Thailand. Korean BBQ buffet, seafod and more.

The other night Noot’s sister Joom and her boyfriend Jack asked us to go to dinner at an all you can eat BBQ restaurant, the Thais call it Korean food.

About 2 minutes after saying “yes” to Joom’s offer my mate Keith rang and asked us to dinner elsewhere. I explained where we were going and in the end he agreed to come to the BBQ place as well.

The place is called ‘Aw Aung’, you sit at a table and they put a small clay pot with burning coals into a hole in the table and then a small grill goes on top of it. You BBQ the meat on the top and in the base you cook your vegetables, prawns and lots of other things.

Thais love this kind of food and it is cheap at 99 baht per person. Thais love to eat! I have said that before, haven’t I? This restaurant has the biggest and best range of food to any of the ones I have been to.

There are plenty of vegetables on offer from salad types to broccoli, mushrooms, corn and carrot and the list goes on.


There is plenty of seafood and Noot’s favourite being squid is in abundance.


There are plenty of processed meats and seafood. There are even good old looking hotdogs and they taste just the same as back home. Place them in the water in the base of the BBQ and they are ready to eat in a few minutes.

Now, you read about people eating escargot in France and apparently they are pretty expensive. Well you can eat them here and as much as you like.

Here it is a seafood man’s paradise. These crabs were the biggest and only ones I have seen on offer at a buffet. They were very sweet and delicious as well.


A very popular seafood is a small mussel or mollusk. Noot can eat these by the kilogram, they are good but I prefer something that was on offer later.


Here on the grill you can see I am heating a few things up. Now if you look to the top in the small holder, those babies are scallops. I was so happy as these are not on offer at any other buffets, they were bloody delicious and I was told they are 200 baht plus a kilogram. There were also really nice skewers with large prawns and tomato and pineapple grilling away. They were great too.

There were succulent pork skewers on offer as well.


Apart from all of these there was the meat to grill on the BBQ plate. The small eggs are from a bird that looks like a partridge.


This curried meat tasted I hate to say it but great, also there was liver, heart and offal on offer. The top left hand corner is chicken’s feet a delicacy here and very chewy and fatty.


If you are a prawn man you can eat these guys until they come out your ears. I grilled some and Noot cooked others in the stock water in the BBQ. Look, Yummy liver as well.


Now, these puppies are called 1000 day eggs or what I have heard, the Thai name is Kai Yeow Mah. I heard they bury them in the ground but Noot doesn’t have a clue how they are cooked. They actually taste good.

No dinner is complete without dessert of some kind. Here there was again so many on offer. Cakes of many flavours and I will be honest I ate one of each so I could do a fair and honest review. Some I had to eat two of them as I wasn’t sure which was best.





There was ice-cream and fruit, plenty of choices again. Dragon fruit, papaya, Falang, grapes, pineapple, watermelon, apple and rambutam just to name a few. I also tested many of these for my readers!





Thais love these pickled variety of fruits, I think they are disgusting and bitter. Thais dip these in a mix of salt and chili and say it’s great. They have strange tastes.



It was a good night with plenty of good fresh food and also company. There was 9 adults and Chelsea was free as she is so small and ate hardly anything. The bill with 4 bottles of coke and 3 waters came to around 1100 baht. So that is around 120 baht per person or $4.20 Aussie. What a bargain I say.

Brunty.

Thailand. Pizza Company review and a crazy parking officer.

The other night Noot and I were invited by my mate Keith and his wife Sarah to dinner. Their youngest daughter Chelsea wanted pizza for dinner so we headed to Pizza Company here in Ubon Ratchathani. We don’t have Pizza Hut here, yet.



We sat down and waited for the menu to come out. I haven’t had a pizza in Ubon in the 2 and a half years here and only actually eaten pizza once and that was in Pattaya at Pizza Hut on Beach Road many years ago and that was terrible. I am sorry but Thais don’t make good pizzas.


The salad bar is not that fantastic. Actually I will call it very average and it was extortionate. It was 80 baht for one small plate. So Keith’s eldest daughter Christa’s job was to overload the plate as much as possible.

