I’ve been coming to our village in Eastern Thailand every at least once a year for the past 10 years (we own property next to the village). Things change so fast here. In the last 4 years we now have land line service and a 10mb Internet connection (that’s 4x as fast as we have at our place in California). Oh and we have 24/7 running water. Prior to this we had to walk 5 minutes to the local pond, turn on the pump for water and then walk back over and turn it off when finished. We still do not have hot water and on some nights taking a shower is a frigid proposition. We still take showers with small buckets from large water urns but at least we have the option of using running water if we like.
The village has shrunk in size – now there are only 2 homes rather than the 7 or 8 we had a few years ago. There are only 4 full time residents down from the nearly 30 of a few years ago. The reason for this is that the villagers sold their land in the village and moved out to the dirt road that leads to the village. They built their homes from scratch – all western styled rather than the typical Thai style homes you see in this area (raised on stilts, tin roof, mostly open to the air).
So now instead of empty fields surrounding the dirt road there are now a number of homes. Oh and we had our first Farang (western Caucasian person) sighting ever in the village. A German man is building a house on the outside of the village and comes into the village to shop at the one small market. Haven’t yet had a chance to speak to him – but saw him here several times.
Animals used to be kept in the village – but that’s all gone now. We used to kill a pig for New Years, preparing each part of the animal in a variety of dishes – now we just buy an already prepared pig and BBQ it.
Those are just a few changes in the last few years – imagine the changes over the past 30 years here.
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