Category: Thai Society/Culture

Putting the F in WTF

So here I am almost at the half year mark after starting over in this new place. It’s been grand, it’s been challenging, and sometimes the newness of it all is staggering. That newness, combined with my habit of running full speed into all kinds of cultural barriers and boundaries, sometimes creates situations which I am hard pressed to think about, much less relate to my readers about…
Forward, then.
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It started out oddly, yet innocently enough. My father-in-law’s friend came over for a visit with his approximately six year old daughter in tow. A sweet girl she was, bold enough to ask for what she wanted, yet polite enough to ask first. She took an instant liking to Nam (most children take instantly to either Nam or myself, but rarely to both of us, which makes it a kind of contest) and decided to eat lunch with her. Nam talked to the girl’s dad a bit and was told a few things:

  • The girl’s real mom had left when she was small, but the father had a dream where he was told to keep the girl, so he did
  • The father had since remarried to a woman who has children of her own
  • The girl is very easy to take care of and isn’t a “difficult” child at all

So this is where things start to get odd for me in American/Japanese mode: The man asks his daughter if she’s ready to go home, and she says she wants to stay, so he just leaves. Just leaves! As he (the little girl’s father) is walking out the door, Nam’s father says, “if we don’t take her back tonight, it’s because she’s staying over, ok?” (Nam told me about this later, I didn’t hear it myself or I would have… Well, I actually have no idea what I would have done.) So we spent the day with this little girl, who is actually one of the nicest little girls I have ever met, and she turns out to be like, a total prodigy or something. I show her how to play this traditional Thai xylophone-thingy (can’t be fucked to look it up just now), and pretty soon she’s like making actual music. Then I let her feed my improbably colored fish and showed her how to use my Nikon – and she proceeds to take like 500 photos all around the house. Here, you be the judge:






She took a shot through the screen door for this awesome effect – something that would never have even occurred to me to try
I mean, holy crap. And those photos are like totally unedited, just resized. I don’t know what to say, looking back on it, we just had a really fun day together. There were some strange things that stick out in my mind, like when the little girl couldn’t remember my name and just started calling us mom and dad, and when her parents didn’t even call to check up or anything – she was with us for about 6 hours straight until it got dark. We took her home, and guess what? Nobody was home… So we drove back to our house and she stayed the night in our room, on the floor.
Her parents (father and stepmom) showed up the next day and we made small talk about how much fun we had together and then the bomb was dropped when THEY OFFERED TO GIVE HER TO US. (When something this strange happens to me, my mind always reverts back to this early NWA sample that exclaims, “motherfucker, say what?”) Yeah. So we were pretty sure that was a joke, but kind of in shock because we had a sinking feeling it wasn’t. Somehow, her parents slipped away again while we were still in that what-the-fuck-just-happened state of mind.
So I need to explain something here: There are two factors at play here which make this a fucked up, yet totally understandable situation within the bounds of Thai society. First of all, there is the factor that Nam was aware of and related to me before this even came up: Thais believe that for a couple to spend time with somebody else’s child will bless them with their own child. So this is why even though things were kind of weird from the day before, we just assumed that this was what everybody had in mind regarding this situation. The second factor has to do with a time-honored tradition that has lasted until the current day: Poor parents sometimes give their children away to people who they think can take care of them better. Of course, I was flabbergasted when I heard this. I mean, I guess you could kind of view it as adoption without an adoption agency, but then you have to remember that adoption agencies exist for a reason. We could be axe murderers for all her parents know! I mean, they really have no fucking idea who we are, and they are offering up their daughter? Yes, I can honestly say this is one cultural wall I have run smack into, and will have a hard time recovering from. This wall kicked my ass.
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So to finish the story: We dropped the little girl off at home later that evening. Sure, she lives in a poor part of town in an old house that her stepmom has converted into a beauty salon, but she ain’t gonna die of starvation or the plague, if you know what I mean. We greeted her parents, said out goodbyes to the girl, and basically sprinted back to our car. In parting, the father shouted something in thai that I couldn’t understand. I asked Nam what he had said when we were back in the car, and her face was still in shock. “Papers,” she said. “He said he would sign her over to us officially.”
Jesus fucking christ, yo.
The thing is, the girl seems really into it. The last scene I described was yesterday. Today her parents brought her around to our house again because her father (supposedly?) had to meet Nam’s father for something. Nam and I were both at work at the time. The little girl called Nam from our house and asked, “Why didn’t you pick me up today, mom?” Um…
So now we have a very weird situation that needs straightening out. In fact, the little girl called Nam again to ask if Nam would take her to work with her tomorrow. (Heh. Remember how I told you that children usually bond to either Nam or myself immediately, but almost never to both of us? Heh… Marital disclaimer: This is by no means really funny, just kind of amusing if you think about it in an abstract sort of way, obliquely, without any pertinence to the current situation in any way, or to reality at all if you really think about it.)
We have talked about this at length – I mean, how do we tell the parents we don’t want the little girl without somehow making the little girl feel badly? Although I’d love to smack the shit out of the parents for offering her up and putting us in this situation, would it even make me feel better? Even a little? No, I don’t think so. I feel bad for even fantasizing about it – you can’t smack the ignorance out of people. And I do believe this is ignorance – I mean, for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to offer up your daughter, your own flesh and blood, at the very least please do some due diligence. Fuck, this makes me so angry.
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We will work this out, somehow.

