Moving to the Moo Ban - Permanently????

[lom]

"Any parent or student can report any teamoney case to us via our call centre's hotline number 1579," she said.

Where after we will bring the complaint to the school, including the name of the complainer..

[Lily]

^But for a small fee, we will let it drop!

[El Gibbon]

Time for an update on the aircon.

As I mentioned I bought a 24,000 BTU Trane. It was installed without fuss in 3 hours in a very professional manner. They even wrapped all the piping etc from the inside unit to the compressor unit it nice cloth covering after gluing insulating foam on it. Nicely done and looks professional.

At the risk of being called an idiot or more. I did not insulate the ceilings in the three rooms, the sitting room/offic and two small bedrooms. considering that we have three different styles of windows a closed area this is not. WE have typical sash windows, swing out and jalousie all in different sizes.

So, the single large aircon has worked beautifully. Both ladies are happy sleeping in 25 deg. temps and I'm quite happy as well. We turn it on about mid -day (25 deg) and let it run throughout the evening and night till we get up at about 5:30 or 6.

I was a little worried that we would be overworking the compressor with cooling so much area that was poorly sealed off. It appears there is no problem. The compressor cycles on and off as any normally controlled unit does. The unit is almost stealth quiet. No more noisy than a fan on low speed.

The electric bill will be up there I'm sure, but, we only plan on using it during the hotest times of the year, now through mid May. We can handle it.

So the premise was correct as far as I'm concerned. Buy the big one first and see if you need multiple units. Don't go out and buy multiples until you KNOW you need them.

I'll get lots of responses I'm sure but it is what it is.

E. G.

[Thetyim]

I also found out about the "tea" money for assured acceptance into a decent High School.

Same Same here.
I just found out that this year they have put the price of 'voluntary contributions' up to 8000 baht.
How much is it down your way ?

[El Gibbon]

I'm being told that 10,000 (+?) will be required to get her into the HS she wants to attend.

I can't complain really, its part of the same system where she attends now and hopefully will lead into the attached Uni.

I figure any investment in a private school education is the ONE thing I can do to help her have a life, rather than cutting rubber or heading for Bangers.

E. G.

[Thetyim]

I figure any investment in a private school education is the ONE thing I can do to help her have a life

I agree except that this is a bribe and not a school fee.
I am divided on how I feel about it.
I will pay if I have to but I am reluctant to encourage corruption

[Itchy]

While you wate for the shocking electricity bill, and it will be a shock, you might want to consider having a look where they have installed the aircond compressor unit.

Is it in direct sunlight?

If it is, your compressor is not only cooling your house, but working to cool heat gained from the sun shining on the a/c unit.

Putting a sunshade over the compressor unit will reduce this load and save some of the massive electricity bill coming your way.

[El Gibbon]

Itchy, already have that one sussed. This is the THIRD house in Thailand for installing aircon...

Thanks

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

OK, am half pissed, maybe fully pissed who knows?

gotta post this before I forget it though. Two sisters and a BiL came over tonight.. Besides the beer there is always the 'condiments" fried chicken, sausages etc. etc.

Today was a different experience... Deep fried chicken intestines... ever have them... Actually pretty good as finger snacks.

My family back in the "world" would be agast.. but hey, it was cool.

Part of the deal was if I ate the chicken intestines the BiL would eat a roasted peanut whole.....

Needless to say, we both enjoyed it and ate a lot more of each.

[friscofrankie]

Deep fried chicken intestines... ever have them... Actually pretty good as finger snacks.

OK, am half pissed, maybe fully pissed who knows?

you are the only one asking this question, right?

[El Gibbon]

^ LoL, turns out I was prolly fully pissed...

But, the Chicken intestines were actually quite good, similar to the little twisted pretzels that are often served as bar snacks.

While on the subject of food. Probably should be in the Thai Fruits section but what the hell it ain't all about fruits.



These odd little things are quite good. Have no idea of the English name or if there is even one. Thai is either ma prang, the sweet one's name, or ma yon chit which is more a bitter sweet. I have no idea how they tell the difference, the both look the same to me.



To eat you peel the thin skin to access the fruit. You have this seed left when your done munching. These were very sweet. Peeling them is not a task for the impatient. Leave it to your (wife/mother/gf/bg whatever.)

Yesterday I had the following for breakfast. I find it interesting that most of it either grew within a few yards of the house or was made by me..



These tiny bananas are very nice tasting and quite firm.



I've always like oatmeal, even the Quaker Instant, which is handy as hell and doesn't require a major hassle cleaning up afterwards like real oatmeal does.

