My journey into yoga and meditation...

Leaving The Sanctuary

Today is my last day of a 3 day 'retreat' at The Sanctuary at Had Tien beach on Koh Phangan.  At the end of this wonderful 3 month family retreat to our small quiet island, I have managed to create 3 days completely for myself.   I have never taken time solely for myself like this before, but for many years have been attracted to the idea.  My goal:  to carry on with some more yoga, to learn a bit about meditation and take time for reflection. 

Note: it is not an organized retreat in that sense of the word, just a personal one.

The transport in and out of Had Tien


ad Tien is accessible by boat (or a very difficult 4WD track) and The Sanctuary is known for its yoga & meditation, various resident healers, very good vegetarian & seafood restaurant and fasting programs.  I am not fasting, although many people here are - something for next time perhaps.  As I arrived by boat I had a sense of being transported far away, even if it was only 30 minutes or so from where our house is.

My balcony


The whole place is built from the beach up a hill over the rocks and amongst the jungle.  I have a small simple bamboo bungalow with a thatch roof, a comfortable bed, a chair, a mosquito net inside and a hammock outside.  The bathroom has a warm shower and a western style toilet, is accessed over a small bridge and one wall is a large rock.  The accommodation options range from more basic than that, to more comfortable, depending on your preference.

Where the healers reside...


As well as yoga and meditation, I have also had the opportunity to keep an open mind and try some things I have never experienced before, such as a transformative breathing class, and an astrology session.  The astrologer woman was fascinating to see in action, just observing how she can see so much for all the signs of the zodiac just from one map.  And  while I didn't find particular meaning for me right now in her horoscope, I did learn that I need to know my time-of-birth to fix once and for all whether I am a Libra or Scorpio !  Anyone who is interested can ask me about transformative breathing, it was a completely new experience for me and there were clearly some real enthusiasts of this process in the group.

My glorious regular yoga location in Sri Thanu

I came to Thailand hoping to continue my fitness with yoga (my inclination to run was soon overcome by the heat, and various stray barking dogs chasing me) and I have been to a number of classes while we have been here.  Low season has meant that the classes aren't always reliably running and the instructors change regularly, but the upside of this is that it has expanded my experience of styles and techniques.  Some of the teachers would end with a led meditation.  As well as Hatha and Ashtanga, one style taught at the Sanctuary is Yin yoga which I had not come across before.  This emphasizes the length of time spent in each pose, essentially aiming to focus on breathing and to meditate in each pose - so a good opportunity for practicing what I have been learning.  It is still quite hot, so every class feels a bit like what I imagine Bikram yoga to be like, so I have not been tempted by that particular style.  

I hadn't been to yoga for about 3 years after injuring my back, so have been careful in getting back into it.  I have been learning from the different instructors some tips for not doing that again.  However a couple of weeks ago I did re-injure it in the same place in another Ashtanga class - so may need to steer clear of Ashtanga.  Fortunately, regular Lek massages have helped significantly in the recovery. 

When we arrived on this island, I was completely unaware that Koh Phangan is known for its meditation, as there is a very old local temple Wat Khao Tam where the monks have taught meditation for many years.  Because of this, many private centers for yoga and meditation have also grown up in various spots around the island.  At the Wat they now run 10 day retreats where there are many hours of meditation each day with no talking and no technology allowed - definitely for the experienced meditator and not a mere beginner like myself!  I looked into doing something more organized, but didn't find anything that suited the dates I had available.

My interest in meditation stems from wanting to train myself to be more 'present', rather than have my mind constantly running ahead to the next things to be done.  The mental challenge of quieting my mind is as big as I anticipated, but I now have some tools for helping with this.  What I hadn't anticipated was the physical challenge for sitting for long periods of time virtually immobile - although I have learned a little about walking and lying meditation as well.

My first experiences of meditating were with 'our' wonderful massage lady Lek.  She has just built a small house which she uses solely as a place of meditation.  She goes there morning and night and after hearing I was interested to learn, one evening invited me along also.  I followed behind her motorbike in the dark to an area just outside of Thong Sala and she showed me her very small meditation house.  I hadn't realized it would just be us there.  She took me though her preparatory Buddhist rituals and how she meditates and I followed suit, in my own way.  Her gift to me is a mantra which means 'kindness and love from the heart'.  It was a truly meaningful introduction to the practice of meditation and one that will remain with me forever. 

