Life in Phana

Long-tailed Macaque Twins in Don Chao Poo Forest

Ten days ago I saw a monkey carrying two young infants. The infants looked to be the same age but I had never seen twins in the forest here before. I know that sometimes a female will foster an orphaned infant, so that is a possibility too. At the time I did not have my camera with me, and my sighting of the mother + two was quite brief.

 

I have been on the lookout for them ever since, and today I finally succeeded. And I had my camera with me.

 

They look like twins to me. What do you think? And have you come across long-tailed macaque twins in the wild before?

Click on an image to enlarge it.

This post also appears on Thai Monkey Forest. Please visit that site if long-tailed macaques interest you.

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Study Centre is Busy, Busy

After opening on 8th March, the Rin-Homhual Mahanil Study Centre in Phana was busy two days later when the Phana Bicycle Rally came by. Then there were a few quiet days when we wondered where everyone was who had said they would visit. Slowly ‘business’ picked up. The Director of Phana Suksa called in with a good luck gift to the Centre, for example, and several people stopped by to do a little weaving.

But this last week has been very busy and has been everything we had hoped the Study Centre would be: a place for people to study, to hold discussions and meetings, and to drop in to browse through the books and magazines and study the exhibits and ask questions about them.

Three groups of children on school holiday are now attending the Study Centre twice a week for English lessons and practice. The largest group (16 of them at the last count) are of Primary One age or a bit younger. One group of them comes in from a village about 7 kms away in/on this vehicle driven by the mother of one of them. I guess you would call this a little-people carrier.

The oldest group (M1) is currently the smallest, but these three girls are very keen. They are joined by ‘Judy’ in the background, a Phanasuksa student who has just returned from a year as an AFS student in Brazil. She is helping out at the Study Centre and especially helping me with the teaching.

The other group, about to double in numbers next week, is Primary 4 and 5. After their class finished on Thursday they stayed on to play some English-language games on the computer.

On Wednesday we hosted a group of teachers and students from Benjamah Mahavat School in Ubon. They were following up an earlier exploratory visit to assess Phana as a possible focus for their off-site study programme. We started the day early after they had had breakfast across the road at the house of Acharn Kalyani, who is involved in the running of the centre.

After introducing them to the centre and looking at the history and monkey exhibitions in some detail, we took them on a tour of other possible educational sites in the village.

The Traditional Medicine Centre had not been expecting us, but when we arrived they had just done a presentation to a group from Si Sa Ket, so they kindly repeated it for us.

 

At Fai Rong Hin the group was most interested in the cooking, using methane gas produced on site with the help of a lot of pigs… (APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE)

… and in posing for a group photo:

After lunch we visited the weaving co-operative in Moo 9. Again, they had not been expecting us and it turned out that a training session was in progress. But again, we were welcomed, given lots of attention and lots of answers to our questions, and a couple of the teachers were sold some cloth produced by the co-operative.

And finally, to Don Chao Poo, where we took them on the Path of the Buddha:

Then it was back to the Study Centre for a plenary discussion. It looks very likely that a group or groups of students from the school will be making a visit of several days to carry out a varied study programme using all the facilities we visited early in the new school year which starts in mid-May.

And finally, on Friday evening the first of a planned series of meetings took place at the Study Centre, organised this time by Khun Chorkdee Pornsri. The idea was to discuss the ways in which the traditional 12-month festivals were celebrated ‘in the old days’.

Thirty-two people turned up, but they didn’t get past the first month! The next meeting in two weeks time will be to listen to the Chao Kana Amphur (the chief abbot of the District) talking about his recent pilgrimage to the places in India associated with the life of the Buddha.

So, a very busy week at the Study Centre, and a very productive one which promises well for the continued use and interest in the Centre.

