Below you will find some photographs taken during our travels in Thailand, including our house in Saraburi, my attempt to learn the Thai language, and some of the funny and interesting things that happened during our stays there.

The page was last updated on 9th November 2006.

Wang Nam Kio

These photographs are taken from our trip from Saraburi up to Nakon Ratchasima, usually known as Korat, and then on to visit a famous teacher monk at a small temple in Wang Nam Kio, (Green Water Palace). Click on the images to view them full size.

The Ayuttaya flooding

The plan was to visit a monk at a temple in Sena, near Ayuttaya, but the flooding in the area was too bad and I made Ploy turn back. The devastation was incredible, with so many houses uninhabitable and people living by the side of the road trying to feed themselves and their livestock. Click on the images to view them full size.

Bang Saen

Bang Saen is a small resort by the sea, not far from Chon Buri. Ploy and I spent a couple of days there, mainly because she had to have a follow up appointment with a doctor at the hospital (she had fell at the entrance to a department store), but also to visit a friend who lives in Chon Buri. Bang Saen is also home to a fantastic Chinese Temple, the Nha Ja Sa Tai Jue shrine. Click on the images to view them full size.

A 60th Anniversary

Ploy telephoned me on Thursday morning and said, "Why don't you come to Thailand. This weekend is the 60th Anniversary of the King's accession to the throne and there are celebrations everywhere." So I booked a flight and rapidly arranged holiday from work and flew out that night, and I was so glad I did and was able to participate in what was a very special event. Click on the images to view them full size.

We stayed in Bangkok at our usual hotel, the Nasa Vegas. The Friday was the official anniversary and there was a parade of royal barges along the Chao Phraya river. Ploy managed to get us a seat to watch the parade at the Chang Pier. Every possible position near the river was lined with yellow shirted Thais (yellow is the colour of the King's birthday), and one or two foreigners. We had bought our 'official' yellow shirts and also a commerative 60baht note that had been specially printed for the occasion. Watching the boats go by was eerie: the oarsmen of every boat seemed to be synchronised, chanting the same rythmic devotion to the King, with the only other sound being a spontaneous burst of applause. The excitement grew as, what would have been the Kings boat, bedecked in gold, appoached. The entire procession was also accompanied by lightning and thunder, but strangely no rain, which all added to the effect. Click on the images to view them full size.

After the parade we walked around the royal palace surroundings (entry to the palace was for Thai people only so we didn't wait in the very long queue), and then joined in a celebratory party in the nearby park where Ploy slowly moved us forward towards the stage, eventually getting so close I was frightened I would be included in the band. There was also the largest gathering of monks I have every seen, offering good luck to the King. Again being part of all this, trying my best to sing along with the national anthem, being embraced by the Thai people as one of them (they constantly relit my candle when it blew out and people kept coming up to me and saying 'dee' 'dee mark' [good] and asking Ploy where I was from) made it feel very special. The rest of the night was then spent trying to get a tuk-tuk, along with a few million other Thais. Click on the images to view them full size.

On the Saturday night there was a fireworks display. Ploy booked us seats on a boat, which, in advance of the display, took us along the river to show us the royal barges and then parked up for a view of the fireworks. Every possible position on every bridge and every vantage point along the river seemed to be a sea of yellow. Click on the images to view them full size.

On Sunday 25 other royal representatives (of the 29 world wide, for the UK Prince Andrew was there), were presented to the King. It was a quieter day and we spent it wandering around the royal palace environs and trying to book another seat for the Monday royal barge procession when it was rumoured the King would be present. In fact he wasn't, but after the procession we went for something to eat opposite the democracy monument (MetHav Alai Sornd Reng Restaurant), and watched the parade of limousines for all the royal families, including the King, as they went off for a special dinner. All the streets were closed for this and we took the chance to join everyone else (and by that I think the entire population of Thailand was on the streets of Bangkok that night), and enjoy the decorative lights. Click on the images to view them full size.

