Thai Life in Phana

Retreat in the Forest, Day one

We arrived too late this morning to take part in the alms round at Don Chao Poo so we had to take our food offering directly to the 'food station'.

All the food offered to the monks into their bowls is pooled and sorted. Far too much food is provided, but it has to feed the monks and all the men and women in white (upasika) who take 8 precepts each day of the retreat. And when they have all eaten it is the turn of the lay people.The monks eat directly from their bowls during these 10 days, as forest monks always do. 'Wet' food is put into a little plastic bag and tightly sealed with a rubber band. Most of the rice offered this morning was the sticky variety and I guess that will be the case  every day.

Now what looks good here?

All of it!

Be patient ...

... and now you can help yourselves. When a monk's bowl gets full of rice it is emptied into a big basket like this one. The bowls quickly get full so the men pushing the basket-on-a-cart have to be spaced out along the line of monks.

The girls just want to have fun.

We put up with this every year ...

... so we might as well make the best of it.

 There's a good-looking fella!

The pillow suggests he lay down to sleep rather than sat up as the most stringent tudong monks do.

A neat and tidy monk was here:

How did this robe get so far up a tree? It's a mystery.

 
 

Caught in the act!

 

Women eat Thai food (and some men too). This is their time (at last) and place.

Schoolgirls have been taking care of the food arrangements and now they are serving the lay people.

Here we have a young monk with his proud mum and sisters. There was a call for him on his mum's mobile and he had to be found so he could take the call. When he got to them it was the tiny little boy who had to hand him the phone because women don't hand something directly to a monk. I guess if his sister had had a baby daughter I would have had to do the honours as the nearest man.

When everyone had eaten it was time for most of us to go home. Not for those who were staying to practise meditation and listen to some teaching later in the day. I left too but will return again before the retreat is over.
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Preparing for retreat in Don Chao Poo

Every year Don Chao Poo forest in Phana is taken over by hundreds of monks, novices and men and women in white who have undertaken to join them for 10 days of meditation and Buddhist teachings. The people of Phana undertake to feed them every day from 21st December to 30th December. Different villages take it in turns to do this, though other people are welcome to join them on any day. Some people go to the forest every day to offer food as the long line of monks go on the morning bindabat, or alms round.

The opening ceremony, which is not attended by the monks, will take place in the forest tomorrow morning. But for the last few days people have been preparing the forest.

Boys and girls from Udomwitayakorn Primary School near the forest have been working hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of their work has been sweeping leaves from the main entrance to the forest and collecting some of the rubbish that litters the area.

The big problem is plastic bags. People bring food for the monkeys in plastic bags and although some of the bags get put into rubbish bins, the wind and the monkeys often take them out again. Some of the monkeys also have the habit of snatching bags of food and making off into the forest with it, so bags can be found all over the place. The problem of plastic bags here needs to be looked at and something done about it. Not that there is an easy solution but I'm sure it could be alleviated.

Anyway, at least once a year something gets done and this young lad seems to be enjoying himself even if he isn't working as hard as the other boys. I wonder how he got into this priviliged position. My guess is he knows somebody.

Outside the forest, this tetsaban employee is delivering flags to line the front wall of the forest.

Leaving my car inside the forest while I went off to take photos was a big mistake.

If the schoolboys were working hard, this was playtime for the forest residents.

 

I went back to the forest today, Sunday. The monks arrive today and the tetsaban had arranged a reception counter for them.

Most of the monks have attended this annual retreat before and they knew their way around the forest. All the same, someone was on hand to greet them and help them with their camping equipment. Some of them came with a glot, the tent which looks like an umbrella when it is rolled up. This is the one which tudong monks use when they are on their travels. I couldn't get a photo of one today because monks were changing their robes at each of the ones I found.

 

Many monks are into camping equipment of a more recognisable form.

A kitchen was set up near the reception area.

It looks as if a cup of tea will soon be served. These monks will only eat once a day during the 10-day retreat but tea without milk is allowable at any time, as is water, of course.

There are several of these water tanks in the forest and part of the preparations has been to clean them out.

The most important area is this one where the monks and other meditators will sit. Straw has been laid on the ground beneath the trees and there are piles of straw in several places so  that it can be renewed when necessary.

The monks also practise walking meditation along the shady paths of the forest.
 
 

I will be returning to the forest tomorrow morning because Moo 1 where I live is the main sponsor for offering food on the first day. Because it is the first day, though, there will be hundreds of people waiting to offer food to the monks. Then I will go back on other days to see how things are going. So I hope to post again about this meditation retreat later in the week.

 
 

 

Thai restaurants in small towns in Isan

Finding a restaurant in a small town in the middle of the day often proves almost impossible. If you do find one between noon and 1 p.m. it is usually so full of local government officials and secondary school students that you don't like to intrude. Or you don't want to wait that long. Or you don't want to be confronted with a scared waitress who seems to believe you are speaking any language except Thai although the older woman she calls over understands you perfectly well.

If you go along a bit later another factor preventing you eating comes into play. The restaurants are usually too well disguised for you to find them. The thing is that the people who live in these small towns all know where the restaurant is so it doesn't need a sign, or tables and chairs outside, or anything helpful like that.

My wife often drags me protesting to what I can only call dark little holes in the wall and almost always they come up with really delicious food.

 I usually go looking for small buildings with thatched roofs like this one. I have a theory that restaurants with thatched roofs serve good food. No matter how many times I have been proved wrong, I cling to this theory. In this case the tables proved to have big holes in the middle of them, which means they serve korean so-called barbecue which I don't much like.

 

 

This would be my favourite sort of restaurant.

The combination of thatch, an open-air private room, and water, probably with lots of hungry fish in it, is irresistible to me. And usually to various flying insects, too.

