Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Hope to shovel more of these guys in my tummy later this week. Some friends are coming from Japan, so we are doing an end of year trip to see them in Pattaya, Bang Saen, and Bangkok. Ironically, it’s hard to find good seafood near the sea in popular places here, so we have to scope out good places online before we go. Over the past decade, Google Maps has become the best in gauging places from their reviews, and more importantly, the kind of people posting them.
I’m currently on an extended keto and IF experiment which is turning out very well. Starchy noodles, like my beloved bami egg noodles, pictured above, are off the table.
But I can dream.
I’m not entirely sure if this means what I think it means… Taken at a resort we stayed at on Koh Chang.
This is the shit.
We found the holy grail of crispy pork shops on Koh Chang over the summer. Everybody on that trip still talks about it. We were there to visit students interning on the island, so I was with a couple coworker pals and we brought Max along as well. Tee drove us to Bangkok, where we stayed at his condo for a night, then we set out for a few days of island life.
This was probably the best meal of the whole trip because the prices were cheap (less than 2 dollars a dish) and the portions were huge!
Of course, the place is a total hole in the wall, and run by the friendliest people.
The name of the shop? YUMMY
The last remaining member of our squirrel assassin clan.
Thai soi (street) dogs are mostly chill. This huge concrete lot near our house was supposed to be a fresh market years ago, but before it was completed, there was a huge storm. It toppled the poorly-constructed first market area roof and someone was killed by the falling roof while several others were injured. As it turns out, it was built too low and gets flooded a foot deep for the entire duration of rainy season anyway. This doggo and his friends run around here freely now.
This is a pretty common demonstration at schools and government offices in this country. Seemingly. the more run down the venue is, the crazier the demonstrations are. I’ve seen them light the flames and wave the gas cylinders over their heads like Donkey Kong before.
Somebody drove their original Toyota 2000GT through Bangkok traffic to a classic car show last week.
What a legend!
This must be the same car I wrote about being kept in an underground garage a couple years ago: Toyota 2000GT in Thailand
Credit goes to Kai Vorra-asd on Facebook: LINK
The saddest cooking news I’ve heard in a long time: Black plastic products including spatulas are likely being made from recycled electronic waste like computers and televisions, many of which are treated with flame retardants and other chemicals. Flame retardants can dislodge from polymers easily and make their way into the surrounding environment. They are endocrine disruptors, which interfere with the body’s hormonal system and may be associated with thyroid disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Full link to the Atlantic story: Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula
These are my mainstay utensils for certain things I cook and I surely have a dozen in my kitchen including spoons, ladles, slotted and unslotted spatulas, etc., because sometimes silicon is too flexible and wood/steel are too hard. I do have blue plastic spatulas, but they are on the large side… Then even if I buy all the right size blue plastic ones to replace the black ones, we’ll find out that they’re made of recycled nuclear Smurf poop or something…