Category: Photos

Tendai Visit – August 2025

Nam and I met at Tenri University in Japan 30+ years ago. Over the years, we kept in touch with Tendai from Thailand both formally and otherwise, which led to formal MOU signings between Tenri university and Nam’s employer, Mahasarakham University, as well as mine, Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University. This eventually led to yearly trips from Tendai to MSU with groups of up to 20 students, as well as Nam taking students from Mina’s high school (with her uni students acting as chaperones) for intensive Japanese language training and cultural study in Tenri.

The Tendai group always has a couple destinations when they come over, and they left for Phayao yesterday after spending a few days here. One of the highlights was visiting a Muay Thai camp about 20 minutes away, where students from my university showed us a choreographed routine they had performed at the Maha Sarakham 160 year founding anniversary celebrations the day before.

Come to find out, their coach (a teacher at my uni) attended the sports college next door and was one class below Tony Jaa! I do see some Ong Bak inspiration in their routine.

Anyway, Dabrun Muay Thai Camp posted some photos to FB: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BQUe5vLuN/

As did the moo krata restaurant we ate at later that night: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19Uz7k3Jz1/

Hope to see all of you again soon!

Went on our yearly Pattaya trip

Me and T have been going there every year to visit interns or attend conferences and the like. I took a lot of food photos to add to Maps in hopes of reaching level 10 as a Guide. The trip started out with a great bowl of pork blood noodles for lunch on the way to Borabu, the next town over. Unless otherwise indicated, all of the many bowls of noodles consumed on this trip were yellow bami noodles, which I crave when I’m on keto (I’m off due to uni trips at the moment, so game on!).

What made this bowl stand out were the type of noodles used (thin and perfectly textured), the clear and tasty soup, and the giant chunks of braised pork tendon served in each bowl.

Pickle carrier

Pickle’s son, Marmalade, sadly passed a while back, and they were both afflicted with some strain of flu. This made them weak and moody. I took Pickle to the vet several times over the course of a few months, and she got even more annoying and meowy in the car than she normally is… But she sure is a cute derp sometimes.

Triton is no longer the Bang Saen Special

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).

Gauge cluster (mostly wrong/defunct – true racer style)
A shift indicator – the first one I’ve used since learning to drive stick in a Porsche 944 35 years ago!
Up on the stand
Rear drums, baby!
Pickle loves hanging out under the truck and in its shadows all day – it’s very secure

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.