At night I feel the same way about fairy lights. Again, I'm often disappointed unless I am in fact looking for a dodgy karaoke bar, which I am not as a rule.

 

 

This is what drew me into a small restaurant in a very small amphur last week. We had been looking for a long time and this place, although on the main road, was well hidden. There was only a narrow entrance and the restaurant itself, a garden restaurant, was set well back in a very narrow space.

This looked attractive though, so it drew us in and conformed nicely to my theory that if people take the trouble to serve their food in pleasant surroundings then the food is probably going to be good. (I seem to have somewhat modified my original theory, so perhaps experience does teach me something.)

The food was good although there was no menu. The young woman running the place said that there was no need for one since she knew everything that was available. It turned out that they had only been open a few days so there was not much available. And they probably have a written menu by now because I'm sure she will get tired of running through it maybe hundreds of times a day.

What turned out to be odd about the place was the decoration, decor would not quite be the word, I think. I was looking for a theme, a motif, but I couldn't find one. Here are some of the things they had arranged for us to look at while we were waiting for our food:

The nest of something that flies and is dangerous.

 

Some interesting bits of twig.

 

A topiary reindeer one day not soon enough.

 

A sort of swan made from wood and dried berries.

 

Designs carried out by a retired sailor, perhaps.

There were several more but you've probably got the idea (or lack of one) by now.

There was a nice place to sit, though.

 

 

 

 

 

The very best thing was this light shade. But I can't help thinking that some distant relative (the one who went to do an MBA in Montana) will one day come looking for it.

Just another quiet day in Phana

I have to thank the Oyster Band for my title today although their song was much more heavily ironic than this post will be. That's because it really was a quiet day in Phana and as it got dark here this evening I was thinking that nothing at all had happened. But on reflection that is not quite true.

The loudspeaker from Moo 9 started up really early today, about 5 a.m. it woke me and by the sound of it it had been going on a while. There is a special harvest festival being held at Wat Burapa in Moo 9 over the next three days and it started this morning.

By about 7.15 Pensri and I were out in the drive playing badminton, a daily activity for us and a source of entertainment for the busloads of schoolkids who go by between this time and 8 o'clock. My usual intense concentration was disturbed though by what I saw on the cables strung out along the far side of the road. I rushed for my camera and then rushed with it up the road, The result was poor but at least it is proof that I'm not just making all this excitement up.

Now something like this would not get a mention if I lived in Lopburi, but here it only happens about once a year. I suspect that it is the same elderly male that goes walkabout on the wires. He is heading home here but is still about a km away.  

As we were eating breakfast on the verandah (it makes us think we are at Southfork) a young woman came by and squatted down next to Pensri and asked her advice on some family problems she is having. I wandered off to my 'study' at the back of the house to do some work on an extended piece of writing I am currently busy with in an off and on sort of way. A friend of mine, a former illegal immigrant now made legal, came by with a gift of a large fish. We said we would have it for lunch and an hour or so later he was back with lots of vegetables for us to eat with it. While he was away a friend of Pensri's came by with a ripe papaya from her garden. So that was a bit more lunch for us.

Pensri went off to do some photo-copying and while she was away another annual sort of traveller went by on a bicycle. I'm not easily fooled so I knew straight away that it was Santa Claus. Except, of course, that it wasn't. Because I caught a glimpse of a very neat leg emerging from the red robe. You shouldn't be in my blog, I thought, get back, get back to  where you once belonged Mrs Claws.

Lunchtime came and the fish was one I had never had before, The flesh was similar in colour and texture to a trout but it was a much chubbier fish (though I have never eaten chub) and a bit oily for my taste. Good though. And the papaya was sweeter and jucier than many we buy.

A couple of hours after lunch we were both on the verandah again, this time I was having a foot massage from the woman I met at the community day recently. A man from Wat Phra Lao committee came and talked us into donating towards moving the crematorium a bit further west. At the moment they need money for land-filling, 200 Baht a truck-load.  He had a big accounts book with him and took a long time telling us who had paid up so far and how much. So he put us down for 5 loads and we paid up. We don't much like their reasons for moving the crematorium (more room for the stage when they hold the annual festival) but on the other hand it will be moved further from us, so on balance it's to our advantage.

A couple more visitors. Ajarn Kanet, headteacher of one of Phana's schools, came round to talk to Pensri about the school reunion they are organizing together. Then, just after I had finished my foot massage, another ajarn came round to collect some proof-reading I had done of some work sheets he had prepared for his English classes.

And finally (but I can't really be sure of this for at least another hour since it is now 8.30 p.m.) Mr Arporn came round, coughing badly. Yesterday he was coughing worse and took himself to the district hospital just before dusk. He took a short cut from his house through Don Chao Poo, the local forest and monkey sanctuary. On one of the sandy tracks he came across a python, about 6 metres long and as fat as his admittedly skinny thigh. He didn't have much time to be frightened but he managed to be and accelerated past it because he reckoned if he had braked he would have stopped right up next to it. He also mentioned that it was lucky he wasn't on his bicycle becaue it doesn't have any lights. I don't actually think pythons are a danger to fully-grown humans but I didn't want to spoil his story. And I may be wrong. I definitely wouldn't hang around to put my theory to the test.

People used to talk about the python in Don Chao Poo but a couple of years ago the monkey population started to increase and it was assumed that the python was no more. It was a defunct python. Etc, etc, etc. I met an Englishman a couple of years ago who lives about 75 kms away. He said that he used to have a Burmese python but it grew too big so he put it in a box and drove it to Don Chao Poo where he released it, hoping it liked macaque monkeys. So I just wonder ...

I am also wondering whether tomorrow will be another quiet day in Phana. We shall see.

