Greetings from the Village - Eastern Thailand

We are back in the village for the next month – enjoying some fine R&R after a hectic schedule from this past year. The kids are learning Chinese in school and are happy to practice. Our niece of almost 5 years old informed us today that she is “tired of being a Thai girl and wants to be an American girl”. We asked her to speak some English but all she could say was “thank you” over and over again!

There is a rash of road accidents this past week – thank goodness I no longer have to take the motorcycle into town – as we have faster wifi now at the village then we do at our place in California. We spend the afternoons languidly lounging in the hammocks under our house drinking Spy Wine Coolers and if we find the energy, we may come up for some food, but often we are too lazy to even get out of the hammocks. However sometimes the food arrives on the table near the hammocks – so we then have to muster up the energy to walk a few steps over.

We were last here in August of last year during the rainy season. This time of year everything is dry – it is winter here and the daytime temperatures are usually around 33 to 35 degrees. Certainly not the 40’s that we experienced in Sydney earlier this year but still certainly warm for winter!

It is nice to see all the tropical fruit trees starting to mature that we have planted here over the past 5 years. Our jackfruit tree has finally sprung to life after 2 years and now has small fruits. Our Namibian and Zambian Mangoes that we planted from seed are also doing well. Land prices have jumped 50% in this area in the last year due to flooding in Ayuthaya in the past year. The industrial and technology zones here are on high ground, do not flood and have good electricity. A number of companies from Ayuthaya moved here after the floods.