Now the specials that we ordered looked great on the paper placemats. A large pizza, garlic bread, jug of Pepsi and chicken dip sticks for 299 baht. So it was just over $10 Aussie dollars. Not that great of a special I thought. We ordered 2 of these, one a sausage creation and the other seafood.


They brought out the garlic bread and chicken dipping sticks first for us to get started on and when the pizzas arrived and first thing I noticed was, they were tiny. They were the size of what I would call a medium in Australia and the toppings were really sparse. The sausage pizza was very nice but the seafood was well below par and even the Thai girls didn’t like it.

After ordering a couple of extras the bill came 750 baht or $25 Aussie dollars and when you think of the quality pizzas and deals you get back on foreign soil I will not be going back in a hurry. My first and last visit, I say. My mate Keith picked up the tab and wouldn’t let me contribute as he said he asked me out. He is very kind, so thanks mate.

We went to the shopping centre next door called Robinson’s for a look and we were in for a surprise. There was a parking attendant who was dressed in the full uniform as you often see them. This guy was a classic though.

When he seen us he started dry rooting the air. He actually looked like he was humping something. Keith and I pissed ourselves laughing but the girls just wanted to run away. Keith got up close and the guy saluted him and started humping his leg like a horny old dog. I was trying not to cry at this point.

I had to get in on the picture opportunity and the guy spoke a little English. He had lost most his teeth and when we enquired about this he said “Thai boxing” when he was younger. He was good fun and asked the basic questions you are always asked being a farang.


After browsing in the shops it was off to my place for a cup of tea. Now Noot, Christa and Dum jumped on the motorbike as soon as we got my home. When they got back they had been over to buy “somtam Laos” or papaya salad and also a grilled fish. Here in Thailand you cannot just sit down and watch TV without eating, it’s just not possible no matter how full you are.

Keith and I passed up the food and chatted and watched TV, Latte our rabbit was over being the centre of attention and had gone to his favourite place beside the couch and shoe cabinet. He will often sit there for hours on end and just sleep. It’s a hard life here in Isaan country, Thailand.

Brunty.

Thailand. Fixing a stupid mistake.

The other day I reported about getting a new BBQ or grill. I was very happy and didn’t think too much and painted the inside to stop it rusting.

The funny thing was, when I had finished I thought I had done wrong and decided to do some WWW surfing. Sure enough on two very good BBQ sites I saw that what I had done was foolish indeed. It talked about sealing the inside with oil like you seal your good camping cooking equipment.

I also had a heads up from my good mate MJ TheNHBushman.com Lots of fun, photos and good times with MJ and Hui-chen in Taiwan and Asia. He is a grilling and BBQing guru and when he also confirmed I was an idiot, I knew I had to fix the screw up.

So I was off to the local hardware store and picked up some paint stripper and went to work. A safety warning, don’t do this without gloves and other safety gear. It really burns when it gets on your skin.


So after burning myself a few times and also getting sun burnt being in the sun for a few hours I had completely removed all the paint and sanded and steel brushed the surface back to bare metal. I washed the surface off completely and then left it to dry.


After it had dried I coated the BBQ in cooking oil and loaded it full of coals and lit the fire.

It was a windy day so it didn’t take long for the coals to catch on and we had good heat pumping out already.

I closed the lid after it was well lit and let it be.


After a few hours it had done the job perfectly. The BBQ was a lovely burnt colour and it was sealed into the metal well and truly.


The BBQ stayed hot for at least 5 hours and I mean hot enough to hurt when you touched the drum after all that time. I was surprised by this. I thought it would have not held the heat so well.


So now I am going to give it one more burn just to be safe that there are no poisons left as I don’t want to poison my friends. If it is I and my loved ones I am not so concerned about that!

So I hope top have the BBQ fired up and cooking as soon as Saturday night. I have no idea what I am going to cook yet but whatever it is I am sure it will be great.

Brunty.

Thailand. Rock pools, swimming and a monk.

