Hounds

It's kind of scary that most of the dogs (and there are many) on Haad Rin beach know me by know. The other night when I was out partying one of the dogs saw me from a hundred yards away and came running to meet me for a scratch on the head. Maybe it's because I live with four dogs that they smell them on me and that qualifies me as dog-friendly. I like all the animals I've had while I've been here. Damian, Caliban, Ying, Jezebel, Shadow, Widget, Smiler, Jessie. The dogs here are really sweet! Even though most of them are half-wild. The ones that live close to the humans learn to be docile. If they don't, I figure they learn to push up daisies instead. It's nice to always have dogs around to scratch on the head or curl up next to you on the balcony.

I'm leaving here friday, which is good. The excesses of Haad Rin can really be rather excessive, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. I could use a break. Get back to exploring and get away from partying, from the tumbling raucous hen and stag party of The Drop In and the Cactus. Therre are armies of the young and nubile marching around with buckets in handsearching for that spoecial evening. As stupid as it can be, I've met some quite cool people at the parties. Even sensible folks like a party sometimes. It's been rather spicy a few times, such as at the Shiva Moon partry in Ban Tai when a woman flew into a jealous rage because I was talking to some other girls and the shouting match culminated with her punching me in the face. Wow. I can count the number of times I've been punched inthe face by girls on one hand. She was mortified at her behavior the next day. Appropriately. The other time that I can recall was back in New York, when Lopez, Kennedy, surly and I were at a bar after work in midtown several years ago. Two women approached us, and began flirting with us by being insulting. Um... okay. So we started teasing and taking the piss out them, but nicely enough that they stuck around for more. I pissed one of them off to the point that she started trying to hit me, so we squared off and had a boxing matxch that weent on dfor some time. Boxing match is only an accurate term if you discount the fact that I never hit her, just deflected her blows and provoked her to greater exertions. At one point, I said, Ok, I'm sorry, I'm being a jerk, go ahead and give me a good shot. She hauled off and punched me in the face so hard that her wrist swelled up like a pregnant whale and she had to go get it x-rayed. Hey. I have a hard head.

Red Curry Paste

This is the key and primary ingredient in lots of Thai cooking. MAke your own, customiize it to your taste, keep it in the fridge for as long as you like.

my proportions, measured in amounts based on joints of a finger.

Two thumb joints of galangal
One thumb joint of krachai ( a relative of ginger)
three or four cloves each garlic and shallot
three or four pinkies of the pale part of the lemongrass stalk
a dozen black peppercorns
a finger joint of Thai turmeric
a sprinkle of salt
from five to fifteen small (1"-1 1/2" long"dried red chilies. Adjust number according to how "phet" you want it. The smaller the chili the hotter they are. If the little red are too much, go a bit bigger.

Mince all this stuff up quite small, then pound the living daylights out of it in your mortar and pestle. Or, for those soft prosperous westerners amongst you, use your blender or grinder. Reduce it to a paste. I do feel that having your own sweat involved makes a food better.

Anyway. That's the paste.

Now to make a typical red curry:

1 healthy glob of paste
1 glob oyster sauce
a few hunks of meat and vegetable, you pick it. I recommend carrots, cabbage and baby corn. Maybe some small green thai eggplants, little round things about the size of a golf ball.
equal parts coconut cream and unsweetened evap[orated or condensed milk. Sometimes smashed small cloves of garlic.

Put all this in a pot. Bring to a boil. Serve with rice.

So easy once you've got the paste.

