Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
When we built our house in Thailand 17 years ago, we had a Japanese-style name plate carved in granite. When we were thinking of selling our house and moving back to the states last year after the floods, we painted it it over and put an artsy plastic address number over it. Then, when we decided not to move back after all, I eventually scraped all the paint off it… No harm, no foul, I guess.
These particular fields (next to a needle shop and art village) have lain fallow for so long, I’m not sure if there’s actually any rice left.
They were nice enough to put a nappy on it.
Thai meatballs (luk chin or look chin, depending on your preferred Romanization) are, like sausage, popular and of mysterious formulation — you never really know what they’re made of, even after eating them. More important, however, is the dipping sauce. Good dipping sauce has saved many a bad meatball, and sauce is actually one of the most important aspects of Thai culture.
The neighborhood was lit up. Taken in front of our house.
Someday, I will make a list all of the vehicles I have owned over the years. A truck has never been among them, until recently. After our neighborhood and my precious Crown was flooded in 2022 (the Crown is sitting at my mechanic’s place, waiting for me to save enough money for a proper restoration), I needed new wheels. Since both of our kids were studying in the USA at the time, I figured we could get away with a standard size pickup and got a great deal on the Triton. It’s been great for carrying stuff around.
An older lady in the neighborhood was giving away huge potted plants, so Nam and I headed over to her house after work one night.
She told us the local name of the plants, which I have since forgotten, and I have since misidentified them several times. We originally thought they were giant lilies (Crinum asiaticum), but that appears not to be the case.
We gave the two shown on the back of the truck to Nam’s mom and kept the twins in the pot on our driveway shown in the top pic. The twins were eventually infected with rust, so I had to do some serious leaf removal.
It was hard deep frying inside the house until we upgraded our Electrolux hood with a 1HP Mitsubishi blower on our roof.
Female, I guess.
AKA Japanese rhinoceros beetle, Japanese horned beetle, or kabutomushi (カブトムシ).
They show up in our yard at least once a year. The males are more impressive, with their long horn. I was not shocked to read about their use in Chinese medicine, but I was surprised to see that researchers have discovered that their larva show anti-obesity and antibiotic effects. Thank you, Wikipedia!
If you know, you know.
Seeing this made me want to watch True Detective S1 again.
True Detective set in rural Thailand would have the perfect atmosphere.
