I tried my best not to stare at the doll-like holes on her forehead. “I’m trans gender.” “Oh really?” My acting was bad as her hair transplant but her voice was water to my parched ears. We were in an English language desert, the Thai Immigration Bureau in Bangkok, located a three hour bus ride from anywhere familiar, as was […]
Too Much Change is Still Good
Praborommathatchiyaratchaworawihan (I can’t pronounce it either.)
It was a bit awkward standing behind a monk at Seven Eleven to buy a beer. But I didn’t care. I needed one. It was the first time I thought I was going to die, since walking down a Chinese sidewalk and almost getting plowed by a taxi. I was visiting an ancient temple in southern Thailand called . I know. […]
Temples and Tastebuds
It’s the coconut capital of the world.That’s all I knew about Surat Thani and thought it would be worth spending a day. But I quickly found out this coastal Thai city has more than what Chicago has Starbucks. I visited several, each one having its own flavor. This one had a meals on wheels program. Another temple taught young […]
The Un-memorial
I couldn’t see the beach. The white sand, all of the beer bellied sunbathers in small speedos were all washed away. All I could see was the wave of the Tsunami of 2004 hitting the Patong beach of Phuket. My mind went back to December 26th, 2004. I was in a coffee shop in Amsterdam with my husband, doing what […]
Holiday Dare
The last few days have been filled with food indulgences but not your typical holiday fare. Our school celebrated the New Year’s at a Chinese version of the Four Seasons Sunday Buffet. Usually, a picture is worth a thousand words. But in China, sometimes the translations are better, like Baked Pumpkin Mud. Imagine a Crème brûlée made with a pumpkin […]
Black is the New Pink
I just came back from Bangkok. Usually the city is a swirl of color, from the taxis to tuk tuks. But now, it’s black black. Since King Rama IX died in October, a year long memorial started. Mind you, the love for this king was fierce. If you stepped on a piece of money with his picture on it, you could […]
Think Inside the Box
Duct tape has a lot of cool uses. Getting a kid to speak English is one of them. A new business moved right next to a school, a paint ball court. Yeah, just a slight distraction. But last week after installing the air ducts, the workers dumped a gazillion huge boxes into the trash. I’m talking larger than life boxes–well, […]
Some things need to be retired. But never are they people.
I cannot eat this apple, I thought as the old lady handed it to me, her beef jerky like fingers trembling, the smile under her hat lighting up the dingy room. “Xie Xie,” I nodded, admiring her face. Every wrinkle lead to a different story, from China’s Cultural Revolution to her recipe for jiaozi. Why was I at this human time capsule […]
Chinese School
A friend invited Hamburger Laoshi for “Show and Tell” today. She’s an English teacher at a Chinese Public School on the north side of Kunming. Four Thousand students, forty crammed into every class, all wearing the same uniform. The students learn by rote memorization. Check out this video clip of them “getting their English on”. I talked a bit about […]
Wǒ jiào Beetlejuice
I haven’t seen a rat that big since I lived in Chicago. It was scruffy, looking like it had better days, huddled next to great wall of soy sauce in my favorite local store. That’s when universal phrase for “I just saw a rat!” came flying out of my mouth: “SHRIEK!!!!!” A group of young female employees came over […]