Thunder bolts and lightning, very very frighting!

An unusual few days here in Chiang Mai. There has been a Hot-Air Balloon festival at the Gymkhana Club (1/2 mile down the road). We awoke on Saturday to see half a dozen balloons flying over our site. It was strange to see the BT logo floating overhead so far from home!

We had an early start because we were having a Board Meeting with the Thai Trustees and the Staff from the Dolphin Bay Juniper Tree. Before that, though, we were meeting early out on the "New Land" to dedicate the site for 2 new houses that we are starting soon.

L/R: Muriel, John, Tim, Simon,Gill, Casper, Ajaan Kapaan (pastor)
Paul,Dr Kressenai, Melanie, Joan, Liz, Khun Pythun (Builder) Joan!

The Chairman of the Trustees is Dr Kresseni, a Surgeon and University Teacher who also chairs the Covenant Foundation. It is the foundation that enables us volunteers to work here in Thailand and they have many projects. One new project, of interest to us is a school, that will aim at providing academic rigour for students who haven't access to good schools.
The meeting went on all day, but there was lots to discuss considering the size of the two Juniper Tree operations now, and the number of staff involved.
The photos show a beautiful, sunny day however, this was to change very quickly! As the fireworks started at the balloon festival that evening, lightening soon upstaged the whole show. A tropical storm swept in and torrential rain, violent winds and thunder made the most amazing noise! 
In the morning one of the gardeners took me down the land to see a very sorry sight. The winds had brought down one of our beautiful rain trees. 

As you can see, the tree fell the right way! The only damage was a small concrete chess table. One thing about Thailand is that instead of paying someone to take the tree away; someone pays for the privilege!
Our little tree was nothing to the next tree related surprise.
Just down the road is a Monastery and next to it is their Holy Tree. The wind sent this monster crashing down onto their water tower, toilet and shower block. As if that wasn't enough, it also took out a string of six or seven electricity pylons and dozens of cables. This meant all the electricity in a mile or so radius went off. The roads around us were all blocked and of course with no electric pumps; we had no water from the taps.
We spend Sunday morning running around buying buckets for water, torches and a generator to power the water pumps. One of the stranger interludes in the generator saga was when we ran out of cash for the extra plugs and wires the lady who runs the best tool shop in Chiang Mai brought round one of her many young helper's to take me to the nearest ATM! This meant getting on the back of his 

motorbike, no helmet, just sandals on my feet and clinging on as we wriggled our way through the cars on the Super Highway and then a short-cut back to the shop, going down back alleys that make a Lancashire Ginnel look like an "A" road! The weight involved was probably like this Thai rider's payload!


We were just congratulating ourselves about getting every thing sorted out, when the Electricity Board stunned everyone by getting the power back on by the end of the afternoon.

The monk's expressive gesture says it all. Another thing is that no one is bothered about stepping around the cables, branches and rubble.
Pleased to say, by the following day things were right back to normal. Bright sunshine, no wind and the only noises being the many fireworks that are starting to go off in anticipation of the festival starting tomorrow. Perhaps we will have a quieter few days for the rest of the week?

Tim's new workshop & Management by Carrot Cake

3 Weeks in and we are starting to find our way around in every sense. Learning to speak enough Thai to get beyond a cheery greeting will be the most demanding thing to start with; when the same word can mean 5 different things, for example, "mai" can mean mile, wood, not, new or silk; all according to the tone of your voice!
The words for today are: sa-bai dee mai (how are you?)

Current Houses 19 & 20

Presently we are anticipating a meeting of the Thai Board Members here at the weekend. We will also meet our counterparts from the "Juniper Tree" at Dolphin Bay. As we are planning to build 2 new houses here during the cool season there will be a lot to discuss including how to raise the outstanding money to pay for the second one by the time they are finished! (Not our problem, the Trustees will do this) The new houses will be smaller versions of the 2 newest houses we have.
As one of the new ones is intended for us we have a vested interest in the success of this project! The Thai Lady who runs the building company that are doing the job is very dynamic and seems to be very well connected with the Authorities so we hope that by April, the whole project will be completed.