 

Champassak, Lao PDR

Now that I have renewed my car passport, I am already looking forward to my next trip over the border to Laos. But for me, looking forward often involves some looking back too. So I am thinking of my last few trips to Laos.

Several times I have headed for the small town of Champassak. There was a time when this was the local capital. Capital of a small kingdom, in fact, with very close ties to Phana. The Lao people of Phana came from here, although originally they had lived in Vientiane. When the French took over Laos they created a new southern capital at Pakse and Muang Champassak slowly took on its present character as a sleepy, riverside town that is not much more than a village.

 

Tranquility is guarranteed here as this scene shows. The shot was taken from my favourite guest house in Champassak.

The Mekong is wide and mostly quite shallow here, especially so as this was a couple of months into the dry season. But I have known the Mekong since 1974 and even at its highest it is definitely a lot lower now than it used to be. The Chinese have built several dams on tributary rivers and this has had a dramatic effect. Fishermen are worried that fish stocks will fall but that doesn't seem to have happened so far.

I have travelled to Muang Champassak by boat from Pakse as well as driving down the new road. The road is on the far bank so you have to take a ferry. The ferries are small, flat wooden rafts floating on oil drums but they get you there. The crossing takes about 10 minutes on the vehicle ferrry, but foot and cycle passengers can go across in little long-tail boats.

This picture shows the ferry loading up to leave Champassak.

 

The little town of Muang Champassak has a long history but there is little to show for it. There are a couple of French colonial-style villas that were once used by the Princes of Champassak, but that is about all.

On the other hand, about 7 kms south of the town is a wonderful site. Wat Phu Champassak.

 

Wat Phu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and this is what UNESCO has to say about it:

The Champasak cultural landscape, including the Vat Phou Temple complex, is a remarkably well-preserved planned landscape more than 1,000 years old. It was shaped to express the Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and humanity, using an axis from mountain top to river bank to lay out a geometric pattern of temples, shrines and waterworks extending over some 10 km. Two planned cities on the banks of the Mekong River are also part of the site, as well as Phou Kao mountain. The whole represents a development ranging from the 5th to 15th centuries, mainly associated with the Khmer Empire.

 

 

 

 

 

There is an entry fee payable by foreigners (don't tell the people on ThaiVisa!) but entry is free for Lao. I think it is 50 Baht. Pensri always tries to pay (chiefly because about three women sit there all day and most days there about six visitors at most) but she has never succeeded. "But I am Thai," she says. "No you are not. You speak Lao, so you are Lao," they insist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Near the entrance to the complex there are also women selling flowers and other offerings. This image is about half way up the mountain so making an offering here is a good excuse for having a rest before continuing the climb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like all these Khmer temples, this was originally a Hindu temple, then it became a  Buddhist temple.

These images are from early in the Buddhist period and you can see how unlike the various Thai styles of image they are.

 

The images do not always wear robes as they are doing here and there aren't always so many offerings. But I took this picture just before the Wat Phu festival, a big three-day event that includes a huge temple fair and sporting and cultural events. Last year, and probably every year, there were dancers and musicians from Vietnam and Cambodia as well as from different parts of Laos.

 

 

These relief images carved from the rock at the top of the mountain show the Hindu trinity of gods.

UNESCO again:

The Temple Complex of Vat Phou bears exceptional testimony to the cultures of south-east Asia, and in particular to the Khmer Empire which dominated the region in the 10th–14th centuries. The Vat Phou complex is an outstanding example of the integration of symbolic landscape of great spiritual significance to its natural surroundings. Contrived to express the Hindu version of the relationship between nature and humanity, Vat Phou exhibits a remarkable complex of monuments and other structures over an extensive area between river and mountain, some of outstanding architecture, many containing great works of art, and all expressing intense religious conviction and commitment.

 

It is a cliche, I know, but time really does seem to flow by at the speed of the river. In the dry season anyway, when the river seems almost apologetic about passing you by.

Along the river there are little communities like these. The river joins them and a laterite road  runs south off the metalled road from the Thai border to Pakse. If life here has changed, it is only very recently.

The Lao-Nippon Bridge with a span of 1380 metres across the Mekong at Pakse was completed in 2000 and Highway 13 south to the Cambodian border was finally upgraded in 2007. Before these projects were completed, most travel was on the river, by ferry across to Pakse, and by riveboat 'buses' up and down the river.

 

 

 

For fishermen the river remains (at least for the time-being) their main source of food. Fish for protein and vegetables grown on the fertile river-banks to eat with it.

And much older than Wat Phu, and even more impressive, is always the Mekong, Mae Nam Khong.

 

 

And nowhere is the river more impressive than the Khong Phapeng falls. I first saw them in the rainy season. I thought they would be an amazing sight with so much water in the river.

There was almost nothing to see because there was just so much water that there was very little drop in levels. In the dry season, as here, it is a different matter.

 

 

The falls are not far south of the four thousand islands, the si phan don of the famously plaintive and nostalgic lao song. Nearby you can still see a few Irawaddy dolphins, though only at a distance out of respect for them in what is after all their habitat.

 

 

 

 

Far more tourists make it down to the falls than ever get to Wat Phu. Perhaps that is just as well. The fast new Highway 13 seems to  be there just for the huge Thai tour buses and their passengers as are the food stalls and the souvenir stalls. The Thai tourists pour out, take a look at the falls, eat, dismiss the souvenirs as not as good as the ones in Thailand and then pile back into their buses. That was Champassak. That was Laos. That is the tourist industry.

