The Siamerican

Settling back down her in Phuket for five days now, about half way through this semi vacation. Most of the time has been spent at the inlaws pad, spending time with the son, television, and computer, while the kid’s mom is off at work. Kid’s grandma is here sewing away, while the brother in law laxes around as has always been. Running off to meet his friends midday, coming back late night–same old story, new month and year.

On Friday night, the Siamerican went out with his Thai British friend to an Irish pub, O’Malleys, in Phuket town. Initially, just played foosball as the only pool table was occupied with some mini pool tournament. The place was packed with CELTA teacher trainees from Britian, USA, and even Sweden. Other than that, a small Filipino crowd showed up, and various other girls were hanging out.

After Foosball, tried their hands at darts, of which Kit, the Thai-Englishman clearly held his own in the British pub favorite. Eventually, the pool table cleared and they got a few games in. The Siamerican joined in for a few jams with the spare guitar lying around, and the night gradually faded down. The Siamerican ended up bunking at his buddies house as it was too late to head back to the inlaws house.

Last weekend, the Siamerican went to Topps to load up on food supply for the next week. The cost of raw meat in Thailand has gone up tremendously. Pork is some 150 baht per kilogram, while chicken is easily half that–higher than has ever seen this side of the world.  Bought some chicken wings, minced pork, ham, okra, mushrooms, pasta, bread, milk, cereal,  doritos, kid’s milk, pretzels, and deep frying batter running a bill of about 1500 baht.

If not careful, one could spend that in a few meals of delivery and restaurant food. The groceries, in contrast should easily last through this week.  The idea was to utilize the deep fry cooker the Siamerican had bought for the house, which had previously been untouched the last few months. On the first night, he mad some fried okra, which turned out good. The next day, he made some fried meat balls, and today fried up some seasoned chicken wings. Fried food may not be healthy, but it surely is scrumptious!

What else has been going down, lets see… Oh yea, Monday, got up and about and headed for the Kawasaki dealer to give the bike its 8000 kilometer service, which basically was an oil change, that required a two hour queue wait.

After picking up the bike 2ish, the Siamerican took a drive to the Southwest part of the island, to Kata beach. He was hoping to run in to his Swedish friend, Pontus, who had apparently come to Phuket since Friday. The two had planned to meet, but Pontus’s phone has been disconnected since Friday, most likely lost.

When the Siamerican got to Kata and noticed all the farang vacation goers, mostly Swedish and Scandinavians, he realized his chances of coincidentally running into his friend were slim. When scoping Kata beach, the Siamerican realized that the local destination has become quite the nude beach.  He was shocked to see all the topless white woman casually sun bathing about the beach as if it were France. Over the hill naked white woman isn’t exactly eye candy, but the Siamerican tried hard not to pay any special attention, as awkward as it was to see.

The sun was strong, and the curving, inclining road back to the East side of the island would require focus to return safely by early evening, where he continued on his bicycle, along with his sun to the playground near bye.

The next day, he was inspired to learn and practice the popular power break dancing spectacle, the Windmill.  Realizing that his upper body strength, and lower body weight ratio is insufficient to execute such a move with ease, he studied the videos in between pushups and turtle spins…someday, it will be fun to show it off! Until than, his triceps, biceps, wrists, and forearms need to increase in strength to comfortably support his mass of 90 kilograms at awkward angles in the air.

As for today, lots of blog maintenance in between quality time with the son. It’s going to be hard to leave him behind in Phuket yet again when the Siamerican has to return to his studies in Bangkok next week–not exactly something he’s looking forward to doing.

…stay tuned…