Note the Hi Tec kit!

Simon is keen that I get my notice board finished before Saturday; a feat that wasn't looking likely given that working the tough teak-like wood is like carving a turkey with a penknife! I have set up a temporary workshop on the verandah outside our house and now that I've put a fan through the window I can work for most of the day.
Khamsi, the handyman, seems to have a sixth sense about what tools and equipment I'm going to need and provides it from some mysterious store.
The grounds staff are sinking two wooden posts into the concrete path outside the office and the notice board will go there shortly. I'm glad they are breaking up the concrete, it looks very deep and tough!
Last night, when the kitchen was empty, Joan did a late raid to bake the first Thai-Carrot Cake of perhaps many. Helped by a lovely family from South Carolina, it became quite a social event. It was left in the fridge for the local staff to share today, on our day off. We're  sure they didn't mind Joan using the kitchen, but she tried very had to leave it as found, with even the small tribe of Geckos that provided a screeching sound track to enterprise, left undisturbed!

Here's Joan "working" with her i-pad; a leaving gift from the friends at Nelson and Colne College. This desk is in the corner of our little house and looks out over the gardens and pool.

Paul and Rachel

Just behind Joan is another vital part of our life saving kit- a printer to allow daily access to the Guardian Crosswords!

Over the last week we have got to know a couple from Simon and Melanie's home Church, who came out to see how they are doing. Paul and Rachel turned out to be great fun and a real encouragement to all of us. Here is a picture of them at Simon and Melanie's house one evening. Paul works in the radio industry and Rachel is a practice nurse and teenage sexual health advisor. Below is a small selection of wildlife pictures taken by a guest who made it his mission to find as many types of snakes, amphibians  insects etc. He told me his Dad was a zoo keeper! As he and his wife live and work in a very deprived area of India, I suppose living close to wildlife is more mundane!

Back in Thailand!

Finally, flew out of London on 31st October (No comments about broomsticks please!)

We had good flights in and out of Paris and Bangkok and the only slight hitch was a delay of 30 mins leaving Paris meant a mad run across Bangkok airport to get our connecting flight. Air France came to the rescue, however by sending a graduate trainee to meet us off the plane and to run ahead of us, clearing the way and chivvying the immigration officials to ensure we made it in time; I don't think she thought her training would include a sub 4 minute mile every time a plane is delayed!

We are now comfortably installed in baan sip bpairt (house no.18).

From day one we have been thrown into the melee, as Elliot, Simon and Melanie's son, needed to go into hospital for a few days; Melanie staying with him. This left the poor residents of the "Juniper Tree" at the mercy of 2 jet lagged and inexperienced managers, thank goodness we had Lilly with us! Lilly is the King Pin in the office here, as she speaks excellent English and Thai.

I am pleased to say that Elliot came home on Saturday and is making a good recovery. He is back at school this week but needs to return to hospital each day, after school, to have further indignities perpetrated on his leg!

We are gradually getting used to things now (Wednesday 7th) and finding our feet with most of the office routine. We have already got to know some really interesting people and hear lots of news about amazing things happening around the world. We have people coming from Siberia, China, Cambodia, Singapore, Bangkok, Canada, Bangladesh, India......the UK and, of course the USA. It is the people from the States who are avidly wanting news of the election results today.

Other less welcome visitors to the site have included a green tree snake, a tokay gecko trapped in a wardrobe and various spiders and insects. This grasshopper is, according to Joan called Cyril!

Tomorrow we get our day off and we will probably go and investigate the shops. If we keep eating the three full meals a day here we will end up the size of the elephants that Thailand is so famous for.

On the 5th Nov. Simon had bought some fireworks and paper hot-air balloons which we let off as soon as it went dark. The Thai fireworks seem much more explosive than ours! As it was a very still evening, the air-balloons seemed to go on rising straight up for ages, they had fireworks tied onto them which made a fantastic display too.

