Thai Society/Culture
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F*ck Songkran
So we’re in the middle of the Songkran holiday period that marks the Thai New Year. The reason I feel so strongly about this holiday, which is also called the “water festival” in English, is that in typical third-world fashion, safety is being totally sacrificed for alcohol-fueled shits ‘n giggles. Apparently the current state of affairs is a perversion of the old tradition of pouring water over the hands of elders to wash away bad luck (just as we experienced during our wedding here). What I mean by “current state of affairs” is roads lined with drunken idiots (and all of their children, brothers, and sisters, also drunk) who throw…
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Captain Ahab: The Man Who Brought Us Lizard Salad
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. //////////// Related link: A lucky photo of the elusive Japanese Hummingbird Moth
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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…
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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? ////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Flava Flav says “Ho!”
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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…
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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 //////////////////////////////////////////////// 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…
