Yesterday provided a chance encounter with a local character which has forever changed our culinary lives. WE HAVE EATEN LIZARD, SOME KIND OF IGUANA. Specifically, this kind of iguana, although it might have been a blue-colored one since those are apparently bigger and tastier. There are so many things I want to say about this experience, it’s all just a jumble in my mind right now… I think I’ll tackle the explanation chronologically.
So yesterday, Nam and I were in front of our house taking photos. I set up a tripod in front of the pond and we started taking a long series of shots in the hot sun. Along came Captain Ahab, carrying his mini-harpoon gun:
“Do you want to try it out?” OH HELL YES PLEASE!
I tested out his fine contraption on a bunch of reeds floating in the pond, and maimed them quite handily. The trigger pull was about 20 lbs. and activated the release of the thick rubber bands (not tubes) attached to either sides of the receiver, acting much like a Hawaiian sling.
He assured us this longarm was also effective for home defense. I belive his actual words were, “you can also use this to shoot burglars!” Check out the awesomely hand-ground and nastily-barbed mini-harpoon:
You could probably do a lot more than shoot your eye out with this gun; the Captain said he’d bought it off a student 30 years ago and had speared too many fish with it to count over the years. (note: The reason I deemed this fine fellow Ahab is that he claimed to have brought in a 300 kilogram fish with this rig once. I called bullshit, first off because the harpoon was only attached with what looked like around 20 lb. test. Also,
I firmly believe anyone harpooning a 300 kg. fish with this rig would end up just like the original Captain Ahab – it’s just not possible to land. Later, I found out this may have been a misunderstanding – he may have meant 300 kgs. of fish, not a 300 kg. fish. Since the time period wasn’t specified, this sounds totally feasible. Sorry for doubting you, Captain, and sorry for the undeserved moniker) Unfortunately, he did not know where I could find one for myself. Here’s a shot of the loaded projectile (gun uncocked).
And here is where we come to lizard salad (iguana salad?). (Well not really salad. It’s about as salad-ish as a fruit salad, in that it’s not, really… ah screw it, you’ll see.) A few weeks ago some friends told me that it’s prime iguana hunting season right now and I was really jazzed about rounding up some friends and going… They hypnotize the hapless beasts with special whistling sounds, then shoot them out of the trees with slingshots made from inner tubes. Nam also wanted me to go, but was worried about karmic implications during this period just before the baby is born, so I refrained from going. For some reason, Nam thought I merely wanted to eat the iguanas (where as for me, the hunt is the only reason I would even consider eating a lizard to begin with), so she asked Captain Ahab, who certainly appeared to be able to live off the land, if he could round up some for me.
This is how we started the lizard negotiations. He asked how many she wanted, she said one or two. He said that wasn’t enough and said, “how about ten?” Nam countered with five, and we were all set. He promised to catch some later that night and asked if we knew how to prepare them. He was worried that we didn’t know how to slowly roast and skin them, and then mix various herbs and fruits together to make it all very tasty, and rightly so – we were totally like lizard virgins, man. So it ended up that he had his wife cook up the lizards he caught for us and brought us a bag of LIZARD SALAD for lunch today. Behold:
THE VERDICT: The lizard meat was smoky from being slowly grilled, presumably over charcoal. Just looking at the photo, it looks like many other variations of Thai country “salad,” most of which are based on local veggies or fruits such as eggplant, bamboo shoots, tamarind, papaya or mango, or are fish-based. This one was definitely lizard though, because I picked a spiny part out of my mouth. The closest flavor I can compare iguana flesh to is canned tuna – it had the same kind of consistency when mashed up, and didn’t taste too strongly of anything, perhaps just hinting at fish.
An added bonus was the ant queen salad Ahab’s wife also prepared for us:
Today was a good day. I learned things about this culture that even Thai people don’t know about. I KNOW WHAT IGUANA TASTES LIKE, BITCHES!
That is all.
Category: Thai Society/Culture
Isan News Update
It has been raining the past week, which is a rather curious development for this area this time of year. In fact, there was a pretty serious storm a couple nights ago and it rained fairly hard last night as well. The huge tract of land (future housing lots) behind our house has been filled in with shallow ponds (kind of returning it to its natural status of swamp, except elevated a couple meters with fill dirt), from which many noisy amphibians have emerged. This sudden spate of precipitation is in stark contrast to the first year I lived here, when I saw no real rain from October 2006 all the way until June or July of last year.
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My wife’s aunt and uncle called up yesterday to say they were on a road trip and would like to stay at our house tonight. Family is always welcome, of course (most, anyway). So its fun talking to them in my very basic Thai, but mostly just sitting there absorbing the indecipherable (to my ears, anyway) utterances of their of their specific dialect. I love learning the little nuances and unique characteristics of a new language, but believe me, fart jokes and belching are universal (just thought I’d include that here).
