Same Same But Same Once upon a time, long ago in Thailand, a sole banana seller set up shop on the street. His neighbor saw him and said, “I can do what he’s doing,” and set up shop next to him. The neighbor’s cousin saw them and said, “I can do what they’re doing,” and […]
Life In The Laugh Lane – May 2023 Read More »
I’m afraid of my stove I owned many gas kitchen stoves in America, car-camped across the country with Coleman camping stoves, and carried backpack stoves into the wilderness, but after three months of living in my Sansai bungalow, I’m still afraid of my plain old, ordinary, everyday Thai propane stove. My first attempt to light
Life In The Laugh Lane – April 2023 Read More »
Fowl play The chicken is one of the few things you can eat before it’s alive and after it’s dead—fried egg, fried leg. There’s probably some live eating here in Asia, but I don’t want to know about it. My first childhood memory of a live chicken was just before its death. The farmer had
Life In The Laugh Lane – March 2023 Read More »
6,000,000 Cleaning Ladies AS a child, I was very young. I used to harass ants, stomp on their hills and throw burning sticks in their path. Later I collected insects, gassed them in jars with formaldehyde and pinned them to boards. It’s payback time. These gruesome tales traveled through the ant world and now the
Life In The Laugh Lane – February 2023 Read More »
Nap attack! Above: Perfect time to get a bargain. Shake her, hand her some coins and leave before she’s coherent. If a manager found her sleeping on the merchandise in the USA, her next nap would be in an unemployment line. Upper right: I wanted to buy a CD player but I thought he might
Life In The Laugh Lane – January 2023 Read More »
Arrest the city! If Chiangmai were in America, the entire city would be arrested. No one seems to agree on what the Loi Kratong Festival in November means or celebrates, but I think the closest translation is “legal chaos.” In the USA, the army would surround the city, build a huge, maximum-security fence around it,
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It’s A Bad Sign Two thousand years ago, a guy named Joseph tried to find a room at an inn with his Israeli wife ready to give birth. (The Book says the inn was full, but perhaps his wife was from Thailand.) Two thousand years later, a guy named Scott tries to find a room
Life In The Laugh Lane – November 2022 Read More »
My most embarrassing moment in Thailand When I first came to Thailand, I was recovering from a motorcycle accident—little ailments like broken neck, fractured pelvis and destroyed foot the doctors reassembled with metal rods, rubber cement and duct tape. The metal is gone, but there are still large numb areas I’m sure are filled with
Life In The Laugh Lane – October 2022 Read More »
Airy Orgy Do not allow my daughter to read this chapter or she’ll never visit me in Thailand. I visited a friend in Chiangmai, and as we prepared dinner a few bugs flew around the kitchen, very big bugs that seemed drunk and barely able to fly. When we began to eat, an official swarm
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The Electric Fishermen Nature is my next-door neighbor. My outdoor kitchen/deck faces a marsh and the mountains. If something drops off the counter or deck, it bounces into the stream, which is very convenient for getting rid of fruit skins, piles of suicidal insects of unwanted guests. Although it seems very secluded, I never know
Life In The Laugh Lane – August 2022 Read More »