 

 

On one visit to Muang Champassak, Pensri was delighted to find this portrait of the monk Chao Phone Samed. He had led her ancestors from Vientiane In about 1688 AD, stopped to repair the that near Nakon Phanom and became de facto ruler of Champassak for many years. Pensri heard a lot about him from her great-grandmother. She said that he was loved and respected so much that he was known as Yakru Kee Hom.  Readers in Thailand can work out most of that but might not be familiar with the Lao title Yakru. The Thai equivalent is Phrakru, a learned monk. They were less delicate in those days. Even less delicate, perhaps I should say.

 

Roll on my next trip to Laos.

 

 

 

When will they ever learn?

Reading about the war cemetries in Kanchanaburi recently I was put in mind of the story of a great-uncle of mine. He spent his whole life wanting to be a soldier. His grandfather and two of his uncles had illustrious careers in the Indian Army, both of them in what were known then as 'native regiments'. His grandfather had started his career in a regiment raised by the East India Company that only became part of the British army after the mutiny, or the uprising as Indians naturally prefer to call it.

This all sounds like ancient history, which of course it is. But reading a blog about a visit to the Thailand - Burma death railway and another about the Japanese invasion of Thailand , I realised that there is a connection to the present. So this is the sad story of my great-uncle, born in 1903, died in 1954.

As I said, he spent his whole life wanting to be a soldier. In 1918, aged 15, he joined up in an Indian regiment by lying about his age. I learned from my grandmother -- his older sister-- that although he joined up, the army later rejected him. A few years ago, while researching his grandfather at the National Archive at Kew, I looked up Uncle Colin's army record too. He was sent from England to India, by ship, and made his way to the regimental HQ at Peshawar, just down from the Khyber Pass. When he reported for duty, unfortunately for him he was recognized by someone who knew his real age. The very next day he was returned by train to Karachi and some time later by ship back to England and the regimental depot! His army record shows that he was rejected by the CO for being underage.

Uncle Colin spent the years up to the Second World War feeling a strong sense of injustice, made worse because his older brother, who hated soldiering and described himself as a useless soldier, had survived WW1 and achieved the rank of major.

Then came WWII and Uncle Colin's second chance. By now he was 37 years old, too old to volunteer (though later no doubt he would have been called up) so once again he lied about his age, lowering it this time. He was accepted, retrained, and sent out to Singapore.

He had been in Singapore two months when the Japanese invaded and he was taken prisoner. He was imprisoned first in Changi jail but not sent to Thailand. He was spared that, perhaps because of his age. The graves in Kanchanaburi are almost all of very young men.

Instead, he was sent to Japan. His prison camp was on the outskirts of Nagasaki so when the second atomic bomb was dropped there on 9 August 1945 he was exposed to radiation which killed him slowly and painfully nine years later.

I saw him fairly often in the years before he died and though I didn't understand why, I remember noticing that he seemed to get smaller each time we met. The other thing I remember is that he always told me what a great thing it was to be a soldier. He talked sometimes about life in the prison camp, but never mentioned how brief and inglorious his contributions to the two world wars was. I've no doubt that if he had lived he would have wanted to enlist again. When will they ever learn?

 

Out of the Fire, into the Frying Pan

The downturn in the global economy has reached Phana. At least one small enterprise that had been looking to expand is currently feeling the chill of currency disparities despite basing  its business on applying some pretty high temperatures.

Behind the innocent-looking facade of this rural scene on the outskirts of Phana, an unlikely business is carried out.

 

 

And this is Mr Arporn, the man who lives here. His field of expertise is in  producing chicken for human consumption. He worked away from Phana for more than twenty years but like many people he has returned here to start his own little business.

 

His career as an employee was fairly evenly spread in terms of time between five different companies. Two of them, the first and the last, were wholly Thai companies, but three of them were joint ventures, one with a Japanese company, one with a Dutch company and one with a company from New Zealand.

Mr Arporn speaks pretty good English, though naturally it is better when he is talking about chickens and chicken parts and the various processes involved in preparing them for consumption.

The business he runs behind the bamboo curtain is the production of cooking oil. He has installed what looks like a giant wok which is heated using wood as fuel. He buys chicken fat from a factory in Warin Chamrap, in Ubon Ratchathani Province. This factory is currently processing 30,000 birds a day. Roughly 70% of their product is for the export market and the remainder for domestic consumption. The meat sold on the domestic market is of lower grade than that for export. That is not quite as bad as it sounds because apparently it is mostly graded on size, the smaller size not being exported. But the lower grade does also include slightly bruised meat and meat which Mr Arporn describes as 'ugly'.

Mr Arporn buys all the chicken fat which is cut off as part of the factory process. It is delivered to him in Phana every day. He pays 12 Baht a kilo and reckons to need about 1,000 kilos a day. During the night the fat is rendered into oil in his giant wok, producing about 750 kilos of usable oil. After mixing the residue with used oil from KFC in Ubon, he supplies it to another business which produces animal feed. This mixture he sells on at 20 Baht a kilo, whereas the oil destined for use by food vendors and restaurants he sells at 25 Baht per kilo. Mr Arporn's younger brother and sister-in-law work for him, carefully decanting a measured quantity of oil into plastic bags and delivering them to customers.

The problem for the factory in Warin Chamrap and hence fro Mr Arporn at the moment is the strong Thai Baht and the relatively weak US Dollar. The factory  is processing 30,000 birds a day as I said, but this is down from the 70,000 a day up to the beginning of November and their break-even figure is 50,000 a day. So there is a lot less chicken fat coming Mr Arporn's way, and his customers are crying out for more cooking oil. The other downside for him is that the factory in Warin Chamrap had asked him to try to get more customers for the processed chicken pieces they produce, specifically in Laos and Vietnam where he has some contacts still from his years working in the industry. Laos, it seems, counts as the domestic market (ie they get the lower grade product) while Vietnam is an export grade market. Either way, Thai chicken is very expensive right now outside Thailand so demand has fallen considerably.

