Nong Bua Daeng district festival

I woke up one morning with Moni's mum and dad getting in a pickup truck and when I asked where they were going Moni said they are heading off to the town Nong Bua Daeng because Moni's dad was playing the drums in the Nong Bua Daeng agricultural festival. Me and Moni decided to go there ourselves to have a look. To be honest it was a lot smaller and less interesting as I thought it might be with only about 10-20 different stands but there was quite a lot of visitors.

We watched Moni's dad playing in the band with a mix of people from all the surrounding villages dancing or playing instruments. Some of them have seen me before in the rocket festival (I wrote about previously) and there's some people from our village also anyway they got me up dancing again with them and stuck me at the front of them all much to the amusement of the passersby. While up their dancing for them we quite a few visitors including the mayor of Nong Bua Daeng town and the boss of the whole Nong Bua Daeng district. I didn't find this out until afterwards as I thought they were quite important by everyone's reactions to them so I asked Moni who they were. Also this was the 2nd time a news channel cameraman showed up to film me but I don't know if it went on TV or not.

Bamboo Cutting

There haven't been any updates for just over a week now and that's because I've had some problems with my internet and I also lost my backup 3G aircard when I did a border/visa run recently but more on that later.

Today's blog I start my next project and the first step is to get some bamboo to build with so here are some pictures of me and Moni cutting Bamboo.

So for those of you who don't know and might be interested this is what bamboo looks like growing, this is all one bamboo plant and they bamboo canes grow in clumps which go up quite high and then get very leafy towards the top.

So before I start its important to get a nice healthy breakfast so this is my omelette with some added bugs.

Moni using a machete to cut off the branches on the bamboo. Hopefully Moni doesn't see this picture as I'm sure she would love to know I'm posting a picture of her ass.

This is Kip playing with Bamboo (my dog) we were cutting the bamboo on her family's land and had to pay 45p per 15-20ft bamboo. We need 8 of these so only about £4.

I knew this was going to be hard work in the heat of the day so I thought i'd wear a workout top that does a good job of keeping the sweat off your body and cooling you down while also protecting me from bugs like mosquitoes that I might disturb.

Me in action cutting the bamboo, I have to say I quite enjoyed doing this. Also that's Dab the family dog just following us around keeping us protected :)

So this was actually from the day before the bamboo cutting, we went out too get some wood also for the upcoming project. It doesn't look like I did much work during this but that's because I was taking the pictures but I promise I did a good share of the sawing and after that was done I had too carry the heavy part of the tree(over 35kg) on my shoulder for a 15min trek through the woods. I'm use to lifting weights and that isn't so hard for me but walking with it for 15mins while its resting on my shoulder was hard work mainly because it was painful.

Farming 1

I know some have been looking forward to this post and after a month of being in Thailand I started farming :)

Me and Moni headed up to the farm for our initial task which was to listen out for a local farmer with his tractor and tell him we are ready for him to use his tractor to till (Tillage involves overturning of topsoil). We could hear to tractor but he sounded far away so instead we weeded Moni's mum small field of sugar cane.

This is Moni just looking out over some of her Mum's land before we start.

This is me weeding the sugar cane.

Job Done :)

Then when we got home after a small time weeding we rang the farmer and told him to come to the fields tomorrow early and we will meet him there. So here's the tractor tilling after we fed him 2 redbulls:

After the tractor had gone over some of the land tilling I spotted some big rocks to move for excersise as I dont like just sitting and watching, so here is me clearing the land of some big rocks.

As I said before there is no point in overloading you all and getting you too bored so I will add more on farming later.

Internet

I wanted to make a post about my internet and what I currently use for those that are interested. I have a 3G USB dongle called an aircard in Thailand which acts like internet in all the latest smart phones except the best connection I can get is edge in Thailand on this which is not quite as good as 3G. Posting pictures using this aircard can take about an hour for 2-3 pictures so this was the main reason I didn't post initially. The aircard is actually fast enough for most of my work thankfully so this is what I worked using for the first few days.

So while this was adequate I wanted to try and get better so after talking to Mon who is Moni's brother he recommended speaking to a shop on Nong Bua Daeng who could apparently supply wi-fi. This isn't the sort of Wi-Fi you get at home but a long distance Wi-Fi that uses 30ft antennae's to broadcast the Wi-Fi signal to each of these and they piggy back each off other over 22km to town.

Noise pollution

Now I'm quite a heavy sleeper and noise doesn't bother me getting to sleep nor wake me up and I put this down to living in pubs a good part of my life. I last lived in Surbiton on the high street so there was quite a lot of noise there to. Over here the noise pollution is not so much from the humans but the animals/insects.

I am sure lots of you know that cockerels unlike popular belief don't just crow when it's morning they crow whenever they damn well want and they wake up between 3-6 am. This wouldn't be too bad if they kept them in enclosures but out here they roam free and I swear they like to hang just outside my door. Amazingly the chickens never wander to far from home like the cats and dogs they have their turf and they mostly stick to it, occasionally something goes for a wander and its mostly Bamboo (my dog) and he quickly runs back yelping because the neighbours dogs tell him off for going to there land.

There is also the insects and they aren't as loud as the cockerels but they are constant and its quite a bizarre orchestra with the many varieties of insects.

Lastly is my favourite the dogs every night one of them will start barking which sets of others close by and then every dog in the village howls and this goes around the village like a Mexican wave for 5 minutes at a time. I have to say when ever I am awake to hear this it always makes me laugh and I like to watch Bamboo's reaction who mostly sits up with his ears raised high, lets out a couple of little yelp type barks and then just listens as well.

Holiday to Koh Samui and Koh Phangan

The day after Moni's birthday me, Moni, Brendan and Alice started another long bus ride from Huahin to Koh Samui I think about 8 hours and then a 1-2 hour boat journey. This was all due too the fact we wanted to attend the Full Moon Party on an island called Koh Phangan a 30min speed boat journey away.

So while waiting for the party at night we spent the day driving around on scooters sight seeing with me being the guide as I have been to the island twice before.

This is Mama and Papa rock on Samui, one looks like a penis and the other a vagina.

We made it to the Full Moon Party, I think between 10,000 - 30,000 people party on the beach while getting sold buckets of drinks which consist of a half litre bottle of spirit, a similar size bottle of soft drink and ice. You can see me carrying a pink bucket below.

Brendan and Alice had to leave us at this stage unfortunately so it was me and Moni from here on. Some pictures from our boys holidays (Dan Malone, Dan B and Rutters) favourite guest house and restaurant.

 Standard picture in Thailand with a monkey sitting on my arm. There are people patrolling the bars and restaurants with monkeys, birds of prey and reptiles and they charge you to take a picture with their polaroid or for a smaller fee you can take pic with your own camera.
While out kayaking we went to a small island just off a Samui that had a woman searching for cockles so we spent about 30-60 mins helping her out which later she would of sold. We also had the pleasure of seeing a sea turtle which is very rare sight on Samui. Unfortunately the little bugger was quick and it was very hard to get a picture of him.