Daily Archives: June 17, 2005

Thai Restaurant Menu – 03

I went out to eat at one of our local seafood restaurants tonight with some friends. I took the camera along so that I could show you what you missed! The only dish I didn’t take a picture of was the fish as we ate that last time. The or-suan dish is interesting – it is like the hoi tod that I gave you the recipe for not long ago. However, this one is about ten times more expensive as it also has crab and shrimp. The meal we had today was vegetarian so the green curry had fish balls instead of chicken. Our other option was shrimp.

ทอดมันกุ้ง – tod mun goong
Prawn cakes

ออส่วน – or-suan
Fried mussels, shrimp and crab in omlette

แกงเขียวหวานลูกชิ้นปลากราย – gang keow waan look-chin blaa grai
Green curry with fishballs

กุ้งชุบแป้งทอด – goong choop baeng tod
Fried Shrimp

This five dish meal, which included rice and two large bottles of Singha Beer cost about 180 baht each. That is about US$4.50 each. Not too bad. As I mentioned before, at restaurants like this, you usually end up paying about 200 baht each. We were thinking about going for the crab curry which is really nice. But, the starting price was 800 baht! To put this in perspective for newbies, the pad thai meal I had by the side of the road last night cost only 20 baht. It is nice going to the restaurants, but I hope you can see why I don’t go too often.

My First Birthday in My New School!

I was so happy when I knew I could get a quota to study in Triam Udom Suksa School. Although, I was worried if I couldn’t get along well with others or couldn’t catch up their intelligence but it turned out to be the opposite. I enjoyed it there although it was just my first days at the school. When one semester passed, it was time for every school here to start preparing for significant coming event, “SPORTS DAY!!”.

Mostly, we’ve got sports day during semester 2 of a year around November – December. Most schools have it here, high schools, junior high schools, primary schools or even kindergarten schools. We are always seperated into 5 or 7 parties (colors) approximately. My first year in Triam, I was purple. Don’t think I was a widow (Thai people believe purple is the colour of a widow) or a gay (international belief) but I got no choices to choose!

At the end of semester 1, seniors had to find people who would be interested in any sports competitions including cute girls and guys to be cheerleades as well. Everybody chose what they wanted to do, some were cheerleaders, some were at cheering sections (singing), some chose to do nothing..I chose to run.

Not so long after semester 2 started, people started to practise..a lot! (According to the pictures, you may see it’s a war time here at my school.) I was asked to start warming up and down and running on 11th December as the first day. You know what? That’s my birthday!!! I felt totally fresh and ready to practise. I went down to the tracks as the first person. I warmed up vigorously. Then people started to come and at last ..we warmed up together again and started to run. I was set in a team of four girls.. 4x100m. I was the first person to start. Teacher was there timing us so I ran as fast as I could ..arriving ..arriving.. BANG!!!! I hit the second person.. she didn’t know she had to start running before I reached her..She just stood there watching me coming. – -” She said sorry and left. The teacher told me to start it again but I felt like I couldn’t move. My right foot was so painful cuz it hit the back of that girl’s right foot (her shoe actually). Imagine you or something..coming with the great velocity and was stopped by something hard! I stood there for a few seconds then fell down.. I quickly took of my shoe to see if my foot was alright. Was taking of a sock slowly..slowly..almost..almost..

“GREY NAIL!!!!” was what I discovered on my right toe! I wasn’t stupid like I always am that day..I didn’t think I got some silver growing on my toe. I knew it was blood stuck inside straigh away! I went to sit for a while then it began to be dark grey and black at last :'( I asked the teacher what to do but he seemed careless to me. He told me to go to the nursing room. I did. I got something cold on my toe to cure it but I felt much more pain. The lady there told me to go to the hospital then. So I went to the hospital.. with my friend, Prae. Just two of us.. paid for the taxi ourselves and I couldn’t ask for money I had paid for the doctor from anyone :'(.

