How Learning a Language Makes You Stupid Again

Take, for example, this conversation:

I would like a coffee.

We do not have any coffee.

Then I would not like coffee.

Good.


Or, for your consideration:


Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

But you are korean?

Yes.

Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

Koreans like pink.

I do not like pink. I am Korean.

I do not understand. Goodbye.

Club 7

This is where Josh and I hang out when we are feeling cheap. There is a lawn (which is part of an office complex, but no one seems to mind) across the street from our local 7-11 (you might think that 7-11 isn't very Thai, but you would be ever so wrong). So we buy beers at the store and then lay in the grass and drink beer and talk about how we don't ever want to go home. I'm sure if we spent too much time here we would discuss how we wanted to go home, but we haven't gotten to that point yet.

Klong Toei Market

This is the market where Thais go for, well, everything. Need a motorcycle fender? And some superglue? And a pair of gigantic cotton panties? And a kilo of red curry paste? And a live chicken? This is your place.

This is my favorite stall- the curry paste vendor. I love that there are like six different kinds of red curry paste.

These will make your face implode.

Mmmmmm... crabs. Wrapped for my protection.

OH GOD THE FOOD!

Glass noodle salad with peanuts, shrimp, ground pork and cilantro. Tastes like I might never come back to Washington, DC.

Sticky rice.

OH GOD. Som tam with tiny field crabs in it to flavor it like crab. You don't actually eat these crabs, but the crunch of the green papaya and the heat of the chiles combines amazingly with the lime and fish sauce dressing.

Wat Sutthat

A wat is where buddhists go to believe in magic, the same way that church is where christians go to pray to their dad. Summing up religion is easy!

Entrance to Wat complex.

This guy should be a cartoon character, preferably one that sells cereal to children. "Captain Chanachitporn's Chocolate Chomps", or the like.

That's a big Buddha. Don't get in his way.

Roof!

One of these things is not like the other.

Sunset over Bangkok

อนุสาวรีย์ ชัย / Our Neighborhood

This is the view from our apartment balcony. I use the word "apartment" loosely. Bed in a room might be more appropriate.

This is the actual monument our neighborhood is named after. In Thai you say ahnusawarichisumanipum. Or rather, Thais say that. I just point at a picture of the monument and then throw my hand up in the air. As if I just don't care. Jump around! Ok, that got derivative.

Ma ride.

ข้าวเหนียว Tasty Treat

This is my current street food obsession. It's sticky rice cooked with coconut milk and then wrapped in a banana leaf. It comes with a little packet of white sugar ground with deep fried crispy garlic pieces and dried shrimp. You dump the spice packet onto the leaf, break the sticky rice into chunks and dip and snack and repeat.

Krushing Koreans

Yesterday I spent three hours in a small, gray classroom repeating unhearable tones to a thin woman who never stopped smiling, even when the Japanese student got ten out of ten wrong. She is Kruu, or teacher. Kruu started class by having us practice vowels. Having not really thought about vowels for a very long time, it was kind of hilarious sitting in a classroom making the O face to practice long o sounds with five other adults. Also, Thai has some huge ridiculous number of vowels. Did anyone know there are like six ways to pronounce U? I did not.

Kruu gave us some listening sheets and she would pronounce different sounds, and we had to fill in the sounds she made on the sheet. I've always felt I was pretty good at languages, and I'm also quietly competitive, so I was irrationally angered when the Korean girls got perfect scores on the listening. I want to be the best! I want to get all the right answers! It made me feel better that the Spanish guy and the Irish guy did worse than me, but still. Schadenfraude only gets you so far in beating the Koreans.

Luckily, their Waterloo was yet to come: tones. In addition to multiple and ridiculous ways to pronounce the vowels, there are also tones in Thai. There are five tones: low (talk like you imagine a sexy telephone operator would talk), mid (normal), high (like when you get really mad and the ends of words start to go up in pitch), rising (gets confusing here: basically make the word dip, high on each end but low in the middle), and falling (reverse of rising, shockingly enough). While I admit I struggle to hear the tones when regular Thais talk, I can definitely hear Kruu's tones, probably because she talks as if her class is full of retarded bears.

