Hobo with a FILTHY laptop

Monday morning I reach to the nightstand and boot up my MacBook. Not 30 seconds into the NY Times it plinks off and will not restart.

I rush the poor dead thing to the local Mac Zone in hopes of salvaging its hard drive, dismayed that I might have to pungle up for a whole new laptop. The technicians pinpoint the trouble almost instantly:

I recognize the cat hair, and even some of the crumbs. Clearly my computer died of embarrassment. It costs me 1,000 baht (around $33) to have it rehabilitated. Thank you, Chiang Mai Genius Bar.

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Sunday evening I finally get to meet up with Nick Egert, an American who has lived and worked in northern Thailand for five years. Nick is a trove of useful information about places in northern Thailand I might want to consider for my expat adventure; more on that in a future post. After beers at a faux Irish pub (what other kind could there be in southeast Asia?), Nick tests my sense of culinary adventure: we catch a ride to Chiang Mai's biggest moo ka tha, a buffet barbecue like nothing I've ever seen.

Nick Egert, my new role model.

Every night hundreds of working-class Thais gather under this immense shelter to gorge on table after table of raw meat and fish, which they cook themselves over fire pots at every table. Each fire pot is crowned with a metal dome for searing meat; the dome is ringed by a moat of boiling water for wilting greens and cooking noodles. And there are ready-cooked satays and curries and salads and sushi and desserts and ... but you get the idea. All you can eat for 189 baht, a little over $6.

Nick and I lay waste to plate after plate of chicken, pork, shrimp, squid, mystery cuts (to me) and much more, and probably don't even see most of what's available. But we are pikers compared to these thin Asians all around us, the girls especially, Hoovering up enough food to gag a competitive eater.

Also amazing to watch are the young men carrying fresh fire pots through the crowd, and reaching across diners to swap out dying pots; they must have replaced our fire at least twice. A scene like this would never play in America; too "dangerous." Ditto for the tons of raw meat just sitting out in the open air.

Hours later we stagger up to the street and flag down a tuk-tuk. Not two minutes down the road I realize that I left my reading glasses on our table at the moo ka tha. Nick, who speaks fluent Thai, quickly tells the driver what happened and instructs him to head back. I recover my specs, happy ending.

And ... lesson learned. This small hiccup illustrates perfectly how much my success in this foreign land will depend on acquiring real language skills -- not just assembling a toolbox of useful phrases. Without Nick here, I would be reduced to waving my arms and gibbering. And not for the first time.

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Charming local commerce.