I cannot quite come to terms with all this concentration on Europeans...of course many died...but the numbers of people in the Thai Islands..Chao Ley..Sea Gypsies and even worse in the pretty unregulated Burmese/Myanmar Islands must have been far worse...(Later see reports in the Guardian from Indonesia and about Burma..same view)

The official Thai figures are 1800 dead 1500 missing....however CNN has 3 times that number...Interesting that while other countries appear to have tried to estimate casualities the Thai approach has been to downplay...I should think poossibly well over 5000 casual;ties here!

(Later..make that 12000)

Again Later...The Thai PM Thaksin is describing his efforts as..mending the fence after the cows have run away..but the cows will be coming back...which neatly sums up the Thai attitude to Tourists..Stay Away...

More on this later!!)

We are now being treated to the not very edifying sight of the great and the good of Thailand very expensively suited andfcoiffed and the executives of foreign companies shuffling forward with very large cheques...I mean in size not money..bit like those lottery cheques...and looking smug....I realise that grinning is a Chinese and Thai way of dealing with tragedy,,,oh and now we have pop singers with dirges to a background of drowning people....
Anyway here are two bits which I print in full as they might curiously disappear!!
You will see the kind of visitors to Patong!!

THAI TALK: Horrendous failure of our national warning system

Published on December 30, 2004
(Extract)

“Why weren’t we warned?” This question has been echoing around the tsunami-wrecked coast in the South ever since Sunday. The answers, none of which is very satisfactory, are at best evasive.

Based on interviews given by senior officials from the Meteorological Department and the Geological Resources Department, though, the official response could be paraphrased thus:

“The public was not warned because we weren’t sure. Tsunamis have rarely been reported in the Indian Ocean. We’re more familiar with tsunamis in the Pacific.”

Not very convincing. The very rationale for a warning system is to expect the unexpected. That’s what forecasters are there for. That’s what monitoring natural disasters is all about.

A much more tell-tale explanation of the massive failure given by another Weather Bureau official would go something like this:

“Since we haven’t had a tsunami in the Indian Ocean for decades, we were reluctant to issue a warning. Six years earlier, the then director-general of the Weather Bureau issued a tsunami warning for off of the coast of Phuket. One never materialised. A lot of people there condemned him for making a prediction that they claimed could scare off tourists. The public outcry there at the time practically banned him from ever visiting Phuket again. Frankly, we had this very bad memory in mind when we were considering whether or not to issue a warning.”

While all this horror has been going on we have, as is the way been getting on with normal life!
This morning we went down the Wat to get the car sorted out. Half an hour of painting with a paste of talcum powder..inside and out.. and water..much sticking of gold leaf..good sprinkling of holy water. As you see the car has a good paint job. This will prevent any further attcks by ghosts and evil spirits let alone humans driving anything from motorbikes with two or three wheels and rice cultivators through to grannies riding bikes the wrong way in the middle of the carriageway, SUV and Mercedes housed gents paying more attention to Mobile Phones and mistresses as well as amphetamine crazed drivers of overloaded juggernauts and long distance buses....Maybe!








Meanwhile Madam continues adventures with stickers

We are fine...We now live a long way from the sea...I guess the little blue house in Phuket, which was only about 100 metres from the beach has gone though!
The whole of the beachfront of Patong and Kalim looks entirely flattened with buses and boats in the trees


December 27

As it happens there were two, well three, good reasons for not living in Phuket! The most trivial was that there were too many tourists. More serious was that in due course…. ie 5 years… the water supply was going to give up and there would be real problems. And there was this that has happened. It is a bit like the San Andreas fault…everyone I knew thought it would happen..but when?
Phuket has a low lying coastal strip of about a kilometre as does Samui, then the land rises steeply. But all around-down into Krabi and Satun the strip is many kilos wide and mainly mangrove swamp. To the north there are long strips of low lying beach.
There are harrowing scenes on Thai TV of both Europeans and Thais clutching dead children.
The Thai story is that it is mainly foreigners who are dead. I doubt it. Of course at 10.00 am the beaches would have been filling up and people waking in hotels, but many people will have gone on diving and boat trips to Ko Phi Phi and Similan…but I should think the toll amongst those known as Chao Ley..Sea Gipsies must be enormous. They live in small wooden houses on stilts in villages along the beaches the whole way from N of Phuket to the Malysian border and beyond. There are few communications and what I see of the very few images of the tsunamis in Koh Lanta outside Krabi suggests enormous devastation.

We don’t quite understand why it was not worse in Phuket..failure to understand tsunamis, I suppose. We can only think that as Phuket is so close to Aceh the water did not have time to build up into huge waves.
There are graphic accounts of children on hotel balconies saying: “Daddy, Mummy, the sea has run away!” :Don’t be silly, darling, of course it hasn’t!”
“Oh my God, so it has!” Then 20 Metre walls of water.
Do you know, Antonia and I had been talking of going to Phuket or Samui for Christmas!
I was looking at the news at about 9.00 yesterday morning….and I said to K…If there has been that kind of earthquake there will be enormous waves….2 hours later!

Among the most bizarre pictures are those of Europeans running away from the sea as fast as they can and of Thais running towards it to see what is happening….such are the benefits of education!

This being Thailand I should think the true toll will never be known…stands at 400 or so this afternoon..more like 2000 I should think…and if the waves hit the coastline of Burma…we will certainly never know what happened there.

Now this is what you might have eaten instead of that insipid 'turkey'....!

We went to Chiang Mai to get a Visa..quite a palaver..had to open new Bank Accounts, visit the Doctor: “Do you have any serious diseases? No, only life. No, no. Must not joke with Thais in these situations. .no sense of humour! No I do not have, nor ever had, TB, Yellow Fever, Aids…Certificate acquired at cost of 1Euro,. Visa pricey at £27,50..but means I can stay here forever..is that what I want? ..I think not.
On the way home we went to market. Bought Strawberry Wine ..disgusting..not like last year..Pork Intestine sausage, hundreds of sweet things and Chiang Mai sausage…but also a small ‘Wild’ Chicken..of which more later and a loin of Sanglier….

So here you have

Cotes de Sanglier au Vapeur

Depending on number of people:
This for two or three people

Loin of Wild Boar:Sanglier..about 1kg..preferably with ribs and kidney, but not crucial
Glass of Marc/Brandy…
Herbs..In Europe I would use Black Pepper, Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano. Here I put Black Pepper, 1 Lime leaf, Small piece of Lemongrass, Squeeze of Lime Juice.
Foil

1 Onion
10 Cloves Garlic
6 Tomatoes
(In Europe a teaspoon of Juniper Berries, crushed)
25ml Red Wine
Salt
Black Pepper
Quarter Pint strong Stock
2 Coffee Cups Olive Oil

Wrap the Loin of Sanglier in Foil, together with the Black Pepper, Herbs, and Marc. Make sure the parcel is watertight.

Place parcel in a steamer, with a lid, over sufficient boiling water to last for 2 hours.

Steam for two hours, checking water level from time to time.

While the Sanglier is steaming
Peel and chop the Onion, Peel the garlic and crush the cloves and discard the skin…
Put the Tomatoes in a bowl and add boiling water to cover. Heat one of the cups of the oil and add the Onion, Garlic and Juniper Berries. Cook until colouring.
Peel the Tomatoes. Chop and add to the Onion and Garlic.
Cook for 5 minutes or so. Add the red wine, salt, pepper and stock.
Cook, very slowly, until the sauce is reduced and very dark and glutinous. Remove from heat.

Remove Sanglier from the steamer. Unwrap the parcel. Add any juices to the sauce. Heat the sauce further to amalgamate the added juices.

Remove, with a sharp knife, in one piece, the rind from the loin of Sanglier..
Heat the second cup of oil. Fry the rind of the Sanglier, turning from time to time, until it is crispy, but not burnt!

Serve with Kwangtung Greens, Pommes Parmentier( a favourite of ours-better than frites), or whatever!!

Again..the point of the dish is that you have a contrast of moist but meltingly crumbly boar, with crispy crackling, and resolute sauce with real depth..this will offset any tendency to dryness in the boar

We got Bananas in Our Garden!!

MORE FOOD!!

Ratatouille Thai

I am a great fan of ratatouille. It requires, though, ingredients of the highest quality. A tasteless tomato, a bitter pepper and it is spoiled. So I have hardly made it in recent years in the UK, particularly as it is impossible to buy aubergines other than the gross hothouse dutch things. And I can only buy idiotic miniature courgettes or huge bitter things

Here I am spoiled for choice where aubergines are concerned. I have long green ones, and long purple ones, round purple ones that look like capsicum peppers, tiny green ones that are used in Thai Green Sweet Curry, green and white ones that are often eaten raw and these small purple ones. As they can be used whole they are ideal. There are no courgettes but the small Pumpkins with yellow flesh known as Fat Tongs are as good if not better because they are drier and keep their texture better than courgettes. There are red peppers to be had but I prefer not to use them

So here they are!!




2 Onions
10 Cloves of Garlic
About 16 small aubergines
One Small Fat Tong or 6 proper sized Courgettes ie about 4 inches long
8 Small Plum Tomatoes
2 Chili Peppers
Inch or so of peeled Ginger
Small amount of Tomato Juice
Salt
Black Pepper
Juice of One or Two Limes
Coffee/Small cup Olive Oil

Chop the Onion into rings
Crush and Peel the Garlic. Leave whole.
Trim the Aubergines
Trim the Fat Tong or Courgettes and cut into Inch long lengths or quarter and divide the Fat Tong into inch cubes
Peel and slice the Ginger

Heat the oil in a heavy casserole
Add the Onion and Garlic.
Cook to colour lightly
Add Aubergines. Ensure well covered with oil
Add Chili Peppers, Fat Tong/Courgettes and Ginger
Cook. Stirring lightly but well- You want the vegetables to retain their shape
Season.
Add Tomatoes. Continue light lifting and mixing.

