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.