Still Stalactite Thirty Years On!

Staying in Ralph and Mee's house in the mountains was magic.

Waking up to a sea of clouds made the long journey worthwhile.

Papa cooks breakfast in his bamboo house nearby,

and Mama and her sister enjoy the meal in their bamboo house.

A walk to their tea garden washes away the stresses of the city,

while Papa picks tea leaves under the jungle canopy.

This village tree is a single banyan which puts down tap roots.

Slaughtering a pig seems to be quite a big event,

and everyone is there, anxious for a slice of the action.

We visit the Chiang Dao caves and feed the fish in the temple pond.

And I recognise a stalactite I last photographd thirty years ago.


Tourists to Thailand rush to the sea and islands but for me the forests and mountains are an even greater draw.

Cat and I have just come back to Bangkok after a short holiday in Chiang Mai and it’s been amazing. Walking through the tea plantations high in the mountains, the light falling soft and dappled on the manicured bushes is an uplifting experience. This magical place could hardly be more different to the endless flat rice fields that surround us at home in our north eastern village in Surin province.

We stayed with Ralph and Mee in their modern home in Mee’s Lahu village high in the mountains above Chiang Rai. We arrived in pouring rain but awoke the next day to the vista of a sea of cloud seen from the upstairs balcony.

From then on our stay was a succession of great experiences.

Mee’s parents live there with them, cooking and eating in a traditional split bamboo room right next to the house. Their life retains many of the traditional routines of their mountain upbringing and every day in season they take the long walk to their tea garden to pick twenty kilos of leaves each.

The village is vibrant with life, at night the children playing in the open area by a vast banyan tree and in the day workers go off on their motorcycles to pick tea. Life is much as it is everywhere in a rural community with small shops, a pork butcher and noodle stalls but unusually for Thailand there are three Christian churches.

On our last day Ralph took us down to the valley to visit the Chiang Dao caves, one of the largest limestone cave complexes in Thailand. After we’d fed the massive fish in the temple pond at the approach to the caves we went inside and were hugely impressed by the echoing caverns.

While I was photographing one of the stalactites I suddenly recognized it as an old friend. It was not the caves themselves that I remembered but the photo I’d taken of this river of limestone three decades ago. On thinking back I soon realized I’d been here just a month or two short of thirty years ago.

That time in the seventies the rice harvest was already coming in and the workers were out in the heat of the fields, swathed in clothes to keep out the dust, threshing and winnowing the rice by hand, tossing it on bamboo trays and blowing away the chaff with big fans. The rice was then hauled away on ox carts for storage in their wooden barns, all so very different to how it’s now done in the twenty first century.

Back in Chiang Mai we drove through crowded streets out of town past the university and the temple of Wat Suan Dork, which is now totally hidden behind rows of shops. On that first visit to Chiang Mai the Suan Dork temple was then a sleepy place. It was outside the urban area and into the the countryside.

We also ate at Aroon Rai, a well know eatery on Mool Muang Road. I told the middle aged waitress I’d been there thirty years before and that, as I remembered it, there'd been no bleak concrete building as now and we’d eaten outside in a quiet garden. Yes, I was right, she said, as she’d started working there just three years before that time.

Worryingly I’d forgotten about the Chiang Dao caves but had remembered the restaurant! This time I’ll have to get back there to both of them sooner than thirty years on.

Yes, Chiang Mai has changed. It’s bigger and brasher, though in many ways it feels very much the same… hot, busy and chaotic but so welcoming and I think I’ll always want to come back.

Now I have to survive being in Bangkok again before we go back to the village, still thinking of the peace of the family tea garden in the mountains.

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog October 2009

No Bamboo In Bamboo Land

Living in the back of beyond in rural Isaan, apart from English newspapers and farang food, there’s not many things you need that you can’t get hold of quite easily. Although there’s bamboo everywhere, including in our back yard, there’s a strange shortage though of stuff made from bamboo.

Yes, you can get pre-Ikea knock-down chip board furniture everywhere and fold-down steel kitchen tables that are totally hideous. But if you want attractive bamboo or rattan furniture for an exotic Eastern look you might as well forget it!