OK, the oatmeal with local honey ( the real stuff from the beekeeping place nearby) and bananas from behiind the house along with homemade bread with homemade cashew butter. Add a cup of coffee (in this case instant ) and there you have it one of El's favorite day starters. And healthy too, doesn't make up for the rest of the week eating heart cloggers but every little bit helps.

[El Gibbon]

Different subject. Its been some time since we've had an abundance of butterflys around. The weather and the life cycle of these critters ensure survival by spreading their life cycles throughout the year. Anyway, discovered this guy getting his fill. He hung around for 15 - 20 minutes allowing me to go inside and grab the photo thing-a-ma-jig.



This shot clearly shows the probiscus in the ground sucking up either water or minerals, not sure which since this is the washing area where there is always moisture and bacteria.



As I said, he was quite amenible to my moving around to take these shots. Very nice of him/her.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

Security doesn't seem to be a problem here, even though the Thai mentality says it is "always" a problem... I've lived in areas that were/are a hell of a lot worse than this village.

The neighbor across the street has a really old Thai Ridgeback that look like she's had about 100 litters. Old, fat and a lovely dog, she used to wander over now and then when I whistled for her. She loves chicken bones and spare ribs. What dog wouldn't? We got to be good friends.



Recently a friend who has two of those flocking hairy little whiners was unlucky enough that his bitch had a litter of three of these little worthless shits. The Ms and daughter want one!, NO! The daughter won't be here to care for it and the Ms. is not really a dog person. IF I have a dog it will be a real dog, not carried around in someone's arms, it will stay outside and be trained etc. .... Like a real dog, not a toy.

The neighbor recently got two brothers from the same litter, I suspect they know that "Fat Dog", as I call her, is nearing the end of the road.

These are almost twins and really lively puppies, bright eyed and full of hell.



This one I call shit head as he's is the A personality and always causing trouble.



This one is Wimpy, has no balls and is very shy. Definitely not the 'lead' dog.

The three of them have taken to spending part of the day here at our house. There is always some snack available, thanks to the young un being home from school. When the family across the soi are gone they like to be around us.

Mom (surogate type) and the 'boys' like to hang out under the shade netting for the orchids, partly because of the moisture in the ground and they are nearby just in case there is food available.



I don't know what breed this is, but they are nice looking and I know of one adult male in the area that is smart as hell. I suspect these two are very smart also and will look around for one or more of my own.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

Well, Ms El got bored with village life.

After getting the house all settled and the "garden" set the way she wanted it was twiddle thumbs time. Now, this woman is absolutely NOT lazy, by 7 AM most mornings the house has been swept and mopped twice. You can eat on any surface in the house and that's not BS.

She's done the wash (by hand) watered her plants and is beginning to cook breakfast. Then its time for ironing if there is any.

Most days she is completely done with everything by 10 AM. Then its visit the sisters, go to the market and run errands. Pretty boring for her.

So, her sister needed help cutting rubber. So now she is off 3 out of 4 nights cutting rubber with her sister from midnight till about 6:30 in the morning. "What for" I asked her? "I'm bored, besides I can make some extra money for Mi's school costs", was her reply.

Now Mi's school costs are not really a burden and we don't need the extra cash, though we will probably spend it sooner or later. BWDIK????

Anyway I now have the real skinny on the rubber business.

They work an eight rai piece that is about 70% 7 year old trees, the rest are about 6 or so. They are averaging about B75 a kilo for #1 which is all they get. The price over the last year has varied from a high of 96 I thiink, to a low of 45. Apparently this is high quality latex since the factory truck comes to them to pick up rather than like the rest of the folks I see carrying their stuff to the local middleman.

They are averaging between 63 and 66 kilo each night. The math says that's 4725 baht using 75/kilo X 64 kilo.

Even taking out the costs of fertilizer, irrigation and tools etc. that's not a bad income. Better than most I imagine. There are a ton of variables in this business so this daily gross really doesn't mean much other than they had a good week. They only cut when the trees are dry, (not cutting tonight due to a T-Storm earlier), they can't cut when the trees are budding or for a couple of weeks after until the leaves are fully developed. The only cut 3 nghts out of 4, the trees need a rest.

I figure they cut probalby about 180 - 200 days a year all-in-all. Taking an average of the cost of rubber at 60 baht and an average yield of 60 Kg that is 3600 X 180 days for a gross of 648 K Baht or 200 X 3600 for a gross of 720 K baht.

Not a lot for a hell of a lot of work in my book. Figure costs for a truck, motocy or some other transportation plus all the little things mentioned earlier its a tough way to make a living. But, the family is better off than a whole host of other villagers.

The sister is getting ready to plant another 17/18 rai that I mentioned earlier in a post about burning slash. All together the family must have close to 60 rai in various stages of growth. The oldest section was just harvested for the lumber.