I got my nail pierced and the blood gushed out like there was a little fountain on my toe except it was red lol! My birthday seemed to turn out pretty bad. My foot ached.. I couldn’t run that year but God’s never been mean to us. While I was so in pain, I always walked like a toddler in order to let everybody in the streets realize “I’m hurt over here! Don’t step on my foot!”. I could get a seat on both sky train and buses 😀 cuz people felt pity for me. Although it was a lot less painful but I still walked lopsidedly :p cuz the bus was always crowded and I wanted to sit! :p

I felt good about it..it’s like a cool experience lol!! Really, you’d better try! JK!! Anyway, I got the golden medal in my second year instead 🙂

Mold

To Thai people…in general….it seems to me, that the appearance of houses and public buildings on the outside (Other than religious Temples……)are just not important.

Even   this Wat in Lampang could use a little cleaning

I have walked the streets in Bangkok and Chiang Mai and Tak, and Lampang and have been so frustrated with how rundown things looked to western eyes only because of mold and a lack of paint. Sometimes I’ve just wanted to go into a store and buy a gallon of bleach and a wire brush and start cleaning a wall or entry way to a building and show people what could be done in a couple of hours………… with a few dollars and some elbow grease…all the black mold could be gone and things would look beautiful (Until the next rainy season)….

You are a Winner!


from left to right group members Cat, John, Opp, Bo and yours truly (in case you’ve missed it I’m the farang in the pic haha)

Sawasdee Krab!

No this blog does not mean spam has wormed it’s way in here. Today I am “borrowing” our forum to announce the latest winners of my monthly contest for members of the Thai langauge group here in DC.

As a semi co-moderator of our group, or at least the most persistant e-mailer, 😉 I try to find new ways to make things interesting so present members and new members alike can get involved. One of my ideas is a new contest each month for everyone to compete in which I give out prizes to the winner at our next meet up. I actually got the idea from another member a couple months back who started it all with a simple trivia question.

In May, Oop who you see in the pic up there, asked if anyone knew what important holiday it was. For those who don’t know the answer since it was May 5 was easy to figure out, it was Coronation Day. Two minutes and a carefully worded search on Google was all I needed to find the answer hehe. Our great webmaster Richard, as usual, wrote a terrific blog on the holiday that you can read here.

The contest is sent out by our group e-mail and the first one to reply with the correct answer wins! Unfortuately since I usually live on e-mail when I am at home I had a disadvantage over our other members. Therefore to be fair I took up the torch and started my own new contest each month to which I would obviously be disqualified so everyone has a fair chance 😛

The next month I continued the game with a related question, what two, also very important holidays in Thailand, celebrate the Royal Family. This was a fairly easy one and fellow farang member Tiffany quickly researched the answer. The two holidays are of course, Fathers Day on December 5th which is also HM the Kings Birthday, and Mothers Day on August 12th also HM the Queens Birthday 🙂

Now this was a pretty cool idea to come up with every month but I wanted something more challenging and not so easy to answer just by looking it up online 😀 So I came up with something new for this months contest. This time out it was an essay, yes, yes I can hear students out there groaning already as an automatic reaction haha. This new contest was actually, I thought, a really unique idea.

All you had to do was send an e-mail telling me What is your favorite Thai word? simple, just write what your favorite word is, what it means and why you like it. You can make your essay as long or short as you like, you can make it serious or witty, surreal or silly, just not naughty like your what’s your favorite pick up word to use over in Patpong 😉 As an add on if you can send in your favorite word written in Thai then you get bonus points!

I admit I was a tad disappointed there was not more response to this one but we do have a winner! So without further ado the winner of this months Thai langauge contest is……drum roll please!

Joe our member from Woodbridge, Virginia!

