Ghana 24 Aburi and howto get there.......

At the hotel. Finlo and I enjoying a break... 

Aburi is only about 45 kilometers form Accra.  We went on the Sunday and you can see from my last posting it is hardly a mountain but really a small rolling hill. As I also said I should have more photos but.....................  We'll stop there.

Ghana 23 Day out in Aburi Gardens

Had lots of photo to upload but.... Wanna lost my phone.  That's another story which I'll write about on another day.

Needless to say fortunately I still have plenty more.

We went up to the local mountains in Aburi. Mountains is putting strong emphasis on tall hills. But it was cooler than Accra and got us out of the house.  Passed Rita Marley's House. Did you know she had moved back to Ghana... Well you do now. The Marley House Ghana.

We went up the hills with our friend Finlo, to the old colonial gardens. Needless to say they were in a state of disrepair but never the less you could feel the cool breeze and the air of calmness around the place. There were some lovely old trees and on one in particular. It has a long time ago had a creeper which in itself turned into a self supporting tree like structure.  The original tree inside has since died and left a big hollow.  Wanna went up inside to have a look. Fascinating.

There was also an old helicopter laid up.  No idea why. But again something to look at.

We then had a wonder around and relaxed. Stopped at a local hotel which had a lot of funny signs around the place. One caught my eye.

Go on smile.

Strange with Wanna arriving I though I'd find lots to write about. And indeed there is but...

I collected her from the airport and then a few days going round to see stuff! We covered a lot of ground. Gladstone, surrounding towns and coast lines and yesterday even added in Rockhampton which is 110 kilometers up the coast.

Her arrival also coincided with the last few days of the Gladstone Festival, so a trip on the ghost train, then ANZAC day on Monday so parades etc. So for this entry I decided to just 'cut and paste' some of Wanna's photos and not get involved with lots of descriptions. So this is what she saw!!!

Gardening

Having this week managed to make an eatable bread loaf and survive several days of constant rain and heavy down pour it was with relief that the weekend turned out to be sunny and dry. It was a good chance to relax and do nothing. By nothing I mean relax and just sit around the pool reading a book and drinking coffee. Yes coffee. I'm into espresso these days. Got the machine so might as well enjoy. So that was Saturday with nothing to show for it. I've got to stop always trying to find reasons and the need to measure production even if all it comprises is making and drinking coffee. Somehow just relax in the true sense of the word. So Sunday was in comparison a big event. Spent a few hours at the local garden market. There are hundreds of these markets scattered around the locality. But one in particular I had been planning on visiting for sometime. Its situated in north Pattaya on the main Surkumvit road.

It sells a wide range of trees, yes fully grown trees, ranging from Orange to bread fruit to numerous palms. You can having bought a new property come here and buy all you need to make an established garden. No need to plant young plants and wait till they grow. Here you have instant 5 - 10 year old trees read for planting. The sellers will generally replace there for free it they die with in the first 3 months. Not a bad deal.

The colourful array of orchids in stunning. As are the numerous fish tanks with brightly coloured fish if every size and type. Need less to say it is the sort of place you go and with out doubt spend some money. We did. Bought some plastic pots and compost soil. I should mention that Owen had posted us some vegetable seeds which arrived Saturday morning. So we decided to try them out. No doubt the local varieties are more suited to Thailand than the ones from UK but so what. Its all a bit of fun. So having spend several hours walking around I decided it was time to go home and back to practicing the art of relaxing.

The top photo is one I played around with. Not to produce anything particularly special but to let you see the contrast of colours. Amazing.

It's over a week....