The next day we went back to Saraburi, but I was so grateful for having been part of it all. I had no time for the Royal family in the UK, but the King of Thailand does make you think again what an intelligent, altruistic man can do in such a position. Not for this man the glamour lifestyle, the constant parading at fashionable functions or the opening of bridges and launching of boats, the buying of shoes or the taking of extravagant holidays. This man has made a difference to the people of Thailand, especially the poor and it easy to have respect for him. The world will be a poorer place without him.

You can read about Saraburi, where we live in Thailand, here, Saraburi

Two excellent on-line sites for learning the Thai language, Learning Thai and Thai Language

A contact in Singapore for anyone needing official translations of Thai documents, Adisak Wisavakul

I have also been meaning to mention a restaurant in Saraburi called the Banana House (careful how you ask for that in Thai). It does the most fabulous Tom Yam soup anywhere: none of this insipid stuff you get in Singapore, or, God forbid out of packets, this is the real thing: Spicy enough to make to gasp and with an intense sourness (I like to add more lime too). Tom Yam Pla is my favourite with Mud Fish, none of those nancy boy prawns, great lumps of fish. That and a beer Chang and I am in heaven. The cook is unusually a man (for Thailand anyway): he gave up his day job as an electrical engineer to open the restaurant. Do try other things, from chilli frog (too many bones for me) to lemon prawns, but if you miss the Tom Yam Pla you will regret it.

A short trip

I have just come back from 6 days in Thailand. The trip was forced by Ploy's impending operation for which her recovery time means she could not continue to run her businesses there. So we closed the silver jewelry business and are looking for a buyer for the engineering company. The former shutdown meant we had three pickup's full of personal belonging to take between her factory and our house in Saraburi, a five hour round trip each time. Luckily we found a buyer for all the equipment and we closed the lease without a problem: the factory was taken over by the people next door as they wanted to expand. For the engineering company, it has been running 2 years now, and she has letters of recommendation from her major customer, Elephant cement in Saraburi, so we hope to sell it as a going concern (a photo of an office she built can be seen on the left). She has two people interested: in any case we will close the business as it will just drift without Ploy We had been thinking for a while about what to do with the business and had already thought that perhaps Ploy should start something in Singapore so it is not too much of tear to close it.

We also spent some time clearing up our house: it has been used as a temporary store for all her work so it looked like a bomb had hit it. The office at the back of house has also been turned into a bit of shrine. I have noticed that Ploy is becoming more attentive to her Buddhist roots recently: the trip also allowed us to visit a monk which I talk about below. Meanwhile the house has also begun to look like part of Buddhist temple. Ploy tells me it is to protect the house and us, but she also bought some toys which she says is for a little girl that a monk once told her follows her around: the toys were a large plastic truck and a plastic machine gun! Ploy had been spending some time on the garden, but the weeds were beginning to take over control. However the plants that are meant to be there were flourishing so we think when we return we will tile over the garden leaving small beds for the existing plants. We also both would like one of those waterfall features. So a working holiday is due sometime in the summer I guess after Ploy has fully recovered.

Learning the Thai language

I am not a natural at languages, and therefore learning a tonal language such as Thai is not proving easy. For the British, who can forget the Smith and Jones' comedy sketch about ordering in a Thai restaurant, where they revelled in the rude sounding Thai words, like 'poo' and 'prik'. I am determined to get there one day, the rewards are plentiful: a deeper understanding of the Thai culture and people, an ability to enjoy more the occassional gatherings of Ploy and her friends, and I think the language rewards the considerable effort as the little I have learned has shown Thai to be poetic language, quite unlike the western tongues. For example I recently found out that 'moth' in Thai is 'pee sua', or literally 'ghost shirt': isn't that lovely and there are many more instances like that. And you have to love a language where the traps are laid for foreigners to order a kilo of penises, or a glass of cold woman's breasts, much to the amusement of Thais. The first time I visited Thailand I bought this book of Thai. I thumbed through a few pages, and it stayed on my bookshelf as an impenetrable volume, but impressive to the occassional visitor to my bookcase, "You can speak Thai?", I blush and say "A little", knowing the prescence of this book indicates something other, and who can argue? Since being with Ploy I have now a library of my own, cassettes, books, magazines and the websites (the best two are indicated in the listings above). However I do feel I am beginning to get there, so I thought I would share with you my tips for learning Thai.

