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A week of little doings this week. So not very much to write about I’m afraid (to your relief I’m sure). I was aghast at the number of typos in the last blog, so aim to rectify that in this one and make it prefect.

Crap news from back home arrived in the shape of an email from the tenants – they don’t want to take the house beyond the end of the tenancy agreement. This means that I have to find tenants from half way across the world; or rather, press upon those back home to find me tenants that won’t make the place in to a cannabis farm, crack den or brothel (or all three). If anyone reading this knows of anyone wanting a delightful, furnished, affordable 2-bed back-to-back terrace for 500 nicker a month in Leeds then do drop me a line.

I was horrified this week to find myself yanking a hair out of my ear. Two centimeters long. How foul, but luckily it was sun-kissed. My arms are also turning a nice shade of brown, although a little over-exposure last weekend on a 40km bike ride has seen much of my skin decide to leave my arms. I am cultivating a definite T-shirt tan; my torso is still as lily-white as when I left Blighty (and a little flabbier I suspect), and my legs seem impervious to everything the sun throws at them.

This week I have tried in vain to find a witty comment about a Thai chain of supermarkets going by the name of ‘Big C’. So far I have been unable to crowbar any sort of pun or play on words or relation to actual cancer from the name. I guess it’s a subject that simply isn’t funny, unless you count the line in Rhythm Is A Dancer by Snap!, which can be enjoyed about 160 seconds in to this.

Thursday saw Adam and I invited to the Sisters house for supper. It was the blandest cuisine I have had since I last ate at the Sisters house. I couldn’t find any chilli flakes to throw at the spag bol, pork cuts or chicken legs, so ate it without flavour. It was a novelty to reacquaint myself with knives as a piece of cutlery; Thais generally eat with a fork and a spoon and ensure that there is never any need to cut meat in meals by making everything bite sized. Usually though the meat is cooked on the bone, meaning you crunch down unexpectedly on bone or, if you spot it, try to carve/stab/scrape the meat away from the bone with fork and spoon. Not very easy and probably why surgeons use scalpels rather than teaspoons. The alternatively is to lob the meat in your gob and let your teeth skeletonize the meat, then gob it back out on to your plate. Either way, I’m usually left with a small pile of gristle and bone on the side of my plate after most meals. I ask that you all try to cut meat with a spoon. Go on. Anyway, the Sisters had laid knives out and I found it so very easy to slice through animal flesh using one with accuracy and without frustration.

Dessert was gorgeous, a chocolate heart-attack on top of a biscuit base that you find in cheesecake. Delicious. Chatter was generally about plans after school; Sister Deanna heads to the Philippines on the 19th February and returns after I have finished at St. John’s. Sister Vin (a new nun who is only here for 2 or 3 months before heading to Tanzania) was very keen to impart her knowledge of Vietnam when I mentioned I may be heading there. All of us chatted about how much of an experience it’s been for everyone having me (and lately Adam) here; general feedback is good. That was about it really.

Friday saw a day of activities in the school; the morning devoted to ‘academic’ activities from each of the departments. There was bingo from maths (it has numbers); throwing darts at balloons from the science teachers (flying is sort of science); karaoke from..er…don’t know; English karaoke from the English department, alongside thrill-a-minute scrabble; food from the social sciences; a globe from geography (still showing the USSR); and a few other bits and bobs. The kids from Mahathai primary school came down too so the place was busy. A bit of an aside here but I have been impressed by the range of plaits the girls show in their hair; you have your common pigtails but also the very intricate like spirals around the head and the like. I’ve half a mind to photograph some sometime. I wonder whether it’s due to the lack of variety in hair colour that makes them try to do different things. Anyway, it’s by the by. The activities went well and largely without mishap. The kids were being charged for the bingo and the darts and the Thai karaoke and the food and all proceeds were (I think) going towards the Haiti aid effort. Overall, 50 quid was raised which will go to digging some poor blighters out of rubble or giving them a tent and water.

The afternoon’s activities were all Valentine’s Day related. This basically involved a talk about love from Sister Deanna, handing out of little paper hearts to all pupils with shorts extracts from the Bible about love (Corinthians chapter 13 for those who like that sort of stuff) and also me and Adam being volunteered to read the aforementioned chapter out. Say what you like about the Bible (“it’s a load of bloody bobbins which can be interpreted in so many different ways it makes it virtually useless as written set of guidelines for modern society to run its life by” for example) but reading the passage out was quite enjoyable; it had a nice rhythm about it.

Did you know the Bible also has an ISBN? Seems pretty pointless to me “Excuse me, have you a copy of the Bible in stock?”, “sorry, which book?”, “the Bible”, “nope, sorry, I don’t know what you’re on about, have you got the ISBN and I’ll look it up?”.

