Thai Life in Phana

Recycling Day in Phana, Thailand

Recycling Day was a big success in Phana. As usual just about everyone in Tambon Phana was involved, either as a participant or a spectator. The competition for the moo baan with the best costumes and float drew some interesting entries from all the little communities that make up Tetsaban Tambon Phana.

This carefully-crafted hat made from recycled materials seems to epitomise the committment the people of Phana show when they are asked to put on a show like this.

The parade started in the amphur, at Samarkee School. They started marching at about 3.15 pm and reached the bridge just down from our house at about 3.30. As always they were led by two beautiful young women, in this case the two volunteers from Project Trust.

Samarkee School students were near the head of the parade:

The marchers came in all shapes and sizes:

The women of Phana always enjoy a parade and don't seem to mind making a bit of an exhibition of themselves.

 

These men enjoyed themselves too:

This was a day of many worthy slogans.

 

This one was contributed by Pensri and I to the Moo 1 (our community) section of the parade. I don't know how or why the hyphen jumped out of place.

 

This band comes from Samarkee School which has a great tradition of music and dancing.

 

This marching band performs at every occasion imaginable in Phana. They also spend a lot of time practising in the evenings and can be heard a long way off.

 

I love this section of the band, both for the ingenuity of the mobile, battery-powered amps and for the sound that comes out.

 

Here comes the mayor! On the right.

 

The decoration of the floats was fairly predictable but colourful anyway.

 

 

And after the parade comes the Tetsaban's waste-collection truck. Is it about to be made redundant by all this recycling?

 

When I caught up with the stationary parade at the market place I realised that I had contributed these Beer Lao and San Miguel cans. A young woman we know takes them from me and turns them into these attractive decorations.

This is the recycling stall. People brought bags and sacks full of stuff, all sorted. It was weighed and exchanged for an appropriate reward. There were eggs, for example, and kids could get sticker books or soft drinks.

I saw our friend who recently hosted a harvest celebration at her farm. She was having a foot massage and I decided to join her. Unfortunately, you paid for the massage with a ticket obtained by exchanging a sackful of rubbish at the stall. So the massage women were contributing their work to the cause. Well, I didn't have any rubbish with me to exchange so I'm afraid I used a bit of influence. The deputy-mayor's wife somehow acquired a ticket for me, I don't know how because she didn't have any rubbish either. Well, this is Thailand.

Somebody mistakenly thought I would make a good photograph so I asked her to take one with my camera too.

 

This foot massage business takes a lot of concentration. It is excellent anyway, and I have booked the same woman to come and give me another massage tomorrow afternoon. I'll have to pay for that one, though.

 

When they didn't have enough customers (rarely, in fact) the massage women gave each other a massage.

 

Then the on-stage performances began and that is how I ended recycling day in Phana. Very satisfying. Oh, the tetsban also provided everyone with some sticky rice and pork in a banana leaf. Packed in with the food there was also a tiny bit of banana leaf wrapped around some nam prik. Very thoughtful. And delicious.

 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 

 

 

  

 

Allegations against Monk

The other day I visited a temple near a small town about 45 kms from Phana. I had heard that it had a small viharn containing two statues of a monk who was a follower of the famous Isan meditation master, Ajaan Mun Bhuridatto. 

 

I am always interested in the variety of Buddhist temples in Thailand and the extremes of architecture and atmosphere that you can experience in them. This was definitely at the austere end of the spectrum. There was no main viharn, no preaching hall, no famous image. The ubosot (ordination hall) was very plain inside and out. The door was locked but the window shutters were open. Inside there were no murals, no columns, no ceiling ornamentation. The compound was very large and there was a huge number of tall, old trees giving plenty of shade. There was a school for novices (124 of them) with a big welcome sign in English and about three classes of younger novices were in session. Some novices were using the school library to read daily newspapers and the wall outside the library featured news of the death of former PM Samak and photographs of him. Along one side of the compound wall there were several two-storey buildings to accommodate the novices. There were also two special little buildings, one a resdience and the other an office. This was because this temple is where the Chao Kana Changwat (the head monk of the province) stays.

