Thai Life in Phana

Preparing for retreat in Don Chao Poo

Every year Don Chao Poo forest in Phana is taken over by hundreds of monks, novices and men and women in white who have undertaken to join them for 10 days of meditation and Buddhist teachings. The people of Phana undertake to feed them every day from 21st December to 30th December. Different villages take it in turns to do this, though other people are welcome to join them on any day. Some people go to the forest every day to offer food as the long line of monks go on the morning bindabat, or alms round.

The opening ceremony, which is not attended by the monks, will take place in the forest tomorrow morning. But for the last few days people have been preparing the forest.

Boys and girls from Udomwitayakorn Primary School near the forest have been working hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of their work has been sweeping leaves from the main entrance to the forest and collecting some of the rubbish that litters the area.

The big problem is plastic bags. People bring food for the monkeys in plastic bags and although some of the bags get put into rubbish bins, the wind and the monkeys often take them out again. Some of the monkeys also have the habit of snatching bags of food and making off into the forest with it, so bags can be found all over the place. The problem of plastic bags here needs to be looked at and something done about it. Not that there is an easy solution but I'm sure it could be alleviated.

Anyway, at least once a year something gets done and this young lad seems to be enjoying himself even if he isn't working as hard as the other boys. I wonder how he got into this priviliged position. My guess is he knows somebody.

Outside the forest, this tetsaban employee is delivering flags to line the front wall of the forest.

Leaving my car inside the forest while I went off to take photos was a big mistake.

If the schoolboys were working hard, this was playtime for the forest residents.

 

I went back to the forest today, Sunday. The monks arrive today and the tetsaban had arranged a reception counter for them.

Most of the monks have attended this annual retreat before and they knew their way around the forest. All the same, someone was on hand to greet them and help them with their camping equipment. Some of them came with a glot, the tent which looks like an umbrella when it is rolled up. This is the one which tudong monks use when they are on their travels. I couldn't get a photo of one today because monks were changing their robes at each of the ones I found.

 

Many monks are into camping equipment of a more recognisable form.

A kitchen was set up near the reception area.

It looks as if a cup of tea will soon be served. These monks will only eat once a day during the 10-day retreat but tea without milk is allowable at any time, as is water, of course.

There are several of these water tanks in the forest and part of the preparations has been to clean them out.

The most important area is this one where the monks and other meditators will sit. Straw has been laid on the ground beneath the trees and there are piles of straw in several places so  that it can be renewed when necessary.

The monks also practise walking meditation along the shady paths of the forest.
 
 

I will be returning to the forest tomorrow morning because Moo 1 where I live is the main sponsor for offering food on the first day. Because it is the first day, though, there will be hundreds of people waiting to offer food to the monks. Then I will go back on other days to see how things are going. So I hope to post again about this meditation retreat later in the week.

 
 

 

Out of the Fire, into the Frying Pan

The downturn in the global economy has reached Phana. At least one small enterprise that had been looking to expand is currently feeling the chill of currency disparities despite basing  its business on applying some pretty high temperatures.

Behind the innocent-looking facade of this rural scene on the outskirts of Phana, an unlikely business is carried out.

 

 

And this is Mr Arporn, the man who lives here. His field of expertise is in  producing chicken for human consumption. He worked away from Phana for more than twenty years but like many people he has returned here to start his own little business.

 

His career as an employee was fairly evenly spread in terms of time between five different companies. Two of them, the first and the last, were wholly Thai companies, but three of them were joint ventures, one with a Japanese company, one with a Dutch company and one with a company from New Zealand.

Mr Arporn speaks pretty good English, though naturally it is better when he is talking about chickens and chicken parts and the various processes involved in preparing them for consumption.

The business he runs behind the bamboo curtain is the production of cooking oil. He has installed what looks like a giant wok which is heated using wood as fuel. He buys chicken fat from a factory in Warin Chamrap, in Ubon Ratchathani Province. This factory is currently processing 30,000 birds a day. Roughly 70% of their product is for the export market and the remainder for domestic consumption. The meat sold on the domestic market is of lower grade than that for export. That is not quite as bad as it sounds because apparently it is mostly graded on size, the smaller size not being exported. But the lower grade does also include slightly bruised meat and meat which Mr Arporn describes as 'ugly'.

Mr Arporn buys all the chicken fat which is cut off as part of the factory process. It is delivered to him in Phana every day. He pays 12 Baht a kilo and reckons to need about 1,000 kilos a day. During the night the fat is rendered into oil in his giant wok, producing about 750 kilos of usable oil. After mixing the residue with used oil from KFC in Ubon, he supplies it to another business which produces animal feed. This mixture he sells on at 20 Baht a kilo, whereas the oil destined for use by food vendors and restaurants he sells at 25 Baht per kilo. Mr Arporn's younger brother and sister-in-law work for him, carefully decanting a measured quantity of oil into plastic bags and delivering them to customers.

The problem for the factory in Warin Chamrap and hence fro Mr Arporn at the moment is the strong Thai Baht and the relatively weak US Dollar. The factory  is processing 30,000 birds a day as I said, but this is down from the 70,000 a day up to the beginning of November and their break-even figure is 50,000 a day. So there is a lot less chicken fat coming Mr Arporn's way, and his customers are crying out for more cooking oil. The other downside for him is that the factory in Warin Chamrap had asked him to try to get more customers for the processed chicken pieces they produce, specifically in Laos and Vietnam where he has some contacts still from his years working in the industry. Laos, it seems, counts as the domestic market (ie they get the lower grade product) while Vietnam is an export grade market. Either way, Thai chicken is very expensive right now outside Thailand so demand has fallen considerably.