This would probably be my most favourite place in the village. You drive about 1 kilometre out of the village and park on the edge of the road and then you have to walk for about 20 minutes.

It’s an easy walk but rocky but you don’t have to do any steep climbs. When you get to the place you are greeted by rock pools all over the place and when it is warm you can sit in them and cool off.

This is the best place to relax from the heat, at this time of year though it isn’t so hot. I have sat under this small fall and it is really refreshing.


This swimming hole is deep and the water is crystal clear. When it is hot you will have an army of kids up here running and jumping into the water.


Today we where here after trekking up the mountain and we had stopped on the way down to refresh and eat of course. Unknown to me, the backpack had been filled with food, rice, noodles, chicken, eggs and so forth. I wasn’t so keen to eat food that had been in a backpack and not kept cool for around 4hrs so I pretended to not be hungry and just drank some fluids.

It really is beautiful here.













After everyone had finished eating we headed not along the worn track to the road and walk back to the village but up and over a small mountain. Why go around when you can go over it.



After we had gone over the peak and started down the other side towards the village I noticed a small hut. I noticed a monk’s alms bowl and robes about the place. This was a good 800 metres up the mountain from the main temple in the village.

It would be very peaceful up here as it is well away from everything and a bit of a trek to get there. The funny thing was a power cable running from the temple to the small hut. The monk came out when he heard us walking past and the girls said hello to him and I asked to take a picture and he was happy for me to do so.

Now, up the mountain the ladies had collected a heap of mushrooms but they were of all colours. I was always taught to only eat the field mushrooms that are white on top and brown underneath. Others could make you go on a trip or even worse, end up dead.

There was yelling like excited little kids seeing an Easter egg on a hunt when they spotted a mushroom. This beauty that is red really caused a stir and they actually broke into a run to get to it as if someone else was up in the middle of nowhere and going to steal it from them.




These orange guys were also plentiful and also caused a stir when found. We did pick white mushrooms but they were white underneath as well. I was not going to eat them no matter if it offended Noot’s grandfather Da or not. I value my life and wasn’t game enough to give them a try.



So, that was my trip to the village to visit Noot’s grandfather, aunt’s, uncles and so forth. It was good fun and I really enjoyed it and couldn’t believe it had been something like 5-6 months since the last time we had been.

I will try and get up there at Christmas time as we usually get 7-10 days holiday but again we will not know exactly how many days until just before Christmas as this is always the schools way.

Life is hard in Isaan Thailand, I tell you.

Brunty.

Thailand. 47th in the world for Aids cases per capita, and growing.

This article was in the in the paper today.

77 per cent of teenagers have little knowledge about Aids

Nearly 77 per cent of Thai teenagers have little knowledge about Aids, according to a recent report by the Public Health Ministry. Dr Paijit Warachit, permanent secretary for Public Health, Wednesday said this problem partly explained why about half of 321,650 Aids patients in the country were now between 25 and 34 years old. "Such ratio reflects that so many of these patients have been infected with Aids during their teens," he said at a forum in Nakhon Pathom.
The Nation

This is of no surprise to me as I have read about what Thai men have said on their thoughts of using condoms.

Just recently it has been documented that married women are the highest number of new Aids cases being reported and many are being infected by their unfaithful husbands.

The husbands say it’s an insult to be asked by their wives to use a condom as it is a loss of face or something. A survey by ABAC in Bangkok the other day, asked men if they had more than one partner and of course the number was very high in the ‘Yes’ area.

So when you look at the figures above 160,825 people aged 25-34 have been infected by the Aids virus. So 1 in every 373 people in this age group has the virus. Or 1 in every 186 people in Thailand has the virus based on a 60,000,000 population.

I researched this and the number is actually a lot worse according to the statistics at
NationMaster - HIV AIDS > People living with HIV AIDS (per capita) (most recent) by country.

Thailand is 47th on the list out of 148 countries. It says Thailand has an infection rate of 1 in every 114 people.

