Life in Phana

Too busy to blog

This blog has not been updated for some time now. (It has, in fact, just yesterday, which shows how long it has taken me to get this one posted.) I’m not sure whether this is because I have been too busy (I HAVE been busy) or because I have lost some of my former enthusiasm for blogging. I suspect that it is a combination of the two and that the things I have been busy with have supplanted blogging at the forefront of my attention. That, and the fact that this blog is about ‘Life in Phana’ and inevitably my life here has become more routine and less of a novelty to me.

So what have I been busy doing? Well, back in April I had to leave the country to renew my visa. Usually I just go across the border to Laos at Chong Mek, and I’m back home a few hours after I left. But this time I couldn’t do that because there was not enough space in my passport for a Lao visa – it fills a whole page, and then there is the departure stamps from Thailand and Laos, and the new arrival stamp into Thailand. So I decided to go down to Singapore, which I had never visited before. The Air Asia flights to and from Ubon made good connections at Suvannaphumi Airport, so the travelling was all quite straightforward. Except that when we arrived at Singapore there was a fierce storm out of sight below the clouds so we circled round for more than an hour and then ran out of fuel and were diverted to Johor Bahru in Malaysia. There we had to wait while a Singapore Airlines plane on the same errand was refueled ahead of us.

We stayed four nights in Singapore, at the Rider’s Lodge, a friendly and pleasantly calm place to stay away from the city centre. It is set in a nice garden and is part of something called Turf City, which was probably once a race course and is now home to lots of activities like horse-riding, gymnastics and dog-training, all housed in the old stable blocks.

 

One of the oddities of the Rider’s Lodge is that it is Indian-owned and largely Indian staffed, but one of the selling-points in its brochure is that you can “re-live the colonial experience” while staying there. That seems very generous, but hopefully it does not give mem sahibs the right to be beastly to the staff!

We ate in a nearby Indian restaurant on two nights, a French restaurant one night, and once next to the Singapore River at Siem Reap II, which is part of the Indo-Chine restaurant outside the Asian Cultural Centre. One lunch-time we had some excellent tapas. What we didn’t have is Singapore noodles, my standby when eating Chinese food in England.

Singapore has the reputation of being extremely well-ordered, but this photo I took suggests that not all is as it perhaps should be:

 

I take it this is not one of them trying to get away.

For a big, modern city, Singapore has plenty of open spaces and we spent some time at Bukit Timah where there are walking trails through the forested hillside

 

and on another day we visited the McRitchie Reservoir Park:

At both places there are long-tailed macaques, which of course was why we went there. Both places were recommended by Dr Michael Gumert, an associate professor at Nanyang University and an expert on long-tailed macaques. We were lucky enough to spend a very pleasant evening with him over a meal at Picotin, the French bistro in Turf City. The situation regarding these monkeys is very different from here in Phana. The monkeys, though, are much the same:

Back in Phana, time may stand still, but people are always on the move. So my next post, I think, will be about some of the recent comings and goings.

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 Garden Resort

Phana Garden Resort is the only place of its kind in Amphur Phana. It opened in September 2009 in spacious grounds which have been well-maintained as  the 'garden' in the name of the resort.

The frontage is welcoming by day ...

... and by night.

The building nearest to the road is this open-air restaurant:

 As with many things in Phana, the town's iconic monkeys are represented. Here they figure behind the bar.

As well as the open-air restaurant, there is another room, air-conditioned, which can be used for entertaining large groups to lunch or evening meal, or as a meeting room seating up to 80 people. The resort has only a small number of rooms available for accommodation, and most of their business seems to be providing spaces for meetings and celebrations. There are two snooker rooms which seem to be well patronised and so do the two karaoke rooms, of course.

The sleeping accommodation consists of five small one-bed units like these, three of them with air-conditioning and two of them with a fan only. All have a toilet and hot and cold showers. With air-con the price is 470 Baht per day, and with a fan it is 310 Baht per day.

Two larger units with veranda and carpeted floor are 630 Baht a day, and there is one two-bedroom unit with veranda at 960 Baht a day. Breakfast is not included in the price, but it can be provided if ordered the previous night.

This karaoke room can seat 15 people:

The resort is about 1 km from the amphur office, 2 kms from the new market and bus station. The area where the resort is situated is still green and pleasant as this view looking out to the road from the open-air restaurant shows.

At present, the resort is used mainly by people returning to Phana usually  for some sort of family ceremony that means more people attending than the local family members can accommodate. If some of the ideas being proposed as part of the Community Based Tourism initiative in Amnat Charoen Province came to fruition, then Phana Garden Resort will play an important role. People staying there can be sure of friendly and helpful service and a comfortable night's sleep.

