FARMERS

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The Central plains area is the area around Bangkok. It is often called the rice attic of Thailand as there are three rice harvests per year. Farmers rely on rice for the living but nowadays on many other activities also!

Fish net

Here is an ingenious fence across a small sluice. Once the fishes enter in the baskets, they cannot exit anymore.

The Thai King has tried to convince farmers to go for self sufficiency and avoid mono cultures.

Many former rice fields have been transformed into ponds where villagers can breed fishes. This man sets a net to catch fishes for his diner.

The "YO" (ยอ) is a square dip net, i.e. kind of fish-trap. Such Thai fish trap is used by river folks to catch small fish. It represents a traditional livehood tool and still survives in river nooks and inlets.

During end of afternoon, this old man is trying to catch small fishes for his diner into a communal moat.

This fish trap is located across a small sluice. There is a kind of fish-trap to catch fishes wandering around.

This lady is catching fishes along a small canal with a square dip net. Quantity and size of fishes can vary. Most of the time, it is for own use and not for selling on local market.

Fishes are then stored in a small bucket. It is better to well stabilize the bucket as it can happen that all fishes fall back to the canal if a wrong move occurs and the bucket falls.

This man is a fish hunter. He is using a special arbalete in order to catch fishes.

Village

This is a typical house in Central plains area's villages. Most of the time there is no wall around the house.

Thai neighbours are very close. Doors are always opened during the day. Neighbours help each other. It is very common to pay for bills of neighbours if they are out of town.

In villages motorbikes are often used. Better be careful as teens are often racing at full speed.

Such Thai traditional houses are still very numerous in Thai Central plains villages.

Some old style Thai village houses have the lower part built with bricks and the upper part built with wood.

As hospitals are more likely to be located in cities, many big villages do have a local community Health Centre (สวนสขภาพ).

Such local community Health Centre are important facilities to follow villagers and avoid crowded hospitals.

ศาลตายาย - "SAN TA YAI" is the shrine for the "Grandfather and Grandmother" or the local guardian spirits.

A small ice factory is making big blocks of ice on demand. Whenever there are local Buddhist festivals such as monk ordination, big buckets full of ice are used to keep bottle of water, soft drinks, beers in cool condition.

Thai cows

As cows like to roam the fields, a guardian is responsible to keep watching them. In the past, children were guarding cows. Those children were often coming from very poor families and were not going to school. They were called the Buffalo boys (เด็กเลี้ยงควาย).