December 2005
Sawankhalok

Well before the year ends I am reflecting on it; mainly because even by our standards of dislocation, grief and dysfunction it has been ‘unusual’!

We started off with our ‘Tour of the North’ in January. Well half of the North..we still have not got back to Mae Hong Son..maybe in January! Many beautiful but, for us, uninhabitable places. Wherever there is a Royal residence in Thailand you can be pretty sure it is a good place!

Through February and March I managed to get the pages of ‘Sarn and Siam’ together, as well as ‘In A World Of Our Own’.
Still not sure what to do with them. No great hurry.
The dead not running away, only our lives running on.

The Restless Boredom syndrome of Adam Phillips eventually took us back to the UK at the beginning of April and we went and got K here RTR visa with no hassles..just a lot of money.

We then made the mistake of going to the French Embassy in South Kensington to get her a Schengen Visa. Before we had got it with no difficulty in BKK. Big Mistake. Lot of people. Only one person can go inside..so K and E stay in the street. Once inside turns out you are locked in and cannot get out. No mention of this nonsense BEFORE you get inside. It is cold and I have the car keys….after much shouting between self and surly staff, aided by Philippino lady in same position.whose child, aged 4, the embassy staff hit so hard they draw blood..get to throw the car keys out of the door to K. Takes about 5 hours to get a visa…Have to have an ‘appointment’ I thought things mus be looking up and different from the old days of queues all round South Ken. Just turns out that 1000 other people have ‘appointment’ for the same time…..
Staff thoroughly rude and unhelpful. La Belle France. Maybe it is the difference between £500 and Free. I doubt it. And we are white…
Interesting what I was reading about Islam in France in the early part of the year and what happened later!

Made getting UK visa seem like dreamland..simple appointment system and visa processed by Muslim lady in full gear. Welcome to HM’s Civil Service 2005.

K and E go home on the bus.
K: “Please can you let me off at Ladbroke Grove and tell me when we get there?”
Bus Driver: “Dunno where it is!”
Lady on Bus “Don’t be so bloody stupid, the bus goes to Ladbroke Grove!”
Bus Driver: “S’not my fault she don’t know where it is!”
Lady on Bus “Don’t worry dear I’m going up there.”
K in tears: “Why are people in this country so horrible to each other?”.
Lady on Bus “Dunno, dear. Sometimes wish I had never come.”

Welcome to England
Welcome to France
Shall not do that again

Anyway, having achieved all that, we bought a white Mercedes and headed off to France! E very taken with boats and hotels.

So we spent the best part of 3 months in Beaune in Jean and Michelle’s beautiful house. E grew beans and turnips, peas and tomatoes! We had a sandpit ‘just like Wales’ and wandered around rural France.
It did seem even more remote than Sarn, and that says something; though of course Beaune and Chalons are hardly Pwllheli or Bangor..in either of those a market or a Leclerc/Carrefour would be welcome!!
But the playgroups were not fun and the amazingly ancient population pretty unfriendly; inspite of an amazingly louche performance by the locals on July 14!...So when the best friend that we made, an engineer from Grenoble died, we headed off to Spain and Portugal. Galicia and its beaches, let alone its fantastically roofed houses, looked pretty good. One day!?

And then we thought: we have a beautiful house in a beautiful place by the sea! We had better go and live in it. So J and M’s son, Louis, came to the house and we left.

K drove all the way from Beaune to Sarn. Not having driven in France before!
It was only later that I discovered that she had thought that, when driving at 80mph, she was driving at 80kph..and me being fussy with her for driving fast. We had several altercations about 45kph speed limits in France..but to no avail!!

So we spent a wonderful 2 months in Sarn doing all the usual seaside, prawning, fishing and gardening things and then came back to Swankhalok.

Elodie’s desire to go to school has been met and now she has been going to school for some 10 weeks; and is today going to dance with her class on a stage dressed in white frilly socks and lace gloves, white tap dancing shoes and a gold paper dress!

In amongst all that the peculiarity of the year was compounded by the amazing fairy story of Ana Pearce actually coming true and really offering up its treasure; which has made a difference to dreams and possibilities. I know that sounds oblique and obscure, but I am not sure I am yet up to recounting the whole story. It just meant we variously spent months in disbelief..(this can’t be true! Can it) and others in real disbelief..(Of course it is not true..behave as though nothing will come of it) And all that from a letter which I nearly tossed away as I looked suspiciously like some menacing debt collector!

But! We have paid off the bank, bought some land(s) and started on what is needed to stop the streams of Mynydd Rhiw running through Sarn! Though why we need to do this rather than our esteemed landlord remains a mystery!

We are planning ‘renovations’ to the house here which will give us more space and E a room of her own, and we will build a house in Chiang Mai against the day when she needs to go to an IB school, which at least exists there!

Whether we could acquire either house or land in the UK or Europe remains a moot point..and anyway.. Where? As I have said before!

We had one extravagance which is K's Vespa!

The building of the road at Sarn is starting; but we can’t really get worked up about it. I am sure it will be horrible at the beginning but the rampant growth of a couple of summers will bury it.

Anyway I will go back briefly in January to see whether we can in any way influence the design free zones of the National Trust and Gwynedd Council; and then we will see if there is any satisfaction in going back again in the summer of the year!

A year with little writing, then. We have left that up to whose book on RS, The Man Who Went Into The West, nears completion. He asks, at the end, what he is to write about B? Who?

K has been opening businesses of which she dreamed but had not the capital to start. All such ventures have to be opened on days sanctioned by monks. They look in disbelief at her and then at Elodie and finally at me. The last one having shaken his head in the same way as all of them said: ‘So much money; AND more to come’ If only!!
Happy Christmas

Here's a nice lunch
Grilled Pomfret
with
the main ingredient of a red pepper, lemon and cream salsa on the way
Pomfret veryexpensive £3.00 a kilo why? Probably grossly overfished


No-one needs a recipe for that, do they?!

My new wife









Has to be said living with Kunjana gives a whole new angle on Serial Monogamy

I am working on my dance routines for the Christmas Party






























My friend! As you know half european children are called luk khreung here. Stupid woman in the market says to K...oh luk khreung eh. Yes says K...and this one too? Oh yes says K Her father is very handsome black man. Really? Aren't you lucky? Oh, very, says K.......hey ho!
If it is true that English and American sense of humour is mutually unintelligible...try Thais..who have almost No sense of humour in daily life...though they are led by the nose by live and TV comedians...!










I've had my eye on this basket for some time. Well I would have if I could get my eye to actually look at it!

The Radio Station

Required Reading...unless you already did!!
Pinter

Amongst the pleasures of living here are:
No Car Alarms
No Planes
No Police, Fire or Ambulance Sirens
Of course that is partly because there are no police cars and no ambulances and the fire engines look like dinky toys

On the other hand there is the cacophony of Radio played at full volume from 5.00 am in many houses-diferent stations, pickup trucks with loud speakers carrying out earsplitting advertising, all night musical performances for an infinite number of excuses, monks exhortations-also by loudspeaker at 5.00 am, too, and followed by town council news delivered in same manner, school bands which play tunelessly all day with a lot of drums..100s of undersilenced motorbikes. But you can see the stars..no sodium lights, and smell the jungle!

And today's must have school accessory is
A Money Box!

I was wandering around the market in Phitsanulok. Many miles from the sea; I came across this:

So here is Raie au Beurre Noir Oriental

First catch your skate



Skin it, reserve the liver and roe, make two nice skate wings.



Heat some butter in a good large pan; add skin, bones, 1 onion, 1 carrot, both diced, 3 heads of crushed garlic, black pepper and a bunch of coriander leaves. Brown and add a litre of fish stock. Simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Add some white wine and lemon juice. Reduce to 250 or so mll.

Steam or boil 500g of potatoes.

You then need a knob of butter, 250g bunch of straw mushrooms, a few small hot chilis, some slivers of ginger and plenty more garlic.

Cook these ingredients in the butter until just tender

Put a further decent knob of butter in a large pan. Cook the skate wings-one at a time or together, depending on your pan. Cook slowly at first then, when the wings are nearly cooked-say 10 minutes-increase the heat so the bits that have accumulated in the pan are crisped.

Remove the skate wings to a serving dish

Add to the pan a cup of the fish stock; reduce to a couple of tablespoonfuls, then add a good dash of vinegar-balsamic or red wine according to preference and a large spoonful of chopped cornichons and deglaze the pan. Pour over the skate. Serve the skates dressed with a little garnish of herb leaves and the potatoes with the mushroom/liver/roe sauce.



Best eaten somewhere like Honfleur or Dieppe with a good Cidre Normande. There was a time when you could buy what passed for cider here ie Strongbow. But it has gone. The best I could do, which actually was not such a batty idea, was a can of ice cold Guinness! Not quite like decent bread, Guinness and Oysters in Galway..but not too bad!

Did you ever wonder what was really going on in Iraq?
If you read this you probably wished you didn't!
I thought this interesting too:
More Truths and Lies from Iraq
I liked..: The most foolish war since 9BC when Augustus sent his legions to Germany and lost them!

Kate went to the funeral of her friend's uncle. Chinese business. Hundreds of people, acres of flowers. Body in the coffin. Before it was sealed wife tucks in mobile phone + charger. You never know!!

And I was reading this!!
Any more ideas??

