Just Desserts

Lately my Thai cooking skills have taken a turn towards the sweeter side. Bay has recently taught me how to make two Thai deserts, and I’m going to pass a bit of my recently acquired knowledge on to you. Too bad you can’t taste over the internet because both were amazing. If you want to try to make them yourself or are more curious about exactly how they were made, I've included the recipes below.

The first is bau loy, tiny balls made of sticky rice flour, colored with veggies, and served in coconut cream. It’s extremely rich and probably very unhealthy for you, but that’s ok because it’s hard to eat more than a little. Here are some pictures from our cooking session.

We used four vegetables to color our bau loy: taro root (silver), carrots (orange), pumpkin (yellow), and pandam leaves (green). This is me using a mortar and pestle to make sure that all the little bits of pumpkin are pounded to a pulp.

The four colors of dough before we form them into tiny balls.

The tiny balls before they are boiled (this takes forever!)

After boiling

Added to the coconut milk

And the final product!

The second dessert, Tab Tim Grob, Bay made for me a few weeks ago. It is actually small cubes of water chestnuts soaked in sugar syrup and then served in coconut milk on ice. It’s less heavy than the bua loy, but still quite rich. I was not present for the entire preparation of this one, so there are only two pictures.

The first is after the pieces have been boiled and are cooling off in the cold water.

The second is the finished product.

Here are the recipes translated by Bay. Of course when we made them there weren’t measurements for the different ingredients. As Bay put it Thai cooking is more experiment than measurement, but she found measurements for me since experimenting is not my forte.

Bau Loy

1. Coconut milk 2 cups

2. Sugar ½ cup

3. Salt ¼ teaspoon

4. Glutinous flour ½ cup

5. Boiled veggies 1/3 cup

6. Warm water ¼ cup

1. Boil veggies until soft and blend.
2. Mix glutinous flour with blended veggies and water.
3. Make small balls.
4. Heat a saucepan of water to a rolling boil.
5. Put the balls in the water.
6. Take the balls out of the water when they come up to the surface.
7. Boil half of coconut milk with sugar and salt.
8. Put the cooked balls into the pot.
9. Before serving, add the rest of coconut milk to the bau loy.

Tab Tim Grob

1. Water chestnuts (cut in small cubes) 1 cup

2. Tapioca flour ½ cup

3. Sugar 150 grams

4. Water ¾ cup

5. Coconut milk ¾ cup

6. Syrup (for color) ½ cup

1. Soak water chestnuts in syrup for at least 10 minutes.
2. Coat the water chestnuts with tapioca flour (Tab Tim).
3. Heat water to a rolling boil.
4. Put Tab Tim into the pot.
5. Get Tab Tim out of water when they come up on the surface and put them in cold water immediately.
6. Boil water with sugar to make syrup. If you have Bai Toey (pandam leaves), you can put it in to improve the aroma.
7. Serve Tab Tim with syrup, coconut milk, and ice.

Vacay

How do you sum up an amazing 35 day vacation that spans 3 countries, temperatures between somewhere cold enough to snow and 117 degrees Fahrenheit, from sea level to 16,000 feet, old friends, new friends, yaks, camels, tents, sleeper trains, beautiful hotels, tea tastings, a WWF wrestler, and emergency taxi rides that just barely get you to airport? I’ve been thinking it over since I’ve arrived back safe and sound in Khon Kaen. The task seems daunting, but I’ve put it off for a month now and if I don’t write it soon, I’m not sure I ever will.

The first leg of our journey begins with a broken camera. One of our oldest friends (Joe’s best woman from our wedding) flew into Bangkok to join us as we backpacked a giant loop that began in central Thailand, then moved through the north, stopping in Chiang Mai, then to the border where we took a two day river cruise to the serene Luang Prabang. We then flew to Laos’ capital where we just spent a few hours before heading south through north-eastern Thailand. The last day was spent in Khon Kaen before we bussed back to Bangkok. On the very first day, our 7 year old camera bit the dust and we were “forced” to buy a spiffy new one which captured every place we visited much better than I could in words. I’ve written about most of the places we visited before, so I’ll focus on the parts of Laos that were new to me.

The river trip down the Mekong was something that we’ve wanted to do almost since we arrived in Thailand, but had never gotten to do. I’m glad we made the time because the scenery is gorgeous! Between the sunsets and constant fresh air, the two days flew by.


