Thai Christmas Fairy
Its been a funny old week in Thailand for me. We have had two snakes in the garden and one in the house, I met a strange foreigner in the village who was staying in the temple and I have been subjected to Doy practising her violin every evening for the forthcoming Christmas concert at her school, where she along with her classmates will do their best to put a Thai theme on the Christmas story. Finally today the mercury has plummeted and I am actually feeling cold following some heavy and unseasonal rain which didn’t stop my neighbours boy and girl dog getting locked in a loving embrace on my drive as we wanted to take the kids to school.
Quite why we had the sudden rush of reptiles is beyond me, given that you rarely see them especially in the cool season, although my neighbour has been doing some spring cleaning in her garden and may have disturbed them. The first two encountered outside, one in the hedge and one in a vine, were Green Tree Snakes which I do believe are back-fanged snakes and mildly venomous although not to humans. That makes four of these little beauties in the last month. I actually managed to remove these two using my snake catcher pole before my Thai other half plucked up the courage to administer the coup de grace with the meaty stick she keeps for this purpose.
Unfortunately the snake in the lounge faired worse, since I could not identify it and although I coaxed it out onto the patio with a soft broom, it foolishly hung around enabling Duen to get off the chair she had been occupying and deal it a fatal blow. To add to my snake story I might also add that I watched another Green Tree Snake scale 40 foot up a nearby coconut tree trunk as I drunk an early morning cup of tea and cleared my lungs the other day. I didn’t mention that to Duen since she obviously thinks snakes can’t climb given her position in the previous encounter.
Fortunately my next encounter was human since on returning from my now regular early evening cycle ride I spotted a half naked foreigner walking along the village street near the OK Karaoke, well he had shorts on but not much else. A sure fire way to send a ripple of excitement through the bars collection of eligible, but somewhat past it, middle aged ladies sitting outside chewing the fat. Many of whom, I casually observed, turned their focus away from my toned physique to look at the new man in town.
I stopped to chat for a while since it seemed polite and soon discovered my new friend was staying at Nong Hin Temple, clearly not a visiting monk, I enquired why. “Well it doesn’t cost anything,” was his reply and “I have already spent three days at the temple up the road at Dan Singkhon.” It transpired the new foreigner was just passing through and had been working his way around the country using Buddhist hospitality to take care of his needs by staying at rural temples. He said he was from Australia, so perhaps he had gone walkabout? Mind you he didn’t sound very Aussie to me, more European. In fact when I mentioned my encounter to Duen she said she had already met him at the Amphur Office where he was availing himself of the community Internet access, which is also free.
As for Doy and my doggy chums well more of the former after her surrogate uncle returns from the school concert on Saturday with “we liss yo an erry Christmas,” ringing in his ears. As for the dogs, well I guess its just nature but exactly how would you answer a curious 7 yr old when she enquired this morning, “why is Tom(boy dog) making Jack(girl dog) cry?”
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