Pad Thai

I’ve been promising pictures of our house since I moved in (February), and last week I delivered- with pictures of our toilets. Here’s a tour of the rest of the house.

Here's the front of the house (photo from Mara). We live on a very narrow street, so you can't really back up to take a better picture. It's a pretty normal townhouse in Khon Kaen. Those are our motorbikes in the driveway.

This is what you see when you walk in the house. On the left there is a small seating area with a TV, and on the right are our desks. Towards the back of the house is the kitchen. It's indoors, which is nice since many Thai kitchens are not, but the windows are only screens and not glass, so it's more like a screen porch.

Here's the same room standing in front of the kitchen. Note the three fans, there's no air-conditioning downstairs, so fans are a must.

This is our bedroom with a HUGE bed. It does have air-con.

This is our desk in the bedroom and a half-vanity/half-closet. There are no built-in closets that I've seen in Thailand (although I'm sure they exist). Most places just have small wardrobes.

Here is our other wardrobe, and a table and chair at the foot of the bed. Not very exciting, I know.





Other than the bathrooms, that's pretty much it (other than Mara's bedroom). It's comfortable, and relatively nice. Here's one final picture looking up the street from our house.

Necessities

As new fellows from Joe’s organization slowly trickle into Khon Kaen, Joe has been busy showing them around and helping them gather the essentials. I have played a less prominent role, but there has been one thing I’ve made sure everyone understands—how to use a Thai toilet.

I am making this issue a priority since many months were spent here by the last fellows before someone explained the proper technique. Let me also add that if you don’t choose to follow this advice, you will inevitably end up peeing on yourself.

First, here’s a picture of a Thai toilet so you can properly imagine what I’m describing. This particular specimen is in our downstairs bathroom.

Now I’ve been building this up like it’s some complicated procedure, but in reality all you have to do is stand on the toilet (note the grooves on the bowl to prevent slippage), and squat. Oh yeah, and you have to face the wall (opposite from the direction one faces when using a western toilet). That last bit is the piece of the puzzle we were missing, the essential chunk that makes the difference between splashing and no splashing. I know you’re thinking you would have figured this out yourself, but I promise you, it’s not as obvious as it sounds. Also notice the lack of a flusher. The toilet is flushed by filling a small pail with water and pouring it into the toilet until the water is clear. This even works on western toilets (and thankfully we have a western toilet in our upstairs bathroom).

The showers here are also different as they are in almost all foreign countries. Most notably, there is no separation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, which means the whole bathroom gets wet during a shower. Our bathroom is even more unusual; the shower is practically directly over the sink.

Most houses here do not have a giant hot water heater like they do in the states. Instead, there is a little device on the wall that heats the water as it runs through. Sometimes this works very well, and sometimes it doesn’t. I love the shower at our house, but most others that I have encountered did not heat the water quite to my standard. I did learn a trick from one of the other American Ajan, if you decrease the amount of water flowing through the heater, the water will be hotter. Of course you are then left trying to rinse soap off with just a trickle, but on all but the hottest mornings that’s better than a freezing deluge.

PS. If my blog updates aren’t enough to satisfy your hunger for news from KK, I’ve added links to Joe’s blog and our new awesome roommate Mara’s blog. And if that’s still not enough, you should just come and visit.

Hua Hin and Vientiane Again

It may seem like I take an inordinate number of vacations, and I suppose I do thanks to the rule that you have to leave the country to update your visa. Alas, I will soon have a work permit and will no longer have to endure this heavy burden. Two weeks ago Joe and I made the “necessary” trek up to Lao again, which happily relieved me of the frequent dreams of cheese that have recently been haunting me at night.

Fortunately, this time I was prepared for the culinary bounty and was able to tear myself away from the coffee shops and French restaurants long enough to see some of the sites of Lao’s capital city. Honestly, the place is tiny, slightly larger than a one-stoplight town in the U.S, and there isn’t really that much to see. We did make a point of visiting Wat Sisaket, the only temple left after the Siamese burned the rest down in the middle of the 19^th century. It was beautiful, and different from wats in Thailand in that you could see the French influence in things like the motifs of the floor tiles and actual chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. You couldn’t take pictures of the inside, but here’s one of the outside.

They even had their own library (see the picture with Joe below), but I doubt that they’re hiring.

