Life in Phana

Moving House in Isan Part 2

Moving house here in Phana, Isan, has finished. What happens next is that the newly-located building is going to be renovated and adapted to new purposes. As I explained in Part 1, the house has been empty for some years and it has looked increasingly sorry for itself and uncared for. But in fact many people care a lot for it and want the house to be used, to be useful, and to reflect the life and memory of Ta Rin and Yai Hom who lived in it for so long and who brought up so many young people (not just their own children) in this house.

As I also explained in Part 1, we were not in Phana on the day that the house was moved back away from the road. But we were here and I did take some photos on the day that the house was raised to its new height. I hope that the pictures will give an idea of how this was done because I think my explanation would be tedious and would probably not offer any clarification at all.  All I will say is that the raising of the house was done with great care and patience, little by little, co-ordinated, and with lots of measuring and fine adjustments before the craftsmen were satisfied that the job was done.

Once the poles had been raised, they needed to have supports added to each of their bases. My father-in-law had a traditional rice store in the lane behind the house but this, too, had not been used for years, and the lane wound round it in a way that made little sense now that traffic (motor bikes) use the lane. So the rice store was dismantled, the ancient hard wood still in excellent condition. Just how hard it was was discovered by these men who had to saw it up, albeit with an electric saw.

The new bases were fitted to the poles and they were all bedded down:

As a reminder of how far the house has been moved back, here is a photo taken before that happened:

And here is the house in its new position, awaiting the renovation and new work:

So the house has moved! Over the next few weeks I will try to record the renovation and adaptation work as it happens. We are expecting that everything will be done by about mid-January. The workmen here don't hang about once they get started.

 

Moving House in Isan Part 1

Pensri's father built this house in about 1937. It has stood here ever since but now it is moving. It moved, or was moved, about ten days ago and will move again before too long, I hope. The men who are doing the moving have taken a break for harvesting, but they are expected back any day now. 

The house didn't look like this when it was built because like the more recent houses on either side, and like all the houses in Phana at that time, it was built on stilts. Even when I first came to stay in the house in 1970, it didn't look like this. 

Several changes have been made. The currugated iron rooof had been added not long before 1970 and was seen as a big improvement on the old wooden roof. Since 1970, the ground floor has been enclosed with brick, the old wooden, folding doors replaced by the sliding security gate, the windows and window frames replaced more than once. And most disastrously for the house and the people who have lived in it, the road out front, originally just a sandy track, has gradually been raised higher and higher. For several years this caused the downstairs room to be flooded in the rainy season but eventually (and again, in at least two stages) drains have been put in along the road. But getting into the house became a matter of going down several steps, and then later a ramp when my sister-in-law bought a motor-bike.

This closer-up picture might make the situation clearer.

But the house has stood empty for the last ten years, since Pensri's sister died. Her three children are scattered, two in Bangkok and one in Lamphun, and they each have families born and growing up there, though they come up to Phana to pay respects to ancestors most years. The house belongs to the eldest son, as does the family farm, but the three of them effectively have joint ownership by mutual consent. The fields are farmed by a second cousin who lives in the soi alongside the house and most people in the family get a bit of the rice each year.

For several years now the older members of the family have talked about renovating the house but it hasn't been quite clear what the purpose of that would be, other than out of respect for their parents and in memory of all the people who lived in the house in their childhood years. But finally minds have been made up, agreements made, money collected, plans made. I will write about these in a later post.

For now, this is what was done first. The walls enclosing the downstairs area have been knocked down. The bricks and mortar will serve as the base for the new ground floor, which must be raised to the level of the road, or above it, preferably.

  

 And here is the house after the ground has been brought up to road level by filling with sand.

In this picture you can see how the house has been moved back from the road, on some sort of trolleys apparently.

Unfortunately, this was done while we were in Ubon. We had expected that it would be done the following day and we would have watched, but the men worked hard and late so that they could go harvesting the next day, and so we missed it.

