Back home in the USA

Sawasdee Bii Mai!

Dancing Shrimp!

I LOVE Thai food, especially in Thailand! However, there have been a few local delicacies that I have refused to sample. One notable dish is called "Goong Dan", which translates to "Dancing Shrimp". This dish is comprised of a type of shrimp that are small, almost larvae-like in appearance, with really LONG antenna. They are served alive, mixed in a bowl with some of the hottest and most sour spices imaginable! You shake the bowl, and pull off the lid, and the shrimp jump (hence the name "Dance"!), presumably because of the spices. You then scoop some up, along with the spice, and with a bit of rice, and pop the whole thing in your mouth. Well, after much cajoling by my fellow diners, I dared to give it a try! The hardest part for me is always the antenna---they just feel so wierd! However, I have to say that this was one of the spiciest things I have ever eaten in my life---and I only managed to swallow it all with the help of a large gulp of Pepsi at the end!!

Green Papaya, Aloha Shirts and other fun things!

Centipedes and leaches and slugs oh my!

It's almost always late at night when you are tired and just trying to get through the teeth brushing and get to bed when you see them. For me it was last night, and what looked like either a centipede (bad), leach (also bad), or slug (the least bad of the three bads!) that was struggling mightily to squeeze through a drain in the floor and get me! Centipede, you might be thinking...how bad can that be?! Plenty I say for they grow here to near epic proportions (I once saw one that was a foot long), have a coat of armour like scales (a throw-back from some dinosaur era) making them nearly impossible to squish without some tool to help, and about a million tentacles that will latch on to you and inject you with a painful venom that requires a trip to the hospital for an anti-venom shot---ouch!! I did what I have often done in the past---sprayed it back into the drain with a water hose, shut off the light and slammed the door behind me exiting stage right.

Oh, then there is the snakes, spiders and lizards...but that is a story for another day!!

A hundred aloha shirts!

It is almost Songkhran---the Thai New Year celebration that occurs in mid-April each year. It is a nice touch that it comes in the hottest season of the year, as the tradition is to "play" water---short hand for "look out, you will have water dumped on, sprayed at, and generally thrown at you for the entirety of the daylight hours!! In years past, the Thai would dress in traditional costume, and with a bowl of jasmine-scented water, and a lei of flowers, they would seek out their elders, approach on bended knee, present them with a deeply respectful Wai, and offer their elders apologies for any wrongs committed during the previous year, and then both offer and recieve a blessing in return. While that surely continues to this day, the holiday has also become an excuse for what I call the biggest water fight in the world!! Moreover, the more traditional Thai dress has been replaced in large measure (or at least supplemented by) crazy Aloha shirts, making the sight quite colorful too. Today, in anticipation of the weeks' festivities (out in our area the local villagers will begin to "play" water this weekend), we piled some of the older kids into the van, and bought about 60 aloha shirts in all sizes and colors---to make sure we have enough for every child to get suited up!! I will actually be here for the first official day of the holiday (Monday), and am looking forward to seeing the fun once again. I promise to post some photos, although it is one of those events that really must be seen to be believed!

By the way, next week marks the beginning of the year 2552 in the Thai calendar--cool, huh?!?!

Scenes from a Tuesday!

What a nice day today---a bit of basketball with the boys, some work (finally got that proposal I have been working on finished!), time for some cute snaps of summer haircut time, and lots of hugs from dear friends, old and young alike. All-in-all a good day! Now if we could just get some relief from the horrible haze of pollution that is hanging over the Chiang Mai valley like a shroud. It is particularly bad these last few days, and blots out the view of the mountain as well as the sun. Not unlike a thermal blanket in winter, it also holds the heat in overnight, and renders the atmosphere pretty stifling.