Kalasin colours (and sounds)

Life in the countryside is odd. Time appears to move slowly, then all of a sudden a year passes and you realise you still haven’t got around to writing that blog post.

It’s hard figuring out why the gap started or why it was allowed to grow as it did. You could put it down to time, which isn’t really the case. Or motivation, which isn’t true either. I often think about things to write about.

I’ve thought of lots of potential reasons but in the end it’s quite simple. Life here becomes normal, and who wants to read about normal.

We’ve now been living in rural Kalasin, in north-east Thailand, for four years. We moved in before the house was finished, when the field we looked out onto was a simply that - a field, and we did it all so quickly we never gave ourselves a chance for a second thought.

But we are still here, and loving it more than ever. Our garden is full of greenery - as it should be at this time of year - and the trees are taller, fuller, and teeming with birds.

A sooty headed bul bul - quite the name, quite a looker, and a beauty of a singer - starts the first song of the day just after 5am; a little daffodil yellow Asian golden weaver pops out from its weaved nest hanging precariously over our pond, checking out what’s going on; even the teams of sparrows bickering over who knows what - together they create a cacophony of songs and chirps.

Our house in the country is anything but quiet.

The noises shift and change through the day. Breakfast and dinner are dominated by our arboreal neighbours. Throughout the day the chorus of our three dogs takes centre stage. It’s starts unexpectedly, reaches a range of volumes, and usually dies quickly, depending on who, or what, catches their attention. They particularly don’t like passing motorbikes with welded on sidecars. It’s likely a combination of their noise, their ambling speed, and the fact the rider often has a stick to swipe at dogs throughout the area that draws our dogs to chasing them.

After dark can be quiet, but when the frogs start you know all about it. Sitting next to a few acres of rice fields gives us a very serene landscape to view. Those fields are home to a vast array of animals, of which frogs are the loudest. When they begin, usually after a good dose of sunset rain, villagers are drawn out, sporting a head torch and a net as they hunt for frogs, but will take anything else that comes their way: crabs, birds, insects - anything. This is when evening dog shift gets underway, as they get concerned about the unknown lights approaching our house.

We have three dogs officially, but two others are almost permanent fixtures on our land. Three citizens, one with permanent, but not fixed, permission to stay, and the last one with a multiple entry visa with no apparent expiry date, if you could look at it that way. The citizens have the benefit of all meals, balcony access, and their shared kennel. Some bark often, some rarely, but when their nighttime howling chorus gets going they are all in sync and it can sound quite wonderful.

But this time of year is really about the colours. From the start of the year cool season turns to dry, then hot season quickly appears and everything turns dusty and brown. Then the rains start: the grass that had almost disappeared is back and standing tall; Fruit bursts from the trees - this year was a bumper mango year and we’re only just seeing the last of them now; and everything blooms.

I love how the nursery fields for rice sway in the wind, bringing out the different shades of green. It looks like hundreds of shades all moving as one.

And it’s the greenery that’s the striking thing about this time of year. As if they know they have a limited time to maximize growth every plant or blade of grass just puts all their energy into growing. The difference between hot and wet season is as stark as the change between both seasons is quick.

Coco cheekily moving through young rice.

This year I found out we have more varieties of mango than I knew possible. Different flavours, different textures, but most of all different colours. The king, and queen, of fruits, with plenty of very worthy princes and princesses. We have around 60 trees and we’d happily plant more. Finding a product we can make out of them would be good, as many of the fruit were not picked this year, although they’ll make the soil richer as they rot where they dropped.

Up above, the sky can bring both sights and sounds. Storms can be almost operatic, as different parts of the sky flash white or thump and make you jump, and those busy skies give breathtaking sunsets.

It’s all this and more that makes us certain we are where we belong, and despite only living here for four years I can barely remember living anywhere else.

Life in the countryside may be odd. But it’s also quite wonderful.