Ron in Thailand: Missive 2

I’m trying! I’m trying! I’ll just sneak in a blog every 10days or so – emphasis on “or so”! This year I have a number of people who have sponsored me for a day’s work so some of you have heard from me as I have sent emails and letters after the day’s work. We are half way through the building trip now and the shape of the place is changing as it usually does when we are here. We are putting a verandah on the front of the dining room and a quite tricky connecting walkway between the dining room and the big girls’ house. Two years ago we were debating whether to line up the new dining room with the big girls’ house or the old dining room. We decided to compromise and not line up with either. Now our walkway is wider at one end than the other – hence the trickiness.
We have our posts up, the beams and rafters are on, the renewed plumbing is finished and as I write Chris and Boonsalit are getting ready for the tiles, Malcolm is rewiring the fans and lights, Deo and Sun are putting up rafters ready for the ceiling, and Richard and I are preparing the verandah and the walkway for concrete. I have just finished a day on the jackhammer and shovel (as has Richard) so we were glad to hear the knock off whistle – or more correctly Malcolm yelling out “Pack up! Go home!” in his best Thai accent.
We have been blessed with continual mild weather and cool mornings. The Thais emerge all rugged up and rush over for a warming hug and to report how many doonas they slept under last night. Today was a bit hotter – just as the jackhammer appeared wouldn’t you know it!
A highlight of the last couple of weeks was a trip to Khon Kaen where, as most of you know, we have an orphanage caring for 40 HIV+ children. In recent weeks we have finally found some land in KK on which to build a new orphanage. Our current facility is a leased property (although we have invested quite a bit in it to make it suitable for an orphanage) and the lease runs out in two and a half years’ time. The site is beautiful with a couple of houses on it and a driveway of palms with some rice paddies at the back. Buying in KK is quite expensive – a million baht per rai (40 metre square) compared to less than 50,000 baht a rai here in the country at Phetchabun. There is about 9 rai there so is costing about $330,000. The first payment was made on the weekend that we were there – and a great step of faith is required to make the remaining payments each year from now on.
Malcolm has been busy with his design programme on his computer designing accommodation and dining rooms and Eric is drawing up the shape of the land so the buildings can be placed (just so he can get out of the jackhammer work I reckon – then again, at 83 that’s probably fair enough). We are all so excited about it that we are planning to spend the 2012 building trip at KK putting up the first of the buildings – or at least enough to accommodate the kids we have at the moment. The vision is to eventually have up to 100 kids there so the plans are being prepared accordingly.
It wouldn’t be a trip to Khon Kaen if we didn’t go to the Steak House and I reckon their steaks are getting better and better. Inflation has struck though and instead of “all you can eat for 99baht ($3.40) it is now 109baht ($3.70). We have a strange and mad tradition about going to the steak house – any first timers get taken by the hand and are run back to the car. The looks of amazement on the faces of the Thais as they watch this piece of madness is a sight to behold. Again in deference to age we thought we would give Eric a break and not subject him to something which might see the end of his days.
Colleen has continued to struggle with her very painful wrist but hopefully will be on top of it soon. She had an experience the other night which took her mind off it when she stepped on a scorpion in bare feet in our lounge room. No harm done – except to the scorpion who was dispatched very quickly. It was only 5cm long and only a baby compared to some real beauties we are uncovering in our digging – some of them would be 15cm long (including their tail). We haven’t had any encounters with snakes yet in our house but that’s normal for the dry season.
Colleen has started her English classes with the older girls and they have a good time together. She is especially pleased with our Whun whose English has come on in leaps and bounds. She has become quite a chatterbox in English – she has always been a chatterbox in Thai! We have had a few other teams passing through while we are here. One team, led by Paul and Sheryll Lanham of Nambour have been here every year that we have and we enjoy a great time with them. Every year Malcolm gets closer and closer to dumping Sheryll in the dam and she spends all year plotting revenge! Colleen has also been active “selling” child sponsorships to anyone interested on these teams.
Time to get this off to my son Andrew who kindly puts all this stuff onto the blog site.
God bless till next time.
Ron