The Little Entrepreneur.

Robin has decided he must start to earn some money. He is now frequently to be found sitting just outside our front gate with his "Shop". On this occasion he was selling glasses of Iced Ovaltine to all and sundry, even sending his trusty sidekick, Tommy, to stop passers by. He sold about five glasses, one to an unknown customer.

Graduation Day.

In mid January Lucky finally received her degree. She had lived with us for four years while she attended university in Chiang Mai. She now has a good job, and chance of a career with the Siam Commercial Bank in Khon Kaen. (Her mother now has her back under the thumb on home turf, a source of no small stress for a young lady who really wants to start making her own way in life..

One push and he was off.

At the end of January, Tommy broke one of his rear support wheels, so I removed the broken wheel and it's pair. Lots of heavy persuasion and not a few tears later, Tommy mounted his newly more dangerous bike and, amid cries of "Daddy, Don't let go", was pushed out into the wide unknown. He never looked back. One further push later he discovered how to start himself.

Interschool Athletics Tournament

Robin was chosen to take part in the long-jump, the 60 meters and the relay. (Here he is just landing after a very good effort at his jump.) Tommy ran the relay and 60 meters. Neither of them won their event, nor did either come last, so heads could be held high on the way home.
Our school came second overall, a very good result considering we are the smallest of the competing schools.

Big Bike

After Tommy conquored bike riding, Robin decided he was too grown up to use a child's bike any more. He therefore Hijacked Ann's.

Eating Out

we paid a visit to a very pretty Vietnamese restaurant in town. As you can see. It seemed to hit the mark.

His Royal Highness Prince Bhisadej

The last surviving son of Thailand's King Rama V is a regular visitor to the restaurant. He is particularly fond of our roast lamb. This was probably the last time he will have visited us because he was off to the UK a few days later and will probably return after the restaurant has been sold.

Concentration

This is a look of concentration to the extreme. On this evening, Tommy spent over three hours trying to run a steel ball through a little plastic labyrinth. He kept failing and starting again until we turned off the light and physically removed the toy from him.
He tried again the following day, and the day after until he succeeded in conquoring the maze after many hours. I truly wish I had his powers of perseverance and ability to tune out all but the task at hand.

Our local clubhouse swimming pool.

Not far off half an acre of water, most of which is shallow enough for the children to walk in.
We are currently swimming almost every day. (Tommy & Robin are the two children center right of the photo, Tommy in his shocking pink swim cap!)
It could be a great place to swim and work out etc, but it is unfortunately let down by excruciatingly bad, Thai-style management and the fact it now belongs to an ultra fundamental Christian organisation who are running a school here. There are rumours that our "Lifetime Memberships" are due to be cancelled before year end because the American run school is afraid we might put a bomb in the water, or something.
Feelings are running somewhat ill at present along these lines.

Last day of Easter Holidays - A Chiang Mai Zoo visit.

The pride of Chiang Mai, the two giant pandas are responsible for increasing visitor numbers by more than tenfold, and revenues by more than twenty times. The panda enclosure is heavily air-conditioned and may be the coldest place in the North. (Bangkok now has a couple of bars where the temperature is kept at a "comfortable" -10 Celcius.)
We were lucky to see this panda. His/her mate left just as we arrived and he quickly finished off his bamboo snack and ambled off after her.
Had a bit of a row prior to entering. Everybody has to purchase special "Panda" tickets to get in and they wanted to charge the "Foreigner Price", approximately 10 times more than Thai! A differential I flatly refuse to pay anywhere in the country. They eventually permitted me access as a Thai, but I had to pass a spoken Thai test before they would do so.

General Stripes here was not to happy to see us. He was really not too happy about anything much, displaying the psychotic back and forewards walk across the front of his enclosure. 

The White Tigers do not enjoy the climate of a Northern Thai hot season, they would much prefer to be at home in Siberia.They both seem to be displaying a slight orange yellow tinge to their coats now.

(April) Thai New Year Celebrations - Songkran in Chiang Mai.

The whole center of the city comes to a complete standstill during Songkran week which runs either side of April 13th.
The revelleries normally start at about 11am and continue until early evening. During this time the traffic speed drops to well under 1Kmph. We therefore try to complete our business well before lunchtime, so we can return home and hide in relative safety.
This is the most dangerous time of year to be out and about in Thailand. Huge numbers of drunks turn the Kingdom's roads into scenes of carnage.
This and the following photos were taken through the side window or windscreen of the car as we got caught in the jam. 45 minutes to go about 300 meters until we could escape along some less-packed side roads..

Plenty of solid water to cool the temperature... This is mixed into the canal water to ensure the bacteria stay fresh enough to do real damage to the stomach or earways when unfortunate revellers get soaked or inadvertantly swallow.

Even the Tuk-Tuks, (three wheel taxis,) get in on the act. They remove their tops, put a bucket behind the driver and offer trips around the moat for a fee. They make enough doing this to pay for after-Songkran holidays and hospital bills.

Not all revellers are on foot or in cars. Seconds later these two girls were almost knocked off their motorcycle by buckets of water from the car in front of us, on their left. 

Run out of water. His 'war paint' is talcum mixed to a paste with water and is traditionally spread around on people, vehicles, buildings, dogs cats and sausages during songkran. Bangkok has taken almost four days to remove the worst of the talcum from theur signage etc. this year. 

The sign says "Ice 30 Baht - Fill with water free." If you are going to soak people, might as well use freezing water!
Note the bacterial soup in the moat behind him. This is his free fillup water.

Apple-Orgies

Highly contrite. I appear to have been ignoring the blog for some few months. No real excuse I'm afraid, I have simply been doing other things.

Okay, let's catch up a bit with the happenings, and lack of such, over the past half year or so.
Of most note, in a purely personal manner: My book at last, if it has not been put to bed, has taken a well earned rest with my agents in the States. Might even be placed on shelves before the decades end. Much heartache and nose picking went into that I'm afraid.

We have suffered through our normal cool season. A lovely time of year if the %@&!*#$ villagers here did not set fire to every blade of grass, leaf, twig, plastic bottle, rock, dead dog, cat, rat and old tyre in the region. All of which smoke is kept nicely close to the ground by our atmospheric inversion layer caused by the surrounding mountains. Dry racking coughs and teary eyes become the norm for a couple of months. This year was far better than any of the previous four. There was only one day when I was unable to breathe without pain or see without a constant wipe from an Optrex-soaked rag. (This may be the only city in the world where you occasionally see people walking around wearing diving masks during the season! Pity the scuba bottles weigh so much, or I'm sure they would be brought into use too.)

The pretty lady above joined our household in March. She shares her cage with her partner, who is believed to be a boy, and two pairs of brilliant rose-orange love birds. She is the only tame one amongst the group, and is very picky about whose attention she is willing to accept.