Stuff I've Noticed

I played with "culture shock"-type titles for this post, but nothing has been a shock, or really a surprise, and not always cultural. So here goes some stuff I've noticed.

I was expecting the local fruit to be different. We'd seen some Anthony Bourdain show where he was eating some fruit that was too perishable to be shipped, so you could only get it in that country. He was going nuts over how great it was. Now that we're here, we've found that local-only fruit! Longan, mangosteen, rambutan, to name a few. Annnd... They're kind of disappointing. Most fruits have their own unique flavor: mangoes, pineapple, and passion fruit all taste only like themselves. The other ones I've had here are very sweet, but they're blandly sweet, like plain white sugar. It's kind of a bummer. Maybe that's why I'm not a big fan of figs, either. Sweet, but... just sweet. I have yet to try durian, which definitely has its own flavor, but I'm open.

Also, right now it's apparently strawberry season. In November. That's amusing to me. Wanna know the Thai word for strawberry? It's strawberry, but the emphasis is on the "REE" at the end, which is fun to say. And the local strawberries are very small, like blackberries.

Thailand loves hot dogs. I mean, it loves hot dogs. Smooth, single-color processed meat comes in all shapes and sizes and shades of gray to pink-orange. They're on every breakfast buffet, labeled "sausage." (No.) (However, there is a local Northern Thai sausage that is incredible.) A great deal of the street food stalls offer these baloney-like meats, usually in dime-sized balls on skewers. I made pigs in blankets for Sascha's birthday party, and the pigs were probably the easiest thing to find (no crescent roll dough; had to make it from scratch, but turned out great).

My sister asked me the other day if there are grocery stores here. Yes! Closest to us is a Costco-type warehouse store. Here's the fish department... that stuff is fresh.

About a ten minute drive away, there are two stores. One is a very pretty market in the mall that carries a lot of Western goods.

Free samples... of raw fish. Can you imagine? In the US? *LIABILITY!!*

The German section. American Style Hot Dogs! And chocolate called "Feelings." Marketing geniuses.

The other one is sort of like a Super Wal-Mart. It carries everything. I took this a few months ago, but this is the one we normally go to.

More Random Thailand:

That last video was barrettes that I saw in the market. The first one is made of pills. Then there's a pasta barrette, beer bottle caps...

Here's a recent culture shock/stupid light-bulb moment: I was at school thinking about what to do for dinner. I thought, ehh, maybe we can just go out. But then I thought, gawwh, can’t we just go somewhere that’s indoors? With walls, and air conditioning? And then I realized: this is exactly what you wanted, you idiot. You spent months trapped indoors, and you wanted to be outside. Most of rural Thailand is exposed, and this being a small/new city, a lot of Chiang Rai is exposed as well. There's plenty of middle-class (and up) housing, but many, many people here live in … houses? consisting of basically a platform and a roof. Here's a video I took of a house close to our neighborhood. It's hard to tell if it's someone's house, or a little restaurant, or both. I slowed it down to half time so you can see right through the house to the other side. It's just wide open. I felt a little intrusive taking this video, I have to admit.

Or if it’s a regular house, it has screenless windows.

This is a government building downtown, but I wanted to get the traditional Thai window design.

So. Plenty of fresh air. It is what I wanted.

This post is all over the place (as am I, as I write it from school, and home, with kids talking to me and dinner and baths in between and whatnot). I'll finish with this final video I took today. It was a typical situation: I went to get Sascha's bike fixed downtown. I was not looking forward to it because I always think they're going to think I'm a stupid farang, not knowing much Thai, with my big mouth, big boobs and big wallet. Anyway, I hung out in the back of the bike shop while a huge truck unloaded its cargo right next to me (liability!) and I watched the guy fix her tire. As I was sitting there half-grinning in my usual state of "oh my god I can't believe I am living here, I am so happy," I heard monks chanting from the temple next door. I got a 30-second video as I left.

Strep Neck and Chiang Mai

I have strep throat, but the pain went all the way around to the base of my skull, so I’m calling it strep neck. Ugh. I went looking for a doctor to confirm that it was bacterial (because you can buy antibiotics over the counter here), and ended up in the ER. They were very nice, the place was clean and efficient, and I paid less than $20 for the whole thing (all out of pocket—I don’t know how our insurance works yet). Public health care is so utterly oppressive!