Along with the basic admin jobs I have also been installing various multi-national electrical sockets into the rooms, to avoid using so many adaptors and so reduce the fire risk. I am planning to install electrical earthing to many of the existing rooms as, at present, only the showers are earthed.
Time is running away so I need to get back to work, more to follow! Tim & Joan x

Summer silence, Autumn action!

Summer silence
Out of consideration for our Family, Church and Joan's colleagues, we have had to keep many of the developments towards our eventual permanent move over to "The Juniper Tree" Chiang Mai under wraps until now.

Lower Foulridge Reservoir

During the "silence" of May-September in my blogging, much has happened! We managed, after 2 or 3 years to sell "Brooks Hall Farm" and we have been living in Foulridge.
This beautiful reservoir is just behind the Cottage and Toby has enjoyed many more interesting walks around it!
We have been renting this cottage from the parents of a colleague at Joan's College and it's been a wonderful place to prepare for the big move.
We decided to sell up and rent before looking for a house to leave as a UK base because it was proving very difficult to  know what we would be able to realistically afford in the present economic circumstances.

Autumn Action
What at first seemed a daft idea, developed into a eminently sensible solution to our problem, when we eventually bought "Les Planchettes"; a farmhouse in, France! We intend to use this as a holiday home whilst we are in Thailand and in the meantime friends and family can have a French bolt-hole with the added bonus for us of keeping it secure.

Les Planchettes

Now that everyone knows that the move is on there is so much to do. We have booked flights to Chiang Mai for the 31st October and should be safely at "The Juniper Tree" early on the 1st November.
Leaving celebrations at College have to be arranged as do those for Friends. We have already booked a Band: "The Quadrille Ceilidh Band", who will be leading the celebrations on the 13th October at our Church Hall in Sabden.
Letters with contact details are ready to go out to every conceivable person who may need to know where we are and removal men are all ready for the off!
We still need to sort out our visas but the letters from the Trustees of "The Juniper Tree" are now with us and we can get that done now.
It's six weeks till the day of departure and we hope to keep everyone up to date via this blog both in the run up to that date and after we get into the job in November.

Farewell, for now, Juniper Tree!

As I fly out of Thailand early on Monday, it's time to start getting packed up. Hopefully the interval between this months visit and our return to work here will be brief, but as yet no definite plans can be made.
As today is my last "day off", I went to the Day Market in Chiang Mai to pick up some souvenirs for home.

Unlike the Night Market, there is a much wider range of goods and not all aimed at the tourists either. I wandered around for an hour or two and found a few interesting things. One vegetable stall piled about six feet high had a very life like effigy of an old woman lying asleep among the fruit and veg. It wasn't until I was nearly passed by that I realised it wasn't an effigy-it was Grandma, snoring away the lunch time on top of the fresh goods!

Another stall, which was no more than a small folding table had small plastic bags of live fish, some tiny finches in a tiny bamboo basket and a washing-up bowl with twenty or more tiny turtles in it. Whether these were for sale as pets or as food-stuff, I'm not sure.

You could watch them cook your lunch here!

If you wanted to buy sea-food, the picture below is of a stall that was cooking fresh shrimps, tilapea, sun-fish, and many more I couldn't recognise, but the smell was fantastic! Other stalls with vast buckets of curries, sausages, kebabs and every conceivable  type of meat product in vast heaps sprawling across their counters.

Just outside the market was a Buddist temple. In fact there were far more monks, in their distinctive saffron robes, wandering in the market than I have seen so far. The temple was beautifully kept, it stands out like a jewel amongst the ramshakle stalls of the market. Markets often look like this though don't they? Even the Tooting Market in London looks and smells just the same in places! (At least it did last time I went there!)