Ideally a Ratatouille should need no liquid other than its own juices. But I find, for whatever reason, that most benefit from a small amount of tomato juice. So if you think it is looking dry add a little-if not-don’t!

Cook for as short a time possible to ensure vegetables are cooked. They should be al dente.

Add the lime juice Chill a little and serve with whatever else you choose: A grilled or saltcrust fish is good, a grilled or roast piece of meat with some juices….Here we buy flattened seasoned, mildly cured, pieces of beef about an eighth of an inch thick and 4 to 5 inches or so square. This Neua Daet Deo or One Sun Beef- ie dried in the sun once…which is quickly fried over high heat.

The point is really the ginger. The dish should be distinctly gingery, slightly piquant and delicately limed!

Very good for breakfast.

(Later).. I proposed this dish to K’s mother. She tasted it, approved, but looked thoughtful. The next day she produced real Thai Ratatouille. This leaves out the Onions, the Ginger, the Courgettes or Fat Tong, the Tomatoes and certainly the Sweet Peppers, but adds more chilis and, heaven help us, about two tablespoons of sugar and then a good dose of Fish Sauce. Substitutes Sunflower Oil for Olive.
It produces a sort of hot sweet relish or chutney. I think it would go well with any bitter meat say a pheasant or a guinea fowl, ….as, of course, would Ratatouille!



Wine Simmered Duck

I also managed to acquire, in Phitsanulok, that rarest of creatures-a duck. We used to be able to buy duck breasts and legs in BKK, but even there a whole one was difficult to find.

It came looking like your standard supermarket duck, breast up, film wrapped on a plastic tray. It cost £2.30 or $4.50. Of course unwrapped it has head, necks, feet and kidneys…Elodie looked at it and said.’Rhinoceros’!
Anyway she helped cut it up…

So
(This really only enough for two…so more ducks for more people!)

1 Duck…feet etc. not required..but if present reserve for making soup
1 Onion
10 Cloves of Garlic
6 Tomatoes
Stick of Cinnamon
Half Star Anise
Inch twig of green peppercorns
Scant half teaspoon Chinese 5 Spice Powder
Tablespoon Fish Sauce
Dessertspoon Dark Soy sauce
Large glass –250 ml-Chinese Rice Wine or Dry Sherry or frankly anything decent red or white.
1 litre Mushroom or vegetable Stock
Salt to season

2 Tablespoons-at most- Sunflower Oil

Also to garnish
I head Pak Choi or 1 Romaine Lettuce
2 Tomatoes.

Remove wing tips from duck. Reserve, also head and neck. Chop neck into 1” lengths. Reserve. Remove parson’s nose and oil sacks at tail and any bits of debris lurking inside-particularly kidneys and discard.

With a sharp Chinese cleaver joint the duck by removing thighs and legs together, wings. Set aside for another dish or freeze.

Remove the two breasts each in one piece, as close to the bone as you can. Reserve.
Chop the remaining carcase into 1” sections.

Chop the onion finely, crush and skin the garlic. Soak the tomatoes in boiling water and remove skins.
Heat one of the spoons of oil in a wok or large sautee pan. Add the onions and garlic. Lightly fry. Add the portions of the duck carcase and neck. Fry until well browned.
Add the tomatoes, the cinnamon, star anise and green peppercorns.

Add the wine and allow to bubble briefly

Add the fish sauce, soy sauce and stock.

Bring back to the boil, check for salt.
Cover and reduce heat to a bare simmer for about an hour.

When the stock is done, and tastes good, remove the pieces of duck and give to the cat or the dog.
Reduce the stock to about a pint or so.

In a clean wok heat a bare covering of oil.
Add the duck breasts; first skin side down. Cook on medium to low heat until cloured. Turn the breasts and cook the flesh side. Turn and cook until barely done. The centre should be quite pink.

Remove from the pan. Slice the skin away from the breasts. Reserve breasts and keep warm.
Return the skin to the pan and fry until crispy..not burnt!

Dress a dish with the Pak Choi

Slice the duck breasts, but keep whole. Lay on the dish
Garnish with tomato
Spoon over a small amount bodf the soup and the juices that will have run from the duck

Reheat the soup.

Serve with rice

NB. Duck feet are fairly gooey..so one enough for this amount of soup.



Thai Squid Salad
Yam PlaMuk ie.Inkfish

Lethally Hot!

These Tha Salads known as ‘Yam’ are not really salads at all but an excuse to dress something-fish, prawns, meat, noodles with a chilli dressing.
The two best known are this one and Yam Wunsen which replaces the squid with glass noodles and a few small shrimps.

1 Large Squid (better) or smaller ones c. 300gm
3 Red Shallots
6 Cloves Garlic
4 Two inch Chili Peppers
Large Bunch Coriander Leaves
1 Lettuce-(for dressing not eating!)
4 Limes
Tablespoon or more Fish Sauce
2 Tomatoes

Peel and Chop Shallots finely
Crush and peel Garlic. Chop finely
Chop Chili Peppers finely
Clean and chop Coriander finely
Mix these 4 Ingredients together.
Add juice of Limes and Fish Sauce.
Mix well.
Set aside for about 30 minutes

Then

Clean Squid, removing quill and innards. Skin if necessary. Clean head removing beak.
Cut in half and score lightly in a quadrillage manner on the outside.

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Blanch the Squid for about a minute at the most. Remove from water. Drain.

Cut squid into bite sized slices
Loosely chop tentacles

Lay Lettuce on a dish
Lay on Squid
Cover with Other Ingredients.
Garnish With Tomato

In other words the Squid should be warm

Ouch!


Pieds et Paquets

Traditionally this dish is made with sheep’s feet and tripe. I think the best I ever ate was in the Hiely Restaurant in Avignon? With a very nice bottle, as I remember, of that most under-rated Madiran-well-not by them!
Given that pig’s feet are easier to come by a perfectly acceptable dish can be made with them. Though I suppose you might rather call it a gratinee de pied de porc.
Of course I am going to do a Thai version. Sheep’s feet can probably be obtained in the hinterland of Muslim Bangkok or the South, but certainly not here, where even FRESH pig’s feet as opposed to pre-cooked ones are difficult to come by. On the other hand the innards are readily available.

2 Pig’s Trotters
Piece of Pig’s Tripe
1 Onion
10 Cloves of Garlic
1 Red Pepper
I large Carrot
300g Mushrooms
1.5 Litres Pork or Vegetable Stock
2 Lime Leaves
Tablespoon Coriander Leaves
Grated Roots of 6 Coriander plants
Teaspoon ground Coriander Seeds
Stalk of Lemon Grass
Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
Knob of Fresh Ginger, sliced
Tablespoon Olive Oil

A further 250g Mushrooms
Small Carrot
2 Plum Tomatoes
Bunch of Parsley
Small Glass of Brandy, Grand Marnier or preferably an Apricot liqueur..here I will just use Remy Martin

If you have a decent cleaver cut the trotters in half lengthwise. Though not necessary this speeds up the cooking.
Cut the tripe into 3 inch squares. Roll up into little parcels and secure-toothpicks will do.

Chop the Onion roughly,
Crush and skin the Garlic
Slice and seed the Red Pepper

Put Oil in a decent size pan with a lid.
Cook the above ingredients for 3 or 4 minutes

Add the Pig’s Feet and Tripe Parcels.
Brown
Add Carrot, Mushrooms, Lime Leaves, Coriander-Seeds, Leaves and Root, Lemon Grass and Ginger

Cook a further 3 minutes lifting gently.

Add Soy Sauce then Stock.
Bring to a slow boil then reduce heat to a bare simmer-and cook-probably for 3 hours. In Provence we used to cook it for 7 hours or so.

When the feet and tripes are cooked, remove from pan. With a slatted spoon remove all the other debris in the pan and discard. Strain the remaining liquid through a fine sieve.

Return juice to a pan. Add the brandy and bring to the boil.. Add the feet and tripes, the carrot, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Cook briefly until vegetables are done. Remove vegetables and feet and tripes to a dish and keep warm

Reduce remaining liquid to a few tablespoon- well about 10!- of pungent sauce.

Serve the feet and tripes with the liquid poured over.

Of course if you are feeling really haute cuisine you can bone the trotters, but its more fun to suck on the bones.

We just are this with a little dish of stir-fried Pak Choi and Beansprouts-all you need for Supper!!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Aiming to cut road deaths over the New Year from 700!! to 630!!
Great stuff
How many people die on the roads in the UK over New Year?

carnage

We are, I hope, very lucky.

I was watching E. and thinking: In her day…she wakes and plays in the bed. Then Granny has bought breakfast for her… sticky rice…of which more later---pork…doughnuts…soya milk …actually she will eat half a melon!….and maybe Granny will feed her.

She will play with me then for an hour or so. Around 9.00/10.00 am little children, the same age, will appear and they play together. She is patient with them. She will play more on her own, and a bit with mama, and then Aunties, whom she bosses about . Later she will eat and play with Granny again. She is keen on tormenting the fish and any bowl of water this month. In the afternoon she still sleeps a little listening to Rhymes and Peter Rabbit!.

Towards evening her younger cousins come back from school-they are 5 and 8, she is very fierce with them, sticking up for herself.

Then around six the older ones-12 and 14 come for a while. They treat her like a doll, to which she accedes. I cannot believe their lives..today!! They are called Pat and B-ie the second daughter A, B..get it? The parents do not care if they go to school. The boys are buzzing around them both…B’s friend-13 is already pregnant and married..to a 30 year old…for a few hundred pounds I suppose…these are the fringes of our life…In a bizarre way, mainly, I think, through the efforts of Granny, her part of the family have become part of the new Thai Middle Class-Nurses, Teachers, Business women…but the other side of the tracks!!??