Cruelty

Something happened yesterday that stuck with me in an unpleasant way. Nicola and I (the nice English bird I've been kissing) were on the beach in the afternoon in Haad Rin, playing with three little puppies we found. There're loads of them around. One of them, a fuzzy little black and white thing, was just sleeping in the sand, so we left him alone as we squatted in front of him and played with the others. A little Thai boy ran up to us and grabbed a handful of skin on the little puppy's haunch. The puppy shrieked. Then the little bastard held it up in the air by its throat, choking it, then he threw it onto the concrete. Thye puppy screamed and kpet whimpering since he had hurt its leg. I wanted to give the brat the back of my hand and ask him how it felt to be bullied by someone bigger than him. Several problems. 1) Cabn't say that in Thai. 2) he's not my kid 3) his parents were there. 4) unknown cultural boundary about discipling someone else's kid. Apparently I would have been alright scolding him. Respect for one's elders is a pillar of Thai culture, so that would prbably have been alright. He was just showing off, showing that he could take from Farangs with impunity, or that he didn't care about offending us or something like that, I'm not sure exactly what, acting out for attention, something like that. Cruelty and disregard for animals is also a pillar of Thai culture. It's gotten much better since the king adopted a few strays a few years ago. He is a cultural role model and hero to the people, so what he does will be imitated. He was trying to get the stray dog problem under wraps. Sven told me a few years ago, it was too scary to walk on the beach at night. The packs of wild dogs were too numerous and too aggressive. Things are much quieter these days since the king adopted. most houses now adopt a few dogs and feed them, keeping them around. In turn those dogs keep the others away, having made it their territory. This combined with a spaying and neutering program has brought the wild population down a bit. The Thai's fairly brutal approach to dogs actually makes them really well behaved. Usually around here if a dog sees you pick up a stick, they assume you're going to throw it at them, not for them. Fetch is not the name of the game around here. They tend to be really well behaved. They know they can't come inside, they all understand, "Pai! Pai!" (Go!), and they tend to be quiet. I assume there's a certain selective pressure here in favor of being well-behaved and quiet. The bad dogs get killed. Only those dogs with a gentler nature are allowed to survive and procreate. Caliban, one of my dogs back at the Yoga retreat where I lived for a bit, was really sweet. He must have been part Basset or Dachshund or Corgi with those stubby little legs of his. A nice dog. Ying was mcu hmore trouble, always jumping up at you a bit too enthusiastically.


These brits are ruining the way I speak! All of this crap slang working its way into my vocabulary! I say things like pikey, bird, skint, fag, poof, all kinds of nosense like that. When I get back I'm going to need a linguistic reinstall. These people don't speak english.

On the 30th I'm leaving fantasy island.

Does anyone know if you can still send telegrams to the United States? I read in the paper that Western Union sent their last one in the states some months ago, but does anyone else do it?

Loyal readers, my apologies for writing so little lately. I've jsut been busy having adventures, living my nice life with my adopted family here, cooking up a storm, raging hard in Haad Rin from time to time, swimming, hiking, loafing, spinning my poi, reading, and drawing. Spinning my pi is a new party trick I picked up, even though it's an annoying hippie fad. It's fun and it's a way to get the blood moving and get my butt out of my hammock. Sort of like exercise, but mostly just for the arms and shoulders. What they are is two weighted banners on the end of two-foot strings that you whirla round you at high speed. It looks pretty cool if you've never seen it before. I tried it with the flaming wieghts the other night for the first time. No harm done. It's a nice little hobby. Not highly demanding, but I think hobbies that get your blood moving are quite salubrious. Helps you work off the buckets.

love
Tom

Pad Thai

Everyone likes Pad Thai. I cook it all the time. I'm going to tell you how so you can do it at home.

get some Pad Thai noodles. They're not the same as glass noodles or thin rice vermnicelli or glass noodles. They're made from sticky rice. Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco street in Chinatown should have them. So get some pad thai noodles first.

Then get yourself a wok and in said wok put a glob of oyster sauce, a spoonful of powdered chicken stock, two spoonfuls of sugar, about an inch and a half of water, a blob of oil, and a healthy glob of some tomato product. Any will work, like canned tomatoes or tomato paste, but I like to use about two fresh small minced tomatoes. The tomatoes all the source of that mysterious brownish orange color. Bring all this crap to a boil to get it mixed up and the tomatoes cooked down a little, then add whatever meat you're using, beef, chicken, pork, whatever. Cook the meat mostly but not totally. Then throw in a buinch of noodles. If they're fresh, throw them in straight. If they're dried, partially preboil them. Cook the noodles about two minutes, cutting them with your spatula as you go. Then throw in whatever vegetables, seafood or egg you're using. Suggested vegetables are baby corn, carrot, chinese cabbage, all sliced thinly. They cook fast. Do not overcook. Plate it up, and then sprinkle crushed peanut, minced scallion, lime juice and minced cilantro. You're done. It's really fast. It's really good.