odo trick – I [heart] OCD

One of my “borderline” traits is my fascination with numbers, especially numerical readouts (this also partially explains my fascination with pachinko and the like). Some numbers and patterns just mean a lot to me, although my commemoration of odometer milestones I know is at least shared by some of my friends. Some people just don’t get it though – I remember when I stopped my S-13 Silvia on a busy highway median to photograph reaching the 111,111 kilometer mark (sub trip odometer 1,111), the person I was with totally DID NOT understand why I thought it was so special, so I told him to get the fuck out of my car and he immediately got hit by a big truck and died. OK, maybe that last part was just wishful thinking, but what a fucking killjoy, you know?
So with that in mind, I present to you the first big milestone for my new (used) car:

Odometer otakus should note that I have synchronized the sub-trip recorder to within 0.3 meters of the main readout.
This is going to be something special.
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I finally got around to taking a pic of my new audio setup, but I didn’t take it during the right time of day, unfortunately:

I was so happy with the work my guy did, I let him put a sticker on the box – it’s in Comic Sans!
The sub box is located in front of the amp, a simple vented design for a 12″ driver I bought cheaply in Japan and have used for over 5 years now. I can’t recommend the polymer/silicon/carbon substrate construction for speaker cones enough, and it’s a damn shame the only factory making them burned down last year. The speaker points forward, as I tried pointing both forward and back, but due to the dampened trunk lid, excess reverb prevented a rear-pointing layout. Speaking of dampening, the entire rear third of the car has been soundproofed with bitumen sheets. The rest will be done when I have the time.
All I have to say is, I’m lucky to be in Thailand because I could never afford to have all this stuff done in the states or Japan. I just happened to find, through a long string of coincidences, a local workshop whose owner speaks English really well and is more into car audio than I am, which is pretty rare. What’s even more rare is that his shop is A) fast B) cheap and C) extremely competent – it’s like being on a different plane of reality, where shit that isn’t supposed to exist does. I plan to take full advantage of this most advantageous situation.