Back to mummy and daddy to play and read books and fall asleep

So she has friends of 3 and 4, cousins of 5 and 8, also 13 and 14, Mummy of 30, Aunties of 30s and 40s, daddy of 50s, and Granny of 60s…..to be with…I suppose she learns something from all of this…All girls except Da… What is missing ? Grandpas and Uncles…of how many lives is this the case?…In Farnham she had Chris which was very good for her. And in London and Wales Rhodri..Not enough boys for fun…Our friends..boys.. in Wales nice to her, for whatever reason!……but old and casual..and not family…?!

The children, having given up on the cats and dogs, capture themselves:

So you see
(if you wait long enough!!)
Now we have snowflakes...( well with the Mozilla Browser you do!)
Must be turning into adolescent Chinese Girl

and of course I have arranged for it to snow MONEY for you. I gather the rage is to amass Gold....I have tried to get falling Gold Bars, but failed..due to absence of Gold Bar Key on computer..surely to be rectified by Chinese Takeover of IBM!?

One of the great disadvantages of Swankhalok is the absence of sea fish. There is an abundance of river and farmed fish; but I do not like them. There are salt water prawns, squid and octopus, blue crabs, frozen oysters-which are good, the occasional mackerel drifts in. Whereas in Bangkapi the market was full of sea fish. Miss it.
We went down to Phitsanulok, an old city with an illustrious past, but now manages to concentrate the worst of an American city without any of the saving graces-huge four lane carriageways with an endless array of repair shops, exhaust and tyre shops, gas stations. When you want to find anything you can’t because of the crazy address allocation. But it has an airport a train station and the dirtiest bus station in Thailand.
It also has a Tesco and a Big C. We managed at last to buy a car seat for Elodie-most inquiries into this object have been greeted by initially incomprehension, then disbelief. Its made in Taiwan..but?!
Anyway back to Big C, which is just another hypermarket. Eventually tracked down better red wine than Tesco in Uttaradit and ‘Fish’

So:

Lemon Pomfret





2 medium size Pomfret
I think John Dory would do, also Red Mullet, Black or Sea Bream…but Pomfret best!

1 Onion
10 cloves of garlic
2 stalks of Lemongrass
2 or 3 Lime leaves
4 Bird’s eye Chilis
4 Tomatoes
2 Bunches of Celery Leaves
2 Bunches of Coriander leaves
2 pints Fish Stock
Juice of as many as 4 limes
Tablespoon of Sunflower Oil

Clean the small innards from the Pomfret..set aside

Chop Onion finely
Crush, skin and chop Garlic finely
Chop Lemongrass into Inch lengths
Tear Lime leaves into small pieces
Chop Chilis
Skin and Chop tomatoes
Chop One Bunch of Celery and One of Coriander
2 pints Fish Stock
Juice of as many as 4 limes
Tablespoon of Sunflower Oil


Heat oil in wok.
Add Chopped ingredients. Stir fry for 1 minute on high heat.
Add Fish Stock and juice of 2 Limes

Bring Back to Boil. Reduce heat to a low simmer for about 20-30 minutes

If you are happy with the taste which should be sharp/sour/fishy and salty

Add I fish.
Turn off heat and leave for five minutes.
Remove fish
Bring liquid back to the boil.
Turn off heat
Return fish to the pan for 1 minute or so on other side ie. Cooked side up!
Remove fish

Repeat procedure for second fish etc.

Remove as much ‘vegetable mixture’ as looks elegant and strew over fish. Remove and discard rest.
Reserve fish on a hot plate
Reduce liquid a little, adding more lime juice to make it pungent.
Serve liquid separately
Garnish fish and liquid with some green herb leaves-coriander, celery, etc

Serve with other dishes and rice

I have taken to using the Mozilla Firefox Browser and Netscape rather than Internet Explorer. Firefox is much more reliable if not as versatile; and I don't get endless messages that IE has performed illegal operations...BUT..I see that in IE some of the earlier pictures are not displayed....I'll probably upset the whole thing in trying to fix it!
I thought the whole point about XHTML was that it was consistently displayed whatever Browser. Clearly Not...And what happens to all this on a Mac....???
It is so cold I am going to have to buy a jacket!! Down to C12 at night

On Cooking!!

Well there has not been much on this….So this is the week’s menus at Wednesday…so far!!

On Ingredients:

Most of what you need can be bought in Indian and Chinese shops.

If you are in London you can go to Hounslow or Southall, for Indian goods..spices etc. The best Chinese shops are those in Lisle Street to the S. of Gerard Street or the Supermarket Hoo Hing on the North Circular just N of the Hanger Lane/Park Royal roundabout…not difficult to miss: a corrugated iron warehouse with Chinese roof. The dry goods are cheap in both places. Obviously spices in the Indian shops and the Sauces in the Chinese ones!…and you can buy the vegetables including green ginger in both.
Thai shops are more of a problem. There is the one off the Chepstow Road W2..dirty and Talad Thai in Putney..better. I hear good things of Amaranth in Garrett Lane SW 18 but I have not been there…..there are obviously others I don’t know about. When we were in Wales we had weekly deliveries from Manchester.

You have to remember the basic Thai greeting is not: ‘Hello!‘ or ‘How are you?’ But ‘Have you eaten yet?!’

Coconut Milk is available either in cans or in packets as a hard block. If the latter simply melt in some milk. A number of recipes distinguish between thick and thin coconut milk. If you make it yourself, which is easy….buy packets of dessicated coconut: .then .for the thick milk, mix with milk and whiz in the blender, then for the thin milk, reserve the coconut pulp and add a bit more and mix with water and blend

It is difficult to get Coriander with the root on..but mostly it comes with it and the shops cut it off..find a guy who will reserve it! Difficult too to get Lime Leaf though Bart Spices do jars of dried leaves.In Spar if nowhere else...if you find frozen ones they are OK too. Quite a lot of supermarkets sell lemongrass! It is also quite easy to grow yourself! As is Coriander of course

Garlic. In the UK I use large cloves as they are easy to peel. Here there are not any and I have to use small ones. V. boring to peel..but tasty. The number of cloves realty refers to what you like..the more the better!

Chili. There are dozens of different chilis, of varying strength. The rule seems to be: the smaller, the hotter..Bird’s eye chilis are the smallest Avoid those rather gross looking green things like fat fingers that supermarkets sell..they are tasteless and bitter.

Oil. The Thais use Corn Oil or worse. I find Sunflower the best as it heats quickly and has little taste. As with French food even Thai food is improved by butter if eaten hot!

All that I cook would be improved by Red Wine, Dijon Mustard and Cream….but alas….!.

On no account be tempted to substitute Regency ie, Thai Brandy for Cognac!

Basically Thai Restaurant Food is in the same state as Indian Restaurant Food in the 1970s or Chinese Food in the same period ie. bears little or no resemblance to Thai Food, whatever that might be.
Bit by bit regional Chinese..Szechuan, Cantonese, Beijing Food and regional Indian Food has been revealed..this has not yet happened with Thai Food. Most of Thai restaurant Food and the Menus seem to be produced by ‘Restaurant Central’ in some factory in Park Royal.

But that the food is liked reveals that there is a whole cuisine hidden from restaurant eaters, and even from restaurant eaters in Thailand. Most Thais eat either at home or they eat street food and noodles.
Street food is mostly snacks-sausages, grilled and fried chicken, grilled squid, meatballs, sweet corn, sweets, sticky rice, doughnuts…

I find Thai sweets, which are mostly based on sticky rice and coconut disgusting,,, ,so you wont be hearing much about those!!

Noodles are either sen mee/bamee, sen yai or sen lek..ie according to size and colour..bamee are yellow, sen yai are thick rice noodles and sen lek like thin vermicelli…either dry or with soup. We go to eat wonderful noodles which are Nam Tok…the noodles are ordinary but the soup is a thick blood enriched broth of which you do not need much. It comes with pork scratchings which you melt in the broth, bean sprouts, cabbage and basil leaf.

Tamarind Chicken
Easy and quick!

Tablespoon Coriander Seeds
Tablespoon Cumin/Jeera Seeds
3 Cardamon pods
Cinnamon Stick
Tablespoon scant Black Pepper Corns
2 Star Anise
Salt

Tablespoon or so of dried Tamarind pulp

10-20 Cloves Garlic
Large Onion
2/3 Lime Leaves
Lemon Grass stalk
Inch cube of fresh ginger-or old ginger if you cannot get fresh
Bird’s Eye Chilis to taste-I use 6 or so

Tablespoon Sunflower Oil for initial frying
( More Oil if you are making the paste)
Not olive oil which is wasted in these dishes

Coconut Milk
Chicken or Mushroom Stock

4 Chicken Drumsticks and 4 Thighs

Coriander Leaves
Mint
Parsley

Grind the 6 spices ( take the cardamon seeds from their pods!) and the salt until you have a fine powder.

Put the tamarind in a mug and add good measure of boiling water to cover. About a cupful. Leave for 5 minutes, then crush the tamarind into the water and leave a further 5-10 minutes

Either:
Crush and peel the garlic, chop the onion, tear the lime leaves, slice the lemon grass into inch long lengths discarding any tough bits.; chop chilis finely-for a milder version split and de-seed the chilis discard the seeds; if the ginger is old, ie brown not green and white, peel it and chop finely, otherwise just chop finely. Set aside

Or;
Crush garlic etc. as above and put all those ingredients in a blender and whiz with enough oil to make a thick paste.

Dry roast the spices. Take care they do not catch or burn.

Heat the oil and add either the chopped garlic mixture or the paste. Cook until, in the case of the paste, the oil starts to seep out at the edges of the mixture-about 5 minutes. Add the roast spices and the chicken. Turn and cook until the chicken is well coated and coloured on the outside.

Add the strained tamarind juice, coconut milk, and stock.

Cook gently until chicken is done, ie about 40 minutes. Check the stock does not reduce too far and catch. Check for salt and chilis-if you think too hot add some more coconut milk!

If when the chicken is done the sauce is still watery, remove the chicken and reduce the sauce. You are looking to achieve a liquid paste.

