip on Heineken and eat neua ded diew. But some have been kept in their original beautiful condition, made even better now than when they were built by the maturation of gorgeous shady trees around them. Hopefully this apartment block’s redo might inspire a few other owners, and some of the houses that have been allowed to go to seed will be brought back to their former glory.

How To.

Start It Up, by Luke Johnson. A worthwhile read if you’re thinking of making a new start in 2012. Maybe the best thing about it – and he does refer to the fact – is that the author’s fortune wasn’t made in any particularly innovative way. An existing business idea, slightly improved, is all you need. It doesn’t have to be perfect from day one, just start it up and deal with problems as they arise, and make improvements all the time. And if you fail, which you very probably will, shake yourself off and do it again, and end up with £140 million, then write a book about it. Easy.

Tip top.

For good coffee beans in Bangkok: no need to try too hard. Just pop in to your local Tops for their house brand products: Brazilian Santos, Jamaican and Colombian beans. But for my money the best buy is the espresso blend – made, I’m guessing, with beans from the north of Thailand and roasted to perfection, with volumes high enough to guarantee that the beans you pick up are never more than a few days away from their roasting date.