For the locals of course, wicker or rattan smacks of the past and they much prefer fifties chip board chic, but the strange thing is that functional bamboo furniture can be seen everywhere. It’s quite nice and all the little grass roofed eating places in town use it… but can you buy it here?

Not a chance?

After we’d built the house, I’d always wanted a decent bamboo table and chairs so we could eat out on our downstairs verandah, but they’re simply not available anywhere. This puzzled me so I worked on the problem as intensively as a CIA spook for three years until I discovered the truth. Bamboo furniture comes from a bambooish sort of place in Ubon province about three hours away and you can only get it there. Apart perhaps for a few roving pickups loaded to the sky that come round the villages, you can’t buy it here.

Ultimately therefore, three years on, despairing of my old jeep, I had to buy a new pickup and drive to Ubon and find the bamboo shops myself in order to fulfill my farang dream of eating off bamboo furniture.

This minor frustration was recently mirrored in a severe marital tension that has occurred between me and my sweet though straight talking wife, Cat. Just before leaving for a trip to see my family in England the rains began early and it seemed that the gutters round the house were blocked with leaves, probably from the eucalyptus from next door. The result was that they were overflowing in the worst of the downpours and water was cascading down the front of the house and onto my valuable bamboo furniture and precious antique ox cart.

“Cat,” I say to her desperately, “We must get gutter man in to unblock the gutters”.
“Cannot,” says Cat. “In Sangkha not have gutter man.’
“But we only need someone with a ladder who can get up there and do it in a few minutes.”
“But in Sangkha nobody have ladder. I ask already at all the shops.”

I quietly seethe in frustrated disbelief, silently accusing Cat of not being bothered about this disaster and telling me what she wants me to hear.

So it seems that Surin folk don’t do ladders then. When they built our house all those five years ago they did it without a ladder, instead standing on upturned paint tins and climbing painfully up the wooden scaffolding. And nobody in all the builders merchants in town knew of a gutter man, insisted Cat, even though they all sell guttering. And certainly nobody, but nobody in Sangkha has a ladder.

Seriously, Cat tells me, nobody has a ladder because they’re always made of bamboo and bamboo stuff’s made in Ubon and not in Surin.

So we flew off together to England leaving unblocked gutters and torrents of water falling down the front of the house. When we got back, like the mowing, nothing of course had been done about it.

I tackle Cat head on asking her to get it sorted and get one of those ‘kill-at a thousand-paces’ laser looks.

I’ll go and cut some bamboo from around the pond and make a ladder myself if I have to, I tell her. I’ll charter a helicopter to drop me onto the roof. I’ll clear the gutters if it’s the last thing I do… and given the height and the steep pitch of the roof, indeed it might be.

Then Cat’s brother Saniam, taking a break from helping us to cut the ‘lawn’ goes somewhere and walks back about five kilometers to the house carrying on his shoulder a short bamboo ladder. He tells me through alcoholic fumes that he’s going to stand the ladder on the low kitchen roof, climb up and over the top of the house and dig out the gutters for us.

I contemplate scraping his remains off the path at the back of the house and decide to put a damper on the whole thing. Drunk in charge of a ladder is not a good idea Perhaps tomorrow he’ll be sober, I fantasize, but no, it never happens and I soon notice that the ladder has gone.

Then one day I hear Cat’s frantic voice loudly calling me from the back of the house. It must be an invasion from Cambodia, World War Three or the pig’s escaped again. Then I hear what she’s saying to me.

“Andrew, gutter man come. Run, run quickly!”

I’m out of the house in a flash and at the gate and sure enough there’s a modern pickup with a ladder on the roof coming down the soi. Like many Isaan tradesmen, the man who does gutters drives far and wide looking for work, announcing his arrival with an intrusive loudspeaker that can be heard for hundreds of yards. Cat had heard him coming. This was the answer to my prayers.

But shock, horror… all he had on top of his truck was a short bamboo ladder!

