Category: Thai Society/Culture

Airbag Story

On Saturday. I went to my homeboy Ot’s shop, Wattana Sound, to get a bigger horn put on the car since it seems to be the only deterrent to the 50,000 students haphazardly riding motor scooters on the local roads.
His worker takes off the steering column cover and leans under to examine wiring bundles. He uses a tester and checks each wire and then inadvertently triggers the driver’s side airbag… POW! The airbag catches him square in the eye and is louder than a tire blowing out (I know this because I was across the street when it happened).
So eventually I return to the shop and Ot is waiting for me and shows me the problem… I make sure the worker is all right (he has a very small cut over his eye) and Ot assures me he will cover the cost for replacement at the Nissan dealer. I tell him that it’s more than just the airbag since the collision system is tied into the seatbelts and active head restraints via computer (actually, it turns out there’s a spring loaded system in the rear seats as well); Ot breaks out some cans of Beer Lao and starts making calls.
Somewhere in Bangkok, the steering assembly for an A33 Cefiro is placed on a truck bound for Mahasarakham, where we will have it installed on Monday.
///////////////
On Sunday morning, I am driving Nam to work when I hear this curious vibrating noise between my seat and the car door. I reach under to see what it is and my hand comes back up holding a U-shaped wire hair holder-thingie. Nam immediately demands to know who’s it is, and I’m hard pressed to answer, because I just have no idea… She’s has no reason to be suspicious, really, but then again, neither of us has any idea how the hell a girl’s hair thingie got in my car.
I thought about it all day and a weird scenario evolved in my head… I told Nam about it and she thought I was totally bullshitting, but we went to confirm my theory – we went back to Ot’s car shop. The worker who had been doing the wiring has long hair, and the force of the airbag deploying in his face knocked the hair thingie clear off his head and under the seat. Awesome!
///////////////
Yesterday we got the car fixed, so all’s well that ends well, I guess.

On the Road 2007 (Part 3) – Koh Chang

There are several ferries running from Trat to Koh Chang. We chose the Center Point Ferry because it was the only one that looked like it wouldn’t sink if hit by a stiff breeze. The signs for it on the roadway emphasized the fact that they were using Japanese ferries, which was somehow very comforting (I don’t know how I would feel about trusting my life, wife, and car to a ferry made in, say, Kazakhstan or Luxembourg, you know?). It might be since I rode the ferry so many times between Awaji Island and Osaka, but I guess it’s the same thing applied to electronics or cars.

Ferries are great places to check out other people’s cars. Check out the gravel truck.

All of the trucks are carrying building materials!
As it turns out, even though Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand, most of it consists of protected forest so everything has to be carried over.

At first I thought these life jackets were solid proof of this ship’s Japanese origin. However…

Not exactly comforting
I couldn’t decide which was more unsettling, the date of manufacture or the implication that these life jackets don’t work well immersed in petroleum products… Surely these weren’t made for papyrus rafts or galleons, right? Steamships?
||||||||||||||||
Like many tourist boomtowns, Koh Chang has a bit of a confused identity due to the high turnover of businesses. Businesses have to evolve in order to survive, and this also results in some curious hybrids:

A barber shop/real estate company

A burger joint turned into tattoo parlor and postcard shop

This sign, complete with roof, somehow reminded me of the dark wooden ones for onsen in Kurokawa, Kyushu.
We had arrived on the island in the afternoon and just followed the stream of cars off the ferry. Most seemed to be heading down the west coast of the island, so we just followed them since I was worried about getting stuck in the mud since it had been raining off and on all week. The strips of shops and whatnot defining the town areas were, quite honestly, depressing. We hadn’t driven a thousand kilometers away from home to be surrounded by druggie loser expat scum and backpackers in search of The Island, but that’s exactly who most of the island (and especially the town areas) catered to… My wanderlust soon kicked in and I pointed the car south and drove up and down hills, around blind corners, and past breathtaking views of the ocean from the tops of jungle cliffs.
We were on a search for the best accomodations possible, not too expensive yet in a nice location, and preferably away from fat sweaty Europeans in thongs and college students having mushroom epiphanies. Of couse, this led us somewhat off the beaten track:

My car said “oh hell no!” I said, “mush, bitch!” … and of course, that puddle was covering a foot-deep hole.
After following several muddy roads and doubling back after notfinding suitable accomodation, we drove as far as the main road went before reaching a guard shack and this ridiculously pompous sign:

Five bucks just to enter? In Thailand?
So here’s where we hit a curveball. The guard came out of the shack speaking furiously into a two-way and asked if we had reservations. I said no but asked if we could take a look around inside and decide there. He said we would have to pay to even drive onto the resort property. I said no way. He told me to wait a minute and spoke into the two-way. The man on the other end asked what kind of car we were driving.
“Cefiro.”