It’s been over a week since I added anything to this Blog. What have I been doing you ask? Not much. Popped over to Ho Chi Minh City last weekend for a few meals and a chance to catch up with a few friends. In particular I met with my old mate, Vinh. We chatted away over several coffees and realised it was about 7 years since we last met. Time flys. I've now got grey hair and Vinh, well he's just the same. It was, I hope a successful trip in all respects, food was good and the company first class. Only time will tell how good the trrip was , and that will be tested on how well we all remain in touch.
It’s a fun place, but, I’ve now been so often that these recent trips are more about seeing people than the usual touristy stuff. This time I had a series of catch ups on the Saturday and again on the Sunday. It was all over and me back to work at Map Ta Phut, on the Monday morning before I felt I had actually been to Ho Chi Minh City, let along got back. If you follow my meaning…
As always it was hectic and it is good to be back to work and almost be in a relaxed mode.
Next weekend is Ban Muang and I hope to start my cooking videos. I did as earlier mentioned look up Issan cooking on You Tube. Not much round. However being bit slow I did not think to check Lao Cooking which of course now I’ve told you is so, so, so very obvious…. Enough of my stupidity.
So this weekend it is a tree planting session, catch up with few people and relax. And of course get down to some of the promised cooking.
The trees we bought in Pak Chong a few weeks back and we left them in their plastic pots ready to take up with us. Not sure we have that much room left to plant more trees. We’ve got so much growing already. I have however thought about digging up on of the rice fields and so making our pond bigger. The excess material can go onto our second rice field and provide another area for tree cultivation. After that, we’ve run out of land!!

Pornudom herbs

Had a quick visit to a small ‘farm’ come ‘Nursery' located about 25 kilometers south of Pattaya. Pornudom herbs http://www.pornudomherbs.com/ (All Thai Web site). In fact I pass it every day to work but only today did I finally make a visit. My colleague Tawatcahi and I took some time out to pay a short visit and have a look round. Tawatchai had been before. It’s a small set up comprising 10 Rai, about 3 acres of land where he grows orchids and also rice in flower pots. The rice is growing well but I cannot imagine it being anywhere near commercial. There much be some benifit to the orchades and rice growing together. Even if it is just to attract visitors like myself! He showed us round which took about 10 minutes, that was leaving out the walk round the forest area where he keeps wild chickens. I think I was most impressed with the tranquility and sense of peace which seemed to prevail. He explained that 2 years ago he had bought 500 Baht worth of Orchids. Since then he has produced about 5,000 additional plants. Quite a good result! All in a nice peaceful environment. MAybe thats what helps the plants grow?
He also showed us his hand driven rice milling machine. Clever thing used a lot about 20 years ago by Thai farmers.
Also of particular interest to me was the papaya grafting which seemed successful. Never though about doing it before but it clearly is possible and effective.
This trip out was followed by us having to return to work. Not before having a quick lunch in a local road side restaurant. Really delicious food. Stir fried mixtures using lots of ginger and herbs mixed with a choice of Ostrich, pork or Deer meat!!!! Delicious.

Tattoos And Things…

Seems to have passed in a flash. Our friends from Pakistan came down from Bangkok for the weekend and before I knew what had happened, they were returning as Sunday evening had already arrived.

We left the condo to meet up with them. However the place is undergoing a major repaint. In true Thai way they made quick work of it. Simple to paint the face of a 15 story Condo. Start at the top with a roller and a bucket of paint. Work your way down on a rope.
We took in a Tattoo Festival early Saturday morning. Not so much to see as it was just starting up. However did notice some head tattoos and a couple of Thai Rasta’s. So some interest there. Also discovers a place which does religion/Thai tat’s so will give that a visit some time soon.

Later we watched a street seller making some savory pancakes. I did a quick video and slowed it down on the replay. Quite amazing the speed at which she worked. So the slowing down to 25% speed makes you realize just how quick she was.

The Sunday afternoon was taken up with a trip to Silver Lake. A recently established Vineyard. Had a walk around there followed by a quick visit to the local Wat.


Again beautiful statues and as always, I never cease to be surprised at how calm everything seems after such a visit.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon lazing on the beach prior to yet more food and an early night. Now back to completing my Seychelles Blogs. It was such good fun as a break but having to write it all up seems like a long task...