*Rainbow Fish Marcus Pfister
*Room on the Broom Julia Donaldson
*Lavenders Blue Nursery Rhymes Kathleen Lines
One Fish, Two Fish Dr. Seuss
+No Matter What Debbi Gliori
Dance with Angelina Kathleen Holabird
Felicity Wishes Emma Thomson
*Guri and Gura’s Seaside Adventure Rieko Nakagawa
*There was an Old Lady who
Swallowed a Fly Pam Adams
Jolly Phonic Songs Laurie Fyke
Faster Faster Little Red Train Benedict Blaythwayt
Lily and The Magical Moonbeam Stephen Culbis
Thomas and The Naughty Diesel
*Captain Toby Satoshi Kitamura
Dogs Never Climb Trees Lynley Dodd
*Mouse Paint Ellen Stoll Walsh
Wee Sing Pamela Beall
The Steam Train Jigsaw Book Heather Amery
+Brown Bear, Brown Bear Bill Martin
+The Gigantic Turnip Aleksei Tolstoy
Whiskers and Paws Fiona Waters
+*Stories Songs and Rhymes Basic Skills Agency!!
+Marvin Wanted More Joseph Theobald
The Tiger Who Came to Tea Judith Kerr
Mog’s Family of Cats Judith Kerr
Goodbye Mog Judith Kerr
Kipper’s Toybox Mick Inkpen
+Guess How Much I love you Sam McBratney
Playtime Rhymes Sally Gardner
*Pumpkin Soup Helen Cooper
Laura’s Star Klaus Baumgart
*The Magic Porridge Pot Tania Hurt-Newton
Spot Bakes a Cake Eric Hill
+Splosh Mick Inkpen
Underwater Farmyard Carol Ann Duffy
*We’re Going On a Bear Hunt Mike Rosen
Trevor and The Bonfire Brenda Apsley (Thomas TTE!)
Kitten Finds A Home Michael Coxon
In The Night Kitchen Maurice Sendak
Molly and The Storm Christine Leeson
Fox in Socks Dr Seuss

* Current Favorites!
+ Past Favorites..Old Hat Now!!

ME

November has gone with scarcely a word being written! I’m not sure why!

I think much of it is that I no longer have a fresh eye as to the peculiarities and distinctiveness of what is here. All rather humdrum..if bizarre, as ever.

So much of what we have fought for has been achieved. So there is not really any angst in our personal lives to drive the cutting edge. Elodie is well. The road is, for better for worse, happening. We are here. Elodie is in school. Only in those wastes beyond our horizons the world seethes..and we are not likely to go and set up house in Iran, Brazil, Indonesia, Burundi or wherever; if one might ever, it is not now with this small life.

So, we have been taken up with trying to buy land and houses, with Elodie going to school, and with Kate’s businesses.

We have been up and down Chiang Mai and I have been down to Phuket two or three times. The houses are mostly horrible boxes on housing estates-though some of them are elegant and spacious..at a price. Kate does not want to live in Phuket, though we have found what seems to be a good school; but Phuket is a building site and one wonders what the point of being there is, if you cannot see the sea! And to see the sea you need 200K. Better places to spend it I should say. And Samui and Phuket have not enough water..signs of the future!
Neither of us are sure about Chiang Mai, which seems to have all the disadvantages of Bangkok and none of the benefits. Traffic, crime, tourists corruption, greed.

Newsweek is full of the rapidly widening gap between rich and poor in Asia and it is more than visible in all these Thai cities. Half the population, nearly 2 Billion people, living, still, on $2 a day.
But at least large swathes of Bangkok and Chiang Mai look like quite well-off places; unlike Manila and Jakarta.

The south of Thailand continues to be war-torn-mainly, as far as I can see- due to the stupidity of politicians and years of neglect. And that is true of much of rural Thailand. Patronage, despotism, violence. I see that Thailand has come out top of the league of domestic violence. Given the amount of woman bashing that is shown on TV every night one is hardly surprised.
Imagine if every English girl you knew said she would under no circumstances even think about having a relationship with, let alone marrying, an English guy!

All of which has created ghettoes of the poor in the cities. So we have to choose to have that here or the simmering dissatisfactions of France, Britain and elsewhere..even Ireland I hear.

So we might just stay put! Not that I can see car burning has reached Pen Llyn, yet!
Travel and wander.

I am not at all sure what it means for Elodie’s education. But then my overpriced one was hardly of much use was it? Rhodri’s at least seems to have been worth it. I see Westminster is well over 20K a year, now. So we would not be doing that again, anyway..and where?..boarding at Wycombe Abbey? I think not!

So we have extended the land holdings n Sawankhalok, which seems like a good idea for the future. We went to look at some of the most beautiful land I have ever seen, up in the hills. Several hectares of orange trees on the banks of a huge lake, sniving with wildlife. But this being a crazy country there are no proper land titles and so it is impossible to get it, securely, in any way. And as I have said before..it is probably too dangerous to go out into the wilds. You would need fences and dogs and armed house guards I should think, even if you were Thai let alone me! K’s view is that you would either have to be dirt poor or zoomingly rich and influential. I still find it hard to get my head round the fact that some 70% of Thai land is supposed to either belong to the king or the government. So most people outside the big cities are squatters under patronage!

So sadly we won’t be doing that. Like an upstate Michigan lake..but hot!! We could have had orchards and gardens and boats and terraces dripping with bougainvillea and hibiscus. To get there we drove about 3 miles and then turned off onto a dirt road to collect the keys to the house..yes the land had a house too! To our amazement we found ourselves in the middle of a Meo Hill Tribe village with old ladies with gold teeth and home woven clothes and pampooties sitting around amongst pigs and chickens. I don’t think it had ever occurred to anyone that there were such people in Sukothai….Chiang Mai and the North, yes; but Sukothai!
The photograph will give you the idea…but before we bought a Sony T5..so now we will have swizzing pics…if boring..well to you! Suppose I have to spend the next year learning how to use Photoshop..apparently Agfa, Polaroid and Agfa are on their last legs. Soon won’t be able to buy B/w film I suppose.

We went through the motions of Loy Kratong; for some reason very perfunctory compared with last year. What was notable was that last year we wandered around in the river bed while this year the river was surging past. Today the 26th whole of Samui and S. Thailand under water..so very much not like a year ago. Though normal I think for Samui in October/November.

Kate and friends have bought and started a Radio Station, which keeps people busy…shades of small town America in the early 60s to me..if only we had Cadillac Cabriolets too!
Anyway at some stage I am suppose to pole up with an hour a day of Learning English with music..two topics on which I am uniquely ill qualified. I suppose I could manage music of the 60s, but as to learning English.! Well!
I turned up the obvious places. IAELTS, to find the name of the Thai contact was Prefessor (sic) someone, which did not inspire confidence, then the BBC which is horribly efficient but the materials appear to have nothing to do with being 18 and wanting to learn English in Sukothai. I see the fashionable dumbing down way of currently describing English is in terms of ‘chunks’ of language- a word I am more likely to associate with pineapples than that phrase only heard on aircraft..’would you care for?'....more tea?...to which, of course to everyone’s confusion. you cannot reply ‘Yes,I would care for some!’. Without appearing facetious’; while at least the British Council, while apparently to be more geared to luring people to study in the UK than anything else, has at least heard of music, which drives life here as anywhere..so we will have to muddle through as ever. I can hear Ann in Chiswick saying now…oh yeah here we go again ‘bullshit to the line’……….thanks!!
Not even any money or a sinecure in it this time me dears!

A Propos of nothing at all I bought a litre of Gilbeys Gin for £5…bet that would put a lease of life into the domestic finances of my step mother, even with her wealth. Still, she must have a stronger constitution than that poor Mr. Best. What are those pills they put in his tummy. Doctor used to give us Flagyl presumably on the same basis? Should I have some in stock along with the Tamiflu?. I see only governments are supposed to be able to get that now! Not in Thailand I think!

Anyway …I was watching an interview with Jean Louis Trintignant…it is true!... he has eyes more terrifying than mine..I could not work out whether they were red or black!..but then I was watching on TV5 on Thai TV !........
It brought back all the horrors of the early months with Elodie. I do not know what happened to his daughter Pauline..almost impossible to find out now…his other daughter’s murder is all over. 9 years old. How does a rich 9 year old disappear? What if Elodie disappeared?
It is true she is watched here like a hawk and a mouse…The potential for horror here is even greater than in France..sold into slavery, prostitution, begging, mutilated..and for a few pounds…Murder and extensive violence for a gold chain here…£130 is not uncommon...so in case you thought we were relaxing with a nice book and a cocktail.....
Etc….

As you see! We are all into Bikes

Life moves on!
Kate at 18
and
Kate today

Off to School
!

Vllage Poet is on a journey
Village Poet is here too

So much seems to have happened; and while it was happening there seemed no time to write about it
There are swathes of thoughts from our stay in France, which have a peculiar autumnal melancholy about them as we sit here watching the rage of young men on the streets of Clichy. Now wonder K says there is no reason to return to either France or the UK. However were the South of Thailand to come closer to the North then there might be no reasons to be here either. Perhaps M. Sarkozy and M.Thaksin would like to exchange views. I am sure they would find they have a lot in common
So we have come back to Sukothai.
To me this seems like something of a relief…though I had no desire to leave Sarn. I will return to this!
Our French adventure was, shall we say, interesting! What did we learn? Kate learned French at top speed, we were all bored to bits..but that, I think, because of where we were. Rural France stuck in the 1950’s with the addition of massive 21st Century farm vehicles was probably never going to be to our taste. I remember the look of horror on Michelle’s face, when we asked if she had thought of living there! Not Lyon! Palleau is very beautiful and the treasured house, full of memories… and histories more so. We felt very privileged to have been a brief part of its history ! We felt our way into it all and sat and gardened and lived…but…even in Poleymieux where Elsi spent her childhood it did not seem we had any reason to be there..nor in Chamonix and Chambery..other places with family connections.

