Living in Bangkok

We've moved out of durian and jackfruit season into mangosteen and rambutan season, it's warm and muggy and often rainy here, and life under lockdown goes on. On Fridays we eat doughnuts. We walk in the direction of Phloen Chit to a cart set up near the train tracks. I don't know what time in the morning this guy starts, but while he's there, he works nonstop—cutting up the fresh dough into small pieces, frying it in a hot, oil-filled, wok, and then scooping out the puffed-up pieces of dough to cool in their metal tray before customers come to scoop them up.  Even early in the morning, it looks like hot work. But by 9am or so he sells out and closes up shop. The vendor makes Chinese doughnuts and little round doughnut holes and we usually get some of both and a container of condensed milk dipping sauce, all for 30 baht (about 90 cents). And here's lunch at the cart just outside our condo. One of the women who works there spea...

Well! I haven't written a post in a while and I'm sure everyone is just dying for an update! Our routine hasn't changed much—we take morning and evening walks, we lesson plan and teach, I write fiction and cook most of our meals (the rest we pick up on the street or get delivered). We do a bigger grocery shop at Foodland or Villa Market or the wet market, and then supplement with fruit and vegetables from the local vendors on our street. We are finding new side streets to explore on our daily walks, and sometimes we get caught in the rain. Roman went to his school to pick up some books, and visited a couple of his fellow English teachers on their apartment rooftop. I also had to pick up some materials from my school, and took pics of a pretty building, and of a vendor selling mangosteens from the back of his truck. I could also share some pictures of our meals? Here's a lunch I made — salmon with asparagus, yogurt-cucumber sauce, sticky rice, and lime (would you ...

Not much new to report...but I did get some pics of Animals of Bangkok ... Western Union cat The local crew of adolescent kitties A frog at the frog pond--or is it a toad? Kitten hiding in a closed-up food cart Close-up We also went on a big exciting Bangkok adventure (meaning, we had to get passport photocopies made and look for a couple electronic items, so we actually left our usual 2-mile walking radius). We took a few more photos then. Green stairs Cowboy Mall art Mall Art, Part Two And that's it for now...

We are settling into a kind of routine here, which I think is a helpful way to get through lockdown. We usually wake up around 7:00am, and I make us breakfast—cracked wheat cereal or oatmeal with fruit, or toast with a little sliced cheese and fruit, or pastries from BBC, or else sticky rice with coconut milk and fruit, with hot tea for me and instant coffee for Roman. We meditate and then take a walk around the neighborhood before it gets too hot. Then I have a couple hours to lesson plan or write while Roman either teaches or lesson plans or plays guitar. Before lunch, I usually do a Youtube yoga class in my office. For lunch, either I make us something simple, or we pick up something on the street and bring it home, or we go down to the cart just outside our house.  Me with vegetable stir-fry and kra pow moo, Roman's fried chicken and khao neo Roman putting an insane amount of chilies on his kra pow moo krob; my pad see ew After lunch, I put on my school t-shir...

I'm feeling a little low about all this lockdown stuff. It just sucks that so many people here are suffering so badly. Hospitals are running out of beds and people can't even get tested in order to get admitted to those hospitals and several people have literally died on the streets in Bangkok. Construction workers are being locked into construction sites and given very little food or care. The vaccine rollout has been a total mess. I think Thai people are in general very upset with how the government has dealt with Covid. There were protests just last week, in defiance of the ban on public assembly: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/2150783/police-fire-water-cannon-rubber-bullets-tear-gas-at-protesters And, you know, just personally, I feel kinda low—low energy, low motivation to do anything. Over the weekend, we had thought we might go to Lumphini or Benjakiti park, but on Friday, the government announced the closure of all public parks. We took a tr...

I started teaching for real this week. Well, teaching for real online—I teach three classes over Zoom every afternoon, Monday through Thursday. I teach the oldest kids first (5-6 year olds, or K3), then the middle-age kids (4-5 year olds, or K2), and then the youngest (3-4 year olds, or K1). My first two classes on Monday went...not as well as I hoped. The whole point of these lessons is to get the kids speaking in English, and I knew I'd have to do a lot of repeat after me , and that I'd have to call on them individually to make sure they all had a chance to practice speaking. There are only five to ten students per class, so taking time to call on every one of them wouldn't be an issue—and would probably nicely fill up the thirty minutes, I figured. But in my first class, everything went a little haywire with the rollcall. I had a list of all the students' full names, but not the nicknames they use with their foreign (and Thai?) teachers. But that wasn't a big ...