My mum and brother come to visit

For the last 2 weeks my mum and brother have been here visiting and that time seems to have flown by. I was planning to update my blog while they were here but things never turn out like we plan.

In summary we went on a couple of long treks one into the mountains through the forest and one up a long long stairway of a mountain to a cave.

We had dinner in a few places

Went to see a couple local rivers one for dinosaur footprints and the other for some lunch

Me and my brother went spear fishing but only came back with snails to eat. We also visited and spoke to some westerners living around the area.

and of course lots of just messing around.

We did manage to finally see the vegetarian alligator at a temple that I had mentioned in a previous post.

One of my nights spear fishing I came across a turtle and afraid that the local would find it instead of me and eat it I took it home and kept him for a few days before finally relocating him/her to a big lake on my mum and brothers last day here.

Bamboo Season

Around August its bamboo season in my village which means lots of people who normally works outside the village like in Bangkok come home because the bamboo is starting to sprout its shoots and these can be harvested and prepared for eating then sold to large companies. Any village (such as mine) that has a good source of bamboo close get to do this (£6-£12) in a day which is much more than they can get doing any of their normal jobs (£3-£6) for the large population of none highly educated farmers that live in this area.
Well this all sounds like fun to me and a chance to earn some extra money so time for me to give it a go:

Here's a couple of pics in my mossie prevention setup which consists of long sleeved top, coat over top, hat with face protection, wellies and thick combat trousers.

This is the view from a viewpoint while climbing up the mountain/jungle:

The view down the carefully trodden slope of the mountain.

A pic of me and Team at a resting point up the mountain.

This is what we are after this is the new bamboo shoots sprouting out the ground.

We cut the bamboo shoots with a long slim shovel called a "siam" in Thai as one type of bamboo that we are mostly after today is thorny bamboo and it has thorns all around the branches but luckily not on the shoots themselves. This is Team with some cut off bamboo shoots and his job was to skin them and pack them in the bags so and then pile them all back up in base camp.

This is out base camp with all the freshily cut and skinned bamboo.

Homeward bound with bags packed tight, I ended up carrying 35kilos on my back this day and team about 28kilos through the jungle a few kilometers and down the treacherous mountain path.

The bamboo is all cut into smaller pieces ready for cooking and then consumption in plastic bags these are then sold to someone with a pickup truck who then I guess sells them to large companies. This is probably close to about 1 ton of bamboo here.

Yay I am home from a day in a bamboo forest which is mosquito breeding grounds without a single a mosquito bite :) My following days weren't so lucky but still not too many bites. It is quite hard to wear all that clothes in Thailand's heat and also trekking through jungle/mountains.

I'm cutting rice brb

Just a quick post to say since I am jobless you would think I would be posting more often but I have to take every opportunity that's available for work over here. For the last week I've been in the fields cutting rice and will do a post on it in the near future but my next post will be about harvesting bamboo shoots in the mountain/jungle which I plan to complete tomorrow.

Here's a pic of me in my bamboo shoot cutting clothes:

Chicken Tuesday picture

I didn't have a picture yesterday for the chicken Tuesday post but I took one when I was at the market not a good one but a pic nonetheless.

It's a boy

Some of my closest friends and family know already but to the rest of you who don't Moni is now 5 months pregnant with a boy.

Rainy season

As its draws into mid November today the rainy season has pretty much ended and we only get the odd light shower every couple of weeks. During the rainy season though it was a different story and we had a range of different types of rain, a couple of times it was very heavy rain and it lasted 5 or so days which meant lots of flooding around Thailand. In Chiayapum it's mostly flat land with some mountains and when it rains we get dried up rivers flowing with water, fish and the chance to see some nice waterfalls. This pic is of the flooding river near us and this pic was taken on a bridge, you can see how high the river came up as the trees are not normally submerged.

The flooding was not only around the sides of the river but flowed through rice and sugar cane fields nearby and over the "road to civilisation" from my village. Don't worry we like to make good use of the the flooding road and get our bikes cleaned. You can see how high above the road the water came by looking at the people wading in the background and they weren't even in the deepest part.

After about 4 days after the rain stopped, so the water becomes clear again, me and Moni's dad headed up one of those previously dried up rivers into the mountains/jungle for some fishing and a chance at catching some crabs. There was about 5 or so waterfalls on our way varying in size and im sure there is a lot more further on but we were stopping and fishing at the time so we didn't go too far up the river.

Where's Wally... i mean Moni's dad :P

Oh and yes we use bamboo fishing poles because I am what the Thai's call "Falang Khi Nook" which literally translates to bird shit foreigner and what it means is I'm a cheapskate. :P

Chicken tuesday

Its exciting day today as it's chicken Tuesday again. As some of you may be aware that most chicken out here are not what they would look like in the UK and they don't have as much meat on their bones but every Tuesday afternoon at our local market a nice woman sells precooked what we call "Gai Fam" which translates to farm chicken and they are ones we buy in the UK with lots of meat. They cost about £3 so not the usual bargain price im use to with Thai things but worth the extra money :)

In fact Thailand is a massive chicken exporter so some of what you eat will indeed by Thai chickens.