So, we travelled, in France, and to Spain and Portugal..in search of something! We bought tents we never used and the aged Benz purred round Europe. I guess the nicest places we found were Ceret outside Perpignan where we had been with Matty 30 years ago..but now too many Brits…the hidden Costa Brava of Aiguablanca and Vigo..a stunning place. We went from Beaune to Montpellier and Perpignan, Barcelona, Malaga, Sevilla, Faro, Oporto, Vigo, Castillana del Mar, Bayonne, Perpignan…at top speed!....We had tremendous times in Spain and Portugal…memorable meals n beached restaurants, even amazing Chinese food. We had dancing and fireworks, fado and Basque singers. Elodie ran and laughed in the wide sea and coming through Perpignan and Perigueux we thought…these are the two most boring places we have been in for three weeks!!
We might have gone on…to Italy and Greece..to Germany, even, but it occurred to us, one day, that we, too, had a beautiful house by the seaside and we had better go and live in it..so we did…much to Elodie’s delight…so probably not the wrong decision.
We will go back to Germany, Venice, Greece. All we were looking for, really was a school and a place. No big cities, no rural dumps. The languages are a problem for Kate, let alone me and what does it mean to go to school in many of these places?...Not that they are not in all cases better than Walsall. But are they better than Pen Llyn? Answers on a p/c please.
So we came back here to see Granny and to speak some Thai. We went to Chiang Mai and nearly bought a house..but I cannot quite commit myself to a bourgeois Thai housing estate..give me time!
Then I went back to Phuket.
Kalim is a desert..eveything razed in preparation for some mammoth housing project..Patong a building site..they must be trying to create 20 new ‘Spas’ at least. I felt so sorry for the lost tourists wandering in this chaos..and of course it was raining 24/24 as ever! Patong has been transformed from the small village of unpaved roads that I knew into an unpleasant mixture of huge hotels and a scrubby new Thai town the whole length of Soi Nanai
Phuket Town though grows more attractive. It is to Phuket as Corte is to Corsica. Once you get away from the sea there is a real life to be lived. And now it has schools, Makro, Robinson and Central..all new!
M took me to see her daughter’s school. A bilingual school with the curriculum looking sorted out, qualified teachers, small classes….For Thailand it actually looks like a place a child might learn something. Neither government regimentation nor European ostentation. She has endless problems with the school and the authorities because, of course, she is Lao not Thai. And even though her daughter was born in Phuket she has yet, aged 6, to achieve Thai citizenship. This nonsense is repeated all over the north of Thailand where thousands of Hmong, Akha and other hill tribe children are being persistently discriminated against and exploited by the Thais even though they have lived in what is now ‘Thailand’ for generations. Thai racism extends widely-to Issan people, and certainly to southern Muslims, whose land after all did not become part of Siam until the first years of the C20.
Thai culture and Thai nationalism are very strong. There is no denying the vigorous and exciting range and depth of its characteristics. It is locally as English is more broadly..a dominant phenomenon.
I was in Hollywood Awards in BKK the other night with some 3000 Thai youths and girls in their 20’s. A commonality of cultural norms, shared songs and experiences was huge..very powerful…everyone knew the words and tunes to every song, every one knew exactly who every singer and performer was…

Coming back through BKK I stopped to see my friend P. She says she wants to go home to Uttaradit..but needs to stay for business. I should think there is a chance that BKK will be the New Orleans of Asia. Now there is talk of a floating city in Phuket and a new city at the new BKK airport..all appears awful.

Sukothai and the hinterland of Bali let alone Phuket sound better.

So E is going to go to school! What a long way we have come.

Here I go with my ABC and my numbers and Thai letters..all of which she knows…very full of myself. She might well come home after the first day and tell us that that is enough..been there done that! She keeps checking she can go to school in her ’seaside’ too when we go (or is it come?) back.

So in case you thought we ate nothing in France…..you could try some of these!!

May 5 Jambon de Bayonne
Le Cassolet des coquilles et moules
Andouillette (Laon)

May 6 Macquereaux a la grillade
La macedoine des courgettes et tomates (Lyon)

May 7 Jambon Persille
Steak Tartare
Salade Nicoise (Beaune)

Kaeng Keow Wan
Soupe Chinoise (Palleau)
Legumes braises au facon Thai

May 8 Les Merguez
Jambon Persille de Verdun
Salade verte (Palleau)

Pasta Sauce au volaille Thai
Fraises

May 9 Saute de Porc au menthe et champignons a la crème
Le Riz
Salade de Chicons

May 10 Sandwich Jambon Persille et Moutarde
Sandwich Camembert et Mango Chutney
Saute de Noix de St. Jacques et Coques
Cervelle de Veau en bouillon

Les Pommes de terre
Salade de Chicons et tomates

May11 Pla Khaem Kao Tom

Pintadeau-Sauce Orange
Riz
Carrottes Sucres
Les Asperges

Petits pots au Chocolat

May 12 Nouilles Thai (Mama!)

Les Chipirons et Les Noix de St. Jacques Sauce au Vin Blanc
Le Riz

May 13 Les Artichauts
Nouilles Thai (Mama!) aux Legumes
Sandwich Pintadeau Mango Chutney

Assiette de Pintadeau Froid, Museau de Porc et Salamis
Salade de Chicons et Cornichons

May 14 Risotto des Crevettes
Poulet Fermier Poele
Les Pommes de Terre a vapeur
Les Epinards
Sauce aux Tomates Provencales

May 15 Salade des Crevettes

Casserole de Porc au Vin Blanc avec Pois Chiches
Tarte aux Fraises

May 16 Le Coq au Vin
Pommes Mousselines
Les Haricots Verts

Les Fruits
Le Fromage-Comte et Brie

May 17 Couscous au Poulet Fermier
Les Courgettes, Les Carottes, Les Navets

May 18 Salade composee de Cervelles de Porc, Chicons et Cornichons
Pizza facon Thomas-Sauce aux Tomates de Vigne, Oignons Rouges, Ail, Herbes de Provence, Fromage Emmenthal, Olives Noirs, Anchois

Tarte aux Framboises

May 19 Salade de Chicons et Anchois
Assiette de Rosette de Lyon et Salamis

Soupe Menerboise
Fromage

Tarte de Pommes

May 20 Salade de Museau de Porc

Blanquette de Lapin
Riz au Saffron
Les Haricots Verts

Les Fruits

May 21 Pasta au Jus de Lapin

Le Veau Roti aux Pommes de terre et Les Herbes
Les Flageolets
Les Carottes Sucree

May 22 Salade de Chicons et du Thon

Risotto de Foie de Volailles
Pommes de Terre Sautees
Le Fenouil au Citron
Sauce aux Tomates


May 23 Jambon de Bayonne
Salade Vert

Pintade au Yaourt et Citron(BBQ)
Sauce Chamignons
Le Riz

May 24 Salade des Haricots, Oeufs, Anchois

Crevettes Thai
Le Riz

May 25 Lotte Sauce Provencale
Les Haricots Verts
Broccoli


May 26 Sautee de Porc Thai
Les Navets
Le Melon

May 27 Salade de Crevettes et Noix de St. Jacques

Salade de Tomates et Mozzarella
Le Thon avec Tapenade de Oregane
Les Asperges Violets Sauce Nantua
Les Fruits (Jean et Michelle)

May 28 On the Road

May 29 On the Road….ie Salami, Bread, Cheese, Prawns

May 30 Cotelette de Veau Grillee
Les Haricots Verts

May 31 Merguez et Poulet Grillee (BBQ)
Pommes Frites
Salade Vert

June 1 Filets de Sandre
Sauce Moules
Les Eclairs

June 2 Pintadeau Grillee(BBQ)
Poivrons Rouge
Le Riz
Tarte Citron


June 3 Salade de thon aux haricots

Les Raviolis aux fromages
Sauce aux champignons
Cerises

June 4 Soupe de Poissons et Sa Rouille
Assiettes de Salamis

Les Crudites
Les Pigeons aux Poivrons Rouges
Les Pommes de Terre Etuvees
Les haricots Verts

June 5 Salades de Tomates et Mozarella
Les Haricots Verts au Vapeur
L’Agneau au Miel et les Epices du Maghreb
Les Fromages (a Paul et Roslyn a Corgengoux)

Les Maqueraux a l’Ail au four
Sauces aux Cornichons
Les Epinards

June 6 Assiettes des Fromages et Saucissons

Le Poulet de Bresse
Sauce a la Crème
Les Pommes de Terre au Vapeur
Le Choux Fleur

Tarte aux abricots

June 7 Les Rougets
Pommes Frites
Sauce Remoulade

Legumes et Porc Thai
Le Riz

June 8 Les Asperges
Les Fromages
Salade

Canard aux Cerises
Mousseline des Pommes de Terre
Tomates Farcies



June 9 Pates Sauce Cannette

Roti de Porc
Les Carottes
Epinards aux Tomates
Mousseline de Pommes de Terres

June 10 Pates au beurre

Les Cailles
Sauce Poivron Rouge
Les Frites de Celeri Rave

June 11 Salade des Crevettes
Salade des Pommes de Terre

La Raie au Beurre Noire
Les Petits Pois
Pommes de Terre au Vapeur

Les Cerises Summit

June 12 Soupe Chinoise
Au Poulet de Bresse
Riz

Melon de Cavaillon

June 13 Pasta Sauce Tomates
Les Asperges Violets
Salade Verte

June 14 Le Jarret de Porc Demi Salee
Son Jus au Vin Blanc
Pommes de Terre
Celeri

June 15 Le Boeuf Bourguignon
Pommes de Terre
Fenouil au Citron

June 16 Darne de Julienne
Sauce Hollandaise
Riz
Les Courgettes aux Tomates

June 17 Pasta
Sauce Boeuf Bourguignon

Les Huitres Fines Claires
Travers de Porc Chinoises
Le Riz

Melon de Cavaillon


June 18 Salade de Concombres et Coppa
Jarret de Jambon Roti
Salade Escarole
Cerises

Entrecote Grille
Andouillette Grille
Les Haricots Verts

Nectarines et Abricots de Provence

June 19

Steaks Haches
Saucissons de Volaille
Pommes Frites
Salsa
Les Petits Pois

Nectarines et Abricots de Provence

Then June 20 we went to Spain and Portugal…Perpignan, dire food, St Feliciu..excellent supper of Ham, Moules and fish..unfortunately had to eat it on my own as everyone else exhausted by the site of Aiguablava…Cueller-Chinese Food!, Montril-excellent fish on the beach-Monchique-mad BBQ-Oporto-more excellent fish on the river-Vigo-best fish-Santillana-Omelettes with Chanterelles-Terrines of Fish and Cheese, good Beef, Monkfish with Balsamic Vinegar..hmm……, more fish…went to Carrefour in Bayonne to buy picnic..fish much better than Chalon..in fact everything…however looked forward to supper in Perigueux.but….failed to eat as menus so dire..even the Chinese Restaurant was pulling up the floorboards..Just as well we had a chicken and a couple of bottles tucked up in the icebox!

So we found nowhere anything much to eat

We had endless picnics, ate good fish in Spain and thought the fish in the shops pretty good. Returning home via Perigueux, the cite des truffes, we found only lazy salads composes of the kind you would not even think of in Covent Garden…so we arrived home in need of Vegetables!!