Put in a dish to serve and garnish with the chopped herbs.

This is not a Thai dish. It owes something to Indonesia with the tamarind and something to India with the paste. But with the lemon grass, lime leaves and coriander it has a distinctly Thai taste.

Coriander Chicken Liver

Quick, cheap and easy again

Large Onion
20 cloves of Garlic
Large bunch of Coriander, preferably with the root. I mean a bunch about 4” in diameter, not the miffy stuff you buy in supermarkets, even in pots.
6+ Bird’s eye chilis
Two tubs or about 400 g of Chicken Livers*

250 ml thick Coconut Milk
750 ml Chicken or Vegetable Stock
Salt

Tablespoon Sunflower Oil

Chop the onion finely; crush and peel the garlic, chop the chilis…. de-seed them if you don’t want this over hot.
Scrape any stringy bits off the roots from the coriander, then cut off the cleaned root, , then scrape to shred the root with a sharp knife.

Heat the oil
Add the garlic, onion, chilis and coriander root.
Cook for about 3 minutes until the garlic starts to colour.
Add the chicken livers and cook until they are only just done.. they should be very pink still in the middle.
Remove the livers and set aside, leaving as much of the other mixture in the pan as you can. The blood will seep from the livers when set aside so you will know you have got it about right. If nothing comes out you have overcooked them! In which case at the end just put them in the liquid and serve without waiting!

Add most of the Coriander leaves, chopped, the Coconut Milk and the stock.
Cook, checking the seasoning, until all is reduced to a thickish liquid.
Remove from the heat; add the chicken livers and leave for 5 minutes or so.
Add the rest of the coriander leaves for garnish

Serve quickly so that the livers don’t go grey and tough!

* Now here, when I buy chicken livers, I buy the liver, the gizzard, the heart all together. This improves both appearance and flavour, but I guess cannot be bought in Europe/US

Again not a Thai dish, but with the strong coriander flavour, might as well be!

Prawn Chowder



Onion
20 Cloves of Garlic
3 Tomatoes
Celery Leaves
3 Lime leaves
Stick of Lemon Grass
8 Bird’s Eye Chilis to taste!

Tablespoon Sunflower Oil (plus 20z butter better)
1 litre Fish stock
500g baby octopus or cuttlefish heads; Squid if you must!
a ‘White’Fish, about 400g eg. Sole, Sea Bream, John Dory, Red Snapper, Cod, Haddock
I use Barracuda or Red Snapper!

250g cockles
1kg prawns
Large potato ie. 300g
250g Mushrooms
Pinch ie. two or three threads of saffron*
Juice of 2 limes
Another Litre fish stock


Chop the onions, crush and skin the garlic. Heat pan with oil and add onion and garlic. Cook 5 minutes. Add Sliced tomatoes, Lime Leaves, Celery Leaves and Chilis.

Add octopus and the fish sliced into 1 inch thick slices.#
Brown a little.

Add fish stock and cover. Simmer gently for one hour.

Strain liquid into another pan. Discard remainder.

Bring liquid back to the boil. Turn down heat. Add potato diced into inch inch cubes. Simmer until potato cooked. Add cockles, saffron and lime juice. Cook for I minute.
Remove potato and cockles.

Add further litre of fish stock. Boil until reduced to about 1 litre.

Return potatoes and cockles to stock.
Add Prawns
Simmer until prawns are cooked.only about 2 minutes

Again Thais would not recognise this. I use the white salt water prawns.. Most of the large prawns here are farmed fresh water ones. When you cook them some peculiar red liquid emerges. I think it is because of the rubbish they are fed. Also explains why land used for prawn farming is useless for anything else afterwards; so avoid Thai Tiger Prawns at £25 a kilo
*Saffron is an oddity. You can buy big cheap bags! of what they are calling ‘saffron’ in the so-called ‘hill tribe villages’ north of Chiang Mai. It looks like crocus but has no taste that is of saffron
Have yet to discover its botanical origins, but not saffron! If you can be bothered to roast it first, and then soak a little, it is better but it burns easily!





Pork and Marrow Soup

500g Belly Pork
500g Pork Spare Ribs
6 Spring Onions
Handful Coriander Leaf
10 Cloves Garlic

1 large marrow or 6 large courgettes-the kind you could not use for much else, or 2 butternut squash, or a pumpkin. Here we use white pumpkin, but have not seen in UK

Tablespoon Sunflower Oil
1 litre vegetable stock

I tablespoon Oyster Sauce
I Tablespoon Soy Sauce
One scant dessertspoon Black Sauce! (You can buy this in Chinese shops, but it tends to have no English on the label..actually it is just a kind of more liquid treacle or molasses..which will do as well)

Chop Onions and Coriander leaf.
Crush and Peel garlic
Chop Belly Pork and Spare Ribs into 1 inch slices
Chop vegetable into large pieces ie at least 2 inch square
Put Pork, Onions, Coriander Leaf and Garlic into a pan with the oil and cook gently for 3 or four minutes.
Add vegetables and stock and simmer for an hour or so until pork nearly cooked. It should be falling off the rib bones.

Add the spoonfuls of sauces.
Cook another 15 minutes or so until meat is melting.

A super winter soup.
And Thais would recognise it

Kaeng Neua Nua Wan or Northern Sweet Beef Curry

Thais eat little or no beef, except in the Muslim areas of the South. So this is a bit of an oddity.Thoughh there was a restaurant we used to go to in Bangkok which gave its name to the street Soi Steak Lao..was not wonderful!
In my experience Northern beef tough as a boot..also have tried it with water buffalo steak ..even tougher….never mind two hours even 4 sometimes not enough..and sometimes..Never!
Nb. This is HOT! But the Red Peppers render it just pleasantly sweet

Tablespoon Coriander Seeds,
also tablespoons of black jeera/cumin, cardamon, turmeric, black pepper, teaspoon of grated nutmeg, 6 large dried chilis.
All blended to a fine powder in a blender or mortar.
This is quite a lot of cardamon and maybe not to everyone’s taste..a teaspoon will do. Also you can substitute white jeera/cumin.

Large Onion
30 cloves of Garlic, crushed and peeled
4 Red Peppers, cut in half, de-seeded and then roasted or grilled so that the blackened skins can be removed…save a few finely shredded slivers to garnish at the end.
6 Tomatoes, skins removed by placing in bowl, pouring boiling water over, waiting 5 minutes then remove skins and chop tomatoes.
500 g of Scented Mushrooms..these are a little like ceps. You can buy them dried in the Chinese shop. Take about 250g and soak in hot water for an hour until ‘pliable’!

50 ml Coconut milk ie very little-just for taste
Generous Litre Beef stock…you will find that if you have to cook longer you will need to top up the stock

750g of good beef steak, cut into 2 inch squares. Chuck will do as will shin or brisket as it is going to cook for a long time. For me the more fat the better.

Simple:

Fry Onion and Garlic
Add Beef, cook to colour
Add spices. Stir to coat beef.
Add Red Peppers and Tomatoes. Stir a bit more.
Add Coconut Milk and Stock. Bring to a boil.
Add mushrooms.
Return to boil.
Reduce heat so that liquid barely simmers.
Cook on ring on v. low heat until Beef done…2 hours very good as everything will be melting and infused with the spices and the Red Pepper…


What we also ate…but not you!!

Take 2 slices of salted fish. Fry until nearly burned to death. Eat with a relish made from garlic, chilis, fish sauce, lime juice and basil leaves.

Also take 6 watermelons about the size of an orange..exactly..E very fond of this..boil until tender. Also some broccoli, okra and cabbage similarly boiled. Serve and eat with a relish made from crushed garlic and chilli, lime juice, roasted peppers, fried stag beetles and fermented fish.

Also fried green jackfruit with lime leaf, red curry paste!

All: Yum!

All the dishes eaten with a mixture of 1 part red rice to two parts jasmine rice. I eat mixed brown rice and red rice. Almost no-one will touch brown rice! Whereas jasmine rice is sold loose and in 10 kilo+ sacks brown rice appears in 250g bags! At a price.

I also eat green salads-mainly made with Pak Choi and Chinese leaf with various other as yet unnamed leaves tossed in. Again treated with disbelief by Thais for whom a ‘Salad’ more resembles a fruit salad ie mainly melon, pineapple, orange, kidney or other beans and some cucumber with a measly bit of wet lettuce; all this then covered with a dressing which appears to be made of a teaspoon of oil, one of mayonnaise and 4 tablespoons of sugar. It has taken me years to track down a jar of mayonnaise that has no sugar..now have one but contains for no apparent reason chopped plastic ham!

The Guardian has this: The Thai solution to militant Islam

Origami Birds

Oh, for some reason the link does not work...It says this:

100m origami birds flutter down on Thai Muslims

John Aglionby, south-east Asia correspondent
Monday December 6, 2004

The Guardian
An estimated 100m paper birds were released yesterday on the birthday of Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej as a goodwill gesture by the predominantly Buddhist kingdom towards a mainly Muslim region mired in communal violence.

Thousands waited outside their homes as the origami cranes descended from more than 50 air force planes trailing smoke in the red, white and blue colours of the Thai flag.

Everyone in the targeted southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat was hoping that he or she would be the one to find a bird which had been folded and signed by the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra - the prize was a scholarship for a child and a good job for an adult.

By last night no one had claimed the sought-after bird.

Mr Thaksin called for the gesture after being widely criticised following the deaths of 78 demonstrators in the south in October. They suffocated when bound and stacked on top of each other to be transported to a detention centre. About 500 people have been killed this year in the region.

All 63 million Thais were ordered to fold at least one bird, and for the past fortnight local television has shown everyone from cabinet ministers to prisoners busily using everything from bank notes to colourful plastic.

While ordinary people appeared to enjoy the bird drop, community leaders in the predominantly Muslim provinces said it would do little to arrest the escalating unrest.