I remember back in Milhous, my dirty but lovable hippie co-op back in the day, various folks trying to figure out hopw to make pad thai. Peoplke were always throwing peanut butter in there. All wrong. We were so wrong and ended up with a gelatinous brown mass that would cork up the New York City sewer system. Yikes. Hey. We were young. We were in love. We had no idea what we were doing.

House

There are a lot of things I'll miss about Pha Ngan. All the jungle sounds: The barking geckos, chirruping frogs, whistling birds, rustling palms, the bubbling sizzle of the coffee in my kitchen in the morning. I'll miss our kitchen. I'll miss being able to cook up a feast and have my friends over. We had a great barbecue last night. The weather threatened so we just met at the house and set the grill up on the balcony with us. Lamb chops, curry-marinated pork, beef and chicken marinated in ginger, garlic and soy, a spicy Lao dipping sauce, grilled onions, baked potatoes, and of course rice. coin is running out. More soon.

I cook for my friends all the time here. It's nice having a brief window of domsticity for a couple of weeks.

I'll miss the wind rushing over my skin as I cruise through the hills on my motorbike. I'll miss my bike, my turquoise Honda Sonic 125, and the freedom it affords. I'll miss the sun fading into the fog over the islands as the squid fleet turns on their blazing white floodlights. They make it look like there is a row of stadia out on the horizon. I'll miss my cozy house where Sven and I lounge in our sarongs in the morning, or in our hammocks on the balcony when the air is too hot to breathe. I'll even miss the sweat. I'm done with cold climates. For the moment.

Bubble

Since the gloom and doom of the death passed along with the widow back to Ireland, I've come to be living in a wonderful little bubble here on the island. It is not what I had intended exactly for this voyage, but I'm happy and part of the purpose of this trip is being willing to take advantage of what I find before me. During the wake, Mairead and I moved in with Sven, but he asked me to stay even after the mourning period was over and we had paced her off back to Ireland. I have a really pretty room in my own building, our living room is a balcony overlooking the a lush jungle valley, and my friends and I lounge on cushions and hammocks in the breeze. Sven, John and I have become really good friends. Vanessa, Sven's lady, has moved in with us as well. We had a splendid Bushwick-in-Thailand dinner party the other night. I understand that this is a bubble, a brief period of time with some really kind, interesting people. It's our little haven. We have a lot of fun, just cooking out at the house or hanging out at the sunset bar or raging in Haad Rin. So I'm delaying my departure yet a little longer to stay with my little family of friends for a bit. When I think of life back in New York, socially I'm definitely happier here. In some ways. Plus I don't pay any rent.

I'm going to get yelled at by all of you back home for all the odd English and Aussie slang I've picked up.

flexibly yours,
Tom

Wear

I am simultaneously happy and exhausted from providing vital in loco familia support to my bereaved friend.

Requiescat

One of my friends died of a sudden heart attack yesterday. Tony Frawley, Irish, aged 48. He was a member of my little family of friends here on Pha Ngan.

I got there about half and hour after it happened, and it must just have been my own racing pulse that I felt when I checked him out. He was gone, but still fully warm. We sat with him on the deck of the Dragon Bar through the rest of the sunset, overlooking Haad Salad bay. He had said to one of us last week, "I don't want a long time, I want a good time." And he had it. He and Mairead had a great three months here. And how much better a place than a long, grim decline in a hospital bed. Haad Salad is so lovely at sunset, the rocks and the palms and the fishing boats. And for her, I think it's been good to have hethe rest of us right around her, so close at hand when it happened. We've just been sitting with her and help her get everything squared away to go back to Ireland. John and Sven and I moved their stuff out and returned his motorbike. TJ took her to Samui to get some of her affairs straightened out. Better that than many other ways it could have happened.

He was starting over. After twenty-three years in the army and a previous marriage and five children, he retired and started a new life with Mairead. He was so goddamn tough when he was alive. You just can't plan these things. They were getting ready to open their sunset bar out on the rocks overlooking the sea.

And now things are breaking up and settling down at the same time. Everyone's talking about quitting smoking. Talking about leaving. Talking about taking the opportunities that are in front of them. Talking about mortality. It's all pretty familiar from other deaths, but the whole thing has been really shocking and grim.

It's funny, Sven and I were planning a going-away dinner party for all of us right when it happened. Once Mairead's on her way, I'm leaving the island.