Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
About a month ago, Maha Sarakham received a power up in the form of a real home center – Global House. Previously, our only choices for hunting hardware in this province were a pitifully small and understocked Home Mart, and a great number of mom & pops. I’ve visited this place only once, for a quick purchase, and noted that it will take at least a couple hours to properly check out every aisle.
It’s still quite cool during the days in Maha Sarakham and actually cold at night. Last year we only had a week or two of this weather, so it’s been great to have it continue for almost two whole months.
These past two months, I’ve been all over on family trips to Phimai, Chiang Mai, and Surin, and for work to Nam Nao, Saraburi, Trat, and Koh Chang. Next weekend I’m taking my Master’s class to Wang Nam Keaw for a weekend survey. Then hopefully, I can take a break from too much traveling for a while. The babies miss me when I’m gone (or so I like to think), and I miss them too.
The photos above were taken with my Galaxy 5 phone on one of our neighborhood walks – the open areas in our development are fast disappearing, so we are getting in as many dirt road rambles with the babies as we can.
Donna and Keilie are rolling with us to see M&M’s great grandmother and visit the big elephant village in Surin province.
As a sidenote, it’s always great to come home to my trusty rainhead shower and flash water heater. 220V FTW.
We are back in town, and all of the comforts and familiarity of home are just made so much better with one of the best bowls of noodles in town… So I bought take-out kway chap for the babies in between the last classes of the year, and this insolent cat drinking the water offering on the spirit house in front of the shop caught my eye.
Tomorrow, we have kin from the states coming, so it looks to be a special new years!
Last night was the first night it felt a bit chilly since last “winter.” From now through January is the best part of the year in NE Thailand.
We start the new term at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University on Monday.
I teach weekend classes all tomorrow; today’s class was cancelled because we were locked out of the building. Nobody complained, because my students are also teachers preparing for next week.
Thailand has been suffering from record flooding in recent weeks. What sets this situation apart from years past is that previously safe areas have also been flooded out. Rainfall has been heavy in some areas, but what seems to have caused the problems this time is the steady meddling with waterways and ignoring what might happen when they overflow.
Maha Sarakham is said to be at risk from today until October 31st.
I think the area where our house is should be okay, but of course there is also the possibility of the roads being wiped out, so I went aggro at Big C last week and stocked up on loads of boxed milk for Max and diapers for both of them. Also, the Nam (river) Chi flows in a long curve along the back of the Big C parking lot before running parallel to the highway to Kalasin, so it’s a good place to see the water level.
I hope I never have to use the rubber raft I brought over from Japan.
Getting rid of Bitty turned out to be a mistake. Max demanded to know where his pet had gone. Upon learning that Bitty had been returned to the pond (“to be with his friends…”), he threw an epic fit. It was so incredibly heart-rending and long, we all piled in the car. Destination: Pet store.
The main pet store in Maha Sarakham is five minutes from our house, but it seemed like ages with Max screaming the whole way. The last time I’d been there was a few years before, to buy charcoal for my DIY air/water purification project (mission status: Incomplete). I had been horrified to see the neglect of the fishtanks on display; a couple of them were filled with the black, rotting corpses of goldfish bobbing violently as the pumps merrily bubbled away. This time, there were no such horrors. We bought Max the smallest possible tank (ten inches by six?) with gravel and a pump, and decided on two attractively striped little bitties. We didn’t know it at the time, but this tank contained an anomalous zone with Strange Occurrences.
The best way to describe the Occurrences is with a timeline of the less than one-month span the aquarium was actually in operation, plus the follow-up period:
So the main mystery is: What happened to the fish? The simple explanation is that the crabs ate them. However, although this is perhaps a reasonable explanation for the second fish, the first fish was nearly as big as the small crab (the big crab wasn’t yet in the tank when the first fish disappeared). And there are other questions/factors as well:
The other major possibility is that the fish jumped out of the tank, but I never found them. The area around the table the tank was kept on was cluttered with baby seats and toys and whatnot, but I looked around everywhere more than once and still didn’t find anything.
Not having a satisfactory answer and not knowing eventually led me to consider alternative explanations:
I fear I will never know.
Does anybody out there have a better guess?
Both recent finds when all I had was a crappy cell phone camera.
This is the first time I’ve seen this type of mushroom here and one can only wonder if licking the nipple would be deadly or not.
I found Leafy Mothra in our driveway and captured it in an empty mustard jar for Max to see. He was duly impressed, as the entire body was blaze orange. Leafy Mothra was about 2″ long.
ACT FAST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!! GET YOURS TODAY!!!
@ the baby store conglomeration on the third floor of SermThai Department store, Maha Sarakham, Thailand (link to hp removed due to malicious script warning).
I think I’ve finally got this blog up and running the way it should be, so I feel great.
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Woke up this morning, went to buy a traditional Isan breakfast of sticky rice and skewered BBQ pork, as well as some fried doughballs and a bag of rice porridge. Brought it all back home, got Max ready, and took him to school. Found a roadside vendor selling fresh durian and had him break down a small (~.75 kgs whole) one for Nam – she loves them (I merely tolerate them). Came home again to Mina babbling and scooting around madly on her baby walker. It’s been a perfect start for the day.