And that is how the house stands at the moment. The next stage will be to lift it higher, but that will have to wait about a week because the men who will do the lifting are the ones who have gone off to do some harvesting. Harvesting is better paid, and can't wait, so that's fair enough. We will just have to be patient.

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.

More than one way to make merit

There is more than one way to make merit, but in Thailand the most common way is to donate to a temple. Putting some money into a donation box is easy. Putting some money into an envelope and handing it to a monk is easy, too. Many people do one and/or the other frequently. But there are other ways to make merit by donating. In my last post, I wrote about people in the village of Ban Noen That donating land and money for the good of the community. And on our visit to Kalasin earlier this year, we came across a common form of donation: donating one's skill and labour.

We had called at Ban Sema village on our way to the provincial capital of Kalasin Province. Ban Sema is part of an ancient settlement known as Muang Fadaet Songyang, and the village gets its name from the large number of sandstone boundary markers (sema) found in Wat Pho Chai Semaram. The women in the picture above were weaving mats. The women on the right were doing the 'finishing' and were also in charge of sales.

 

 

 The materials seen here were almost certainly provided by people who purchased them for donation, but perhaps did not have the time or skill to make the mats. The materials are sourced locally and the skill is one which local people will have practised for a very long time. It's not a skill that is found uniquely here, of course, but often a village would supply mats or whatever within a limited area, perhaps exchanging their product for something produced in another nearby village. It is this tradition that OTOP (One Tambon One Product) is based on, although the success of OTOP relies on making products available to a wider market.

 

The mats are made for sale and the proceeds are ear-marked to pay for this structure where meditation practice will take place. Around the perimeter you can see sema in place. These are of plain sandstone. There are other larger ones with bas relief but those are kept in a covered space. Apparently people walk around where these plain ones are, practicing walking meditation I think, and the path gets very muddy in the rainy season. And so the concrete will make it easier to walk here at any time of year. 

 

This man is one of several who have also donated their labour and skill to building the structure. A monk invited me to donate a can of krating daeng to keep this man going. In the meantime, Pensri was demonstrating her bargaining skills. The mats were offered to her at 300 Baht each, so she took six for 2,000 Baht.

As I said, there is more than one way to make merit.

 

I think that sweeping leaves must be a major way to make merit for monks. If you visit almost any monastery in Isan there will be at least one monk sweeping the leaves. Morning or afternoon. I sometimes wonder whether the task is allocated as a penance. It is certainly an excellent reminder of the impermanence of any state.

 
 You can read more about Wat Po Chai Semaram HERE  on my other site, Isan Traveller.

 

 

Education and social mobility in Isan

Social mobility, or the lack of it, is often cited as a reason for the discontent in Thailand, and in Isan particularly. The same goes for education, or the lack of it. And lack of education is the usual explanation given for the lack of social mobility.

At the last election I attended a meeting in a village in Phana district at which all the main candidates spoke to a crowd of villagers. Most of them mentioned the need for more educational opportunities for people in the area. This didn't really go down very well because the people of Phana are proud of their education, and make the most of their educational opportunities. Phana had the second government primary school in Ubon Province when Udomwitayakorn was started in 1910 (2453), 12 years after the first one in Ubon itself. People from this school became teachers in schools all over  Isan as the government gradually increased the number of schools in the region. And even before the government opened a secondary school in Phana in 1963, many people had gone from Phana to Bangkok to get degrees. Still today, education is highly valued here, and to become a teacher is a sure sign of social mobility.

Nowadays the number of students attending Phanasuksa School is almost 1500 and 98% of those complete the six years of secondary schooling and many go on to universities throughout Thailand. Quite a few girls and boys attend secondary schools in Ubon, too.

The woman pictured here is a good example of what can be done if parents have the determination to help their children get on though education. Pensri met her at Wat Burapha during the time that preparations were being made for the celebration of the abbot's promotion. Then she saw her again while out cycling and invited her to our house. She and her husband are farmers but she also weaves cloth, as has always been the tradition, especially in the dry season when there is little to do in the fields. She brought with her a selection of the silk cloth that she has woven.