There was a surprising number of cars and pick-ups and a mini-van parked in the shade under several of the trees. It isn't unusual for there to be vehicles like this in a temple, but there didn't seem to be anyone around except three old ladies sitting at a table in the deserted outdoor canteen for novices. While I wandered around the grounds and visited the school, Pensri went to sit with the women. It didn't take her long to find out what was going on.

A meeting was going on between the Chao Kana Changwat and a delegation of supporters of a small forest monastery not far away in the same amphur. There was only one monk (a 20-year monk, 42 years old) staying at the temple and there were also three middle-aged women, one of them his aunt, who also stay there practising meditation, though they are not mae chee. Allegations had been made in writing that the monk was 'too strict' and requests made that he be removed from the temple. There were also allegations that he had misbehaved with one or more women.

The allegation of being too strict arose from a few people who had borrowed money from the monk, or from the temple funds. His strictness took the form of ASKING FOR THE MONEY TO BE REPAID. Now it is not uncommon in Isan for loans to be requested and granted with both sides knowing that there is little or no chance of repayment, though nothing is said to this effect. But this would not be the expectation in the case of money borrowed from a temple. Asking for repayment causes  loss of face, possibly to both sides. As for the allegations of sexual impropriety, they are easily made against a solitary monk. In this case it would seem that they only arose because the monk had been so strict about the money. He certainly wasn't wise to lend money in the first place, though if you were being charitable you might say he was being helpful.

The people Pensri spoke to, and seemingly all the people who had come for the meeting (there were about 60 of them), all supported the monk and wanted him to stay. And that was the outcome of the meeting: the monk was allowed to stay. However, when his supporters had all left, he was still in conference with the Chao Kana Changwat, so perhaps some form of pennance, or at least some good advice, was coming his way.

A few photos of the temple. The wat gate already suggests austerity in that it focuses on the Buddha's teaching, the wheel of the law and the two tudong (wandering) monks on either side. Also the lack of bright colour is significant.

 

This small viharn was specially built to house the shrine to comemorate the revered monk who spent years wandering with Ajaan Mun. The local people decided some time ago to comemmorate him here, perhaps because he settled here in his old age, or perhaps he was originally a local person.

The walls of the lower section are of brick roughly covered with stucco. The interesting thing is that these walls do not reach the ceiling and the windows have no shutters, so it is very cool and airy inside. This inner building is the original, the viharn is just an open-sided sala built over it to provide protection from the rain and sun.

 

The shrine room is also very simple and relatively uncluttered.

 

Behind the viharn is the ordination hall and these two animals were being sheltered on a kind of veranda behind the hall. They were covered in heavy-duty canvas patches, stitched fairly roughly. I suppose that they were waiting to be covered with concrete or stucco of some sort.

 

This was a very interesting temple to visit, and the 'goings on' there on that day made it even more interesting.

 
   

 

 

 

Fewer than 180 Monks feasted in Phana

180 monks were invited to a ceremony in Phana a couple of weekends ago and so were we. We only received our invitation the previous evening when the organisers -- two good friends of ours -- realised we were back in Phana. We did not entirely understand what was going on but knew that 180 monks had been invited to chant and eat at a new wat on the edge of the town.  Our friends had booked a table for six people in our name and we were to offer 600 baht. We could invite four people to join us, of course.

It was a somewhat unusual occasion but not the first that supporters of this particular monastery have arranged. The monastery was only founded a few years ago. It is in a forested area right on the western edge of Phana, opposite the secondary school Phanasuksa. There is one large wooden sala with a wide verandah in front and about ten small kuti where the monks stay. There is no viharn as such and no ubosot.

The precise nature of the arrangements only gradually became clearer once we got there. It wasn't until the ceremony had finished and the last people (us) were about to go home that I found out why Ajarn Deem was carrying a blue briefcase the whole time.

The sala was crowded with people, there were more out on the verandah, and many more sitting outside under the trees. Under a temporary pavillion to one side of the sala 30 red tables with white table-cloths had been set up. Apparently we had sponsored one of these tables. The monks would eat there after they led us through taking the five precepts, agreed to accept our offerings, chanted, one of them had given an extemporised sermon and they chanted again. Another feature that made this occasion unique in my experience was that all the usual 'old man' duties were performed by women: asking for the precepts, making the formal offering, and so on.

 

 

People who take food to the wat to offer to the monks usually eat there too. On most occasions the food is first pooled and then shared out among the monks. What is left over is then redistributed to the lay people. That is what happened on this occasion. In addition, though, the villagers who live around the wat had bought and cooked enough food to feed the 180 monks they had invited.  I understand that they spent about 10,000 Baht on this. On top of that, people who had brought food also made cash donations according to their means, usually ranging between 20 baht and 100 Baht but there are no limits set at either end of the scale. But our sponsorship of 600 Baht was effectively a 100 baht per person donation.

 

The monks and novices took quite easily to being feasted at tables. But by my calculation there were only about 130 -140 monks present, so there were empty tables and more food than was required for the monks. Added to that is that monks are always given too much and they never finish it all. Their practice is that they stop eating when they have had sufficient. I only wish I had the self-discipline to do the same!

 

People waited patiently and in good humour for the monks to finish eating. It is customary courtesy for lay people to wait until the monks have finished, and also so that excess food can be redistributed.

 

The food was distributed to the monks' tables by  boys and girls from Phanasuksa School. They then cleared the tables and helped villagers to redistribute what had been left over plus the food that had been brought in by lay people. There was plenty for everybody, and again people mostly sat in groups of six, most on the ground but some old-timers like me at tables left empty by absent monks.

 

Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves a lot. Apparently this wasn't the first such occasion that the village supporters of this monastery had arranged. It won't be the last, either, because altough they raised about 60,000 baht above their expenses on this day, they still have some way to go to complete the two gateways. Two days later the workmen returned to continue work on the first one. But of course after the gateways it will be the viharn, and so on until the little kids here this day are well into adulthood themselves.

 

And what was Ajarn Deem carrying that briefcase for? When she opened it she pulled out several class registers and the boys and girls from Phanasuksa lined up and had their names checked against it. They had looked like happy and willing volunteers (which I am sure they were) but they were also fulfilling an assignment as part of their religious and community studies programme.

 
 
 
 

 

 
 

Phana: a former volunteer's view

I recently blogged about the volunteers who have come to Phana from Project Trust in the last five years. The fifth pair have just left and we are awaiting the next couple. So it seemed a good time to invite former volunteers to describe how Phana seems to them as they look back on their time here.

Gemma was the first volunteer, arriving in December 2004 and leaving in June 2005. She returned to England to train as a teacher and she has been teaching in a primary school for a year now. Gemma has said that she would like to set up some sort internet link between her class in England and a school in Phana, and I am going to try to facilitate this. I'm sure the school will be keen to get involved.

Here are some of Gemma's thoughts about Phana, together with some of her photos and occasional 'editor's comments' from me.

The thing that I will always remember the most about Phana is the people who live there and the way they welcomed us into their community.

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma and English teachers at Phana Suksa)

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma and cuddly students)

 

They took good care of us and constantly made sure we were OK and had everything we needed. I remember seeing our house for the first time with nothing in it and within a few days everyone had rallied round to make sure we had everything we needed.

 

(editor's comment: Gemma's house belonged to the Post Office and was in the Post Office compound with three others. The Head Postman lived in the house next to Gemma's. He was more than  a little delighted by the fact of living so close to two young farang girls!)

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma and the Post man)

The best thing about living in Phana was all of the festivals and parties we got to go to. The municipality included us in everything and we got to meet so many people.