I can't wait to see what today's class brings! Also, I vow to crush the Koreans.

While this looks very impressive, it's actually just me writing all the numbers to 100. I love the way some thai letters have hats.

Bangkok Arts and Culture Center

Some art is about the future. Or being in a tanning bed.

Some art is about fourth-grade gym class.

This art appears to be about awesome paper mache, but actually it's about Burmese migrant workers. Art can be tricky like that.

This art is about twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

This art is about being the food, instead of the food eater.

Pictures from Thailand

New Year's Eve Update: Drunken Finnish Boy Declares Maybe He Likes Guys. Calamity Ensues.

New Year's Eve at our guest house, Respected Older Sister put on quite a meal. I promise pictures, as soon as I can find an internet cafe with a card reader. There was fried mackerel, laap, pad prik king, snapper braised in coconut milk and red curry paste, and more than I can remember, because there were also buckets of booze provided as a New Year's Eve treat. While Respected Older Sister is a hilarious force at this guest house, the yang to her yin is a man that we will call Fake Hippie. FH is maybe the owner, maybe ROS's husband (or brother)- who can know? I certainly couldn't figure it out. FH has long flowing hair, loves pot, and wants everyone to "be happy!" Forced merriment is a concept that simply doesn't work; it's like willing someone to love you. It is doomed to fail. Unless you ply your subject with intoxicants, which is what FH did.

There were eight or nine Thai hipsters that were staying at the guest house, two weird Dutch guys, a Russian couple (his name was Vladimir. No, really. He didn't seem that excited that my bicycle was also named Vladimir), a dude of indeterminable origin, as he never deigned to talk to us, and the three Finnish boys. I say boys because their mom must have had to pry the Nintendo controllers from their hands to send them on this trip. The Finns have unpronounceable, unremembered names, so we will call them Ulrich, Helmat, and Paco. Helmat and Paco were brothers, and Ulrich lived across the street from them in Finland, and they had been friends since kindergarten. Ulrich told us this joke: "Poles drink water. Russians drink vodka. Finns drink vodka like water." And so they did, except it was Thai whiskey mixed with Red Bull.

After dinner, almost everyone walked down to the beach for star-lit dancing and really bad techno, followed by fireworks. On the way, Helmat asks me if I have a girlfriend and I said no, I'm gay, that's my boyfriend, blah blah blah. That's when Helmat says "I think I might be gay too. I mean, I have a girlfriend now, but when I watch porn I usually watch gay porn." I don't really know what I'm supposed to say to that, so I just say "Uhhhhhhhh, maybe you should have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, then?". He says, with out obvious irony, "I'll think about that."

At this point, the Finns are getting drunk enough that they keep getting lost on the beach, in sight of each other, so Josh and I decide to go down the beach and do some good old proper nightswimming. So while the fireworks went off, I was floating in the South China Sea, thinking that maybe I am the luckiest person alive. The next morning, we wake up to find out that Helmat and Paco had gotten in a fist-fight over his revelation that he maybe likes guys when he is drunk, and their friend Ulrich had to pry them apart. Moral of the story: swimming at night is less dangerous than being Finnish. K Thanx Bai!

Beach Causes Retardation

**Because of the mentioned retardation, I posted this to the wrong blog, so now I am setting it right.**

No really. It does. Sitting in the sunshine and then running off to splash in the waves is making me dumber by the moment. I have spent the last two days memorizing EIGHT thai vowels. And I'll be honest. I'm not sure I actually have them down. But thanks to the side effects of the sun and water, I have become too dumb to notice.