At the end of the long trip, we arrived in Luang Prabang with sore derrieres (from long days on the boat’s wooden benches) and ready for some French colonial food. We were not disappointed. Luang Prabang is the most beautiful town I’ve seen in SE Asia. It’s unbelievably chill with beautiful temples, great shopping, and restaurants with selections and cheap prices that are seem too good to be true- but they’re not. It’s very small, and I think if you spent more then a few days there the enchantment might start to wear thin, but since we left after just two days, I’m sure the magic of the place will stay with me forever.






















Saying goodbye to our friend was sad, but we had a lot to look forward to, namely the three weeks in India that we’ve been saving for since we arrived. You can see a few more of my pictures here.


We landed at the Delhi airport not sure what we were going to do with our 9 hour layover, but that decision was soon made for us. We knew that we had a short bus ride from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, and we quickly found the waiting room for the bus that was supposed to leave every half hour or so. We were slightly taken aback when we looked out the windowed wall where the bus was supposed to arrive to see thousands of Indians screaming, holding signs, and pressing on the glass that did not look as if it were designed to hold back the masses. “I know India is over-populated, but this is ridiculous,” Joe said to me as we found a place in the un-crowded room to see if we could figure out what was going on.

After standing around looking confused for about 20 minutes, a nice gentleman came over and explained that famous WWF heavyweight champion, The Great Khail, was landing in India for the first time in 12 years. He then pointed out Khail’s father and other relatives relaxing on a nearby sofa to us as the TV station switched to breaking news: footage of the thousands of people from the outside of the airport. After airport security played a triple switcheroo on the crowd, leading them to believe that Khail was leaving from one door and then another, and then back to the first, the massive man exited the building and within 45 minutes the crowd dispersed.

After a long wait in the domestic terminal, a short plane ride, and a long, bumpy jeep ride, we made it safely to Sikkim for a few days repose in Gangtok (and lots of Tibetan monasteries brought to us by our jeep driver/professional photographer, Arby) before we heading to Yuksom and then off on our trek.







Sikkim is the least populace state in India and its residents are relatively well off. It is bordered by Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan and it is stunning. Prayer flags, tiny children in school uniforms, and monkeys line the highway through the small villages. Humorous signs remind drivers on the mountain roads to honk and “Be gentle on my curves.”



“Just follow the yaks,” our guide, Choongda, said as he made final preparations at his house just before we set off on our first day trekking. I won’t even try to describe all nine days and 90 miles of our incredible trip through the Himalayas. Every day was full of intense climbing, but we were rewarded by forests of rhododendron, dozens of bird sightings (and a few other animals), freshly fallen snow on our tent, views from the tops of 13,000 foot peaks, secret waterfalls, sore muscles, communicating (badly) in Nepali, tea time in our tent, and a 3:00am start time that brought us to Goecha La, more than 16,000 feet above sea level and base camp for the third highest mountain in the world. If you want more details, you’ll just have to ask us or check out the picture posts below. Our last night on the trail we even tried Tsongba, a local alcoholic beverage made of fermented millet that automatically comes with free refills as you just have to add more hot water to the millet mix and wait a few minutes before sipping the wine-like beverage through a bamboo straw.






After another short break in Pelling where we showered for the first time sincestarting the trek, we got our final dose of Sikkimese culture before heading through the fragrant hills to Darjeeling for tea tastings and a ride on the famous toy train. I think we enjoyed Glennary’s Bakery and their chocolate tarts as much as the tea. I was also able to find macaroni and cheese, which had been haunting my dreams when we were out on the trail and eating camp food three times a day.

After cramming our bags full of tea for everyone we knew at home, we flew back to Delhi for a few days. This is the mistake we made in planning out trip. If you are going to India, don’t go to Delhi. I was reading an article in the New Yorker last week about a movie where they had to recreate Skid Row and they consulted photos of Delhi in order to make sure it looked sufficiently filthy. Enough said.






We then took an overnight train (where a random woman tried to climb into bed with me) to Bundi, a small town in Rajasthan famous for its miniature paintings, palaces, fort, and step-wells. This was what I imagined when we decided to go to India: burning hot sand, turbans, saris, camels, and really tasty paneer. We even stayed in a 400-ear-old haveli; our room was covered with miniature paintings that were copied from a nearby palace. There were only 5 other tourists in the village, and when we visited the sights we were always the only people there. Normally I like at least a few other tourists around, but after the craziness of Delhi we were happy to go about our business without too many touts.