It didn't take too long as a first attempt, and shortly afterward a group of invited friends and her meditation teacher turned up.  It turned into what I would describe as a seated Buddhist prayer meeting, starting with lighting of bunches of incense, which continued to waft through the room for the evening, then continued with beautiful musical chanting, punctuated with intermittent bowing to the shrine set up along one wall.  It was an amazing experience to be a part of, and would have been even more meaningful if I could have understand a single word!  Several days later I was chatting to another (Thai) woman who had been there who told me it was mostly actually in Chinese so she didn't understand a lot of it either !  For me, it eventually became a sort of endurance event for how long I could remain seated on the floor barely shifting and so, after more than one hour, and having observed a few people coming and going, so ascertaining this would be acceptable, I made my own exit.  

A few days later Lek invited Mike, Annabelle and Matthew to come for a visit also.  She showed us around her garden, opened a coconut for a snack, and we all took part in the incense lighting.  She enjoyed teaching the children a little bit of meditation also. and we stayed for just a few minutes of the prayer session, which was all the children could really manage.  

Seeking to understand a little more about meditation than I could access through the language barrier with Lek, I have read a simple but great book called One Step At A Time by Phra Peter Pannapadipo which explains Buddhist meditation, from the very basics and in the context of the Buddhist faith.  He is actually English but has chosen life as a monk (Phra) in Thailand so explains it in an easily understandable way, from an informed Western perspective.  

View down to Had Tien from the top of the hill

At The Sanctuary, I have also had the opportunity to take part in some guided meditation sessions and ask some questions related to my own experiences in a session with an experienced meditator - a lovely intuitive American woman named Tammy.

So from these teachers I have had a chance to learn, and have had some time on my own for practice.  I am not sure I am making great progress, but am enjoying, and persisting with the journey.  I hope I can keep with it when we return.

There are a host of alternative practices on offer.
On occasion I have found myself seeking to find meaning in the phrases uttered, such as:
- breathe through your middle eye
- your hips are the crucible for your organs
- find the part of you that is always there
I am not sure that I was always successful.

Mike & Matthew - budding Muay Thai champions of Remuera !

Speed, power, balance !
Mike sparring with Nut

And look at that power !
Matthew sparring with Kob.

I have been thinking about what last topics I want to capture as we will leave Koh Phangan in less than 2 weeks now - we will be back in NZ in about 3 weeks.  I know once we get back to NZ anything left un-blogged will remain un-blogged !

One of these things is Muay Thai.  Not that I feel particularly qualified to say much about it as this has been Mike's gig.   However it has been a significant feature of our family stay here and I feel my musings wouldn't be complete without something on it.  So this is my take on Muay Thai, from listening, watching at the gym and some Q&A with Mike.

The ring, with the gym on the right.

Mike has been regularly going to Kobra Muay Thai (sometimes they call them gyms, sometimes camps).  Well before leaving NZ he had identified that this was something he wanted to use this time for - combining a uniquely Thai experience and a new skill, with fitness and weightloss.

Muay Thai is the traditional boxing of Thailand.  It means 'The Art of Eight Limbs' because there are 8 possible parts of contact (rather than just one i.e. fists).  To watch it appears to be the only form of boxing which virtually has no rules - you can use head, fists, elbows, legs, feet and knees.  As far as we know the only thing you can't do is knee/kick in the balls, but anything else goes !  There is very little of the protective gear that you would see with any sort of boxing in Western countries

Not long after arriving here, Mike (with me in tow) drove around to check out 3 or 4 of the local Muay Thai gyms and their offerings.  Most concentrate on group training sessions and you pay a weekly or monthly fee, regardless of how often you go.  However Kobra, which also happened to be the closest to us, had a more personal offering which was one-on-one training and a pay-as-you-go system.  Surprisingly the fees were probably about the same wherever you went - it is 300B for 1.5 hours (i.e. about $12NZD) - great value for one-on-one.  

Shub ! Shub !

Mike goes along about 4 or 5 times a week, when he has been here, and is not injured (he has had a couple of weeks away with 2 work trips to Sydney and Singapore).  He trains with Kob who is the gym owner and was, in his day, a champion fighter - he is now also in his 40s.  Or if not Kob, then one of the 3 young (20-ish) Thai guys who live, work and train at the gym - this is the traditional way these places have worked - hence called a 'camp'. 

Kobra Camp

The training session starts with about half an hour of fitness (a run, or skipping, jumping on tyres), then some stretching in which the trainer helps (sometimes too much - Mike was injured the other day by one of the young trainers pulling his leg up too high).  They then have their hands strapped and move onto shadow boxing and after that sparring. 

Matthew being stretched by Nut

And hands taped.