Tonight, on the final day of the year, there are gigantic speakers being set up on the beach, as well as ridiculous amounts of beverages being laid in by the beach-side bars. The full moon has decided to sync with the evenings events, piling even more tinder onto the bonfire of twenty-something beach goers that are ready to puke into the surf to celebrate another passing year. Hurray! A pinnacle for western civilization!

I'm being entirely too cynical, because I plan to have more than the recommended dosage of beer and dance my ass off under the stars. Don't be surprised when I drunk dial you at your mom's house.

Eating Asia: Part The Second

So, we're back in Asia. Thailand this time. J. is studying advanced Thai in preparation for a possible fellowship in Bangkok, so I am coming along so that when we arrive this summer I will be able to ask for the bathroom and drinks. Why learn Thai, people ask? Because I often need the bathroom and drinks.

Anyhoo, thought we might start looking at food again, and this time I might actually continue posting. Sorry about that last summer. Things got busy and then everyone was mad and I cried.

Birthday Weekend A Success; Nation Cheers

Josh and me in the minibus on the way to the Thai border.


Uhhhhhh.... right. This is what Josh is around for. READ THE SIGN, MONKEY! No, really, he's totally good at reading signs and I am proud.


Raul (we named our car Raul. Get on board.) has many cousins in Thailand! His name is Pracornchit. No seriously.


Oh god THE FOOD. Coconut Curried Fish and Braised Pork with Green Chili, over jasmine rice. OH GOD THE FOOD.


Even better with a bottle of $2 ice cold Singha beer. OH MY GOD THE FOOD.


From left to right: red beef curry with coconut milk, red braised pork in ginger-wine broth, sour tamarind curry, chicken curry with sweet potato. Did I mention: OH GOD THE FOOD.


Our Thai friends, excited that we could eat "village style". I think it was called village style because there was a pig laying in some mud about fifteen feet to the left and a chicken was sitting under the table at one point. As if farm animals are going to keep me from eating curry.


Me, swimming in a waterfall, in the jungle, the day I turned 32. Swimming in the waterfalls in the jungle was seriously one of the best, most refreshing things I have ever done and I never want to forget about it. Although, two minutes before this, the Thai kids in the picture were laughing at me histerically because I fell into the water, cause I am totally awesomely coordinated. Hope the government doesn't mind my passport being soaked.



This picture is blurry cause it was night and everything was moving and Josh had drank like four beers at this point, but look very carefully at what I am petting. AN ELEPHANT. That's right. I fed it sugarcane and it put its weird, wet trunk on my head and I felt very special.


After many more beers, Josh decided he needed the "Fat Girl Special" from 7-11, which is instant noodles with a spicy hotdog inside. No really, it's called that.


So in summary, Thailand is awesome. That is all.

Is this irony, or not irony? It's confusing.

I feel like in my life I have spent a lot of time explaining to people that travelling overseas is not dangerous, people don't target you because you are foriegn, most countries have a vested interest in maintaining the safety of their tourists, blah blah blah. Then yesterday I got robbed.

I got robbed while I was riding the previously mentioned motorcycle ON THE EXPRESSWAY. Yeah, I didn't even have to slow down to get robbed. The douchebag rode up beside me, grabbed my bag, gave my bike a shove, and was off. My bag, which had an unfortunate amount of stuff I would have prefered not to lose, was snatched right out of the basket and I was forced to wave goodbye to my phone, camera, notebook full of recipes, watch, ring, mp3 player and my backpack itself, which was awesome. Also, my water bottle.

I chased the twatwaffle who grabbed the bag for awhile, but he obviously had done this before, and I wasn't in the mood to be robbed and die in an accident in the same day. At least I wasn't hurt, and things can be replaced. Cold comfort, but still. Not dead at the end of a robbery is a fine consolation prize.

Luckily the asshat on a bike turned the corner too fast and ran into a petrol truck and died in the ensuing explosion. [This is what I like to call imagined reality. It's the best. Try it.]

