Category: Phuket

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The Smoking Hot Pot

Yesterday I bought a small hot pot to heat water for some hot beverages in the hotel room. It cost around US$9. I plugged it in, let it heat up the water and the area around the electric plug started smoking. I thought it might be just some new material that was not cleaned off when it was put in the box for sale so I tried it again. The second time it started smoking and smelling like some kind of plastic material burning. I looked more closely at it and it was the plastic bottom just above the electric outlet on the pot. The plastic was also starting to bubble which indicates it was getting way too hot.

I took it back to the shop and they pointed to the little sticker on the side of the pot that said that the electric connector to the pot has to be pulled out at a certain time or the pot will start smoking which is not a problem. But another problem was that the pot was making a popping sound as well which indicates that the plastic was burning. So I told him I didn’t want it because it was actually dangerous and after giving them another US$3 I got a more advanced hot pot which doesn’t smoke.

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Italian Encounter in Patong

Last night with Kung (EBI-chan, 海老ちゃん）we sat and ordered at an Italian owned restaurant. The owner, an Italian woman, was totally drunk, taking our orders; coffee for Kung and garlic bread and deep fried squid for me. Kung got his coffee and bread and I got baby octopus legs with no batter and tough as a tire. The owner, still sloshed, came to talk to us. I used some of my very spotty Italian to explain Kung and I used to work together 26 years ago in the diving business, etc. She explained she was from Modena and I mentioned Ferrari. She said she is wearing a Ferrari red blouse because she is from Maranello, the HQ of Ferrari and the Ferrari racetrack. I mentioned Ristorante Montana and their famous tortellini. She was so happy to hear someone knew about her wonderful home town. I was there with a friend this last June.

Then she mentioned she was stocking up on food because “you don’t know what is happening tomorrow”. Then she mentioned her son and started to weep. I was not sure if she was referring to something happening here in Phuket or something in her home town in Northern Italy that is suffering terribly from the virus. I felt sorry for her.

So, I didn’t complain about the food, paid and thanked them. We need to be flexible, especially now, not knowing what others might be going through.

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A “Stuck” Beijing Couple

Walking on the beach I came across a Beijing couple playing with a dog and turns out the husband studied in England for several years and was a very good English speaker. We chatted about (I listened mostly) his negative feelings concerning the conduct of the current communist party cadre. The have a Thai friend to house them, have been her a month and got permission from the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok to stay another month and then from Thai immigration due to the current Covid related problems. He and his wife want to stay here since he can do his internet business anywhere. If they go back there is a good chance they will taken to a hotel somewhere and locked up for 2 weeks. Being in Patong is preferable (hahaha, of course).