"The paper birds are not a traditional symbol for us," said Abdullaham Abdulsamad of the Narathiwat Islamic Council. "It's a different culture. Our people do not understand what the birds stand for."

The stunt did not prevent one person being shot dead yesterday, and police being called to defuse a 10kg bomb on a road where hundreds of people were waiting for the bird drop.

Analysts blame the violence on a combination of Islamist-inspired separatism, cross-border banditry and turf wars between the police and military.

The government's heavy-handed response has been criticised for aggravating rather than calming the situation.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004


Better they had this story of disasters for real birds:

Thai Environmental Stupidity


particularly if How To Be a Bad Birdwatcher is all the rage. Now why did not RS think of that?


The month has started cold; you know at mid-day it is only C26. The result:
We all have to put our coats on!:



We went up to Uttaradit: about 40 miles where there was reported to be yet another new Tesco!

Yes and an MK Suki restaurant. 6 persons stuffed with suki, dim sum, duck, vegetables and beer-750Baht ie. £10.

It is not clear to me why this has not caught on in the UK. They are basically slow fast food restaurants. Sit at a table on banquettes with the cauldron of hot water already bubbling away in the middle. We order six or so dishes of dim sum, including duck’s tongues—the dim sum in the Kamtong Restaurant in Queensway MUCH better-even if 5 times the price, a half roast duck with ginger and cucumber, then platters of mushrooms-3 varieties, sweet corn, cabbage, Chinese leaf an Chinese greens, tripe, beef, pork, squid, prawns, tofu, eggs and lime green noodles. Bowls of Suki sauce and soy sauce with chilli arrive together with iced tea. Elodie has her own little set of bowl, mug, spoon and special suki sauce. She thinks this good and drinks it-refills arrive in a big kettle.

We put this feast little by little into the boiling water. Everyone has a slatted spoon and a spoon for getting ‘nam soup’-soup water. I like to mix a lot of the water with the suki sauce, but this is considered eccentric.
An hour later everyone is ‘bouffe’.

Tesco is as dreadful as ever. Whatever their strategy maybe for going ‘up market’ in the UK, here they have reverted to the days of green stamps and pile it high. I have rarely seen such an assembly of cheap tat under one roof.

The Thais use it as a cash and carry for village shops etc., so you have families wheeling out six carts of fanta and coke and 10 carts of TVs!

I bought a bottle of olive oil which I cannot get here. Elodie bought two pairs of knickers. Asked why, she said: ‘For going on holiday!’.
She is desperate to get to the seaside…we’ll go in the New Year

The excuse for this jaunt was the king’s birthday. The night before we wandered out to see the family Likay troupe..pics not so good…and then in the evening up the lane to where a huge pic of HRH was installed with an eye-blinding set of strip lights

I was dragged out of the house by the sight of a yellow clad band stumbling up the road playing, of course, Yellow Submarine.

We each have a little candle…sing patriotic songs..wave candles in the air and eventually set them in front of the king.

Elodie holds candle with concentration,



then announces…

’kin khanom dee gwa’, ie: ‘ I think I would rather eat some sweets’…
Thais crease up. Then she asks:
‘Sing Happy Birthday, King?’ More laughter. She is getting to be ‘a case.’


The lane is stuffed with vendors selling sausages, grilled chicken, meatballs, toys, clothes, lurid drinks and a sort of lottery which no-one can get near because of the crush. The air is thick with barbie smoke! Round the corner in ‘Snug Alley’ where trade is plied under blue and pink strip lights les belles de nuit have decorated the corrugated iron shacks with portraits of the king and candles. Most houses have flares made out of ‘Lipovitan’ bottles..bit like brown glass half size HP sauce bottles… with kerosene and wicks! I asked Ma: ‘Why?’. ‘Dunno.’ ‘Done it for decades.!’

When the car came back, mended. She looked at it thoughtfully.
Then:
’Edodie car come back’. ..everything belongs to her.
‘Yes’.
‘Mummy drive again?’
‘Yes’.
‘This time Mummy carefully!’


E has spent much time trapping the cat, known as Ee Boolong, in the laundry basket. The cat now hares off when he sees E. The dog is more patient:



It has been too the month for kite flying: Wing Wao!

Here I watch very carefully



Then fail lamentably



Also as part of becoming Thai, I have to master Karaoke:

Never mind Thailand! It occurs to us that some people may not have seen Sarn Y Plas at its best! See below!

I am not going to try and compete with Singapore schoolgirls on the design of this weblog....they have shooting stars and amazing graphics...however black 'n pink!!..when I can I'll give some links...I don't think anyone our age is doing this...why not?? Weblogs...I hate that word 'blog' ... seem to be either written by 14 year olds, God squad, philosophers etc. and a lot of really boring sales stuff...besides the enduring US stuff boring for politics...there seems a lot of writing which belongs to those doing a vigilante job on journalists, let alone politicians....for a country whose institutional and corporate lies seem without horizon, this US 'domestic' morality strikes an odd chord...

Anyway If YOU get bored just click that 'Next Blog' button at the top right and enter a world you never knew was there!

It is both fascinating and quite addictive.

Also I am aware that I have never really caught up, here, on events with Elodie. We spent the best part of 18 months in the UK, up and down to Great Ormond Street; and as far as we can tell the amazing Lewis Spitz and Dr.Ali have sorted everything out. She only has small scars and they diminish every day. Her innards seem to work properly and she gets heavy!.

We are now wondering what to do next. I guess we will certainly stay here for the winter; and maybe come back in the spring to get K her 'Right to Remain' visa....or maybe not....there are lots of good reasons for staying until Elodie can speak, read and write Thai fluently and with ease....and then come back.

Also with the whole business of this road that they are going to build..partly not sure we want to be there while that is going on and partly want to supervise evry inch of construction......

We both miss Sarn and our friends....but what future for Elodie?....And here she is awash with little friends....

We still think we will go to Europe for her to go to school..but where and why? Still thinking Romans looks good-but anywhere avoiding Brits! And with space for K to work

Also occurs to me that there are not enough pics of the boy!

Every evening, at 17.00, my mother in law goes dancing. She is nearly 70. Each day she wears a different colour polo shirt-pink, orange, gree, blue etc. This is the grannies dance gals.
This week is special. There are basketball matches and the teams have cheerleaders, too. All the teams have granny cheerleaders. The Thais have solved the difficulty of getting the ball in the net by having a keeper who stands on a chair with a bamboo basket which she waves around to catch the ball!
Ma is in the blue shirt on the right!

October in Sawankhalok, Sukothai!!

You ask how I spend the day!
Well you don’t but shall I tell you?!!
You have heard some of this before, I guess, but it is life anew.
E wakes about 7.00 and plays in the bed, talking, talking.
Her friends are already running in the road
She goes to meet them
I sleep more
K never wakes
In an hour or so
E eats sticky rice and salty pork
I wake fumbling for orange juice
Another hour, if we are lucky, K wakes
Like a 19 year old pulled through a hedge
Stunned by sleep for another hour
E is busy in the streets.
While it is half term.
Now school has opened and they are off at 8.00. E is most indignant. Dee go school too. You know she calls herself Dee-though it is changing- and now she is more likely to call herself Edodie! She puts on shoes, gathers her books, puts them in her backpack and is ready on her bike to go. When they leave without her she howls and we have to play going to school in the living room.

We shower
Cold water sluiced from a huge sistern
Edodie don’t like it she says. For some reason she has taken against hair washing.
She eats sticky rice and pork for her breakfast and is gaining weight like a Lao piggy!
She speaks a fabulous mixture of English and Thai…Now Thai words but English syntax. Dee done Leeaw…ie Elodie done it already and Dee Kin Mot ie Elodie has eaten it all up!

I go to the Post Office. Open emails. Send Invoices. Do the banking. All has to be done before about 11.00 as after that the Net gives up until after lunch. Now with a 7 hour difference it is tedious to wait until 11.00 here, 04.00 in the UK for the banks to have done their computing.

I go to the market
I can buy every ingredient from French Charcuterie and Pork Cookery mostly for about 10p an item. Pig’s heads, innards, liver, kidneys, back fat
There is tough Islam beef
Salted fish, live fish, catfish, not much sea fish, but squid, octopus, prawns and mackerel, frogs, turtles, snakes, rats…plenty of protein. The sea fish does not come in until about 10.00
I buy potatoes!! Expensive. Lentils, coconout, chili , red peppers, aubergines. In total about £2.50
We cook, we eat.
About 14.00m E goes to sleep for a couple of hours. Maybe us too.

We shower, go to buy Rice Porridge, Durian, Melons, Vegetables, this week Chinese Vegetarian Food, as it is the festival of Kin Je, supposed to be no meat, no alcohol, no sex……!?

By 17.00 it is cool enough to play again in the road, bikes, trucks, games.
Then they play inside. Maybe watch peculiar videos.

Today she has an exquisite new friend. 7 years old, a face like a Cham statue, But her skin is scarred from head to toe with mosquito bites.
K and I start to talk.
E goes to sleep at 8.30. Books read by K. She has two lovely Thai books, one about all the things that can sting you…jep jang loeey!! And one about yawning Haaow…She yawns most movingly..then Kipper and Mog, Various other cat books, Laura and her Star, The Gigantic Turnip….books read by Dada.
Her favourite now is a version of Briggs’s Snowman which has extended into an enormous world of snow, ice, lands beyond, dreams….By 9.30 she is asleep

We talk
Maybe 4 hours or 5, maybe watch a peculiar Thai soap opera or a movie at the same time
By midnight Thai TV has surrendered itself to yowling folk and country music and by 02.00 the adverts for body building have taken over
Time for showers and beds
In amongst all this there are sharp interludes of visits to banks, critical purchases, love! Trips to Tesco in Phitsanulok, mendings of bikes and cars, phone calls to the UK and France, visits to outlying family hovels

And in this little town?

I do not pretend to understand this town
Under the patronage of one good family for decades who have worked out how to keep the money coming in and the intrusive bureaucrats at bay?

