From Saturday dinner at Markus and Tam’s apartment, here’s a shot of Tam and his sister Poun, preparing some tasty Northern Thai-style dishes.  Actually Poun did the preparing.  Tam was just the dish-washer.

But dish-washing is an important way to contribute to the dinner, right?

After returning from my Sunday morning bike ride and resting for a while, I headed back out to ProBike to find a kick stand.  The bicycle rack at the apartment is not very high and is on a sloped floor, so the bike spokes lean against the metal rack in a way that probably isn’t good for the spokes.  The biggest challenge with shopping for bicycle parts here in Thailand seems to be that the selection of certain parts is quite limited.  For example, there is just one type of kick stand at ProBike and I would imagine at most other shops, too.

Tod’s friend Brian is in town from Vancouver, so I met up with them about 5:30 and we went for dinner at Big Momma’s, a small Italian restaurant across Asoke from us.  It is a nice, low-key place and we ordered a Tom Yum Gai spaghetti, which contains all the flavors from the spicy-hot Tom Yum chicken soup, but as a light spaghetti sauce.  It was fantastic.  Sadly, when I ordered their delectable chocolate cake for dessert, the waitress told me, Khaake chokolaat mote, kha – we’re out!

Afterwards, we drove into the old part of the city so Brian could take some nighttime photos.  We didn’t get there until after 9:00, so the lights of the Grand Palace were already off.  But the lights of the adjacent Wat Pho (temple of the reclining Buddha) were still illuminated so he took pictures of that.  Then we noticed that a small soi leading to the river offered a great view of Wat Arun (temple of dawn) which was illuminated, too.  There was a nearly-full moon right overhead and the usual humidity-induced haze had cleared off and a few stars were visible, too.

Monday is a holiday for many people in Thailand, although tomorrow is the official holiday – the beginning of Buddhist Lent.  So today will be spent mostly on the computer, working, as Buddhist Lent isn’t a recognized holiday in the United States, where my job is based.  Also, I’ll do some studying, too.  I’ve found that in the past week I’ve had more opportunities to practice speaking Thai and that it is a very good thing for improving it.

Some interesting shots that I’ve been meaning to share for a few days and haven’t:

Oishi (“tasty” in Japanese) is an inexpensive chain of Japanese (duh!) restaurants here in Bangkok.  The food is good quality and tasty even if it isn’t terribly fancy.  Best of all, it is very reasonably priced.

We learned recently that Oishi offers home delivery, free if you order at least 300 baht.  So we tried it out, each ordering a different bento box-type meal that included miso soup, rice, sushi, gyoza dumplings, salad, and the main course – plus a bottle of Oishi-brand green tea.  All this for only 380 baht, about US$10. 

Most fascinating was the packaging.  Talk about wasteful: the food came in a plastic tray that was then in a cardboard box.  The soup was in small plastic bags (very Thai style) which were then placed in plastic soup bowls with a plastic spoon, then secured with a lid and tape.  Another plastic bag contained salad dressing, wasabi dressing, chopsticks, napkins, soy sauce, etc.  Then all of this was in yet another large plastic bag.

So we face a delima: inexpensive, reasonably nutritious food that we don’t have to leave home for after a busy day working, weighed against the tremendous amount of waste it produces that may or may not get recycled downstream.  I’ve already stopped taking my lunch away from the local restaurants, preferring to eat there on a reusable plate with metal utensils instead of coming home each afternoon with yet another styrofoam container.  A friend from Kuala Lumpur who recently visiting challenged my thinking about the importance of reduce, reuse, recycle, arguing that as long as it all goes into landfill or dumps, that can eventually be covered over and becoe usable land.

I think that doesn’t capture the complexity of the issue.

Other news, Tawn is in Bali this weekend with his office colleagues as part of the annual company trip.  Each team of employees has to do a skit at tonight’s formal dinner, as do the managers.  So one of the skits that Tawn is involved in has a theme that requires Tawn to play an Indian Maharaja.  Friday afternoon he returned home after work carrying a bag from a local costume rental shop.  Here’s what was in it:

There’s also a full topless photo, but I don’t think Tawn wants me to share that.