E. G.

[Rigger]

To eat you peel the thin skin to access the fruit. You have this seed left when your done munching. These were very sweet. Peeling them is not a task for the impatient.

Thats why I eat them with the skin I haven,t seen anyone peel one before

[El Gibbon]

^ That's what I thought too, but hey, if they want to peel grapes for me so-be-it. Actually the Ms says the skin are rough on the throat, I'll try it next time just to see.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

Well, this is the second day of really rough T-Storms. It was so black out at noon today we had all the lights on in the house.

Heavy heavy rain, lost all my makua starters and a lot of tomato plants that were almost ready to transplant. Friggin water everywhere.

The reason for this post though is to send good news to those of you that have or are thinking of using IPstar sat. service. While UBC went out on occasion my internet connection was solid all through both storms, (exception being a couple of power outages), of course the HTTP shit was flocked as usual due to the T(otally) O(out of it) T(elephone abortion.

Torrents continued to click right along so the connection was good. Would love to find a way around their servers.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

y friend from a couple of posts ago was back today.



It is really tame and doesn't spook at all, almost like having a pet butterfly.

Too bad his life will be over in a few days.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

The other day the Ms came home with a "snack".

It is some type of sticky rice combo that you dip in
sugar. It is really pretty good. Kinda sticks to your
teeth good.



They are really expensive too.... B10 for 12 of em.




Kan nom gang

At least that's the closest I can come with the name.

E. G.

got a couple of long posts to do next week, off to Bangers for a couple of days. yep..... teazer, you won't believe one of them.

[k1klass]

Great thread, did 2 beers while i read this

[El Gibbon]

I've been putting this off long enough. Finally uploaded all the pix so here goes.

I would not have believed this if I had not seen it with my own two eyes. Trat has a 'vegetable' festival every year. Local folks are encouraged to participate in a parade of floats. The local village apparently has a rather large reputation regarding the nature of their floats.

As the theme is vegetables the float is decorated with fresh veggies, fruit and flowers.



This was my first view of the masterpiece. Quite attractive and a real fly catcher to boot. Millions of the little suckers around but no bother as they were all after the sugars.



Pretty much all starts here with styrofoam modeling of what is going on the float.



They have all sorts of things on the float depicting the beach, mountains and of course the orchards in the area.



And of course birds. These are in the initial stages of being done up. Dark rice sesame seeds and white rice are all hand glued on these forms.



The flower garland are done and ready to be placed on the mountain.



This prep area is where the individual fruits/veggies are put on your basic common pins. Then trays are delivered to the ladies actually pinning these things on the float.



This lady was doing roosters, what a remarkable job she does. Each feather is a trimmed pineaple leaf pinned in just the correct position. the way she blends the leafs to include color shifts and the flowing nature of feathers is truly outstanding.



This is the initial portion of the Garuda the will adorn the front of the float.



This is a tray of subassemblies ready to be placed on the float. Note the sections of pineaple skins outlined with long beans. This then gets pinned to the float as the background. The white piece with ground coconut glued on is representative of a wave and placed around the bottom of the float. The large ends of green peppers are for adornment somewhere.



A tray of baby rambutans with toothpicks and ready to attach to the float.



This is the basic background of the float. Starting from the top:

The colorful pineaple skins outlined with the long bean. The star shaped deally with an odd type of makua (eggplant) surrounded by little green beans of some nature, off set with pineaple leaves trimmed and fitted. A row of makua again, then a row of baby rambutan and then yellow split peas bounded on the top by long bean and on the bottom by these little green thingies and another row of long bean. Then I think its regular rice that's been dyed red. and so on.



The fence that goes around the top is done in split fresh corn it looks like. The flies like it anyway.



This young lady is pinning the pineaple sections in their final position. You can see the temporary scewers that have held them in place initially.



ANd here we have another take on the original picture. Again you can see the skewers hold thing in their initial position waiting for the final dressing up and attachement.

Sadly I didn't return the next day to shoot the finished product as I was busy. I don't know how they fared in Trat. Wish I could have gone and viewed the parade myself but had already made plans for Bangkok for the weekend.

One of the BiLs was the head honcho on this project. He is quite an artist in his own right. Famous in the region for his temple murals. I'll have to check with him and see how they did.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

It always amazed me that no matter where you turn, with some exceptions in Bangkok and other large cities, there will be a flash of color within eye-sight.

The other evening I was at the BiLs place, when he went off for more Leo I was just wandering around his property.

In his sala was this beauty in full bloom.



He also has a couple of these by his driveway. No idea what it is but it really isn't a flower. The leaves actually have color, ranging from a deep purple through red and whites.



And these:



These next really caught my eye with their brilliant colorations.



