Thai Society/Culture
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Top of BKK
Do NOT watch if you can’t handle heights:
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Thousand year old egg stir fry with deep fried basil
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. Posted from WordPress for Android
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Urination defense
Someone is very disturbed by creatures pissing on their walls. Posted from WordPress for Android
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Fire, No Water, Burn.
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. Posted from WordPress for Android
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Hulk smash.
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…
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Areca Nut (aka Betel Nut)
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. Posted from WordPress for Android
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How to fix Broken Thai Text Display in Google Chrome
I recently experienced a very strange and vexing problem in Chrome (EN v.38, 64-bit, Windows 7) where all Thai text appeared as small boxes or squares, or squares with strange symbols inside of them. It literally appeared overnight, and no amount of tweaking encodings or font settings (you know, the normal stuff) could fix it. Only Thai language seemed affected, and it only happened in Chrome (I tested in FF, IE, Opera, and MS Office as well). If you are experiencing the same problem, I have a solution that is working 100% (for me). It is tied to a new Microdicksoft font rendering technology recently enabled in Chrome by default…
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How poor are poor families in Myanmar?
Poor enough to sell their children to human trafficking rings for $50 US: Trafficker of Rose-Selling Children on Khaosan Road Arrested The story linked above is currently displayed along an article stating that Thailand has been downgraded to the lowest level (with the worst offenders) in the US State Department’s latest report on human trafficking. …This is a direct result of the recent reporting on slavery on Thai shrimp boats and the media tying some of the largest corporations in Thailand, the US, and the UK to human trafficking (the big NY Times article ran just yesterday). The response from some of these corporations has been promising: Through our research…
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Isan Lunch
Lao-style somtam, grilled tilapia, beef meatball skewers, rice noodles, sticky rice: Around $5 US!!
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Taco night
When Dave and Michiko visited from Japan a month ago, we had a Mexifood party. Due to what’s available here, we had to improvise a few things, but it all turned out well: I made carnitas pork and refried beans in the slow cooker (in that order, without washing the pot, using pork fat to season the beans) from the night before. A trip to the supermarket only yielded a single, cement-hard avocado, so we nuked it for a minute and mixed it in with locally available (Khon Kaen) sour cream. Finally, we deemed making corn tortillas with the masa I have in the freezer and the tortilla press my…