We are not old money, definitely

Old money here is, I think, some 300 years or so of thrift and graft. Some more recent. It is, in its centre, a Chinese town. Businesses all..mobile phones, grocers, funeral parlours, general agricultural merchandise, .et.al. metal bashing, bikes, computers, photo shops, cars.a bit..all Chinese businesses…there are elegant middle aged Chinese gentlemen to be seen conducting serious and leisurely business in doorways, back rooms, the street.

I have said before you could make a movie in the Bangkok Bank alone. The staggering sums withdrawn and deposited, taken from little handbags, stuffed into carrier bags…$10,000 at a time and more…buying and selling, cash businesses. The boy that runs the vegetable night markets dripping in gold,, the girl that sells retail too.

There is some sense of volume here that I do not sense in a European small town, but maybe I am just ignorant of business

The centre of the town shifts throughout the day. In the early morning you can sidle out into your nearest road, nod at a few monks seeking alms, buy sticky rice and fried dough, soya bean milk, pork satay, endless sticky rice sweets, a few essentials more for morning food. By 6.00 the street market is open, busy, by 09.00 dead. The covered market busy from 5.00, by midday dead., too. The town sleeps. Around 16.00 the evening markets open. One sells more fish-fresh, pickled, fried to death, prawn fritters,, fresh vegetables, fruit-oranges, mangoes, pineapple, longan and lychee, cantaloupe, mangosteen…all according to season, fried chicken, grilled chicken hearts and livers on skewers, skewers of parson’s noses, honey ,banana flowers, all from local farms.

Then the cooked food market opens around 17.00. Here we buy Rice Soup, Noodles Soup, milky drinks, more fruit, made dumplings, fried sausage, grilled squid, flowers, endless curries in plastic gags, bird’s nest soup, tuna and sweet corn sandwiches..! yes, . In another hour or so the night vegetable market is busy. 10 kilo sacks of vegetables..sweet corn, aubergines, yams, cabbage, salad, broccoli, greens, onions, radishes, peppers and chilis..all going to little food businesses in the surrounding villages.

But all the while 7-11, Seven, that focal point of Thai small town life is there.. open…. the money pouring in.

CP foods, the franchisee of 7 here is one of the biggest companies in China, Thailand, The World. Very big in chickens. Bigger than the disgraced Tysons. Don’t think you can buy any part of a chicken, an egg or its offshoots they don’t own. They own that enormous new mall in Shanghai..what’s it called…?? No wonder. They are collecting money 24 hours a day round the globe at little cost and great profit. It is hardly sustenance food..just fripperies of the night. Coke, sweets, beer, ice cream, sausages, crisps, cakes, slushies and slurpies, there is a huge box of condoms next to the till!

At 05.00 again the monks speak pleasantries, urbane platitudes, through Tannoyed speakers…and soon it will be the all night festival season again…! I must order ear plugs..or go out into the dawn.

So what is good about this town?
It is hot, which I like; cool in the morning and at night. We have a house that is OK, a garden, family. I can buy food 24 hours a day, and most normal consumer goods. The air is clear, there is a river running muddy, deep and sufficiently wild.
There is an airport. One hour to Bangkok, 40 minutes to Chiang Mai. Flights to Laos, Singapore China.
What if Pwllheli was an hour from London, Dublin, Paris?
There are birds, flowers, beautiful fields of rice. The Internet is quick and works. K has friends she has known all her life, E has her little circle too. If she goes to school these, too, she will always know. It is like a French/German provincial village before..now? I do not know. When I was in Munster everyone went home to their villages at the weekend.
I have been on buses filled only with kids coming home here from BKK for a week.
I cannot buy mustard, olive oil, wine..why should I…there are other condiments…though I can do so in Chiang Mai. I miss my new friends. But better to be alone here than there. But we will have to return for money, schools.
It continues to be the contrasts and juxtapositions that rouse the dulled senses. A guy drives down the main drag on a Ford 6600 tractor, large disc harrow in tow, stops to top up his mobile phone and inspect the display of Laptop computers that are displayed under a tent outside the station. He has no shoes.

But
It is a long way from the sea, which I miss. I am a stranger and will always be so. We are a bit odd. There are no books, no toys, no gin. Everyone is getting on with life disregarding, and why not.
Thai TV is awful but that would be the same everywhere. Is S4C so good? I think not. There is a pulse and rhythm to the months that I am and never will be part of. Of what was I a part in the UK?
The lighting is terrible. I was thinking of making some juice this evening and went to the kitchen only to think:. One strip light is SO depressing..I cannot see, I do not want to be in this room…Electricity is cheap..and so are lamps and bulbs, but….no thank you…!! Of course if you do not read books…don’t need light to watch TV.

My personal space is limited, but here not much valued. They ask: Why would I want to be alone?. Those habits of thought and writing, reflection and dream must now be part of the life of others. I who was so all alone, no longer so! I have not developed that art of self absorption that the Chinese and Thais appear to have done..see Austin Coates on this. We went down the road. I said…the mad boy looks bad today, he is dirty loud. Who? She said? I said The Mad Boy, you complain about him every day…I did not see him, she said, I was thinking about Durian…How could you miss him?.Shrug…

But she says to me too. I, who cannot sleep alone.. too many nights in freezing, small, tightly wrapped beds with too few blankets and a falling off eiderdown. I like to sleep alone. I slept, on a small space of hard floor, the mosquitoes whining, with my mother, my father, drunk, my two sisters, fussy, for 14 years. No space to write, for homework, no light but the grim striplight, the TVs blaring, neighbours shouting. Now I have my own bed, my own pillow.. I can lie in bed, read, think, look in the mirror, talk on my mobile, pamper my hair Now, at last, I have my space. I can sleep alone! Then Elodie comes!! But who can gainsay that?!

I have been reading Gabriel Marquez’s new book, struggling with my rusty Spanish. Old men and sex. Is that me?. When I used to read Iris Murdoch as a youth I was accused of only reading books that were about my life….Sex, he says, is all you have when you fail to attain love. Not so.
I have never paid for sex, though I have paid for company..Company comes more expensive I think!

I have been trying to explain to K, regimen, diet…mind, body and estate/spirit via Foucault and Galen…Moderation, the mean, quality of air, foods..the prolongation of life, the regulation of venus…….There must be an equivalent lurking here. China is different of course where the whole thing is as articulated as in Europe..now forgotten..not in China..the value of old knowledge, lost knowledge. The difference between China and Europe enormous..wives and children, the hierarchies of pleasure, the context of pleasure in the equilibrum of marriage.

There are four words I have been trying to translate: Pleasure, Delight, Lovely. Adventure.
So far I have failed. Pleasure as something more relaxed, more intense, seekable, achievable..than fun, Going Out, and also as a verb to pleasure. Delight seems even more difficult. As it falls short of excess, is not Joy, Charm nor Fun, but is a transport, too.. Lovely is not Neat, Nice, Beautiful…thou art more lovely. And Adventure with its echoes of Journey, Risk, Novelty, but slightly contained…I am not finding the words for these. Maybe I am not finding a proper grasp of them in my own life.

But to return to The Laureate…Marquez, I mean……

Hang On

Another good story comes in!!
I met a guy a the Bangkok Bank, American, riding an un-necessarily large motorbike, and we fell into conversation waiting for the unbelievably complicated bureaucracy of Thai financial transactions to work themselves through. Nice guy from Atlanta, Georgia, Civil Engineer..well off retired 50 plus, bit of a hippy manqué but who in these parts is not. We talk about our lives. He has a wife from here AND a large family, of course. The girl comes from the market, ordinary, pretty enough, about 30 I suppose…been together 4 years. Then another girl appears 20 or so, More pretty but very chippy. .pouty face, rude, ogling me… .who is this? ..he raises eyes…her sister…so? She asks him for money..he gives her 500B and off she goes…the wife mutters at him…what can I do he says…she just asks for money all the time..if I give about 10,000 every week…10,000 that is $200….. there is peace… if not Father, Mother, Uncles, Wife think I am a shit….Good grief, how much do you give your wife I ask…..Don’t do it, face it out I say….yeah yeah
Anyway today K comes home
The guy has left for the US
But before he went he hired a JCB and took it to the house they had built, nice dwelling US style on the outskirts of town and demolished the whole thing. Left a note saying Sorry to the girl But your family is impossible ..I am not stupid. .I know I need to look after you all and so I did but your family just drunk on money and you do not stop them…
But of course they have the land
So K’s guess is that in a year or two there will be another husband another house……..what do you think??!!
Miss you very much
Love G, K, E


October 27 2004

I should start to write about my spectacularly dysfunctional family. Except. In Thai terms I rather think it is quite normal..maybe better than average.

My wife, the exquisite Kate, .She is 28 years old. She is the only child of her mother and father, but read on!
She lived with her mother and father and older half sister until her sister, 6 years older went away to University to become a nurse. I guess my wife was 12 or 13 when this happened., She stayed on, fighting with her father.

They moved house a couple of times in those years eventually ending up in the rather lovely two story classic Thai house on stilts in which we all now live. The day she graduated from high school, she got on a bus on her own and left for Bangkok.

She goes to work. Selling ice-cream, vegetarian food, goes to work for a marketing company, then goes to university.

She wants to study painting and graphic design. There are no facilities, no teachers. Sometimes a room with a video. There are cribs you buy in the street to enable you to pass the ludicrous multiple choice tests that pass for exams. Rhodri and I read E101..full of errors, archaisms and unintelligible stuff. IT101 Computing is all about obscure workings of out of date mainframe computers. So she tries Mass Communications, which at least appears to have a syllabus and teachers.

She meets Christians, boys, pimps, traders in everything; shares rooms with dozens of people. Sees the world. She said to me: I was a good girl, living in Bangkok. I did not need much; but I met most of the people who have been unpleasant to me in those few years. And some of those were people from Sukothai who had known me all my life.. City life?