All of this may be more information than you needed about one of those topics that is rarely thought about and perhaps best not thought about at all. So it is probably time to draw the bamboo curtain across the subject.

 

I will just add that Mr Arporn tells me that he does eat chicken but only the scrawny, free-range local variety. Who can blame him? We do the same ourselves, buying it in the fresh market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Scorpion Invasion

The first scorpion I ever saw in Thailand was in a small village in Si Sa Ket Province a few years back. Then last year I found one when I moved a smallish water jar which had been damaged by a branch falling from a tree next door. The scorpion was hiding under the jar and judging by how slowly it moved and how disoriented it seemed -- unable to make up its mind which direction to scuttle off in -- I think it had been hibernating or at least having a prolonged snooze.

Then a couple of days ago Pensri reported finding one in a sort of pit she had dug to start piling cuttings that would need to be burnt because they were too big to compost (greenhouse effect? in Phana?). Although I rushed over there with my camera, the scorpion had disappeared completely.

 

 

 

 

Then only about 10 minutes later Pensri found another one in a different part of the garden. Possibly it was the same scorpion although it would have had to move a lot faster and much more decisively than last year's specimen to have got to the new location in that time.

 

He is covered in bits of earth so he was hiding under a loose pile that may have been where Pensri first saw him.

 

 

I moved him onto this piece of concrete so that there was a bit more contrast and less tocamouflage him.Two red ants have attached themselves to his tail so there could be a battle of the venoms going on here. Scorpions eat small arthropods and insects so they are playing a dangerous game.

Apparently Thai scorpions (there is only the one species here) are fairly harmless. Their venom is about as powerful as a wasp sting but as with a wasp there is always the possibility of an allergic reaction which could be fatal.  They are nocturnal and hide in dark places such as under rocks and in holes in the ground during the day which is why you don't see them very often. They are preyed on by  birds, centipedes, lizards, mice, and rats.

 

 

Living  in the vicinity of snakes (and now scorpions) which are generally invisible, I have got used to the idea that they are not hiding from me so that they can plot ways of getting at me. I think I have also eliminated the desire to kill such creatures if I should see them. At the same time I have become more mindful when moving about the garden (and the house) so that I will hopefully be prepared if I do come across one. I suppose this makes me more like them, though in the case of the scorpion there was little he could do to take avoiding action once his hiding place had been revealed. He was certainly ready to do what he could to fend me off if I attacked him, though. He wasn't to know that I wouldn't do such a thing. 

 

 

 

 

Recycling Day in Phana, Thailand

Recycling Day was a big success in Phana. As usual just about everyone in Tambon Phana was involved, either as a participant or a spectator. The competition for the moo baan with the best costumes and float drew some interesting entries from all the little communities that make up Tetsaban Tambon Phana.

This carefully-crafted hat made from recycled materials seems to epitomise the committment the people of Phana show when they are asked to put on a show like this.

The parade started in the amphur, at Samarkee School. They started marching at about 3.15 pm and reached the bridge just down from our house at about 3.30. As always they were led by two beautiful young women, in this case the two volunteers from Project Trust.

Samarkee School students were near the head of the parade:

The marchers came in all shapes and sizes:

The women of Phana always enjoy a parade and don't seem to mind making a bit of an exhibition of themselves.

 

These men enjoyed themselves too:

This was a day of many worthy slogans.

 

This one was contributed by Pensri and I to the Moo 1 (our community) section of the parade. I don't know how or why the hyphen jumped out of place.

 

This band comes from Samarkee School which has a great tradition of music and dancing.

 

This marching band performs at every occasion imaginable in Phana. They also spend a lot of time practising in the evenings and can be heard a long way off.

 

I love this section of the band, both for the ingenuity of the mobile, battery-powered amps and for the sound that comes out.

 

Here comes the mayor! On the right.

 

The decoration of the floats was fairly predictable but colourful anyway.

 

 

And after the parade comes the Tetsaban's waste-collection truck. Is it about to be made redundant by all this recycling?

 

When I caught up with the stationary parade at the market place I realised that I had contributed these Beer Lao and San Miguel cans. A young woman we know takes them from me and turns them into these attractive decorations.

This is the recycling stall. People brought bags and sacks full of stuff, all sorted. It was weighed and exchanged for an appropriate reward. There were eggs, for example, and kids could get sticker books or soft drinks.

I saw our friend who recently hosted a harvest celebration at her farm. She was having a foot massage and I decided to join her. Unfortunately, you paid for the massage with a ticket obtained by exchanging a sackful of rubbish at the stall. So the massage women were contributing their work to the cause. Well, I didn't have any rubbish with me to exchange so I'm afraid I used a bit of influence. The deputy-mayor's wife somehow acquired a ticket for me, I don't know how because she didn't have any rubbish either. Well, this is Thailand.

Somebody mistakenly thought I would make a good photograph so I asked her to take one with my camera too.

 

This foot massage business takes a lot of concentration. It is excellent anyway, and I have booked the same woman to come and give me another massage tomorrow afternoon. I'll have to pay for that one, though.

 

When they didn't have enough customers (rarely, in fact) the massage women gave each other a massage.

 

Then the on-stage performances began and that is how I ended recycling day in Phana. Very satisfying. Oh, the tetsban also provided everyone with some sticky rice and pork in a banana leaf. Packed in with the food there was also a tiny bit of banana leaf wrapped around some nam prik. Very thoughtful. And delicious.

 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 

 

 

  

 

Car Tax and Passport

 

Last year Pensri and I made a 3-week road trip through central and northern Laos, and the year before that we drove around the south. Here we parked beside the road in Hua Phan Province, on the way to the former capital of the liberated zone, Xam Nua.

