Here comes a quick “yewish survival guide” for Bangkok, Thailand.

Firstly, if you’re the kind that get sick from only looking at chaser, this is no place for you! You will bump into pig’s heads all over the city, either lying in front of ghost houses as a sacrifice or as decoration next to some food stand. Probably the city has the silhouette of a little piggy when looking down from space…..will have to check on that one next time I google for satellite pics

Secondly, if you are male and stroll around on your own…..well, you do know how advertising via catalogue works……the same holds true for women there. They come well assorted in glossy pics and explicit poses. No matter how you are dressed or who you are, at some point someone will push the babe-catalogue in front of your nose. Also, try not to get lost looking for some night market…….you will find a lot of intresting stuff, but not fake handbags The vast dimensions of this business allow for some conclusions towards the percentage of tourists looking for those services. I’d say one in three. You’ve been there? You should be ashamed!!!!

After this has been said and you have been warned, let’s continue with the more pleasant things.

There is, baruch haShem, Chabad in Bangkok. They not only cater to lost yewish souls, but also to hungry yewish tourists. Their website is: www.yewishtailand.com. There are three synagogues in Bangkok,a Mikwa, Chabad house and a kosher restaurant and a bakery. The restaurant will cater to your apartment or hotel. A full Shabbos meal will cost about 30 USD per person and will include wine, challah, starters, main course, dessert and breakfast after your choice. It comes in a huge styrofoam box to keep it warm well into Shabbos. The servings are rather sizeable and we ended up freezing one person’s share for the next Shabbos. You can also register for kosher Shabbos dinneers or for seuda shlishit at the some of the communal locations. For some additional info on Jews in Thailand see: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/thailand.html.

And it looks amazing! I was completely floored when the bookbinder handed me the once battered siddur and it looked like never opened before! The mottled paper in blue and red is beautifully contrasted by the dark blue back of the book. The pages had been cut slightly to give it the touch of a new book. All loose pages and also the rest of the pages have been fitted into a new binding. All in all a complete makeover. I am quite sure it is now fit to survive the next 20 generations

I promised long ago to write about the hotel N.CH where we stayed during our holidays in Torremolinos, Spain. There is nothing special about this hotel except for the fact that it offers kosher food and is prepared for the needs of guests who are shomer shabbat.

The not so kosher traveller might ask now: „Why not just dine vegetarian in Torremolinos?“. Guys there is no such thing as a vegetarian Spanish restaurant! Besides nearly all restaurants have exactly the same menu featuring very prominently shellfish and pork. So even if your standards are way below orthodox I highly doubt you would enjoy Spain from the culinary point of view ☺

During our stay there was a kind of catoholic holiday called „Romeria y fiesta de San Miguel“. It was nice to look at and most of the local women dressed in very ornate traditional dresses. Definitely not an everyday experience.

In the N.CH hotel you basically get a small but clean room with a balcony facing a small square. But every evening the really exceptional part of the holiday takes place. The kosher dinner! The meals are not only really tasty, but will serve at least double the amount of people present

But there are some major drawbacks to the kashrut level because they (i) do not have a valid hechscher, which forces them to get the food precooked from the nearby kosher restaurant and (ii) do not have personnel that is trained in matters of kashrut. I had a few glances into the kitchen and it seems not to be in regular use except for heating up food or opening cans for breakfast. Furthermore I was unfortunately not able to spot a difference between our evening fleishig cutlery and the breakfast milchig one, not mentioning the fact that both seemed to be washed in the same sink…..

Nevertheless it was o.k. for us as we are not that meticulous, and even accepting the possibility that we had fleishig dinner with treif cutlery we were a thousand times better off than eating out somewhere else.

The dinner started each night with appetizers consisting of about four different types of Spanish tapas or Israeli dips and salads with French bread (on shabbat two loaves of challa instead and some fancy sparkling mevushal wine). For starters they served either soup (a chicken soup to die for) or some small pasta dish. The main dish was usually meat (chicken or beef) with pasta, rice etc. They even served chicken Chinese style one night. And for dessert either fruit or some very exquisite sponge cakes with different fillings.

As the food was supplied by the small kosher restaurant around the corner one can stay in Torremolinos even if one has a higher kashrut observance than described above. So if you plan to stay in Torremolinos I am quite sure the friendly couple owning the restaurant will be able to deliver to your hotel as well. Another possibility would be to just dine at the small restaurant each night, but I actually preferred it the other way round as the hotel dining room was more spacious and well air-conditioned. Nevertheless we enjoyed to sit in the restaurant one night and met some nice people from the local congregation.

Torremolinos itself is not exactly a beauty. It is highly touristic and looks like any other beach village in Spain. So if you are in for a bit of mindless “sleep, eat, drink, swim, get a tan”-sort of holidays it is great. But if you don’t want to see people running around in bathing suits all day it is definitely not your place. But there are ways you nearly get around the “meat display”. The beach is pretty empty until 10am. We enjoyed nice early morning walks on the seashore. The water is worth taking a plunge as well! In October there aren’t that many tourists around any more but the temperature is still nice. I therefore strongly recommend visiting Torremolinos off-season.

Torremolinos has an orthodox synagogue situated near the left part of the town. It is called Beith Minzi and services follow minhag sefard. Peaple are very nice and welcoming and it is definitely worth to go daaven there!

From Torremolinos you can make nice day trips to nearby cities. Especially Grenada is definitely worth a trip for the Jewish traveller! Tha Alhambra is absolutely stunning!