A couple months back, we visited a small restaurant in neighboring Kosum Phisai, on one of the two main routes to Khon Kaen from Maha Sarakham. This place advertises along the highway as serving spaghetti and pork steak, the local iterations of which are invariably disappointing… but I bever order that crap anyway, so it didn’t really bother me. What did bother me was what I found on the bathroom wall:
Do Not Disturb!
Nam reported that the same could be found in the women’s restroom as well (the man’s and women’s were separated by a wall, so it was probably connected through cracks or something.
This was one of the more disturbing sights at a restaurant last year, somebody caring for the termite nests.
Just a little present for Christmas I suppose. Usually we have a month or two of cool weather here, but it stayed hot for the longest time I’ve ever seen. Fucking global warming. It’s only 20°C (68°F) right now, but I’m sure most of my students will be dressed for skiing this week.
Lunch @ Oishi RamenNew SF Cinema has 5 or 6 theaters, 2 in SONY 3DSome famous Thai TV dude
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Three years ago, when we moved into this house, many people doubted my choice of location. I simply told them that it would be a few years until this became the new center of Maha Sarakham. Our house was one of the first up around here and, back then, was surrounded by nothing. Now there are hundreds of houses that have sprung up all around us, a new Big C supercenter, dozens of new stores and restaurants, and as of today, a huge new shopping mall.
The oldest shopping center/minimall in Mahasarakham is Sermthai plaza, located next to the canal in the old downtown district – this year is its 55th year of operation. It was built by a very wealthy family who were some of the original settlers here, when it was literally a jungle. I knew when we bought this house that the land originally belonged to this family. It made sense that if they were going to invest in big projects, the area around our house was the logical place to do it. Sure, some swampy land had to be filled in, but landfill is cheap for rich people who can shuffle dirt from worthless pieces of land to valuable ones. So I stand vindicated today, because they have just opened the largest mall in a 60 kilometer radius just across the street from the back entrance to my neighborhood – a five or ten minute walk. Hopefully, this further increases the land value of this area. Thank you, rich people, for sharing the wealth with us peasants – and thank you for making a decent ramen shop ten minutes from my house.
Walking around the new Sermthai Complex on opening day, two things really stand out:
Maha Sarakham really is the definition of a university town. I have heard there are ten thousand teachers at the various schools and universities here, and I’m guessing the number of students may be ten times that. Many businesses really attract a crowd by offering student memberships and discounts, and many businesses just close during long holiday periods – two whole months during the summer break – because the population of the city is seemingly cut by half as students go back home. For certain businesses that depend on students for income, the long breaks simply are not sustainable. Dormitory room rates near the universities discount their rates by half during these periods. So this new mall will hopefully be a great place to visit during the long school breaks.
Also, people watching at the new Sermthai today was just a study in contrast – I’ve never seen so many low-so people in such a hi-so place (I count myself as an honorary low-so person); like Beverly Hillbillies on some grand scale, set in SE Asia. Awesome.
A big storm blew through here yesterday… At one point, it was gusting as hard as I’ve ever seen it. The reeds at the edge of the pond were blowing sideways, and the doors of the house seemed unsure of whether to blow in or out. The babies were sleeping at the time, and stayed that way even though the thunder seemed to boom right over us and the lightning tripped the Saf-T-Cut twice. Nam was still at work, and the street in front of our house flooded a bit, but not as bad as last time.
The storm blew over and the sun came out. The babies eventually woke up and Max must have remembered the floods from last year since he asked me to go get him a fish. Neither the pond nor the storm drains were overflowing this time, so there weren’t any fish.
I had to run errands on the other side of town and saw that the storm had blown down a huge highway sign right in front of our neighborhood. I hope nobody got hurt. The rear entrance was flooded again, like last time, and for a while it was a bit too deep to drive a car or motorcycle through, although pickups were making it through just fine.
If anybody stupid enough to drive through that storm was going under this sign when the telephone pole-sized steel legs bent in half, they either crapped their pants or didn't even see how close they came to being squashed because it was impossible to see or hear anything.They closed off one side of the highway to pull down the sign with crane trucks. This was the only way to get into my neighborhood, though, because the rear entrance was still flooded.This doggy found a juicy treat.