So Nam’s aunt and uncle are well into their 70’s and have been living together so long they communicate in a kind of nonverbal gestalt; they arrived in a Ford Escort he bought new 35 or 40 years ago and it’s currently swapping war stories with my ’71 Toyota Crown out in the driveway. They are both senile as hell and continue to go on road trips every year from their current home around Bangkok up around here to see friends and family in Isan (the Northeast) and back again. When she is freshening up in the other room he tells us in a hushed voice that he’s concerned about her memory since she often repeats herself three or four times in any given conversation, forgetting that he himself has told us the exact same thing just minutes before… They are good people, and I basically trust any couple who, by choice, go on long roadtrips in cars without power steering in this day and age (it’s a salt-of-the-earth kind of thing).
Anyway, the highlight of my day was hearing Nam’s uncle tell us that he much prefers the Japanese system of government over the Thai model since Japanese government officials have to commit suicide if they disgrace their families or office… I didn’t have the heart to tell him any different either, since it would probably be better that way (plus, I think I still have a few years before I need to tell somebody that Santa doesn’t exist).
Our New Thai House Part 1 – Picking a Plot
I’ve put off posting proper photos of our new house since we decided to build it, that is, for the better part of a year. What can I say? We were busy getting it finished (this is a home builder’s joke – a new house is never finished).
Getting this house built took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears… We really honed our powers of persuasion, pleading, and cajoling. I learned how to effectively threaten someone in Thai, and Nam learned that being visibly pregnant is a great way to have people do things for you. We both learned that government officials in charge of the positioning of power transformers, who knock away a hand offering an envelope and loudly claim to be unbribable, are merely asking for more money. Life lessons, these.
If I had tried to blog about all the problems we ran into during construction of this house, all of you would have stayed away for the duration, believe me. There was simply too much to bitch about, so I ended up breaking a lot of scrap wood and taking it out on random tailgaters instead. Life is sometimes too crappy to effectively document, anyway.
I have so many photos for this particular subject, I’ve decided to break it up into several posts, which should be generally chronological. I hope you can enjoy reading this series as much as I will writing it.
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Coming to Thailand in October of 2006 to live in a house I helped pay for in advance ended up not working out real well. This was due to a certain insufferable alcoholic-in-law who treated himself to our house before I moved here from Japan. My wife and I therefore decided to move out as soon as possible.
We searched for houses and apartments alike, debating whether to rent or buy. We searched all over Mahasarakham, which is a large area, and sometimes, for comparison, we would even look in neighboring towns. Our search took us all up and down the banks of the Chi river, since I wanted to live close to the water (a sort of compensation for living in dry country). To make a long story a bit shorter, we could find no suitable houses and no suitable land on which to build a new house.
In mid-2007, I revisited a new neighborhood just starting to be built between my university and Nam’s. One of the lots was situated right in front of a natural pond (with some reinforced banks). We fell in love with the sky and decided to build a house there.
END OF PART 1
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Our New Thai House entries:
Our New Thai House Part 1 – Picking a Plot
Our New Thai House Part 2 – Foundations
Our New Thai House Part 3 – Groundwork
Our New Thai House Part 4 – Roof and Walls
Our New Thai House Part 5 – The Blessing Way
Landscaping Our House – Before and After
good juju, bad juju, it’s all just plain old juju
Yes, sometime I will probably stop trying to write blues lyrics in the titles… but today is not the day to do so, because yesterday, I ran over a chameleon sunning himself on the highway. When chameleons are chilling, sometimes they do this curious push up routine where they puff out their chests and bob up and down (apparently, this is the best time to catch them – in order to eat them, of course – at least my Thai friends tell me so). I was on my way to work in the Crown, cruising along in fifth gear and enjoying engine noise, the wind in my hair, and the way the asphalt turns into streams of buttery gold in the intense summer morning sun.
The stretch of highway I was on is a long straightway with no intersecting roads , so I was only looking about twenty feet ahead of my car. By the time I saw the chameleon doing push ups, it was too late to swerve. I felt a small disturbance in the force as the tiniest crunching sound was heard from under the front left tire. Then all was still.
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Last week a coworker said he had seen the exact same model of car as mine on the edge of town, so I hopped in the Kujira to go check it out… there it was, in dark blue, indeed looking pretty damn similar to the very car I was driving. As I’ve been looking for spare parts (most noticeably a missing piece of chrome trim from the front), this was a truly exciting find. Who would have thought another specimen, in seemingly good condition, could be found in the very city I brought mine to? I got stuck thinking about what to do next, though.
If I expressed interest in the car, I was afraid the owner would ask too much for it. Would the better play be to keep an eye on it and wait for the situation to change (the car might appear with a for sale sign some day, or break down)? In the end, I took a gamble on being straightforward and went to talk to the owner with Nam yesterday afternoon. The car wasn’t in the parking space of what turned out to be an insurance company, but the lady inside told us it was her grandfather’s and not a customer’s , as we had begun to fear. She told us they couldn’t sell the car, as it was all they had, but we left our number in case they ever wanted to sell it, and told the lady that as we wanted it for parts, it didn’t even have to be in running condition.