Recent Observations

I just saw a big house gecko bite another on the neck, and it wouldn’t let go. Finally the one being bitten managed to escape, but the big one chased it all the way across the wall. I wonder what that was all about; it’s not like there’s a shortage of bugs to eat around here or anything.
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For the English camp, we stayed at a campground in a nature preserve, up in the mountains. We stayed in bungalows maintained by the forest rangers, who wore tigerstripe and treebark camouflage, and watched over the entire preserve with high-power binoculars. Once a day or so, they would hear a message on the two way or see possible poaching activity, after which a couple of them would fetch long arms and jump in the back of a pickup to go investigate. I saw an AR-type rifle, a sawed-off pump shottie, and an FN-FAL. On the last day, a colleague said he could hear shooting out in the woods after we saw a group of them take off to investigate.
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Today I bought an old motor scooter for 1,000 baht from a Japanese girl going back to Japan. It has a dubious history, no license plates, and no registration. It also has a Finding Nemo theme airbrushed all over the cowling (which itself is metallic gold). Steady pimpin’, yo. Oh, also, this is the second used scooter in a month I bought for exactly 1,000 baht from a Japanese girl leaving Sarakham. Strange coincidence. Even stranger, there is a distinct possibility that there may be a third soon. More on this later.
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Yesterday, Nam bought a fresh pack of durian at a night market we visited. Although I was worried about carrying it in my car, I figured what the hell since she loves the King of Fruits so much and we were only five minutes from home… Oops. Even though I bought two huge garlands of fresh-cut jasmine and left them in my car overnight in addition to a new car deodorizer thingie, this morning, the hot interior of my car smelled unmistakably durianesque. I set the aircon to vent, drove to work with all the windows open, and managed to get rid of most the smell. So. I came back from work in the afternoon and got a call from a student who just came back from working at a candle factory in Rayong (you should read that link, I was inspired when writing it). He had a present for me, he said. Can you guess what it was?
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That’s right, after all that defunktifying in the morning, I had another very ripe durian in my car, and this time in the scorching afternoon sun! The worst part is, I had several errands to run (like getting an alignment at a garage on the other side of town) and couldn’t take it home right away… I fear my car will never smell of leather again. At least Nam seems to dig it, though.

Thailand is too hot for campfires

I’ve just come back from an “English camp” where I taught elementary school kids at a summer camp with a couple of colleagues. It was fun, but totally sapping in the 100 degree weather. It was nice to be in the green mountains after living on the dusty plains for so long… Man, it was so hot at times, I could have roasted marshmallows in my pocket!
Speaking of heat, there was a fire at MBK center. MBK is great because they have so many unique shops crammed into all the space, which is also why it would suck to be there in a fire. In fact, whenever I’m there, my eyes are constantly searching for the stairways and when I’m weaving around all the groups of people, I’m thinking about how many would die from smoke inhalation versus how many would be trampled if there was a fire. I’m just strange that way.
Speaking of strange, this is perhaps the strangest and coolest link I’ve seen since being back in front of a pc after my four day break: Enjoy!

Mangosteens and Rambutans

…are in season!

They sell for around 40 cents per pound each at the market; this is apparently a good year.

Probably my favorite fruit in the world. In fact, I can’t think of a close second.

Such an alien-looking fruit. Delicious, though.

Fr007 pr0n!
Bonus trivia (via Wikipedia):

  • The mangosteen is known as the “Queen of Fruits” in Asia. (The “King of Fruits” is the durian. If the king and queen ever bear children, I’ll be the first in line to eat them.)
  • The exocarp (purple outer layer) of the mangosteen is rich in both nutrients and antioxidants, however, this is generally not the edible part. The inner white fruit is known as the aril and seems to contain, well, uh, delicious juices that aren’t proven to be beneficial in any way, thus proving that anything that’s really healthy for you probably doesn’t taste very good.
  • “There is a story, possibly apocryphal, about Queen Victoria offering a cash reward to anyone who could deliver to her the fabled fruit (mangosteen).”
  • Thailand is now the world’s largest producer of rambutans.
  • Rambutan seeds are poisonous to humans.

My first speeding ticket in Thailand

So the short version of this story goes:

  1. Today I got caught speeding 50kph over the (unposted) speed limit
  2. I paid a fine on the spot and was released
  3. I love Thailand!