 

Mapping the forest

When our group from Exeter first arrived in Phana, we decided to familiarise ourselves with the forest and macaques by conducting a time budget analysis of the population. This is a common technique in animal behaviour, and would allow us to learn how individuals, separated by age and sex, differ in daily activity, taking into account the time of day, habitat and location. This investigatory study would then allow us to ask more narrowly defined questions from observation. Two problems arose from this: (a) we wished to randomly sample our population, but had no idea of the macaque distribution or forest layout, and (b) we did not know what habitats occurred on site. To tackle this problem, we would need to create a map of the forest, which would then allow us to overlay a randomisation grid, in addition to showing us local habitat types. This would not only help us with the time budget analysis, but provide the Phana Macaque Project with a map and an initial assessment of the habitats located on site.

 

As is typical in research, it was not so simple, and another problem arose. The only source map we had of the site was a low-pixelated image from google.com map service. However, this at least gave us a rough outline of the site, and luck was at hand in the form of a tape measure and GPS device. Using the GPS device, the distances of the paths and parameter of the site was recorded, with shorter distances recorded using the tape measure, due to the +/- error of 5 to 10metres of the GPS device. These measurements were then pieced together using ImageJ, a rather handy tool from http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/. The result was our first attempt at accurately mapping the forest. It may not be the prettiest of maps, but it did the job of providing us an outline for our random samples, and landmark awareness for locating the grids.

 

The map then needed to be filled in with habitat types. To do this certain elements normally used to conduct British Phase I Habitat Surveys was used, but differed slightly due to the situation on site and local habitat descriptions. Doing a walkover of the site a judgement of habitat coverage was taken, documented in detail, and a habitat map produced. The only thing missing from the documentation is inclusion of a personal risk assessment… seing that you are most likely to get sunburnt on the open bare ground, mobbed by macaques on the hardstanding, thrown off your bike by vines in the woodland, and attacked by various sharp-thorned plants in the dense high scrub!

Now that we have a Phase I type guide to the site, what’s next? The obvious next step would be to conduct a more detailed assessment of the habitats in our grid locations by placing transects and taking samples of flora & fauna, along with tree surveys, but we are limited at the moment due to the lack of knowledge on the local flora. That will hopefully be solved with help from the forestry department, and because we have the map and the grid location from our time budget data, we can then match the time budget and habitat data together. Another more immediate possible study to conduct is to plot the macaque population distribution onto the map, which then might be useful as a guide for knowing how the population disperses throughout the day.

I hope this small informal report sheds some light on what is happening within the Phana Macaque Project, and we hope to report on some more detailed data later on in the process. Thanks for reading.

- Robin

(Guest blogger Robin Southon, MSc Animal Behaviour, Exeter University, UK)

Study Centre Opening Day

 

The day finally came for the opening of the study centre last week. It was what all the work on renovating Pensri's parents' old house had been about: The Rin-Homhual Mahanil Study Centre and the Don Chao Poo Research Centre. As is often the case in Isan, most of the ceremony took place very early in the morning -- before breakfast. Monks were invited to the house instead of walking on the alms round, so they brought their bowls with them and food was placed in each bowl as it would have been on the alms round, although more food was offered after they had chanted.

(CLICK on the images to enlarge them.)

Many of the preparations were literally last-minute, but we had got the study centre ready for the ceremony AND in good shape to show off the various activities we are hoping to promote.

The number of people out and about and prepared to attend our ceremony at 6.30 in the morning was quite impressive. There were eight farangs in town and sitting on the floor too, which must be almost a record, I think, for this small town.

The moment when the holy water is sprinkled on the lay people as a blessing is enjoyed by everyone, especially the monk. Here, the abbot of Wat Don Khual was doing the honours.

 

While the monks were having their meal, the rest of us began the baci suk kwan. These were the youngest dancers I have seen performing the introductory dance, and very good they were too.

The dancers had an attentive and appreciative audience (we all applauded when they finished) and then they were suitably rewarded by Pensri.

Our four researchers from the UK were the recipients of the baci and hopefully the ceremony will have brought them the good luck and success that people wished them as they tied the sacred threads on their wrists.