All of this may be more information than you needed about one of those topics that is rarely thought about and perhaps best not thought about at all. So it is probably time to draw the bamboo curtain across the subject.

 

I will just add that Mr Arporn tells me that he does eat chicken but only the scrawny, free-range local variety. Who can blame him? We do the same ourselves, buying it in the fresh market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Happy Returns to Phana

I got back to Phana yesterday from my trip to Malaysia and a few days in Bangkok. I had only been away ten days so unsurprisingly nothing had really changed. The harvest is just about completed so the fields have changed colour quite dramatically. And the weather has changed again. When I left it had got unseasonably hot again after a very brief cold spell. But when I got here at about mid-day it was immediately apparent that the cold weather was back. And by bed-time I was closing all the windows and searching for more blankets.

 

When I got back to Phana in September after six months away, there had been more significant changes so I went around taking photos. The new market and bus station was well on the way to completion, now scheduled for a December opening.

 

 

 

A private building project that had been completed was the new 'resort' just outside town. It looks very nice and has a restaurant with several items listed that I really like but can not get in Phana. Tod mun kung, for eaxample. The waitress said they had that every day so I ordered some. Not today, I was told about 15 minutes later. On my next (and probably last) visit, exactly the same thing happened. All that glitters ...

 

I'm not expecting Phana to become a major tourist destination, however. When I asked how much the bungalows were, I was quoted two prices, one for three hours and one for the night. So I guess they are not exactly aiming at too many long-term visitors. But they do quite a good trade in karaoke, even at lunch time.

The most mysterious change was to the course of the Huay Phra Lao. Upstream from the bridge the banks had been cleared and the stream revealed to be divided, whether around a small island or not I haven't been able to find out yet. The view is certainly improved and it looks as if a riverside walk is planned. Previously the stream only seemed to come from the top right of this picture. 

 

Back in 1982 I swam upstream of the bridge with our kids and some relatives. I can't imagine anyone doing that now, though doubtless it is no less wholesome than it was then and I don't remember anyone getting ill or anything. A little child nearly got swept away but wouldn't have got far because the bridge was just being built then and there was lots of bamboo scaffolding in the river forming a kind of porous dam. I think the present bridge is a newer one.

 

Downstream nothing has changed. A lot of fishing goes on at the weir, usually.

 

Who said Isan is a desert? Not here, it isn't. The Huay Phra Lao divides the old town of Ban Phana from the new town, the amphur. A few kilometres downstream it joins the larger Se Bok, which in turn flows into the Mae Nam Mun east of Ubon. The Mun in turn flows into the Mekong at Khong Chiam, and then it's all the way to the sea through Cambodia and Vietnam.

People thought I would be interested in the new machines set up around the old market place in Ban Phana and along the road where the tetsaban offices are in the amphur. But believe me, despite their lurid colours, taking these photos is the nearest I am likely to get to these things. Other people find them amusing, though, especially round about dusk. Not at the moment, perhaps. Too cold.

 

Close up they are even more off-putting.

 

More to my taste are these new kuti in Wat Phra Lao:

 

So Phana changes, but so far it still looks very nice, I think, and I can't imagine not being glad to get back here. So, many more happy returns, I hope.
 
 
 

 

Sandal Man in Phana

Phana is often the focal point for itinerant salespeople, or so it seems. I often wonder where they come from and how they get here. This morning I was standing in the street near Wat Burapha while Pensri was talking to two old friends when a man came along pushing a little trolley loaded with sandals. He was tall, thin, smartly dressed with an amazing hat, broad-brimmed and floppy with a neck-ptotecting cloth hanging down the back. He asked me if I wanted any sandals and I said I didn't but would like a photo of him. He seemed more pleased than I would have expected if I had wanted sandals.

 The strange thing is that I did want sandals, but somehow not being in a shoe shop made me forget that. Luckily he stayed around chatting to Pensri and the other women for long enough for me to remember that my current sandals were in a state of imminent collapse.

 The result was that I tried on several pairs and eventually settled on one I wanted to buy. They all cost 190 Baht and I thought there was little point in bargaining. I ended up giving him 200 Baht (That's how good I am at bargaining anyway) saying the extra 10 Baht was for the photos I took.

 And I got his story too. He came from Mahasarakham and so did the sandals. They came from a village which made them as their OTOP (One Tambon One Product). They were bought by a middleman who employs my new friend on a commission-only basis plus transport and two meals a day. The middleman has several pickup trucks. One had brought my  friend and nine others to Phana and then distributed them around different villages, one per village. They would stay a week based in Phana, being ferried to different villages each day. The driver arranged breakfast and evening meals but the sales force had to get their own food during the day, all being in different locations I suppose. At night they stay in a wat, sleeping in a sala. He didn't know exactly where they would be sleeping because the driver arranged all that. He did say that they all came equipped with their own sleeping mat, pillow and mosquito net.

 

He is a farmer but does this work when there is nothing to do on the farm except watch the rice grow. He said he had been all over the place selling sandals, including Bangkok and the South. And how much did he make out of it? 50 Baht per pair of sandals, apparently. And on a good day he might sell 20 or 30 pairs, though not all days were good. It would take a lot of luck to sell that many (like finding Cinderella, I think) because he wasn't carrying more than about 40 or maybe 50 pairs. I guess any bargaining down would have reduced his commission, not the middleman's cut. So I am glad I didn't even try. He was a really nice man: dignified, informative, proud of his work, a pleasure to talk to and listen to. I am glad I met him.