Just like Saniam’s plan, this he perched precariously on the kitchen roof and in bare feet scaled up and over the house to clear out the gutters and repair a few leaks. I watched him climbing down again, the foot of the ladder stood on the steep slope of the kitchen roof. It was shocking to see the risks he was daily exposed to through his own casual attitude to life and death. And who would have to pay hospital bills or compensation if he fell? It would be me! Like when a motorbike runs into the side of your car, that’s just the way it works around here.

I’ve written before about the pleasure Cat takes in gathering wild food in the surrounding countryside. I’m quite proud too that we’re self-sufficient in obtaining our own drinking water and have so far lived to tell the tale. While many farang friends buy bottled water, releasing thousands of plastic bottles a year into the wild, we drink real organic rain water.

For six month it rains heavily and a peripheral purpose of the gutters is to channel the sweet water into the three vast ceramic storage vats we have around the house. These usually last us out over the ensuing dry season, so it’s a system that saves both the planet and my satang.

Of course the roof water’s safe, I tell myself. The air’s clean as there’s no industry with only the methane farts of buffaloes to pollute it, and I’ve never had a tummy problem from it.

But then while gutter man was still working away up top, I went around the house and saw the mud and gunge that he’d scraped out of the gutters, dropping it in heaps to the terrace below. I was truly horrified. We’d been drinking water filtered through the leaves and dirt of the five and more years we’ve been living here.

And why this extraordinary negligence with our well being and health? Essentially it’s because this is Surin and not Ubon and here they don’t make bamboo ladders. So that’s why until now we’ve never once managed to get the gutters cleaned out.

What might be a good idea would be for me to get in the pickup, drive the three hours to Ubon and buy a ladder so I can do it myself in future.

But no, I’ll buy ten of them at a good discount and I’ll cruise round the town and villages selling them. Then that way the ladder famine in Surin will in part be relieved.

While I’m at it I might as well get some tables and chairs and sell them too!

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog October 2009

Her Papa's A Hunter Gatherer!

In the West there's food aplenty and Pooh Bear and Tigger can get fat on sweet cup cakes. Here in Isaan, the poor North East of Thailand, they have plastic plates but little to put on them. Tiny crabs, shrimps and shell fish are gathered from the flooded rice fields and add flavour to the rice. There's a long tradition of hunting and gathering though it's not possible now to make a living from the forests.


Fish caught in the outfall from our pond.

A bucket of bamboo shoots cut from around the pond.

Cat spent hours chopping and boiling to make them edible.

This crab just walked into our garage...

... so did this frog and ended up getting eaten.

A vicious spear for fish and frogs and whatever gets in the way.

... and this is the bucket of protein Cat brought back one night.

But it's not enough. The young have to work in Bangkok and grandmama gets left holding the baby.


I’ve written before about how the forest in the Surin countryside where my wife, Cat and I now live used to be bountiful and how it abundantly yielded birds and animals to eat, roots, leaves, nuts and fruits. Her childhood was spent gathering food in the countryside and her memories of that time seem to be happy ones.

The trouble is now that every available scrap of land has been made productive and almost all the forest has gone. With increasing population, farming cannot support the population and this unlimited resource of free food for the landless is no longer there. Thus the young and fit have to move away to the cities to find low paid work, often leaving their small children with Mama Papa in the village.

I’d never before thought of Thais as hunter gatherers but rather as prosperous growers of rice, so this is a new insight for me. Farmers and pastoralists wandering the world with their cows are the wealthy ones and the hunter gatherers are all but gone. One thinks only of the pygmies in the Congo, of the Punan in Borneo and the Orang Asli or Sakai in the mountainous jungles down the spine of Malaysia.

I’ve seen people in West Africa who wore nothing but leaves but even they grew crops. I’ve stayed with Dyaks several days up the Skrang river in Sarawak, sleeping under the huge bundles of human skulls tied up with rattan. They lived off the jungle and just before we went out hunting orang utan, they showed me the paws of a bear they’d killed a few days before. They also grew a few vegetables and kept pigs that ran wild in the forest around the long houses. This was fine by me but in the absence of a WC, when I headed off into the jungle to hide behind a bush, the pigs would come running. They were so keen to get up close and personal as I squatted down that they almost knocked me flying.

