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!

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.