Missive 8

This should be a brief one – I’m off home in a couple of days so this will have to keep my massive readership satisfied for a while. We are at the beginning of “sonkraan” here in Thailand – a huge nationwide festival celebrating, I gather, the Thai new year, although fun, games and shenanigans with water seems to be pre-eminent over the real purpose. Not a lot different to our Easter I suppose where eggs and buns and booze swamp the real thing. Just like Easter is a danger time on our roads in Australia, the road toll during sonkraan is horrendous.

But the fun continues unabated. An enormous number of water pistols and buckets are sold and an enormous amount of water is thrown over everything and everyone. It is wise to keep your car doors locked while driving in the street – it is not uncommon for someone to open your car door at traffic lights and throw a bucket of water in. The kids here are very excited and are looking forward to getting themselves and everyone else wet.

A downside (for me) to sonkraan is that everyone in Thailand is going somewhere else and the buses are full. I haven’t been able to get a ticket to get to Bangkok to fly home so it looks like I’ll have to drive my ute there and park it at Rob and Jean’s place.

We don't usually celebrate Good Friday here, so Thursday night I organised everybody to tell the Easter story. We started in the dining room where we had bread and grape juice and we remembered the meal Jesus had with his disciples. We then went out under some trees to represent the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed and some of the kids acted as the sleeping disciples. Jesus was duly arrested by the big boys and we then went to another place where I had a fire and 3 of the girls asked Peter if he knew Jesus - which of course he denied. I then told them about the trial and had a crown of thorns and a whip which one of the boys wielded with relish. I had made a big cross and one of the boys dragged this to the front of Ban Meata. We then put some nails in the cross and stood it up where we’ll leave it at least over Easter. It was a special time and everybody got into the spirit of the story really well.

Bit by bit we are getting the old dining room ready as a pre-school before the new school year. We have put in toilets and a shower, tiled that area, taken the ceiling tiles down and painted them, painted the walls throughout in some bright colours, put a verandah out the back (no old rocking chair yet!), and put in some drainage ditches. There is still a bit to do but I think it is on target.

Last weekend I took the remaining big girls, Whun, Why, Waen, Joop Jang and Far, and big Whun of course, up to the mountains and we had a wonderful day. We visited an enormous temple at Khao Kho and the girls had a bit of a go at ringing the 108 brass bells hanging outside. We didn’t wake up any of the gods and were grateful that ours doesn’t need to be woken up! We then went to a war memorial in a spot where there was a good deal of fighting against communist insurgents coming down from Laos in the 70’s. The marble memorial lists hundreds of names of those who died.

Nearby was a weapons museum and we had a good time looking over old helicopters and tanks and guns. From there we went to the “International Library”, rather incongruously perched on top of a mountain. What it lacked as a library (some fairly old, dusty books) it made up for in the beautiful gardens in which it is set. From there we visited the Prince’s holiday palace, sitting on top of the next mountain, and then drove down into Phetchabun where we had a meal and did some shopping at Tescos. I think the girls enjoyed the last visit as much as anything else!

I’ve had the chance to get out of the office in recent days and up to the farm. We are planting a pasture grass in our rice paddies and to do this we brought 4 ute-loads of the grass, spread it on the mud and pressed it in where it will grow in a similar fashion to couch or kikuyu. I spent a day or so up to my calves in mud – not as hard as planting rice though because we did not have to bend over as much.

We have just put in another large dam on the farm and are hoping that this will help us have enough water over the dry months to be able to keep pasture going as well as the fruit trees and the vegetables.

Some of the routines of Ban Meata are relaxed during the holidays and as I write there are kids at the dam by the visitors’ centre with bamboo poles and hooks doing some fishing. They also like to sit outside after dark and catch flying beetles. They set up a light on a pole and catch the beetles and drop them in a bucket of water. They then cook them and eat them. The other day I found them playing with beetles very creatively. They had a number of dung beetles which they put behind their toy cars and “raced” them. Another highlight has been collecting ants’ eggs. The rather ferocious red ants live in large leaf cocoons in the trees and the kids climb up and knock them down or hold buckets under them and knock them off with a bamboo pole. The ants aren’t all that keen on the idea and the kids do a fair bit of hopping and jumping about. They then shake the eggs into a bucket with some flour so the ants will walk away. And what do they do with the eggs? You guessed it, they are a delicacy and they are eaten as they are or put in some of the dishes at lunch time.

Well, while it is still fairly brief I’ll end. We will be leaving for Thailand again on May 14th, a few days after our daughter Michelle’s wedding. I have an exciting month ahead – back with Colleen again after our longest absence in 40 years, seeing our new grand-daughter Gemma, spending time with the other grandchildren, and of course Michelle’s and Yevan’s wedding.

Bless you all
Ron