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma came back to Phana from her summer holiday travels to be a Songkran Queen)

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma with the mayor of Phana - centre front - and teachers)

The worst thing without a doubt was the 3 a.m. market!!!

(editor's comment: The Saturday morning market was set up very close to Gemma's house, and the vendors started to set out their stalls at 3 a.m. accompanied by very loud music. Gemma and her volunteer partner had expected a Saturday morning lie-in to help them recover from the week's teaching. No such luck!)

My mum and dad came out to visit me with my brother and sister and they loved every bit of it. It took my sister a few days to figure out the toilet though!!

 

(editor's comment: No comment!)

One of my not so happy memories of Thailand was the Tsunami and the effect it had. It was worrying for all our friends and families and even when we went to Phuket in April the devastating effects of it were still very visible.

I plan on definitely coming back again to Phana and it will be the people who I am looking forward to seeing again, especially all of the teachers I spent so much time with and the workers of the municipality.

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma with teachers at Phana Suksa)

 

 

(editor's comment: a primary school class)

 

 

(editor's comment: Gemma surrounded by farewell presents)

 

Tetsaban Phana? No Problem, Sir!

The total number of people registered in Tetsaban Phana is 2695 and they are spread through 917 households. But as I said in my last post, a large number of these are not resident here most of the time. Pensri and I live in Moo 1, which is pretty much the site of the original 300-year-old village. There are 154 housholds, with 254 males and 343 females registered. With an average of 3.87 per household that gives it the highest density of all the 6 mooban. When Etienne Aymonier passed near Phana between 1882 and 1884, he reported that it was one of the eight muangs that comprised the province of Ubon and says that the 'former capital, Ban Phra Lao' consisted of 200 houses.That would probably have given it a population of about 1,000 if it conformed to the pattern of other muangs that he visited.  The 4 mooban that now cover the area he was talking about now boasts 519 houses with 1,848 people registered in them.

The annual budget for the year 2551 (2008) was almost 40 million Baht, up more than 10 million on the previous year. Almost half of this comes from the central government support grant and the rest from money collected by the Tetsaban, or directly from taxes raised by the government. The main expenditure in the current 3-year plan is the construction of a new market and bus station. In the previous three years one of the main construction projects was to provide a 'community centre' for each mooban. These all followed the same design: a wooden house on concrete stilts, with a single large room for holding meetings, ceremonies, and so on. The space beneath the house is used for a variety of community activities, some of them making a little money, but more often these houses are the focus of activities centred on preparations for festvals, processions, dancing contests and the like. A pair of public toilets is also provided in a separate little building nearby. How many communities the size of Phana can boast of a public toilet in each mooban?

A lot of money has been spent in the last few years since the Tetsaban took over running Samarkee School. At the time several of the teachers there decided not to stay since they disapproved of the Tetsaban taking over. But then the Tetsaban spent lots of money on new buildings as well as refurbishing the old ones and providing new and better equipment. Now more teachers want to work there than they need.

The tetsaban is also an important employer. Currently there are 11 teachers at Samarkee School, while at the Tetsaban itself there are 57 employees including 22 admin personnel who are civil servants and 32 'temporary' employees who do a variety of tasks, many of which entail driving around here and there in one of the 13 vehicles the Tetsaban owns -- fire engines, refuse collection trucks, water trucks, emergency rescue vehicle, emergency medical service vehicle, motorcycles and the minibus.

 

 

 

I am very impressed by the Phana Municipality, as you can tell. Perhaps I have been influenced by them giving me several little gifts every year. I should point out, though, that they give the same gifts to every person over 60 years of age, and in some cases they provide an extra one for each household. Most of these gifts are shirts, and most of them yellow, by the way! Other shirts I have been given promote physical exercise, although I rarely follow the good advice printed on these shirts. Most useful have been the blankets they have handed out in cold weather to each household, and a cold weather jacket with Tetsaban Phana printed on the back. They hand out 600 Baht pensions monthly to over 60s who have no other pension (that is, not to teachers, civil servants) but neither Pensri or I are eligible for one of these. The Mayor and his deputies and most of the fitter councillors always distribute these by bicycle, a good PR stunt if ever I saw one.

