Advertisement
Published: July 16th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Geo: 16.392, 103.924
The severe cold has returned and according to the TV will be here for at least the next three days. At least I'm not biking into Phon Thong this morning.
A bit of pottering in the garden and I pick a ripe papaya which Jai cuts up for us to snack on when we walk through the kitchen. Later I cut the rest of the longan's from the tree by our back door. Whilst I am picking them for eating Jai is tying them up in bunches to go and sell. We reach a compromise with a bog bowl of the loose ones in the kitchen for us and those still attached in bunches Jai takes to sell to the neighbours.
After lunch Jai goes next door to listen in on a meeting of the village part-time doctors. These aren't doctors at all but a group of mainly women who help out around the village by sharing medical information that is passed to the village from above. Truth of the matter is that get paid each month and do almost nothing the whole year. If we were here all the time I would encourage Jai to join up as its money
for nothing. There has always been a couple of chaps who drove around the villages here selling dodgy medicines to people who didnt know any better - Jai's mum was a regular customer despite what we told her. I soon realise that the guy whose come to talk to the group this afternoon is no different, just a modern version of the same fraudsters. He even has a computer and a few other toys to impress people with so his stuff must be good right ? When Jai returns I am pleased to se that she hasnt bought anything from him. She was checked out along with all of them and told that she should stop eating chicken - because it has wings ? - or else she will be likely to develop rheumatism in later life. By coincidence, if she had bought a box of tablets from the Doc, special ones that he just happened to have with him and only costing about 40GBP per month, then these would help prevent the rheumatism from setting in. Some people did by stuff from him and he left a happy chappy in his new car.
The postman opposite us has had a
large delivery of soil arrive to build up his front drive. By this time next year most of it will be in front of our house and being moved to my back garden !
Late evening the postman brought the letter from the British Embassy that we had been waiting for. We hurry through th bundle of documents that have returned to find jai's current passport but cant see a visa in it. I search through all of the other paperwork looking for a letter refusing to grant the visa and to find out what reason they have come up with this year. Then, good news, Jai finds the new visa in her passport. The Embassy do like to play games with us and for some reason, in a near empty new passport, they had stuck the visa about half way through on page 32 ?!! Still, we should be grateful that they have approved the visa as we wanted, starting on March 24, which is the day we fly, and allowing a stay of 180 days. Once my heart had settled down again I enjoy a celebratory beer.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0788s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb