Where I Live

I guess I never really properly introduced my community on this blog.

The town of Phanat Nikhom (พนัสนิคม) is a little more than
an hour's drive from Bangkok and an almost an hour inland (with traffic) from the southern coast in Chon Buri (ชลบุรี) province.

Its 120,000 inhabitants are spread across a deceptively large geographic area, so although the few winding blocks of downtown are relatively busy and filled with storefronts under two or three story buildings, it never feels like living with close to that number of people.

My house is about three kilometers north of the downtown, where the buildings stand out in seas of rice fields, fish ponds, and banana groves. Neighborhoods are often structured around temples, which are usually no more than a kilometer apart.

Wat Bot (วัดโบสถ์), the temple which my neighborhood is named after. These are the old and new buildings equivalent to the sanctuary in a church. The entire temple is comprised of a complex of several buildings including additional halls, shrines, living quarters for monks, and, in this case, a small museum.

My house is very close to the main highway and temple, but further back from the road, the area looks more like this. This is where I go running. The rice (left on the picture below) wasn't always green - it began as shoots poking up through the mud, then about two months ago began to reach maturity.

In the evenings, people meet at the primary school to play futsal or volleyball. Futsal is frequented by the smallest boys up to a few middle aged men. The volleyball players are some of the same group, but including several women. I have improved significantly at both sports, although I have recently been exercising more on my own.

I've already introduced my house and school, so that is all for this post. Next, I'll try to write about the Rotary trips and the best Thai burrito in the world, two New Years in Bangkok, going downtown in Phanat, and maybe some more on what I do at school now that I've settled in.