The tetsaban has several slogans, most of which are not very inspiring but they have two which I like very much. One is in Thai, and it goes "Kit mai awk, bawk Tetsaban" which translates as "When you can't think what to do, tell the Tetsaban." The other only ever appears in English and I like it even more: "NO PROBLEM, SIR!" The exclamation mark is theirs.

 

Phana wins again! (well, almost)

Phana municipality has won lots of prizes (and money to go with them) in the last few years. I think its small size has something to do with it, making it perhaps easier to organize, plus the need to assert itself that often goes with lack of stature (think Napoleon). A phone call back to Phana on Sunday found some of our friends travelling back from Bangkok after attending an English-speaking contest for primary schools. The Tetsaban-run Samarkee School had already won through several qualifying rounds and seemed to be representing lower Isan.

Anyway, they came fourth, after Chonburi, Suphanburi and Nakhon Phanom. This led to the usual question.

Where IS Phana?

The rest of Thailand should really know by now.

Phana Song

This is an excerpt from "Phana 300 Years" performed by the people of Phana at Wat Phra Lao Thepnimit in April 2008. The young girl singer is a student at Phana Suksa School. The 3-day celebration was sponsored by Phana Municipality. I think it is rather lovely. I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

Tetsaban sponsors volunteers in Phana

I introduced the first Project Trust volunteers to Phana five years ago and currently the 5th pair of volunteers have about 7 weeks longer before they return to their homes in Scotland. My son-in-law had been a PT volunteer in Chiengmai and I had done some school visits in Thailand on behalf of PT.

 

What is Project Trust? It is an organisation with charitable status based on the island of Coll, Scotland, which sends volunteers to more than 20 countries around the world. The volunteers are recent school-leavers taking a gap year before going on to university. They undergo a rigorous selection process on Coll, which is a remote island in the Inner Hebrides. If selected, they then return to Coll for a training week being sent off to their projects in late August. They usually spend 50 weeks in their host country. This is quite an achievement for young people who have not previously had to fend so much for themselves, or make a long-term commitment to working! There are now 8 of them in Isan, 2 in Phana, Amnat Charoen Province, 2 in Yasothon Province and 4 in Ubon Ratchathani Province, but as in many other things, Phana was first!

 

Phana was also first in that all previous volunteers in Thailand had been based in a secondary school but in Phana it is the Municipality (Tetsaban) which sponsors them. For the last two years the Phana Municipality has been responsible for running Samarkee School one of the two primary schools in their area. Samarkee School has now been extended to include two years of secondary schooling (matayum) and this will be further extended with each new intake. Phana Suksa is the long-established secondary school and is located just outside the Phana Municipality boundary. The volunteers teach one day a week at Phana Suksa and two days each at Samarkee School and Udomwitayakorn School, the Ministry of Education-run primary school.

 

The arrival of the first two volunteers was an exciting event in Phana, and each new pair since then has been welcomed quite elaborately with a baci ceremony, dancing, welcoming speeches, a feast, and so on. In the first photo you can see the mayor (in yellow shirt) and the Headteacher of Samarkee School in dark blue shirt behind the sukwan trays:

 

  

These dancing girls are from Phana Suksa school:

 

The volunteers spend the first two weeks with a host family, learning something about theThai lifestyle, manners, food and that sort of thing. After those first weeks they move into a small house provided and furnished by the municipality. Dressing up is also something their hosts like them to do. Here are two volunteers meeting their host family for the first time:

 

Meeting Phana's notables is another important part of their introduction to Thailand. Here are two volunteers being introduced to the chief of police and his deputy by my wife Pensri:

 

This pair are with the deputy mayor and his wife outside the municipal offices. The Deputy Mayor oversees the volunteer programme and while the first two volunteers were in Phana he visited the UK and Coll with me and my wife.

