Mom! Mom! There's a crocodile in our living room!

This is a fake crocodile from this guy's website, but it's a good illustration of what happened to me when I was seven years old and I woke up one morning to discover a fully grown crocodile in our living room!

It was a morning like any other morning during rainy season. Koon Tong woke me up (Anna Anna Wake Up Anna!) and I went downstairs, half asleep, to have breakfast. Except I found the ground floor of our house was full of water!

During the night a dam in northern Chanthaburi had burst and half the province was flooded. Our house had never been flooded before and I could not figure out why there was a foot of water everywhere. I was standing in the water looking around when I looked down and I saw next to my feet a tail. A big tail. A big tail attached to a big crocodile.

I retreated back up the stairs and yelled, "Mom! Mom! There's a crocodile in our living room!" My mom came down and we stood there on the stairs watching the crocodile in our living room. He eventually left but then we heard on the radio that the Chamsom Crocodile Farm and Zoo had been hit by the floodwaters and that there were hundreds of crocodiles loose in Chanthaburi.

For three days we lived like prisoners in the upper part of our house, eating dried beef (#16) while we waited for the flood waters to recede. While we waited, we listened to the radio for news that the crocodile infestation was under control.

It was almost Christmas so I will save the rest of this story for December, but seeing that picture on Flickr reminded me of the time Little Anna met a crocodile.

Anna's Christmas Story (part 2)

Christmas in Thailand means it's time for daughters to spend a lot of time in the kitchen with their moms. Our household was no different except the Prasomphols were even busier than most families. In addition to all the traditional dishes and special desserts for our family and friends, we would put together baskets of food for the prisoners in the local jail, which was less than a mile away from our home.

It was not a very big jail, but it held 800 prisoners. Thai jails and prisons are not like the ones in America. In Thailand they give the prisoners broken rice, and not much else. Your relatives and friends bring food to the prison for you. If not, you get very skinny.

Because my parents came from families who had been refugees from Vietnam, my mother felt that we had an obligation to help feed these prisoners at Christmas time. But 800 prisoners is a lot of mouths to feed so a tradition began in which we would get a water buffalo from my cousin and then make it into dried beef.

One water buffalo makes a lot of dried beef, and we would spend a full week preparing and sun-drying the meat before packaging it up with sticky rice to take to the jail for the prisoners.

Last August I told you the first half of my Christmas story about the crocodiles. Now that you're done with your Christmas holiday I think maybe you are ready to hear the rest of this scary story.

To recap, Little Anna was awoken by her mynah bird Koon Tong and then went downstairs to eat breakfast only to find that the house was flooded and there was a crocodile in her living room!

Because of the flooding there was no electricity and we didn't know what was going on. We did not learn until later from the radio that a crocodile farm upriver had been flooded and all the crocodiles had escaped. We just knew that we had a crocodile in our living room.

We could not cook, but we did have all the dried beef we had made for the prisoners. One of my brothers snuck down to the kitchen after the crocodile left and brought back a bag without any other crocodiles catching him. Then, as we were held prisoner in our own home for three long days, we ate the dried beef we had made as a Christmas gift for the prisoners in the Chanthaburi jail.

Later, after the waters receded and the crocodiles were all rounded up, we took the rest of the dried beef to the prisoners who were still glad to get it even though Christmas was over.

It was not the best Christmas ever, but it was the one I remember best because it was the only Christmas I ever celebrated with a crocodile.

10,000 post reads!

I started this blog back in 2007, but Blogger didn't start tracking statistics until Google acquired them in 2009, so my blog stats only reflect the last three years. I admit that once a month or so I spend too much time looking at these numbers, but blogging has been a strange adventure for me, and it helps to know which posts customers like best. Except I'm not so sure most of my readers are customers. In fact, the stats say that most of my readers aren't even from Minnesota!

How the tamarind tree saved Little Anna's life is not the post I would have guessed would be my most popular. I thought for sure that Mom! Mom! There's a crocodile in our living room! would be more popular, but it only got 15 reads! That is so sad. A crocodile is much scarier than a rabid dog.

A friend who understands these things told me that I get about 50 hits each time I post to my blog. But that number keeps growing because most of you only check my blog every so often, not every day. An average post now gets a few hundred readers altogether, but thanks to Google and other search engines, some posts keep getting new readers every day. My tamarind tree post just broke the 10,000 reader mark! I am proud of that, but also shocked. This blog thing is surprisingly popular.

Some of you may be surprised that My remembrance of Ped is not my most popular post. Actually, it is, but most of the people who read it saw it in the Star Tribune which did not link to my blog. I have no idea how many people read the version the Star Tribune published, but I've been told it was in the tens of thousands.

The trial of the woman who hit and killed Ped is coming up soon. I will be there, but I do not think I will write about it. I am still very sad that Ped is dead. Everything I wrote in my remembrance of him is still true. We here at True Thai miss Ped every day, but I am comforted each time I check my stats and see that a few dozen more people have read about him since I last checked. Since I wrote about Ped's death, many of True Thai's customers and friends have made generous donations to his family. His nephew Shawn works at the restaurant. If you fast forward to the very end of that Best of the Block video about True Thai, Shawn's at the bottom of the screen with a big smile.

The spirit of Ped is in that picture.

Weird food

I am no Andrew Zimmern, but I have eaten many strange foods in my life. That's why I was so excited when I saw this Ed Kohler post about weird foods. He wants to eat everything on the list and seems to be making a lot of progress. Here's the list with a check mark next to the 63 items I've already tried:


The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison √
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros √
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile √
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue √
8. Carp √
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari √
12. Pho √
13. PB&J sandwich √
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart √
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle √
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes √
19. Steamed pork buns √
20. Pistachio ice cream √
21. Heirloom tomatoes √
22. Fresh wild berries √
23. Foie gras √
24. Rice and beans √
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche √
28. Oysters √
29. Baklava √
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas √
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl √
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut √
35. Root beer float √
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo √
40. Oxtail √
41. Curried goat √
42. Whole insects √
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk √
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala √
48. Eel √
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut √
50. Sea urchin √
51. Prickly pear √
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone √
54. Paneer √
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal √
56. Spaetzle √
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores √
62. Sweetbreads √
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian √
66. Frogs’ legs √
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake √
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain √
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette √
71. Gazpacho √
72. Caviar and blini √
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail √
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum √
82. Eggs Benedict √
83. Pocky √
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef √
86. Hare √
87. Goulash √
88. Flowers √
89. Horse √
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam √
92. Soft shell crab √
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish √
95. Mole poblano √
96. Bagel and lox √
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee √
100. Snake √

I think between Ed and I we've eaten just about everything on the list....