Leon is now one year and three months old, and I am very glad to tell you that he is already displaying signs of being every bit as slippery as his Father! Yesterday Nuth bought some snacks from a food cart that comes by the house now and then; she bought some BBQ chicken for Ball (her 10 year old Son from her first marriage) and some lua kheen (kind of deep fried fish dough balls) for Leon. So Leon takes one look at his fish balls, then looks at the BBQ chicken and instantly decides he wants that instead. His brother tells him ok, finish eating all your fish balls and you can have some chicken, then turns his back and starts talking to a friend.

Leon looks at his brother, and then carefully hides the fish balls behind him on the chair he is sitting on. He then shouts for his brother to pay attention to him, and opens his mouth to show it’s empty. Ball then says, ok you have finished the fish balls here is some chicken and hands him a drumstick. Leon eats the chicken, and by the time he is done with it Ball has finished his chicken also. Leon then looks his brother right in the eye, reaches behind his back, grabs a fish ball and stuffs it in his mouth, laughing at his brother all the time! I was so proud of him!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was going out to the village to attend a celebration that is specific to the region of Thailand in which I live. The entire village spent all day cooking food, to be left for the ghosts of dead family members to eat, complete with beer, whiskey and bottles of coke. Of course, as expected the ghosts didn’t actually eat much of it, so around midnight we had the chance to eat all the left overs!

This is the spread that Nuth’s family prepared in their house (every house in the village did the same), when you consider that this represents the kind of food they can seldom afford to cook for themselves, then it becomes apparent just how seriously they take their dead relatives. My particular favourite was the bowl of tiny fried fish, very tasty!

Today I’m going to head out to the village for a very odd sounding religious holiday. It’s a localised thing, not something that is celebrated all over Thailand. Basically the entire village will spend the day cooking lots of food, and then they will set it all out as a feast, for the ghosts of dead family members to eat.

Once the ghosts are finished, the living people get to eat everything that is left over, personally I think it’s an excuse to have a bloody great party but who cares, I love Isaan food so I hope the ghosts are not too hungry!

The last seven days have been the most boring seven days of my life, I am talking mind numbing boring, trapped in a place that is not my home, unable to go outside and unable to leave. Let me explain.

My girlfriend and Son spend the week staying with her father in a small village about 15 minutes away from the apartment in town that I rent, we have found this the best way all round, it means I have peace to work in the week, she gets to take care of her father and stay with her family, and we have a good time at the weekends when she comes to stay with me. During the week I drive out to the village two or three times to have lunch and play with the baby for a while so she gets a break.

So last Friday morning I jumped on my motorcycle and rode out to the village, it started to rain on the way, very heavy rain, as it had done for several days previously. I stayed for a few hours then decided to head home, I drove out of the village, pulled out on to the main road and drove a couple of kilometres before finding the road was flooded, I continued on very slowly, driving through water several centimetres deep, until I came to the road bridge over the river, one major problem here, the bridge wasn’t there anymore, just a gap in the road and a raging torrent streaming through it. I had no choice but to turn around and head back to the village, I figured I would stay the night and things would dry up in the morning and I would find another way to cross the river. How wrong I was, the rain continued non-stop until the next morning, the TV was telling us that the entire province was flooded and the rain was not going to stop for several days.

Each day the water rose higher, eventually completely flooding almost all of the farm land around the village, check out this picture above, this used to be rice fields just outside the village, now completely ruined by the floods. So there I was, trapped in my girlfriend’s village, unable to leave the house let alone get back to my apartment. The rain stopped 3 days ago, it has only been today that I was able to navigate the still flooded roads and drive home.

The real problems will start next year though, an entire region with its yearly rice crop ruined, many of the farmers grow the rice to feed their families, not to sell, I really do not know what these people will do next year, rice is the backbone of their staple diet, without it they will have very little to eat and no money to buy rice.