Congratulations to both Joe and Tiffany for being winners! This coming Saturday is our next group meet up get together and Joe and Tiffany (who had to miss the last meet up) will get their prizes. I am sending out an e-mail after this blog post to our group members to come here and find out who wins hehehe. So you’ll have to wait until this weekends blog to find out what Joe and Tiffany each won but I can definitely tell you they are getting some pretty cool prizes.

Now for the official unveiling here is Joes winning contest submission, especially if this even works with the Thai font!

My favorite Thai word is (meaning ‘love’) because it reminds me of my visit to Thailand. I loved the people, the food, the countryside, the weather (in the northern area) and the list goes on. How’s that?

P.S. Please excuse the very crappy drawing.

As you can see Joe actually submitted a written รัก to my e-mail so he also got the bonus points, a free appetizer at the resturant this Saturday when we get together, that much I am giving way here. Thanks for the great word and extra effort!

How about you? Let’s hear it from everybody out there in Blog land 😀 Whats your favorite Thai word? Sorry I don’t have prizes for you too but everyone gets an honorable mention here in this blogs comments section, hows that? Till next time!

เจอกันนี้วันสุดสัปดาห์
วิทย์

Future of Thai Youths

Reading the blog from SiamJai called Thailand’s future and his remarks on Thai youths; I feel that I should contribute to the subject. It seems that no ones yet to post other blog or discussion on this subject either. Today, I would like to discuss my thoughts toward Thai youths in the new emerging economy.

As Thailand has recovered from the Asian economic crisis back in 1997, in the past couple years, it seems to enjoy enormous growth and prosperity, except a couple set back of SAR disease, drug wars, local problems in the South, and a traumatic event of tsunami last December. Other than that, Thailand seems to continue make it strive and advancement of technological development throughout the country including educational accessibility and funding provided by the government and Royal Family. I think our PM did a good of job of that. But it’s not the point that I try to convey here. I’m worry about Thai youths that growing up during the late 90s to now, as we are continuing to progress in the 21st century, might lose our traditional culture value.

From what I have seen and read through media, socializing with my Thai friends, and reading through the discussions and blogs in this site, Thai youths seem to have lost interested in our traditional value and a proper way of living. The Thai youths, who are currently growing up in Thailand today depicts too much toward liberal western style culture of life. Although, this is great strategically thinking because it helps children to become more independent and expand his/her knowledge of thinking. However, too much influence and pressure from western style might cause them to lose their native culture and values. If you speak to any Thai individuals, they would agree with me.

To my current knowledge of understanding Thai youths today, children are being educated to think creativity and encourage participating in school activities such as playing sports, volunteerism, and others. Parents have more choices where to send their kids to school. With technological advancement and socioeconomic variability, Thai youths have access to the Internet, mobile phone, and other formal of technology that you can name of. Let face it….if a child today asked his/her parents for something; he/she will get it. In fact, they have ability to rebellion against their parents’ teaching if they do not agree with them. This is due to culture influence from western cultures and socio-economical improvement of their parents.

The culture has shift toward a western style of life. Thai education system is incrementally changing and might eventually adopt the full process of western style of teaching. My questions are: Where does Thai traditional culture and value fit in the new Thai education curriculum? Does Thai youth today, still have Buddhism teaching, history, and culture teaching in their education curriculum? Maybe Richard, SiamJai, SteveSuphan, Oakmonster, or others can write more on this topic. I am very interested to see where Thailand will be in, let say, 20-30 years from now.

It is in reversal trends to see the Thai youths, who are growing up in the western culture, where their parents are native Thai-born. The youths are being educated by their mother or father native way of life and value. It seems to me that we, Thai, do educate so much of our value and culture to the Western world and forget to educated Thai youths, who are currently growing up in Thailand.

This leads me to think that we (Thai) did a good job of educating foreigner or Western society about our own Thai culture and fail to educate our Thai youths in her native culture. I wonder how this will contradict itself out in the future. Maybe foreigner knows more about our way of life, than native Thai really do.

I hope this post will spark out a lot more discussions and blogs in weeks and months to come.