The plan was to spend our last day at the Taj Mahal, taking a train from Rajasthan to Agra and then strait to the airport in Delhi. It was not to be. Shortly after boarding our train, a nice man asked us where we were going and informed us that the train was no longer going to Agra. We disembarked and went to shove our way to the one person in charge of reservations. The railroad employee informed us that yes; the train was going to Agra. We returned to the train where other passengers urgently told us that we were not going to Agra. After three trips between the train and “help” desk, Joe finally found the train driver (there was no conductor) who informed us that the train was not going to Agra. We then went back to the help desk for the fourth time and miraculously the help man now understood that the train had been re-routed. Unfortunately there were no more trains that night to Delhi or Agra, so we were in a bit of a bind since our flight left the next day. We ended up in taxis for 8 hours to get to Delhi and catch our flight back to Thailand. We were a little sad to have missed the Taj, but missing our flight would have been infinitely worse since after more than a month, we were definitely ready to sleep in our own beds. But what do you know, who did we pass as we made our way through customs? The Great Khail. What a great set-up for a bad pun about wrestling with India!


More pictures from India are here and here.

Things Are Heating Up

Over the past few weeks the weather around here has finally started warming up to Thai summer standards after an unusually long dry/cool season. How hot is hot? Right now it is 2:00pm and the thermometer outside my door (which is in the shade, by the way) reads 99 degrees.

It’s not only outside that’s heating up. I’ve also been breaking a sweat in the kitchen. My moment of glory was last Tuesday when my friend Bay invited me to her house to do a cooking exchange. Bay would be providing the recipes and ingredients for lunch, while I brought what was needed for dessert.

My plan was to make the stove-top cookies that have kept Joe, Mara, and me alive since we can’t bake. When I arrived at Bay’s I found out that there wasn’t a stove or a sauce pan, just an electric wok. Yes, we made cookies in an electric wok, and they were delicious!

The only thing better than the cookies was lunch itself. The first dish Bay showed me how to make is what I’m calling an Issan version of quiche. You mix a lot of mushrooms, some egg, garlic, lemongrass, shallots, lime leaves, lemon basil, and salt together in a bowl and then spoon the mixture into some banana leaves that you let soften in the sun. You then fold the banana leaves up to make a small package that then goes into the oven until the leaves are about to burn. Bay had a small circular glass oven, I’ve never seen anything like it, and it was fun to watch the leaves cook.

The second thing we made was fried vegetable tempura salad. We cut up veggies and tofu into bite size pieces, coated them in a tempura flour batter, and then deep fried them. I’ve never deep fried in a wok using chop sticks, and it definitely was a challenge not to flick hot oily veggies at myself or Bay. Bay also made a classic Thai sauce made of chilies, lime juice, garlic, salt (non-vegetarians use fish sauce), and sugar to pour over the tempura. It was arroy maak (delicious).

After 2 -3 hours in the non-aircon kitchen, I was very grateful to sit down and share this cross-cultural meal with a good friend.

Face Saver

From my Lonely Planet Thailand:

Thais believe strongly in the concept of saving face, ie avoiding confrontation and endeavoring not to embarrass yourself of other people (except when it’s sanuk- funny- to do so). The ideal face-saver doesn’t bring up negative topics in conversation, and when they notice stress in another’s life, they usually won’t say anything unless that person asks for help. Laughing at minor accidents – such as when someone trips a falls down (or when you can’t speak Thai very well- my addition) – may seem callous but it’s really just an attempt to save face on behalf of the person undergoing the mishap. This is another source of the Thai smile – it’s the best possible face for almost any situation.


Constantly keeping this concept of “face” in mind was one of the most difficult adjustments I made during my first year living here. The description above is fairly accurate, although I would sum it up this way: (1) Never make anyone look bad (2) If someone looks bad, smile (3) If someone looks really bad, laugh.

It is completely permissible and excusable, not to mention preferable, to lie in almost any situation to save someone’s face, whether said person is present or not. I now know not to take everyone at their word, but at first these “little white lies” resulted in a lot of confusion and culture clash.

Another technique in the face-saving repertoire is lumping responsible parties into the collective we, even though it might be one specific person’s fault, as in “Even though you took your midterms 7 ½ weeks ago, we are not finished grading them.”

Finally, as a last resort, use the passive voice. “I was not told that I had to sign for my paycheck 10 days before the end of the month in order to be paid,” or “Your final exam has been moved up 2 weeks.”

Face has also been a barrier to learning Thai. Compared to Americans, Thai people are generally relatively reserved and some would say shy. Therefore, it takes a lot of courage for a stranger to speak to you. Most people just want to practice English, but of those very few who try to speak to you in Thai, face makes it difficult. There are not a lot of foreigners in Khon Kaen, so most people don’t really think about the fact that they might have to alter their speaking speed for a non-native speaker; and, if you don’t immediately understand someone the first time they talk, in general they won’t try more than once to get you to understand. They want to save you the embarrassment of not understanding, so they just stop talking and smile or laugh. I am getting better, though. Now in about 2/3rds of these situations, by the time the Thai person has finished laughing, I have put together what they said and am able to provide some kind of reply. However, sometimes they just keep laughing, which I guess means either I didn’t accurately understand what they said or they can’t understand my accent.

