Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I don’t know the name of the town because I couldn’t be bothered to look at my phone’s location. However, it’s only fair to note that this is the first fueling station I’ve ever seen to have two 7-11s – one for the petrol station and another, newer one for the LPG filling station; they were about 120 meters apart across the huge parking lot.
A fortuitous sign right at the start of our journey…
I don’t know why she likes five stars and six stars so much; it must be a phase… She will undoubtedly mature to a stage where she realizes that ten or twelve spokes are where it’s at, I’m sure.
We are taking a trip for a few days. Will update from the road.
Went to a new Japanese restaurant opening today with Tong. It wasn’t crowded at all, and my first impression was bad because it reeked of fresh paint inside.
I don’t want to go into much detail, because we only had a few dishes, but what we did have was enough to lure me back again to try some other things.
Overall, I give this place a 6/10 (so far) – worth going to check out. The food had problems, but hopefully they will be ironed out soon.
Strengths: Reasonably priced (much cheaper than Japanese restaurants in Sermthai Complex). Has at least a couple strong dishes; soup gyoza is pretty good (tried two dishes with it).
Weaknesses: Smells of paint. Bad noodles (unforgivable for Japanese ramen). Bad sushi (not pictured above). Not much parking. Iced green tea is tooth-dissolvingly sweet. Hot tea is cheap and flavorless.
The place is located next to the copy shop on the corner of Highway 208 and Nakorn Sawan Soi 18 (the street that goes down to N&N 2 and Med Side) next to the copy shop.
http://goo.gl/maps/4E53T
Max and Mina’s Great Grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday in Surin yesterday, and we attended. It was hot, hot, hot. But everybody had a good time catching up with distant relatives and whatnot, and our family’s road trips are always epic.
The other day, I dug up a single earthworm from our sun-dried garden and tied a simple bobber rig onto a spinning rod to give Max and Mina a chance to catch something in the pond across our street. Max got a couple nibbles and then got half the worm stolen, so it was time to re-bait and let Mina have a chance. she hooked up in less than a minute and brought in another bronze featherback, slightly smaller than the one we had before.
Max and Mina wanted to keep him in their tank, since the last fish besides an algae eater we had, a freshwater angelfish bought at a local night market, died after lasting a good few months. As before, the featherback got into it with Mr. Pleco, and proceeded to get his ass kicked around the tank until I got fed up and threw him back into the pond. Nobody missed him. Some fish are just disagreeable.
… or at least, my sister-in-law in Bangkok asked a garage who did… Amazing Thailand!
The replacement part is actually in much worse condition, over all, than the one I took off my car, but the plastic latch that holds the turn signal in place (and keeps me from having to hold the lever when turning – which annoying as hell) is intact. I’m asking my pal, Ot, from Wattana Sound, to pull the best parts from each and create a “best-functioning” amalgamation.
It’s funny that Taro had this same exact problem on his Mitsu Jeep when we were at university; the garage told us it would cost x amount to fix, but being poor students, we just used it broken until Taro bought another (used) Jeep. The difference between then and now is a huge cost differential (probably about 10:1 in favor of labor-cheap Thailand) and that while you expect an old Jeep to be a gritty driving experience, I’m aiming for a more luxurious experience in my Crown (it originally came with a refrigerator in the trunk and a pneumatic central locking system, after all).