The top five countries are:
Swaziland- 1 in every 5 people. Population 1,032,000
Botswana- 1 in every 5 people. Population 1,639,833
Lesotho - 1 in every 7 people. Population 1,795,000
Zimbabwe- 1 in every 7 people. Population 13,010,000
South Africa- 1 in every 8 people. Population 47,900,000

These are some of the first world countries stats.
70th -USA- 1 in every 316 people. Population 302,697,000.
102nd-UK- 1 in every 1,191 people. Population 60,587,000.
106th- Australia-1 in every 1,459 people. Population 21,000,000.

127th- New Zealand- 1 in every 2941 people. Population 4,228,000.
Okay, I think you cannot be infected with the aids virus by sheep so that eliminates a lot of male Kiwis from potentially catching the disease. (Sorry, I had to do it)

One big surprise was the Philippines.
142nd- 1 in every 10,101 people. Population 88,706,000.
I thought the Philippines was a known sex haven but again I am very ignorant at times. I know the people are very religious but Thais are also meant to be. These figures were a big surprise for me.

So going by the article Thailand’s stats aren’t fantastic and are growing each year. Education is probably lacking but I know they do teach about safe sex as they do this at the school I teach at and it’s a Catholic school.

I believe it comes down to ignorance on the man, thinking he isn’t such a man if he uses a condom as he might be saying he is either dirty or the girl is dirty and this could be losing face I suppose. Look, I know this sounds stupid but it is something I personally think could be contributing to the lack of condom use.

Also purchasing condoms for young kids can be agonizing for them. To have a young teenager go into a drug store, shopping centre or anywhere with general public is a huge hurdle for many to overcome. I believe there needs to be many of the vending machines available for teenagers and I believe that this should also be encouraged in certain areas of schools where only older students have access to.

Thai parents also need to change their perceptions on sex and it being ‘taboo’ until marriage. Thailand teenagers are much like the teens of other parts of the world and when puberty hits, sex becomes an interest to them and with parents refusing to discuss the subject only makes matters worse. I don’t have a great idea to solve the problem of unsafe sex practices other than awareness. Schools at home and on the TV would be great starts I believe.

Brunty.

Thailand. Small errors make my day at times.

You have to love Thai papers with all the little mistakes that usually come with them.

I really enjoy finding mistakes in English and grammar as I usually get a laugh and wonder how much they are paying the foreign proof readers to do their jobs but again it could be when the story is edited and retyped the errors occur.

This mistake comes from the Nation Newspaper and is a simple “typo” error. The heading is warning us Northern Thailand dwellers that we are going to have “think” fogs in the mornings.

Northern provinces warned of think fogs, cold weather Wednesday


The Meteorological Department Tuesday warned that the temperature will drop and thick fog will cover northern provinces in the morning from Wednesday to Friday.

The department said a new high pressure mass from China will move down to cover the upper part of Thailand from Wednesday to Friday, resulting in the drop of temperature and thick fog in the morning.

The Nation


The story correctly uses “thick” but the heading was overlooked. At least I and all other Northerners should be a lot smarter the next few mornings.

Now, I am being picky but I believe in the opening sentence it should be;

The Meteorological Department “on” Tuesday and also “Northern” should have a capital letter.

Well, I am being picky and it’s just my ideas. I know when I read my posts and I see mistakes I have made from not proof reading properly are numerous and I usually leave them as we all know. None of us are perfect, right?

Brunty.

Thailand. New BBQ, New Hairdo, Golf and a Rabbit.

Well I had been thinking about getting a BBQ made for a while now as often I go to my friend’s house for a BBQ but I cannot really repay the father as we have a tiny little grill that just cooks enough meat for 2 people little only 10.

I had been given some information about the local prison selling BBQ’s that the prisoners make and we went there and checked these out but the quality was very poor.

My mate Keith was at the market and noticed a new looking BBQ or griller that was made out of a 44 gallon drum and went and asked where it came from. After some explaining and people going here and there a person with enough English gave him directions to where we could buy one from and it was only 800 metres from my house.

