randomly she snapped

This is a product of a random wandering around Yaowaraj the other day. Bangkok's old Chinatown is even more bustling than usual, thanks to the impending new year celebration this weekend. I took a bunch of photos, they'll all be flickring once I get to a faster internet connection, which might be San Francisco!

This shot is from a window display at a Chinese herbalist. Yes, those little guys are precisely what you think they are. Dried sea horses. I have no idea what they are used for, some obscure Chinese remedy, probably.

Comments

[Ivonne]

More proof that often the best photos are the ones taken spontaneously!

[persis]

Hi Pim, I've been following all your sojourns. Glad you're having a fun time back home. Thx for all the lovely pics. Reminds me of home. Just a quick question - how do you set up the badges with url links in your EAT MY BLOG sidebar? I've just set up my blogger and flickr accounts. Sorry for the techie non-food question! Love, persis xx

[j'nathan]

You can get dried sea horses in San Francisco's Chinatown, too. I asked one of the store owners what they are for, and he told me to make soup with it. Supposedly, it is good for colds as well as your skin. A great combination!

[slurp!]

According to TCM, seahorse are considered warming and are good for weak kidneys/bladder, backache, asthma. usually just double boiled them with lean meat & water/light chicken stock, add salt to taste.

[wandernut]

i've had dried sea horse soup when i was an asthmatic youngster. it's supposedly good for the lungs.

tastes really foul too ;)

[vincent]

Seahorses are very endangered species, they are dissaperaing at a very high speed, due to the change of their natural habitat (thanks to men and pollution), but also due to their extesive fishing for traditional medicine reasons!

No study ever managed to find any remote evidence that seahorses are actually good for you in any way, so PLEASE don't buy dried or alive seahorses, they are very fragile creatures dissapearing fast for nothing, all due to old inaccurate beliefs and man destroying nature!!!

Here is the website about a very interesting conservationa dn protection project, led by a marine biologist:
http://seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca/why.html