I haven’t blogged for a while, as I sent my monthly post a few days ago and because my Internet account is still disabled. I managed to get a few hours on Tuesday from a ‘borrowed’ account, before they changed the password on that. Yesterday, one of the support staff at CS Loxinfo (my ISP) then gave me their login details so I could get a few hours, on the premise I would pay the outstanding balance (4193.38 baht) this morning. I still don’t have any money in my bank, but hopefully an invoice will clear, so I can go to the bank tomorrow morning, withdraw the cash from England, deposit the cash in Loxinfo’s account, fax them the slip, and I should be back on-line by mid-day. Feels strange not having connected today, but I did make a lot of good progress off-line (less distractions?).

The well’s been dug. It went down 17 blocks (concrete rings) in the end. Each block is 40cm, which makes it 6.8m deep. It cost 350baht per block to dig (took about 5 days), and the blocks cost 150baht each, except five older ones which I got for 120baht each. One ring rests above ground, so 18 rings were needed. We put 2 sacks of charcoal in the bottom at 160baht a sack, some stones left over from a previous job, and about 400baht’s worth of sand around the outside of the rings. Total cost: 9220 baht.

Despite the relative drought that we’re currently experiencing, water has seeped up about two blocks already. It’s clean, it’s not salty, and it doesn’t have a smell, so we struck lucky. At least now, we don’t have to worry about the pond drying up. We’re expecting more water to seep up over the next few days. I’ll dig some pipes in over the weekend to run the water from the well to the big water filter and to a tap at the front of the house and as soon as there’s enough water in there I’ll move the pump from the pond to the well. A big thunderstorm came over from Burma this afternoon, making it unusually dark. Stormclouds have been building up over Burma every day for over a month now, and we can hear and see the lightning, but they rarely build high enough to cut off the mid-afternoon sun. And rarely are they strong enough to push back the prevailing coastal wind and drift over towards us in Thailand. Today, we saw huge downpours several kilometres in the distance, and some big dark clouds pass overhead, but not a drop of water fell. Still, I suppose the rainy season can’t be that far off now.