Category: Thai Society/Culture

Mina’s new Warbirds

We picked up an incomplete set of Callaway Warbirds for Mina at the Tsuruya Golf (Japan’s golf Mecca) main branch in Honmachi. It was exactly the kind of deal I like to find in Japan, because any imperfection in a product can result in huge bargains – we scored the set for less than half off because it was missing the hood (removable top of the golf bag) and a putter. Nam’s good friend ended up gifting Mina a really nice putter anyway, so we packaged the set with bubble wrap and brought it on the plane back to Thailand. Tonight was Mina’s first lesson in nearly a month, so we were peeling the plastic off of the heads before trying each club. It was like golf Christmas.

She’s only had a dozen lessons, and she seems to really like it (which is great now that we are invested in it LOL). This range is currently the only one open in Sarakham, and it’s owned by Mina’s schoolmate’s mom: Non Duea Driving Range Maha Sarakham

Highly recommended.

I rather like smashing balls with a weighted stick (although I have no proper form and employ only brute force – I hope Mina teaches me the form part someday), so I hope we can start actually golfing soon.

Raw Liver at ลาบ ลับ ลับ ปรีดี 43

Either Taro or my cousin knew about an awesome Japanese street restaurant in Bangkok that serves raw beef liver – a dish once very popular in Japan that is now very hard to get (where it is available, single portions are apparently given out to customers in a sealed plastic container with origin/tracking information). Everything was excellent, but the liver, served traditionally with rock salt and sesame oil, was outstanding. Taro and I ate too much.

The sashimi was also pretty good:

It was very hot that night, but we had a blast:

The Green VIP Party Bus

We just came back from a back-to-back four day trip to Pattaya and 8 day trip to Japan. I will try and document some of it here. The Pattaya trip was a 40-person corporate trip for my cousin’s company in Japan that Nam and I organized; it turned out well. It all started out with a double-decker bus we chartered to pick up the group at BKK. It was a pretty awesome setup and the driver, Noi, was very cool.

Hot like the hell

A student told me it was hot like the hell the other day, and I’m not inclined to disagree. The temp is reaching 43°C (109.4°F) pretty much all week, and we just hide from the sun all day, be it at home or at the nearby mall, or somewhere with good AC. I still walk every day at dusk, and I long for even slightly cooler days.

These were taken back in November of last year. This is actually a flooded parking lot (the water was about a foot deep) that has been completely dry for the past few months. It is extremely dry this year, and hotter than usual. The only saving grace is a strong breeze that kicks up for hours at a time, which has an effect like a convection oven during the hot afternoons, but it’s better than that clingy hot and humid feeling like Japanese summers.