The only pure hunter gatherers I’ve ever met though were the Sakai in the Taman Negara national park in Malaysia. In the vastness of the jungle we were lucky to come across them sitting in low temporary shelters of palm and leaves. They were very hospitable as they showed us how they whittled the darts for the blow pipes with which they killed monkeys and showed us the roots and the honey they’d recently collected from the jungle. They were delightful people to meet, their most precious possession being the fire that they kept glowing in one of their shelters.

I now realize to my surprise that my Thai wife too is a hunter gatherer. There’s nothing she loves doing more in the village than collecting food and despite the loss of the forests, it’s still out there if you know how to find it.

And it also comes into the house too without being asked! The garage is a cool, quiet place where we’ve caught intruding crabs and frogs, rats and even a scorpion, and all of them have gone into the pot.

Then when it rains heavily at night, the frogs cry out noisily and Cat gets up and goes out in the dark and the wet hunting them. She takes a powerful head torch and a vicious looking spear and returns with several kilos of frogs and fish in a bucket.

We’ve had heavy rain recently and the fish pond overflowed and she made a fish trap of fine netting where the water runs out. This produced quantities of beautiful small fish of the kind that are used to make plaa raa, the foul smelling fermented fish that Isaan people so love.

Then Cat takes the bamboo shoots from around the fish pond and spends ages cutting it into tiny slices and boiling it up to soften it. One dish she made recently was to mix it with rice, chopped pork, various spices and a liberal quantity of plaa raa and fiery chilli to render it totally uneatable by any farang. Then it was wrapped in parcels of banana leaf to make a local delicacy that was truly a labour of love.

She also collects pak ah chet, a leaf that grows on the surface of the pond. And she gathers kee lek from behind the house which is pounded to make a bitter green paste or soup, and at a certain time of the year we go out to the rice fields and climb the sadao trees to collect the young shoots that again are cooked up to make a decent curry as bitter as bile.

Then there was the trap with a blue light that accumulates a huge quantity of insects overnight that are fried up and eaten as a snack. The rice fields are full of fish and crabs, shell fish and prawns, all there for the taking, just like at the seaside, so in some ways the countryside is still nothing less than bountiful.

Nonetheless, you have to have land as there is no longer enough to sustain the whole population of rural Isaan. And that’s why the middle generation has gone off to the towns to find menial and badly paid work.

A few days ago one of Cat’s aunties came in to show off a new grandchild that had just been left with her by her daughter who works in Bangkok. This woman had eight children of her own but with only one of them now still with her in the village, all the others having gone away to the south. She already has two small grandsons living with her, their unmarried mothers gone far away so a third is a real burden, not to mention the cost of milk formula. From time to time her family send back small sums of money her and Papa and the children but for them it’s a poor life, living in what an only be described as a shack. They have absolutely no other income.

The new child is of course a joy, but the burden for an old woman of raising yet another baby is hard. But that’s just the way it is in rural Thailand.

The comfortable middle classes in Bangkok benefit from a vast pool of cheap labour while Isaan is a totally different world.

The village is a real community, though under threat, but it’s sad if more of the benefits of the modern economy cannot be brought to the countryside. That tension is of course what the current political turmoil in Thailand has been all about.

Meanwhile Cat has her farang and a comfortable life, but I respect her passion for living off the land and for not running a mile from the toughness of her upbringing. That’s what makes living in the village more rewarding for me as Cat’s enthusiasm for country life brings me a little closer to what remains of ‘the real Thailand’.

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog September 2009

Remembering The Ancestors

At the village wat we remember family who have passed on.

Making offerings of food and alcohol to propitiate their spirits.





The animist shrine in the temple grounds.

Tribute is paid to a small laterite rock.



“Tomorrow we go Ban Lamong… take food to grandpapa,” says Cat breezily.

“But he died years ago,” I reply, puzzled for a moment before I realize she’s talking about the annual ceremony at the temple remembering her mother’s dead relatives.

