Baby Feet!

Baby feet have become a whole new thing around the house. At first, they just poked adorably out of the wraps. But, suddenly in the past week, feet have become terribly interesting.



You can play with them.



You can stick them up on things.



You can stand on them!

And, in the middle of the night, you can lift both of them up and drop them really hard making the whole mattress quake and Mum and Paw roll over and groan (oh, so quietly). (no photo available)

Boiled Eggs on a Stick

If you read my recent post "Pancakes on a Stick," you will certainly still be mulling over the thought of boiled eggs on a stick. As luck would have it, on Sunday Amnat and I ran into a boiled-eggs-on-a-stick lady sitting on the sidewalk not far from the house. Boiled eggs on a stick, like many Thai street foods, are sold by peddlers who carry, push, or drive stuff around. You know they are coming, because they have a honky horn and they honk their way down your street.



I've discovered that if you say, in Thai, that you have a website, people WANT their picture taken. The boiled-eggs-on-a-stick lady hopped up from her little plastic stool to shoulder the load and make a proper presentation. She carries two baskets from a bamboo bow with a charcoal burner in one basket to keep the eggs hot. Yes, hot charcoals walking down the street in 90 degree weather. Unfortunately, a few words spoken with convincing accent sets people to thinking you actually speak their language. She told me an awful lot about the eggs, but I only caught about every seventh word.



The eggs were still warm when she put them in a bag for me, but Amnat wouldn't let me eat them. He's quite fussy about food, as he's had a lot of bad food over the years. When I asked why we couldn't eat them, he just said - salty. I've learned to trust his judgment. Thai people eat from a very long list of unpalatable things. And, strong flavors are what drives Thai cuisine. If he says it's salty, it's SALTY.



From what I could piece together from Amnat and the boiled-eggs-on-a-stick lady, the eggs are boiled, then brined and then skewered and heated over the charcoal fire. Seems like you'd need a beer with them for sure, but there was no ice chest in that second basket.

What We Learned from Our First Play Date

Blocks taste good.
Babies are exciting, and it makes you want to squeeze them really hard.
Crying is contagious.

Luckily, this time it was just the babies crying.

Pancakes on a Stick

Thai people love to eat food on sticks. I've had watermelon on a stick, and fish balls, Fanta and Coke popsicles, porks balls, hot dogs (deep fried.... oi), boiled quail eggs (in the shell), and I've even seen fetal chickens - in the shell - barbecued - and put on a stick. Didn't try that one, needless to say. But, this week at the local street market I saw a new take on stick cuisine. Pancakes on a stick.

Because they are Thai pancakes, they are beautiful and fun and anything but dull. These pancakes come with cartoons, of course, but the secret to this cart's success is the jelly swirl embedded in the cake. The pancake-on-a-stick lady squeezes on the jelly swirl then overlays more cake batter from a squeezy bottle to hide it. All this, AND you can have it with jellyfish decoration!

Nearby, the competition offers fish waffles with various fillings. The griddle is just the coolest, and if it weren't cast iron, I'd ship one home. The fish-waffle guy uses little hooks to flip open the hot waffle maker, and the sound is hypnotic, as is the smell. He offers about seven filling flavors all (kind of) fruity and very artificial tasting. The brown one is chocolate. There's a lot of brown-flavored stuff here, no real chocolate to speak of. But, none of the fish waffles actually tastes like fish.


You laugh. Two weeks ago I brought home from the little neighborhood baker some "chocolate chip" cookies. They had curious looking chips, but everything is a little askew here anyway. First bite seemed a little fishy, but I'm a tad sensitive about people sneaking me fishy shit all the time, so I munched on thinking I was just sleep deprived and delusional. Second bite, the chips were definitely chewy and brownish. Dried shrimp, no kidding.

You gotta' watch these Thai people all the time....

Welcome to My World

Every day I walk past this sign about four times. It is as big as me, which makes the mosquitoes about as big as Jimmy. The sign is mounted on the motorbike parking lean-to of the Chiang Mai Women's Correctional Institution, our neighbor across the street. Believe me, our little family doesn't need the reminder.

We spend a good bit of every day incinerating mosquitoes with our little re-chargable tennis raquet/mosquito electrocutor. We've nicknamed it "The Zapper." On many occasions I have even caught my Buddhist, I-was-a-monk-for-16-years husband OUTSIDE incinerating mosquitoes in the garden. He regularly yells, "Die" (in English) while doing this.

We will probably all come back in our next life bug-born for our efforts, but with malaria and dengue fever in the city, we are taking our chances. Can't wait to get back to the great Northeast where the mosquitoes die with the first frost, and they can't actually kill you.

Jimmy's Four-Month Family Self-Portrait

Gosh, I love these digital self-portraits, even when they are slightly out of focus. And who doesn't look better slightly out of focus, anyway? We had to take quite a few before we could get Jimmy away from the booby. We'll just save those for family consumption.

With just a few days to spare, Jimmy managed to check off the last of his development hurdles this month. He lifted his head to full vertical on his tummy. When was the last time you had yourself in such a position? It looks exhausting and usually ends with a wimper which quickly turns to a more direct plea to be put in any other position. It's hard to be a baby.



