Thai Society/Culture
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I ride a “big bike” in Thailand
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.…
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Krungthep Mahana Nani
Still one of my favorite Japanese game show clips!
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INSERT ANIMAL NAME – Crap coffee
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.
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Thailand’s Most Wanted
While browsing some Thai Government websites for business research, I stumbled upon this masterpiece: Here’s the original, in Thai:
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Dorilocos, Frito Pies, and Papaslocas! Oh, my!
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.
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Sunset Cast
We visited a nearby reservoir, Kaeng Loeng Chan (they really need to simplify the official English spelling), on the weekend. They were holding a work rally to cover the newly-created Health Park with grass sod and quite a few people showed up to volunteer (or as a Thai would say, to make merit). We got bored of the manual labor after less than an hour and walked around the banks of the reservoir instead, taking photos and looking at dead crabs. The water seems too murky and oxygen-depleted to support fish close too shore, but they must be out there somewhere. Maybe I’ll take the kids fishing out there sometime.
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Climate Change in Thailand
The Nation published a cool infographic about what climate change means for Thailand. Having lived here for over a decade, I have noticed huge changes in the seasons and climate. When I came, the first few years contained long drought periods (one year in particular it didn’t rain for almost five months), and the long-term trend since then has been one of persistent flooding instead of drought. LINK: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355898
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Cool PEA Truck
Old iron on the road gets harder and harder to find every year, but the Provincial Electricity Authority still has a fleet of classic cherry picker trucks from Japan.
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Who Owns Victory Monument?
The district where this most famous of Bangkok landmarks (created to mark conquest over territories in Indochina that have since been returned ) proposed building a museum and pedestrian tunnels underneath it, but it was stalled because nobody knows who owns it! A historian expressed surprise that no government agency has claimed Bangkok’s most iconic war memorial. But he also notes that ownership of a historical site has always been something everyone took for granted. “We never asked ourselves this question before,” Thamrongsak Petchlertanan said in an interview. “Because we always knew it was government property. We never observed who actually owns it.” The monument was built in 1941 to…
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Cholos in Din Daeng
This is still my favorite Coconuts video of all time: Thai cholos? Bangkok bangers? Siam-esés? Odelay.