Towards the end of pansaa, the Buddhist ‘lent’, it is the custom of the Suay people to gather at the temple where their family members have been cremated and to hold a ceremony with the monks in their remembrance.

Curiously this coincides exactly with the Chinese ceremony of Ching Ming when families gather at the ancestral graves with food offerings and joss sticks and sweep the graves. I used to watch this at crowded ceremonies in Hong Kong and it looked a happy occasion when all the family made the effort to gather together and honour the departed. It was more like a party than mourning, which was thoroughly healthy and appropriate.

To me it seems a major omission that in the West we have no such custom. We cremate our dead in a clinical crematorium and quickly move on with little ritual or formal grieving. There is no grave to return to and we have no tradition of coming together to remember them at a particular time. Our elders seem to be readily forgotten.

Not so in Suay culture, of whom Cat’s mother is one. Here the spirits of the deceased are all around and need to be attended to and kept sweet. Thus it was that we all climbed into the pickup that morning and headed off to the next village where Cat’s mother had been born and raised.

It was a grey day, heavy with rainy season cloud as we arrived in the temple precincts and parked by the cremation ground. The first small ceremony was to make offerings of food and alcohol to the spirits of the dead. These were placed at the foot of a tree and the old aunties and uncles sat round, pouring alcohol into bowls and presenting the sticky rice to grandpapa.

Then mats were laid on the ground and four elderly monks in saffron robes arrived and sat in a row under the trees. There then began a long formal ceremony in which they chanted the names of those to be remembered and went through the usual formal chants in Sanskrit.

“Bhut thang saranang katchami.”

Then everyone went off to the temple hall while I waited outside. As always there were long announcements on the battered PA system, including lists of small donations given by various locals, often of ten or twenty baht.

Waiting by the pickup I'd noticed a curiosity, a small animist temple right here in the grounds of the Buddhist temple. As I watched, three ladies walked across to it and started making food offerings to its very pagan altar. On this was a large chunk of laterite rock with a ribbon around it, various small figures and the remains of old food offerings. They of course were very amused about the farang with his camera and chattered happily away to me. The one thing I heard was that one of them said they were giving food to Buddha.

I am constantly fascinated by this commingling of Buddhist and animist ritual and the complete failure to distinguish between the two. First of all, propitiating the spirits of the ancestors by the Suay was a wholly animistic ceremony, as appeared from the making of offerings at the foot of the tree. Buddhism and the temple then claim a part as the monks perform their rituals, while on the sidelines further offerings are made to a rock with a ribbon around it.

Just as Christianity, the religion of a jealous god, nevertheless accommodated many pre-christian beliefs and festivals such as that on 25th December, so every organized religion has to absorb existing poly-theistic beliefs and practices. Buddhism is especially tolerant and so happily co-exists with the animism that surrounds it. Monks participating in animistic rituals is thus to be expected but I do sometimes wonder how much of Buddhism actually remains in Thailand once animism has stripped away.

The ladies in the animist shrine said they were giving food to Buddha but what really defines a religion is not the labels but their actual beliefs. Ask a British Christian or a Thai Buddhist what they actually believe in and you’d hardly get a cogent answer. What I suspect though is that the minds of the people around here are filled with a strong belief in the spirits of their ancestors and of the forces of nature that surrounds them. What room that allows for true Buddhist philosophy or observance I have very little idea.

The ceremony in Ban Lamong though was one of the nicer ones and every society should likewise mark an annual occasion when everyone comes together as a family to remember the past and those who are no longer with them.

It strikes me that in this respect our western society is decidedly lacking.

Should we not do this too?

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog September 2009

"Thai Girl" Goes to Hollywood

It’s perhaps every novelist’s dream to see their story on the silver screen, so I’m more than pleased to tell you that my novel, “Thai Girl” has been optioned as a Hollywood movie.

It’s a small studio in Los Angeles called ‘Filmed Imagination’ run by two interesting characters called Daniel Dreifuss and Marius Haugan and that suits me just fine. The big studios often option novels in large numbers and, like a developer’s land bank, keep them indefinitely gathering dust on the shelf in case the story comes into fashion.