This is paid for, to some extent, by the elder half- sister (and government loans). By virtue of, besides being a good girl who loves her mother, being a state employee the banks are headlong in trying to lend the nurse sister money. Lesson one: Work for the government.
She even has a different colour ID card! She gets preferential rates of interest on anything….

My wife has three half sisters and a half brother on her mother’s side. They are now aged c.40, 38, 37 and 33. When her elder sister was 2, she is the one is now 33, her mother, now aged 65, decided she no longer wished to be a minor wife and , in spite of the children, upped and left with my wife’s father. She took the elder sister with her and left the other three with their father and his major wife. I think there is some animosity between all parties on this score!

My wife’s mother’s first ‘husband’…how does one describe this..climbed in through her bedroom window when she was eighteen and raped her and took her to be his minor wife….explains why all the downstairs windows of this house are nailed up….

This guy, father of the other kids, is he a step father if he was there before? I think not…was a Phu Yai, big cheese, Khmer-Chinese…plenty of old money, land, rents, businesses…no need to work…He died some 8 years ago. His children by his major wife were already dead. He left nothing to the children of his minor wife. In that common Thai way all has been stolen by the nephews, great nieces and who knows who..a few gifts here, a few arrangements with officials there and the land papers have strangely re-appeared with their names on.

My wife’s father was a property developer from Vientiane. Chinese-Lao, amongst other things I guess by his looks. Started life a s a rubbish collector and pulled himself through so far. He was trying hard, but failed, to cover this province south of Chiang Mai in concrete. When he realised he was not to achieve this dream he gave up on life and took to the bottle and to beating everyone up.

Last year, as a result, he had a huge stroke which has left him paralysed down his right side.
He is younger than me.
I think there is some unspoken idea that I was his nemesis. No-one had managed to deal him for all those years and then we arrive with the small child and in 6 months he is gone and smitten.

My wife also has a half brother and half sister on her father’s side. They are aged 36 and 34 .The father now lives with that daughter and son, who live in adjacent houses the other side of town, definitely the other side of the tracks too. It is an unusual set up. There is this, sort of, huge extended family living in some half a dozen houses. Three of the houses are substantial modern concrete two story, balconied edifices, built with westerners money that the two lady boys have acquired along with absent partners. They are all actors and perform Likay, traditional Thai dance and plays, around the country, and were the principals in the story of moving house from BKK that I told a few years ago!

On her father’s side her half brother has two girls 13 and 10, little bored lolitas, while her half sister sister has three boys, 10, 8 and 6. All playing Likay. None go to school.

Her father’s first wife also lives with their children, as does he, and his first wife’s lover, who is about 35 and is the strong man of the Likkay.

Are you still with me?

Her siblings on her mother’s side have no children, except her eldest sister. She has a boy and a girl who are older than my wife. The boy has no children, but the girl has two, a boy aged eight and a girl aged six. Two different fathers. So they are K’s great nieces!. The mother has thrown them away and they are looked after by my wife’s sister. The daughter now has a new husband and a new 1 year old baby.

This one reason why Elodie is so special.

Her eldest sister also has a husband. And they have been together forever and live in the house next door. He drives a mini bus, occasionally, and raises fish under the house. She makes amazing yellow sweets, which require the purchase of about 200 eggs every couple of days. A few of these she sells in the night market. Her second sister looked after her father, ie her father not my wife’s father..oh dear!, for many years. When he died it emerged he had given most of his land, while senile, to his granddaughter in Yala, in the S of Thailand. His major wife and children long dead. She and her husband have some land of their own, so not too bad. They cannot have children. Her half brother now lives with them and his wife, from whom he is divorced as a consequence of the long story you may have read elsewhere re his adventures in Taiwan. It seems he cannot have children either. The Thais account for this by the fact that he has a white patch in his black hair.,

My wife’s other sister, the nurse, who is supposed to be the jewel in the crown, and it is a measure of the difference between being a state employee and not that she has been able to do what she has done, has now got ‘married’ I use this word advisedly to a guy, a teacher from Korat, she met on the Internet. Interestingly he too has a white patch of hair and the same conclusions have been reached. We shall see.

As far as I can work it out none of his family came to the ‘wedding’..and he got married in my jacket and shoes!. My wife has decided that the reason they ‘married’ was to ensure my mother in law was not embarrassed by the girl sleeping with the guy in the hospital 30 miles away where she works. They have not got a tabian jot –marrige certificate-from the Amphur, and everyone considers them not properly married. Indeed most people think he must have a wife already. Why else would your mother, your sisters and your friends not come to the ‘wedding’? The excuses were, apparently, too busy and too sick! The day after the wedding he went back to Bangkok. Too busy, also.

Indeed no-one in this saga, including mother in law, with the exception of my wife and I who were married in Richmond Upon Thames, heaven help her, has a marriage certificate. Most of them do not know on which day they were born, though they have had to invent birthdays for tabian ban. No-one celebrates birthdays. My mother in law has no clue on which day she, let alone her husbands and children were born. None of the siblings know their own nor each other’s birthdays.

When I have talked elsewhere about the ‘anarchy’, is that the right word? of Thai daily life this is partly what I think of..

Small diversion on weddings!!:

One time, when younger and ignorant, I had occasion to take up with a lady called J from Sisaket, in the East of Thailand, on the edge of what they call the weeping plain. No water, poor soil, but eerily pretty, a bit like the middle of Sicily but flat! After various passages of pleasure and business in Bangkok, Chianfg Mai, Phuket and Elsewhere we went ‘home’ to Sisaket.
After some days a party was announced. I already knew this as going to cost me money. So the appointed night arrives. 300 or so persons appear. There are bonfires and fireworks, food in abundance; by 22.00 an impressive pile of Singha Beer and Mekhong whisky bottles is building. A policeman, who has the only truck, is despatched to what the bThais call ‘seven’ ie. The 7-11 minimart in town to buy more crates.
Monks appear.
I am bound by the wrists with white threads about 200 times to this young lady, by every person present. What is happening/? Oh you are getting married of course says an ‘uncle’…well there you go…’Mind you’ he says, ‘you are, I think, the fourth guy she has married this year, but this is a VERY good party; you must have moré money..very good.’

We return to BKK. Me dripping with threads..walking in the street,,,,
European guy: Hi J how are you..(sees our wrists)..wow what happened? you got married?
J: Yes I very happy..
Farang: Oh? found someone rich enough at last??
J: Maybe

Did not last much after that!
In fact we went to Kanchanaburi and after various passages with hotels and restaurants we were walking by the river, J dressed up in combat gear and all the dogs of Kanchanaburi decide to eat her. J winding them up all the while with switches. We made it home. All my fault. I just got on a bus. And do you know she was wearing 10B of gold, about $2000 dollars worth, and she gave it all back so she cannot have been all bad. Many years later I found her, through a madam in Sukhumvit, who tells me I am the only one she loved…oh yeah? She has a Luk Kreung, a half European child, a little girl, 5 years old with a guy long lost in Finland!

Her sister has a worse/better life. Met a guy from Germany with a furniture store. Nice guy but entirely spaced/smashed. One day we went back to the apartment in Soi Korpai, Pattaya. He is looking v. green. Dead on the floor. Last seen trading stuff with some Thai guy on the stairs. Looks like bad heroin. No-one in the apartment building wants to know, foreigners, Thais alike. Every one knows what happened. A short visit from the police, a few pictures, some cursory inquiries into who the Thai guy might have been. Case closed. Another stupid foreigner…. who cares.?

Parents come from some former E German city, Jena I think, to collect son’s body, take wife, yes wife, home with them. Good, very upset people.…particularly liked the bit of the wife milking the Amex card, and all bank cards, from the ATM in the few minutes before going to the police station.
Last heard of shacked up, of course, with German ‘husband’ in Berlin…..at least got more sense than to come back to Thailand.

As I say, the general view around town here is that the guy, I am now returning to sister’s new husband, who is quite presentable if pompous, must have a wife and family already..so the whole thing is a wonderful Thai charade.

I have the wedding photos. Never saw a guy look so miserable in all my life..a wedding?..I think not..but of course no one can say anything….!

Not about this nor anything else. I am continually surprised by the utter freedom individuals here believe they have to do exactly what they want when they want to, but only in certain spheres of life. This ‘freedom’ is of course circumscribed by a ferocious set of social controls which start early with the different child rearing processes for boys and girls, follow through into the nonsensical rigidities of school, reinforced by the tyrannies of age and status so ingrained in the language and in patterns of respect and behaviour-overlaid with a good deal of monkish nonsense, but also infused with sets of values and practices, I think far more sensitive to the realities of the lives of human beings than many in the so-called ‘West’.

These things range from the trivial and annoying-I’ll park my car, drive my car anywhere I want without considering there is another one on the road, I will go to the counter ahead of 300 people waiting, If I want to sleep with someone I will-why should you care?, If you want a mia noi, I don’t care….which leads to: You are my family and so more important than anyone-I will care for you and you for me and we for our children and they for us over and above everything until we die, I will give my father all my money (and yours!) if he needs it,
Thailand is the third country on the list with the highest number of deaths by shooting of all countries after South Africa and Colombia

At the end of the month. Full Moon. Awk Phansa. Time for the short stay monks to leave the monastery. E and I go out into the road to await the procession. This time very small and short. A few monks in pick ups gathering alms, then some characters in mock ancient Chinese masks. Funny face says E, then the line of monks gathering rice and finally a peculiar procession of papier mache ‘monsters’ of which the children are supposed to be terrified. They look like badly made Mini- Ents from Lord of the Rings. More funny face says E.

Granny has gone to Nong Khai with her minibus grannies’ outing, of which there are many. She is a transformed woman with the departure of K’s father. She comes back with jars of rice spirit, lengths of beautiful cloth, sausages.

