It’s time for us to leave Nang Rong. There are already some hot days in late February this time, although there are number of cool ones as well. A few things have happened.

Regarding restaurants and chain stores, it appears the local KFC may make it (refer to previous blog entry). I do often see it empty, but on a hot day the air conditioning is a draw. I remember two years back when I first brought my wife Sue to Nang Rong. I think it was a hot day in March. I can’t remember what we were doing, but when lunch time rolled around she just had to go to an air conditioned restaurant. At that time there was only one choice. We ended up standing in a corner in Seven Eleven with a hot dog and a slurpee.

Anyway, Sue has hauled me over to KFC in Nang Rong three times now. They now have the complete KFC line of food. In addition, rumors are floating about that the large area of land being prepared on the highway seven kilometers west of Nang Rong is going to be a new Lotus Tesco, which is a large discount store with groceries.

The new highway 24 just went all four lane as far east as Nang Rong last year, and development will come more quickly along its route. This will be at the expense of the old east west route 50 km north of here which passes through the capital cities of Buriram and three adjacent provinces.

Times are changing, but it will take years for change to get into Nang Rong once you get off the highway. Land rights and existing buildings will keep the old layout. Roads are narrow and corners are sharp, with most turns made at 1 – 2 miles an hour. The growth will be east and west of town along the new four lane road.

We have a foundation board meeting this Monday, then we leave for Bangkok the next day. We have a few doctor appointments there (we are certified medical tourists) and then we’ll leave for Singapore. We’ll be back in Nang Rong by early October for sure.

The first picture was taken at night just as I left my landlord’s house. This elephant goes around Nang Rong in the evening with a reflector tied to his tail, stopping at the restaurants. Since the restaurants are open to the outside, the elephant just comes up close, but not close enough to grab anything off your table or tap you on the shoulder with his trunk. If it is dark outside you don’t notice him until he’s there. His handler sells a bag of sugar cane you can buy and feed back to him. My wife always goes for it.

The seat on the elephant suggests you could get a ride if you wanted. We’ve never checked into that. I’ve driven an elephant in the jungle, but driving one in the city is probably beyond my capabilities.

We have a volunteer family visiting for three weeks. The night after their first day it rained. Then there was a light drizzle all day for their second and third days. It is finally leaving and should be back to normal sunny “dry season” days soon.

Now I’m thinking you may not believe me after all I have said about continuous great weather here during “dry” or “cool” season. This is the first time in my three years here that I remember it being like this. If it does rain, which is rare, during this season, it usually rains hard for about ten minutes and that’s it, just like in rainy season.

We are just getting started on our first child home in Opportunity Village. In April the first of our two families, now in rental homes, will move into the new house. We are looking to add one or if possible two more families in rental homes this year. The second picture is not going to be the new home. It’s the temporary shelter, and perhaps home, for the workers building the house. It’s over by the main canal on the west side of the property.

The final thing to report is that I ran into another parade two days ago, on the street that crosses my street five houses down. The flatbed trucks you see coming held monks and nuns sitting in rows. Something to do with buddhism, of course, but other than that I don’t know. Now just about every street around me has had a parade in the last year except mine. Some weddings, a few ordinations (kids becoming a monk for awhile) and buddhist house warming celebrations, but no real parades.

Something did happen last night. There is some kind of small beetle, dark brown and shaped like a ladybird beetle but a quarter or less the size, that is mating, breeding or otherwise celebrating some part of their life cycle. This part appears to be to find a light and fly around within a foot of it until you die. This is a picture of my front porch. I had the porch light on for movie night and forgot to turn it off until later. They look like coarse brown dirt. This is the second and probably last die off I have seen this year. The first time I had five or more times as many insects. I should have taken a picture of my porch then. It was quite impressive. I did not realize what the “dirt” was and just started sweeping it away. They sweep up easily.