These are some kind of lily I think. There appear to be two different variations of the same genus.



Note the slightly different color variations in the 'throat' of the blossoms.



Even the weeds have flowers and those nasty creeping vines you can't get rid of have beautifully colored flowers.

So, keep your eyes open when you exit your dwelling/office, there is some beauty within your normal range of vision.

E. G.

EDIT: There are 'beauties' that don't wear skirts and heels....

[dirtydog]

EDIT: There are 'beauties' that don't wear skirts and heels....

Your bedroom must be better than mine then

[El Gibbon]

It's been a few days since last posting but have been busy yikes... a word not normal around here. lol

I've been baking bread for awhile now and have a recipe that seems to be repeatable. Now I'm interested in finding a recipe for hoagy/grinder rolls. If you don't know what a hoagy or grinder is: they are long sandwiches that have loads of stuff crammed into them. Think onions, provolone, swiss, tomato, lettuce, salami, ham, bologna, pickles and dripped fresh olive oil.
Fold it up squeeze into your mouth and chomp away.... wonderful finger-lickin good.

The roll has to have certain qualities to be really up to the task of holding the ingredients without breaking up, yet being light enough that you aren't just eating a loaf of bread. Small loaves of bread just don't hack it.

The crust has to be tough and chewy without the texture of a baguette, the center must be soft and collapse with the pressure of the hand. Basically a hot dog bun with a tougher crust that isn't too tough.

On the last batch of bread I reserved 1/2 of the dough in the freezer prior to the first raise - a good way to hold the dough if your oven is only big enough to hold a loaf at a time.



This was the result. I held the raise on the first time to slightly less than double in size. I punched it down then ripped it into three separate pieces and let raise until double. The dough was still "cool" to the touch when I put them in the oven and started the oven.

The result wasn't too bad, the crust was almost exactly what I was looking for. The inside was not as light as I wanted but fairly close. Yeah, they don't look pretty since I was experimenting I didn't bother with making them look good.

I think the next time I'll reduce the size slightly and start them in a hot oven, see what happens.

On another note, one of the reasons I've been busy is it is the start of the harvest season here in the south. Durian and mangosteens are coming on strong. Below is a couple of hours work for two people harvesting mangosteen.



This box holds about 40 kilo of fruit. It is delivered to an aggregatoin point where each fruit is graded by size, weight and color. This box contains a real mixture as is usual coming from the orchard. Once graded the current pricing is #1 62 -64 baht a kilo, #2 37 -38 baht, #3 34 baht, #4 28 baht.

This pricing indicates a 'normal' season in terms of quantity of fruit available. Unlike last year when #1 was getting 95 baht due to the shortage in fruit. This is also the 'early' price, if all goes well with the harvest the #1 price will gradually drop into the high 20s low 30s.

This is truly a great fruit, would love to figure out a way to can them. You see lychee, rambutan and longon in the stores canned, but no mangosteen.

We've also had a couple of visitors to the neighborhood. This devilish thing appeared under one of my tomato starter pots. Evil looking sucker with vicious looking pincers and a tail that indicates ouch!



Also this guy was found resting on the front porch this morning.



Other than that its been pretty quiet here on Moo Ha.

E. G.

[El Gibbon]

Another reason I really really like living here is the multitude of fresh fruit and veggies available at a moments notice.

Tonight I wanted one of my favorite dishes. Deep fried torringue and mango chutney. MMmmmm one of the true classic tastes to be had.

OOooops no green mango to make the fresh sauce with... Duh... OK the Ms goes outside grabes a long bamboo pole and goes to the mango tree that is loaded at the moment and comes back with two mango. Fresh??? who saiys fresh.



Peeled and ready to go. Add some fish sauce, sugar ( to make the mango "bleed"), onion amd chilli to taste. You end up with something like this:



Deep fry the Terringue (spanish mackerel) and you end up with fried fish rice and the fresh mango chutney.



(Note to self ,, you really gotta put the white rice on the dark side of the plate and the fish on the white side.. .dumb ass)

For desert I had one of these;



Fresh from the garden.... Actually the bananas will go into another banana bread for the SiL, on request... yeah! The farang is getting famous in the village ...... "... he makes really good banana bread" they whisper as I sidle by.

This is desert: mangosteen



Sorry its a little blurry, what do you expect after a half dozen gin on the rocks?

Wonderfully sweet and soft.. a real experience if you've not tried them. Yummy.



This is not a #1 fruit. the 'scale' blotches reduce the value. As I've mentioned earlier each fruit is graded when brought into the wholesaler. Although you will not find a fruit that 'tastes' better it doesn't look as nice.

All the fresh fruit and vegetables came within 100 meters of the house... gotta love it.

E. G.