Motorcycle!

So walking around town was fun, but RIDING AROUND TOWN is AWESOME! Josh keeps making fun of me because I like to act like this awesome bike is some sort of bad ass chopper, instead of what I think is considered a "non-licensed vehicle" at home, meaning the engine is so small not only do you not need a driver's license to operate it, but that it doesn't even need tags in most states. Plus, it costs $90 a month to rent it, and a dollar to fill the gas tank.

But, the Honda X5 Dream is the first step towards the middle class for millions of Asians, so I am justified in renting this motorbike because it can be considered research. That's right. Justification is fun.

Whheeeeeeee!!

PS. Mine does not have that retarded basket on the front. That is for total losers.

Langkawi

Just north of Penang Island is another island chain, called Langkawi, which means eagles butt or something in Malay. We went there for two reasons: need more beach time, and it's a duty free port. Which means that a can of beer is 50 cents. Also, this happened on Langkawi: met cute Dutch boys who turned out to be 18, met Finnish girls who were drinking buckets of vodka (no really, buckets- the bar was serving booze in buckets), and went midnight swimming under the southern cross. A very good weekend, all in all.

Nasi Lemak

*Note to self: taking pictures of food under florescent light does no favors to the food.

Remember, from before, that thing that I ate? Yeah, well I learned how to cook it. At last we have a kitchen. Nasi lemak consists of three parts- the rice, the sambal, and the garnishes. The rice is cooked with coconut milk and lightly spiced. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the traditional spice is Pandan, or Screwpine Leaves (yeah, I have no idea where that name came from, as the plant itself looks like broad grass). If you can't find that, a bay leaf will work nicely. The sambal is the spice paste that is garlic, shallots, onion, fresh chilies, dried chilies, shrimp paste, and sometimes lemon grass, fried until fragrant in oil and then cooked with tamarind juice to give it some tartness. The garnishes are traditionally fried peanuts, chopped cucumber and maybe some cilantro or mint leaves.

Nasi lemak actually refers to just the rice, but it is normally served with a protein as well. I decided to go crazy traditional Malay: dried tiny anchovies. Yeah, I know, sounds gross. But really, they came out excellent. You can easily substitute peeled shrimp or pieces of fish or chicken. The tiny anchovies are friend until they are golden brown and crunchy, and really, they sort of remind me of bacon. Fish bacon.

Just a note on getting all this to come together, I put the rice on and then fried the fish and the peanuts, and then made the sambal. It was all done about the right time.

The How To:

Coconut Rice

240 ml / 1 c rice

240 ml / 1 c coconut milk

80 ml / 1/3 c water

2 pantan leaves or 1 bay leaf

¼ stick cinnamon

1 whole clove

pinch of salt

Put everything into a saucepan with a tightly fitting lid. Bring to a boil and then reduce to the lowest flame possible (just barely simmering). Let cook undisturbed for 20 minutes.

Sambal

1 small red onion (really, should be ¼ small red American onion- we seem to have gargantuan produce in North America)

4 small shallots or 2 large

2 cloves garlic

10 whole dried red chilies

5 fresh hot red chilies

1 t shrimp paste (substitute anchovy paste, normally sold in the Italian section of the supermarket in a tube, if you can't find it at an Asian shop)

¼ t salt

1 T sugar

4 T tamarind paste, dissolved in 1 c water for 30 min, then strained

You can do this by hand, like I did (because I don't have anything else to do it with, not because I am better than you), or use a food processor. I wholeheartedly approve of the food processor. Basically, grind the onion, shallots, garlic, dried chilies, fresh chilies, shrimp paste, salt, and sugar until they become a chunky paste. You might have to add a bit of water to the mixture to get it to blend smooth, but try to add as little as possible. When you have a paste, heat four tablespoons of oil in a wok. When the oil is shimmering, add the spice paste and fry about two minutes, or until the garlic smells fragrant and the chilies start to smell toasted. Add half of the tamarind water, and mix well. Continue cooking over high heat until the oil begins to separate out from the sambal. That is your signal that it is done. Reserve the sambal and the remaining tamarind water.

