We arrived back in Phana yesterday afternoon but didn't get out at all. Stayed in, unpacked, received a few visitors, inspected the house for snakes under various things, went early to bed (like everyone else in Phana).
4 a.m. Woken by tokay gecko eating the house again. Had noticed a couple of new holes last night, but mostly he likes to chew on concrete beams.
4.45 Woman next door (across a vacant lot of mostly weeds and coconut trees) put on radio. Seemed to be some kind of chanting. Quite melodic, so possibly dhammakaya.
5.00 a.m. Her radio broadcasts a dhamma talk by a monk. Very serious of course, and this continues until at least
By the time he has finished it is 6 a.m. so we might as well get up. By 6.30 we are playing badminton out on the front drive, interrupted by several people who tell us that we are back (!) and a man on a motorbike selling sweet green rice of the new early crop (khao maow). We buy some, then a distant cousin comes by on her motorbike and we buy some for her, too. 20 baht a bag, not bad. Pensri and I both remember aloud (as we always do when we see/eat/think about khao maow) about how her mother used to come to Bangkok in the 60s and 70s with bags of this green rice for all her daughters and nephews and nieces.
The next interruption to our exercise regime is the arrival of the garbage truck at about 6.45. There is a new system and the tetsaban has provided us with two new dustbins. Instead of having one bin permanently at the roadside, on the far side of the road, we now have to put our bin outside our gate whenever we want it emptied. There will still be daily collections.
After the badminton we inspected the garden, looking especially for our new coconut trees and a guava tree. These had been donated by the government via the tetsaban in our absence, and so that they wouldn’t be wasted, someone from the tetsaban planted them for us. They seem to have chosen appropriate spots, so no replanting is going to be needed. I didn't take any pics of sprouting coconuts, but I took some of the current crop of flowers. I can't include them here, though because our broadband hasn't been reinstated yet. The telephone was cut off because the amount we had paid in advance wasn't quite enough. But they immediately reconnected it when we said we would go over to Amnat Charoen this afternoon to pay up. I can't see the phone company back in UK taking our word like that. So now I am using my old cslox dialup connection which takes forever to load a picture.
We were already sitting on the verandah eating breakfast by the time the National Anthem came over the tetsaban loudspeakers, followed by their daily notices which today chiefly concerned an open invitation for people to tum boun at Wat Phra Lao for phansa. The announcer must have had more topics to inform us of, but we weren't taking any notice I'm afraid. By 8.30 she had finished, and in all probability we can now settle down to enjoy a nice quiet day. Would you bet on that?
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