Our time in Lao is always too short. I’m thankful that the embassy makes you stay 24 hours before you are allowed to return to Thailand, but I did find myself hoping there would be a mistake in my paperwork that would force us to stay longer.

After a 5 day hiatus at home, we got on the (overnight) bus that started out trip to Hua Hin, a beach a few hours south of Bangkok. This trip was sort of a last hurrah for Joe since his summer break from school is over and in celebration of our 4^th anniversary.

The town was cute and the beach was amazing. Khon Kaen is nowhere near any large body of water (other than a few small lakes), and looking out at the beautiful expanse of the ocean was just perfect. I never thought about how spoiled I was in Miami when I got to see such things every day. It was also low season, so there weren’t as many tourists and the prices were very good. We stayed at a sleepy little place right on the beach. There were 11 “houses” and each guest had their own house with hardwood floors, lovely furnishings, and their own patio. The pool was literally right on the beach and you could sit in it and look out at the ocean. (I’m going to such lengths to describe the rooms because we tragically forgot to take a picture).

Although I was nursing a cold for most of the week, we still were able to take long walks along the beach and through the fishing village nearby to get to Khao Takiab where we thought we might stumble upon some rock climbing possibilities. We didn’t look too hard since I wasn’t feeling well, but we did find a nice little wat with a 20 meter tall Buddha that we could see from our hotel. The picture below is of Khao Takiab from the pool at our hotel. It wasn’t very exciting, just relaxing, which was exactly what we wanted.

As a side note: I can no longer access my blog at home. Don’t worry, I can still post, but I can’t see what I’m posting, so if the formatting is off, sorry. I’ve been told that it has something to do with a government firewall, but that might just be propaganda.

Straight from the Wat

A few weeks ago I got a new student, which in itself is not that unusual as many people here like to sample each of the local English schools, but this one is a little different. There will inevitably be challenges to face teaching every student: they might be very shy, spoiled, or have a distinct proclivity towards nose picking. This particular adult student is none of that and in most ways is the ideal student except for one thing: he is a monk.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a great respect for monks and this student just wonderful, a real pleasure to teach, but his monkhood does pose some pedagogical difficulties. First of all there are certain cultural and religious protocols when dealing with monks, particularly if you are female. I can neither touch my student nor hand him anything. This doesn’t sound like it would be that difficult, but it takes constant vigilance! Everything must first be put on the table and then the other party may pick it up. This is particularly awkward when checking homework and correcting mistakes.

Another arena ripe with possibilities for embarrassment is the realm of conversation. When learning about how to express preferences and food vocabulary (What is your favorite food for breakfast?), I suddenly realized that monks don’t get to decide what to eat, they may only take what’s given on their morning alms round. (At dawn almost anywhere you can see monks with bowls that Buddhists put food into to make merit.) I nervously asked the question and discovered that he likes coffee with milk for breakfast—a double surprise since it’s quite difficult to find coffee. I then asked him what he likes for dinner, forgetting that monks don’t get to eat dinner. I now find myself anticipating these faux pas at every turn.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to talk about clothing, but monks always wear the same thing, and orange monk robe is not in our book, I already checked.

Songkran 2550

Things I learned over the holiday week:

1. Songkran is a Buddhist New Year’s festival, and is based on the lunar calendar from the time of the Buddha. At some point in time Thailand switched to a solar calendar like the west, but they still use the date from the lunar calendar, which means it’s currently 2550 in Thailand, but they actually have the year change over on the solar calendar when we do. Yeah.
2. Songkran is supposed to be a break from the steamy summer wrath of Mother Nature. This year she wasn’t feeling the wrath vibe and decided to give us a break on the temperature. It was very hot the week before Songkran, and then immediately afterwards, but while the entire country was having one huge water fight there was no sun to be seen and temperatures would have been quite pleasant if I had not been soaking for hours on end riding at 2 mph down city streets in the back of a pickup truck as hundreds of complete strangers constantly drenched us with water.
3. I thought Thai children were extremely polite and reserved. Songkran is the exception that makes up for the rest of the year. Any human being that would purposely dump buckets of ice water on visibly shivering people in the back of a truck after dark better be on their best behavior for the other 361 days.
4. Touching members of the opposite sex is frowned upon in public in Thailand, except during Songkran, when many, many men (and a few women) walk right up to anyone and everyone and rub handfuls of baby powder into their cheeks. They get you from the front, from behind, from every direction. I think more people touched my face over the last week than during the last 26 years of my life combined. Really. I asked several Thai people about this custom, it’s origins, what it represented, and the only answer I got was that it was a chance for men to touch women’s’ faces. Somehow I suspect there used to be more to the story.
5. Some of the baby powder was laced with menthol. Menthol stings when it’s rubbed into your cheeks. Let’s not talk about when it gets in your eyes.
6. Although partying is more intense in some sections of the city, you can be Songkraned anywhere, at any time from any direction, even if you just changed out of your wet clothes into dry ones.
7. (Almost) everything closes during Songkran, so if you’re used to eating in restaurants for every meal, good luck finding food. Of course the meat vendors are still open, we can’t go without meat on a stick/and or string for even a day now can we? Luckily Pizza Co. doesn’t observe this tradition.
8. It’s illegal to sell alcohol during Songkran, although no one actually stops selling it. Some people protest this hypocrisy with marches during the festivities, demanding that no one drink in the streets during the holiday (but they don’t care if you stand with a beer on the sidewalk, as long as you don’t step into the street).
9. Songkran is amazing and unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world, and the Thai people really know how to throw one amazing, four-day-long, country-wide party. If you think a kiss at midnight starts the year right, you need a good Songkraning.

I (heart) Durian

There are many culinary adventures to be had here in Thailand, and the durian fruit certainly qualifies. Since moving here I have been asked three times by different Thai people if I had yet tried the durian, and I have not been asked that question about any other Thai food.

When another fellow in Joe’s program who is staying with us brought some home the other night (she had never tried it either), how could we say no?

First a little background on durian.

It’s large, about 12 inches long and 6 inches in diameter with a scary thorn-covered outer shell. On the inside are yellow pods each containing a pit attached to the center core. The yellow pods are usually removed and one eats the yellow flesh around the pit. So far not so intimidating, right?

The unusual part of the durian is the way it tastes and smells. I simply can’t describe it except to say that it tastes like farmer’s cheese. Lucky for you I found great quotes on the web (I’ve given up on the live links since they so often fail).

Here is how Alfred Russel Wallace (a British naturalist writing in 1856) describes the flavor:

“A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy.”

And here’s a great quote on the taste by travel and food writer Richard Sterling:

“... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.”

After opening the package and releasing the stench, we told ourselves we would not be put off. I wish I had a camera to catch the look of apprehension on our faces as we bit in and then our various expressions of confusion as we registered the taste. Joe and the other PiA bravely took several bites, but in the end surrendered admitting they hated it (a quote from our friend: “I can’t believe it, I never met a fruit I didn’t like!”). I was baffled for a different reason. I loved it, and I didn’t understand why the others looked like they were about to toss their cookies. In the end it turned out to be great luck for me, because I got to eat the rest of the fruit, and a raw deal for the others since they had to smell it over the next two days while I finished off the supply.

Cooling Off, Thai Style

I woke up this morning thinking about how unusually cool the weather felt. I didn’t begin to sweat the second I left my air-con bedroom, and come to think of it, riding home last night on the motorbike was almost chilly. Then I checked the actual temperature on weather.com. The high is in the mid-nineties. How hot must it normally be for 90 to feel cool you might ask? Oh, between 105 and 110.

We are right in the middle of summer here in Khon Kaen, and it is hot. Even on a cool day it’s hot. I used to think that people who covered up to protect themselves from the heat were crazy- of course it must be hotter under all that clothing. Nope, it’s not. Direct sun-on –skin contact is to be avoided at all costs. Normally riding your motorbike is a cooling activity. A few days ago I remember thinking that riding in the heat felt like continuously opening the oven door while cookies are baking: just wave after wave of heat.

Of course the Thai people know how to make the best out of the situation, thus a week from today begins the Thai New Year, aka Songkran. New Year is not a single-night celebration here as it is in the US. Songkran is a 4 day water festival where basically the only objective is to make sure that every person in the county is soaked from head to toe in water. You walk down the street and literally (or so I’ told) people will just throw buckets of water at you. I’ve already had two Thai friends offer to show me around the festivities, personally I think they just want to see me all wet. Songkran conveniently falls right smack in the middle of summer. What better way to cool off from the 100+ heat than to take a few days off of work and douse every moving being with refreshing water? I’ll let you know how it goes.