floods receding in vientiane

According to the Vientiane Times, the flood waters are receding in Vientiane.

However, floods remain a risk all through the rainy season, so the city wants to reinforce their dikes and built a higher wall in case there is heavy rains again.

the lotus, it’s not just for tesco

Last night in Thai class we talked about the lotus, and its importance to Thai society.

When it rains a little, Thai farmers plant rice, but when there is too much water, the rice cannot live, so they plant lotus, which can live in a lot of water. This is an agricultural version of hedging your investment portfolio.

The wai is like making a lotus bud with your hand.

I’m always surprised at how much the teachers manage to explain with our limited grasp of Thai. They talked about how the different stages of the lotus plant are like the different stages of enlightenment according to Buddhism.

The best part is that the teachers always joke around a lot and make fun of each other. They told us that in old times, one thing Thai girls and boys would do when they liked each other, is that the guy would row a boat for the girl while she picked flowers on the river. Back then, guys didn’t wear shirts, so it was a good way to show off how buff he was.

Then they showed us how to eat lotus seeds and hit each other (a lot) with the lotus plants.

quote of the month

Every month I have to do a find-and-replace on the word “fabulous”

– an editor friend in BKK, on her orders to make the men’s magazine she edits more “manly”, despite a writing staff of mostly gay writers

“sushi, hookers and golf”, Bangkok WTF? special Japanese edition

Today I went walking in Phrom Pong neighborhood, which is a neighborhood of Bangkok with many Japanese expats. Strangely, it has the best true French-style bread in Bangkok (at Custard Nakamura, go early they sell out), and is also my connection for the genmaicha (green tea with roasted rice) tea that I drink everyday.

If geography is destiny, then judging by the composition of Japanese neighborhoods in Bangkok, what Japanese expats want is:

1) Japanese food
2) golf
3) hookers

Soi Thaniya is entirely composed of this holy triumvirate, and Phrom Pong has all three, plus karaoke bars, which probably also involve hookers. They even sell golf supplies at Fuji supermarket!

Then I had coffee at Fuji, which between the taste of the coffee and the chain smoking old Japanese guys sitting out in front, feels exactly like having coffee in Tokyo. It’s in front of Fuji supermarket, and you can watch Japanese families frantically doing their weekly shopping.

There were three Japanese people in full judo uniforms inside the grocery store.

I stumbled onto a giant family of rats on Sukumvit rooting through the garbage. This is actually pretty rare in Bangkok, at least in the daytime.

I went to my favorite used bookstore. There was an old farang expat guy complaining loudly inside — of a type instantly recognizable to anyone who lives here — those bitter and fussy old fossils who seem to spend every living hour in Thailand complaining about Thailand but linger on here for years, probably because the Third World is the only place they can get laid.

Then I had sushi, but no hookers and no golf.

Mekong river floods Vientiane, Laos, North-East Thailand

I was looking forward to going to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, one of my favorite cities, after wrapping up my art show this month, but it’s flooded!

What six months ago looked like this:

Now looks like this:

Here are some bloggers in Vientiane reporting on the floods:

Apocalypse Laos has pictures and videos of the floods.
Peter Evans, a telecoms researcher in Vientianehas good descriptions of what is going on.
Quaking blog has some photos of the flood prevention efforts

Unusually hard rains have led to very high levels for the Mekong river, which has now flooded Laos, North-Eastern Thailand, and more floods are predicted as the swell of water moves down the Mekong.

Vientiane is one of my favorite cities in the world, so I really hope that the city, along with its lovely people will be ok.

one monday in bangkok

This is probably only funny if you live in Bangkok.

In Thai culture there is a color associated with each day of the week. Yellow is Monday’s color, and it is also the King’s color. On Monday, all civil servants in Bangkok are required to wear yellow, and many other office workers choose to wear yellow as well.

On Monday the city is a big sea of yellow.

free!

One great thing about living in an emerging economy, aka “the thirld world”, aka “the only markets left on earth that aren’t already 100% saturated with Western crap” is that multinational companies, in their eagerness to create needs where none existed before, give out lots of free stuff. Grocery shopping in Bangkok is bank: I’ve gotten free samples of:

• proscuito
• parmesan reggiano
• smoked salmon
• caviar!!! (the sample tray was left unattended, let’s just say I ate a lot of it.
• entire bottles of shampoo, mouthwash, moisturizer, and of course, SPF 50++ sunscreen, for keeping your skin eskimo-white despite the tropical sun.

Today I got some Lindt chocolate and strawberry juice. Score!

thailand: a culture of entrepreneurship

They say that everyone is a critic, but in Bangkok everyone seems to be an entrepreneur. While in Canada, a normal person aspires to have a good job, not their own company, I am constantly surprised at how many Thais I know that either own their own business, or have some kind of money-making side project.

One of my teachers rents out two taxicabs to taxi drivers. He uses the money they give him to repay the bank loan, which leaves him with 300$/m from the cars after the loan payment, and soon the cars will be completely paid off. This is on top of his normal salary.

Another teacher raises and sells a rare kind of plant that Chinese people really love. Each plants sells for about 100$, and he has whole fields of them. He enters them into competitions, and people order his seeds from as far away as Indonesia and Malaysia.

Despite the lack of entrepreneurship-encouraging infrastructure like we have in Canada, like Barcamp, startupcamp, government loans for opening up your own business, it seems like more Thais seem to think of themselves as potential entrepreneurs.

Why could this be? Here are my ideas:

today’s bangkok wtf?

I’m eating som tam with my friend Gerry in a cute little place in Thong Lo. “Sorry”, I say, momentarily distracted in the middle of her story and looking away, “there was an elephant.”

It was a really big one, too, an adult with a mahout on her back, so big she obscured the entire window.

Then on the skytrain back home, a farang man boards the train, wearing a furry gorrila mask. Gerry looks at her watch. “Hmm”, she says, “7pm, is too early for people to be really drunk.”

printing out flyers for my art show!

I’m really happy at how they turned out! If you know me in Bangkok, and want a flyer, just let me know.