We have had one(another) of those 'difficult periods'. Elodie continues physically still very unwell, so we were stuck in BKK for longer than we wanted. However she walks by pulling and propping herself around and laughs and squawks a great deal. She is not the least interested in toys only real things and books. Presently her favourite 'toys' are the Epson Printer with its little silver nipples, the keyboard, a deodorant stick which rolls, any plastic bag and the clothes horse which she uses as a climbing frame. Her favourite book came free with a packet of washing powder-it is the best because it is plastic and can be eaten. It has pictures of giraffe, zebras and tigers-all of which she went to see in Chiang Mai Zoo!
She has already eaten most of The Insects of Thailand which was a board book. Heavily into Bill Martin's Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See and Spot-also a bizarre book which Thai Airways gave her featuring elephants treading on rabbits!
I asked the very good Doctor Tongkao at the Childrens Hospital how many Posterior Sagitttal Anorectoplasties he had performed and he grinned...so that was not encouraging...Elodie certainly not going to be his first however much we like him.....while probably in Great Ormond Street it is routine, which is not encouraging either.
We went on a peculiar trip to the Hospital.. Ladprao that is... at their request.. to 'discuss' matters. We are waiting on the upshot of this. Anyway me, K, her sister and husband.. and E went with two lawyers to talk, as we thought, to the assembled might of Lasdprao.. which amounted one very short, clever, Chinese guy from Chicago. We discursed about all matters medical for three hours, while he tried to persuade us to bring E back to the Hospital, or at least send her to Chula.. the University Hospital...while we mournfully said ...no.. we were going to the UK if she needed the operation.
So we have arrived at a point where 'yes maybe the doctor made a little error..but let us not dwell on that, rather look to the future and see how Ladprao 'can help you'! He said he has to talk to his Board of Directors, however it appears the hospital belongs to him! We shall know the extent of their 'help' in a couple of weeks. No 'help' we will be off to the courts, which they certainly do not want.............!! The help only amounts to enough to go to GOSH privately. As we said to him if this was the UK or US you would be facing a claim for £30m.
Anyway then my friend Chulee arrived with her two daughters aged c20, her brother, her grand-daughter and some Iranian she appeared to be trying to marry off to one of the daughters....so we buzzed about a bit, looked at ruins and rivers, and made fabulous pork and shrimp BBQs...then went to Chiang Mai....the Rose of the North.....well once. Chulee kept dragging her daughters into the Wat at every opportunity and conversing at length with any monk she could find, which was a bit tedious for them. In the Wat at Tungsaliam-which is about 30 kilo from Sawangkhalok her younger daughter came across a woman with a mongoose tied up in a sack. As it ibrings good merit to release a caged animal the mongoose was purchased. It then had to sit snarling and spitting in the car until a suitable release terrain was found..I suggested we should find a snake, but this was not thought amusing. I am amazesd no-one got bitten. However on being tipped out of the sack the mongoose sat and sulked..so maybe it was a 'tame' one after all.
It suddenly struck me, looking out the hotel window, how like Tucson Chiang Mai is. The mountains rise above it in shapes very similar to Mt. Lemmon and it stretches for miles., now, East and West as well as down to Lamphun. And the town is awash with Spas, herbal soaps, massage oils and other organic confections as well as an array of tatty handicrafts, very beautiful antique and modern furniture and artefacts, and the usual Thai tat...but it is still a lovely city and has an exquisite flower market. And the restaurants by the river are magical.
We went on a completely batty excursion to the Burmese border and looked at caves, elephants and even more long-necked Karens in their little village zoo. Unlike the Karens in Mae Hong Son, many of these girls were teenagers...must be an amazingly good business..but what a one......the minibuses roll in..about 10 an hour every day I should say...buy some tat, take photos, shell out guilt money/......yuk. In Mae Hong Son you have to get in a boat to get to their villages and the exhibits are the same ones I saw in the Geographical Magazine 40 years ago.......Most depressing was the number of 'Salvation' Churches we passed. I see that that part of N. Thailand appears on the Missionary maps as 'Evangelised' Bad Luck.
European and American Missionaries speak Thai(and other dialects) far better than any one else..which speaks something for their motivation, if not training, as opposed to any one else!
For some reason there seems to be a preponderance of Finn and Lutheran missionaries..why?