I have inordinate problems pronouncing Thai. It is not just the tones, the short or long vowels, it is the language that decides it is clever to move the 'ng' sound which naturally belongs at the end of word, to the beginning as well. I practice with Daeng Mo, 'Gai nguan', 'Tham ngarn', 'Ngoo'. "No!, No! No!" She then says to me exactly what I have just said. I try again "No! No! Yes! Yes!" I repeat it identically. "No!" So there is a whole part of the language where I cannot go. And pronouncing the difference between 'mai', 'mai', 'mai', 'mai', 'mai' and 'mai', (variously meaning, wood, new, no?, burn etc.) or 'ya', 'ya', 'ya', 'ya', 'ya', and 'ya' (grass, grandfather, medicine etc.) or 'tong', 'tong', and 'tong', (sky, stomach and gold etc.) well you get the drift. Ploy can hear through my tonal errors but others cannot. So I have found an approach. What do you do in English when someone doesn't understand something? You approach it a different way, try a different context. So this is what I am trying to do with Thai. The basics are out of the way, I can shop and order food, but to engage in real conversation: well I will leave that alone for now. First I am getting my comprehansion and vocabulary up so when I open my mouth again I do just that, have sufficient vocabulary that the context of mispronounced word is understood, or I repeat the sentence using a different word. And the way I am extending my vocabulary is by learning to read Thai. Reading Thai I find helps the words 'stick' better (apart from enabling you, in Thailand, to go into a pharmacy shop to by aspirin rather than a florist): much better than just learning lists. They also get around the various ways each Thai language book has to display the tones, each different and each incomprehensible. In any case 'mai' and 'mai' (no? and 'burn') are both phonetically the same, except they are not! So while Ploy drives around Saraburi I try to read the posters and signposts and she tries not to 'dop salop sa lai' me (hit me until I am unconcious).

Ploy has bought me this children's book. It has pictures for each of the Thai consonants and vowels. Associating the symbol with the picture immediately gives me new words, from fighting kite to ogre to egg to owl. Daeng Mo questions me on the bus or after work. 'Hor heep'? 'Dor dek'? 'Gor gai'? It is starting to stick. Slowly, slowly it is beginning to dawn.

'Tamboon'