Interestingly, the bravest and most persistent people I’ve come across in this situation are gas station attendants. More often than not when they’re filling up my motorbike, the gas station attendant will ask me questions, and since the questions tend to cover the same subjects (am I traveling, how long have I been here, do I work…), I’m getting pretty good at providing answers. I’m slowly starting to work my way to the next level; at this point I usually still have no idea what their 3rd or 4th follow-up questions are, but the conversation always ends in a smile.

PS: This topic was inspired by a NYT article about something completely different, and even though it's technically about Japan, the comparisons in the article could just as easily be said about Thailand. I just thought I'd post it for fun.
East and West Part Ways in Test of Facial Expressions

From a faculty bathroom at KKU...

Now why is this sign in English and not Thai?

Aj. Jordan

I am currently on summer vacation and spring break at the same time. How could this be? Being a lecturer (ajarn) at a Thai university and a grad student at an American university forces me to live by two different academic schedules, which is a huge hassle the majority of the year, but this week is the exception.

I know when I got my current job back in October I promised to tell all of you more about it, but the excuse for my tardiness is twofold: 1) How can I fully and accurately explain if I haven’t lived through an entire semester? 2) See paragraph 1.

Note: If you don’t like the longer, more boring posts, you can go ahead and stop reading now.

Anyway, here’s what I do…

I’m contracted to teach 15 to 20 hours a week with the expectation that I’ll help out with other “tasks” that require a native speaker when asked. I’m also salary, which is both good (I get paid for the summer break) and bad (unlike hourly people, I don’t get money for those extra “tasks” and I teach classes that in general require more work outside of class). Almost all of my classes are for English majors, which is much better than the part time/ hourly teachers who mostly teach English for other majors (the university requires 2 semesters of English minimum for every graduate), but I do have a lot more work.

This past semester I taught 6 classes (16 hours), 4 of which were classes for majors. My favorite classes were my 2 classes for third year majors. One was a conversation and discussion class. It was a breeze to teach with almost no work outside class, and I learned a lot about Thai culture through our class discussions. It was also challenging to keep the conversation going since it is not very culturally acceptable to disagree, but I was able to create a space that was non-alienating, and since I’m not a Thai teacher, I think the students felt freer to act outside their cultural norms.

The other class I really enjoyed was Creative Writing. There was an enormous amount of material cover and work to be graded for this class (they wrote 2 3-page stories a week!), but it was all worth it. We spent the first half of the semester writing short stories, and the second half we covered playwriting and poetry. Although a lot of the writing was done in groups of 3 or 4, every student wrote their own 10-15 page short story. That’s a huge achievement in a foreign language! Of course these stories also took an hour to grade each, and I had to do it twice; once for the rough draft and once for the final (18 students in the class). Another class project was writing and producing their own 30 minute play, but at least for this they could work in groups of three. Soon I will post some pictures of their performances (the relationship between my camera and my computer is currently a bit rocky).

My other classes were not nearly as exciting. I taught two sections of a paragraph writing class for second year majors that was the bane of my existence as it was super-boring material and created pounds of boring grading.

I also taught another conversation class for MD students which was not exciting, but certainly interesting at times. My favorite lesson was when I had each of the students (there were only 12) bring in 5 slang words and we created a chart on the board with their definitions, a number on a scale of 1-5 to show how “bad” they were, and an appropriate audience and context for the word. I got a lot of positive feedback on that lesson because the students simply don’t have another source to learn these definitions.

My final class was a standard issue non-majors course that all first year students take. The book is boring, the material was far too easy for these pharmacy majors, and I couldn’t pay my students to participate. Normally I would adjust the class to meet the students at their level, but my thinking was just that it was a mandatory course; I had to cover the specific material I was given because 85% of their grade is determined by their midterm and final, so there was no need to make it any more difficult for them. The class is just a money maker for the department. In reality, most of my students could have passed the midterm and final before the class, so I just kept it easy and tried to be as entertaining as I could.

Other “tasks” have mostly included editing work for other Thai ajarns and doing things where it’s nice to have a native English speaker, like interviewing grad students. Not too much other than teaching.