 

What they are in Phana for, of course, is teaching, mostly in the two primary schools. Here is one of their primary school classes and some small groups of students:

 

 

 

 

Getting to know some of the students outside school is also important, and good fun:

The volunteers spend 3 weeks in Chiengmai taking a course in Thai language ... and enjoying themselves with the other volunteers from all over Thailand. They last saw them on the training course on Coll. After that, the second semester of the Thai school year starts, and then comes Christmas, which seems to be an increasingly popular excuse for a bit of celebration. In the first picture our two girl volunteers were joined by a volunteer in Chiangrai who came to Phana for Christmas.

 

 

Being able (and/or willing) to put on a bit of a song and dance always goes down well in Phana:

 

These two (above) were part of a performance that starred the Phana Suksa bong lang orchestra (below):

Occasionally, other young farangs visit Phana. These two girls were AFS students living and going to school in Amnat Charoen. The girl on the left is from Belgium, the girl in the middle is from Italy and on the right is the head of English at Phana Suksa. The girls spent a few days in Phana, staying at our house.

 

The Tetsaban provide the volunteers with bicycles, but NOT with cycle training!

 

The Tetsaban even have spare bikes for visiting friends who are shown around Phana:

 

There are a lot of opportunities for dressing up. These two (our current volunteers) are with an English teacher from Samarkee School:

 

  

These two joined other young women of Phana to dance for the King's 80th birthday:

From mid-March to mid-May our volunteers spend travelling in Thailand or in neighbouring countries. But every year they have come back to Phana for Songkran. The next sequence of photos of the first two girls who came to Phana show why:

 

The Songkran procession makes its way to Don Chao Poo, where the 'Queens' join other VIPs:

 

... and receive the traditional blessings:

 

When August (earlier in the case of our first pair of volunteers) comes around it is time for Phana and their two volunteers to say goodbye to each other, and they do so with some formality and a lot of sincerity:

 

 

But some of them come back again, several have had parents visit Phana, and ALL of them have been pleased to welcome friends to stay in Phana. And Phana ... always knew it was the centre of the universe!

If you would like to know more about PROJECT TRUST, you can visit their website at:

www.projecttrust.org.uk

or click on the link on my blog's sidebar.

 

Wat Tung Si Muang, Ubon Ratchathani

    Ubon Ratchathani is just the right distance from Phana to make a good day out. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there, about an hour on the songthaew bus which stops frequently on the way. Mostly these days I go to Ubon for shopping at Big C or Tesco Lotus: there are a few things I can’t do without, such as cereal for breakfast. But I often spend time ‘browsing’ in wats and Wat Tung Si Muang in Ubon is one of my favourites, partly because it isn’t usually very busy but it does have two outstanding features.

 

 

 

    The feature that is made the most of in Tourist Authority literature is the Hor Trai or scripture library. It is more than 150 years old but very well preserved, standing on about twenty stout wooden pillars in a small pond. For several years the scriptures, narrow palm-leaf accordion-shaped books, could be handled because they lay in drawers and cupboards inside the building. But recently they have been removed, hopefully for safer keeping. The hor trai building itself is a mixture of Thai, Burmese and Lao styles. The multiple overlapping roofs reflect the Burmese influence while the carvings over the two gables are Lao, illustrating different animal signs according to traditional astrology as well as various designs based on plant life.

 

 

 

    Less often promoted but in some ways more interesting are the murals in the ubosot. These date from the mid-nineteenth century and as with most wat murals they offer an insight into life at that time as well as illustrating some of the Jataka stories. The murals have not been restored (luckily, I think) so some of them are very faded and some even partially degraded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    There is also a replica of the Buddha’s footprint which was brought from Bangkok during the reign of Rama III.

 

    The ubosot, which is very small, has recently been renovated and repainted on the outside. This picture was taken shortly before the work was completed.