For this studio though, “Thai Girl” is a key project and they’re strongly committed to getting it filmed. Marius, a long time visitor to Thailand developed a passion for the book and its story and had little difficulty persuading Dan that it was just up their street. They see the book as having many key qualities that would make it a fabulous movie.

The “Thai Girl” story is set on the beautiful holiday islands of Koh Samet and Koh Chang, in Bangkok and the rice fields of Buriram province. It thus offers exotic locations of sea and islands and Bangkok city nightscapes, together with the softer contrasts of the real rural Thailand. Visually it should be stunning.

As a bitter sweet romance between Ben, a good looking English lad off travelling after university and Fon, a pretty beach masseuse, “Thai Girl” explores broad popular themes of universal appeal. When their two very different worlds collide, Ben and Fon are swept along together, grappling with the eternal confusions of a cross-cultural relationship. As Ben vigorously pursues his passion for Fon, the sparkling Thai girl of his dreams, she resists his advances, refusing to be distracted by a passing foreigner. Will Ben get his girl? Will Fon overcome her natural suspicion of this attractive young guy and fall for Ben?

The key characters are few and the story’s structure is not unduly complex, so it should adapt well as a feature film that’s every bit as compelling as readers often find the book.

A review of “Thai Girl” has described it as ‘one of the top selling English language novels ever published in Thailand’ so the story certainly seems to have a wide appeal. It also has many thought provoking themes that a movie maker could interpret and develop. Another reviewer has called it ‘the definitive novel about relations between Thais and foreigners’, so the movie should be more than just another sentimental love story.

One of the first things that impressed me about Dan and Marius before I signed up with them was that they are very committed to “Thai Girl” and its themes and so, I hope, will make a movie that’s true to the book. I put it to them that the ending isn’t very Hollywood but, they said, two star-crossed lovers called Romeo and Juliet likewise failed to overcome the forces that kept them apart and their story has made some great movies. The happy couple do not have to sail off into the sunset together for it to make it a successful movie.

I’m thus hopeful that an engaging film will emerge that is positive about Thailand, that showcases some of the finest visitor attractions here and is respectful of the Thai people generally. There’s a tendency for movies set in Thailand to focus on a seedy fantasy land of sex and drugs and crime. In strong contrast the “Thai Girl” characters are down to earth, ordinary and real. Ben is fresh and clean living and Fon is not a bar girl but is a serious Buddhist who works hard for her family.

While Ben is intrigued by the Bangkok bar scene, he thus does not waver in his passion for Fon but struggles to understand why young Thai women are so readily treated as a saleable commodity to attract single male tourists to Thailand. When he visits her village in Buriram with Fon, he begins to understand how farming is no longer a viable way of life and that young people, Fon included, have to find a new life for themselves far from home in a perilous world. His experiences with Fon illustrate for him all the stark issues that confront the more thoughtful western visitor to Thailand, an aspect to the story that can give the movie depth as well as just being entertaining.

Finally, what existing movies are there already about young travelers exploring the cultural mysteries of Thailand? Apart from “The Beach”, (which was about an anonymous ‘desert island’ community and made very little specific reference to Thailand), there really aren’t any at all. Given the enduring popularity of Thailand with young visitors, this is thus an extraordinary omission and a huge opportunity for a movie maker.

Current economic conditions aren’t that good for financing a movie but nonetheless the industry grinds slowly on. “Thai Girl” won’t be an expensive movie to make and, in difficult times it’s a great moment to produce a love story that’s poignant and beautiful and plucks at the world’s heart strings.

Writing “Thai Girl” has been a very rewarding experience for me… “Thai Girl”, the movie would be the icing on the cake.

I can’t wait to see it on the big screen!

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” blog. September 2009

Thai Education - A Small Gleam of Light

Any headmaster would glow with pride at the achievement of his school in running so joyful and exuberant a sports festival as the one Cat and I have just attended at the small primary school here in our remote Surin village.