June 30 Les Aubergines aux Tomates
Haricots Verts
Pommes de Terre Etovees
Champignons a la Creme

July 1 Garbure
Choufleur au Piments
Courgettes au Rosmarin

July 2 Salade des Haricots, Oeufs, Pommes de Terre, Anchois

Gigot de Lotte Rotie
Sauce au Capres
Les Courgettes

July 3 Le Canard Grille
Tomates Farcies
Salade de Chicons

July 4 Les Bulots et Les Crevettes Nam Jim

Les Ailes de Poulet facon Thai
Le Riz
Legumes facon Thai
Salade Verte



July 5 Gigot d’Agneau
Sauce aux Abricots et Epices de Maroc
Le Riz
Les Haricots d’Espagne

Fromages


July 6 Les Ravioilis de Tomates et Basilisc
Les Coteletes de Veau
Les Broccolis au Beurre
Tarte de Framboises


July 07 Pak Nam Prik
Soupe des Celeris

Langue de Boeuf
Sauce Madere
Pommes de Terre Vapeur
Poireaux au Vin Rouge

July 8 Crudites
Saucisses d’Auvergne

Tom Yum Gai
Le Riz/
Les Andouillettes de Troyes
Sauce Poivrons Rouges

July 9 Moules au Vin Blanc
Les Pieds et Paquets
Salade Vert

July 10 Osso Bucco alla Milanese
Risotto
Tomates Noirs

July 11 Boeuf Stroganoff
Pommes Sautees
Les Courgettes

July 12 Truites au bleu
Pommes Vapeurs
Les Haricots au Beurre(Jaune)

July 13 Cervelles De Porc
Le Veau a la Creme
Pommes de Terre
Haricots Verts du Jardin

July 14 Le BBQ du 14 Juillet Palleau…Oh Dear

July15 Cotelettes de Veau
Sauce Chamipgnons a la Creme

July 16 Grillade de Pintadeau Citon Verts
Sauce Poivrons Rouges Tomates Noirs

July 17 Salade des Maqueraux

Lapin au Safran
Le Riz

So we survived Burgundy, which appeared to be fossilised in 1945, and now we are going back to the East. We hope we can start to write again......A bientot.

We have managed to get from Sukothai to Farnham via Hua Hin and Kuala Lumpur! For some reason all very jet-lagged.
All we have to do now is find £500 for Her Majesty's Government's new outrageous Visa Fees! Why have they doubled? The spokes'person' believes it is to 'bring us in line with Australia!' Nuff said. K's Schengen Visa is, of course, free!!
Not much to be said until we are in one place for a while.

I'm very busy nowadays. Mostly its toys, food, water, Garfield and Barbie Movies. But dressing up and Jumping and Sliding are big parts of my day!
I am going to go and live in France. Said to me: "So I will be a French Girl!"

Went to the market.
Elodie: " Daddy I need money"
Daddy: "Magic word?"
Elodie: "Please!"
Gave her 10p.
Elodie: "Tua (the little girl she calls her big sister-aged 5) needs money too"
Daddy: "OK"
Elodie: (Grabbing and stuffing further 10p into pocket) "Don't worry Tua, Elodie will look after it for you..."

I dress for breakfast



Then there are bricks



playdough



and photographs to be dealt with

Never mind the drought, which is getting serious ..This is we are really worried about:
Events

I think this:
Biological Engineering
is one of the most amazing things I have read in many a year!

And my friend said to me:

And he is Thai

“We have talked much about this. I still have no real purchase on the issue!"

"Are you saying that it is OK for you to come here, that you can live here, and be happy as a foreigner ‘abroad’; whereas you are, also, saying it is difficult if not impossible for my sister to go to your country and live, work and be happy?”

Well

That raises a Q.

What is it..if anything. .that makes it possible to leave your home and go and live anywhere else?

Maybe one should distinguish between going 29 miles away, 200 and to ‘London’ to ‘Europe’ let alone to far flung parts of the earth.

And then the process in reverse. If Europeans had not ‘arrived’ in Australia, S and N America, Africa etc.....…who from those places would be thinking......…Oh! I’ll just nip over to Germany and make a life?.....…then what happens?. Americans welcome everyone because they think,.... do they?, they will contribute to the future of the ‘Nation’....…Western Europeans get panicked and think they are being over-run by Albanians, Ukrainians, Ethiopian, Romanians, Gypsies etc. etc.

Chinese never worried. Enough of usT...But not enough that we think we shouldn't miscegenate with Tibetans etc......Thais? well what is there to say?

I am thinking…I will be happy to be ‘home’ Where is that? . Elodie knows nothing…she is 3 years old...…what does K think….What would it feel like to be born in Norwich and have a ‘dream’: to go to Thailand/China/’Japan.. wherever…and have a husband, a life, a child….because to have it was MUCH better than Norwich....….better by what criteria….??

Hurting of heads!!

JUST FOR FUN:
You could write something like this about UK, USA, Australia or wherever…couldn’t you?
Do it?
News. News. This year’s/Next Year’s. Maybe!!…..When it all gets too much…......
must be the heat!

1. Shin Corp( That is The Prime Ministers Phone Company) confirms all new Mobile Phone Contracts and Sim Top Ups require ID in form of Thai ID Card. No Passports or Foreign ID permitted….reason Terrorism in Yala
2. Only 30 day Visas will be issued in future. Extensions for further 30 days will cost B5000. Maximum Stay under any circumstance 90 Days. Reason. Go away.
3. All foreigners (farang) from non-ASEAN countries can apply for 90 day visas if employed by organisation with headquarters/registered office etc outside Thailand. ASEAN nationals: talk to us, fees not excessive…Reason. Foreign capital and investment we love.
4. All contracts with EFL schools are for maximum of one term. Reason. We know about what EFL Teachers are up to in Thailand.
5. Minors ie-18years. Living in Thailand with non-Thai fathers are required to renounce any dual citizenship. Reason . Luk Khreung (Half Thai children) are not Thai
6. Sale of Beer and other Intoxicating liquor only permitted 17.00-19.00. Reason. Lord Buddha…and also tax increased by 300%. Yum. Already only available 11.00-14.00 and 17.00-23.00…remember that in the UK?!
7. Tax on Signs in English increased to 1000B per square centimetre. Reason. Thais do not need to read English/French/German etc.
8. All missionaries of all denominations to return to their countries. Reason. Enough ‘Dividing of the Thai people’
9. All persons residing within Thailand to be accorded Thai citizenship provided they promise to vote TRT (PM’s Party) at next election. Reason. Good source of vote fodder.
10. War declared. Thai forces attack Malaysia. Reason. Assisting Muslims in South.
11. Malaysia forces return fire. Did not need Reason
12. Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat (Thai Southern Provinces) become Thailand’s Northern Ireland. Reason. Provinces should never have been ceded to Thailand in first place. Defence…protection of integrity of Thai State. Cause: Ethnic and Religious minority marginalized and impoverished by Thai colonialism and neglect.
13. 2 Year drought wrecks rice harvest, Reason Theft of timber and other resources by high-ranking Thais. Talking of rice..Thai Jasmine Rice is discovered in 9thCentury tombs in Peru therefore proving: a Thais discovered S.America. Therefore All S. Americans are Thai (but of course Luk Khreung)
14. Myanmar declares war on Thailand. Reason. Thais renege on contracts to sell and distribute amphetamines etc.produced by companies of Wealthy Thais in Myanmar.
15. Thailand becomes 10th biggest Economy in the world. Reason. Profits of Noodle sellers and other street stalls; also we discovered how to TAX them. Also profits of Shin Corp Casinos. Failed to tax those.
16. Bird flu decimates Thai population. Reason. Not politically helpful to police and control ‘Wet Markets’. Also ’Might discourage tourism.’ However coach tours of Bangkapi Wet Market suspended for now.
17. Thailand wins Football World Cup 2006. Reason. Suddenly discovered 11 players in Premier League and Bundesliga are entitled to Thai citizenship by maternity. Not all called Tiger either. (For this purpose NOT Luk Khreungs)
18. CP foods (huge Thai multinational food etc.Company) assures consumers there have NEVER been any outbreaks of avian flu in CP plants, or premises of suppliers, in any country, anywhere, ever, never.
19. Tourism to Thailand down. Reason. Worldwide reporting: 600 Foreigners prevented from travelling on Thai Ferry with capacity for 100. Foreigners say: Where’s the buzz?
20. Foreigner deported for declaring he loves his Thai wife and children and is very happy, in spite of everything…. (cos better than elsewhere)… living in Thailand. Reason. Don’t want your sort. Never mind you inject B150,000 a month into Thai Economy! You are Not Thai. And Farang says: Who’s that? Chinese Thais, Khmer Thais, Lao Thais, Sipsong Panna Thais, Mon Thais, Muslim Thais, Hill Tribe Thais…or just those who have bought the subscription?…..No Farang Thais ha? Ho Ho…More??

What would you make of this in a European Newspaper!!?

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2005/03/09/national/index.php?news=national_16666378.html
interestingly cannot mark this!..might disappear....quote in full....


DISASTER PROBE : Tsunami report won?t see light of day: Smith_*

*Published on March 09, 2005*

/Need to protect Kingdom against foreign lawsuits, says investigation
chief; conclusions may never be put on paper/

The public will not hear if the Meteorological Department failed in its
duty to warn people that December?s devastating tsunami was heading
towards Thailand, the chief of the investigation into the disaster said
yesterday.

What?s more, Smith Tham-masaroj said a report into the

incident might never be written. Smith said he would conceal a tsunami
report from the public

out of patriotism in order to protect national interests, as some 60
foreign relatives of Western tourists killed by the massive waves in
southern Thailand might use the information in their lawsuit against the
government.

?I will not and I cannot reveal it - and the report may never be
published... No way, because it has become a lawsuit issue and could
cause much damage,? he said.

He added that billions of baht could be lost if the Meteorological
Department was found guilty of failing to warn the public and tourists
in Phuket, Phang Nga and Krabi.