Few came in last night because there was no inside light to draw them (movie night, remember?). Thai houses don’t seal that well, and the night of the first time I did not understand what was happening. My inside, as well as outside, lights were on and a few got in. I was reading directly under a light and five or six times a little beetle just fell onto me. It could be dead or still crawling a bit. They don’t bite and you can’t feel them except when they first fall and hit you. When I was cleaning up next morning I noticed they were only on the dining and coffee tables in the house, nowhere else. The two lights were directly over these tables.

So if you are eating your evening meal at an outdoor restaurant (about the only kind we have) in Nang Rong and start getting bombed by tiny beetles, just move to a table between two lights, and you should not have any problem.

With Sue in India doing teacher training and me in Nang Rong, I have to think about finding food more often than I would otherwise. I have already written about one Isaan basic food group, Som Tam. Today I walked down to Nong Biea for lunch. It is named after the owner’s young son and located by a red teardrop on our map.

It is run by a good friend, shown here with his wife who works alongside him. Previously it was a one minute walk from my house but he closed that to help care for his son who was in a bad accident more than a year ago. He has since reopened in a new location. It now takes five minutes. In the above picture it appears dark back in there. It’s not dark, it’s just out of the sun. The front is open to the outside, just like nearly every other restaurant and store in Nang Rong. He cooks out front, to the right in the picture.

I had the old stand by, kao pat gai, or chicken fried rice. I have him put in onions too. I can get something like it in the states and I’ve had it at different places in Bangkok, but I like it better here. If a new farang knows the Thai name of only one dish, this is probably it.

“Pat” means stir fried. Except for steamed rice, most hot things served in a restaurant, the meat and the veggies, have just been stir fried. The first time I see a microwave oven in a restaurant in Nang Rong, I’ll let you know.

Many of the restaurants in Nang Rong offer fried rice, but Nong Biea’s looks and tastes lighter. When Nong Biea was closed, I got kao pat gai at other restaurants. What made me stop eating it was getting a take out bag and putting it in the refrigerator for the next day. I took it out and looked through the transparent bag and thought “I’ve been eating this?” and hoped I had not been forgetting my cholesterol pills. It was easy to see the solidified white grease here and there. I heated it up in the microwave just to try it. It did not taste as good as the day before. I only ate the first bite.

After having sworn off, I tried it again a few weeks ago when working at the foundation office. We all ordered kao pat gai from Nong Biea to be brought in for lunch. It looked and tasted a bit lighter than I remembered, so a few days ago I did the “test” again. I got both a take out and an eat in order of kao pat gai. It was very good at the restaurant, and when I took it out of the refrigerator the next day it still looked good, without any more clumping up than already cooked rice is going to do. After microwaving it tasted pretty much the same as the day before.

Kao pat gai is normally not spicy at all. You can add the red peppers shown in the small dish if you wish. I usually do. At Nong Biea I also like gapow gai, a spicier dish with chicken and steamed rice in the rightmost picture. Pak boong, the green vegetable shown with it, is a very common vegetable and is maybe the Thai substitute for spinach.

Thailand is just starting to think about heart health. Many of the city hospitals are opening up heart centers and doctors here know more about heart disease than a few years ago. I suppose in a few years they will start thinking more about what they are eating (they still consume tons of MSG also). In the meantime, I would have already recommended Nong Biea for those of its selections I had previously tried, but now I can also say that they use vegetable oil for their stir frying, not the left over hog fat.

What everything is thrown into is called a croc, like a big wooden pestle and mortar. They pound everything pretty well; put it all in a bag, rubber band the neck and you are ready to go.

Some of the ingredients, especially the bpara, can be an acquired tast. We get ours “vegetarian”, leaving out bpara, shrimp, MSG, most of the sugar and most of the peppers. It’s pretty hard for the lady to leave out all the peppers, so I let her put in two. This is Som Tam, and it’s supposed to be spicy. This places it at about level four of a typical Thai restaurant in America that has five levels of spiciness. If you ordered it spicy here it would be off the scale of an American Thai restaurant by a factor of three of four, so be careful. If you want to eat spicy like some Thais, break into it gradually.