A Weekend away at Ban Muang..............บ้าน ม่จง

Had a really good time this last weekend. We had intended to go to Ban Muang and relax. As usual things did not quite turn out as planned and it was not to be. We got to Ban Muang but it was just plain hectic as always.
We took the over night bus on Friday evening from Pattaya to Khon Kaen. It was a real VIP bus, complete with luxury wide ‘business class’ seats with massage switch. Dinner was simple just a sandwich and fruit juice. Departed 9.30 pm and arrived fresh and rearing to go at 06.00am in Khon Kaen. All for Baht 420. Fantastic value.
Met on arrival by Sai, one of Wanna’s cousins. We had on one of our earlier trips last month to Chantaburi bought about 20 small trees, or saplings, mainly fruit and some Thai peppers. They got packed and came up on the bus with us. We had planned to plant them on the farm. They traveled without any damage and on arrival in KK were promptly put in the back of the pickup along with yours truly.
Got home to the farm and had a walk round the place. Felt really good to be back. The bread fruit tree had got two fruits on it. We had planted 5 trees and the other 4 had dies so to be getting fruit as well and just surviving was a big deal. We then fed the fish and decided it was time for breakfast.
Off up to the village and bought some rice, chicken stew and assortment of kebabs.
Took them round to Wanna’s parents and tucked in. While there we watched the new puppy getting a bath! Sort of side show while eating….
One of the things I had been planning on doing this time up was visit the Governments Bee Keeping Extension Programme. It serves the whole of North East Thailand and amazingly, or fortunately it is situated only about 5 kilometers from our house.
Really great little set up in such a tranquil location, where you can have a good look round and get advice, very helpful couple of guys there, and also you can go on a bee keeping courses. All courses in Thai of course… Wanna booked herself in for January 2010. The bees up here are quite docile and very unlike any I’ve kept before. If anything, they are a bit smaller and as I say harmless. One very interesting set of hives had ‘miniature’ bees. They were about the size of a match head. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

So that was that, or so we thought. I rushed round to get a few photos etc. And sure enough there was more. They also running an insect breading programme. So we had a chance to look into this as well. Seems a straight forward thing to do, and might work well on our Farm. We had had a couple of tries several years ago and ended up with some excellent grass hopper curry. Really good.
Basically you get the insect eggs and put tem in a storage area in this case round concrete sections, and add food and a few egg boxes Yes Egg boxes as something to ‘play’ on. Leave them for however long than harvest them. Straight forward and lots of protein.
While there we saw a 2 meter long snake which crossed our path and disappeared in the bush. I ran after it, and they can move fast! Could not get a photo as it kept hiding in the bushes or the longer grass. But not to worry I was told it was good luck to have seen one so close like that. Sure?.. Really?.. OK if you say so.
Following on from the Bee Keeping we went on to the local petrol station as this the place to buy fish and prawns. I know strange but apparently the chap has been selling here since the place opened years ago. We have last year bough about 300 fry to stock our pond. Now we’ve got 2-3 kilo Cat fish swimming around so it was a good investment. 300 fry cost 100 Baht. That’s USD 2.5. Ridiculous really.
Earlier in the morning we had been to see Steve, a chap in the village who breeds fish. He has some floating nets and we wanted to buy one and see how it would work for breading prawns in our pond. Well we bought one frame and netting and needed now to get some fry.
Hence ending up at the fish shop. Well of course, you guessed, he did not stock the small prawns. Need to go into town for that and Khon Kaen is about 10n kilometers away and necessitated wearing a helmet on the bike. Here in the sticks it’s OK but there in KK, lot of Police and all waiting for ‘Khun’ Alan to turn up and pay a fine. No way. So the prawn farming experiment will have to wait till next trip. We did buy some fully grown ones, about 2 kilos. The ones that survived the trip back to the farm we put in the pond and others put straight on the Bar B Q. No wastage there….
(As an after note we saw one dead prawn in the pond this morning).
As if that was not enough we rounded the afternoon off with some Som Tam and cold beer.
Sunday saw us plant the 20 trees we had brought up with us. Also bough along hose pipe so that they can get watered properly every day. Wanna’s Sister ‘Mem’ has this job and looks after the place in our absence. Works well.
We again tried to sit for a while but t here always seemed to be something to do.
The garden was alive wiht Butterflys. Big ones at that. I tried to film one as you can see but the effect is not so good. There must be some special way to catch these beautiful creatures on film.

Well after all the running around on a borrowed motor Bike, we decided to either buy one or buy an ATV. ATVs are much more fun for sure. So I rang Steve to enquire where does one buy an ATV in KK. “You don’t need an ATV, I’ve got an old motor bike I’ll sell you. Will do all you require up here”. Sure enough, quick inspection and done deal.
I’m exhausted just writing this and realize yet again what we had planned for, was a quiet weekend, but was again just go go go. All good fun.