Garnishes

60 ml/ ¼ c raw shelled peanuts, fried in 2 T oil for few minutes, until golden

½ English cucumber, sliced into small pieces

Protien

2 oz dried ikan bilis (small whole anchovies)

-or-

4 oz shrimp, peeled and cleaned

-or-

4 oz boneless chicken meat, chopped into small cubes

If using the dried anchovies, fry them in a ¼ c of oil until golden brown. Strain.

If using chicken or shirmp, sear in a hot wok with a spoonful of oil until nicely seared but not done.

Add the protein and 2/3 of the sambal mixture to the wok, and add the remaining tamarind water. Bring to a boil and cook until the meat is done and the sauce has thickened (you want the sauce to be like thick chili, basically).

To Serve:

Mound the rice and top with the protien in sambal sauce. Serve the remaining sambal on the side as a condiment, along with the cucumbers and peanuts. Eat, and be mad you never had this before.

The Servants are Stealing Sugar

Part of this trip has been travel, and the other part practice. Josh is practising having a real job, and I am practising being a diplomatic wife. A diplomatic wife, you ask? Yes, the partner of a diplomat who, because diplomats' wives are not allowed to work, becomes more paranoid and cooped up, eventually falling into a pool of drink and abusing the household servants. I mean, at the very least, it's a romantic ideal.

So on Monday, Josh went off to a conference at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel to meet and greet, and I started searching for an apartment to rent, holding a gin and tonic and yelling at the maid the entire time. If you used to read my other blog, then you remember the multitude of apartments that we went through to get our current place. I vowed not to repeat that experience.

Armed with the Malaysian version of craigslist (craigslist does actually exist here, but no one uses it, ever), the newspaper, and my mobile phone, I discovered the following things about myself: (1) I am not a Muslim. (2) I am not Chinese. (3) I do not wish to rent an apartment for two years. Granted, none of this was new information, but apparently my love of bacon disqualifies me from furnished apartments owned by Halal-keeping Muslims. Halal is the Islamic equivalent to Jews who keep Kosher (there is a statement designed to get you beat up in both Tel Aviv and Cairo). I didn't realize this, but cooking bacon while smooching my boyfriend and drinking a beer at the same time basically means that the apartment owners have to burn it down and start over. Seems drastic, but there you go.

In America, if you state in your apartment listing “Chinese Only” or “Black Only” or whatever, it's basically an invitation to go to court, twice. First as guests of the federal government, and second as a class action defendant. I like that system. It's cruel but fair. In Malaysia, it's totally ok to be all “Chinese Only, peeps, Whiteys Smell Like Butter and Can't Trust Indians, so Later Skaters”. I called a couple “Chinese Only” apartments just to see if they were serious. The sound of getting hung up on indicates that they were.

Short-term apartments are not really that common in the US, but normally you can find a student's place or something to sub-let. I could not, here. Everyone wanted me to sign a two year contract, and asking for a shorter contract involved a lot of teeth sucking and hand waving on the part of the agent, only to be offered a one year contract. Asking for two months caused the sky to rip and frogs to rain from heaven.

But, persistence wins. (Persistence and cheating. They both win.) I found an agent that was familiar with the concept of short-term rental, and who didn't care if we were Chinese Muslims, and now we live in a three bedroom apartment on the twenty-first floor next to the ocean.

Totally didn't see that coming.

View from the room where the washing machine is kept, because, obviously, laundry enjoys a nice view.The Sultan of Kedah (the state next to Penang) has a house right across the street. Not much seems to happen here, but I like to imagine it is a den of inequity.
This is the view of the Straits of Malacca from our balcony. Just across the water you can see mainland Malaysia.