    Wat Tung Si Muang is also home to a school for novices. There are more than 200 students at the school which comprises three years of secondary school and three years of high school. Students come from provinces throughout the northeast and follow a curriculum which mirrors that in ordinary schools but with the added emphasis on Buddhist studies. At the end of the six years, students can either return to lay life, perhaps entering a secular university, or continue their studies at a branch of one or other of the two Buddhist Universities. Ubon and Warin Chamrap have branches of these universities.

 

 

 

 

    Walking around Ubon in the late afternoon and early evening you are likely to come across groups of young novices. Many of them seem to enjoy spending time playing games in the internet and games cafes and making calls on their mobile phones. It is easy to feel critical of this behaviour, seeing it as being unworthy of monks, but it must be remembered that these are NOT monks, they are schoolboys. And while they have obviously not given up all the pursuits that schoolboys enjoy, they have taken on a considerable number of duties and responsibilities that most schoolboys do not, as well as living away from their families, often far away. They should be seen positively, I think, as schoolboys with added value rather than as deficient in some way. They are just learning about the monastic life, after all, and may quite legitimately find it does not suit them.

 

 

Monkey Troubles

 

    Phana is known as the monkey town by some insensitive people (farangs is how they are usually known). I have never heard anyone from Phana use any such term. The self-coined description of Phana is “the land of scholars” which is perhaps overdoing it a bit but it is certainly preferable to monkey town. The land of scholars thing was well-earned in the past because Phana was home to only the second school in the whole of Ubon Ratchathani province, just one year after the first was founded in Ubon in 1897. From then on Phana’s scholastic fame spread as teachers born there were sent out to teach at schools all over Isan.

 

    Phana often features in monkey stories in the national press. The story is always the same but it has appeared several times in the last few years. It reports that the tribe of monkeys in Don Chao Poo (wildly overestimated as being in the thousands) is starving and needs people to come and visit and feed them. It has never been clear who places this story as certainly no reporter has been known to come and investigate. It might be in the interests of Phana Municipality to attract more visitors to the town, but the story always criticises them for neglecting the monkeys so they are not likely to be the source of the story. In fact, the monkeys are not starving and the municipality has done a lot for them. Similar stories pop up on local radio stations occasionally, too.

    As far as anyone knows there have been monkeys living in Don Chao Poo for ever. They had never been much of a problem until their numbers began to increase quite rapidly in the last few years. Currently I estimate their number as somewhere between 300 and 400. I have tried counting several times but always lose count round about 300. They stay in the forest at night and most of them don’t venture outside during the day, although some do go out onto the road in front of the main entrance. There has been some invasion of new houses behind the forest and a newly-built private kindergarten there was refused a government licence because on the day it was inspected there were quite a few monkeys on the premises. Occasionally a lone old male can be seen wandering the roads, probably because he has been chased away by the others for some reason. A small family visited our house once, a distance of about 1 km. I don’t know exactly how they made their way there but I saw them leave along the power cables above the road.

 

    The increase in the monkey population of Phana is down to two main factors, the first obviously being their natural randiness. The other factor, though, is down to humans. The monkeys are a popular attraction for visitors from outside the town, and they come to feed them, especially at weekends and on holidays.

 

 

In addition, the municipality, which took over the responsibility of the forest a few years ago, provides them with a daily supply of unhusked brown rice, and has also built water troughs for them.

 

 

Once a year they also put on a ‘sit down’ feast on tables with bright tablecloths. I have never been there for this event so I don’t know how they keep the monkeys away until everything is ready for them.

 

  

 

 

    Whenever people feed them they can behave in a very greedy, grasping manner, and if you have food in a bag the bigger males will try to grab it and the winner will keep all the contents for himself. The braver ones also tend to swarm on you and this can be very alarming, although if you can remain calm this is not as dangerous as it may seem. Sometimes, however, you will find that you can feed younger monkeys and females by hand.

 

Be prepared, though, to fling your food onto the ground and let them fight over it. If you have no food with you the monkeys will let you walk amongst them and they won’t bother you at all.