Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Which hack is Mad Maxier?
A. This tortoise shell guitar found at an obscure ya-dong bar in Roi Et:
or
B. My old dirt-thrasher Tena (the urusai-est Honda Tena in the world)
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This review of Wilson Silver Color Mist (apparently used as the chrome inhalant in the movie) made me bust a gut.
It appeared to signal the end of a long class at my part-time gig in Roi Et, so I excused the students and drove home in the rain.
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Fail to heed his warnings and pay the price.
I got ambitious cooking one of my favorite restarant foods last week. Just to go over the top, I tried it with pork belly and these groovy new green dyed century eggs, which I first deep fried in tempura batter.
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Someone is very disturbed by creatures pissing on their walls.
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During the Songkran water festival, a fire truck came around to refill its tanks at the pond in front of our house. The trucks normally spend the duration of the festivities driving along the main strips downtown and basically enjoying being the kings of the country-wide watertfight. On this day, however, a huge fire broke out within a mile of our house and this truck was not at all ready to do its job… The next day we saw another fire truck spraying people during the waterfights, so obviously, Songkran is the worst time of year to have a fire in Thailand.
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About six years ago, I was attacked by a Malaysian Sun Bear. I had gone on a school trip to the mountains, and at one of the scenic viewpoints, there was a dirty cage with a juvenile sun bear in it. Tourists were feeding it chips and bottled soy milk and whatever shit they had with them, and it was really just a shitty experience overall. But I, like every other asshole around, was entranced by the bear, and held a banana through the steel fencing for a second too long. The bear came around and swiped the banana out of my hand, and one of his claws brushed the top of my hand. It didn’t break skin, but immediately turned red and funky. And that is my story about the time I was attacked by a bear.
Actually, I was just trying to write something, anything, to get my mind off this photo I just saw. It made me hate people again. Really, really hate people. Here it is:
Here’s the short explanation:
“Kwan” the Malayan sun bear died after the group discovered her starving and kept in a dark room Saturday during what the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand described as a routine check on wildlife kept at a temple. (full story here)
If you want to hate people any more, you can check out Wildlife Friends Foundation FB page and see more horrifying pictures of Kwan, read about the loris that had its legs broken so it couldn’t run away from the stew pot, and see just how bad it really is:
Full props to Wildlife Friends Foundation and whoever paid off the authorities and freed that goddamn caged-for-30-years gorilla in Bangkok (although I’ve heard rumors this actually did not happen).
Seriously, fuck people.
Apparently, the palm tree growing behind our house is an Areca Palm, because Nam pulled these off it today. I tried chewing betel nut a few years ago with Nam’s grandmother (it was….interesting), and know a bit about it from talking to an old vendor at the market after that. This type is called “mak luang” (yellow betel nut) in Thai. I’m not actually sure if yellow is a variety our just a stage of growth, though.
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