Quite predictably, the long car ride to and from Bangkok was not appreciated by either baby, which they were quite vocal about. This was a kind of test run; do we really want to unleash these two on a plane full of innocents for the cumulative nineteen or so hours it takes to get back to Cali (w/one stopover)? The answer might just be children’s cold medicine…
Mina’s birth abroad has been duly reported, and her passport is in the works. Legally, she’s not a citizen exactly but has all the same rights as a citizen when she gets the passport. Say what? Yeah, it’s kind of a funny thing (though not half as funny as finding out that there is a Thai way of counting months for the Chinese zodiac and that Mina is a Tiger like me instead of an Ox because she was born in December) that way. I asked the vice consul to explain better what a non-citizen who bears all the rights (and responsibilities) of a citizen is, but even she didn’t know, so hey, that’s some pedantic shit right there.
Bangkok was hot and muggy as ever, and it was a relief to get back home. It’s hotter here, but it’s kind of a clean heat – Bangkok pollution just has a way of working itself into every pore and just making you sticky and gross. Plus, the scourge of mosquitoes in our room was epic. They attacked Max and I until Nam and I just got fed up with it and turned on all the lights and went medieval on their asses. It was like a Tarantino scene because I kept having to use various tools to get at these mosquitoes hiding in different places – a rolled-up newspaper to bat one off the ceiling, and a pillow to smash on in a headboard groove. One even got inside Mina’s portable framed mosquito net and bit her cheek, which woke her up, too.
Itchy, screaming babies at 3 in the morning sucks hard. So getting payback against the insect kingdom in general felt really good, and after we devoted twenty minutes to smashing every bug in the room, we fell asleep again and had no more problems. Up until that though, I’ve never seen mosquitoes so voracious. We had the AC and two floor fans pointed at Max and the bastards were still getting through to torture him.
Category: Photos
Cornershop Kway Chap
Last week I visited at a noodle shop that I thought was new, but my coworker said it’s been around for a few years.
This is mainly what they sell, standard kway chap noodles served Vietnamese style in clear chicken stock with rice noodles of medium thickness (you can also get instant ramen served in kway chap stock).
This is opposed to the other style of kway chap popular in Thailand, the Chinese kind in brown stock with blood cubes, bamboo shoots, and spiral flat noodles (this Chinese kind is usually done very poorly in Thailand IMHO, but when done properly, with fresh ingredients and duck meat, can be very tasty).
A vital key to surviving in any given area over an extended period of time is knowing the secret menus of your favorite haunts. The secret menu of this place was somewhat amusing:
I loves me some chicken bones! (They use a bunch of these for the broth every day.)
Notes: This shop is located on Soi Srisawat between RMU and Spirit House Kway Chap, on the right side if headed away from RMU. Kway chap w/o egg 20 baht, w/egg 25 baht, chicken carcass 20 (25?) baht.
missiles
I was browsing teh intarwebs and stumbled upon this pic:
…and all I could think of was a photo we took a few years ago on the beach in Sumoto:
I say “we” because I don’t remember who was using Kana’s point-and-shoot (EXIF says it was a Casio EX-Z500) for this jump series; it was probably me or Kana or Faye. It took me a while to find the photo because I couldn’t spot it in my archives, so I ended up logging into Flickr for the first time in two years (A long story in itself. Basically, the Yahoo login system is fuxxored.) and looking for it among the earlier photos we posted in the might as well jump photo group. Even though I’d basically given up on the NEW! IMPROVED! and utterly soulless Flickr experience after wholeheartedly embracing its awesome start up and being within the first few users to upload over 10,000 photos, many people have stuck with it – that group really grew when I was gone.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Dinner Set
…for the discerning toddler.
Blue kapom (Calotes versicolor) (correction: Calotes mystaceus)
It took me three years to find one of the blue ones after I heard about them (and possibly ate them as well). This lizard is known in standard Thai as ginka and in Isan dialect as kapom. It has many names in English, including Oriental Garden Lizard, Eastern Garden Lizard, Changeable Lizard, Bloodsucker Lizard, Crested Tree Lizard, Garden Fence Lizard. They are Agamids, from the family Agamidae, commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. Here’s an informative passage from this page:
Changeable Lizards are related to iguanas (which are found only in the New World). Unlike other lizards, they do not drop their tails (autotomy), and their tails can be very long, stiff and pointy. Like other reptiles, they shed their skins. Like chameleons, Changeable Lizards can move each of their eyes in different directions.
I saw it on this tree at a restaurant my coworker and I were having lunch at, and it must have been mating season because there was another blue one, a half-red one, and one changing from tan to tan with spots before our very eyes! It was quite a sight, and I’ll definitely go to see them again sometime.
Note to self: I’m not sure of the restaurant’s name, but it’s in Maha Sarakham, out on the bypass between the crossroad to Borabu and the one to Wapi Pathum, 200 hundred meters before the road to Rui Sap (where my cop student got drunk on pineapple brandy and waved a glock around at everybody) on the left.
Update March 2023: Although the name of these lizards are the same in Thai and Isan languages (กะปอม/กิ้งก่า gabpawm/ginggaa), the red ones and the blue ones are actually different species. The red ones are Calotes versicolor, commonly known as Oriental Garden Lizard, etc. The blue ones are Calotes mystaceus aka the Indo-Chinese forest lizard or blue crested lizard; some of the research online (which I refuse to link to because it’s on a pay-to-access pseudo-academic research site) seems to indicate that these blue ones weren’t officially recorded in a nearby province (Ubon Rachatani) until 2018! I originally posted this article in 2010.
I’ve written some further information on a new post: Blue vs Red Kapom/Gapom Species
Mina chanbo
This was a few weeks ago, when she still wasn’t very cute at all.
max on the wall
Those are newfangled, lightweight building blocks made of some porous, anechoic material (I yelled at ’em and they didn’t answer back.). They’re predictably better at insulating, but much weaker than good old red bricks – they’re only used for top story walls on a two story houses (or everywhere on a single story).
over yonder
Max in the sandlot near home. Taken with Samsung J700 phone (crappy camera BTW).
serious growth
Mina could prop herself up before she was two months old… She could turn herself over as well, but only kinda by accident. This morning, she almost moved herself off the bed. She can see across the room, recognizes faces, and talks to you in long spurts when she’s so inclined… Other times, she wants to be held up so she can walk across the room.
She’ll be three months old on Saturday.