Monk

One of the lads in the village called Port became a monk. He is not married yet, so it is thought that by doing this for a week or a month, he will bring good luck to his parents. Port had great hair like Jim Morrison of the Doors, until he shaved his head.

All the villagers helped with the party. Cooking, killing the pigs and all the other jobs. My job was drinking which I actually did too well.

Good luck for the village - Patanar (sp)

Many villagers involved themselves in cleaning the village. This happens once a year and is called Pat-a-nar. This involved cutting back trees, cutting grass and clearing rubbish in communal areas. In the afternoon there was a blessing for the village and in the evening there was a party.

Finishing the garden

We had 15 truckloads of rice field soil dumped in the garden and pushed around by tractor. Hopefully the orange tree seedlings that I have grown will get big enough to plant in a few months. We might not get good oranges but they supposably smell good. The other news from the garden is that the potatoes are sprouting, everyone said that potatoes had no chance, well I dont know whats happening under the soil but above is looking good. Bananas coming on, water melons self seeded, guavas good and a few self seeded tomatoes have been good.

Xmas

We spent christmas afternoon at the Farang Connection in Surin, which is about 40km from us. A great meal and good company. Mac & Bee and Ron & Cha from the next village and Ray & Sanan from the south of Buriram county.

Village life

It has been quite quiet in the past few weeks, even though a lot of people came back to the village for new year. The returnees were mainly men but also a few women who work on building sites around Thailand. The ones closest to me work at Bangkok and Phuket at present. They generally work for very little money, starting salary is about 170 bht a day (£2.40), more experienced workers can get a lot more though and some get good bonuses. However compared to wages in the UK they get very little, though they have advantages that we do not have, such as they can live off the land to a greater extent than we could ever. They appear to be going back after a week in the village.
Jobs recently around the village .... a month ago, everyone was collecting rice straw for the buffalo and cows during rice growing season when they can not be let out into the fields.
After that everyone went mad on draining the pools in the rice fields and finding fish and snails, a lot of the fish have been saved by making a smelly rotten fish sauce type thing, i suppose like salting, smoking, pickling and currying, it saves the fish from really rotting.
Digging for land crabs is taking place, mainly by older women it appears to me. Many people are tending little allotment gardens, like myself, because it is the cold season.

Here are two pics, one of Joe with two frogs for eating, and a woman looking for snails as the pond is drained.

The patter of tiny hooves

I am pleased to announce that the smaller of our two female buffalo has had a baby girl, the larger one (and the one that I thought was pregnant) (which all the thai men give me thumbs up signal when talking about) her has yet to give birth.

She has now given birth to a baby boy buffalo, the second pic.