Before heading back to Cambodia, I flew from Florida to Kentucky to see family and friends, as well as gather some documents for visa/immigration purposes.
Evansville, Indiana 🌽
I arrived at the Louisville, Kentucky airport and was greeted by my dad and stepmom, Ron and Sandy. My dad was the driver, and already quite tired when he arrived, so I drove the nearly 2 hours back to his house on the Indiana side of the border in Evansville. He has a very nice dock behind his house where he like to relax, feed the catfish, and occasionally launch his foot-paddle boat.
Alligator Snapper 🐢
=I'm not 100% sure this little guy was an alligator snapper, but I found him in my dad's lawn, struggling to crawl through the grass and reach the lake. Southern Indiana is about as far north as alligator snapping turtles go, and if this is one, it could easily reach 115+ kilograms in adulthood. With this cute killer in the palm of my hand, I walked down to lake's edge and put him in the water.
Catfish Feeding Time 🐟
My dad keeps a bag of fish food at the dock, and he insisted I hang around for a feeding session. Apparently a Thai family had put a few koi fish into this lake several years ago, and occasionally they join the catfish for dinner. The moment I put my phone away they swam through, one white and gold and the other one gold.
Dinner With Dad 🍛
In Evansville there is a single Thai restaurant that I am aware of, and it's not good, but the staff are friendly and it's the only one in a town with 150,000 people, so it stays in business. I always forget how common it is for foreign foods to be adapted to American tastes, and because there is no Thai expat community in this part of Indiana, the food is made for 'Mericans.
The end result is a larb tofu that looks more like stir-fried veggies than the plate of herbs and shallots the dish would normally be in Southeast Asia. I was so perplexed by the plate that I took a pic and sent it to my wife back in Cambodia. It was edible though, even dare I say tasty, but larb it was not.
My 40th Birthday 🍾
My hometown is not far from where my dad now lives, and it is still where he maintains his used car sales business. June 1st was my 40th birthday, and we celebrated by having a family get together at, believe it or not, a Thai located in a town with 5,000 people only a few miles from the family farm.
Several of my uncles and aunts from my dad's side of the family joined us. This simple restaurant has been here for more than 20 years, located in the front of her husband's tow truck business, and has gained a loyal customer base through the years. The woman here was not a cook originally, but learned to make Thai dishes over the phone by asking friends and family back in her village. The result was recipes not influenced by American taste buds, and pretty authentic compared to Thai dishes back in the motherland.
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