It rained again hard today, which made us scramble around to get things done (Nam’s car is in Khon Kaen getting resprayed so we’re doing it all in the Crown and with the help of my <150cc bike fleet), but it’s all good now.
These are the kinds of photos I really wanted to take before the accident, but I never had the chance. The body shop to which the work was outsourced did a good job – they pounded out parts I thought would be impossible to save, and finished the job slowly while looking for parts.
Only one rare part was totally lost – the lower right front turn signal lens and frame. The shop returned the car to me apologizing for not being able to source the parts in four whole months. At that point, I just wanted the damn car back so I agreed to accept it with this one glaring omission. Then I got my Google on and found the part in one day, shipped from a fellow Crown fan in Bangkok.
Ironically, a good smack in the front end seems to have cured several chronic engine issues. For now, I am just very happy to have the Crown back.
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Location: Maha Sarakham bypass, just around the corner from my neighborhood.
So we went out for a family dinner last night, to a place we used to go a lot for crusted garlic fish, but stopped visiting for no reason in particular. Mina was acting kind of funny, not scarfing down everything in sight as usual. Finally, she really stated acting up and did something that merited a spank on the bottom, so I put her over my lap and wound up for effect.
I knew something was wrong by the sound of impact: SCHLOP!!
Baby shit splattered all over my hand and a stinky mist expanded from the area of impact.
Mina looked at me in defiance.
Nam thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Max just shrugged at me.
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Of course, I already had shit on my hand so I had to change Mina’s poopie diaper as well.
I arrived a bit late to the first wedding of two only to get trapped in the parking lot due to idiots who had parked every which way Undeterred, I squeezed through a couple of pickups to a promising dirt field that appeared to be damp, but solid. A couple feet into it, the car bogged down a bit, but not wanting to get stuck, I pushed forward… and got stuck further into the field.
Anyway, lemons into lemonade I say. This is what my car would look like slammed, with brown tires:
Eventually, a truck came and pulled our trusty Cefiro out of the muck, and I took it to get washed before Nam came home.
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By the way, this is the semi-finished parking lot at the new wedding hall of Marin restaurant in Maha Sarakham.
The OTOP (One Tambon One Product) marketplace I wrote about a couple years ago is now booming. For the first few years of its existence, it struggled along as a ragtag gathering of unsuccessful vegetable vendors and farmers selling homemade charcoal and surplus rice from the curbs. I visited twice a week to buy organic vegetables and freshly slaughtered/butchered meat (that are, as yet, completely unappreciated in this neck of the woods) for years, and nothing ever changed. The entire market seemed to be run by people too old and frail to work any other jobs, and I was in a small group of regular customers who were barely keeping them going. It was depressing, and I dreaded the imminent demise of my fresh-from-people’s-backyards produce source.
But.
The change came very slowly. From about a year ago, things started picking up. Food stalls that set up on the perimeter of the covered market area (actually in the parking lot) in the evening started appearing. I recognized some of the vendors from other markets around town: A grilled egg vendor from the bi-weekly night market on the Khamriang curve, a fried doughball cart from my university’s food stalls, a smoothie vendor from downtown. I asked around, and there was no consensus as to why vendors had started gathering, except that there was no fee for setting up there in the parking lot – with good reason, as it might have been impossible for most shops to regain any fee at all in sales back then… but the traffic slowly increased. More vendors and more customers started appearing, a fried chicken stall here and a prepared-entree-in-plastic-bag cart there. Villagers started coming in by the pickupload in the evenings to buy cheap veggies, and day laborers would wander through for cheap snacks to go with their white spirit dinners.
A couple weeks ago, when most people were still off work and visiting home from the big cities, I found myself trapped in a crowd at the marketplace. I had to wait in line to buy pork and there were more stalls than ever. Compared to a year ago, the marketplace seemed to be doing twenty times more business. It made me feel all warm inside for a second, and then I remembered how much I hate crowds.
Still, I have a soft spot for this market so I want to see it grow, I guess… It was so unpopular for so long, people who drive by it to work every day forget that it’s there… Whoever thought I would be nostalgic for the bad old days?