 

We had stopped to admire this view:

 

Incidentally, we had had the car washed during our 2-day stop in Phonsavanh. Earlier it had looked more like this:

 

Anyway, yesterday I realised that my car tax and car passport (International Transport Permit) were both due for renewal and since a long weekend holiday is about to start I decided to get on and do it.  So I gathered the paperwork as quickly as my inefficient filing system allowed and headed into Ubon.

I have a sister-in-law in Ubon and her husband kindly looks after the insurance of my car for me, mostly because when we go back to England we get a rebate on the policy for the months the car will be off the road and he takes care of that. And the car, too, which he always starts every now and again and has checked before we get back. So I had to call on him first to pick up the insurance documents and he reminded me to go to the insurance office to pay the government premium, which this year has been reduced to 600 Baht, + stamp and VAT bringing it to 645 Baht. Last year it was about 750 Baht.

Second stop was the place which carries out a few tests on cars over a certain age (7 years, I think). This took about 15 minutes so I got to the Land Transport office at 12.20 and about 30 different people told me in a variety of English, Thai and sign language  that they were closed for lunch. So a lunch break for me, too, at the excellent Spago which I learned about from Darwin at We Love Ubon .

Back to the Land Transport office after lunch and it only took me 15 minutes to complete all the formalities and get my windscreen tax sticker for 2553 (2010). What was needed here was just the car registration log book and the insurance documents.

Next I renewed my car passport which required some different paperwork but was again very easy. This is the third time I have had a car passport (as everyone here calls it). The first year was fairly complicated and there were lots of pieces of paper involved. But last year they were just putting a computerised system in place and issued me with a new book and assured me that in future it would be very straightforward. And it was.

The only complications arise because I don't officially own the car, my son does. So what I needed here is a form signed by him and me, photo-copies of his Thai passport and my British one and a letter in Thai and English giving his permission for me to drive the car "in Thailand and other countries". So only a small amount of forgery was required. Plus the car registration document which had just been updated. This took another 20 minutes and could have been less if the woman whose signature was required had not left her desk just before my documents were put on it.

So it was a successful day in the cluthches of the Thai bureaucracy. I must say it was all very easy, very pleasant, and everyone was very kind and helpful. At one point a woman pushed in front of me at the photo-copy machine but when she got to the front of the queue the woman operating the machine turned her away and took my stuff. That was nice.

So now I am looking forward to our next trip to Laos. In the meantime I'll post a couple of blogs about those previous trips. I'll do that when things have quietened down following Phana's Rubbish Parade later today and the King's Birthday tomorrow.

Tetsaban Phana Talks Rubbish Every Day

For the last couple of weeks there has only been one topic coming over the loudspeakers of my moo ban at 6.30 am and in more detail over the tetsaban speakers at 8.05 am. RUBBISH!

Following the final assessment day which I blogged about on 10 October (Community Projects in Phana) members of the tetsaban went to the ESCAP building (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) in Bangkok to receive their award. One of the assessors, a Dr Paiboon, is also involved in a project to do with waste management and waste reduction and he was impressed by the work being done in Phana to do with recycling waste and producing fertilizer. So now Phana is the pilot project for Dr Paiboon's scheme.

Curently we are in phase 1 which has involved each moo ban holding meetings with residents to discuss what needs to be done to reduce waste. An early outcome was the decision to recycle plastic bags by washing them and re-using them. What I notice is that every household now has a bunch of clean, used plastic bags pegged up in a prominently visible place. But the bunch doesn't grow and it doesn't shrink. It seems to be just making the statement that the household has done its bit. Unless you are selling something you don't really need to use plastic bags. I suppose at some point (phase x?) someone will come around and pay a small amount for our plastic bag collections, as they already do for old newspapers, beer bottles and cans and cardboard.

I may have mentioned before that when we came back in September we found that the tetsaban had replaced the large wheelie bins they previously supplied with two very small bins, one black and one green. No need to explain the difference. But why so small? Well, it seems that Dr Paiboon or someone whose research he is familiar with, has discovered that the bigger the bin, the more rubbish is disposed of. And the second discovery is that if you leave bins in the road, a lot of litter accumulates around them. Dogs? Cats? Other creatures? The wind (from China)? It does seem to be true. But Phana was already one of the cleanest places I've ever been (outside Austria). Anyway, we no longer leave bins permanently in the road, but put them out each night for very early morning collection. Lucky the bins are smaller, in fact.

December 4, the eve of the King's birthday, is going to be an environmentally clean and friendly day throughout Thailand, I believe. Here we are going to have a parade with the theme of "NO BINS". Difficult to imagine that there will be much to it other than people walking around without any bins, which is what we all do every day. But I will be proved wrong, because when it comes to parades, Phana excels itself and comes up with a seemingly endless variety of costumes etc. as well as the obligatory beautiful young women leading the procession. I've nothing against that, even if the young women did have to get up at 4 am to have their hair and make-up done.

Just last night there was the sound of strange beating coming from Moo 8. It wasn't the usual sound of drum beats so I can only assume that it was the sound of bins being beaten.

December 4 will also mark the beginning of Phase 2 of the project, so expect an update, as well as photos of the parade.

Meanwhile, here are some photos of the presentation made to Tetsaban Phana in Bangkok. I wasn't there, so thanks to the tetsaban for the pictures.

This was the occasion. KPI stands for King Prajadhipok's Institute. 

 

These were the sponsors:

 

The mayor of Tetsaban Phana, Khun Phachoenlab Intarachan, receives the trophy:

 

And here he proudly holds the trophy and the citation outside the building:

 

 

 

Celebrating the Rice Harvest in Phana

The rice harvest is pretty much completed in Phana and a couple of friends invited us to a ceremony at their farm to mark their own successful harvest.

