finnomick1

Just a thought, one of the lads down here near Buriram has a large swimming pool at his house. He offered to teach the kids to swim for free. And yes, we were taught to swim at the local municipal baths in Wood Green, London N22 when we were at primary school.

The water table is always fairly high, even now you can see a dividing line in the pond banks about 2 metres down. When we had the ponds dug they hit water with the first bucket. The driver jumped out of the macro with a cup, tasted the water and pronounced it drinkable. Last year in August, we had to shore up the ponds with sandbags as they had levelled out with the surrounding rice paddies. The year before we were a bit slow and lost a lot of koi -- much to the delight of the local lads fishing in the stream at the end of the land. Most of them were about 40cms long so I would gladly have bought them back but there you go.

yes, 4" is adequate. We have about 4 rai of which 1 rai is fishponds, 1 rai eucalyptus trees and maybe another rai for ducks, chickens and vegetables and the house is somehow squeezed in between numerous fruit trees. The 100 metres mentioned in my last post was the distance between the borewells. This borewell went down 77 metres. The 2000 litre tank fills up early in the morning then I switch it over to filling up the ponds.

Just for information really - we already had a borewell done some ten years ago when the village lake dried out. It was a fairly shallow drill, about 24 metres. The water is clean enough but seems to contain a lot of calcium and certainly lacks oxygen which is not much use to us as we grow on fish and in this water they just keel over and die. So, we decided to have a deep borewell drilled a couple of weeks ago. The drilling rig turned up on one truck, the generator on another plus a couple of pickups. First setback was that we were advised to have the new borewell about 100 metres from the existing one. The reason being that the deep borewell would drain the other one. So we found a convenient spot near our old mushroom house. Handy because we already have three 2000 litre tanks here, plus the three solar panels were fitted on the roof. The new borewell feeds a 2000 litre tank and when we want, we can change the route of the water straight into one of our fish ponds ( with no detriment to the fish ). Water to the house and various hoses is pumped by a Hitachi pump. The cost of a borewell depended on size. 4" was 15000, 5" 17000 and 6" 20000. We opted for the 5". The solar panels (3), borewell pump, Hitachi pump, all fittings and labour was 39000 so 56000 baht all in. I have to add that the main reason we opted for a deep borewell is that we live about 300 metres from the village lake. In November 2023 the government decided to widen the road and consequently our water pipe was dug up. The village water company then said that if we wanted to be re-connected we would have to dig the necessary trench ourselves ( again ). We told them to stuff their pipes where the sun don't shine. We are in Buriram province but I guess prices would be similar.

I've been advised the XSR comes in different engine sizes. This is a 155cc bike

March 2022 Yamaha XSR for sale. Matt black. Extas added at Yamaha are engine crash bars and daytime riding lights. ABS. Only done 395kms so obviously little used. Asking price is 70,000 baht. We are 11 kms due south of Prakon Chai in Buriram Province. Mick 0902624781 - English Jen 0847667122 - Thai and English.

Just a baby.....

My apologies to you all for the length of time it has taken me to reply, but I am grateful for the answers put forward. Our smaller pond which has the grass problem is about two and a half meters deep and normally dries out by about April. I'll dust it with lime and see what happens in July/August. There's a lot of wild fish in it at the moment but we'll hand pick them for the bbq. The big pond was about four meters deep but the sides have gradually eroded but this retains water ( and fish ) all year round. No grass problem in this one. I need to get around to building my koi pond and move the dozen or so that have grown in this pond along with some huge pla rat ( giant gourami ) which we bought for a fish tank. From about four inches long some five years ago, they are now about two feet in length. We've also removed the couple of mekong catfish which had grown into ginormous monsters:- Hmmm, tried to insert pics but no go......yet

Thank you for the replies. Firstly, RIP Ubonjoe. We never met but had many online conversations. Your wealth of knowledge will be missed along with your enthusiasm to share it. We had more water this year than in the last 18 years. We had to sandbag the ponds after putting blue netting around. Last year we were too late and slow to do anything and lost a lot of koi into the old man's rice field next door which is bordered by a seasonal river. Luckily this year there were no losses but to see a huge lake was a bit of a shock. I think we'll pump the smaller pond after removing the wild fish and let it dry out. Hopefully then we can deal with the grass. The wife wants to fill it in but that's not happening.

Well, it would seem like ' hello ' from one old codger.....but I don't want to be rude on my first post. I've a question about ponds. We only have two now, had seven, but we don't grow fish for resale, just family consumption. I used to get an amazing wealth of info from a member known as ' ubonjoe ' but when I serched him this morning there was an ' RIP ' against his name. A great loss if it is true. He told me several years ago that after harvesting the fish and before filling and re-stocking his ponds, he treated them with either a chemical or a fertiliser that got rid of all unwanted matter. My problem is long grass that grows from the bottom of the pond. Very long grass, 2 to 3 meters and I would dearly love to find a way of getting rid of it. If anyone has any information, I'd be pleased to hear from you. That's both about the ponds and ubonjoe. Happy New Yaer one and all.

Incredible statistics indeed ! I had to contact the Thai flagship airline's booking helpline. The message that came back was that their head office in BKK was operating on a skeleton staff. That was over 10 days ago. I wonder which airlines are bringing all those passengers or maybe all the H.O staff are at the airport assisting with the tumultuous arrivals ?

Giving ?

.....and we are led to believe from the other featured article that Bangkok is rated as the 30th best city in the world and the 2nd best in ASEAN. Hmmm.

It took them a kilometre to catch him, he was swimming and the captors were on jet skis. Really ?