All in all, I was quite busy for most of the semester, but not terribly busy (aka teachforamerica busy) until the final 2 months. It was a very nice pace. Also, my colleagues are for the most part great to work with and the students are fantastic. I have now literally taught students of all ages (from age 2 to about 35) and the students at KKU are my favorites. I don’t even have to think about discipline, and enough of the material requires creative teaching to keep me interested on a day to day level. Also, as with most teaching jobs, the paid vacation (just taking another opportunity to remind all of you that I’m on summer break) is amazing.

oral hygiene very good

I’m currently stuck at home for a few days looking like half a chipmunk because I finally decided to remove the wisdom teeth that have been providing seasonal dull headaches for years. Why now and not 7 years ago when the pain started? Cheap and reliable dental care. Although at this juncture I’m starting to doubt the second adjective.

It all started a few weeks ago when Mara and I decided to go to the dentist for a cleaning and I wanted to have someone look at my wisdom teeth. We got a reference for an office whose dentists came from the university where we work, and who supposedly spoke near fluent English. WRONG! Although our visits went very well (no cavities for either of us) our dentist was not so good on the English side. She spoke a little, but could not understand me when I first said wisdom teeth. She was able to communicate that she couldn’t do anything for my third molars, other than show the two erupted teeth to me in a mirror. She then proceeded to blindfold me (very weird) before she cleaned my teeth and told me I had “oral hygiene very good.” She also said “perfect” in Thai, which I hope was in reference to my teeth, but I don’t really know due to the blindfold. I was just happy to understand the Thai.

After a two week recovery from the initial encounter, I went in to make an appointment with the specialist. In order to make sure I got what I wanted across, I had one of the other Thai ajarns at the university write a note for me that said I wanted an appointment with a specialist to look at my wisdom teeth. This apparently didn’t work because they sent me back to the same dentist I saw the first time and she just told me to go to a specialist. I then politely asked her to help me make an appointment with the specialist to make sure everything was clear to the receptionist.

The following day I went for what I thought was a wisdom tooth consultation at 7:00pm. Why that late? No idea. The dentist was nice enough, and her English was pretty good, so I felt a bit more comfortable. She told me she needed an x-ray to see the two upper teeth that had not erupted, and then she told me she could remove the two right-side teeth today. What? Today? Before I could recover from the shock of it, she was sticking a needle in my gums and then sent me off to get the x-ray. When I got back I asked her why we couldn’t remove all 4 today, and she told me that I wouldn’t be able to chew, and that we could remove the remaining two in one to three weeks. She also asked me if I was “excited.” Thai does not have a word for nervous or worried, instead they use excited. Not thinking, I told her I wasn’t very excited. I later realized that was her way of determining if local anesthesia was going to be good enough. Five minutes later, I’m in surgery.

I was blindfolded again (at least this time I was prepared), and took many deep breaths as she wrenched the lower tooth out and closed it with one stitch - took about 5-10 minutes. The upper tooth was not nearly as cooperative. She kept cutting and prying and cutting and prying, clearly using all of her strength as the assistant held my head tightly for leverage. She ended up ripping the side of my cheek open. Finally, after at least 30 minutes, the tooth was free. Turns out the bottom edges of the tooth were outturned, creating a barb that would not allow the gum to release the tooth. It took 4 stitches to close up that upper wound. Before cleaning me up she actually unblindfolded me to show me the crazy angle of the bottom of the tooth.

The local anesthetic was fine for the surgery, but all she sent me home with was Ibuprofen 400 for pain and an antibiotic. The scariest part of everything has been the recovery. It took more than 12 hours for the bleeding to stop, and 72 hours later I’m still swollen like a chipmunk (although considerably less chubby). I’ve relied a lot on the internet for post-op advice (although I know I shouldn’t). Her advice was don’t smoke, don’t spit, eat soft food. She was also trying to explain something about swelling, but she didn’t know the word swelling, so I’m still not really sure.

Through this miserable 3 day (and counting) recovery I’ve definitely felt a lot of frustration for the way everything was handled. It’s one thing to chalk it all up to cultural differences when you have an issue at work, but when you have no time to mentally prepare for surgery, and when you don’t agree with you dentist’s reasoning for why you can’t get all 4 teeth done at the same time (3 days later and my teeth still won’t meet to chew anything), you tend to feel a little hostile, especially since I’m facing the whole thing over again next week when she removes the remaining two teeth and my stitches. At least the bill was nice, only $100 for two teeth, both impacted, one erupted. And that even includes the Ibuprofen!

In the end, I’m mostly just thankful that I speak English. In so many ways I’ve lucked out because everyone here learns English, and I can only imagine how much more horrible the situation would have been otherwise.