Last month, 19 relatives from Austria and Germany filed a lawsuit in New
York against the government for failing to provide a timely tsunami
warning. ?They won?t have the information to sue us,? Smith said.

Earlier yesterday, he told an audience of about 1,000 in a speech on
lessons from the tsunami that he believed many lives would have been
spared by the Meteorological Department listening to only 10 per cent of
his suggestions concerning the possibility of a tsunami hitting the
Andaman coast in southern Thailand.

By heeding his advice, he said the department would have had one hour
and 15 minutes to act before the tsunami hit. ?I don?t know how to
punish him,?

said Smith, referring to the then director-general of the Meteorological
Department, Suparerk Tansriratwong.

?Did he know about [the impending tsunami]? I can?t tell you the result,
because 60 foreigners are eyeing to sue [the government].

?That?s why I can?t close the case, and I don?t know when I can close
it.? Smith acknowledged that the government might be in a Catch-22
situation, because if it claimed the department did not know the tsunami
was headed for Thailand, it could be grounds for a dereliction-of-duty
lawsuit.

If it were found that officials

knew the tsuna-mi was on its way but did not warn the public, it would
also lead to a lawsuit, he said.

?Either way, they can sue us. And these farangs [Westerners] love to
sue,? he said.

One day after the tsunami struck, one of the four officers in charged of
the Meteorological Department told The Nation that senior officials had toyed with
the idea of issuing a warning the morning of the tsunami.

They decided not to because they feared such a warning would have
negative repercussions on the tourism industry in the event a tsunami
did not occur, the official said.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

I am quite well,thank you.
In fact enough of this girlie stuff, well apart from Barbie Videos...Prince and pauper?? Nutcracker? !!
I have discovered Thomas The Tank Engine and Ultraman


I think we have passed into:
“ Coming back”, mode

However that has raised some old interests.
We have been reduced to buying tickets from Malaysian Travel Agents to come back. This raises its own problems as we have to get to KL.
However there they seem to have understood the basic principle….I want to know if, at the price you quote, there actually ARE seats….Only recently have Travelbag discovered this important idea…and only after they were bought up. Why do most Travel Agents want to quote you a price and then tell you…sorry, full…? Thais still not got it!!

And most travel agents still cannot get their heads around the fact that you might not care which day you travel, as long as you can get on a plane..Why cann they not look at what to me is a simple request…If I cannot travel on April 1, which is the first day when seats are available….oooh..going to the moon?

Meanwhile on Thai matters!!


Thai Smiles
I don’t see much talk about this famous topic
How many Thai Smiles could you count if you could count Thai Smiles?

For a start, today, I have had or seen some of these smiles:

1 Please do not ask me this question
2.Welcome to Seven
3.Wait
4.Wait. Thai person needs something more than you. From both person ignoring queue at copy shop and cowed copyist!
5.Do you want me to go and buy you some more beer?…Better answer:No..No thank you.’.farang smile’.( Have we run out? I’ll be down the offie as soon as I have clothes and can find the key to the bike.?
6.Have you paid the phone bill?. Better have!
7.Why have you still not asked me out? I am beginning to think you are a ++++
8.Please do not ask me this question..a few more times…
9. I don’t know what the +++ I am doing here, better smile. This a very common TV appearance
10.I need some money + a bow! + another bow on receipt.
11. I have been out talking with my friends. Don’t ask. + Chuck under chin
12. Thank you so much for buying bottle whisky and four sodas. How your wife/baby?…ie. We think you are an inebriate westerner…this smile from Chinese shop, of course…followed by Farang smile…” fridge still not cold I see, bad luck!”l “Fai Dap, na?”

and as we just went out to ride the gamut of the night market..21.00
several from boys on bikes swarming the daytime police post, all together!:

13. I don’t know you. You are a farang. I think you are:

a. a shit.
b. someone I might think of robbing
c. a man of whom I am very nervous/jealous; quite like to talk to you
d. person with very pretty wife/daughters, how did you achieve that?…money? grrr!
e. ….never mind, We are Thai….

Very wide smiles……….plus lots of…Hey You…get this most nights…I speak with them..farang poot thai…more smiles, much loss of eye contact….but also never mind, farang motorbike, though 125 Honda does not have twinkly lights on number plate, nor fluorescent brake lights and anyway is silver not current fashion for lemon yellow…..

We went today to what, February 18th, what I can only describe as a riot!

It was supposed to be the ceremony, well it was, for the boy becoming a monk. There seems a certain laxness in how many days, or even hours, nowadays, you have to be a monk!

The guy was wandering around, looking dazed, in a nice white dress. Here the Thais of course can not explain it exactly, but has something to do with the big snake, or naga, wanting to be a monk.,,One day I will read all this.
Anyway the upshot was that a large crowd of people, about 200, mostly unmarried girls who I gather were so flighty no-one would marry them, and all of whom were seriously drunk, danced for about an hour in front of a pickup from which deafening dance music and live songs were played. Following this there came another pickup on which sat the prospective monk and his parents, on nice red plastic chairs, while everyone hung onto the pickup, soberly, for good luck.
This circus arrived at the Wat, eventually, where another crowd had been hanging around, mainly eating and drinking.
The monk to be is sat down. There is competing music from the dance loud speakers on the pickup and a rather dour gathering of traditional musicians playing drums, shawms, etc. Eventually the dance music packs up, but the dancing goes on. A Phu Yai, ie big cheese who I think was the Doctor then starts an endless ceremony of chanting etc. While this was going on the drunk ladies were so raucous that he had to give up on occasions. Mayhem! This will go on all night, with dancing, films, likay performances and then in the morning 9 monks will appear and I presume impose some order. Seems like a good excuse for a bash.
Elodie was, as usual, the centre of jaw dropping attention!

We went for a ‘tour’ of The North… Phrae, Nan, Chiang Kong, Chiang Saen, Mae Sai, Doi Mae Salong and Chiang Mai. We would have gone to Pai and Mae Hong Son, too, but got fed up with winding roads!

Nan we went to see ‘family’. At last got to see the murals in Wat Phumin, a thing I have been trying to do for 10 years. They are odd! I know they are not La Dance Macabre at La Chaise Dieu, but for Thailand they are 'unusual'!... mThey tell the story of the Sihanada Jataka…...mainly about Orphans..they were painted about 1893…so they are not that old, but they were created at an important moment in history when the French took control of Laos..hence the unusual pictures of Westerners!








We went to see the river near Ban Pasingh, which is where Elodie’s grandfather came from. The river Nan lovely as ever and we walked out into it on wooden platforms and fed tumultuous fish. E went splish-splosh which cheered her up.

We went up to the Thai Lao border but absolutely nothing going on there, though we did see a flock of Asian Fairy Bluebirds.. Irena puella .... which was at once astonishing and beautiful in the middle of nowhere!

And then went up to Chiang Kong and Chiang Saen. The Mekong full of threatening rocks and not much water. We stayed outside Chiang Saen by the river and watched Great Egrets- Casmerodius albus tiptoeing around in the shallows, while large parties of Chinese New Year revellers downed vast quantities of food and made away with bottles of Black Label. Everyone lit paper lanterns and floated them off over the river..better than the boat trips on offer at The Golden Triangle, which has become a funfair. It was freezing at night and not enough bed clothes!! We thought about going on a boat to Luang Prabang...but a trip for the future!


In the morning we went up to Mae Sai and bought some jewelery which no doubt further enriched the moguls of the mines of Mogok..a name which surely would have been invented by Tolkien if it had not already existed! I wanted to buy a Lapis Lazuli bracelet, but none to fit. Wanted to buy K a beautiful white and faintly green Jade bracelet at B6000-ie £85 probably £400 in London, but she having none of it! Bought a little one for E instead at £1 which is, I hope, plastic!

Tried to buy an exotic pair of cheap Chinese Binoculars but my little Olympus ones still better. Then we went right up to Doi Mae Salong..awash with Chinese travellers buying tea and no doubt visiting auntie. Hard to think that this little enclave of China was once the redoubt of what was left of Chiang Kai Shek’s forces preparing to re-take China from Mao!

Back to Chiang Mai and to the peculiar world within a world that is the Galare Guest House by the river. No Thais here!

5 days on the road enough so we pootled around CNX for a couple of days and bought clothes and yogurt, sweets and toys.

On the way home we stopped in Lamphun for E to ride on an elephant.


Much taken with this, but enjoyed feeding sugar cane and bananas to them much more. The camp here is much nicer than those up north..cannot think why anyone goes to those! E much enamoured of 9 month old elephant calf playing with a ball in a pond!

Messages from the Road
Elodie speaks a lot. Thais: Why does she speak so well? Ooh, she speaks two languages! Shock!
Most of Thailand looks the same, never mind the lowlands and uplands. The trees change…but every village is Ban Anywhere.
And all those huge tracts of land, relatively uninhabited with everyone struggling to live on the main road. In Doi Mae Salong the Chinese industrious and prosperous, The Hill people in straw huts and selling trinkets!

A profusion of signs to waterfalls and dams, forest parks and wats…getting there to find pretty well nothing. The roads empty of cars..no-one going about to have fun.

Chiang Mai like another planet with tourists and shops, hotels and restaurants. But 10 miles out of town..the dry wastes.

We went out of town to sit by the lake and eat SomTam. E went more splish-splosh, but then got grumpy..tired I should say!


It still has not rained again..so that is six hours rain in five months. If it was Provence or LA the whole place would have been on fire for ever, while here you pass blackened plantations but they will rise again when the rainy season comes. Of all the Thai rivers I think the Nan is the most beautiful. More so than the Ping and Yom and the Chao Phraya, though that holds pride of place. One day I will read Steve van Beek’s Slithering South..but not yet. I bought E some Japanese story books and In The Night Kitchen as well as Rainbow Fish..she likes the Octopus!

B writes to inquire about ‘The Behrends’..I think I have said all I want to about RS and his Anglophilia!

We are very much in two minds about whether to go back to the UK at all. I want to see R and I think, on balance, it would be better if K had her ‘RTR’ visa…. though quite what the point is if we are not going to live there, we are not sure. As time goes by, being here is pretty satisfying…yes broadband would be good…yes a good bookshop….and as to schools!!..that will still be the crunch…we think she will learn to read and write Thai pretty quickly..once that is done I think no reason for her to stay here for a while.

