Blog Hijack #2 / Ducklet Interlude

Make way for ducklings, Sean.

spendy game

Sorry for the delay man…the interweb no worky for two days at the hotel. Berry strange, but hopefully this will work…all for the best though because now I have some ammo. Man, last night was hilarious. And it started off so innocently. But that is the thing about this country, just when you think you have things under control, they slip a few more chillis in the sauce and you are crying into your breakfast (fyi-the thais don’t really have “breakfast” or “lunch,” they have “food,” there are words for the meals we eat, but they rarely use them and they are all built off of the word “ahan” which is food and the meals themselves are not that different. For example, for a traditional southern style breakfast today, I had cow yum which is rice mixed with coconut, basil, scallions, fish sauce, and bean sprouts and then a green curry with a thai version of collard greens and shrimp.) we have been slipping into nights on the movie so things have been getting later and later but last night, the other round eye in the movie, a guy called spencer garrett who is funny as hell and an absolute trip to hang with-a lovely partner in crime, and I got off early. On the way home, the other people in the car asked to stop at the mall (guh). Spencer and I relented and went in-the options were to 1) pull card and not let them get away with this or 2) wait in the car or 3) go in and let them have 3 minutes (spencer’s idea). We chose three. This worked out fine since spencer and I got the bright idea to purchase scrabble if we could find it. We could not, but we did find “spendy game.” Amazing. Just like scrabble in every way save the name. brilliant. I will never play scrabble again, it will forever be known as spendy game. So we plopped in the lobby around 9 and ordered a mai tai. And another. And another. Then a French guy showed up and asked us where we were from. I spoke French. He said (and pass this on to frenchy and alyson please), obviously you have lived in france or live there now, your accent is perfect. Awesome. I love this guy. I love mai tais. He said he was on his honeymoon with his new wife and she was on her way down. She was brazilian and awesome and we bought them mai tais. And mai tais. Then we went to crazy pub with them. Spencer got the massage in the bathroom and tipped the guy 30 bucks. He was so thrilled with it, he cracked the guys back as well. Reciprocity in the toilet. The same band played. We drank some singha (which, also fyi, is pronounced “sing”). Everyone got hungry after dancing for an hour or so and we stumbled out into the streets of krabi only to find one joint open. It was a sidewalk café with plastic tables and loads of young thais downing beer with ice (yes, they do that here) and smoking cigarillos. We asked our wonderfully androgynous (no, she was not a lady boy, but those stories are not far off-there are loads on our crew) waitress/er for food and she said they only have noodle soup. We got three to share for the four of us. It was the least spicy thing we have eaten here but the frenchy and his wife were begging for mercy. Spencer and I told them to fear the food then. They were in trouble. Then spencer and I went on stage (did I mention this lovely café had a karoke machine on the sidewalk?) and cracked off a wonderful, off key rendition of my way and then closed the night with the four of us belting out red red wine or some such euro type song. Epic. Hilarious. The brazilian wife (daniella) turned to me at the end of the night and said I may have forgotten your faces from your movies, but I will never forget this night. Nor will i.

Photo post / Blog Hijack

Sean... Alyson here. I broke into Kip's Gmail account because I think the blog needs a photo today and also this picture of Kip and me at the Grand Palace in Bangkok is so awesome.

The matching tank tops were his idea.

and it rained all night

Sean:

So the rains came in a bit last night. Not so tragic or even that long but it changes things in a way that is hard to describe. It is a bit like florida in that way. A gusher just passes right through and kills off the humidity and the mosquitoes for a second. Sometimes the sun does not even stop shining. It just makes all the greens of this place pop that much more. When we were up on the tiger Buddha temple, a bigger storm passed through. We were, of course, 1200 steps up and making a movie, so we just decided to wait it out. It made me think back to the times when I was a kid and I would sit on the screened porch and watch the rain just come down in sheets on the those hot, Atlanta nights. I just pulled up a limestone crag and enjoyed the view (my camera was at the bottom, so just read and imagine). I have never seen rain move like this. Where we sat, it was sunny (we were on the highest mountain in view, so I did have a unique perspective of things) and light, but just off to the left, over the town of krabi, was a huge storm cloud. The line of rain pulsated. We watched that knife edge just crawl across the country toward us. Persistent. Diligent. Like those days I am sure you had in philly when the sun would be shining in the front yard and the back would be spitting so you ran back and forth with your friends just laughing until finally it was all sun or all rain and you were tired and wet and just amazed at this world. We were just sitting there, being taken over by mother nature. This part of the world has had its share of bouts with her, so you pay your respects. The monkeys even seemed to know her power. Things are quite raw here, sometimes in a bad way. You see how the water could sweep them all away. But man, you also see why they stay.

krabi town center

Oh man sean….i am beat after a day in the jungle shooting, rushing around, dodging elephants as they walked down the dirt paths on which we were shooting (my first elephant encounters) and, of course, eating. So I will leave you with not so much a funny story, but one sure to make your mouth water. I think it may have been the best meal yet. So good I had to get up to watch the lady at her cart make the dish I now will try and repeat at home, pha lang style (this means whitey in case you forgot). It is called hoi tod-and I think it might combine one of my faves with one of aly’s-hoi means mussels and tod means fried (tonight I also learned another reason why this place is so fucking good to eat in-they have at least 5 words for fried!!!). so the lady takes a bowlful of shelled, cleaned mussels and puts them in a bowl. In goes a nice ladle of what looked like pancake or crepe batter. They sit and stew for a second while she cracks an egg into another bowl and whips it gently. Then the mussels hit the black top and on goes the egg. She let them sit and get all crispy. The batter makes a nice, crunchy pancakey dumpling skin thing that gets all chopped and stirred in with the moules. All of this goes on a bed of stir fried bean sprouts and a good hit of chilis on top. Oh man…I was in heaven. With this there was also two (2!) kinds of pad thai (from different stalls) and fresh veggies and a pineapple smoothie and coconut ice cream made on the spot. Not bad for 12 bucks total (there were 4 of us by the way)…


nb: having a problem with the pix right now. will post in the morning. also will add some pictures of the lovely little lady who was running a butcher stand right near where we shot. they were in the process of cutting up huge slabs of moo (that is pig and yes that is confusing). i had someone ask her when the pig was slaughtered and she laughed and said "this morning." it was about 11.

