Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I threw together a bunch of leftovers and it turned out real fine… Pon Yang Kham beef is the best in Thailand, from a Thai/French cattle hybrid. It will never be world class, but it’s the best of what’s available in Thailand.
Tropical Storm Podul (North Korean for “willow”) has been dumping on us since around midnight and I spent the day trying to prevent everything we own from being flooded including vehicles, property, and cats, as well as preparing to sign a lease for our new juku and organizing teaching materials for a seminar at a vocational college in Roi Et city tomorrow (which just got postponed until next week).
My home:
My work:
The highway we were supposed to take:
The area we were supposed to go:
A new skyscraper being built in the shape of a wot (alt spelling: wode; the circular pan flute of Isan):
The newly-created Roi Et Coast Guard station:
And finally, a common sight in the countryside that always brings a smile to my face:
That’s the road to Max and Mina’s school, a couple minutes from our house on the old Maha Sarakham University campus. Nam also found a big pla salit (gourami) stranded in our driveway, and I pushed his armored side along until he could swim back down into the flooded street. When she told a friend about this when we went shopping later in the day, he asked quite seriously why we hadn’t eaten it!
Note: Most of the photos on this page are borrowed from social media and were forwarded multiple times before I used them here. Please let me know if you’d like attribution.
It’s quite possible this is an alternate spelling of “Nick.” But somebody should talk to them about it. Maybe their website is a bit more low key? Nope.
When Nam is driving, I like snapping photos from the passenger seat. Up here in Isan, this type of photo is defined by capturing the camera in the side mirror and long green fields of rice when it’s the right time of year. Otherwise, it’s just a big, hot, dusty expanse.
This is what it feels like in the city, even when you’re not rushing a kid to the hospital:
Quotes are in the title because my CRF is only 250cc; it’s the correct term for Thailand in both the Thai language and the English dialect of Thailand.
From the YouTube page: This is the incredible moment a hero biker saved the life of a young girl having an epileptic fit – by rushing her to hospital while her family were stuck in a traffic jam. The girl’s father Sorachat Sadudee, 51, was driving home after picking up his two daughters from school in Phitsanulok, central Thailand on Thursday (23/05) evening. His youngest daughter Kaimook, eight, told him that she felt sick and very tired, so he tried to make his way home as quickly as he could.
Still one of my favorite Japanese game show clips!
The most expensive coffee in the world is being produced at the elephant camp we take the kids to almost every new year, on the way to Surin province: World’s Priciest Coffee Is Hand-Picked From Elephant Dung
So here’s my prediction: What started as civet crap coffee and moved to elephant crap coffee will eventually result in the production of human crap coffee. Because, let’s be honest, Kopi Luwak can reportedly be very smooth (the ones I tried were not), but most people drink it because it’s something new and exotic, and because they secretly want to be like the baboon.
While browsing some Thai Government websites for business research, I stumbled upon this masterpiece:
Here’s the original, in Thai:
Why haven’t I heard about this until today? My new mission: Create an equally delicious Northeastern Thai version without ever having tried the original: Yam Praduk foo, pork rinds, gummy worms, and blood sausage cubes thrown together in a bag of Banana Party snack chips!
Maybe I need to spend some more time planning first.