So my mate, his wife and I headed over to have a look at these BBQ’s and it was exactly what I wanted but just a few things different from the design they had there. The way they had made the 2 for sale were more for roasting or like an oven than grilling and barbecuing.

So, after speaking to the owner of the business, it is like a Steptoe’s and Sons back home. He is of Chinese descent but has been in Thailand since a small child so speaks Thai and Chinese Mandarin and also English pretty well.

So after some explaining in Thai and English of what I wanted and a mud map was drawn up, we agreed to the design and I was told he would ring in around 5 days when the BBQ was finished.

The call came and I went to pick up the BBQ with my friend Keith and there had to be a few adjustments. The bars across the BBQ that was going to hold stainless steel grill had been forgotten to be put in but this was taken care of and a few hours later it was finished again and looked great.

So my BBQ had been cut in half and three heavy duty hinges had been welded on the back and a safety catch made to stop the lid slamming close.


This is a good heavy duty drum and best of all was very new so it didn’t have a lot of rust.


I sand papered and also used steel wool on the inside of the drum to remove the small amount of surface rust that was in there. It took me maybe an hour to do this and prime it for painting.

I used a heat resistant stop rust paint that can withstand 1200 Fahrenheit. I want this BBQ to last a few years so I hope a little TLC will help me do this.


I sanded any sign of rust off the entire BBQ and then painted the entire BBQ in the heat resistant rust stop paint.





It was a bit of hard work but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to finish painting it tomorrow. I am hoping to give it a burning on Friday, just a test run and then actually cooking on it maybe Saturday night. I want to make sure I am not going to kill any of my friends with toxic fumes first.

A while ago I adopted 2 rabbits from my mate Keith. This is what they looked like way back just a few weeks after they were born.

The two rabbits were brothers and Noot named them Latte and Mocha. They would stick together wherever the other went. In this picture Mocha is the very fluffy rabbit closest to the camera.


Sadly Mocha passed away suddenly just recently and for no reason that we know of. I went to work and Noot to University and when I came home Mocha was on his side stiff and dead. This was at 4.15pm and Noot and last seen them at around 1pm. I have searched the web for answers as I had researched for hours and hours before and also after we had taken the rabbits on as pets.

I read rabbits can die very easily if frightened and also sometimes they can just die. He had seemed fine and been eating and his shite was normal and not runny. I thought for weeks it must have been something we had done but Latte is fine and nothing has changed in the way we care for him. It’s a sad mystery that we won’t solve.

Noot went to the hairdressers today and I went to golf. She had her hair straightened and it took over 6 hours and also cost 900 baht. That’s a lot of money in Thailand but again hat price can you put on beauty.

Noot was very shy to show off her new straight and shiny hair and a Hello Kitty pillow was hiding her face.





Latte is actually the King of the house and spends most of the day running about the place. He can be very mischievous at times but if you watch him and when you raise your voice he stops what he is doing. Here is his keeping an eye on Noot and looking at her new hairdo.




He likes a kiss and a cuddle and will come up to you for these.He really is a people friendly rabbit and this is what Keith and his wife Sarah said when they visited the other night. Latte is a house rabbit and is around us so much that this is common for him I suppose and isn’t scared of people. Isn’t he handsome?


He often comes into the bedroom to where I am on the computer working and hops about the place. He used to be allowed on the bed and he loved this as he would whiz around really fast and was funny to watch. One night when Latte and I were watching TV I thought I seen him getting ready to pee, and I was right. So after that Noot said he isn’t allowed on the bed.

I read on websites about training the rabbit to listen to you and also putting the rabbit into a trance and I laughed and thought it was a load of crap. Now, I can tell you it isn’t. Latte will often sit on my lap upside down while I type away and surf the internet. He will go into what is just like a trance or deep sleep and will stay like this for a long time.

This is how I have him when I trim his nails and the first few times were hell and very stressful for him until I mastered putting him in this trance like state. Now I can trim his nails in no time and also by myself and he doesn’t even bounce around.

You see it is a tuff life being a rabbit in Isaan country Thailand.

Brunty.