I spent last weekend in Chiang Mai, by myself. A weekend alone is decadent enough, but Chiang Mai has worked its way into my top five favorite cities. In no particular order, they are: Austin, DC, Boston, Munich, and now Chiang Mai. I love places that honor their history and uniqueness, not just vast wastelands of chain stores and restaurants with a hotly defended two-block area of cultural preservation, which is just about every other US city I’ve seen. (Granted, I haven’t seen Portland yet, and San Francisco ticks all those boxes perfectly on paper, but for some reason it didn’t speak to me when I was there.) Public transportation is a major factor, and Austin is lacking there, but its motto is “Keep Austin Weird”—I can’t argue with that. 

Chiang Mai has that X factor for me. It’s a manageable size; I took my bike down on the bus and spent the weekend seeing most of it on two wheels. It has endless streets of curious little storefronts and cafes, interspersed with 15^th-century temples. It has a university with a gorgeous campus, right in town. There’s a mountain range just to one side of the city, lush and jungle-y and close enough to touch. There is a modern shopping district with hip restaurants and bars. There is so much to do and see and taste and smell. It’s everything that’s great about Thailand, polished up by an intelligent young population. I just love it. 

 

In this video I mention taking a spot in a temple behind a guy. It turned out it was a meditation class. After a while, they stood up and started doing this walking meditation thing. I tried to follow along but had no idea what I was doing, so the teacher came over to me and showed me what to do. I was kind of embarrassed, having jumped into their class, but it was very cool to learn something new.

We’ve been here four months now, and I definitely feel like we’re settling in. I’ve come to terms with some things we just cannot find here, and I’m okay with it. A co-worker said she misses dill pickles. It looked it up, and it turns out they’re almost easier to make than to buy. I made a batch and they’re so good I don’t know if I’ll ever buy them again. I also made my own yogurt (which they have here, but it’s expensive and way too sweet) and it turned out great! I’ve lamented artichoke hearts, and I just realized the other day that there are no grapevine leaves here in any form—stuffed, raw, in a jar. No dolmades for a long while. Corn tortillas will taste amazing when I finally get them again. (A side note: I did find them in Chiang Mai and bought three packages of them! Then I left them on the bus. Wasn’t meant to be, I guess.)

But it’s dawning on me that there are other things we’re missing, too. We don’t have a mailbox full of flyers and special offers. There are almost no commercials on TV. I don’t feel like anything is assaulting my senses and screaming for my attention; I can actually hear myself think. We never hear crappy Clear Channel music, anywhere, ever. (We could stay here thirty more years and still return home to hear “Free Fallin” and “Better Man” on heavy rotation. “Under the Bridge.” John Mellencamp’s boring “Cherry Bomb.”) And watching the American outrages du jour unfold online from this distance makes me realize that we’re missing out on the shame police. There are no scolds here, no finger-wagging know-it-alls.

America.

Not that I’ve seen, anyway—maybe there are, and since I don’t speak Thai, well…? But it seems like a uniquely American pastime, particularly with parenting. Should, you should, you need to, you should have. I feel like I’m at a safe enough distance to throw up my middle finger from twenty thousand miles away. I’m not saying Thailand is perfect and America sucks; it’s not that black & white. But it’s very strange that I feel more free living in an actual police state. 

I saw this article recently about stressed-out parenting in America (that's a link there, it's hard to see). The article is spot-on, but then… I only read through about 50 comments, but after realizing that half of those said “QUIT WHINING,” I closed the screen, depressed. It’s that whole “you’re on your own, pal” attitude that makes it so unappealing. America’s mean, isolated, bootstrap culture. No examining of the problem, just "quit whining." "Shut up and get back to work, you chose this." Everyone chiming in with unhelpful words instead of actual helping hands. Even just a little empathy would go a long way. 

It doesn’t escape me that I criticize that culture of isolation, and yet I’ve chosen to isolate myself from everything and everyone I know. But it’s a different kind of isolation. The systemic isolation in the US is sad—everyone feeling like they need to hoard their stuff, fortify their castles, actually arm themselves to “defend” them. I listen to the other expats here talk about various dramas going on back home, and they’re usually relieved that they don’t have to deal with any of it. Some of us feel like we’re getting away with something. I know a couple of women who no longer have to listen to people ask them why they’re single. Another one moved from a beautiful but violent country where she had a few toxic relatives and through-the-roof stress. A few others, well, Nick and I can only speculate what kind of stuff they’ve left behind. Of course, we all have our own problems here, but they’re ours. I’m reminded of this commercial quite often—I used to love it just as a runner, but now it has even more meaning.

Sorry this was kind of a downer. Being able to hear myself think means that there’s lots of opportunity to do just that. My next post will be on random cultural differences, much lighter and more fun.