Well, we are officially under way ! The traditional raising of the first column marked day 1, which is considered the start of the contract even though the builder and his crew have been working on the site for a while. In episode 1 a couple of weeks ago the first markers had been laid, and then relaid when the wife wanted to change the positioning of the house.

When that was all settled stringlines were set up, defining the spots for all the support columns which were marked with stakes. That was just before the long New Year holiday so work stopped for a while but then restarted with a vengeance. The backhoe turned up one morning, and by midday the site was looking like a battlefield full of craters.

The top meter or so was sandy fill soil from when the the land was raised so he had to go down into the more solid original soil for good footings. Stringlines had to be relaid, and the center of each footing marked.

As the auspicious date of Jan 11 got closer my wife began to stress about the event but everything turned out fine. She was up at around 2.30a.m. to go to the market and start cooking, I had the luxury of sleeping in until about 5 ! Then it was load up all the chairs, tables, mats, cutlery and crockery and off to the site to set up. Then back into town to pick up the respected elders who had been invited to attend, including the guys responsible for the traditional decorations for the poles, and the first ceremony for the land spirits.

Then the Abbott of the local temple took over to do his part of the proceedings, blessing the rebar columns, the holes, and everybody present. The wife, stepdaughter and I threw money and marigold petals into every hole for luck, plus gold leaf paper, “jewellery” (actually just shiny plastic beads !) and a buffalo horn in the first hole.

Then, with everybody either holding on to the pole, or symbolically helping by pulling on the lucky white cord attached to it, the first pole was raised to loud cheers.

The second pole followed, then it was time for lunch….and celebratory drinks (not for the monk, of course). The builder’s crew knocked off a bottle of Sangsom during their lunch, before going back to work ! While we packed up, and took the monk and elders back to town, the labourers started on erecting the other poles, all 3 dozen of them. By evening they had all of them set and concreted in, then the next day they started on the formwork for the lower part of the poles. Day 3 saw the concrete trucks arriving to fill those forms, by day 5 the forms had been removed and the holes back filled, and well watered to compact the soil again, leaving the above ground rebar skeletons pointing skyward. We were out of the ground !

The next step is to construct the rebar framework for all the ground beams, that’s going to be a long slow job sitting out in the hot sun…glad it’s not me ! That will be a 3 or 4 day job I think, so see you then in episode #3.