I have been reading Adam Phillips..more…that is...my favourite shrink!!...( I see he is being canonised in The Observer!) While I do not revise my opinion of RS and MEE, (as parents!) nonetheless I cannot deny I did get from their life a degree of ‘happiness’ that I do not see in many others. Phillips’ concept of ‘Restless Boredom’ seems to sum up my childhood and adolescent years and my three principles probably add up to ‘The Ability To Be’ … all things that we would wish for E and have taken me years to acquire.

We still need more ££ and never sure we have negotiated the pitfalls of relationships to a peaceful solution..though here the possible and the practical seem to have coalesced..but too far from R.

But we have a ‘Good Life’! Made possible by TPA money and books, by the existence of R and E, by K without whom life would be worse even when it is not good!.

And the ‘Restlessness’ seems capable of being channelled into ‘constructive restlessness’ when the ideas come, but without any great sense that it is necessary to launch empires or fortunes!

It is Valentine’s Day 2005!! I gather in Thailand it is traditionally the day to open virgins!!


Blush for Us!

You weren't thinking of going to the US, were you? Now? Or ever?

Here is more good stuff from Asia Times. It is not whether I agree, it is just great to read this kind of writing in a Newspaper!
Failed States and Failed Markets

All kinds of odd snippets.

We have been talking about books written about life in Thailand by Westerners.

It is interesting to note that many of the ‘novels’ about Thailand or set in Thailand have not been published by established publishers. I cannot believe that is for lack of a decent agent or prejudiced publishers’ readers. It is just that most of the books are pretty unreadable unless you happen to want to read about yourself. It must be annoying to Christopher G. Moore, who presumably thinks of himself as a novelist, that his best book is Heart Talk!

But if I wanted to read fiction about the Far East ….
I would go for classic Japanese writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Junchiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima or The Philippine novelist Arlene J.Chai, Catherine Lim in Singapore, Fernando Toer in Indonesia. etc, even S.Tsow’s Jasmine Nights is better than Western fiction set in and/or about the East. There is now a wealth of great Chinese fiction in translation, too. There are better books too by US and UK Mbased Chinese and Korean writers. Kazuo Ishiguro, is I think, a great writer.

Apart from not being very well written, it is difficult to put a finger on what is wrong with ‘Thailand’ novels. I think partly it is because there is some attempt to ‘explain’ both Thailand and the Thais as well as the writer. Leather, Moore, Barrett, Needham all seem to be more interested in this explication than in telling a ‘good story’. The characters are all one-dimensional and the stories and settings banal, straining to capture the ‘essence of Bangkok’. It is not a recent phenomenon. There have been dreadful ‘Dusky Oriental Maiden’ books for decades. I collect them as they have wonderfully lurid dustjackets!

I suppose if I was Thai I would not want to read novels about the ‘adventures’ of Thais in Amsterdam or Paddington brothels. There seems, too, to be by comparison little about the bars of Angeles or Manila, though I should have thought there were as many westerners married to Filipina bar girls as Thais. So what prompts these books? Are there the same kind of books written in German and Swedish? Or is it a British/N.American genre?


I have a huge bibliography of ‘Oriental’ books. From the imaginative travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries, through to Post Modern academic stuff and sub-literary drivel. You cannot imagine the knots ‘theorists’ get themselves into when trying to ‘deconstruct’ ‘Gender in Modern Thailand’

Things I have liked over the years include these, but they are hardly beach reading

Turpin, M. Histoire Naturelle et Civile du Royaume de Siam 1771
Quaritch Wales.. Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function 1931
R. Le May An Asian Arcady 1938
Cohen, E Thai Girls and Farang Men: The Edge of Ambiguity 1982
Brun, V Traditional Herbal Medicine in Thailand 1987
Chitakasen Thai Construction of Knowledge 1991
Tongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped 1994
Askew, M Bangkok 2002
Seabrook, J In The Cities Of The South 1995
Terwiel , B Through Travellers Eyes (19C Thailand) 1989
Klausner, W. Reflections on Thai Culture 1987
Connelly Touch The Dragon ?1990
Thompson Thai Food 2003
Anderson Plants and People of The Golden Triangle 1993
Phongphaichit, P. et al.Guns, Girls, Gambling and Ganja 1998

B has been on at me, again, about Pandora's Attic-never mind Victoria's Secret..though there are pieces of 1830's underwear catalogued away up there

So I said
Ah yes
Great Men Oft Die By Foul Bezonians n'est ce pas?
Qui a besoin, ce jour ci?

July 5..Found in 'The Attic', a place where most of what we
know of Lost Civilisations had been wrapped in cotton
wool, boxed, tied up in string and labelled..usually
with the note Very Precious Stone/Ring/Lalique Glass
Mascot/Faberge Topknot etc 'Broken To Mend' Origins
and Provenance often attached. By Millie
There was at one time a lot more of the July 5
type/pseudo Ossian nonsense but it got lost burnt or whatever.
Why?...This is spelled out in words even a Shakespeare
Scholar can grasp....To explain, as a beginning, to
the boy, why we are all mad, and in particular his
mercenary unloving grandfather whose fame will outlive
us all--well maybe not you--I mean famille--and
therefore I had better writ it out, longhand like...
Hence ringless fingers which is de pome version and
chill lips wot is de prose one...I will probably
rewite that....and I had to explain to him that his
mother's supposed father was not his grandfather, but
that his grandfather was a Portuguese Dentist from
Lourenco Marques, which is why he looked like a Dago
or a Half Thai Child.......but you probably found all
that out in the PRO already?
Clearly the Bard of Bardsey came on strong to Elsi
Eldridge, and who is averse to a bit of plagiarism if
it leads to bed?

I have just stuffed a Taiwanese Pumpkin, looks like an ordinary Pumpkin to me, BUT with Rice,Garlic, Onions, Lemon Juice, Pork, Chilis, Green and Red Pepper, and a few odds and ends....steamed for 2 hours...
Thais in traditional disbelief mode...Pumpkins are green-this one is
Orange...you could not possibly EAT that....And I go
on about the Yanks living by Numbers

So here are some nice Pumpkins...bit late for All Souls I suppose...
Why are there Taiwanese Pumpkins in Uttaradit?

Le sandwich brunch(1)

Well it is Sunday morning and I have to go Phitsanulok where I shall look mournfully at what passes for food in Tesco and Big C, and dream of this….

This is so obvious as to be banal…but my friend said it was the best sandwich he had ever eaten..ooh such flattery will not get you a decent bottle of Pinot Noir, tonight, nor tomorrow! And where do you ever see such simple things written down?

For two

2 Ciabatta Rolls..though four slices of decent wholegrain bread will do..
2 Free Range Eggs
4 rashers organic Streaky Bacon
2 Organic Tomatoes
Unsalted Butter
Tablespoon Mayonnaise, preferably home made…!
Tablespoon Tomato Sauce or Salsa
2 Cornichons
Sea Salt
Ground Black Pepper
Olive Oil

Fry the bacon rashers in Olive Oil until crispy. Reserve to a plate and keep warm with all what follows.
In the same Oil fry the Tomatoes until tender. Remove and reserve
Clean the pan and add some more Olive Oil. Heat until very hot. Add the first Egg, cook quickly on one side and then flip over, cook further..the Egg must not set. Remove, reserve and repeat for the second Egg. Reserve.

Cut the Ciabatta Rolls in half. Toast. Butter both sides of the inside. Spread the lower half with the Mayonnaise and Tomato Sauce or Salsa.
Finely chop the cornichons and sprinkle over.
Finely chop the Bacon and distribute between the two rolls, similarly add the cooked Tomato.
Sprinkle lightly with Sea Salt, ground or not to your taste, and freshly ground Black Pepper

Place an Egg in each Roll. Close the Rolls and Serve

(If you do not chop the bacon it will come out in unpleasant strings when you bite into the roll. You will already be having to deal with runny Egg yolk!)

I find this more satisfying than Oeufs Benedictine; though I would never sniff at that dish properly prepared. You could, of course, if you had time and ability, substitute Sauce Hollandaise for the Mayonnaise. You could also exchange HP Sauce or your own home-made good Salsa for the Tomato Sauce.It is good with Jambon de Bayonne or Jambon Serrano-any wind dried ham rather than the bacon, again finely chopped so you don’t have stringy mouthfuls. I am partial to substituting Jalapeno Peppers, finely chopped, for the cornichons, or in addition. Like all simple and great dishes it bends to your taste and the ingredients to hand. But no wet lettuce leaves, which most hotels and restaurants seem unable to resist...

If you are nifty you will already have been preparing some Pommes Sautees, ie last night’s potatoes fried in Oil and Butter…but never mind. A few slices of Black Pudding add variety as a side order!. A large glass of Freshly Squeezed Tangerine Juice is a bonus..given where I am… and a large simple sweet black Coffee! I would not refuse a large jug of Bloody Mary either. Plenty of Ice and Tabasco. Black Pepper and Lemon Juice…Perhaps a small dish of Papaya/Mango/Watermelon, to finish, too.
I cannot abide boxed juice, which is made usually from fruit concentrate and neither Cappucino nor Café Latte. With a dish such as this you do not need milk.

Now here is some nicely presented fish!

Came back from BKK

One day I shall write an account of a w/end in BKK.....thank the lord we live here not there. The babe leaping up and down in the airport, having rung me every six hours day and night for four days. Monday 5.00 am wakes K...time to go airport get Daddy...yeah yeah another 5 hours....I bought her a Thomas The Tank Engine train. Very big in Japan!! Brian Wildsmith's The Hare and The Tortoise-in Thai and Dr.Seuss.....

We cannot think straight by way of HAVING to decide whether to come back to the UK at the end of March..as at 14.00 hours No, but at 11.00 was Yes...How can we tell?
Whatever v. pricey...though discovered cheap tickets on Thai. Come live the post Tsunami Experience...better Not.....

Here, by request!!..."well really!! said Cat", hope you know your Russell Hoban/Maurice Sendak??

