Copyright (C) 2007 by F. Scott Sinclair. All Rights Reserved. Due to the increasing cost of household natural gas, Thais have begun to revert to a cheaper form of energy of yesteryear. What might that be...? The name sounds like the Spanish word: tacos, or in English parlance: charcoal, but not the uniform charcoal briquette variety. A real mixed bag of sizes and shapes, but very effective: supplying the necessary energy for daily cooking and easing the burden on the pocketbook. Just one of those bags of charcoal fragments costs approximately 225 Thai baht ($6.64 USD). To show how the cost of energy has escalated and is affecting everyone's life, that same bag of charcoal used to cost only 100 Thai baht a few years ago. And one of those bags lasts a longtime compared to the use of natural gas. Natural gas costs about 290 Thai baht for a 16.5 kilo bottle. I wouldn't be surprised if the cooking time for one bag of charcoal equals nearly one and a half containers of natural gas. If there's a will, there's a way to cut energy costs here in the Land of Smiles. This photo was taken with my trusty Kodak P-850 digital camera from a roadside fruit stand, and has also captured a typical tractor trailer unit that can be seen throughout Thailand transporting commerce to various destinations. And there's a house being built across the highway which shows you how Thai homes are constructed: solidly, folks... You'll rarely, if ever, see plasterboard walls in a Thai house. One-hundred percent cement, steel and brick construction. The only place Thais use plasterboard is in the ceilings for the most part. Only businesses use plasterboard in their buildings to save money on construction costs.