Every so often they take a break for a drink of water and the trainer will give a rub down with a cold wet cloth and a bit of a massage.  Mike does press ups at various intervals and usually finishes up with sit-ups.  Right now he has just walked in hot, sweaty and exhausted !  He also usually has to walk or run to the Muay Thai gym and back as I have the car to take the kids to school and to get to my yoga, which is much further away.  

A cool down and stretch in between bouts.

There is quite a bit of a sense of community around the gym, especially on a fight-night.  Mike has enjoyed the interaction with the local guys and also the longer term Farang trainees.

Fight Night line up.

The young guys who work at the gym, and some of the better/younger Farangs will also take part in a fight every so often (Mike hasn't been invited yet!).  There is an organized Muay Thai fight night on Koh Phanagan about every 3 or 4 weeks, with different gyms taking turns to host it and the fighters being put forward by the various gyms also.  In the couple of days preceding the fights, trucks drive up around the island advertising the fight line up -  probably 5 or 6 fights on one evening, including some between women, and also kids as young as 8 or 9 years.

Mike has been along to a couple of these nights and really enjoyed them - being there with a bunch of people he has met at the gym, knowing one or two of the guys fighting, seeing their pre-fight intensity and focus, cheering loudly for them along with the crowd of 200 or so, soaking up the atmosphere and observing the bets being taken.  

One of these was on Samui, and just happened to be on a night when we were there before Matthew's birthday.  Samui is a 'bigger deal' as far as fights are concerned - more money, prestige etc, and then Bangkok is the big centre.  Mike was there at the Samui stadium with Kob, the fighter and one other and enjoyed the close association with the team and being right in the corner by the ring with the water bucket, liniment, and sweat.

One of the aspects of these nights that he has really appreciated, and didn't anticipate, is the ceremonial commencement of each fight.  There is wai-ing, prayers, blessing of each corner of the ring and a ritual dance that each of the fighters perform.  It displays respect for the history of the sport and the danger involved.

Go Matthew !

Matthew has also been along to Kobra and had trained about half a dozen times since we have been here.  He is really enjoying it too.  I can tell because he comes home constantly practicing his kicks and punches on anything that looks like a good target.    Annabelle and Matthew are both very interested in Mike's tales of the fight nights.  We have made the decision not to take them to a fight, as it is so very violent and the crowd encouraging this behavior is not something we want to really expose them to (and they start at 9.30pm and finish after midnight).  They have seen a little on TV however.  It is a fine line, given Muay Thai is so much part of the culture, also with Mike's involvement, and that some of the kids at school go to them.  However, I suspect Matthew's curiosity has been piqued enough that he will revisit it at some point later in his life.  He is looking forward to practicing some of his moves on his cousins when we get home!

After 2 months here and his committment to Muay Thai, Mike has definitely acquired some new skills, some weightloss and increased fitness.  He has also learned that there is a gym in Mt Eden, Auckland which holds Muay Thai sessions - so maybe he will continue with it!

We are about to re-watch the film 'Beautiful Boxer' written by Desmond Sim (the brother of our lovely friend Philamae) which will be great cultural context, especially when we get the subtitles working.

Lastly, a few more pictures (with thanks to Mike for allowing me to publish!):

Knee...

Fists...

Legs...

Like that, Kob ?

Shadow boxing !

These Thai massages can be ...brutal !

Mike in his massage 'PJs' !

This morning I am not at yoga as the new yoga teacher was overly ambitious for my body and I let him hold me in a stretch with one leg in the air for far too long.  So I have been utilizing the services of our wonderful massage lady more frequently than usual since last Friday when it happened.

In fact one of the things we are both really taking advantage of here in Thailand are the very inexpensive massages.  A one hour Thai massage costs around $10 - sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less.  However they are often just as much about pain as pleasure !

We have had massages in a multitude of different places.

In the busier more tourist oriented places a typical massage place has about 10 massage ladies in uniform all working hard on foot massages, Thai massages or oil massages.  These places often also offer manicure/pedicures and hair braiding as well.  

At the other end of the tourist scale (depending on what sort of tourism you are after) - we once strayed into an establishment where there were individual rooms and the doors could lock from the inside!  Mike felt most comfortable in a room with the kids on that occasion.  I didn't feel especially relaxed and it was a lesson to get a recommendation first.

The best places come in inauspicious packaging !

Here on Koh Phangan they tend to be quite small practices - the place we go to regularly is not particularly smart, the mattresses are on the floor rather than on a platform, the changing room is really a cupboard.  However all the Thai and expat recommendations are "go to Lek" - she is revered on this island for her skill.  So we regularly go to Lek Massage.  In fact it is the only massage place we have seen, which seems to have just as many Thai people having massages as farangs (Westerners).

