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!

I’m looking at plane tickets today, and am seriously thinking about jumping on a plane three months early. My mother has been ill for many years, but she seems to be getting worse a lot quicker now. Only a couple of weeks ago she had an accident, fell out of bed and broke her hip, she was rushed to hospital for an emergency hip replacement.

Yesterday my step sister let me know that she is back in hospital with an infection in her gallbladder and they are going to remove it, so she will have had surgery twice this month for two separate things. I haven’t been back to the UK for a couple of years, I think I should go and visit her.