I sometimes read dire things about Thai education in the media… that levels of achievement in Thai schools are depressingly poor compared to those in similar countries and that Thai children don’t read books. Universities are said to be dismal temples to rote learning and conformity where smart student uniforms and glossy degree ceremonies are more important than academic rigour or creative thinking.

On these things I can hardly comment… all I know is that our village school is a delightful and happy place which is just how a primary school should be!

It’s a small school with about a hundred children aged from four to twelve. Funding is short, the wooden upper storey of the building is literally collapsing and the children are all from poor rice farming families. But it’s full of energy and fun, the classrooms are bright with childrens’ work covering the walls and the teachers are gentle and dedicated. I’m sure that the kids will later look back on their years here as a golden time before they faced the uncertainties of finding a life as adults in a place where farming is viable only if you have enough land.

The annual two day sports festival that’s just been held was a big event involving the whole community and it was fun all the way.

It started early with raising and saluting the Flag, followed by a tribute to the King and then a parade.







The first event was a display of dancing by some ladies of the village. I’m so glad this was traditional and dignified and not a silly imitation of the modern pop dancing that’s inescapable on Thai television.



Then came a display of dancing by some of the oldest girls. It’s hard to believe that they’re eleven and twelve, something that perhaps reflects on poor nutrition.



They were then followed by another troupe of girls all dressed in pink.



The performers then all assembled in front of the teachers and VIPs for congratulations on the work they’d done, before the running races got under way.



The children all seem to be tiny but they ran incredibly fast. An over-sixties race was devised to drag me into the limelight, my only problem being that half the field were in their forties. I managed to hit the tape first with my hand but this didn’t count so the little girl in the pretty dress brought a silver medal for me and not the gold!







The second day saw a series of novelty events and races in the morning followed by football on the afternoon. I missed Cat playing for one of the womens’ sides but I watched the mens’ match later. And was it fast and furious… far more entertaining than a dull World Cup match moving glacially towards a penalty shoot-out.

















That evening there was a big party in the school hall with food for everyone, a live band and presentation of all the trophies for the two days of events. It was a riotous ending to a memorable event and it went on quite late.

The whole thing reminded me that one thing the Thais are particularly good at is throwing a party and making it riotous all the way. Fun it was but the sports festival was also important as institution building for the school and for developing community spirit within the village.

I have no way of knowing how good the school is in academic terms but that probably is not its only or principal focus. I’m sure the children generally leave the school with basic literacy and numeracy, also knowing their ‘abc’ and able to say ‘siddow pree’ and ‘stannup pree’ and all that is a substantial achievement. In any even, too academic approach is probably irrelevant for the village children.

It seems that Thai education is not over-academic but looks to wider aims of community and nation building, of developing collective responsibility in its pupils, protecting them from the dangers of drug taking and promotes team spirit and good health through sporting activities. And these things our school seems to do very well indeed.

I like and admire the dedication of the teachers to the children and that’s why Cat and I have worked hard, initially with a generous Japanese friend, to provide school lunches for the children. While not exactly malnourished, these little Thai school girls and boys are evidently very tiny and a large proportion of them are in fact under the correct body weight for their ages.

As official funding does not run to providing lunches throughout the year, the children just bringing a small quantity of rice with them to school, Cat and I have been collecting donations from friends and readers of this blog to make sure they have a proper cooked meal with meat and vegetables every day. (See my blog articles, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, 12 Dec 2008, and ‘Thai School Girls Are So Appealing’, 19 Jan 2009.)

A second project has been to build a large chicken shed for egg production. The chickens are now laying about a hundred eggs a day but the money to pay for the chickens and for feed has been borrowed and needs to be repaid. Thanks to readers of this blog, some donations have come in but we still have a little way to go. (See my blog article ‘A Quick Trick Chick Factory’, 13 August 2009.)

Living as I do in this village community, I feel it’s important to make a contribution of some sort and how better a way than this. The school is a real credit to the teachers and to everyone else and is worthy of whatever help we can give.

It’s a bright spark of light that counters the doom-laden criticisms one too often hears about education in Thailand and I love it because it's such a happy place.


Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog August 2009