The opening speeches were made by the District Officer (nai amphur), in the pink shirt below, and by my brother-in-law, Somnuk Choovichian.

After his opening speech, Khun Somnuk was invited to strike the gong (three times) …

… and then to draw back the curtains to reveal the name of the study centre and research centre, proudly displayed in Thai and English. And then most people went home or to work, while those of us who remained posed for the group photo.

In the photo below, Pensri and I are with Pensri’s elder sister Arunee and her husband Somnuk. They and their three children have been the driving force behind the renovation of the house and the setting up of the centre and they have been the major donors both in terms of cash and books and other items. But all the families of the descendants of Ta Rin and Yai Homhual Mahanil have contributed very generously, and so have several people here in Phana, most notably Ajarn Kulyani Singnak who has offered much valuable wood, furniture, and her enthusiasm, too. She will continue to play an important part in running the centre.

The Isan House that Moved

There is a house in Exeter, where I live half my time, known as 'the house that moved'. It was originally built in the late 16th or early 17th century and had to move to make way for a new road. Now there is a house that moved here in Phana; not quite so old, but old enough that lots of people are surprised we didn't demolish it and build a new concrete one. I have posted about this house at several stages of its reincarnation, Moving House in Isan Part 1 ,  and Moving House in Isan Part 2, and Keeping the ancestors informed . The work is finished now, and the upper storey is occupied, while we are still preparing the ground floor for a 'grand opening' on March 8th.

The renovation/restoration/refurbishment, call it what you will, has been carried out through donations from a large number of family members of descendants of Ta Rin and Yai Homhual Mahanil, as well as other relatives and neighbours in Phana. The generosity of all these people has been amazing, and those of us who have been closest to the work are most grateful to everyone who has donated.

These two pictures show the house as it now looks from the road:

Here we can see the ground floor after we moved some of the furniture into it, although when the picture was taken we hadn't finalised the arrangement.

The old doors at the back lead into an enclosed area that is part of the 'upstairs' accommodation. This largely open area on the ground floor is going to be a community study centre, containing a library, seating and meeting areas, a screen for showing DVDs, and temporary exhibitions. The opening exhibition will centre around the loom, with pictures and information about weaving and the process of indigo dying as it is practised in Phana.

Behind the closed doors at the back are these stairs and a shower room. The stairs lead to the accommodation we are providing for the Don Chao Poo Research Centre which will serve as the base for people conducting research into all aspects of the nearby forest known as Don Chao Poo, and especially in all probability into all aspects of the long-tailed macaques which live there.

At the top of the stairs is a 'kitchen area'. There is an electric hot-water jug, a 4-slice toaster and a double electric hot-plate.

 

The dining area is shown looking towards the front of the house. In the top right corner is the door to one of the three bedrooms. The doors and the bedrooms they lead to are the original ones, as are all the floorboards and the ouiter wooden walls and shuttered windows.

You can see our lab bench in the picture above, but here is a better view of it. The two microscopes were donated by Exeter University, and our other equipment at present consists of binoculars, a DVD video camera, a hand-held GPS, two stop-watches, and various glassware of a scientific nature.

And here, looking towards the back of the house. The kitchen area is to the right of the bathroom.

This is the sitting area. The chairs have been donated by a generous neighbour, Acharn Kalyani, who also gave us the old dooors downstairs, the stumps that form the front fence, the shuttered windows on the ground floor, and several other valuable pieces of wood that were used in the renovation. She has also provided the meeting table and chairs, three old wooden chairs and a small table, and lots of very interesting books -- all of which are in use on the ground floor. 

Next to the sitting area, towards the bedrooms and the front of the house, is this small library of reference books on academic subjects as well as local history, travel and so on. There are three bedrooms here, but we currently have four researchers in residence, so one has to sleep out in the main room as you can see. They have formed a rota so that this 'privilige' is shared among them.