So that’s that. Someday, I may have a chance at parts, and until then, it’s nice to know there’s a friend running around town. I didn’t get a chance to see the car up close or verify if it’s the same model or not, but maybe I’ll make onther visit sometime to do that and speak to the old man. At the very least, I’d like to know how he came by it.
Banana Moth
I have no idea what the real name of this moth is, and have no time to pore over moth photos for an ID, either. I found it stuck to one of the banana trees we planted behind our house when I was watering this evening. It was about three inches from wingtip to wingtip.
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Related link: A lucky photo of the elusive Japanese Hummingbird Moth
Last night a chili pepper saved my life
Me, the wife, the baby – we’ve all been extremely busy the whole time I haven’t been blogging. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a gadzillion papers and tests to mark and final grades to issue, AND NOW IT’S ALL DONE!! In front of my office door, the tortured souls of those not determined enough to earn a passing grade moan and roil with much indignity. Oh wait, that’s not the sound of tortured souls, it’s just my fever hallucinations again!
Yes, I have been sleeping a lot (when not busy) trying to recover from this nasty congestive head cold thing that I even got prescribed industrial-strength pills for last week. However, the only thing that really helped was a couple nights ago when a coworker and her husband came over for a visit and she cooked up a big pot of sticky fat noodles with nuclear orange chili peppers from a market in Kalasin (a neighboring province).
I should explain here that I’ve always had a high tolerance for spicy food and enjoy feeling the heat after popping an errant chili or two… This was beyond that. After slowly chewing one, sweat was pouring from my brow and my sinuses were clear for the first time in a week… So I popped four more at once (hey, I wasn’t thinking clearly). DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER! It blew my head off andtears were pouring down my face for a few minutes…. But my sinuses were clear for a full 24 hours!
I woke up this morning again a little congested, but I don’t know if I can face those fiery orange hell peppers again… I can honestly say that eating them is a life-changing experience. Anyone wanna try?
git up a git git down 911 119 191 is a joke in yo town
It made so much sense when I found out in Japan that the number for the popo fire department was 119, because like so many other aspects of Japanese culture, it was the exact opposite of what I was used to. Namely, 911. But it is kind of strange that Thailand has taken the only unique left in that series and dubbed 191 the number for emergency services countrywide.
So the real question is, why don’t they standardize the number for emergency services worldwide?
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Flava Flav says “Ho!”
Climbing Motorcycle Show @ Red Cross Fair
What is the Red Cross Fair?
Every year in February, for Chinese New Years, the downtown area of Mahasarakham (Maha Sarakham) around the clock tower is swarmed by vendors and street sellers of every kind of unsanitary food and useless street fair item imaginable. Entire avenues are blocked off for a few weeks, both officially, with rolling steel roadblocks, and unofficially, with sheer human mass. This is the Northeast Thai version of Carnival, sans dancing or fucking in the street, since that would take entirely too much energy (this is the tropics, after all). Somewhere at the center of activity is the real fairground area complete with rickety-ass fair rides of death, rigged game booths, sideshows with brightly illustrated signs ten times more interesting than what’s inside, and even more of the same unsanitary food stalls and useless crap-sellers. In a word, heaven. But to be a bit more honest, it’s just like a fair back home after all is said and done. Except for the motorcycle show.
I saw the “climbing motorcycle show” last year and regretted not having a video camera at the time. The rider was the craziest guy I’ve ever seen, pulling stunts I’d never even imagined. I won’t even try to describe them. Suffice to say, they were some of the most amazing riding tricks I’ve ever seen – in person, on TV, on the net, EVER.
When the Red Cross fair rolled around this year, I knew I had to get it on film. Unfortunately, it seems that they’ve cleaned the show up a bit; it didn’t have the same impact it had last year, and the rider was different this year. It’s of course possible that it was just his day off, but I prefer to believe that he died in a blaze of glory, trying to pull an inverted somersault while doing his stuff.
They’ve added a car to the show (a Nissan NV) this year and have given the children active roles in it. This is pure hubris, and one can only hope the gods turn a blind eye. Anyhow, without further ado:
Upside down in the Third World…
…or is it the First World that’s fucked?
First check out this article:
The Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog: So Good It’s Illegal
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Now, which of the following do you think is harder for me to explain to a classroom full of average Thai kids?
- Why it’s illegal (and a jailable offense) to sell grilled hot dogs where I’m from
- Why street vendors where I’m from have to watch out for cops, health and safety officials and extortionate gangs
- Why any of the above parties can’t be universally placated with a free meal now and then
If they outlawed (and enforced) hot dog grilling in Bangkok alone, 20,000 people would have to change careers. Luckily, most of the changing would be done by just selling different stuff on the cart the next day, but still…