If you leave out the bpara and shrimp, have them wash the croc or your Som Tam will taste fishy. As the picture shows, my restaurant has two crocs, with the one on the right fish free.

What made me think to write this post was that I brought home some Som Tam yesterday, and when it was time for lunch today Sue asked me to go get some more. We really do like it, and Sue in addition likes the low calorie aspect.

View Nang Rong Som Tam in a larger map

So where is the best Som Tam? This is one thing on which everyone here has an opinion, even me. Some Som Tam places are definitely better than others. After the Som Tam lady whose shop was in front of my house left to take care of her mother I was getting it from a place down at the other end of the block, but it just was not as good there. Finally the lady living to one side of me and a guy across the street both informed me of their favorite place. I tried it and agree it is the best. It is on 348, the north/south highway through Nang Rong.

For me it was good, maybe in the top half of restaurants in this town, but not great. The first time it was chicken in a yellow curry sauce, zucchini, bell peppers, a bit of onion, carrots and pineapple chunks. The chicken was good, but not really different from chicken at other restaurants. The sauce was OK but I have certainly had better. Bland?

The second time it was Mongolian beef. I have had better at some U.S. Chinese restaurants but the closest is a five hour drive from here. I’d rate it as very good for here and was told it was a popular dish. The glaze on the beef was good.

There was three times as much meat, twice what I could eat, compared to in Nang Rong. As a leftover the glaze soaks in or changes and the Mongolian beef loses a lot. Split this dish with someone.

They have five levels of spiciness. If you eat medium spicy in Isaan go for five and you should at least notice it.

The big overall thing was the rice. I was coarser, like rice at any normal American restaurant, like rice I grew up on in the U.S. I don’t like it. Maybe most here do? In Isaan they use Jasmine or the like that cooks up softer, a little more “melt in your mouth.”  Add said the owner preferred to save money by using U.S. rice. Notice the chicken dish also saves by using green bell peppers rather than the more expensive, colorful and slightly tastier yellow and red. This restaurant leans toward the upscale (the décor is best I’ve seen in this area of nearly 100,000) so I expected a bit better.

 For me the rice made all the difference. I don’t think he saves much. I get Thai Jasmine rice in a 25 pound bag inexpensively at Costco. My wife as well as Add use it when in the US. Does living in Thailand make one become a rice bigot?

Will this make a difference to most diners here? I don’t think so. They should give it a try. I spent a month in various parts of China and in general (there were a couple of shining exceptions) I like Chinese food in the U.S. better than that in China. I also like pizza here better than that in Italy. But when it comes to Thai food, I’ll stick with Thailand.

In case you were wondering, Sue and I arrive back in Thailand October 7. We would not miss the dry season.

Well, that is no longer completely true, but maybe not completely false either. A new Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened there around the end of the dry season (March) this year. It is located within the Tewikit mall which is out on highway 24. Tewikit is a small department/discount/grocery store, part of a small chain whose two main stores are in Buriram city. KFC’s are located in each of those, so I guess Nang Rong was the next biggest store and the next place to try. It is really half a KFC with only about half their offerings available. The front counter area seems very small, hardly there. There was one employee that I could see and I don’t believe there were any customers present when I checked it out.  

Are the other chains watching, ready to move in should the KFC prove successful? I wouldn’t mind a Pizza Company or a Dairy Queen here. They sell food that I cannot get without traveling to Buriram city or to Korat. I sometimes eat at KFC when in Bangkok or other cities, but in Nang Rong I know places to go for good chicken. The very best chicken I’ve had in the area is barbequed at a roadside place across from the Chalearm Pragaid regional hospital just a few miles east of Nang Rong. With their low overhead the cost is about a sixth of KFC and the view is great. I was standing with my back to a lake when I took the picture.

Some of the more knowledgeable Thais in the area give a low probability for success for this new KFC venture, and I think the franchisers of the fast food places in Thailand are quick to close down outlets that don’t meet their sale minimums.

We won’t change that website entry just yet.