Potted Frog

No, not a Thai delicacy, although I have seen frogs at the market, skinned and ready for some intrepid cook.  In this case it is a new type of orchid pest.  Frogs love to make their daytime hiding place in the orchid pots.  They bash everything out of the way with their hind legs to make a space for themselves to hide.  If that space is taken by potting medium or roots or shoots, then that is just too bad.  Here I am trying to convince a poor bush collected plant to come back to life and grow some roots, but the frog has other ideas.

You Have To Love Simple Practicality

Today I got my Thai car and motorcylce licences.  I stood in the usual number of lines, filled out the usual number of forms, got told that I do/or don't need this photocopy or that document multiple times, then sent upstairs for an eye test.  When I got close enough I found it was a colour blindness test, and suprisingly, they do not use the same ones that I had learned off the internet to fake it for my licence in Australia.  I am severely red green clour blind.  So, how would I survive without a license, how many times could I get a new international driving permit and not get caught out etc.. Sat down to do the test and failed on the second of about a dozen pages.  Big cross on the form, "sit over there".  Maybe you get publicly lynched for failing???  After about 15 minutes sitting "over there" I was joined by two other failures.  The girl the comes over and asks me to stand in the middle of the room and flips a curtain off another chart.  It has about thirty dots on it each about three centimetres around and randomly coloured red, green and amber.  If you can tell her which colour the dots she points to are, you pass the test.  You have to love simple practicality.

Expat Attitude

It seems that no matter where you go in the world, the "Expat Attitude" virus thrives and all expats, and many immigrants, catch it.  The symptoms are a total blindness to the problems with their own country and a need to complain incessantly about the place they have chosen to come to.  In the lead up to the water festival I was sitting (collapsing) after a game of tennis listening to a group of expats whining about the festival.  Every year they have to put up with this thing.  All the shops and banks close down, not for the few days, but for almost the whole week!!!  The fact that this is the Thai version of New Year seems lost on them, and of course, nothing closes for Xmas New Year anywhere else.  Next it was the water thats being thrown around.  Someone did a test on it and found it contained E. Coli and other bugs!  (Just like every suburban beach I have ever heard of.)  Why is this a global thing that people relocate to somewhere for the weather/beaches/people/politics/freedom whatever and then spend all their time telling everyone else that its nowhere near as nice as 'home'.  If you go somewhere and its never as good as home, go home!

Phalaenopsis cornu-cervi

It has to be a good day when you have six different colour morphs of one of your favourite plants in flower at once!  Enjoy.

Standard

Red Flushed

Barred

Red

Clear Yellow

And best in last, Reddest.

Stepping Towards Legitimacy

Another step towards being legitimate here.  I now have a Thai drivers livence for both car and motorbike.  Some thigs stay the same no matter where you go in the world.  Motor Registration Offices are one of them.  

The list of the many things they are NOT includes.....  Easy, consistent, efficient and fast.

Schoenorchis fragrans

OK, I agree you have to be a bit fanatical to be going stupid over something at this size.  This is Schoenorchis fragrans, and no it is not a little seedling, this is a fully mature plant and you can see an equally tiny spike of flowers developing.  Its mounted on a sliver of teak wood because they are well known for dropping dead if the roots are left wet for any time and hate being moved.  By the length of old trunk on the plant, I would guess this one is about 10-15 years old.  You can call me stupid, but I call this fantastic!

Chilochista usnoides

This is Chilochista usnoides.  You may notice that there are no leaves.  This is not a deciduous plant (drops its leaves at certain times), it is a plant that has done away with leaves all together.  Instead you will see that the mass of intertwined roots have a green colour.  The photosynthesis that is usually done in leaves is done in the roots of these plants.  As you can see by the branched spike of beautiful little yellow flowers that is just opening up, the plant seems to be doing very well without them.  Each flower is about 1.5cm (half an inch) across.  Interestingly the plant is mounted on a bit of branch and there is a second plant mounted on the top.  A brassavola nodosa, also in flower!  The roots are all entwined so no splitting them now.

Orchid Collector's Heaven

My landlord came in today and saw the group of orchids that had started cluttering the yard and suggested I might want to go and have a look at the 'open market' that is set up in Phuket Town's Sapan Hin park for the week surrounding the New Year festival.  Given that I was in the general area I went looking for it and after only about twenty minutes of driving circles in the madness of Phuket town, I spied what looked like the right place.  It takes a lot to leave me speechless, but this did it in spades.  Stall after stall full of plants, orchids and others, that I have looked at in books for years and years and thought I would never see in the flesh, and most of them available to buy!  To put it in perspective, I found a plant I have wanted all my life, laying in a pile and had a battle to understand what it was going to cost me to get some.  I was given a price and paid as fast as I could and was selecting the piece I wanted and the vendor kept grabbing other bits as well.  Then I understood as he started weighing them.  The price I had paid was not for a piece, but for a kilo.  I got three pieces in my kilo and it may be a year or two before I really know if it is the Dendrobium chrysotoxum var. suavissimum he assured me it was, but it was an eye opener anyway.  My legs gave out and I had only been through each stall twice!  I tried to be verycontrolled and only bought ten plants.....   today.  Going back tomorrow with a full wallet and a camera.  Even if you are not into plants, and especially orchids, don't tune out.  The food section of the market is another story.  Tonight I ate frog (yes, it did taste like chicken) and 'beetle grub' which tastes sort of roughly like nothing I ever want to put near my mouth ever again.  I stopped short of the segment worms, grasshoppers and beetles as big as my thumb.  Pictures will follow.  For tonight there are just two special plants to put up.

Hope Returns

After being demounted, layered with tissue, rolled, surviving an international flight, left flat for a month on the framers advice, remounted and then framed, Hope has finally finished the process and is on the wall in Thailand.

Confirmation

Now that the flowers have started opening on this plant I am pretty comfortable in saying it actually is what I thought.  Dendrobium formosum.  Certainly not one of the ugliest things out there.

Not just yet, sonny.

So, geckos eat insects, but sometimes nature can be cruel. This is the tiniest gecko I 've seen yet. Its sitting on a door frame and was a whole 5cm long including all the tail. Below, sitting on the path was this beetle. The flash photo doesn't really show off the almost metalic green colour. Somehow I think the Gecko might have to do some growing before taking on this particular lunch, otherwise the tables might get turned.