 

 

 

The pieces of cloth are 2m long and 1m wide, but are cut from a piece 14m in length. She buys silk cloth from Korat and Surin and dyes it herself, using some natural and some chemical dyes deopending on the colour.  It usually takes her two days to weave a 2m length and she sells it for 1,500 baht. But those two days don't take account of the time she spends setting up the loom and dying the thread.

 

Pensri bought one piece and then brought out a piece she had bought at the Phana Weaving Co-operative a year or two ago. This is the classic Phana design and most of what this woman weaves is a variation on this basic design.

It turned out that the woman had woven this piece, too.

It seems that her youngest daughter is currently at university in Bangkok, taking a degree in education that will enable her to become a teacher in a secondary school. The money which her mother earns from her weaving is what is seeing her through her studies. It is not money which is easily earned, and not everyone has the talent and the ability to weave like this. But given talent, and determination, it is possible for people in Isan to provide an education for their children, and for that education to provide upward social mobility. But it needs hard work by parents and children (and some dedicated teachers) in order to succeed.

This woman's face seems to me to portray all that is best in Isan: she has the look of a strong, determined, intelligent and kindly person. She brought with her one of her grand-daughters. I am sure that she too will benefit from the education that she will get in Phana.

 

 

Second-crop Rice

I have been watching the second-crop rice grow in a field next to the Phana by-pass for about three months now. When I first noticed it back in January it had only recently been planted, or transplanted. That was later than is usual for the second crop here, but then the first crop was harvested later than usual because the rain was delayed so long last year. 

Not all the farmers in Phana can grow a second crop. They need access to water in the dry season. Some of them have dug their own ponds and are able to retain sufficient water to irrigate their fields. Others, like this farmer, are lucky enough to have fields next to one of our rivers. This is the Huay Phra Lao (huay being a good Lao word for small-medium sized river) as it passes right next to the field:

The farmer pumps water out of the river ... 

... and into the field:

Now all she has to do is keep the monkeys away. But as I have shown previously, she is well armed. Or her children are.

Community Action Avoided

I am all in favour of positive, practical community action and get involved in a lot of things here in Phana. In return I get recognition that makes me feel less of an outsider. But the annual communal effort right behind our house is something that I always avoid. 

There is a klong (คลอง) or canal running there from the roadside back towards the fields. It's called a klong but it is really a long, narrow, curving pond since it doesn't go anywhere or connect with any other stretch of water. Although it is right behind our house there is a strip of land belonging to our neighbour that comes betweeen the back of our house and the bank of the klong, so we don't have any waterfront. 

There is a notice which tells people not to dump rubbish in there and another which says they should not take fish from it. People out the back do take water from it in the dry season to water vegetables they grow in their nearby fields.

 

It looks nice right now but that is not the way it always looks. In the rainy season the water is dark and murky, home to lots of frogs which are in turn preyed on by all sorts of snakes. The snakes come from the coconut orchard swamp across the road you can just make out in the top of the picture. The frogs let the snakes know where they are by setting up a kind of come-and-get-me serenade each evening. In the dry season the surface is quickly covered in a thick growth of weeds and it is this which has to be dealt with by the good people of Moo 1 before the next rainy season comes around. They start early in the morning, accompanied by loud music, shouting, teasing, laughter, and a good deal of flirting if you ask me. They stop quite early, too, for lunch and alcoholic refreshment of the strong, illicit variety. But in fairness, this is now not just the dry season but the HOT dry season.

Last year I went out the back and took some photos of them at work. That was a bit cheeky, perhaps, and unsurprisingly they invited me to join them in the task. Later they invited me to join them for lunch and refreshments. They seemed to take my refusal in good spirits and I hope that I was able to convey to them my admiration for the work they were doing. But I really didn't want to get as down and dirty as this man was; I don't trust murky waters and what might lurk in them.

 

This year I was conveniently litter-picking in Don Chao Poo, but I took this next picture (and the one at the top of this post) a few days later when it became clear that they were not going to complete the job. I hope they are not waiting for me to go out and do my share.