This celebration goes by the name of Su Kwan Khao (Calling the Rice Spirits) although this one that we attended had several non-traditional features. Traditionally, the ritual was held in the fields before the rice was taken back to the house to be stored. Our friends' house is located right next to their fields and most of their rice had already been sacked up. The little pile of unhusked rice in the foreground of this picture represents the way it used to be done.

Another variation  from tradition was that the main ritual was not performed by a Mor Kwan (a spirit expert). Instead, the pa kwan (the decorated trays in the top centre of the picture) was joined to a Buddha image by the sai sin (sacred thread). People in Phana do not generally pay much attention to spirits. Nobody has a spirit house, for instance.

The spirits were well catered for, all the same. At the four corners of the rice heap were plates containing sticky rice steamed in banana leaves, hard-boiled eggs, a boiled chicken and a bottle of alcoholic spirit. The spirits don't seem to be very interested in the offerings (though I'm sure they appreciate the thought) and the guests always end up consuming everything.

 

The ceremony was held outdoors of course in an area shaded by big mango trees. Now usually if I stand anywhere near a mango tree the red ants that live in it find me within minutes. There must have been something about the presence of nine monks that persuaded them to leave us alone that day, because the ants didn't show at all.

This nicely understated set of shrine tables and the paraphenalia that goes with it stood in one corner of the area. The lotus pond in the background set it off nicely. Our friends' farm is fully organic and recognised as a model farm by one of the King's projects.

The contrasting light and shade didn't make photography easy but the atmosphere was very peaceful.

 

Here the acting-abbot of Wat Phra Lao has extinguished the candle at the end of the chant, thereby making the water in the bowl holy.

 

It is always a nice moment when one of the monks sprinkles the lay people with the holy water. You can feel the relaxation of tension after the serious business of chanting and sitting attentively (or not).

 

Phra Dit (the acting abbot) then read from a palm-leaf book, singing the words. They were in Lao, although they were written in the Thai script. This replaced the invocation to the spirits which a mor kwan would have chanted. I was very impressed by the way he could flip the book to a new page using just his right hand. And also he could read all the words without using a finger to point at them, quite an achievement since the words are very small and the lines very long, the pages being very wide. Still, I'm not sure anyone would have known if he had skipped a line or two.

 

The lay people sitting at a suitably respectful distance made me think that the mango trees had been planted with just this ceremony in mind maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

 

While all this was going on, women and small girls were preparing the food.

 

When the time comes to serve it, the young(est) men carry out the trays.

 

The host (in white shirt) prepares to make the offering...

 

... and his wife joins him with the white envelopes containing a small gift of money for each monk, and one for the layman in the dark clothes who had requested the chanting and the taking of five precepts.

 

On this occasion the monks did not eat from individual trays but arranged themselves in small groups and enjoyed the picnic atmosphere. Monks don't speak while they are eating and they don't show any pleasure or displeasure concerning the food.

 

 

We lay people waited patiently for them to finish so that we could eat. We were not constrained to silence when the time did come for us to eat, and we were full of verbal appreciation for the food.

 

Because Buddhist ceremonies in Thailand all follow the same basic pattern, it is easy to think that your experience is going to be the same on each occasion. But in fact there are always little differences in procedure, or place, or people, or FOOD and these things keep them interesting for me even though I have attended so many and often set out convinced that I am not going to have a good time. But I do. Especially now that everyone accepts that for at least some of the time I need to sit on a chair on the fringes of the gathering.

  

 
 
 

 

 

  

 

Allegations against Monk

The other day I visited a temple near a small town about 45 kms from Phana. I had heard that it had a small viharn containing two statues of a monk who was a follower of the famous Isan meditation master, Ajaan Mun Bhuridatto. 

 

I am always interested in the variety of Buddhist temples in Thailand and the extremes of architecture and atmosphere that you can experience in them. This was definitely at the austere end of the spectrum. There was no main viharn, no preaching hall, no famous image. The ubosot (ordination hall) was very plain inside and out. The door was locked but the window shutters were open. Inside there were no murals, no columns, no ceiling ornamentation. The compound was very large and there was a huge number of tall, old trees giving plenty of shade. There was a school for novices (124 of them) with a big welcome sign in English and about three classes of younger novices were in session. Some novices were using the school library to read daily newspapers and the wall outside the library featured news of the death of former PM Samak and photographs of him. Along one side of the compound wall there were several two-storey buildings to accommodate the novices. There were also two special little buildings, one a resdience and the other an office. This was because this temple is where the Chao Kana Changwat (the head monk of the province) stays.

There was a surprising number of cars and pick-ups and a mini-van parked in the shade under several of the trees. It isn't unusual for there to be vehicles like this in a temple, but there didn't seem to be anyone around except three old ladies sitting at a table in the deserted outdoor canteen for novices. While I wandered around the grounds and visited the school, Pensri went to sit with the women. It didn't take her long to find out what was going on.

A meeting was going on between the Chao Kana Changwat and a delegation of supporters of a small forest monastery not far away in the same amphur. There was only one monk (a 20-year monk, 42 years old) staying at the temple and there were also three middle-aged women, one of them his aunt, who also stay there practising meditation, though they are not mae chee. Allegations had been made in writing that the monk was 'too strict' and requests made that he be removed from the temple. There were also allegations that he had misbehaved with one or more women.

The allegation of being too strict arose from a few people who had borrowed money from the monk, or from the temple funds. His strictness took the form of ASKING FOR THE MONEY TO BE REPAID. Now it is not uncommon in Isan for loans to be requested and granted with both sides knowing that there is little or no chance of repayment, though nothing is said to this effect. But this would not be the expectation in the case of money borrowed from a temple. Asking for repayment causes  loss of face, possibly to both sides. As for the allegations of sexual impropriety, they are easily made against a solitary monk. In this case it would seem that they only arose because the monk had been so strict about the money. He certainly wasn't wise to lend money in the first place, though if you were being charitable you might say he was being helpful.