Lek is an amazing Thai woman, a devout Buddhist, who practices meditation daily at a small house she has just built for this purpose and to invite others to meditate with her (she has been teaching me how to meditate, but that is for a different story) and who has adopted and cares for orphans in her Chang Mai home. She trained in massage at one of the Bangkok hospital schools.   Thai massage and herbal medicine were originally brought to Thailand by Buddhist monks from China (to where it had initially come from India) and filtered through the country.  After some time knowledge began to be lost, until a King brought together all the practitioners to capture this knowledge in written form, and then a later King set up the schools in Bangkok which still exist today.

Lek has the extraordinary skill of being able to run her eye and fingers up and down your spine and being able to diagnose pretty much what is going on with you.  I am currently suffering from a re-injured lower back and hip and I trusted her enough to let her crack my back the other day and I am usually very wary of that particular manipulation.  Mum had a few gentle oil massages from her while she was with us and felt it made a huge difference to her neck problems.  Mike - who is ever-seeking a strong massage, and usually finds that they are not strong enough for him - says he has never had such a strong, accurate massage - but is hoping that when he next goes back she will be busy !

Lek finishing up her treatment of Mike.

We were planning to spend a day training with her on back massage, however she is so busy she cannot spare time for teaching right now.

Lek has a small team of women working with her, and actually my favourite massager is an older lady named Lai.  In fact I have found that many of the best massages have come from the older practitioners who combine strength with years of accumulated skill.  (Apparently the most revered massagers are blind.).  Lai seems to have the knack of finding the muscles and points that need attention and easing off the pressure before it becomes agony.  

I love Lai !

Because Thai massage is not for the faint hearted !  

In a 'real' Thai massage place you first get changed into a some loose fitting clothes that they provide you - they often look like a pair of white pyjamas.  One size fits all - the trousers tie at the waist and Mike can never fit into the t-shirt tops, so wears his own.

And in the more traditional places they also start and finish with a short verbal offering and 'wai' to the Buddha shrine in the room.

Then treatment starts with cleaning your feet - either washing in a bowl of water or just wiping off with a cloth.  They start the massage with lying on your back and working on your feet or legs and push and prod their way up and down your legs along the energy meridians and muscles.  They then move on to your arms and you turn over for your back.  You turn onto one side, then the other for them to get into shoulders, buttocks.  Toward the end you sit up for a last bit of attention to the shoulders and back.

The amazing thing is now the massage person is completely physically committed to the massage - hands, arms, elbows, legs and their whole body is at times being used to apply pressure, bend, stretch and pull you.  However she can sometimes also being having a great conversation with the next door massage person in Thai.  Of course we don't understand a fraction of what they are saying, or what is causing them great mirth.

The massage ends with you lying on your back again, with your head on a pillow, and the massage lady sitting cross-legged behind you.  She uses a hot towel to rub the muscles in your neck and shoulders, finishing with your head and then face.  To me it feels extraordinarily nurturing to be lying with your head in the lap of the woman who has been massaging you for the last hour or so.  This is the relaxing bit,  and also a strangely intimate experience to have your face, and particularly ears, washed by another person.

At Lek's they always offer us green tea and a small snack afterward if we want to hang around a bit longer before leaving.

Despite the fact that this is often not a particularly relaxing experience, for some reason I have been persevering with Thai massage.  
I think there are 3 reasons for this:

Firstly, for authenticity of our experience.

Secondly, because it is nearly half the price of an oil massage (I have been pondering on the economics of this - and writing this prompted me to ask yesterday as one lady spoke English well - apparently the premium is partly for the oil, but mainly for the increased 'power from inside the body' that the practitioner has to use in an oil massage.  It is constant movement rather than the Thai massage where they use their weight to apply much of the pressure.) 

And lastly I have some belief in Lek's oft used Western words "no pain, no gain".  

Learning to cook Thai-style

One day while Mum and Dad were with us, we signed up for a Thai cooking class, at a cooking school run by one of our favorite restaurants.

First up, we chose what we wanted to cook from a 'menu' - we were conscious to choose things that we thought we would be able to replicate at home e.g. not the delicious green papaya salad (although if anyone knows where I can get green papaya or green mango in Auckland tell me quick!) .  Between us we chose a red curry, green curry and a mussaman curry, a pad thai, a tom yum khung and a tom kai.

Embarking on our trip to the markets

Our chef-teacher was a wonderful small Thai lady called Oi, who first led us off on pedal bikes to the local market.  The fresh-market for Koh Phangan occupies one street in the main town of Thong Sala.  We had briefly looked at this street and its multitude of stalls in passing, but had not really engaged with what was on offer.