 

 

Model Agriculture Centre, Phana -- Livestock Update

Life at the Model Agriculture Centre in Phana goes on. And how. We re-visited a few days ago and in the few months since we were last there we found the following new arrivals:

31 piglets, 3 geese, 1 foal, all of them born there. New donations (nobody seemed to know exactly why they had been donated or whether they had a place there other than as pets) were 4 rabbits and 1 guinea-pig.

It also seems that a more accurate rendering of the Centre's name would be something like:

Centre for Training and Distribution for Self-Sufficient Agriculture

But that seems a bit of a mouthful so for the purpose of updating my previous posts, I have stuck with the first name.

The photos are large on this post, partly because I like them that way but also because they more or less speak for themselves so there will be very little text.

My favourite, and the one I went back hoping to see; born a month ago:

 

 

These piglets are a couple of months old, but it seems quite a small litter ...

 

... especially when compared to these 11 one-month olds ...

 

... or the 14 little ones here, less than a week old.

 

The two geese strutting about in the previous post are the parents of these three, but they have been separated so that the little ones can receive special care in a safer environment. 

 

The staff of the centre are preparing for the frog breeding season by building nursery ponds (anuban!) since frogs tend to cannibalise their offspring, or some of them.

 

And here are some of the other newcomers. Click on the pics to enlarge them if you want to see a rabbit and a guinea-pig. They are not that often seen in Thailand.

 

 

And finally ... here's a pig that would like to be taken for an Asiatic Black Bear:

 

Appliance of Science at the Model Agriculture Centre, Phana

The appliance of science was the tag-line on a series of advertisements in the UK some years back. I think it was used by a company producing fridges and freezers. The phrase came back to me when I visited the Model Agriculture Centre in Tambon Phra Lao, Phana. It seems that this piece of equipment is proving of interest to lots of local farmers. It is only of use to them if they are keeping pigs, however. That is because it relies on a good quantity of pig dung to be produced and collected as often as possible. Here are Pensri and  the young man in charge explaining to each other how it works. He explained the day-to-day running and Pensri explained a bit of the practical chemistry behind it. The dog found it all very interesting but made no comment.

The first step is to collect as much pig dung as possible. That is not a problem here as my next post updating the post about livestock will show. The dung is washed into the strong plastic storage tank through this aperture:

The tank is filled to about half its capacity with the slurry of pig dung mixed with water. Methane gas is given off and rises to fill the tank. A pipe connects the tank with a gas cooker through this pipe arching over the water containers. An offshoot of the pipe leads into the inverted plastic bottle which has water in the bottom and a hole cut into the top. The short piece of pipe going into the bottle has a valve which allows gas into the bottle if the pressure is too great. The gas then bubbles through the water and escapes into the air through the hole in the bottle. The purpose of the water is so that if bubbles are seen then it is apparent that the gas pressure is too high. Ingeneous, eh?

Here you see the gas ring, actually a double ring, hence the divided pipe and the two taps. Depending on how much heat you require, you open one or both of the taps. Of course, the gas supply could be attached to a more sophisticated cooker if required.

 

 

About 10 kgs of pig dung is collected here each day and fed into the tank. Enough methane gas is produced to provide all the fuel the half dozen or so workers need in order to cook their food and heat water for tea.

 

The tank is emptied every few days by running off liquid from the end of the tank. Bacterial action inside the tank destroys the fecal matter and there is no smell from the run-off. However, the tank that collects the run-off is normally covered.

Honey Trap?

Another low-tech but effective piece of local ingenuity is featured here. They were not in use, but covered in sand, so I suppose that is where they had previousy been placed.

 

They are about 20 cm tall and perhaps 14 cm across at the widest point. They are like modified jars in that the open neck has a stopper in the form of a ball, but with a skewer through it that prevents it being accidentally removed.

 

But the most important modification to the jar design is the little doorway and metal flap near the base. The flap is very light and the smallest push will open it inwards. But it won't open outwards!

 

So what was this designed to trap? Answers, please, on an electronic postcard. No prizes, though; it's not so difficult, I think.