Membership has its privileges, yo.
Welcome to the Koh Chang Grand Lagoona. The manager was nice and sympathetic to a poor teaching couple from the country and offered us a private boat at one-third of the standard rate. Oh yes.

Morning view. The lagoon is salt water and contains approximately ten hundred thousand million fish.
We borrowed some bicycles and rode through the surf and around the huge resort grounds.

Covering up the resort’s unfortunate little secret.
This resort is pretty much perfect, and priced accordingly. That’s why it hosts royal family members, Miss Universe, and rich Thai families. We felt a bit out of place there, but everyone was really nice about it anyway. There were only two disappointing things about the resort: Weak water pressure on the botas, and an extremely rocky beach. The workers comb the beach all day, but in the surf there are fist-size rocks rolling around and waiting to break your ankle. This beach, in effect, is unswimmable and unwadeable, which is just a damn shame since it defeats the purpose of a beach resort. I guess rich people don’t like getting sand in their ass cracks or something, because none of them seemed even slightly interested in the water.

Our future parking space?
|||||||||||||||||||
Conclusion: The western coast of Koh Chang is just okay. Sometimes beautiful but always expensive. It’s also overrun by foreign shitheads and the weasely natives that follow in their wake. If we’re down that way again, we might check out the eastern coast, though.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
All links for the On the Road 2007 series:
On the Road 2007 (Part 1)
On the Road 2007 (Part 2)
On the Road 2007 (Part 3) – Koh Chang
On the Road 2007 (Part 4) – Overloaded
On the Road 2007 (Part 5) – Tamnanpar
On the Road 2007 (Part 6) – The Animatronic Chicken Roasters of Rayong, Thailand

Thailand Blogspot Ban

All of you on blogspot.com are apparently dangerous… You have all been banned in Thailand for the past couple weeks. No word on when the ban will be lifted, since it was never officially imposed. The reason behind the ban was apparently to suppress any anti-gov sentiment during the previous party’s court ruling last week (they got disbanded).
FWEEDOM OF PEACH, FUWEBA!

This is me, holding my tongue

You know, it really shouldn’t be illegal to shoot a certain number of in-laws in one’s lifetime, say three or so. At the very least, dueling (between in-laws) should be brought back on a trial basis.
That is all.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On second thought, it sucks to end on such a hopeful note, so here’s a photo of a plate of delicious bugs that a gardener gathered from our backyard forest and asked if I wanted to share for lunch:

Don’t mistake the ant eggs for grains of rice. Homeboy must have dug up an ant colony, among other things – Nam poked around it with a twig and a small dead frog emerged.

Front and center is a queen, I believe. To the left, a soldier tugs on a dead beetle thing. That’s as much as I’ll attempt with identification…. Mm-mmm!

These red ants grow to about half an inch long and when they bite, you can FEEL the pincers sinking in… When they crawl up your pant leg, it’s frantic monkey dance time.
Oh, as an afterthought I might as well admit that this fine meal was just…. too goddamn disgusting to try, even for me.

Tainted by Marriage (Thai Government Bank Discrimination)

