Steve and Jemjahn go to Thailand, 2003

 

Home page

1. I Agreed to What?

2. Flight to Bangkok

3. Bangkok, at Last

4. The King's Birthday

5. Jem's Old Home in the Village

6. New Rice Storage House

7. Rice = Money

8. Mealtime

9. Jem's Family

10. Impressions of the Village

11. The Mall in Korat

12. Gordon and Pu

13. Pink Palace

14. Village Elementary School

15. Two Temples

16. Visiting Cousin Loy

17. Jem and Village Headman

18. Phimai

19. Back to Bangkok

20. Looking for Our Old House

21. Shopping

22. Thai People, My Impressions

23. Photography

24. Language

25. Flight Back Home

 

Kohn's Corner    

 

10. Impressions of the Village

Surprisingly noisy

-- roosters crowing even before dawn

-- then the 2-stroke motorbikes

-- and the farm trucks (at right), with 11 hp, 2-cylinder diesel engines that sound like idling Harleys

-- and pickup trucks selling vegetables and household merchandise, their wares announced with loudspeakers

-- plus a radio, TV or stereo heard through neighbors’ open windows

-- and the drone of boys’ kites singing in the steady winds of the dry season

 

 

 

 

Not all that scenic

-- certainly not clean and scenic like German villages

-- lot of rusty corrugated tin, trash lying around, dirt streets  

-- but monks from the local temple "begging" for their daily morning meal never fails to impress

-- and children max out  on the cuteness scale

 

Rice the staff of life

-- fields surrounding the village as far as the eye can see

-- villagers walk or ride bicycles from their homes to their fields

-- farming probably main topic of conversation

 

No longer isolated

-- now a paved 2-lane road from the village to the nearby highway

 

Houses becoming modern

-- now more often concrete   than wood

-- often elevated ... in the past for animals, now probably for parking

(but don't see how this house could survive a stiff wind)

next: The Mall in Korat