We left Friday night and returned on Sunday so neither myself, or Daeng Mo, missed work or school. A chance for me to see Ploy and Daeng Mo to see her friends and family. I saw how the house was progressing (backwards it seemed as dry rot had been found and all the furniture was in the middle of the room as the skirting boards had all been stripped off, but the ceiling was installed since last time and Ploy has plans for a little 'home business' sideline, for which shelves had been installed: bang goes the idea of this being a country retreat, more like an ICI size factory complex). We didn't do much, in fact we mostly slept, but on the Saturday we went to a temple to give 'tamboon' or I think what is best translated as 'merit making'. The mechanics of it seem simple enough, we take some food and gifts to some monks at a temple, and in return they 'bless' us. However there is a lot more behind this, most of which I do not understand. Ploy is a very practical person, but her new found security seems to be bringing out the more mystical side of her. In the bedroom the mattress had been moved, to some disadvantage I thought as you trip over it as soon as you walk in the room (Ploy likes the mattress on the floor, better than a real bed she says). Anyway I asked why, and after a few astronomical calculations she confirmed this was the best position. Across the road a woman had hung herself. Apparently her unhappy spirit will cross the sky from east to west as if following the sun. Should you place your head under this path (which would have happened if we had left the mattress where it was), then you would have bad dreams. So the mattress was moved.
Back to the monks. I told Ploy that if she continued to drive like that, we would see the monks, but only the dead ones. She laughed, and mowed down several surprised cyclists and a lone buffalo as result. The decision to 'tamboon' was taken late and the temple was a long way away (we passed several hundred others on the journey, but this one had a wise monk, so Ploy had been told). We got slightly lost, and swerved in front on a number of motorcyclists to ask the way: in typical Thai style they were very courteous in pointing out the way from their new found location in the ditch by the side of the road. Monks need to eat before noon, It was 11.30. But we found it and all the food was unloaded into dishes with the help of several old ladies and was reverentially presented to the monks. We sat before them on the wooden floor. One monk (who seemed to be their leader) spoke with Ploy. Where am I from? Do I speak Thai? I did my act; "Pom pud pha-sa Thai mai dai khrap" (I do not speak Thai). One monk smiled and I think I got a snigger from another. Our one frowned. Bang goes the 'tamboon'. We waited for the monks to finish eating the feast they had before them. Ploy had also brought gifts which she got from the car; a monks robe and a flourescent tube (even monks need light!).
We wandered around, the temple was faded and in need of repair, a far cry from some the glittering temples you see by the side of the road. Several cats and dogs wandered around. The monks finished eating, Ploy wai'ed reverentially and I did the same. The elder monk chanted something and Ploy repeated it. The other monks joined in, now all sitting cross-legged in a line. Ploy then went to get some water in a small silver jug, and she chanted with the monks as she slowly poured the water from the jug into a small bowl. She took my hand so we both held the jug as we poured. The monks continued chanting, led by the elder. Ploy then got up and went outside to pour the water on the base of a tree outside. We lit some incense sticks and that was it, off to get something to eat.
As we left I noticed the monks had got up and two of them went off for a smoke. It somehow spoiled it. I wondered if I was on the set of Sister Act III and had just spent the last twenty minutes wai-ing Whoopi Goldberg in drag.

I asked Ploy what it all meant. As we poured the water the monks were asking everyone we knew to protect us, our teachers, our family, and even the dead. That is the offering made outside, the tree is the link to the dead. More I do not know; I must read up on it. Whatever my cynicism, for Ploy it matters. There is an element of wishing for things, usually lottery wins, but also in our case, for a child. And for not so simple things like happiness. I wonder if this feeling of being 'protected' leads to the contentedness that I feel the Thai people have. A sort of extended family spirit of protection. When you first come to Thailand every guide books tells you the Thais live by the words 'sanuk' (fun) and 'mai pen rai', (never mind). For sour ex-pats 'mai pen rai' becomes 'don't care' but I don't believe this. I believe the belief Thai's have in fate, in a predetermined destiny gives them a certainty in their future, (this certainty also has a down side, as anyone who has been in a taxi in Bangkok knows, watching the driver wai a budda with eyes closed as we hurtle through red ,ights at 50m.p.h.) It is peoples uncertainty and lack of feeling of stability, the feeling they are not in control of their lives, that leads to sudden and sometimes violent (re)action. Of course it would be unwise to generalize like this, but this is a huge cultural gulf, in the west we want control of our lives, to feel we can change everything, and when we find we can't we react: letters to the Times newpaper, marches on Government, anti-establishment web-sites, picket lines, bombs on busses and in restaurants, war. And if it is all pre-ordained...?

Our House in Thailand

I have just returned from 10 days in Saraburi, or more precisely Huai Bong, north of Saraburi where our new house is: the holiday was to help move in, as the house has been empty for a while. I had only seen the house once before just as Ploy was buying it: it is a Government house (Housing Association) and is two bedroom, semi-detached on a quiet corner location. I arrived to find dusty boxes everywhere, it was difficult to get through the door.