The killing goes on in the South. Even the Bangkok Post, a most brown-nosed newspaper has been criticising Thaksin. I just say..remember he is a policeman and all he really will be happy with is a police state. This is the kind of thinking will get me and all of us shot. The general view here seems to be that …’muslims are mad’ ’because they ‘’don’t want to be Thai’…I say it is madder to pile bodies in trucks stacked 10 high, and with sacks on their heads, so they suffocate…silence..Even The Nation was moved to deplore the sheer disregard of Thais to what was going on.
When I was with the kings’s nephew P in the 90s and the * family from Songkhla they all knew what was going to happen…”just a matter of time if nothing is done about the economy, the oppression, the neglect of the South”, they said…so here we are.Thaksin has dissolved the only talking shop with predictable results. One wonders, as with so many bad men, what motivates him? It must be power. Wealth and fame/notoriety he has already.

No Halloween here. I light some candles, but for whose souls I do not know, Ma?, Dada? Kate? How lonely priests must have been. The night is quite cool. I drive the bike far and very fast under the most orange of moons. I am very depressed. Why are we here?. How did all this happen?. Was I so incompetent at life that this chaos is all I could achieve?. I think so. But why? I cannot blame it all on those early years, but how did I never get it to improve it?. I feel as sorry for K as anyone. How was she to know what was coming to her life?. Had she any idea, that would have been an even greater reason for lack of love. As it is I am just another cross sent for her to bear. That I love her dearly probably makes it worse.

E continues to force English on all the children. They have taken to mocking her, quite kindly,: Elodie don’t like it, Elodie don’t want it, Elodie coming too; and ‘Careful darling!’ She continues to expand her Thai vocabulary with English syntax. Is this the power of the ‘mother’ tongue. I am not sure why she speaks English, but I seem to remember saying how cross I was with everyone two years ago because they were not speaking with her. So here you have it not mother tongue but father tongue. What will be the implications of that?

Loy Kratong

The best cut, paste and invention I can do is this!

Most of what is written else is just tourist brochure or invention of tradition splurge.

Ban Chang, Thailand. Two students perform traditional dance to celebrate Loy Kratong. In their left hands they hold a lotus flower containing a candle.

The festival of Loy Krathong, known as Yi Peng in the north, has many conflicting explanations of its origins and purposes. Is it a Brahmanic rite honoring the dead? A plea for an end to the rainy season? A celebration of the end of rice planting? Is it a way of ridding oneself of bad luck, or the accumulated sins of the year past?

Different legends surround the origins of Loy Kratong. The most popular version is it was an expression of gratitude to the goddess of water 'Phra Mae Kongka' for having extensively used, and sometimes polluted, the water from the rivers and canals. It is also in part a thanksgiving for her bounty in providing water for the livelihood of the people.

Some believe the festival originates from Buddhism. They say the offering of flowers, candles and joss-sticks is a tribute of respect to the footprint of the Lord Buddha on the sandy beach of the Narmaha River in India, as well as to the great Serpent and dwellers of the underwater world, after the Lord Buddha's visit to their watery realm. It is possible that this is derived from a Hindu festival that pays tribute to the god Vishnu, who meditates at the center of the ocean.

Others believe that the floral kratong is offered to the pagoda containing the Lord Buddha's topknot, which was cut off at his self-ordination and is now in heaven. Another explanation is that it is a way to pay respect to one's ancestors.

Another version has it that young couples launched their krathongs together in order to secure their happy and successful journey through life together.

According to a common version the festival was established under the reign of Sukhothai King Ramkamhaeng in the 13th century. His wife, Noppamas, daughter to a Brahmin court priest, was the kingdom’s most famous poetess. She introduced to the King the practice of constructing floats of lotus flowers to send down the river. the King made Loy Krathong into an official state ceremony. (Loy means, "to float", a krathong is a "receptacle made of banana leaves.") The Nang Noppamas Beauty Contests, commemorate this woman's contribution to Thai culture.

But this story may be mere legend. Some scholars have recently contested idea that Rama Kamhaeng devised the Thai system of writing in 1283. Instead, it is possible that the 19th-century King Rama IV inventedthis first formulation of Thai script in order to demonstrate to the europeans that Thai culture and learning was on par with Europe's. Or he might have intended to create a false, but expedient sense of Thai national identity to help deflect colonial encroachment. Possibly the Loy Krathong story along with ‘ancient’ legends was created for similar reasons.

In any case, Loy Krathong has become perhaps Thailand's most beautiful, colourful, and - at least until Bangkok's government started cracking down on the use of firecrackers in public places - noisy. Still, the fireworks begin well before the festival's actual commencement, occurring on the day before the full moon of the 12th lunar month, which usually falls in late October or November.

Building krathongs is an integral part of the festival and a social event in itself, although it is possible to buy pre-made krathongs at roadside stalls.Families will collect or buy the necessary items and make kratongs together.

A krathong's base is a squat, cylindrical cross-section of a banana tree's spongy stem. In Bangkok. Experiments have been made with using Styrofoam instead, because the decomposition of thousands of organic krathongs in Bangkok consumes oxygen needed by marine wildlife. Of course Styrofoam does not decompose at all, which makes the notion of the festival as penance for dirtying the river quite daft.

This was an idea of Samak the recent governor of Bangkok, now reincarnated as a TV chef.

In general, krathongs are made using only natural materials. Folded banana leaves are attached to the krathong base using toothpicks or pins; and then the krathong is decorated with flowers and a candle, joss-sticks, incense, a lock of hair,and a fingernail clipping . A one baht coin also is added

K and I put photographs, nail clippings and locks of each other hair into the Kratongs.

Elodie thought they were variously cakes, because they had candles and hats.

The candles were not supposed to go out which was a sign wishes had been granted.

If the candle stays afloat longevity, too, will surely ensue together with our love! Mmm?

Towards dusk the temple compounds will be a seething mass of vendors and entertainments. All manner of goods are for sale, while dance troupes perform traditional and modern dances and plays, particularly ‘Likay’. Celebrants often dress in traditional Thai styles. Lantern-bedecked parade floats weave through the streets, while on the river boats take part in racing competitions.

We will light khom loys, These are cylyndical hot air lanterns sent high into the sky until their orange light is hidden in the clouds

Finally, the candles and incense of the krathongs are lit, and everyone makes for water Wishes are made the krathongs are set afloat. Any body of water will do, but in Sawankhalok we use the Yom river in Sukothai thelake in the Historical Park, in Bangkok and Chiang Mai the Chao Phraya and Ping Rives. In Phuket we used to launch the kratongs into the the ocean; the trick being to get far enough out beyond the surf. However even so they are likely to wash up later.

If the intention of floating kratongs is to cast away one's sins, is their return some confirmation of the irrevocability of karma?.

The young boys, being practical, get into the river or the lake and nick the coins from the Krathongs.

When you really want to push the boat out these elaborate festivals can accompany Loy Kratong

The Jong Priang, Lote Choot, Loi Khome Long Nam royal ritual begins with an assembly of Buddhist monks for the recital of evening prayers. The next morning, the monks receive offerings from the king. Brahmin priests then perform the ritual in the Brahmin Hall.

Candles and the "priang receptacle" which contains oxen fat or butter are presented to the king. The candles to be presented as sacred offerings are anointed with oxen fat or butter, lit by the king and placed in three distinct types of lanterns. Each denotes the rank and social status of the individual.

The Khome Chai lantern (the lantern of victory) with its nine-tiered umbrella is symbolic of the king. Its bamboo frame is covered with white fabric decorated with stained glass or coloured mirrors. The Khome Chai lantern is fixed to a wooden lantern pole with swan-shaped hooks adorned with dainty bells. In contrast, the Khome Pratiab lantern of the royal concubine features a seven-tiered umbrella, while the tubular-shaped bamboo Khome Boriwarn lantern of the royal entourage and attendants has a three-tiered umbrella.

The lit lanterns are hoisted onto lantern poles lining the palace walls as well as along the outer walls of the palace and the living quarters of the court attendants. At the end of the designated period, the lanterns are taken down from the poles and floated in the waterways.

‘Loi Prateep’ with Illuminated Replicas of the Royal Barges

The "Loi Prateep" royal ritual was performed in the royal court on the night of the full moon of the twelfth lunar month. The ritual begins with the king making offerings of rice, followed by Buddhist sermons being held in the Grand Palace.

The king then placed floral offerings at the "Ubosoth" (chapel) of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha or Wat Phra Si Rattanasatsadaram, and the "Ho Phra" scripture hall of the Grand Palace, before setting off to Ratchaworadit Pier to float the giant krathongs.

What is notable about the water-borne procession of "Loi Prateep" is the impressive fleet of no less than five hundred illuminated vessels, each with two lit candles and an incense stick, being carried down-stream.

Two royal ceremonial barges serve as the State barges, the third carries a sacred Buddha image and the fourth carries other sacred and floral offerings. Other vessels consisted of escort boats, floating Thai orchestra, police boats, firework boats, and others. One of the accompanying vessels, the Phraya Chodeuk Ratcha Setthi Chinese Junk stands out from the rest.

However they don’t do that often and anyway only in BKK..the affair in Sukothai was a deal muddier, but E quite excited by it all.

Now we are off to the real thing in Sukothai City!…I think it will be ‘Son et Lumiere’ at its worst. The slightly amazing thing to me, at least, is that in 30 years no-one here has ever been!! Its 20 miles away.

Yes, well…the Sound and Light turned out to be a most lugubrious affair performed at snail’s pace. Nothing much happened for 10 minutes except a few bursts of illumination of the Sukothai ruins, then there were a couple of invisible battles and a lot of folk milling around being ‘alive’; enter a king or two and finally hundreds of dancers who while beautiful did not as they say ‘do much’. Finally a cast of some 500 put half a dozen kratongs into the lake. This version of the story apparently first written and performed for ‘The Emperor of Japan some 10 years ago. Poor chap I wonder what he made of it. Perhaps he got a Japanese voice over instead of the usual pompous basso profundo that accompanies so many ‘serious’ activities here!