If you’ve read this blog for a while you’ll know that cassoulet ranks as something of a minor obsession of mine. Named for its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round earthenware pot characterized by slanting sides, this rich, slow-cooked, casserole of meat and beans has its origins in Languedoc. Especially the towns of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Castelnaudary, which each claim ownership of the dish and invoke minor variations on what is essentially a peasant stew assembled out of leftovers: Toulouse substitutes a local garlicky saucisson, while Castelnaudary trades duck confit for the more traditional mutton, and in Carcassonne, as I learned onboard le bateau yesterday, duck gets replaced with partridge. In the end it’s six of one: all are made with white beans, confit, sausage, and additional meats. And all soothe the soul on a cold winter’s evening like good comfort food is supposed to do. The only hitch yesterday was the weather. A heavy stew isn’t quite as inviting when the thermometer inches up into the 80’s. Not that I let that stop me.
cassole/cassoulet
canal du midi, or all aboard le bateau
The Canal du Midi is considered one of greatest construction works of the 17th century. It spans 150 miles from the city of Toulouse to Lake Thau, near the Mediterranean, and links with the Canal de Garonne to join the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea in a grand feat of imperial engineering. Curiously the canal never quite lived up to its intended purpose, which was to transport goods on barges pulled along by horses. The arrival of the railroad put paid to that. Now used primarily for recreation and river tourism, the towpaths make for particularly good bike lanes. Today, I boarded a private barge in Carcassonne – not the one pictured above, thank you very much – and spent a few languorous hours cruising through the double leaf locks at a snail’s pace. The wine flowed freely, a memorable lunch was served (more on that later), and plane trees framed every idyllic view. Though the manual opening of the sluices and lock gates has long ago been replaced by electrification, the collection of tolls remains refreshingly antediluvian: each lock has its own local keeper, who won’t let you pass until you pay up.
sip sip ahoy
Of all the fun pop-up experiences happening in and around London right now, Vestal Voyages, the world’s first floating pop-up bar, might be the only one that gets me to don a life vest. The scene is a 50-ft classic canal boat, where a maximum ten guests at a time are invited to push out for a leisurely cocktail-fueled voyage along Regent’s Canal. Sailing from King’s Cross you’ll float through the longest tunnel on the canal network before finally emerging in fleafy Islington, downing luxurious libations all along the way. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a lazy afternoon – weather permitting, natch. For more info tweet @vestalvoyages.
burning up the ship
Three monkeys dressed in suits crouch on bulging sacks of money, striking the pose of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” At more than 30-feet tall, the giant gangsta chimps are the size of a three-story building and joined on all sides by similarly fantastic and macabre creatures, from skeleton divers to slobbering pigs. Welcome to the Duke of Lancaster, an abandoned ship on the Dee Estuary in north Wales, which has become a canvas for some of the most renowned graffiti artists in Europe, including France’s GOIN and Latvian KIWIE. At a whopping 450-feet long and seven stories tall, the former British passenger ferry – built in the same Belfast shipyard as Titanic – is a haunted, rusted out sight. Graffiti collective DuDug approached the ship’s owners with the clever idea of turning the abandoned vessel into an arts destination. With their approval, artists from across Europe began spray-painting the decrepit ship with surreal artworks of punk geishas and bandit businessmen, using cherry pickers to scale the towering walls. DuDug is now campaigning to have the site opened to the public as the centerpiece of an arts festival. At the least, it would be the largest open-air gallery in the UK. If the organizers don’t manage to get anywhere with the local arts council, perhaps they should give the folks at Carnival a call. An open sea gallery off the coast of Italy might make a fitting end to their Costa Concordia troubles.
no man’s land
I can think of no better way to end my short visit to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago than today’s catamaran sail around the Caribbean coast. My destination: a little peninsula affectionately known as No Man’s Land, which more than lived up to the promise of its nickname. As always, click then double-click the image for greater detail.  And yes, the water really is that Crayola shade of  blue-green.
upon a floating gypsy village we come
After leaving JBI we came upon Ko Payni, a floating gypsy village at the head of Phang-Nga Bay. Anachronistic as that sounds, it was nevertheless established by nomadic Malay fisherman near the end of the 18th century. (Check out the brief video clip or double-click the panoramic below to get a sense of the scale of the environs.) At that time Thai law limited land ownership solely to people of Thai origin, so the resourceful gypsies built a settlement on stilts, skirting the law on a technicality while giving themselves easy access to the fisherman’s life. As the community grew prosperous, it expanded and today the village is home to some 1,500 people, a mosque, and even a football pitch, all built on barnacle-covered poles over the sea. As I arrived late in the day, I had time for little more than a coffee and a quick poke around, but it left me wondering what the village must be like in the moonlight – and at bed time as the water laps beyond the gaps of the wooden slatted floors.
how do you like my island, mr. bond?
Hidden away in my treehouse above the sea, I’ve seen very little of the island of Phuket aside from a brief trip to the market. That changed today in a fit of inspired whimsy: I chartered a speedboat off the eastern side of the island and spent the day freewheeling the Andaman Sea. After dropping anchor for a quick picnic and swim on a stretch of beach at Ko Thanan, we headed north towards Phang-Nga Bay, past dozens of islands created by mainland fault movements. Each island is, in fact, a single, massive limestone monolith, upended vertically and pocked round the base with caves which only reveal themselves during the low tide. (Limestone being soluble, the caves are the result of thousands of years of tidal erosion.) You can take a sea kayak and paddle inside the caves if the tide is right, but my timing was off, so I settled for a pee break masquerading as a swim stop beneath the dramatic cliffs before continuing northwards – in a sudden lashing rain – to Ko Phing Kan, or James Bond Island. Used as the setting for the secret lair of Christopher Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun, JBI has become the most famous part of the newly established Ao Phang Nga Marine National Park. In point of fact it’s two islands: the towering Khao Phing Kan, literally “hills leaning against each other,” and Ko Tapu, or “spike island,” where Scaramanga hid the solex laser. If I had to be a super-villain I couldn’t think of a better place to hideaway and plot world domination.
moating
After trampling up and down temples in the sweltering heat – I’ve tried to not belabor the point but it is hot, hot, hot in Cambodia! – it’s time for a little luxury:  skimming the moat of Angkor Thom in a private gondola stocked with champagne and canapes. As the sun set the moon rose high into the sky, casting an iridescent blue glow over the waking jungle.
picture yourself in a boat on a river
Today I got a unique opportunity to explore a small piece of Thailand’s rural heartland aboard a traditional teak rice barge, the Thanatharee, sailing on the Chao Phraya out of Ayuttaya – the ancient Thai capital an hour and a half north of Bangkok – and into the rich agricultural central plains. Comfortably repurposed it could not be beaten as the perfect place for a long, cool drink and a languorous lunch while watching the world drift gently by. That is, until the weather abruptly – and radically – changed.