Ploy is great at all the details, but the amount of work to unpack and clean was imposing. Ploy had bought a mattress which was lying on the bedroom floor still in its plastic: Ploy was waiting until I arrived for us both to use it and had been sleeping on the floor by the side of it until now. So the days were spent cleaning and organising, the first day the lounge and downstairs bathroom, the second the bedroom and upstairs bathroom. The cable TV has come, we have bought a DVD player and lots and lots of locks. Ploy is very safety conscious and wants me to fit a security light as well: she feels vulnerable alone. It now feels more like a home and when I leave here I am happy that Ploy has somewhere to come that is clean and safe. The big work that remains is the extension that needs a new roof and ceiling and some floor repairs: Ploy's staff have started work on that, their main job permitting.

We also need to do some quite a lot on the garden, but that can wait for a while. Ploy wants to get a feng shui person in to tell us what to do, I am always surprised by Ploy's mysticism sometimes as she is one of the most practical people I know.

Our first night's sleep here was interrupted by an animal noise I did not know, Ploy said it was a 'Dook gae'. However the following night we had a closer encounter when I discovered what a 'Dook gae' was: as a lot of Thai people seem scared of the animal we are going to name our house after it. Amazing how such a small animal can make so much noise.

Ploy also has bought some land in Thailand, north of Saraburi and close to a river with a series of waterfalls called 'Jet sow noi' or Seven little sisters, a beautiful location. In fact there was an old Thai style wooden house on the plot and we planned to use the wood for the floor of our new house. We were going to sell the land as we have had a very good offer but we have decided for now to keep it. Maybe we will build that house on it one day.

Saraburi

Not too far from where we live, near to the Chang Cement factory is a large image of Budda with a temple and small market selling offerings which is very busy over the weekends. We visited on a Sunday and added some gold leaf to the statue: Ploy wished for us to have a child. Click on an image to bring up a larger version.

ChaChoenSow

We did take some time out on my last trip to take a friend to ChaChoenSow, a site of a famous temple. The spiritulism of the Thais is so evident at these places, apart from the grandeur of the grand temple (which is prohibited from photography inside) there are the accompanying religious artifact stands, the Thai dancers that can be hired to help along a particular 'prayer', the monks offering advice and wisdom and of course the food.

Petchaburi and Hua Hin

Hua Hin (which means head stone in Thai) is a small, still active, fishing village on the east coast of Thailand, some 200km south of Bangkok. We drove down there from the airport and it took us about 3 hours without being frantic about it. It is quite an interesting town, free of the bustle normally associated with Thailand, and has some fine, clean, albeit busy, beaches. There are lots of restaurants of all flavours but we did find the place a little expensive by normal Thai standards. We used Hua Hin as the base for our holiday, and stayed at the Nina House hotel, 41/5-6, Naeb-Khehars Road (Tel: 032-531291), which we found clean, good value and with friendly owners. Our large, air conditioned room was 700 baht/night.

Here are some impressions of Hua Hin. Click on the image to bring up a larger version.

Just inland of Hua Hin is a small elephant village where you can take rides of elephants or just watch them.

Driving around the area of Hua Hin we found this shrine to a famous monk. Ploy tells me that this monk saved some people's lives when they were in a boat by making the sea-water drinkable. She also tells me the Thai King and Queen visit this site.

Here is a scan of a leaflet showing how they built the statue and inaugurated the site.

We decided to visit Petchaburi, north of Hua Hin, for a day. On the way we happened upon some goat fighting, buffalo racing and what appeared to a most beautiful goat competition! The start of the buffalo racing was more fun the race itself, especially as one of the two carts raced off sideways leaving the other with a clear run.

Petchaburi is a typical Thai market town and our visit, of course, also coincided with some Chinese New Year celebrations, including a lion dance.

In Petchaburi is a fantastic network of caves housing images of Budda, definitely worth a look. The first picture shows the descent into the the cave. There is a small shrine with the remains of a monk where we gave a small offering and added to the gold leaf on his tomb. Some further steps then lead you into the main cave: the pictures speak for themselves.

In the middle of Petchaburi is a hill, which has on top a temple and also the house of King Mongkut, Rama IV, probably the greatest king of Thailand. The hill is a steep climb, although there is a cable car, and if you do walk, as we did, be prepared to fight your way around the thieving monkeys.

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