Thai Society/Culture
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Tokay partner for the win
Since we moved to our new house on New Years day, 2008, I haven’t seen any Tokay geckos – there just aren’t any in the neighborhood (I used to hear one down the block until a couple years ago, but it disappeared). I’ve never seen anything this awesome, though:
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Phuket Butterfly Garden & Insect World
One of the places we took the kids last week: http://www.phuketbutterfly.com/home.htm
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Centara Grand Beach Resort Phuket
We have a room near the kiddie pool. Which means we also have a room near 3 adult pools, the inner tube river, the diving pool, five or six waterslides, a big whirlpool hot tub, a stepped plateau of semi-hidden wading pools, plus this big pond called the Andaman Sea. I took the kids out to play when I was watching them today; Nam went to her conference. I was careful to slather them down with sunscreen which of course meant I forgot to put any on myself. There is nothing worse than being forced into the hot sun when you have kids screaming for you to come in the…
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Centara Grand Beach Resort Phuket
This place is awesome. Definitely the nicest place we’ve ever paid for by ourselves. And this has got to be the best time to visit Phuket, right at the end of low season. Deserted beaches yet all the businesses are open and gearing up for high season. Also, everything is cheap and can be haggled down.
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Flaming Morning Glory
This is the best Thai street food video I’ve ever seen.
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Khon Kaen Immigration
So the most heinous task of renewing our non-immigrant Type B working visas and work permits fell on this very day and to my great surprise, was quite painless, if not actually pleasant. Since I’ve been here, the immigration officethe foreingers in Maha Sarakham report to has changed from Nong Khai to Mukdahan to Khon Kaen. The Khon Kaen office started out kind of rough, which is to be expected anywhere, I guess, but they have really improved their operation. What used to take us 2 hours in Khon Kaen (or in the worst case, 10 hours at the Mukdahan office) only took us 45 minutes today, and since we arrived…
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Flooding in Sarakham
Today we were hit by a sudden storm that dumped a whole lot of water on us, very quickly. This year’s weather has been very wet and relatively cool for Thailand, and it’s been raining almost every day. I’ve been very busy for a while now, and everybody in this house started getting sick from last week. First it was Mina, then mommy, and now Max – but daddy is too busy to get sick. Taking care of three sickies is demanding, you know. So I didn’t even notice that the street in front of our house was flooding after about an hour of heavy rain. Nam did, though. I…
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Thai-specific perk
This week there are girls from the Science Faculty coming around to our offices every afternoon to practice foot massage on anyone willing… and who am I to deny their further education? More than a few people took pictures of both my feet being massaged at the same time as I dozed off on the sofa in the teacher’s room diligently filled out the supplied grading sheets.
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Dog Show at Central Plaza, Khon Kaen
And when they say, “show,” it’s like a spectacle for people who have never seen dogs before and might mistake them for food or something. The only other time I’ve heard of dogs displayed in a cage like this was at Nazo no Paradise (raccoon boner heaven), when they advertised a new “zoo” about 20 years ago and a few people, including my ex-coworker took their kids up to see it… only to find a roped off area next to the muddy parking lot adorned with cages labeled, respectively, “monkey,” “dog,” and “cat.”
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Aegle marmelos
This is a bael or bael fruit AKA Bengal quince, wood apple, stone apple or seer phael (head-fruit). In Thai it’s known as matum. In Thailand, bael is usually found in the form of dried slices, which are reconstituted in water to make juice. Our housekeeper brought over a few from her tree and I was surprised at how hard and heavy they were. We did as she said and boiled them, but then accidentally left them out on a hot night and the next day, they had fermented in the shell and burst, oozing a heavy syrup onto our counters. I threw them into the pond out front as…
