My friend Rin has a house in the outskirts of Chiang Mai, it used to be her fathers house but he passed away a few years ago. Her fathers second wife lives at the house but at the moment she is not here and so I have the house to myself apart from one very lonely terrified wee dog that belonged to her father. It’s cries at night are painful on the ears, it sounds like someone is killing the poor beast and I think the killer is sadness.

At least his tail is up today and not between his legs. 

The poor wee thing is also trying to get its head around this invader which it can’t understand and so it will give me a wide berth. The first night I stayed it howled like a Banshee for most of the night and the neighbours and myself did not get much sleep. Last night was my second night and it was a little better. This morning as I sit outside having breakfast he is coming out of his den and walking around me closer and closer and so I guess he is starting to trust me and is checking me out. Mind you I have tried bribing him with food as you do in these kind of situations. My breakfast of choice in Thailand is as follows, black coffee, 2 bananas and 2 pineapple pies which you can buy from 7/11. My new friend also likes pineapple pies. I’ve decided to call him Mutley for the duration of my stay.

Now when you move to a new place you have to get used to your environment of course and as this house is semi rural it is very dark at night and last night when I came back I saw a green Firefly. I was standing on the steps about to unlock the door and this green tailed Firefly slowly moved passed my face, it was quite amazing and I felt very privileged to see such a creature so close to hand. I think they are absolutely amazing. One good thing about Fireflies is that they don’t make any noises that I can hear.

Next door however we have chicken coops and at the crack of dawn or even before usually they do their thing. So the first night here I had the Mutley going off every 5 mins and then it was the time for the Rooster. No sleep was had.

The house is made from timber and only has bars on most of the windows, no glass, no fly screens. The bedrooms have fly screens thankfully and there is also one on the bedroom door. There are many wee flies and mosquitoes about but I haven’t been bothered too much with them so far. If I stayed here I would have to have air conditioning because even in winter the temperature will reach the 30+Celsius. The cost of this place would be around $100,000 and so it might be something for a future time when I decide to change my country of residence. But in Thailand foreigners can not buy land and so I would be unable to buy this wee place,  but I could buy an apartment or a townhouse.