The people Pensri spoke to, and seemingly all the people who had come for the meeting (there were about 60 of them), all supported the monk and wanted him to stay. And that was the outcome of the meeting: the monk was allowed to stay. However, when his supporters had all left, he was still in conference with the Chao Kana Changwat, so perhaps some form of pennance, or at least some good advice, was coming his way.

A few photos of the temple. The wat gate already suggests austerity in that it focuses on the Buddha's teaching, the wheel of the law and the two tudong (wandering) monks on either side. Also the lack of bright colour is significant.

 

This small viharn was specially built to house the shrine to comemorate the revered monk who spent years wandering with Ajaan Mun. The local people decided some time ago to comemmorate him here, perhaps because he settled here in his old age, or perhaps he was originally a local person.

The walls of the lower section are of brick roughly covered with stucco. The interesting thing is that these walls do not reach the ceiling and the windows have no shutters, so it is very cool and airy inside. This inner building is the original, the viharn is just an open-sided sala built over it to provide protection from the rain and sun.

 

The shrine room is also very simple and relatively uncluttered.

 

Behind the viharn is the ordination hall and these two animals were being sheltered on a kind of veranda behind the hall. They were covered in heavy-duty canvas patches, stitched fairly roughly. I suppose that they were waiting to be covered with concrete or stucco of some sort.

 

This was a very interesting temple to visit, and the 'goings on' there on that day made it even more interesting.

 
   

 

 

 

Happy Returns to Phana

I got back to Phana yesterday from my trip to Malaysia and a few days in Bangkok. I had only been away ten days so unsurprisingly nothing had really changed. The harvest is just about completed so the fields have changed colour quite dramatically. And the weather has changed again. When I left it had got unseasonably hot again after a very brief cold spell. But when I got here at about mid-day it was immediately apparent that the cold weather was back. And by bed-time I was closing all the windows and searching for more blankets.

 

When I got back to Phana in September after six months away, there had been more significant changes so I went around taking photos. The new market and bus station was well on the way to completion, now scheduled for a December opening.

 

 

 

A private building project that had been completed was the new 'resort' just outside town. It looks very nice and has a restaurant with several items listed that I really like but can not get in Phana. Tod mun kung, for eaxample. The waitress said they had that every day so I ordered some. Not today, I was told about 15 minutes later. On my next (and probably last) visit, exactly the same thing happened. All that glitters ...

 

I'm not expecting Phana to become a major tourist destination, however. When I asked how much the bungalows were, I was quoted two prices, one for three hours and one for the night. So I guess they are not exactly aiming at too many long-term visitors. But they do quite a good trade in karaoke, even at lunch time.

The most mysterious change was to the course of the Huay Phra Lao. Upstream from the bridge the banks had been cleared and the stream revealed to be divided, whether around a small island or not I haven't been able to find out yet. The view is certainly improved and it looks as if a riverside walk is planned. Previously the stream only seemed to come from the top right of this picture. 

 

Back in 1982 I swam upstream of the bridge with our kids and some relatives. I can't imagine anyone doing that now, though doubtless it is no less wholesome than it was then and I don't remember anyone getting ill or anything. A little child nearly got swept away but wouldn't have got far because the bridge was just being built then and there was lots of bamboo scaffolding in the river forming a kind of porous dam. I think the present bridge is a newer one.

 

Downstream nothing has changed. A lot of fishing goes on at the weir, usually.

 

Who said Isan is a desert? Not here, it isn't. The Huay Phra Lao divides the old town of Ban Phana from the new town, the amphur. A few kilometres downstream it joins the larger Se Bok, which in turn flows into the Mae Nam Mun east of Ubon. The Mun in turn flows into the Mekong at Khong Chiam, and then it's all the way to the sea through Cambodia and Vietnam.

People thought I would be interested in the new machines set up around the old market place in Ban Phana and along the road where the tetsaban offices are in the amphur. But believe me, despite their lurid colours, taking these photos is the nearest I am likely to get to these things. Other people find them amusing, though, especially round about dusk. Not at the moment, perhaps. Too cold.

 

Close up they are even more off-putting.

 

More to my taste are these new kuti in Wat Phra Lao:

 

So Phana changes, but so far it still looks very nice, I think, and I can't imagine not being glad to get back here. So, many more happy returns, I hope.
 
 
 

 

Professional mor lam in Phana

This is a professional mor lam performance. On the occasion I saw them in Phana only the woman sang, accompanied by the khaen player. To be honest the other man did not do a lot. He hardly danced and he didn't sing. It is possible he was just having a sulk. I can't believe he was only there for ornamental reasons. Sentimental, perhaps.

This was the finale of the Tetsaban Phana  celebration for Tod Kathin last month. One of the things I find most peculiar in Phana (and maybe that could read 'in Thailand') is that by the time the headline act comes on, everyone has gone home! I think no more than a dozen of us were here to listen to this group. And that was a pity because they were realyy pretty good. Earlier the audience had been huge because so many kids and old folk were performing, so all their friends and relatives (ie. everyone in Phana) was there to support them and take pride in them or have a good laugh at their expense.

So what the Tetsaban should have done (are you reading this down at the tetsaban offices?) was to put the professionals on early and give the youngsters a good model. (How come I always know best, in hindsight at least?)

Anyway, they were good. Here they are, and thanks to the Tetsaban for finding them.

 

 

OK, I take it back. He did dance a bit.

And here is me filming them. Not elegantly posed perhaps. But you see what I mean about the sparse audience?