Category Archives: Thailand

Allergy to Silence

Last month I staying in Bannok about sixty kilometers from Chai-nat. Every morning I was woken by the village loudspeakers. The announcer read off farming information to the locals. I couldn’t understand a word that he was saying about rice prices. Finally someone pulled the plug and the world was serenaded by a chorus of […]

Chili Chili Bang Bang

Several years ago the City of London was thrown into a panic by a eye-searing cloud. Police swept the streets for the source of the potential killer only to discover a Thai chef preparing his monthly supply of chilly sauce ‘nam prik pao’. Firefighters in bio-hazard suits removed the?cooking pot despite the protests of the […]

DUST THEN MUD by Peter Nolan Smith

Bangkok was an impossible city in hot season of 1990. Shady trees thankfully shaded the airless sois. The tepid klongs led to the Chao Phyra River. Weary barges transported rice from up-country. The ai-conditioning of Patpong’s go-go lounges chilled the flesh, but not the bones of the dancers. After a short stay at the Malaysia […]

Ganden Sky Burial

A mango tree shaded our old house in Sri Racha. Birds roosted on the branches. Our next-door neighbor hated the tree. Its leaves fell into their yard, even though the tree’s spread of shade cooled down both houses. My neighbor only saw the leaves and the other week she called up the electricity office to […]

INSECTS YUM YUM by Peter Nolan Smith

Most tourists to Thailand are fascinated by the food cart selling with fried insects i.e. crickets, grubs, cockroaches, scorpions, and several unidentified members of the insect species. Photos cost 10 baht. Thais revel in daring farangs to cross that culinary line in hopes of witnessing the European upchuck the crawly creature,s as if they were […]