Friends and guests from all over the world came to our land in late January to help us build a natural straw bale and mud house for Tit Yai, an Issan man who is partially paralyzed. We were fortunate to have teachers from baandin.org and Michel Spaan from Holland along with children and teachers from the Sri Sangwan Khon Kaen School for children with disabilities and many local Issan people help us make this house. Thanks everyone – we could not have done it without you! I posted pictures in an earlier post so please check them out if you have not already.
(Note: At the end of March 2010 Yui and I showed this video we made a few months earlier to some members of a committee for public health and they were quite moved by it – especially the shot of the boy seen above making the Bua Loi – and it may have helped promote our future projects in aiding people with disabilities. )
This is another of our Thai dessert cooking classes for the kids at the Sri Sangwan School for children with disabilities. The Bua Loi has a kinda Gummi Bear texture and is made with natural ingredients – fruit for flavor and flowers for coloring. Music is both a Thai and Jazz version of the children’s classic “If You’re Happy and You Know it” – the Thai version by my wife and the jazz version is by David Leonhardt from the album “Jazz for Kids”.
A cooking class on making Krong Kran, a Thai dessert that Yui and her aunt taught to the kids at the Sri Sangwan School for children with disabilities in Khon Kaen. The colors and flavors of the dessert were from flowers and plants (my contribution was to collect the blue flowers from the bushes outside our house). The result was a very chewy Gumi Bear-like candy that we sprinkled on some awesome local ice cream. The recipe is kinda hard to put down on paper but very simple. Music in the video is Bach Concerto #4 in A performed by Iona Brown Academy of St Martin in The Fields.
The Khon Kaen Mountain Bike team and I rode to Kalasin from Khon Kaen on Saturday and we visited the waterfalls that have T-rex dinosaur footprinting. Kalasin has many dinosaur fossils and there are many museums and exhibits that show the finds.
From my trip last month to Ohio. I visit the Old Man’s Cave in Logan Ohio and then J and I ride our bikes on the Kokosing Gap Trail in Mount Vernon, Ohio.
I visit the beautiful Athens Ohio, home of Ohio University and where I attended the wedding of Erin Quilty and Denny Mcgee. Erin is the cousin of my fiance, J. Please watch this video J and I made – I hope you like it and congratulations Erin and Denny!
On a lake outside Khon Kaen, Thailand, Yui shows how some of the local Issan food is found and made. Yui and I made this last fall for my sister in the States to show her a Thai “Supermarket.” Actually there are western supermarkets in the bigger cities of Thailand, like Khon Kaen, and western diets and weight problems too, unfortunately, but the traditional local ways of Issan still exist in the countryside. Music “Made in Thailand” is by Carabro. Yui’s Guide to Thailand – Local Supermarket from James Quilty on Vimeo.
Yui and I were walking in Hua Hin when she recognized the accent of the fisherwomen working on the docks as from her town of Trat – which is on the other side of the Gulf – and it turns out the women knew her family. This originally was made for www.thewrongguide.com.
is a scenic artist and filmmaker who lives part time in Ohio and Khon Kaen. He first came to Thailand in 1972 as a child and returned in 2004 with the Phuket Project to aid in the Tsunami relief effort.
Yui
is a doctor in Khon Kaen. She has studied in the U.S. and Great Britiain but is happiest on a bike riding around Thailand with the Khon Kaen Mountain Bike Team
Tom and Shampoo
are English Cocker Spaniels who live in Khon Kaen, but often travel to other planets in a spaceship they designed and fight alongside Hanuman against all evil. They also like swimming and sleeping.
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