Sunday Sep 3 2006
Trip Start
May 01, 2002
1
3
64
Trip End
May 01, 2009
Cha-am,
Thailand
Sunday, September 3, 2006
restaurant
it was a great newspaper day. in the perspective section of the bangkok post there was an article about the police force in thailand. it is alleged that they abuse minors in their custody and even kill some of them. the news itself was sad and depressing but it was muckraker journalism at its best. there was also an excellent analysis of the apparent assasination attempt on prime minister thaksin shinawatra. it makes an intriguing who-done-it story with the prime minister himself as one of the prime suspects. i often bad-mouth the bangkok post and accuse them of just printing stories from the wire services and the american press and of not making their own unique contribution to journalism. yet, here it is. par excellence.
so engrossed was i in the post this morning, that when toy came over to pick up the paper for billy i had to ask for more time. another hour at least, i told her. she did not seem to mind and was just as cheerful as ever as she walked back to her house dragging her flip-flops. incidentally, i noticed that here in asia, people don't really pick up their heals when they walk. they just drag them. it's more of a shuffle, like a duck. remember tim conway of the carol burnette show? when he played a geezer, he used to do that walk. in asia, everyone walks like that all the time.
pencil wanted to play badminton and i wanted to play golf and so we compromised. i would play golf alone at noon and then we would play badminton at 5pm. i called the club and made the necessary reservations. lunch at the club was superb. it was a soup made of seaweed, tofu, and country sausage. at the restaurant i ran into my buddy yo who is kind of a semi-pro golfer. he has a 300-yard drive. mostly straight. he was sitting in the restaurant watching wrestling on the big screen tv. a guy with an arabic headdress came onto the stage threatening to kill the referee with a folding metal chair that he was carrying. his name was "mohamed suicidal maniac" or something of that nature. the uncanny ability of the american media to create stereotypes amazes me. it also amazes me that people around the world actually watch this shit.
today was not my day on the golf course. nothing was working right. it's just like tennis. somedays i have a serve and on other days i can't get a ball over the net and into the service box to save my life. so today was a bogie day. a hell of a lot of bogies and a couple of pars with a few double bogies thrown in for good measure.
a hot tub and a massage and i was ready for badminton. i picked up pencil and we headed out to the courts. we played four games and i won all of them. i told her she could not tease me about my age (i am older by decades) until she could beat me in badminton. she just laughed the way she does. this is the thai way. over here, laughter is the best policy whatever the cirumstance.
we had dinner at a highway restaurant in cha-am called baan isaan. it is on phetkasem highway about 10km south of the cha-am beach traffic lights. three of us ate and drank like pigs for over an hour and the bill came to about ten dollars. pencil's neice som joined us for dinner. the food and service were just great. we got to sit in a salaa - a table with its own roof. the bright light at the top of the salaa attracted a lot of bugs but it was a truly great dining experience. the rice was perfect. soft and spongy and warm and fluffy and fragrant. just perfect. loved it.
