Feb 21, 2002: Sorry no log for yesterday, I think a 5-part series on a town with only six streets compensates. That's almost one page per street.
Today marked the half-way point in my Thai classes. On the one hand, I've got all these new words (and characters), but the challenge has been to put them to use, and to be able to read and write them respectively. It reminds me of a cartoon: this stereotypical geek is shown at a computer. He boasts "I can find thousands of facts in seconds!". Another voice in the background says "Sure, but he can't put it into any meaningful context". The caption? "Global Village Idiot". Think about it.
The Heifer folks are tolerant of my ramblings (recall that, for example, using the wrong inflection in a single syllable word can change meaning from "mosquito" to "have sex"). Fortunately I haven't made that particular gaff, yet. [update: not only is this "mosquito sounds like sex" theory true, it's apparently a very crude word for sex. I didn't ask about the politeness of "mosquito". And to make it worse, they both sound a lot like "Yum!"]
But enough of this language banter. It's hot, I would like to prattle on about Thai Ice Cream. Thai ice cream is made not from cow's milk, but from coconut milk. Coconut cream is simply thick coconut milk. More fat. Yum! I only learned this excellent fact today in class. Many people think that coconut milk is the liquid in the coconut (a reasonable, but inaccurate conclusion). It's actually the liquid squeezed from grated coconut (the liquid inside is called "water"). It is rich, it high in fat (and it's saturated fat). It is wonderful. All Thai curries feature coconut milk, from just a little (red curry) to all the liquid (massaman curry). Indonesian food carries this one step further: rendang (a personal favorite) has beef (rendang daging) in coconut milk that's cooked until almost all the liquid is gone.
Thai's believe that Thai food is actually slimming (this I doubt) except for massaman curry, because of the preponderance of coconut milk in that style curry.
Back to ice cream: the Thai version takes the ice cream (coconut cream, sugar, flavor), and puts it in something approximating a hamburger bun. Inside is some sticky rice (which is also a bit sweet). The whole shootin' match is topped with sweetened condensed milk. Kind of like this.
Each Sunday (for 10 weeks, this is the first year of this and this weekend will be the 3rd time) the city of Chiang Mai ("Muang Chiang May") closes Thapae Road, from the Night Market to the Thapae gate. Unless you've been here, this means nothing to you, sorry. Some background: The city of CM is roughly square, walled-in and enclosed by a moat (and yes, at seven hundred years old, it was around when moats were de rigueur), and there are (I believe) five gates. ThaPae gate is the one in the center of the eastern wall. The city is located to the left (west) along the Ping River. The Narawat bridge is the bridge connecting ThaPae Rd and the east side of the Ping. Here's a map:
(the walled city is about 2.5Km diagonally — just over a mile and a half). It's about 1km (.6 miles) from the northwest corner to where I live.
So this pretty main road is shut down on Sundays. It does wonders for the traffic... (not) and the street becomes a Pedestrian Mall of sorts. A different theme "party" takes place each week. I've only been to one, which was focused on northern Thai arts. Why am I mentioning this? It's where I found the ice cream vendor.
Maybe on the weekend I can put together some slides on these street parties. It's unfortunate that about half my "readership" is on Macintosh; the program I have to make slide shows generates only for PCs. It's unfair, but... hey, nobody ever said it was fair.