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!

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!

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.

Shocking pictures of stockpiles of Kraton (not sure how you spell it, basically a plant that gives a high similar to amphetamines), guns and ammo confiscated by the police, and the army sitting cooling their heals.

It’s only a matter of time before the government decides it is going to have to lose face over this, and order in the troops. Last time the army hit the streets in the name of politics they pulled off a bloodless coup, I can’t see them resolving this current mess without pulling the trigger.

We were planning a three week vacation, we have cancelled these plans now, we don’t want to risk getting caught up in anything on our travels.

Eventually she calls me up and says hey I know what I want for my birthday, so I ask her what, and she says… two cows…

I really was not expecting this answer! So, anyway today we went and bought the two cows and they are now happily in her father’s old cow shed. I think this is possibly the strangest birthday present I have ever given somebody.

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.

You see that white concrete bridge? Well that’s the storm drain underneath it. This is about 100 metres from my house, I took this picture from my balcony. This morning at 6am, a jogger discovered three dead children in the storm drain, supposedly drowned. They were a pair of brothers and a friend, quite young about four or five years old.

Now what the hell are three kids of this age doing out on their own at 6am in the morning? Why didn’t anyone see them? How did all three manage to die? Surely if one fell in the others would shout or go for help? There are shops just across the street, and this is a fairly busy road, the chances of nobody seeing three boys get into this kind of trouble is extremely slim even at 6am.

I think there is something suspicious about all this, it just does not add up to me, I don’t believe it is possible that this could have been an accident.

On a slightly different note, it occurs to me that I meet more loonies here in Surin than I have ever met anywhere else. Let me briefly introduce a few of them.

• Ghost Butterfly Man - This Thai guy frequents the small cafe across the road from my apartment, he only knows two words of English, the word ghost and the word butterfly, and he insists on having a conversation with me based around those two words whenever I see him, gripping stuff!
• Idiot Samlo Man - Another Thai guy, he rides a samlo, which is similar to a rickshaw. He is a complete idiot, he see’s me pulling out of the apartment block on my motorcycle, so he stops to ask me if I need a ride, what the fuck?
• Dance Freak Woman - This Thai woman works in the local food market selling meat, but once a week she turns up in the restaurant across the road from me, dumps a ton of change into the juke box and stands there dancing in the middle of the restaurant for a few hours, really weird.
• Take My Dog Man - He lives in a wooden shack on the land next to my apartment block, every time I see him he tries to give me one of his dogs, horrible ugly things with an entire ecosystem going on under their fur.

This is just a handful of the wacky characters I deal with every day in this town, honestly its fruit cake central around here, so I fit in well!

Anyway, I’ve been working hard lately, so we are going to take a holiday next month and go back to Koh Phangan and visit some friends. If I haven’t found a decent place to live by the time we are due to leave the island, I might think about moving back there, although I’m not sure Nuth would be pleased about this.

Leon is growing at an alarming rate, and he is turning in to quite a character, above is a picture of him eating his breakfast, and giving me a nasty look because I keep trying to steal one of his eggs.

Well the last week has seen my three buses arrive in quick succession. Firstly I am snowed under with work right now, not a problem in itself, but definitely a problem when considered as part of the overall situation. Secondly, Nuth has been sick, meaning I have had to take care of Leon, no time for work, anyone who thinks you can take care of a baby and still get a full days work in is living on a different planet. Lastly, the Internet in the apartment building has been terrible lately, most of the time it is unusable. So between looking after Leon, and a dodgy Internet connection, I have managed to dig myself in to quite a hole with a huge backlog of work. This week I am going to need to put in something like 60 hours just to catch up! Oh well, fingers crossed I can clear my desk by the end of the week and take a couple of days off.