As I mentioned previously, the bedrooms and their doors are original. Here is the middle bedroom door:

This is the bedroom that Pensri and I always stayed in back in the 1980s and 1990s. When I came to stay in the 1970s I wasn't senior enough to be given a bedroom, so like our fourth researcher I used to sleep on the floor.

Back downstairs, we are still in the process of arranging the study centre. We are presently awaiting a truck-load (!!!) of books being donated by family members in Bangkok. Also to come is a series of DVDs to help secondary school students to revise for exams in all their subjects. These have been offered by Pink, the daughter of a neice, who has just finished her secondary education and has been awarded a scholarship by a university in Japan, which she will take up later this year.

This view looks out towards a rice and noodle restaurant which our researchers have named 'The Shack'. They eat there a lot, especially at mid-day.

The blue house across the road is home to Panda, a white dog with black markings over his eyes. Panda was quite hostile to the researchers whenh they were staying at our house, but when they moved in here he had a change of heart.  In fact, he moved in as well, sleeping beneath the house for the first few nights. Now he has returned to the blue house, but he has become friendly and protective of the research centre and the researchers. Both have become part of his territory, no doubt.

 

I will post some more about the community study centre when we have got it ready for the opening on March 8th.

 

Keeping Busy in Phana

 

The Phana Monkey Project is about to reach a crucial stage. A week from now five researchers, all recent Msc graduates in Animal Behaviour from Exeter University in the UK, will arrive in Phana to begin a project which will provide the basis for the establishment of Don Chao Poo Forest as a research field site as well as educational and informational material for schoolchildren and visitors to the forest.

This team will be carrying out most of the research which the Phana Monkey Project needs at this stage. In addition, they will be conducting some research of their own along lines that they discussed last Friday with Dr Joah Madden of Exeter University.

 

NO APE MUSEUM

As far as the Phana Monkey Project goes, we have not been idle in the last few months. We have held meetings with the Phana Municipality to clarify our role and theirs. At least one of the original intentions has been abandoned: the money is no longer available for an "Ape Museum" to be built in the forest. Although the promise of this was perhaps the key starting point for the then-named Macaque Project, I think all of us who have carried the idea forward see abandoning that particular part of the project as a good thing. There was every chance that had a building been provided, there would have been no money available to keep it staffed and maintained; on top of that, building inside the forest would have been a major disruption. There are already two small buildings in the forest which have been abandoned and left to the monkeys to play in -- their main playthings being ceiling and roof tiles, which they love to pull off and destroy.

COMMUNITY CENTRE

The Tetsaban have suggested an alternative to an 'Ape Museum' in the forest. The old market building is to be converted into a kind of community centre, and it will provide three main spaces. At one end will be a community IT centre with 22 computer stations. There will be a similar-sized space at the other end of the building which we will be able to use to show videos to visiting schoolchildren. The central space will be for occasional community meetings, and we will provide an exhibition detailing macaque information and photographs in that space.

The tetsaban is providing the materials for the conversion of this building but the community will provide the labour. In the following pictures you see the headman of Moo 7 and his wife working on the new floor, which they have completed since the photos were taken.

CLEANING UP THE FOREST

Last week we worked with the tetsaban / municipality and some students from the school they run, to clear the forest of litter. It is amazing how quickly litter accumulates, and monitoring it will be an important focus of the upcoming research, so that hopefully we can recommend some practical ways to reduce the litter produced and ensure that litter is removed frequently. Our monitoring will be made more useful because we have established a 'zero-litter' environment before the monitoring begins. This way we should be able to get a clearer picture of when, where, and how much litter is dropped over a weekend, for example. Already the tetsaban have put a new cleaning team in place to collect and remove litter and we are sure this will be a great improvement on the previous 'emergency' cleaning sessions before big events.

DON CHAO POO FOREST RESEARCH CENTRE

The Phana Monkey project has also been working to provide a centre for researchers to use while they are in Phana, and the team from Exeter University will be the first to do so. The building is almost ready, and the only thing which may prevent them moving in as soon as they arrive is that water and/or electricity may not be connected in time. Details of this centre will appear here as soon as all is ready.