Les Cotes de Chevreuil facon Milord Byron

One could say that this was the final meal of the war party at Missolonghi-don’t they now make radiators for Argos? Cumin having penetrated Greek Cuisine through the influence of the Turk on his way to conquer Macedonia., or more likely through Averroes and Galen.

However, in truth, this dish was also a result of the last visit to the Tung Kwian Market, between Chiang Mai and Thoen. Next to the stall selling the Sanglier and what I took to be a skinned dog, but turned out to be a calf foetus …eat on…was some Venison.

500g Loin of venison
1 Red Onion
5 Cloves Garlic
Dessertspoon Black Peppercorns
2 Tablespoons White Cumin/Jeera seeds
Teaspoon Juniper Berries
Good Pinch of Sea Salt Crystals
Juice of a Lemon or Lime
Olive Oil
Coriander Leaves

The venison should be cut into fillets about the thickness and size of a veal escalope. 500g should provide enough for four people.

Peel and Chop the Onion roughly. Crush it a bit so some of the juices come out.
Crush and skin the Garlic cloves.
Crush the Juniper Berries

Put Black Pepper and Cumin into a blender/mill and grind until finely ground. Add the Garlic, Black Pepper, Juniper Berries, a little Lemon/Lime Juice and a little Olive Oil. Blend further until you have a decent paste

Put the Onion in a dish, spread the paste over both sides of the Venison fillets, place on top of the Onion, pour over a little more Olive Oil and the rest of the Lemon Juice. Place in refrigerator and marinade for at least an hour. The meat should be turned and the marinade redistributed after half an hour. The longer it is left the better.

Remove fillets from the refrigerator and leave at room temperature for 10 minutes or so. Heat a grill and lightly grill the fillets on both sides. They should be as a good steak, browned on the outside and pink inside, so grill quickly.
They can, of course, be fried if you prefer.

Serve on a dish, with any juices poured over and a sprinkling of Salt and Coriander Leaves.

We eat this with a Green Salad and a version of Pommes Parmentieres, which is easy:

Peel Two or Three Large Potatoes
Cut into Cubes about Half an Inch Square.
Place in a bowl and pour boiling water over to cover. Leave for a minute or so, drain and dry.
In a Grill or other pan heat 1 Coffee Cup Olive Oil and 125g of butter.
Place potatoes in dish and make sure all cubes are coated with oil/butter.
Grill until browned, turning regularly.
Drain Potatoes and place on dish with kitchen paper to get rid of any excess fat. Remove paper and serve with the Venison.

Some Red Currant or Apple/Mint Jelly or whatever should be offered.

I am going to bangkok for a week
I leave you with this!!

We have been talking about ghosts and spirits in Thailand. Belief in them is far from limited to Mirror readers and indeed a bit like Zimbabwe or wherever their influence is quite deep
Bpi, Phee and Phii, Phee or whatever are synonymous

Some definitions for starters

phee ghost, spirit; pertaining to sorcery
win yaan soul, spirit

variations of a theme ...
Jao phaaw a god or spirit
Spirit of man/father..phu yai
Jao mae spirit of/woman mother
Jao pha/jao khao looks after hills
duaang win yaan soul, spirit
bpi saat a spirit, a ghost, a devil
Bpi graseu sai awk ie entrails hanging out..girl
Bpi grahang… boy chawp jap jim,,ie e likes to eat ..well this is a family webblog,…can fly..
phi kradsong..has wings ie baskets under its arms
Eats girl saliva
theh phaa rak guardian spirit
phee thee spirit of an object or place
phee baan spirit of a house

and the ubiquitous spirit houses ...

saan jao shrine, not a spirit house
saan phra phuu mi spirit house

Jaao Pha/jaao khao looks after hills
Jaao Paaw Ruk Muang..Spirit looks after Amphur and Jangwat

Bpi Baan also Bpi Reuan..another word for house (Mae says if she dies that is what she will be)

Bpi Ga…m/F
Body changer
Eats sick people….all to do with entrails!

Bpi Pob
Disguised a a person..eats animals/people alive

Bpi Takian
Lives in trees-girl...if you cut tree down you have a problem

Mae Ya Nang..looks after boats and cars

Bpi Ta Nee
Lives in bananas and wears green clothes..girl

Bpi Dai Hawng
What I become if I die in an accident

Bpi Dai Tong Kom
Turn into this if you die when pregnant

Bpi Prai
Lives in river or even sea…kills swimmers

Bpi Pa/
Bpi Khao
Wild spirit of woods and hills

Bpi Fa
Spirit of old queens… I mean real ones not katoeys..
And their families.looks after villages and hills

Bpi Dip
Back from the dead..ie zombies kills everyone

Bpi Hua Kat
If someone cuts off your head…

Bpi Paa Chaa
Graveyard Souls..You need 7 of them to make a little buffalo…which then looks after house..need Paw Mot to do this!…If I am a pain she will go to the mor doo and get him to make the buffalo make my stomach hurt and then I will die!
Also
Bpi Kwai
Bpi Kwai Tanoo

Bpi Sing
Lives in body makes you mad…same as Bpi Khao

Bpi Kanoon (ie stands under Jack Fruit Tree…hello!)
Prostitute (not a Bpi at all is real!! And found in Lumpini and Sukhumvit!)
Also Bpi Garooa..husband of garee..more abuse..! Real person

Bpi Mae Mai
Dies Not have husband so comes back to f**** man!

Luk Yom, Luk Gok, if pregnant 3 months girl born…keep the baby foetus and dry it,,helps father mother ..

Winyaan Dek.. Gooman…good spirits of children

Paaw Gae..Ghost of old Likay Teacher

Bpi Praet
A very tall Bpi, with everything big-except mouth cos cannot eat and lies to everyone, like a coconut tree-one to whom Sai Baat has not been offered
Big hands, lies to and , hits mother and father.
Like the ones we saw at Awk Phansa

1.Yom Ma Tud/ 2.Yom Pa Baan also Yom Malat..knows when you will die
1 helps 2
1 gets your soul when you die comes with
Sam Wan Ga Suwan comes to see 2 what been up to good or bad
If you have been good Yoo Bon Faa ie send you to live on the star.
.Teeawada..Nang Fa is girl, If you bad…send you Kan Nai Din ie to hell ..just like Brueghel has a dish boiling water..
They? Who? have the book to write what you have done wrong..The Book is made out of Dog Skin..Banchee Nang Maa

If you have been adulterous..you have to climb a tree with big thorns..ouch!..under the tree has a man stuffs spikes up your arse.and when you come to the top has the bird eats your head.
So that deals with farangs in LOS na?

ps
Bpi Takorn appears to live in the sticky rice basket..but now we are into Issan ghosts and spirits ..I think they are all quite regional. local…Can someone come up with some more Issan/ Khon Phu Khao ones??.

Briefly, two nice pieces of Thai 'Wisdom'

1. You cannot use scissors, knives, nail clippers, and presumably shears etc. when you are pregnant as the baby will have a hare lip...Read this somewhere, and vigorously confirmed by wife and mother in law. Sounds like another excuse for idleness to me.

2. Never mind the fishmonger...the real problem here is that they had already abandoned westerners as a lost tourist cause..what they really wanted were Chinese and Koreans...and who, from there, is going to go swimming, let alone sit, on a beach haunted by all those dead spirits. Not my wife.

Oh Dear. Back to the European lager swilling wads o' money

Oh for heaven’s sake
Let’s have something to eat

Garlic Soup

This is really good and easy

6 or so Large Heads of Garlic
2 pints+ Mushroom or Chicken stock
500g Mushrooms. Preferably picked from a field in Pen Llyn in October but failing that supermarket ones will do. If you want the soup strong and brown, open caps, otherwise normal ones. If they are to be had mix 250g of field Mushrooms with 250g Shiitake Mushrooms or 250g of dried Chinese ones…In which case soak Dried Mushrooms in hot boiled water for an hour and reserve the liquid to add to the stock
Pinch of whole dried Chillis or 4 Bird’s Eye or Mouse Shit Chilis (Prik Kee Noo!)ie. Hot ones. For children can be omitted.
Tablespoon chopped Parsley or Coriander..whatever looks pretty..even Mint is quite an addition.

Put Heads of Garlic in a saucepan with the stock and the Chilis. Just as they are.
Cover the pan, bring to the boil and simmer slowly for about 40 minutes.
When the Garlic is done the skins will just slip off the cloves. Remove all the skins, roots etc and throw the skins away and return the cloves to the pan.
Mash a little in the liquid.
If the liquid is reduced to less than you need for your lunch/supper add some more!
Add the Mushrooms, whole if they are dried or small, chopped if flat.
Return to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes until the Mushrooms are done.

You can serve up a dish of croutons if you like them, or even a dash of double cream at the end.

Serve in nice white bowls and garnish with the leaves of your choice…

Had last weekend. … excellent. Am now Jan 11th experimenting with Saffron Chicken Tempura! Might be the last you hear of THAT!

And for dessert:

Nice dish of Mangoes purchased this evening for 45 pence

If you were unlucky enough to miss the real pandas because they either had their backs turned or they were up in their tree house scratching their... you got this

January 2005 Sawankhalok

OK I won’t stop…popular demand! But it will be a little ‘attenuated’.. and wouldn’t you like to know who else reads this?! Probably not.

Oh wow I was looking for that reference to French law on Islamic terrorism and I just got this....look at the bits on Thailand...How much to live in Korat/Nakhon Ratchasima?...which is to Thailand as Oldham is to the UK or St.Etienne to France......:

your next holiday mansion

With reference to the USA below and where to be :;!!This is the kind of crap that you get in UK newspapers
A decent 4 bedroom concrete/brick house with garden...even Bangkok... in Thailand costs about £70,000. Of course if you want to be well positioned for the next sea surge it will cost you...
My brother in law, of whose odd marriage you may have read, just bought a 2 bedroom house in Korat for 900,000 Baht that is £12,500..so he could have got 27 of them at that price. I don't suppose he has the view or the maid's quarters, but probably not that fussed.
I mean, he works in Korat; but once you've been to Khao Yai a couple of times..oh you would need to spend a further £35K on a Toyota Landcruiser to really get the best of its nightlife..animals I mean, what would you do all day or night?..Tesco and Golf, I suppose.
Also Morocco has earthquakes,even if the King did ask to join the EU, Bulgaria close to Chechnya...see below, too!, true extremely beautiful..must ask D to use the photo he sent me....Nicaragua..am I to believe it has changed permanently that much? I think not.
On Estonia I have no view or knowledge.