Okay, I have a really fucked up situation that needs airing, even if the country in which I am currently residing isn’t being ruled by an elected government and the province we live in is still officially under martial law. I thought long and hard on the porcelain about how to state this and I’ve decided to do it quick and dirty, without being too specific.
Last Friday, Nam went to a government bank to apply for a housing loan (we be moving soon, but that’s another story/rant). The president of this bank refused her application on the grounds that she is – wait for it now – married to a foreigner!
(Cue NWA: MOTHERFUCKER, SAY WHAT?)
Oh, man, that just blew our minds…. We made sure several times, and he came back with the same answer unwaveringly: Thai nationals who are married to foreigners cannot borrow from their bank because they are also considered foreigners. So to be clear: My wife, who went to the pains of getting seriously educated overseas, incurring huge student loans in the process (which are being paid back now with long years of underpaid university work), and who is dedicated to giving back to the system isn’t eligible for a (relatively modest) housing loan because her husband is a foreigner.
So we thought, maybe, you know, this being a rural bank and all that, maybe Mr. Hillbilly Goatfucker bank president just got his wires crossed and was saying some xenophobic shit and refusing to even consider Nam’s loan application – which I understand is his right, but I also know is shit we can call him on, you know? So Nam called up the main bank in Bangkok and guess what? What we ran into isn’t discrimination on the part of our local branch, it’s actual Thai government policy.
Well, fuck me very much.
Not really much else to say, except, hey, if they don’t want our money, any number of private banks are happy to serve us (and take our money).

On the Road 2007 (Part 2)

On a typical road trip, the driver is the big man who calls the shots and ultimately determines whether one arrives safely or stuck in a ditch. The navigator’s main responsibilities include reading maps, changing music, spotting promising meal venues/interesting sights, and taking photos from shotgun position. All of the photos below were taken at high speed (both car and shutter) and the variation in sky color can be attributed to three factors:

  1. Ever-changing weather conditions the week of our trip
  2. Whether the shot was taken through an open or closed side window, or our polarized windshield (BTW, having a tinted windshield is totally awesome because until now I’ve only owned cars in places where it’s both illegal and enforced)
  3. My unwillingness to match them in Photoshop (read: laziness)

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

The only Ford tractor we saw in a 1,000km stretch of farmland. It’s sitting next to a patch of newly-planted papaya trees.

This is the kind of truck that I wish could tell its life story..

This is one of the largest stores selling cast concrete lawn animals/spirit houses/earthenware planters I have ever seen (there are countless stores like this on the roadside).

Taken unaimed out the window @ 160kph.

The only petrol station selling “high octane” gas in three counties. We stopped at a whole bunch of others before we found it, so I stretched my legs and took some photos.

The first “goat crossing” sign I’d ever seen.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
All links for the On the Road 2007 series:
On the Road 2007 (Part 1)
On the Road 2007 (Part 2)
On the Road 2007 (Part 3) – Koh Chang
On the Road 2007 (Part 4) – Overloaded
On the Road 2007 (Part 5) – Tamnanpar
On the Road 2007 (Part 6) – The Animatronic Chicken Roasters of Rayong, Thailand

Yoshimoto Entertainment in Thailand

This time we’re off to see Yoshimoto perform in Bangkok at the Imperial Park Queens Hotel. The organizer is an old friend of Nam’s and he came to our wedding last year. We are using our Thai Air mileage for the flight out from Khon Kaen; we need to return on Sunday but all the flights are full. We need to get back to the airport since we’re leaving our car in a pay lot (50 Baht/day) right next to it… Maybe take a Nakhonchai Air VIP bus (curiously, Nakhonchai Air doesn’t have any air transportation – just buses and vans).
Unfortunately, our friends High Heel Momoko and Kuro-chan do not seem to be coming.

On the Road 2007 (Part 1)

Ten days ago, we set off on a road trip.

The rainy season had not yet really started, but it was giving us a nice preview. Wherever we went, the fields were green.

The basic idea of any successful road trip is that you just go where the road takes you. On the first day, it led us to the muddy back roads of a garish temple erected by one of the largest Buddhist sects in Thailand. The temple interested me much less than the hidden pond guarded by water buffalo and spirit houses just off the temple grounds.

Although the main sanctuary was in good condition, the surrounding buildings left much to be desired – such as walls.

The crematorium was in rough shape, too.

Finding a lost shoe always sets my mind to thinking about its story. I’m pretty sure this baby flip flop was abandoned by its parents at the temple because they couldn’t afford to feed it.

This was just our first stop on a long journey.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
All links for the On the Road 2007 series:
On the Road 2007 (Part 1)
On the Road 2007 (Part 2)
On the Road 2007 (Part 3) – Koh Chang
On the Road 2007 (Part 4) – Overloaded
On the Road 2007 (Part 5) – Tamnanpar
On the Road 2007 (Part 6) – The Animatronic Chicken Roasters of Rayong, Thailand