ROAD TRAFFIC FATALITY

Last week we experienced our first recorded road traffic fatality, an adult male killed on the road outside the forest just before 8 am. As it happened, Pensri and I were on our early morning cycle ride, so Pensri put the still-warm monkey in a plastic bag (there were still plenty lying around at the beginning of the week) and took him home. Our first thought was taxidermy but it quickly became apparent that no-one locally had the skill and experience to do this; we soon realised, too, that there was litle point in creating a life-like specimen when we have more than 400 live ones! With advice from Prof Dr Suchinda at Chulalongkorn University, we decided to preserve and display the skeleton. The person in charge of the museum in the Biology Department at Chula sent us some insects (in a box, via the Railway parcels service) and for more than a week now these insects have been nibbling away at the cooked flesh and revealing more of the skeleton. When the process is completed we will post pictures of the skeleton and more detail regarding the process. For the time being, here are a few of the photos we took of our monkey soon after the accident. The monkey had been hit a glancing blow on the side of the head which had fractured his skull but not smashed it. Nevertheless, bleeding was still evident through his nose and mouth, so no pictures of his injury are included here. The blow struck him on the left side of his head, the side not shown here. He was a fine specimen as can be seen from his teeth. (CLICK on the photos for an enlarged view.)

 

We have learned a lot from this monkey and hope to learn more when we are able to examine his skeleton so we have named him "Ajarn Ling" in gratitude. He is not the first macaque to give his life to science, but he will be remembered in Phana, for sure.

( This post has also appeared in a slightly different form at www.thaimonkeyforest.wordpress.com . There is much more about the Phana Monkey Project at that site, so I hope you will visit it sometime soon.)

Back to Phana... again

Here we are back in Phana, far from the floods that are ravaging much of Thailand. We have been here a week now, but our broadband connection was only restored yesterday, so this is my first post in some time.

Our journey from Bangkok was uneventful although the train to Ubon was diverted via Chachoengsao, and the journey time was two hours longer than usual. Warin Chamrap, where the train arrives, on the south side of the Moon River, was quite flooded, with the two large lakes overflowing and people who had had to evacuate their homes living in makeshift shelters along the main road to Ubon.

Arriving on the outskirts of Phana, the fields were full of rice and it looked as if here, at least, there is a good harvest in prospect.

At home in Phana we found  the garden hedge in full bloom and  attracting large butterflies:

We had heard that some of the sandy paths in Don Chao Poo Forest had been 'improved' and we were somewhat fearful that this meant more concrete. It wasn't as bad as that, and perhaps is not so bad at all. Certainly if these new paths encourage people to explore the forest a bit more that might be a good thing.

 

The paths lead to the four Buddha images that have been in the forest for the last 30 or so years.

The monkeys seem to have adopted the paths. Whenever they spend time on the ground, they seem to prefer to spend most of it on the roadways and now on these paths. They eat ants and termites and it may be easier for them to spot these and pick them up from the hard surfaces.

There are still some very pleasant, sandy paths, shaded by the tall canopies of the yang trees. This one leads off one of the concrete roads. I took the picture early on my first morning back in Phana, with the sun just beginning to break through.

It made the perfect welcome back to Phana.

Thai Monkey Forest

The Thai Monkey Forest on the outskirts of Ban Phana is more correctly known as Don Chao Poo Forest Park. I blogged about it several times back in April this year and since leaving Phana to return home to England for the summer I have been working on something we are calling the Phana Macaque Project.

The Phana Macaque Project (PMP) has been set up in response to what we see as a need to ensure that the long-tailed macaques in our forest are looked after in a way that protects and benefits them while also providing a rewarding experience for visitors who come to see them and maintaining and improving the relationship between the monkeys and the residents of Phana. 

