Thai Life in Phana

Retreat in the Forest, Day one

We arrived too late this morning to take part in the alms round at Don Chao Poo so we had to take our food offering directly to the 'food station'.

All the food offered to the monks into their bowls is pooled and sorted. Far too much food is provided, but it has to feed the monks and all the men and women in white (upasika) who take 8 precepts each day of the retreat. And when they have all eaten it is the turn of the lay people.The monks eat directly from their bowls during these 10 days, as forest monks always do. 'Wet' food is put into a little plastic bag and tightly sealed with a rubber band. Most of the rice offered this morning was the sticky variety and I guess that will be the case  every day.

Now what looks good here?

All of it!

Be patient ...

... and now you can help yourselves. When a monk's bowl gets full of rice it is emptied into a big basket like this one. The bowls quickly get full so the men pushing the basket-on-a-cart have to be spaced out along the line of monks.

The girls just want to have fun.

We put up with this every year ...

... so we might as well make the best of it.

 There's a good-looking fella!

The pillow suggests he lay down to sleep rather than sat up as the most stringent tudong monks do.

A neat and tidy monk was here:

How did this robe get so far up a tree? It's a mystery.

 
 

Caught in the act!

 

Women eat Thai food (and some men too). This is their time (at last) and place.

Schoolgirls have been taking care of the food arrangements and now they are serving the lay people.

Here we have a young monk with his proud mum and sisters. There was a call for him on his mum's mobile and he had to be found so he could take the call. When he got to them it was the tiny little boy who had to hand him the phone because women don't hand something directly to a monk. I guess if his sister had had a baby daughter I would have had to do the honours as the nearest man.

When everyone had eaten it was time for most of us to go home. Not for those who were staying to practise meditation and listen to some teaching later in the day. I left too but will return again before the retreat is over.
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Scorpion Invasion

The first scorpion I ever saw in Thailand was in a small village in Si Sa Ket Province a few years back. Then last year I found one when I moved a smallish water jar which had been damaged by a branch falling from a tree next door. The scorpion was hiding under the jar and judging by how slowly it moved and how disoriented it seemed -- unable to make up its mind which direction to scuttle off in -- I think it had been hibernating or at least having a prolonged snooze.

Then a couple of days ago Pensri reported finding one in a sort of pit she had dug to start piling cuttings that would need to be burnt because they were too big to compost (greenhouse effect? in Phana?). Although I rushed over there with my camera, the scorpion had disappeared completely.

 

 

 

 

Then only about 10 minutes later Pensri found another one in a different part of the garden. Possibly it was the same scorpion although it would have had to move a lot faster and much more decisively than last year's specimen to have got to the new location in that time.

 

He is covered in bits of earth so he was hiding under a loose pile that may have been where Pensri first saw him.

 

 

I moved him onto this piece of concrete so that there was a bit more contrast and less tocamouflage him.Two red ants have attached themselves to his tail so there could be a battle of the venoms going on here. Scorpions eat small arthropods and insects so they are playing a dangerous game.

Apparently Thai scorpions (there is only the one species here) are fairly harmless. Their venom is about as powerful as a wasp sting but as with a wasp there is always the possibility of an allergic reaction which could be fatal.  They are nocturnal and hide in dark places such as under rocks and in holes in the ground during the day which is why you don't see them very often. They are preyed on by  birds, centipedes, lizards, mice, and rats.

 

 

Living  in the vicinity of snakes (and now scorpions) which are generally invisible, I have got used to the idea that they are not hiding from me so that they can plot ways of getting at me. I think I have also eliminated the desire to kill such creatures if I should see them. At the same time I have become more mindful when moving about the garden (and the house) so that I will hopefully be prepared if I do come across one. I suppose this makes me more like them, though in the case of the scorpion there was little he could do to take avoiding action once his hiding place had been revealed. He was certainly ready to do what he could to fend me off if I attacked him, though. He wasn't to know that I wouldn't do such a thing. 

 

 

 

 

House-dwelling Snake

The snake video clip has finally made it onto my blog. I hope. After finally learning how to post video clips I think I'd better give my new knowledge some practice.

 

A while back I showed some photos of a bronzeback snake eating a frog at the washing space behind the house (Wildlife in the home). A   long time later the same snake, or a close relative, appeared inside the house. I first saw its head looking out at me from a small crevice at the top of the stairs. With the help of a thin pointy stick we encouraged him to leave, which he did quite dramatically by hurling himself down to the ground floor through the open treads of the top step. It didn't seem to do him any harm, and off he went.

 

A few weeks later we had someone doing some work to repair some termite damage and mentioned the snake. He said he would fill in the crevice but when he went to do so he found the snake back in there. Before he did the same poking around with a stick I got my camera ready to film the event, but unluckily missed the bit where the snake hurled itself over the edge. I was quite relieved to see how difficult it found it to make speed over the shiny floor surface. I think I can move faster than that! And yes, I know this snake is not venomous, but I'm not very keen on snakes anyway.

 

Before I post the video, here are a couple more photos from the series I took of the first snake having a frog for lunch. There is no doubt it is a very beautiful creature.