Category: Thai Society/Culture

Dragonfruit in Bloom

Four or five months ago, Nam’s mother had couple of pitaya plants shipped back from her hometown of Surin (famous for their annual elephant festival and silk weaving). They were pitiful little things tied to a curious looking concrete dais-in-a-planter type of setup. I kept meaning to take photos of them back then for before and after comparison photos, but it was only a few weeks before they started shooting up, doubling, tripling, and growing to ten times their original size…. And they aren’t even full grown yet.
The thing is, we kind of forgot about them sitting there in the yard, because aside from their utterly alien appearance close up, they were just green plants on a green background, and truly unremarkable otherwise… during the day. Last week we went out for a drink for the first time in a while and returned around midnight. This is what was waiting for us:

Feed me, Seymour!

Get outta my way! – Survival of the fittest.

God must have been going through his “Giger” phase
(all photos by Nam!)
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Bonus “strawberry pear” trivia: In Thai, they call the pitaya (aka dragonfruit) a “dragon’s egg,” which is probably the most apt name for anything, ever.

Fugu me? No, fugu you!

From the “you shouldn’t be eating salmon in Thailand anyway” department:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – Unscrupulous vendors in Thailand have been selling meat of the deadly puffer fish disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, a doctor said Thursday.
Although banned since 2002, puffer fish continues to be sold in large quantities at local markets and restaurants, said Narin Hiransuthikul of Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University Hospital.
“Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon which is very dangerous,” Narin said.
Narin said over the past three years more than 15 people have died and about 115 were hospitalized from eating the fish.
The ovaries, liver and intestines of the puffer fish contain tetrodotoxin, a poison so potent that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it can “produce rapid and violent death.”
The fish is called fugu in Japan, where it is consumed by thrill-seeking Japanese gourmets for whom the risk of poisoning adds piquancy.
Every year, there are reports of people dying or falling sick in Asia from eating puffer fish. Eating the fish can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death.

(Full story)
I call bullshit on this story. It sounds like an urban legend. Color aside, puffer meat neither looks nor tastes anything like salmon meat… and anybody that unfamiliar with the fish in question wouldn’t have to be convinced that it was salmon in order to buy it. It could just be sold cheaply, as is. Why go to the trouble of dying it?
Also, the second to last paragraph about Japanese eating fugu for thrills is something oft-seen in the foreign press, but was never evident in all the years I was living in Japan (everybody I knew ate fugu because they liked the taste). I’ve even heard claims from Japan know-it-alls that fugu chefs leave just enough tetrodotoxin on the flesh to give a thrill (but not enough to kill), but I never saw any evidence of this either. The two fugu chefs I asked about it laughed at the question. They also stated that the chances of convincing a licensed fugu chef to prepare fugu livers, ovaries, or intestines for a customer’s thrills are pretty much zero these days.

Carabao’s Made in Thailand Cover by Farang

In my ten months here, I’ve heard this song (which was written by Carabao) performed live dozens of times by many bands… As corny as this clip might seem, this guy’s rendition is the best I’ve ever heard.
I basically cannot stand pop music from any country, but Thai pop is especially insipid IMHO. The traditional Thai music is fascinating, though, even if I can’t understand 90% of the lyrics. It has a lot to do with the energy of it, the groove, especially a live performance.
(thx t)

fruit sacrilege

Thai farmers dumped a ton of mangosteens on the street in front of city hall to protest the low selling price. I’m pretty sure all the government workers rushed out to scoop up their share.
3 baht per kilo does sound pretty low, though. They retail for 18-20 baht/kilo up here in the northeast; the best quality ones at their peak went as high as 25 baht/kilo a couple months ago.
I do have to say that if you’ve never had a fresh mangosteen, you are missing out on one of life’s real pleasures.

On the Road 2007 (Part 6) – The Animatronic Chicken Roasters of Rayong, Thailand

On a previous trip to Thailand, I wrote about the most delicious roast chicken I have ever eaten. I have many special memories of Rayong, and the awesome roast chicken stands by the roadside are certainly counted among them. I had been looking forward to reevaluating the chicken itself since the last time I visited, to be sure it hadn’t been a fluke, or just how hungry I had been at the time.
The chicken stands to which I refer are concentrated along a half-kilometer stretch of a long road into town, from the east end of Mae Ramphueng beach. We scoped out the whole stretch a couple times and stopped at the one that caught my eye.

This stand had the best chicken illustration on their sign (important!), as well as the freshest-looking birds.

Aloha shirt, ski goggles and mask, and a straw hat! What’s not to like?

Grinding away in the heat – this guy’s job really sucks

The entire setup is powered by an electric motor drawing power from the lines directly above the stand.

If shirts could talk…

My man here is styling, too.
As it turns out, this wasn’t the only stand with animatrons, but it was the only one with multiple animatrons. I saw other stands that already were, or were in the process of being semi-automated with motorized spits, and most had the automatrons as well, so I figure the same man or crew may be creating them for everybody on that strip – whoever he is, the guy’s a genius.
The non-automated spits actually require a person to turn them, which is just torture in the midday heat amplifying the heat of the coals. The stands still of course require humans for all the other tasks, and this one was manned by a mother/daughter team:

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I came for chicken and by god, I got chicken (and sticky rice, biooootches!):

The sauce from this stand was good, but not great. The funny thing is, this chicken is so good, it doesn’t need sauce.
Mandatory “glistening fat” closeup:

That bottom right part is the neck – mmm, mmm good.
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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

Riot in Bangkok

The situation described in this article is rapidly developing into a riot on live television. It looks like the anti-coup protesters have erected some sort of bastion in the street in front of the Privy Council President’s house and the police may have used tear gas.
The riot police, I must say, are really disorganized and poorly trained. You can tell by their loose formations when advancing that they are not very good at controlling a crowd that is turning increasingly violent. The crowd was originally throwing what appeared to be empty plastic bottles, but have now turned to throwing rocks and other debris they find on the street. There are some frantic women in the crowd pleading the angry young men to calm down, but they are caught up in the heat of the moment.
Some of the camera crews are staked out on buildings opposite the house and have a good view of the situation only partially blocked by tree branches. From their perspective we just saw one of the protesters parading around with a plexiglass riot shield. Another camera crew on the street, about fifteen minutes later, possibly caught the policeman who lost his shield on the front lines brandishing a heavy plastic chair. At first, he was using it to block things being thrown at him, then he swung it down with great force in someone’s face.
Things do not seem to be calming down at the moment, I will keep watching and perhaps update later.