Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Max took private Muay Thai lessons when he came back during the summer last year. He really enjoyed it, especially since private lessons in the states are too expensive. His gym and teacher were the same from when he studied with Mina when they were bobies.
My brother-in-law opened a boat noodle shop last year. The noodles are good (and the crackling toppings are great), but the wall art is just fantastic:
As you can see, the boat props for boat noodles are very important.
On Maps: รวมพล ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเรือ
We attended a CPR training course over the weekend at a local rescue foundation. Thai CPR practices follow international standards.
Or mostly Japanese, actually.
At the original Big C supermarket location in Maha Sarakham, which has been on a steady decline since so many competitors opened – Makro, Tesco (many branches of varying sizes), some independent stores that usually go bust within a year, and most recently, CJ. What Sarakham really needs is a Tops supermarket, which is is more high-end (but not as high end as Villa).
Pickle really likes wet food recently since she’s getting older, and she crunches reluctantly on dry food like her teeth are sensitive. She likes this Nekko brand a lot (although it’s pretty expensive at Big C, as pictured here), and won’t eat some of the other brands. She still keeps in shape as a mouser and regularly presents us with trophies like rats, mice, squirrels, birds, and lizards. I try to keep her full with cat food so she doesn’t eviscerate her prey on our doorstep like she used to – this system has been working pretty well so far.
We wanted to transfer my lowrider to Nam’s name from her sister’s, in order to prepare it for possible sale. The prefectural inspection officer we ran into at the Land Transport Office either wanted a bribe and didn’t ask for it clearly enough, or was just having a bad day, and decided to insist that my truck was too low and had to be restored to standard height (which is technically not a law here). Either way, we were not in the mood to pay into corruption and thought it might be easier to sell the truck at standard height anyway, so we took it for modification to Nam’s old classmate across the street, who runs a garage in front of his house. Pics of the restored-to-stock truck will follow after I’ve replaced the tires to match the ride height. The photos below are just a remembrance of why I bought it in the first place (in honor of the lowered racing trucks AKA rod sing cruising the beach roads in Chonburi Province).
The shop pictured is the one written about above, but the photos are from a previous visit, when they were replacing brake pads and doing maintenance.
Thai soi (street) dogs are mostly chill. This huge concrete lot near our house was supposed to be a fresh market years ago, but before it was completed, there was a huge storm. It toppled the poorly-constructed first market area roof and someone was killed by the falling roof while several others were injured. As it turns out, it was built too low and gets flooded a foot deep for the entire duration of rainy season anyway. This doggo and his friends run around here freely now.
This is a pretty common demonstration at schools and government offices in this country. Seemingly. the more run down the venue is, the crazier the demonstrations are. I’ve seen them light the flames and wave the gas cylinders over their heads like Donkey Kong before.
This is in the refurbished (!) restroom of one of my favorite restaurants in town. After careful observation, I have determined that it’s a MacGyvered pressure plate flushing mechanism that stinks of piss. It looked disgusting, so I just straddled it and stepped on the cleanest part when I was done… So weird.
I like walking around my campus at sunset because I can see after school activities in a nice light just as it’s getting cooler.
@Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University, Thailand
A year ago, on one of my daily walking routes. I see all kinds of vehicles here that I used to see in Japan – cars, trucks, ferries, heavy equipment. They often still bear company names and logos (other than the manufacturer) that were applied decades ago… It’s strangely comforting.