Category: Thai Society/Culture
Mountains of earthenware jars
The entire lot is covered with pottery shards… What are these jars for? Where do they go? Will they be used for something, or stay here forever to be found by archaeologists who will be convinced that Chiang Mai was a center of pottery?
Royal Thai Motorcade
Last week, on the way home from my program’s English Camp at Nam Nao National Park, I moblogged about a major police presence on the highway suggestive of the presence of royalty. As it turns out, a princess was in town, and we were cleared off the highway to make way for her motorcade. This is my photo log of this most auspicious event.
Long live the King and his family!
Long live Thailand!
Protein snack
We happened upon a stretch of fried grasshopper stands and decided to partake. They were most excellent.
Also, it turned out that one of the princesses of Thailand was in a motorcade behind us and we had to pull over with all the other cars on the road to clear it before she passed. I had my Nikon ready and will post photos later.
alluring address
Today I was greatly relieved to see that one of my innocent first year students had changed her e-mail address per my suggestion last week. I had been reluctant to use her previous address, lovelyhotlove@hotmail.com.
Your Robert Smith fix for the day decade
—==|||| ATTENTION OSAKA BILL, PARIS SOPHIE, COSTA RICA SOPHIA, ADAM(s) AND OTHER ASSORTED CURE FANS, PAST AND PRESENT |||==—
An incredible Crystal Castles cover of Platinum Blonde’s “Not in Love” with Robert Smith vocals: Right click to download
This is currently playing on loop on my deck as a full-scale molam concert is going off at the entrance to our hood. I walked out a few minutes ago to see what was happening and decided I’d rather listen to this again and again, which is saying a lot.
(thx attica)
ngu singh
There’s a meter-long snake that’s been run over in the street in between our house and the next one. It looks like a fat rat snake, the ones they call “lion snakes” here. Too smashed to be much fun taking pictures, though. There have been a lot of smaller snakes run over around the neighborhood recently. I guess they come out to warm up on the road more now that it’s getting colder.
Cool season
Last night was the first night it felt a bit chilly since last “winter.” From now through January is the best part of the year in NE Thailand.
We start the new term at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University on Monday.
I teach weekend classes all tomorrow; today’s class was cancelled because we were locked out of the building. Nobody complained, because my students are also teachers preparing for next week.
Visa Run 2010
I’ve been living overseas for half of my life and applying for visas regularly throughout that time. It never gets easier. Hell, now I have to report every ninety days to immigration (in person or by mail-in form) just for the honor of living here.
At least tomorrow’s visa run is just an hour away, in Khon Kaen. It used to be in the border town of Mukdahan (famous for peppery pork sausage and a shitty Indochinese market), and before that, the border town of Nong Khai (famous for a “friendship” bridge that Japanese engineers would scoff at, plus a shitty Indochinese market), but I suppose they got tired of dealing with so many foreigners coming from hours away.
I’ve met people that travel around to different countries just collecting stamps in their passports, and I really despise them. Collect some for me, fuckers. I’ll give you my passport and all the other shit you need to extend my visa for a year, and you go stand in line with fifty other pissed off, whiny expats that wai to office shrubbery and tow around ugly village wives picking grasshopper legs out of their teeth.
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I fucking hate visa runs.
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UPDATE: I’m done! Everything went really smoothly this year; the staff at Khon Kaen immigration is great and the labor office in Maha Sarakham has always been understanding, if a little comfortably-paced.
Giant Thai Lady Bug
Those are my nasty fingers, not Max’s.