Cool Find at the Morning Market

Found this cool candle holder at the Morning Market

Slide the Glass Up to Put in Candle

 The Mukdahan Morning Market is quite a place. This large open air market opens daily at around 2 am and services the local and provincial restaurants, groceries and citizens with a wide variety of produce, eggs, fish, meats and many other products. There are plenty of small shops inside and around the market that sell all sorts of goods.
My wife and I went to the morning market early today to get fruit, veggies and some meat for the dog. I stopped and had my normal cup of coffee, cafe bolan, which is a thick strong Isaan style coffee with condensed sweet milk at the bottom of the glass. The missus continued shopping and I was assigned my typical duty of lugging out the booty which I really don't mind.  When we were walking out I saw a stall that was selling a few of these lamps like the one in the pictures. The are made of cut up tin cans bent and folded, a piece of wire for the handle and some cut up strips of glass. To put in a candle you just slide the glass part up and put the candle on the base. Total cost 50 baht. This is really coool we will give it a try on our patio tonight!
- Khun Rut

View Mukdahan Morning Market in a larger map

Update!!!! On finding someone to work on my video camera, I went back on Friday and sure enough the guy told me that he was able to fix it and that he would call back when he knew what he had to do to repair it. He called yesterday on Sunday and told me it needed a new head and it would cost about 2500 baht. I thought about it and called back authorizing the order.

Later on I was checking on the web and found there is a niche of equipment called pocket camcorders. They are priced in the under 200 usd range. They can shoot hours of video and save it to an SD card. Sounds great to me. I had the wife call him last night to have him hold up on the order but his wife said he had already ordered the part. I thought that unlikely but stopped by today to see him and he told me that he ordered it yesterday from Sakon Nakon and had it brought in by bus. Anyhow we asked him if he wanted to buy the camera and sell it or something but he told me he already had a buyer for it and when it was done he would put us together and we could make a deal. My fantasy is that it will be enough to cover repairs and buy a new camera too. It is looking good for now.
- Khun Rut


Got a new podcast today about Finding Stuff in Muk. Have a good time with it.As always click on the play button by the link to launch the player or right click the link and save it to your PC.
- Khun Rut

Finding Stuff in Mukdahan

Ball and Chain

How I got there I don't know.... Janis doin' Ball and Chain at the 1st Monterrey Pop Festival in 67. Everyone wasted on Owsley's Monterrey Purple.... anyway here it is... just wow. - Khun Rut

Foghorn Leghorn and the Chicken Hawk

It's cartoon time again. This time my favorite Foghorn Leghorn   My daughter mentioned on Facebook today that I loved Foghorn Leghorn. Well I still do. You got everything you need for laughs a Chicken, a Chicken Hawk and  a Dog. Enjoy,
- Khun Rut

Update!!!! The Top Charoen Mystery

What is going on with Top Charoen in Mukdahan????

Update!!!! I found another location hiding in plain sight just down the hill from Mukdahan School. Don't know How long its been there but that brings the grand total to 8. Note: there are only 6 7/11 stores in Mukdahan. Guess there are a lot of people with a lot of money that have bad eyes here. - Khun Rut

Original Story....
There is something going on in Mukdahan with Top Charoen. Let me start by saying that Mukdahan is not that big of a city. Probably the population is about 50,000 or less. This will give you some perspective. When I first moved here there was one Top Charoen Optical franchise in town. There were several other places where you could get eyeglasses made but Top Charoen was the most well known brand in all of Thailand for this service. For a long time there was just this one location. When Tesco/Lotus opened there was a small Top Charoen shop inside of Lotus. Then about 3 years ago a new branch opened near the main entrance to the Indochina market. Things stayed like this for a long time.

Then rapidly, within the past year, more branches started opening rapidly all in a very close area. Just down the street about 70 meters from the original location another store opened in an old magazine shop and about 50 meters further on is another shop on the other side of the street. so within about 150 meters there are 3 branches on the same road. if you stand at the top of the street you can see them all. Two blocks south of the branch near the Indochina market on the two more locations are once again on the same road. One is on the Indochina Market itself and the other is on the Mukdhan - Don Tan Road.

I don't know what is up with this but there are way more Top Charoen stores than this city needs. I have my ideas but an not sure. Is this happening in any other cities? I would love to hear it until then I will just chalk it up to a mystery. I have included a map of all the locations so you can see how close they are together. There is also a gallery of all the locations. I included every one but the one in Lotus since you aren't allowed to take photographs in their stores.

As I find more locations I will update the page in hopes of unraveling the mystery.


View Top Charoen Mukdahan in a larger map

Below is a gallery of the Top Charoen Branches in Mukdhan. Click on a thumbnail for bigger images (I hope you like shocking blue and white.)

      

      

Yum Yum Eat Em Up

I was talking to my friend John today while we were playing chess and some how it got around to Yum Yum Eat Em Up... I think it was the dog eating something. Anyhow he couldn't remember the classic Our Gang clip about it. I told him I thought it was a drunken indian chasing the kids around. But I remembered wrong it was the Wild Man from Borneo. This isn't the full episode but its about 9 minutes of comedy gold.
- Khun Rut

Stooge Time

Its been raining most of the day and night. Me and the dog are bachelors tonight cuz the wife is visiting her family in Roi Et. I think its time for some Stooge Mania. The 3 Stooges are like a secondary sexual characteristic, almost all men like and almost all women don't. So guys, Enjoy!!!!

- Khun Rut