Community-Based Tourism

I am not sure I fully understand what the Thai Tourism Authority understands by Community-Based Tourism. But Amnat Charoen is one of two provinces (the other is in the south of Thailand) that is going to run a CBT pilot project. I need to understand what is meant because I have been co-opted onto the Provincial committee that is to draw up plans for the different amphur in the province. My job is to 'collect data'. I wasn't at the original committee meeting (though Pensri is one of the Phana representatives and she was there) so I can interpret data collection pretty much as I please, I think.

Tourists already come to Phana, almost all of them Thais coming from other parts of the country. They  visit Wat Phra Lao and sometimes Don Chao Poo Forest Park. On average, they spend no more than 30 minutes in Phana before getting back into their big tour bus or private car and heading off to the next stop on their itinerary.

These tourists are in no way based in our community. They donate to the wat, no doubt, and those going to Don Chao Poo purchase some food (not necessarily appropriate food) for the monkeys there. But Phana gains little or nothing from their visit

What I have done so far is produced  a document outlining what Amphur Phana has to offer to tourists so that they might spend more time here and provide some income-generating opportunities for Phana people.

SITES TOURISTS COULD VISIT IN AMPHUR PHANA

• Wat Phra Lao -- 300-year-old temple and famous Buddha image
• Wat Ban I-Keng -- attractive wat in a nearby village 
• Wat Ban Sao-Ree --village wat with school for novices 12 - 18 years old
• Wat Don Kwan --new(ish) wat in Tambon Phana; largest black Buddha image in Isan; 2nd tallest Phra That under construction
• Don Chao Poo Forest Park -- Buddha images, Chao Poo shrine, monkeys
• Weaving groups: Ban Phana, Ban Pathum Kaew; Ban Soi (silk production from mulberry leaves to cloth)
• Traditional Medicine Centre: Traditional Massage (treatment and training); herbal medicine production and sales
•  Model Agricultural Centre, at Fai Rong Hin, Phra Lao Municipality
•  School visit(s)
•  Noodle-shops and restaurants

ACCOMMODATION: at Phana Garden Resort

INCOME-GENERATING OPPORTUNITIES: Phana Garden Resort, Noodle-shops and Restaurants, Taxi and bus services, Hire of bicycles, Purchase of woven products, Purchase of herbal medicines, Purchase of traditional massage services, Invitations to donate for site visits:

REQUIREMENTS BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION:

• “Come to Phana” brochure produced, in Thai and in English

• “Come to Phana” brochure to be made available at TAT offices in Amnat Charoen, Ubon Ratchathani, Yassothon, Si Sa Ket, Bangkok, etc. And on TAT web-site.

• Production of bi-lingual informational guide leaflets to individual sites; to be made available at the sites, and at Phana Garden Resort, Amphur Offices, Tetsaban offices and OPT offices

• Production of map of Phana district showing facilities, routes and distances; to be made available as guide leaflets above

• English-language menus compiled and made available in noodle-shops and restaurants

• Purchase of bicycles for hire; to be made available at a central location where they are easily available and can be checked for repair, etc. (eg Tetsaban Phana IT Centre at the Old Market)

I suspect that 'Home-Stay' might be part of the TAT definition of CBT, but to me there seems little point in  making all the arrangements that would entail until it becomes clear that there is demand for it from tourists. It would be different if there were not already somewhere to stay. But a visit I recently made to a 'Cultural Village' in Kalasin Province suggests that what might be envisaged is putting on some sort of  cultural performance for large groups of tourists who would be put up in village homes. But this means inspecting and certifying the homes, and preparing to entertain groups which might never materialise. That seems to me a recipe for disillusionment and cynicism. To be fair, at the village in Kalasin it did seem to be working to a certain extent, but that is down to the village being entirely populated by an ethnic group that is sufficiently 'different' to create interest, and whose culture is sufficiently well-maintained that there is likely to be little about it that is specially put on for tourists. I am not sure that Amphur Phana is sufficiently different in that respect, but it does have enough to interest someone for a stay of, say, two days. We shall see what, if anything, comes of this initiative.

 

(No photos with this post, but I expect to be posting about the various sites as I go about 'collecting data'.)

When is an expat not an expat?

Writing about my friend Al recently, I was reminded of an encounter I had with a particularly obnoxious Englishman in Khong Chiam a couple of years back. I was researching restaurants for a guide book at the time and he told me that no farangs like Thai food so I was wasting my time. I pointed out that in England Thai restaurants were very popular and he replied that he couldn't live in England any more. When I asked him why that was, he said that there were too many immigrants in England and they made no effort to integrate, in particular they insisted on having their own food and did not learn to speak English. This seemed pretty rich coming from what I had already learned about him and I certainly did not detect any sense of irony in his remarks.

