Beetle Mania and our last first month in Chiang Mai, Thailand

"Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn."-   Elizabeth Lawrence

As the 1st anniversary of our arrival here approaches we are amazed, in many ways. Amazed that we have made it to this point, amazed at all that we have experienced here, and amazed at how much we have discovered about this wonderful City and Country.
October is still rainy, but the cool season is approaching, so whilst our friends at home start to think of evenings around log fires and mulled wine, we are approaching the season to plant seeds and many flowers start to come into their own!
When I last posted we were awaiting our visas in Kuala Lumpur. We left the Thai Embassy clutching 90 day non-immigrant visas in our grubby mitts and headed off to celebrate!
This, as you can see, involved a rare sighting of Mrs.P having a rest!

We even manged a couple of games of 
canasta and some seriously relaxing reading. In view of the fact that we needed to be up at 3.30 am for the flight home the following day, we took full advantage of the opportunity.
The QPR livery came as a surprise on the way home, as a South Londoner I wasn't too enamored, but as I never really followed a football team in earnest, I was more happy so see it is quite a new aircraft! I'm told there was a Spurs plane somewhere but they had to pay double......

........because it is a bi-plane!The next two photo's are of things that made us laugh. The first speaks for its self, but a video clip would have been better for the second, but Joan wouldn't stand in the road long enough to take one, she's getting very unadventurous these days! The little green man actually runs as the seconds count down towards the end of the crossing cycle. It isn't such a bad idea to run across, because the driving in KL is a lot faster and more aggressive than it is in Thailand. On the subject of things that make us laugh, we have been compiling a list of missed photo opportunities; pictures that would have been brilliant if we had been quicker: Top was the young girl on her way to work on the back of her friend's motor bike, riding side saddle and eating a bowl of rice with chop-sticks (true). Then there are the other things we've spotted being carried by motor cyclists: Strimmers, wheel-barrows, double mattresses, glazed windows and dogs; all of them bigger than the rider themselves!

Outside the "Antique House" the other night was this hole or "cavity" in the footpath, but on looking up, the sign over the shop says it all.
The Dentist, by the way, is a professor of Dentistry at the University who like to keep his skills sharp; he is really good, he sorted out a filling for me, that 3 different dentists at home have fiddled around with!
Getting back to the Juniper Tree, we found  things starting to get busier, more guests and a lot of jobs to get finished.
We got the office repainted, the main office computer needed replacing and this brought it's own head aches as it involved changing from the now ancient Outlook Express for emails!
One issue that started up the night before we set of for KL is the Beetle fighting".
Signs had appeared near the Juniper Tree with pictures of big stag beetles on them, 

we know that people buy and sell insects and there is even an insect museum in Chiang Mai, so we were not too worried; that is until the noise started! Every night we started to hear what sounded like a drunken party going on from about 11.00 p.m. until 2.00 or 3.00 a.m. 
The idea of the beetle fights is simple if strange; a couple of female beetles are hidden in a long bamboo tube(so they can chat?) and then two male beetles are brought into the ring!
Like males everywhere, they soon start to tussle over who is the strongest most virile, stag! The power of pheromones eh?
Then......
1.30 a.m. just nicely off to sleep when there was a tap on the door (this is really rare) One of the houses had lost half it's electrical supply. It took my muddled brain a good half an hour to work out that the wiring to the big new houses is 3 phase and that one or 2 must have short circuited. I traced it back to a junction box beside the main drive that was smelling very weird. 
The next day meant re-rooming 2 big families, something we couldn't do for most of the year, but we managed. To cut a long story short, a botched underground repair from a couple of years ago was responsible. The next day the remaining phase went down and a minor fire started in the junction box! I've been telling the other manager's that we wouldn't burn the place down on our watch! The picture below shows the remains of the wiring! On the way back to house I found this praying Mantis, he must be a Christian!

Every thing settled down to normal the day after and we are starting to get more guests arriving and filling up the rooms. We are starting to look forward to some family and friends arriving soon and that will be really good fun!