The kids were let out early to descend like a plague of child-shaped locusts on the street vendors outside the school and then the teachers were invited to a re-run of the heart-giving exercise. Interminably dull. Friday done and dusted at school and back in Chiang Khan, I wandered down to the river to watch the sun set with a couple of beers. It really is very pleasant watching the big red disc sink into the ground as the distant mountains turn various shades of violet, whilst the people potter about on the river catching fish. Whilst sat there I was waved over by three men. They asked what I thought of Chiang Khan and explained that they were here for the weekend on behalf of Channel 7 television, and pointed over to a camera taking shots of street vendors and tourists. For a fleeting moment I thought I was about to get on national TV but thankfully I wasn’t lumped in front of the camera. We chatted a little longer about England and what I was up to before one of the fellas, after me asking “what have you got planned this weekend then?”, motioned the international sign for shagging – thrusting of groin and arms held slightly out to the sides. Bloody TV execs eh? I made my excuses and retired to a beer, some distance away.

Saturday was an early start, like all Saturdays recently it seems. It was another Sports Day, this time for the teachers of the non-state schools in Loei. Up at 5am, we had to be in Loei for 7am for the start of the parade through town. Arriving at about 6.45 I was overjoyed to see a completely empty schoolyard where all the schools were meant to meet. At about 7.30am everyone else started coming along in dribs and drabs. By about 8am we were ready to wander the streets causing traffic issues and to be gawped at by the early morning citizens of Loei. Adam and I were volunteered (a common theme) to carry the St. John’s banner. The banner was about 10 feet long by 3 feet wide and was to be carried at chest height, length ways. This involved carrying it with my arms in a position probably used by the CIA/FBI to illegally extract confessions from wrong-looking Arabs in the dusty, war-torn streets of Kabul. After what felt like an hours march about the town we finally headed to the venue for the days proceedings – Loei’s ‘Health Encouragement Exercise Service Centre’; or the towns indoor sports complex. I say complex, it was about as complex as a big box with lines on the floor. There was, as far as I could work out, knockout volleyball and football competitions and a tug of war. I had been drafted in to the 5-a-side football team (along with 14 others…) so received a strip, a fetching maroon not too far removed from Heart of Midlothian’s strip. I was also placed in the tug of war team, more for weight advantage than any show of strength.

Almost immediately, the music started. They essentially reversed a flat-bed trucks worth of speakers in to the big, echoing sportsbox and pressed play. Then for good measure threw in some commentators screaming over the music, commentating on the games. Then for further good measure, each school had brought with them an assortment of drums, cymbals and tambourines, which were all then thrown around in a dustbin for about 10 hours solid. The sheer noise, pounding ‘rhythms’, mass of balloons and banners and costumes were as close as I’ll ever get to discovering what Indiana Jones found in the Temple of Doom, minus the sacrifices. And the hat. Kind of Indiana Jones and the gaily-decorated Temple of Gaudy Doom.

Amongst this, the male teachers cracked open the white whiskey and beer. The female teachers regressed to teenage girls and screamed and danced and also drank. I avoided the booze for a while; citing my ability to play footy better when not trying to kick two balls.

First up was tug of war, which we actually won. We romped the first round then came to the final. A good contest fought keenly by two equal-ish teams. We scraped by and won that one 2-1 (I think, I didn’t really follow the rules – how hard can it be? “Pull until the others fall over”) and lots of high-fiving and high-tenning ensued.

During football, I discovered that dusty, parquet flooring is not the easiest to grip when running at speed and a sharp turn is required. In the end we played three games of football, and having been told that we were only playing one, I was well oiled by the third. We didn’t win a single game. I did however manage to kick two of the opposition in to next week (first one I got the ball, honest; the second occurred in the second game and resulted in me shouting “Oh get up you soft shit” to the prone victim’s back). After the third game it all became a bit of a haze…I remember having a shower; being asked by the bargirl if I’d like anything else with the beer (beer was all that she sold so I don’t for the life of me understand what ‘anything else’ could have been *takes off naivety cap*); poking Sunisa the maths teacher’s ear for about 10 minutes purely because she was sat in front of me; drinking some whiskey that tasted like brandy; and then offering to buy everyone a KFC on the way home. This apparently filled in five hours of my time.

Arriving back in Chiang Khan, the family were still up and Douglas had joined them for supper. I sat there for about five minutes trying not to be drunk; giving that up as a bad idea I stated “Mao maak” (very drunk), pointed upstairs and toddled off to bed.

WILDLIFE OF THE WEEK

A small spider no bigger than a midge and coloured like a bluebottles back, creeping along a bench, then as I bent forward to take a closer look at the bright little fella it leapt 4 inches on to my book. Cue me shaking the book furiously and stamping on the spider when it fell to the ground.