wat tham sua

Hey man…

So today was the first day of shooting on bitter/sweet. And it lived up to the title, mostly that bitter part. The actual shooting and movie making aspects were perfect-great crew, awesome food (totally thai breakfast of seaweed soup, rice, fried eggs with chili peppers in oil, and stir fried octopus and veggies), fun cast, and not raining. Those were the sweet parts. The bitter parts were the unbearable heat and the location. The location is actually one of the more beautiful things to see in all of southern Thailand-wat tham sua (wat is temple, tham is cave, and sua is tiger…or shirt if you are whitey and say it wrong). What made it so bitter was my costume. Stupid brian has to be all cool about things and wear a polo shirt (on him: light cotton long sleeve button down, perfect for those early fall cookouts while hanging on to the last nights of the summer on Nantucket, roll up the sleeves for that casual look or pull them down for the office, in stripes of pea soup, butternut, ochre, and aubergine on white, page 32) and corduroy pants (a classic of the city bound wilderness lover, these long knap cords keep you warm and smart in the chilly onset of winter-easily goes from subway to office to Christmas get together, available in khaki, mud, sand, and forest, page 76). Oh, I also got to wear sweet sandals. That really kept things cool and light. Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that this temple is on top of a mountain. A mile up. Straight up. With steps made of concrete of varying heights and fortitude. Facing east. We climbed up at 6 am. Wow. I was an awesome sight of sweat and heat stroke. But still, I am in better shape than all the thais save the muay thai guys who can kick my ass. So that was bitter. Another bitter part: when we finally got up it started to rain so we could not work for hours and were stuck up there waiting for the helicopter to be able to fly. I slept some. I learned some thai (not easy, but now I can say that shirt is blue or that shirt is orange or that tiger is orange or that hat is green-pretty rad!!) I mainly learn thai for two reasons: it is fun for some reason and, because MY accent is so bad, it gives me free reign to make fun of the thais and use my engrish. I am a diplomat!!

Talk soon…I am a bit too tired to tell you about the monkeys and what it was like when the rain came in (amazing). Will get to that stat i am sure...

it's my riiiiiife

Shiggins…how are things? I know your head is spinning a bit as you read the title of this post. Mine was too as we walked into the crazy pub in downtown krabi. Saturday night. The thais are raging. All slicked back hair, appropriately frazzled t-shirts, skinny jeans. Unhip hipsters all huddled together listening to a thai cover band in full force. Howling “it’s my riiiiiife” and I turned to alyson and said aerosmi-no no, bon jovi. Awesome. Awesome. The lyrics were their interpretation of the English version. Had we had the opportunity to ask them, they would have said they were speaking actual English but in fact it was just made up words, an approximation of the lyrics set to the tune. So great. This shifted into some thai songs (I am assuming) then a full thai language version of that super annoying song about how he’s sorry he can’t find the words(I’m sorry if I keep thinking of the right words to say, but I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be, but if you wait around a while…you get it). The crowd loved this. This is crazy pub. This is thai youth at its finest.

Also, next time you get all annoyed at the guy who sits in the bathroom in “fancy” places and turns on the fucking water for you so you have to tip him a buck? I always find myself wondering what he should be doing for that dollar. The thai answer? After you have been at the urinal for a while-just a courtesy to get the flow going-the guy lays a wet towel on your neck-which since you are reading this will not scare the shit out of you, but I had no such blog or foreknowledge. And since I am assuming you don’t have your dick out right now, I will remind you just how vulnerable one feels at this particular moment. A wet towel, though very much welcome in the all encompassing heat, can be quite startling when placed on your neck by a strange man in a bathroom. I also must stress that you are unable to move as urine is blasting out of your penis. Handcuffed. I just froze. Which was the right move since he then started to give me full thai massage. Well, I guess not full-but neck, back and shoulders. He left before I finished. I can’t say I liked it but I can’t say it was horrible either. I went to the sink to wash up and he slapped a couple of well placed fist along the spine just to make sure it was in line. Again, I just froze. Dried my hands and threw some money in some guys hand without making eye contact but did glance over my shoulder to make sure I was not the only “special” one in the joint. I was not. Everyone who comes in gets the treatment. Pha langs (whitey) and thai alike. That and thai bon jovi covers? Yes. Yes indeed.


Things I have eaten:

Rice noodles with three curries poured over top and at each table by the cart a full bowl of fresh mint, basil, beans, cucumber, and homemade sweet pickles

Street fried chicken

Herb salad of indeterminable ingredients too numerous to name

Congee with an egg poured in, soft soft soft boiled to cook in the bowl (this is typical thai breakfast)

Duck eggs fried sunny side up

Best mai tai ever

Whole fried mackerel dressed in sticky curry and onion

Durien (the super smelly fruit)

Nori flavored lays (I was curious)

Fish jerky

Tom gai khun


Islands we have snorkeled near:

Ko Phi Phi
Ko Hong
Railay Beach
Ao Nang

More to come…who won the moto gp? Has it even happened yet? I have no idea what time it is there or even what day it might be. I hope you had fun at the berlin show…I will send you aly back…take care of her for me. Thanks sean…werd up yo…