Amnat and Jimmy are both tucked in as I'm typing away, so I'll be brief. Actually, there's no tucking in going on, with the days still hovering around 90 degrees. We just sprawl under the mosquito net. Before living here, I thought sleeping under a mosquito net would be terribly exotic. It turns out to be a big pain, especially on the rare occasion when you trap a mosquito IN with you. But, some day we will likely look back on these photos taken through filmy netting and feel wistful.


We're doing fine, even when we're not. We have a lot to be thankful for.

Baby Visits His First Museum (of sorts)

About a month ago, I felt compelled to find something educational to do with my 12 week old baby. (You see the problem already.) After puzzling over where one can take a baby in this city, my friend Nong and I decided to head to the Chiang Mai University Art Museum. I'd been there before, so my expectations were in check.

The show this time was an homage to the King of Thailand, who celebrates the 60th anniversary of his coronation this year, thus making him the longest reigning monarch in the world. The second gallery (of sorts) featured thesis projects from the university's MFA program.

I've said before that the definition of a Thai artist is any man with hair below his ear lobes and any woman with hair above her ear lobes. Thai people are "flock thinkers," which is very hard for a westerner to wrap the mind around. Some time ago, I came across an article by a western business guy talking about working with his Thai staff. He offered sales bonuses for individual achievement, and his staff didn't take him up on the idea. They preferred to SHARE the cash with every member of the team. How thoroughly un-American. So, I sometimes struggle to understand the viewpoint of my family, neighbors, and the population at large

The result of this "flock thinking" in the field of new art is that the flock dress alike and paint alike - mostly multiple copies of big flowers and illustrations of a standard repertoire of romanticized historical Thai cultural icons. If you're decorating a spa, it's just what you're in the market for.



Thai culture is in flux, as are all cultures at all times; but Thai people have witnessed a rapid change in lifestyle and are aggressively romantic about the recent past. Given that my mother-in-law is still living in that recent past, and I've experienced it first-hand, I don't find it romantic. It's traditional, for sure, but it's also physically very uncomfortable, at times very unsafe, and can be quite unhealthy. Amnat is the generation with one foot in each world, and he is balancing there quite well. Moving to the U.S. may tip his scales, but we have some time before that happens.



Back to the museum.... It fulfilled expectations. Lots of romantic illustrations of chickens, sunsets over grass houses, and temples. Baby slept through the entire visit, despite a total lack of ventilation in the cavernous (and leaky) concrete hulk of a building.

I amused myself (and perhaps, you) by taking photos of baby contemplating the art. Nong didn't really get the joke. I hope you will.

Next year, the Metropolitan, if all goes well!

News of the Day

Here we are, at the end of the rainy season in Chiang Mai. We have started to feel a slight up-tick in the number of tourists in the city, which is very good news. Having a baby and building the new massage studio definitely took a dent. Despite floods and mud-slides in the north which stop the trains and busses, tourists are still making their way here. Infrastructure is good, but not great; so a mudslide can significantly effect the number of people in guest houses each week. Water management and erosion are huge problems here, as development moves forward largely unchecked and poorly planned.

The six-month low season is drawing to a close, and we are very much looking forward to bigger classes of Thai massage students and cafes full of interesting people to talk to. Amnat has four students in the Massage Studio this week, an American, two Brits, and a lovely Irish woman. Amnat is so well-liked by his students and very popular, that I seem hardly to be missed. A blow to the ego, for sure; but I'm very content with my new job. As with anything, it has it's deadly dull spells, but there's something new every week.



Jimmy is starting to really enjoy his own strength. We stand him up - Ray Bolger style - with his scarecrow legs buckling out sideways. We all get a big thrill from it. And, he can almost lift his head on his stomach. The screaming phase has passed, thankfully. Being on his stomach was not a favorite, shall we say.



His head still bobbles in the most silly way when he's excited, and his legs and arms kick out rigid when something really good is going on.



We spent a spent a relaxing hour this past weekend sitting over coffee, and Amnat snapped these photos of me. The first I'd title, "How I Look Now;" and the second, "How I Feel Now." A little out of focus and hang-dog, for sure. But, I keep busy staying out of the sun, swatting mosquitoes, and writing. Lots of new topics in mind, these days.
Made a nice re-connection recently with my old friend Bernie, my thesis advisor from grad school, who says he's just keeping busy thinking thoughts. Thinking thoughts is a pretty good way to spend your days, and it's what I (still) do best (despite the sleep dep and the caffeine buzz).



I'm working on the curriculum for a new advanced level Thai massage course for pre-natal and post-partum chicks. I'll be teaching it at the end of next year, when we get back to the U.S.A. I have something to say on the topic, which was a blind spot for me before. With some forethought, we took photos for the book when I was still pregnant. I got to be my own model, which was quite nice. Hope to be appearing in a town near you for our training courses next year. Amnat could use a nice tour around the U.S. as a welcome to his new home.