When we went to BKK this time we stayed, for reasons unclear to me, in a hotel that belonged to a university! It was full of Americans, who I rather naively thought had come to learn Thai...well of course they had...but then on Sunday morning I viewed the announcement board advertising the day's conventions and Room 101 was 'The Bible' Ah!
K bought a ton of antique silver bracelets and is now weighed down like a hill-tribe maiden........all you can say it is cheaper than gold, which with the approach of Chinese New Year on Saturday has soared to 7,200 B (£110) for One Baht...(gold is weighed in baht..one baht is about 13.grams)...Chulee appeared dripping in gold.. which says something for the casino business in London! She stuck some of it on Elodie's ankle, so now she looks like a chained monkey.
Anyway once the Chinese have showed off for a day or two it will sink back to 5,000 or 6,000 depending on Mr.Bush. Of course when I first came here the exchange rate was 40 Baht to the GBP, now it is 67 Baht and in the heady days of the wonderful Mr.Chavalit, when we sold everything to raise money, it went to 90Baht to the GBP!! Maybe Dubya will be as successful.
In our lengthy and unsuccessful discussions with the bank we did explain that this was one of the reasons why we did not keep all our money in their bank....the banks appear incapable of comprehending that money can come from abroad. I asked the guy in the Bank of Asia how it was then that Thailand was able to export so much and presumably get paid in Yen and Dollars if they could not understand that K had money from the UK. I just think they cannot read English, though most of the important stuff is translated into Thai, and are too lazy to go and see the condo.. the condo company said no-one from a bank has been near the place.
We went(to Chiang Mai that is!) and came back through a province I was not much familiar with...Lampang...The most striking aspect of which were the houses. 16 twenty foot tree trunks about 18 inches plus wide forming the frame of the house, to which all the floors and walls are attached, and then on the top a myriad of roofs, balconies and porches. Exquisite in ochre, burnt sienna and blue, which then ages to a silver grey..not the blue roof which comes from Australia...before there were shingles..but these are a dying breed, of course.
A 100 square metre house is £12,000 without the land.....and the villages were up on a sort of plain, surrounded by mountains.....a bit like the Causse if it was surrounded too. The land poor, but the forest rich.
The trouble is it is nearly impossible to transport timber from one province to another. You need to bribe so many policeman it is prohibitively expensive.
This prohibition does not, of course, extend to the businesses of Thai MPs denuding Burma of its teak forests. They have already wrecked the forests of Thailand, much to the aggravation of the Japanese, who now have to get their chipboard from the rain forests of Indonesia. (They use tropical rainforest hardwood chipboard to fence off building sites in Japan)
Here in Sawangkhalok the long progress of marriages and deaths continues accompanied by ear splitting Likkei theatrical performances, with of course the Grade A sound systems, which wind to a crescendo at 4.00 am before the monks come in and drone for an hour or so at 8.00. K assures me that it will end on the 31st! I bought some more ear plugs in BKK but they are sponge and not so good as the wax ones. Bought them in Boots which appears to have no clue as to how to market and sell things here. The shops are like in the UK, clean and bright but empty. Everything expensive, while Watsons the Hong Kong Chemist is a mess, cheap and buzzing. Sell your Boots shares now before there is another disaster, like in Japan. I suppose the co. is so rich it do not care. Suppose, too, that is why pile it high and sell it cheap Tesco is thriving here.
I also managed to buy some binoculars in BKK and an excellent Birds of Thailand by Craig Robson. So I can now tell you that these flighty little birds in the garden that are so skittish, loquacious and charming are White Throated and Pied Fantails -Rhipidura albicollis and Rhipidura javanica to you!. Other than that we have Common Ioras -Aegithina tiphia, Oriental Magpie Robins-Copsychus saularis and Mynas-both Acridotheres tristis and grandis in abundance. Also a pair of Black Drongos - Dicrurus macrocercus which have a nest and call a great deal!
I have got some more pictures, now, so I will put those on the weblog as they are easier to see there. In fact I might put all of this too! So everyone will know what I write to you!
Meanwhile the road saga continues. Apparently Fiona Reynolds is going to go and 'SEE for HERSELF'...sounds like a Royal Progress to me. We have been reading all kinds of bad things about the NT that the House of Lords dragged up.. let us hope they will see sense in this case.. Cannot say I am hopeful. Apparently they can make 'laws' of their own which are directly contrary to UK law! They are certainly exempt from normal Planning and Housing legislation. How did this come about?
