Category: Around Mahasarakham

Weaver

I went on an excursion to the nearby town of Kut Lang on a social development training course for our students. This consisted of locals gathering at a temple, Wat Nong Saen Nuea, and showing off their handmade product crafting skills while students watched and asked questions, with the intention of offering improvement strategies at a future date.

For me, however, this meant a chance to do a side quest and add a new skill, so I embraced it and sat on the concrete floor and learned to weave dried bamboo strips and reeds for five hours.

The old ladies were surprised that a foreigner was so interested in their craft and taught me how to weave a sticky rice steaming basket step by step. I was pitifully slow compared to them, but I kept at it through lunch (the chicken rice looked delicious but is no bueno for keto me), and they put the finishing touches on it just before we left for the day.

Overall, it was a great day for learning.

Thai Cat Food

Or mostly Japanese, actually.

At the original Big C supermarket location in Maha Sarakham, which has been on a steady decline since so many competitors opened – Makro, Tesco (many branches of varying sizes), some independent stores that usually go bust within a year, and most recently, CJ. What Sarakham really needs is a Tops supermarket, which is is more high-end (but not as high end as Villa).

Pickle really likes wet food recently since she’s getting older, and she crunches reluctantly on dry food like her teeth are sensitive. She likes this Nekko brand a lot (although it’s pretty expensive at Big C, as pictured here), and won’t eat some of the other brands. She still keeps in shape as a mouser and regularly presents us with trophies like rats, mice, squirrels, birds, and lizards. I try to keep her full with cat food so she doesn’t eviscerate her prey on our doorstep like she used to – this system has been working pretty well so far.

Triton is no longer the Bang Saen Special

We wanted to transfer my lowrider to Nam’s name from her sister’s, in order to prepare it for possible sale. The prefectural inspection officer we ran into at the Land Transport Office either wanted a bribe and didn’t ask for it clearly enough, or was just having a bad day, and decided to insist that my truck was too low and had to be restored to standard height (which is technically not a law here). Either way, we were not in the mood to pay into corruption and thought it might be easier to sell the truck at standard height anyway, so we took it for modification to Nam’s old classmate across the street, who runs a garage in front of his house. Pics of the restored-to-stock truck will follow after I’ve replaced the tires to match the ride height. The photos below are just a remembrance of why I bought it in the first place (in honor of the lowered racing trucks AKA rod sing cruising the beach roads in Chonburi Province).

Gauge cluster (mostly wrong/defunct – true racer style)
A shift indicator – the first one I’ve used since learning to drive stick in a Porsche 944 35 years ago!
Up on the stand
Rear drums, baby!
Pickle loves hanging out under the truck and in its shadows all day – it’s very secure

The shop pictured is the one written about above, but the photos are from a previous visit, when they were replacing brake pads and doing maintenance.

Random soi dog

Thai soi (street) dogs are mostly chill. This huge concrete lot near our house was supposed to be a fresh market years ago, but before it was completed, there was a huge storm. It toppled the poorly-constructed first market area roof and someone was killed by the falling roof while several others were injured. As it turns out, it was built too low and gets flooded a foot deep for the entire duration of rainy season anyway. This doggo and his friends run around here freely now.

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