I wanted to spend some time out in the sun around the Juniper Tree's gardens today. Before the original "Holiday Resort" was built, the land which we are now on was an orchard. Many of the mature trees in the gardens have survived from those days. The tamarind that I mentioned was in close proximity to lychees, jack fruit, bannas, mangoes and papayas. Other less well known fruits are growing around the gardens and in time I'll be able to find out more about some of them.


In the mean time try doing a google image search for mangosteen, rhong-rien, durian or dragonfruit; all these add a lot of colour and flavour to the choice we have here. Below are some of the fruit trees growing in the Juniper Tree gardens:

Mangoe

Bannans

Lychees

Jack Fruit

The Tamarind Tree Chain-saw Massacre!

The builders moved in today. Like builders everywhere there were sharp intakes of breath, off-key whistling and the need for digging some random holes! Oh yes, and of course, phone wires cut and water going off without warning.
The picture below shows the Thai approach to tree-felling. First, swarm up your tree in bare feet and shorts with a 24" chain-saw and start lopping off chunks of tree.

There were these tree fellers.......

The purpose of the radical tree surgery was to allow the builders to strengthen the perimeter wall of the Juniper Tree Site. Last year the floods that made the international headlines when they reached Bangkok, seriously damaged the flood defence walls around our Site. The neighbours didn't help by smashing holes through.
The thickened walls should help to minimise any future flooding. It's impractical to completely keep the water out but enough can be done to prevent danger to lives and most property.
The beautiful tamarind tree; known as ma-kaam in Thailand was too near the wall and one of the houses now it's so big. A lot of the staff were after slabs of the trunk to use as cutting boards, as it's the favoured variety of wood for this purpose here. The fruit is used in a sour curry, called kaeng som.
With the rains have come a wide variety of extra wildlife to contend with. Swarms of flying ants leave a blanket of dead wings behind them. Huge toads come out at night to feast on the flying ants.

I spent this afternoon visiting Elliot's school. His class were presenting their research projects on different South American Countries. His was about Uruguay. He had made a 3D map out of salt-dough, done some power-point slides, leaflets and models. Many other students had produced work on other destinations. A lot of effort and good quality of presentation in evidence! I tried not to start grading the work on display!
My next task was to install a computerised system for the Day and Night-Watchmen to use on their rounds of the site. The watchmen have to use a device to log their visits to each place on their rounds. They can record events, from the serious, like spotting  an intruder to the more mundane, like a broken light or a fallen branch! This may not go down so well with the watchmen as it means they have to be awake and walking to each sensor at a preset time. The next morning a print out of the previous 24 hours is produced in the office. Security here in Thailand isn't a major issue just yet but we do pay the local police to visit the site twice a day and add their weight to the security. Tim

Cobras and counting

You may have noticed the gap in the blog! It's very busy here at the Juniper Tree just now and I am finding more and more that I can help with.

Today one of the gardeners found a big King Cobra sleeping under house no. 20. 

This is one of the newly built houses at the back of our land. He released it back into the forest. 

As the rains have now started; I'm told it's  bit early this year, I expect we will see more.

We have had lots of lighting and thunder but until today only brief, heavy rain fall.

I am slowly getting familiar with the house numbers and the counting of money. It's a good thing that Thai numbers follow a simple, logical pattern; with only the names of the digits to remember because even that's a challenge to my frazzled brain cells!

I have even found that my DIY skills have been of use this week. I discovered that the computers, modems, wi-fi gear and printers where all daisy-chained together off one socket. This socket was sparking and melting; a fire waiting to ignite. Simon and I added 18 new sockets to the wall and we still need some adaptors to plug everything in! 

House no. 20

I would love to tell you more about the work that our guests are involved in, but this will wait until I get home. The managers are now getting ready for their Holiday in just a few weeks; we are all waiting to hear who is lined up to cover for them, both here and a Dolphin Bay. A speedy conclusion to our own house sale will be a great help to all concerned!

More news soon and I send you the warm greetings from all at the Lana International Church that I went to this morning.

Tim