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I have this running joke with people who ride in my car and ask what the funny device attached to my windshield is – “It’s a 7-11 detector,” I always say (I’ve NEVER seen another radar detector in Thailand, so their curiosity is understandable). Sure enough, it starts beeping madly whenever we pass a convenience store (or anywhere else with automatic door sensors), so this explanation may be less facetious than it sounds (then again, maybe not). Well as it turns out, it might as well have been a “7-11 detector” today when it started beeping wildly while I was driving on a flat stretch of highway between towns.
The beeping surprised the hell out of me, because all around, there was nothing but typical Isan scenery: A few trees, rice fields as far as the eye could see, a couple of skinny cows, and the tall spire of a temple half a kilo down the road. I consciously noticed that I had become desensitized to the sound of my radar detector – I didn’t brake and instead just let off the gas a bit, convinced that it had picked up on an errant signal sent from the cosmos, or perhaps a stray radar wave bouncing off the dusty Thai ionosphere. The last thing, the absolute last thing I thought it could be was a speed trap, so you pretty much see where this story is going.
The men in brown were waiting for me a kilometer down the road. Luckily, Nam was in the car with me and she took care of the whole thing. they wanted me to pull over and wait to be processed. They wanted my driver’s license. They wanted to know if I knew I had been driving at least 130kph. When all was said and done, they wanted to get paid. My fine for speeding 50kph over the limit?
200 baht.
That’s like, six bucks.
In Japan, I’d instantly have my license revoked and be fined thousands of dollars, plus maybe get a free night’s stay in traffic jail.
Like I’ve said before, some things are just really cheap out here in the sticks. The funny thing is, we actually paid more than normal (for around here, at least, in Bangkok, etc., it’s a lot different), because this was a special traffic safety crackdown taking place to reduce accidents for the Songkran holiday period, which starts tomorrow.
I love Thailand.

Impossible Fish


Why not ride on the coattails of the Impossible Fish Tank? (See that? That’s how to give credit, bitches…)
We somehow acquired a small fish tank at the house and went out to buy some fish to keep as slaves (not slaves in the sense that they will work our land for a share of the crops, but in the sense that they exist only to amuse us, since freshwater fish make such shitty companions/rescue animals).
We went to the local pet shop and found mostly a bunch of fat, quivering goldfish and mollies, which I detest, as I like my slaves skinny (and preferably, forlorn/amusing). In a tank wedged between the goldfish, however, we found the fish pictured above. Rather than thinking about how I’d never seen fish like these before, or how unnatural their coloring looked, I instead thought about what a stunning resemblance they shared with some fishing lures in my tackle box at home:

So you may understand that I reacted with some surprise when the worker at the pet shop, while scooping these specimens into a bag for us to take home, told us that they had in fact been artificially colored. And I do not mean to say that they were painted or dipped in some kind of dye, either. It was INJECTED into their bodies!
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Fucking third world!
Poor fishies!
I no longer think of them as slaves; they are my babies and I shall care for them tenderly (feeding them processed food pellets once a day) until the time of the Big Flush.

Banks and Blades and Monster Geckos

One of the coolest things about rural Thailand is the prevalence of bladed tool vendors outside of banks and government building selling scythes, spades, hatchets, axes, machetes, and cooking knives of all sizes and types. I went to the tax office with some Japanese teachers last week and as they waited in line inside, I was just outside the window closest to the tax clerks, handling what could basically be desribed as a ghetto battle axe, with a rusty, roughly machined blade welded to a steel pipe that served as a handle. I don’t know if the clerks saw me outside in my adolescent dwarf warrior state, but when I went in they let me cut to the front of the line…
This morning I bought a big ghetto cleaver with a big hole cut in the blade to hang it from a nail on the wall, just before I went inside Kasikorn Bank to pay the monthly on my car. The security guard saw me test the blade with my thumb, make the purchase, and stroll into the bank and didn’t bat an eye… Which is kind of amazing since if all I had was a nightstick and someone pulled this on me, I’d wail like a beleaguered bitch and surrender my castle:

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Of course, it bears asking if the monster living under the eaves of my house is going to be impressed:

I’m guessing: Not!
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BONUS TOKAY GECKO (Latin: Gekko Gecko @ Linnaeus, 1758) TRIVIA:

  • “Tokays are the least lovable of the geckos. They are known for their nasty temperament, cheerfully biting the hand that feeds, cleans or otherwise comes into anything resembling close proximity to them.” (link)
  • Vietnam vets know Tokay Geckos as “fuck you” lizards (link), due to their mating calls (which last all goddamn night, believe me)