I pointed out to him that he and I are both immigrants in Thailand but he refuted this. We are expats, he told me. What is the difference, I asked. His answer to that was: "I should think the difference is obvious."

What is obvious, I think, is what he was implying.

A result of this encounter has been that I have developed a dislike of the word 'expat', seeing it as denoting a sense of superiority. I realise that this is not entirely rational, or at least is not fully deserved. Some of my best friends are expats, as they say. There is some evidence, however, that the word is not exactly neutral. People from neighbouring countries who come to work in Thailand are referred to as 'migrant workers' whereas office workers in Bangkok who come from further afield are always known as expats. There is surely an implied racial (but not necessarily racist, let me be clear) element to phrases such as 'expat hang-outs' and 'expat food'. I am reminded that Pensri worked in the UK for 30+ years, held a UK passport before arriving, and was often referred to as an immigrant, but never ever as an expat.

But whether a word is neutral or loaded (postively or negatively) is often a matter of intention on the part of the speaker or interpretation on the part of the hearer. For me, 'farang' is a neutral word on most occasions, but I think I can tell when the intention is otherwise, and that is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. 

Time for some help from reference books. The Chambers Thesaurus entries for 'expat' and 'immigrant' are sugestive of a difference in emphasis: EXPAT: emigrant, emigre, exile, refugee, displaced person. It seems that the emphasis here is on someone who has LEFT their native country. IMMIGRANT: incomer, settler, migrant, newcomer, new arrival, alien. Here the emphasis is on ARRIVAL.

Two dictionary definitions (Shorter Oxford) suggest the same thing but also add the idea of temporary and permanent residence: EXPAT: person living abroad, especially for a long period. IMMIGRANT: person who comes as a permanent resident to a country other than one's native land.

So in the end, there seems no doubt that whatever I may think about the word, since I am still a permanent resident of the UK who spends a lot of time abroad, when I am in Thailand  for six months as I am now, I am most definitely an expat. That is not the conclusion I had expected to reach, but I am comfortable with it nonetheless. The all-embracing term 'foreigner' is still more to my liking, but I am less happy about 'alien'. But there we are. Call me what you like.

 

Dolphin Bay Resort

I have just spent a few days at Dolphin Bay Resort where our daughter Darunee is staying with Adam and their three little girls. The bay is home to dolphins which can sometimes be seen from boat trips around the nearby Monkey Island, which in its turn is home to a tribe of macaque monkeys. I don't know how they got there but I suppose they are either happy there or don't remember how to get back. That sort of thing happens to lots of us in Thailand.

A more correct but perhaps less tourist-friendly name for Dolphin Bay is Ao Sam Roi Yod, and it is very near the entrance to the national park.

I am reliably informed that the beaches further south are better, mostly in the sense that there is shade nearer to the sea, but there are plenty of resorts along this stretch of the coast between Hua Hin and Prachuab Kiri Khan so perhaps the main attraction here at the moment is that it is a quiet and relaxed (rather than exciting) area. The resorts are all low-rise and set back from the beach, hidden really until you get up close. Quite a few foreigners, mostly Europeans, have also bought properties round here.

 

 

The main draw of Dolphin Bay Resort is that it sells itself as being "family friendly" and it is. Almost everybody there last week was with children, and on the day we arrived unbooked there were just two rooms available. Although there are not many facilities, they are perfect for small children.

 

 

The swimming pool has three sections, one for swimmers, one for less-confident child swimmers or those with arm-bands, and one for paddling. Our 16-month old grand-daughter loved the paddling pool and practised her walking in it without the usual falls onto hard ground.

 

Most of the accommodation is in rooms some of them with connecting doors. There are also about 30 semi-detached bungalows, some of them also with connecting rooms, ideal for families. There is also one 6-bedroom house and there were several extended families staying there who would have found this ideal, except that one family had already booked it.

 

The Resort served breakfast, lunch and evening meals buffet style, and most people opted for this. You could also order individual dishes and drinks directly from the poolside bar. Pensri and I mostly ate a little way down the road at a small restaurant run by a friendly young woman called Dao and her family. Dao spoke English fairly well and the food was excellent. Naturally, a lot of it was seafood, all very fresh and locally caught. Next door you could get massage from some tough-looking women who claimed to have been trained at Wat Po. That means joint-stretching as well as some probing and squeezing of muscles.

The website for Dolphin Bay Resort is here. For me, one of the nice things about our stay was meeting up with Mike and Duen from Prachuab Kiri Khan. Mike's blog is a mine of information about this area and other things Thai.