Month has got off to a bizarre start. The echoes of the tsunami are all over us. .satellite photos, endless coverage, slow realisation by Brits that some of them might have been there.. devastation of Swedish Villages….
Turns out the little house in Patong survived happily ..but who wants to go there?.. it was already colonised by Khmers (with our agreement)..and will live on.
And looks like those accidents of geography may well have protected Myanmar…
There has been much discussion in the media about.. ‘Whether to got to Thailand..or anywhere else in the region?’…
Don’t be daft! Have you any idea of the scale of mayhem in Phuket and Khao Lak, even if the Thais are desperately trying to ‘import’ beaches!! ??
Stay home! Go somewhere else

Photos are reduced due to purchase of handycam..so now we have hours of wobbly footage of yowling infant, wonky bananas and other dross. K has a habit of turning the camera on and then letting it dangle from her wrist while she answers the mobile. As her sister said..Headache!

On to the big questions!..
And the more I think about it the more serious it seems to be..but I am not going to write a text book about it.
How any of us come to be living where we are is complex enough…but just to reduce it to the particular…
I was born here, I went to school here, my family lives here as do my friends, I have work here…I married the girl next door..well within 20 miles… We speak the same language
But for so many people that was and is not the case..transported and deported by dreams and ambitions, fear and atrocities, circumstance and opportunity..
I once had a thought to write a series of articles to make a book about unusual ‘expatriated’ communities..Japanese in Argentina or was it Peru?, Welsh in Patagonia, Finnish peoples in Oregon (and Pen Llyn..also) Polish villages in Pwllheli, Thais in Finland, Hmong in California etc. etc, not the Brits in the Dordogne and Spain in other words.
Nor the great historic migrations..just displaced by disaster, ambition or happenstance.

So what about you and me?

If I am a victim, I am a victim of dreams. Elsi wanted to get away from London. RS had his ‘Dream of the setting Celtic Sun’ While they both achieved it I think RS was the luckier. He even wrote to Fraser Darling about setting up a self -sufficient community on some Irish or Welsh Island! RS was, if anything more cack handed and incompetent than ‘Leave it to me, Peg! Crash’ Tommy Twice. Fraser Darling being of a more sensible and pragmatic character advised him, strongly, NO….but I think the dream did not die!

And I guess I inherited.
You probably never saw a most execrable and sentimental movie in which Hayley Mills careered around a few hot islands in an old boat in an reasonable state of undress and a bandana..looked good to a 17 year old…and then there was Pierrot Le Fou.
Maybe Phuket was that too..I think not!

Growing up in Manafon attached me to the place. And Elsi loved it. But no reason to live there or return.. also Eglwys Fach and Aberdaron.. as I have said elsewhere their dream not mine. Sarn is a bit different. It is, well was-thanks Gwynedd C, quite exceptional by any standards of ‘good location’…. But still not my dream in adult life…

But for RS certainly and . to a degree Elsi , it provided them with the solution to their dream. Neither was much interested in ‘Abroad’. Elsi thought that she had ‘been there and done that’ and now it was ‘dangerous’; while RS at one point threw away his passport as he would not go ‘abroad’ as a ‘British’ citizen1 The offices of a restless wife and the prospect of some birds, some prizes and a few good lunches as the guest of honour and changed that!

I went to Cambridge to study (reasonable? Not sure) Maybe Shan had something to do with it. Stayed for Margaret. Went to Middle Barton half way twixt Ealing and Birmingham ie. Work. Went to Whitebrook-stupid ..looking for country living but had to go to London to work. Went to Kew
a. for Rhodri.. not a lot of use had to drive to Westminster every day and
b. for work.
S and I explored going to France, but gave up on the idea

We had dreams of other places..Is this a British problem? Dream of California not so dissimilar nor the wandering Chinese. Is Ahasuerus the prototype?

There is that little snippet in Lawrence Durrell’s Clea…he sits writing, while the child plays…
He had the sea..I just have the waving coconuts and bananas!

Discovered Corsica, Arizona and Phuket..no work in Corsica, unpleasant people in Arizona and for reasons already explored Phuket not wonderful.
So here we are in Sarn…Got it Use it!
And Sukothai..back to family

If you try to really escape this mesh is it worth the candle?

It is really now a case of fortune telling and future watching

Rhodri will make his own choices..but for E?

I shall be repetitous
For E lots of good reasons for staying
Family
Quite a wealthy province. The land fertile and sufficient water (true?) Not an accident that it was the original capital. You come down off the Lamphun Hills, which are fairly barren-though good trees onto the plain. Sri Satchanalai is lovely. Bit like Richmond Park!
Don’t suppose anyone starved here in many a year
Perhaps one day Thailand will be as wealthy as it can be..When?
If the dollar collapses..
If America is in trouble..Britain too?
If China grows stronger…and then there is an E Asian currency…
Many wonderful things in Thai Culture…
Entrepreneurial, Confident…

BUT

Education system presently appalling.. why do all rich Thai, Malaysians, Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese send their children abroad to school and university?
Class ridden more than UK
Dirty beyond belief
Enormous rich/poor divide… therefore huge amount of theft
Thai plutocracy possesses very high percentage of the wealth
Violence against women commonplace
Racist in the extreme.. and E does not look Thai.. whatever languages she speaks
Corrupt. Not just the Police. And in many ways it is a police state
Thai boys a complete pain, undisciplined, indulged, irresponsible, violent. .same everywhere!?
Water resources undermined by logging and theft in many places
‘Insecure’ Sound like mother..’ abroad dangerous’.. but now I think Bognor quite dangerous too!


If Mr. Bin L manages to bankrupt America..what will happen. On the one hand good luck to him,
See these two articles

us fun 1

us fun 2


(You don’t know what I spend the day reading!!)

but on the other the fallout will be horrendous and I do not see he has much to offer other than beards and burkhas.


Notice he has been quiet about the tsunami, while others have said: How does Islam explain this to its believers.. After all Aceh is quite significantly Muslim

Waiting for the answer!

Here is an interesting article from France..on the same subject.. Islam is not presently my domiciliary difficulty!! Though in the future....? if what follows pertains

Judge Dread!



I am old, so for me it is really immaterial now. K is Thai. So she has to sort that out. But we can choose for Elodie.

The most conservative sides of me opt for Australia. ie. How far away can you get from ‘dangerous abroad’ where they are (mostly) white and speak English..and it is sunny so better than Ireland!

The middle ground says go for the EU. Take a risk that it will work, in spite of the US, and won’t come to blows again..so France or whatever.

Or we could just stay here and in time she will have to decide whether to cash in her option on a UK passport.

When the heady 1990s were with us it was projected that Thailand would be the 9th biggest economy in the world in 10 years. Might still be
Thais far more savvy and contrary and thus independent than Latin America…but they have not got much in the way of natural resources,(left!) as opposed to human ones. Still it is quite a big country, very fertile.. Just need to do something about Knowledge!!

Anyway we have been here for nearly 4 months now and have had ONE day of rain. Does not appear to have made much difference. The level of the river is quite low but I see the paddy fields being flooded and planted fairly normally..but maybe I am missing something. The large stand of bamboo looks a bit yellow, but then it is winter. When we went up to Chiang Mai, Lamphun and Lampang looked dessicated.

Chatted for hours to both D and B. Cheaper to ring them from here than in the UK…we have been trying to nail down the thing about Ronnie and Millie and ‘class’. Some one told B that as RS was an outsider at Bangor Coll that was when he started to affect the toff pose. Elsi on the other hand did move in some fairly bohemian/wealthy circles. Mostly as a result of Royal College of Art stuff. While she abandoned that she kept on quite a few friends and correspondents.

RS used to moan that he had never provided Elsi with a ‘decent residence’. By which he meant a Rectory with croquet lawns, French windows and maids. Mind you both Manafon and Eglwys Fach had those strings of bells in kitchen and bell pulls in all the rooms. To summon the lackeys. Manafon had fires in the bedroom and I had a nurse so he must have thought that was OK…and then he pushed me off to ‘be educated’ As I have said pity he did not go for top of the range. Might as well have been abused at Eton or Winchester rather than by the River Pang!

There were a whole series of things that they considered indicators of ‘good breeding’..no milk bottles or jamjars on the table, no light bulbs without lampshades etc. Please say either not eether. Definitely lavatory not toilet. Really just normal bourgeois stuff. In Eglwys Fach they might as well have had a Club. It was a sort of colonial posting with RS as the Padre I suppose. There were all those retired people; many of whom had indeed done service in far flung parts Louis Behrend had been in Egypt, Hunter was Cap’n Norman. Mrs Gall in India, .Cap’n Ransome and the notorious Gen. Lewis Pugh. Girls all in good thick skirts and sensible shoes. They lunched (Mary and Bow Behrend had a cook and a maid) and the little Grey House at Llanwrin stuffed with Henry Lambs and Stanley Spencers , where the swans loomed over you as you chewed the leg of lamb and splintered the meringues, had sherry parties and went on ‘trips’ and ‘hunting parties with picnics’ to view exotic flora and fauna together with the architectural remains of ‘celtic culture’!

At the end he dressed like a retired brigadier. I think he would have quite liked to be George Herbert! The squire and the parson measuring out charity and grace. Is that unkind?

B and I also talked about ‘The Last Days’. Which is sufficiently St.John The Divine or Revelations.

Yes, I think there is a big unanswered Q. When he left Sarn in 1995 he was elderly but fit. He had some heart flutters and a previous history of ‘nerves’..no more. He went to Llanfairnghornwy in 1995/6 and within 5 years he was dead…what happened? I have neither seen his death certificate nor know from what ailment he died!. I have reported he is to be found, in Thomas Hardy like repose, under a gargoyle/drainpipe in Porthmadog churchyard with a pricey bit of stone.