Demolishing

Moni's Mum and Dad have been paid to demolish a neighbours old bamboo house and I felt obliged to give a hand because it sounded like good fun which it was. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before so there is only a picture of where it once stood and the walls of their outhouse as they wanted to keep that.

Swimming Pool

While doing the building on the shop I decided to make a swimming pool for the kids.

My first bamboo project part 2

Last time I showed you the "Bamboo Project" hopefully you could see it was an extension on the front of my house here's a recap pic:

Well since then we added a small fence to deter the dogs and chickens coming in and making a mess and we also built a counter to open our little shop.

Just outside our house a small collection of bikes and scooters as the kids are in our shop.

The front of our shop with concrete table and stools (cost me about £17), the big blue bin is a ice bucket that you store drinks along with ice for them.

So this is a picture of 2 laptops setup as a small internet cafe but the kids mostly just come play the games installed.

Sweeties for the kids :)

Bill and her friends playing some weird game with stones.

The blue plastic thing on the floor is because the kids keep getting white feet from walking on the concrete so its just a temporary thing to stop that. We have actually moved some of the stuff around now so I will send up to date pictures in another blog.

Westerners

I wanted to post a brief blog on "Do you see any other westerners?" or "How many westerners are there near you?"
So have I seen some foreigners other than Bangkok when I arrived and the touristy areas I went to for my brief holiday? Yes there are some around this area. The province I live in is Isaan which is the poorest province in Thailand. It must be like 90+% of the population up here are farmers of rice, potatoes, sugar cane (if they are wealthy), bamboo, chilli's, fruit etc. As this is the poorest province it also well known for the girls when they become of age 16+ they head down too the touristy areas and usually find themselves end up in red light areas or bar girls because they can make their parents monthly wage in one good night. I am explaining this so you understand why there are westerners in this province as this is the least visited province by foreigners. The foreigners that I do see tend to be older men 50+ years that have met a Thai girl in one of the bars and moved up here as this is where her family lives. Most of these men don't stay long as the party life they are used to in the popular tourist areas is non existent in the villages and towns and often you have to travel many miles just to get to a town with bars. There are quite a lot of houses built by these foreign men with intention to live in them but after a short time they usually go back to the tourist areas to live, they usually look quite different to the Thai houses so are easy to spot but it would seem that less than 10% of these houses are actually lived in regularly by the foreigner.
I think in the first month I saw about 4 or 5 foreigners only, the second month I've seen about 12. Mostly older men living up here but some a few of them have been young travelers passing through. There is 1 man about 25 years old I think teaching as I have seen him on 3 occasions and a girl of about the same age I've seen on 3 occasions, the last they were both together drinking with 2 other foreigners and a couple of Thais in a bar that I sometimes to go to on the weekend.

My first haircut (in Thailand)

The last post was another one of those blogs with no pictures so time to break it up with another picture post as I know most of you just want to see more pics.
It's been over a month since my last haircut by this time and my hair is getting quite uncontrollable to style, not that I do style it much other than going to the main town or special occasions.

Ok time for my haircut,

A few mins later what happened to the barber...

That's better there he is, lets get started.

The barber asked if I wanted a shave as well which I of course said yes and the whole thing cost me around 90p that's a big difference from my English £10-11 for a haircut without the shave. I've been back there since then and for a few days before my haircut I don't bother shaving so I can get even more of my moneys worth of a shave :P

My first bamboo project part 1

So rather than following in chronological order with my posts I thought I would skip a few posts as I want another with some pictures and I want to let people know about the bamboo project I talked about previously.

Here we are sawing one of the trees I got earlier to use as a support beam. I paid the neighbour to help me with this project a small bottle of whiskey which cost about £1.20

Laying down the support beams approximately where they will go.

Digging holes for the support beams.

Starting to lay the bamboo across the beams to the house.

Here's the frame for the roof almost formed.

Not quite enough bamboo so here we are coming back with 1 more.

2 days after the above we got the iron girding for the roof delivered along with sand and stones.

A couple of days later after laying the cement time for me to work again.

Apologies I didn't appear in that many of the pictures I assure you I was working but as I was also the one taking most of the pictures so I couldn't be in many.