To record the progress we have made to date, and to make information available to anyone interested in Thai monkeys and our Thai Monkey Forest, a blog / website has been set up HERE and I have added a link to this site on my BLOG ROLL. Posts to the site will appear on Thailand Voice. I hope you will take the time to visit and that you will find what we are doing in Phana for the long-tailed macaques interesting. As always your comments and suggestion will be much appreciated.

Visit Phana

VISIT PHANA was the theme of the community-based tourism that was on the agenda of the Amnat Charoen Provincial authorities earlier this year. Nothing much seems to have come of it so far, at least as far as the Provincial initiative goes. That may in part be due to the change in government. Not because a change in government necessarily results in the abandonment of all previous policies, but because budget allocations inevitably have to be looked at again in order to reassess priorities.

But in Phana itself some progress was made towards planning for community-based tourism. Perhaps it has taken a new direction, or at least a somehwat unexpected one, in that Don Chao Poo and the resident monkeys have become the focus; and the focus has been narrowed down further to the educational possibilities that they offer.

Another step towards community-based tourism in Phana has been the production of several leaflets, in English initially, but to be translated into Thai and possibly into Japanese.

Here is the content of the first leaflet.

VISIT PHANA 

THE TOWN OF FIELDS IN THE FOREST

Visit Phana and uncover the secrets of this little-known but historic and surprising town in the heart of Isan.

Phana just may be the best place you have never heard of!

Phana is famous for Phra Lao Thepnimit, the beautiful image in a 300-year-old temple: come and pay your respects.

 

Phana is famous, too, for the large tribe of long-tailed macaque monkeys in Don Chao Poo forest – come and feed them, or just sit and watch them.

 

But visit Phana and you can discover much more

Visit during one of the festivals – there is one every month, but the most lively is the Wat Phra Lao festival in February. Join the festivities at the temple. Take part in the bicycle rally around the town …

Come for the rocket festival in May. You can see the young women of Phana competing in traditional dancing as well as watch the firing of huge rockets.

Or Boun Pravet in March when the story of Buddha’s penultimate life is paraded on a banner and read in 13 chapters in a temple.

Or celebrate Loy Kratong at the big pond in Don Kwan village in November.

Visit on market days – Wednesday and Saturday mornings – but you must be up early as most of the action is between 6.30 and 8.00 a.m. The market meets again on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from about 4 – 6 p.m.

Come to Phana and eat gai yaang with som tam and sticky rice, or duck noodle soup, Korean BBQ perhaps.

Or a local speciality: Jao Hawn.

 

Visit the Traditional Medicine Centre for a massage or a sauna – or spoil yourself and have both!

Ask to see how traditional herbal  medicines are produced — and then buy some to ensure your health and comfort.

 

Hire a bicycle to visit the nearby villages. Watch weavers at work at their looms or dying thread; take a tuk-tuk to Ban Soi in Tambon  Chan Lan and see the complete process of silk production from mulberry leaf and silkworm raising to the finished cloth.

Take a picnic to Fai Rong Hin (the Model Agricultural Centre) in Tambon Phra Lao. Enjoy the quiet serenity and take a look at the livestock and find out how farmers are advised to adopt a more self-sufficient and sustainable style of farming.

 

Don’t forget to take a look at those fields in the forest.

 

 

Phana Garden Resort is waiting to welcome you.

Get to Phana by bus from Amnat Charoen or Ubon Ratchathani. Or take the a/c coach service from Bangkok to Khong Jiam.

But don't forget your destination:

Phana

Come on!

Surprise yourself

with an unforgettable visit.

Phana Macaque Project

 

 
The Phana Macaque Project is taking a lot of my time at the moment. I'm not complaining because I am enjoying the contacts we have made so far and it does look as if people in various parts of the world are interested in coming to study our long-tailed macaques. We have interest so far from academics and students in Thailand, England, Japan and the USA.

One way we have promoted the project can be seen if you click on the link below: 

 

Download Phana macaque project

You may have to be a little patient. It will open in Adobe Reader.

I previously posted about the project HERE and you can find other posts in the category 'long-tailed macaques'.