Fast Food, The Thai Way

Numerous motorbikes with sidecars snake past our house every day, honking little rubber-bubble horns of the sort I remember on bicycles in my youth. Many of them are traveling kitchens. Most of the kitchens on wheels are rather elaborate and also sport awnings. They are amazing affairs - coals under large caldrons of steaming, delicious soups and coal grills with assorted marinated satays and veggies toasting on them. When flagged down by a hungry customer, they transform themselves into roadside, fast food concessions. For about fifty US cents, you can satisfy your belly for half a day and the flavors are fantastic.

All sorts of vendors on wheels course the streets of our villa. Some are not motorized and just pushed along - the most impressive being the hearty souls hawking large, woven furniture. First glimpse of these mountains of elaborately fabricated reed chairs and lounges makes you think it's impossible for one person to be pushing that load many miles per day. The furniture is gorgeous and painstakenly crafted. I don't know what one would pay for something similiar in the US, but a large lounge chair can be had off the street here for under twenty-five bucks. Then there are the broom sellers and the cutting board sellers and... and...

Now this is the real stuff... the sort of craftsmanship and expertise that is uniquely Thai and of the highest quality - I'm talking about the hard goods and the food too. Ironically (or maybe not), much of the western world, look-alike items one buys in the glitzy shopping centers don't quite cut it. I mean... like we bought two spiffy looking desk chairs recently at a shopping center - you know... they had those turn-and-roll-in-any-direction casters on them and the get-me-up and get-me-down levers and all that. After they were delivered, we learned that the casters catch , drag and don't quite roll correctly, and the seat adjustment is erratic. Most expats living here chuckle over the fact that many store-bought, imitation western, items "almost" work. But purchase a genuine, Thai traditional piece of furniture, or traditional anything else, and you own something functional, well designed and inexpensive.

One of the above pictures also shows the houses across the street from us and gives a notion of the look of our neighborhood. It's a cozy and enjoyable setting and A, with her fearless and outgoing manner, has plunked herself easily into this community. It's fun to see her standing next to our neighbors ordering food from one of the kitchens on wheels and I think it endears her to them and telegraphs the message that we truly love living in their culture. And that's a fact.

Click on any picture to view it full screen.

No Sweat, Madam Heng

I've been a Kirk's Castile Soap user for years. As you might guess, it's not available here, so I resumed my soap search from where it left off when I was here three years ago. I suppose bathing with the 'just right' soap is not a big deal to most people, but it is with me. I have problematic skin – not sensitive in the usual ways, but my pores are large and... wait a minute... no, no... I'm not going into details about comodomes and so on. Let's just say that Kirk's works well for me and I miss it when I'm away from the US. A few weeks ago, I discovered Madame Heng. (I'm in love with Madame Heng – well, with her spirit anyway, because I suspect she's probably long dead.)

We're on an island that sits seven degrees away from the equator. It's hot and it's humid. It takes a whole lot of adjusting for our northern European genes to acclimate themselves to the onslaught of ninety percent humidity and ninety degree + days. (We keep our air-conditioned bedroom set to around 83 degrees and that feels like a comfortably cool, even chilly, setting to sleep in.)

The hot temperature thing requires a different mind-set. I wake up every morning knowing I am going to sweat during the day. It's a given. It's an important fact and a condition that is important to accept, and yes, even welcome. I welcome it because my skin seems to love it. There is no other place on earth where my skin feels and looks better, despite the fact that my large pores expel a lot of sweat. Now here's the big surprise – I never detect any annoying body odors accompanying the sweat – that is – only if I'm using the right soap. Madame Heng figured it out.

Madame Heng's soap is a camphor-based bar. Thais swear by camphor for its healing powers and who knows what else. They use it in toothpaste, ointments, and medicines and (bless Madame Heng) also in soap. Our bodies beg frequent bathing in this climate. Many Thais bathe three times a day, and so do we. I'm sometimes jealous of the Thais, who are so well adapted to this climate that it's unusual to see them sweating, but, ironically, they are also jealous of my sweat, and some of my Thai friends tell me that sweating is good for you and they believe it helps the heart. Well I can tell you that my heart has never felt better and perhaps it's the copious sweating that is doing it (but I suspect there are a lot of other factors involved as well).

Dr. Thiti

Breast cancer delayed our arrival in Phuket by one year – the time it took to get over the shock of the diagnosis and combat it with surgeries, radiation, etc. Test results; received shortly before we finally did depart the US, showed A to be clear, clean and healthy. Future monitoring is super important, of course, and we researched the medical resources of Thailand extensively before deciding to leave the shelter of US expertise. We learned that Thai medical care is up-to-date and, because some procedures and drugs have not yet been approved in the US, many folks come here specifically for treatment. We feel as covered here as we did in the US.

We believe (with good reason) that A has successfully confronted, eliminated and waltzed past the dreaded Big C, and we don't think she will ever have to use Bangkok's spiffy cancer treatment centers.

And then... wouldn't-chu-know... down the road a piece from us, and within walking distance, we spotted Dr. Thiti's sign (neon enhanced at night). It gave us pause. Is it possible that we won't have to fly to Bangkok for A's six-month exams? Hmmm... ???

Purchased: Two Brains & One Organ

It's quaint, it's cute, it's mystifiying and sometimes terribly confusing. We moved into an unfurnished house some six weeks ago and promptly began buying furniture. It's been a fun chore, but laced with complexities and a lot of faith. The language hurdle insists on faith and it's a harrowing two-way street. Thais do their best to accomodate the English speaking world and the English speaking world does its best to interpret their English interpretations. Very few of us ever master the complexities of their Sanskrit based alphabet and learn to read Thai (let alone learn the tonal inflections of their lyrical language).

So today is the day I've chosen to attack the daunting task of organizing receipts - an accounting ready to be used if we find ourselves moving and selling once again. It was all going pretty well until I flipped over to the Koncept Furniture receipt - 2 brains and 1 organ - the rest of the details were in Thai script.

Hello?

The receipt (detail above) says that one of the brains we purchased cost 3,080 baht (after the 30% discount) and the other, 3,010 baht. The day would have proceeded much more smoothly had both brains been the same price. As it was- a family row ensued and A and I argued over which of us had furnished our minds with the better quality brain. I insisted that, since the Thai culture (like every other culture on earth) favors males, I was the one who received the higher priced brain. A pointed out the fact that the organ was the highest priced item on the bill (coming in at 16.590 baht) and suggested that I had ordered it behind her back. She furthered her argument by saying that male brains are traditionally installed in an organ and are notoriously dumber than female brains, so it was obvious that she had received the higher priced, better quality brain. I was stopped in my tracks - no retort.

Somewhere in the back of my mind (wherever the hell it resides) I know that the 2 brains and 1 organ on the Koncept Furniture receipt refer to three pieces of furniture, but I'll be damned if I know what they are.

Listing "two brains and one organ" is going to be clumsy (and perhaps false advertising) if we have a yard sale in the future. And that's another problem... Thais don't have, or understand the concept of yard sales. Yard sales don't make sense in a country where the majority of folks purchase goods according to neccessity, rather than indulging whims made possible by having expendable cash. So I guess we will have to bring our two new brains and expensive organ along with us if we move to aother location.