Sometimes very simple, homespun blog entries give very fine portraits of people and places. Recent posts by a New Zealand man about his adopted home in Rural Thailand provide a good example.
The blogger, who goes by MeMock, was traveling in Australia and New Zealand with his Thai wife and daughters last week when his father-in-law, a 78-year old country gentleman, suddenly became sick. Before the author’s wife, son of the sick man, was able to get back to her home in northeast Thailand, the father got rapidly worse and died. MeMock describes their heartbreaking attempt to make it home so she could see him alive one last time.
The real interest of the story is MeMock’s very fond description on March 25th of his deceased father-in-law. Called Por Yai, which means grandfather, he held court for other villagers every day, gossiped, told stories, and solved the problems of the world quite effectively with all of his village friends. A gentle, small-town, elderly man, he helped people, baby sat his grandchildren, visited, and maintained the peaceful Buddhist traditions of his rural society. MeMock continued the story on March 29 and 31 by describing his and his wife’s reactions to the funeral ceremonies.
MeMock has written other blog posts about what he calls Traditional Thailand, such as a description of a bicycle-powered cab, called a Samlor Taxi, and a write-up on the old fashioned approach to pounding rice and winnowing it in the air to separate it from the husks. Most of his posts include good photos to illustrate the subjects. He includes pictures of his children during their trip to New Zealand and Australia, and the post last week that so effectively portrayed the deceased man includes a wonderful photo of his daughter Ariya with Por Yai, her grandfather, taken only six weeks ago.
Subjects for other posts about the Thai village include a village wedding, wild honey available in the market, getting a haircut in a local barber shop, and a neighboring man who makes throw nets to keep himself busy. The author has a down-home style of writing, but he is a keen observer of rural Thailand and his occasional articles about what he sees make for fun reading.