Oi talked us through all the fresh ingredients we were buying - the various species of eggplant (pea sized and up), many herbs, how to pick kaffir limes leaves, chillies, pickled turnip, various varieties of mushroom, fresh tofu, prawns, bamboo shoots, tamarind, cane sugar and so on.

Mum selecting from the seafood

Identifying new vegetables

White eggs, brown eggs, pink pickled eggs, quail eggs

We also purchased many delicious fruits - most of which we had been eating every day anyway.  Every morning our day starts with a platter of 3 or 4 fresh tropical fruit.  Our long time favorite, mango, is a staple, but also papaya, pomelo (kind of like a enormous sweet grapefruit which you eat one segment at a time), juicy pineapple and also the less exotic rock melon/canteloupe and very sweet watermelon. 

We newly identified dragon-fruit which we have been eating regularly but calling by the wrong name (red outside with a white flesh dotted with tiny black edible pips), and we also tried mangosteen for the first time - which has become a real favorite of ours.

We also bought and tried some banana wrapped in sticky rice and steamed in banana leaves - delicious, particularly with mango, and a great gluten free dessert for mum !  Another delicious desert we have tried here is mango and sticky rice with coconut milk - divine.  

Our regular fruit lady with mounds of papaya, melon and dragon-fruit (the red ones)

I had assumed we would be making the curries from the individual spices, however this was not the case.  The markets sold large mounds of pastes for each of the curries made in this part of Thailand.  Oi did provide a recipe for the pastes though, should we wish to prepare from scratch at home.

We returned to the kitchen and prepared all our ingredients, for our 3 individual dishes.

Following Oi's lead in preparing the ingredients

Pad Thai - interestingly used fresh noodles (the flat white rice ones) and this gave a much better result than presoaking the dried noodles, which is how I have made it at home, as it avoided it all clumping together.  Oi gave us advice on things to substitute if you couldn't get various ingredients in our own country.  I wonder if we can get fresh rice noodles anywhere?

Red curry - made with the egg sized, and pea-sized eggplants.  The tricky thing with this was to use sufficient curry paste so as to have a good flavor, but without blowing your head off with the chilli.

Tom Kha (similar to Tom Yum but with coconut milk), really tasty with lemongrass, galangal, fresh coriander root and kaffir limes.  I made this one without chili so that the children could eat it - and it was still really good and went down well.

Quick-cooking in a smoking hot wok.

Once the ingredients were prepared we moved to the woks in the kitchen and started to cook.  The fierce heat meant that this took no time at all, but that we were sweltering, on a day that was already about 35 C outside, let alone standing over a high flame !  The trick here was to get them all into the wok in the right order at the right moment so that they were perfectly cooked once it was served.

Feeling quite proud of our colourful, aromatic creations we sat down to a large glass of cold water and a shared meal.  It was delicious, we enjoyed it thoroughly, although the curries were a bit too spicy for some.  The children had helped a little too and they thoroughly enjoyed tasting our creations as well.

Look what we made !

Delicious !

There was so much food - each of us having made three dishes that served 2 people !  So we took home takeaways (in Thai style - clear plastic bags tied at the tops with all the air inside with an elastic band) and it fed us all for another couple of meals !

The cooking was interesting and the food delicious, and almost the best bit was our tour around the markets which has given us the confidence to shop there more,  and it has much better produce than the (revolting smelling) supermarket.

I have recipes for the dishes we cooked which I am happy to share with anyone, once we get near a scanner, as the list of ingredients is formidable, or I could take a photo for you.  Or perhaps we will be cooking up some Thai meals on our return ! 

How we came to get a pet: our dog Billy

The kids feeding Billy in the front garden

The topic of dog ownership (or not) has been raised several times in our family over the last few years.  I am the reluctant one, feeling like the responsibility would, in the end, rest with me and that having consciously stopped our family at 2 children, getting a dog would be like another child - but one that never grows up.  Somehow, however, it had crept onto the agenda for when we returned home from Thailand.

Then a few days after we moved into our house - Baan Sunshine - the Italian/German owner Eddie, who lives on-and-off in the house behind, asked if we could feed his dog BIlly while we were here.  He was off back to Europe for a few months.

There are lots of dogs around, many stray or semi-stray.  Along our strip of beach, almost every residence or resort seems to have a dog or few.  Each have their own clearly defined territory which they defend with growls, barks and the occasional fight if another dog should stray into it. 

Some are well taken care of with vaccinations, food, flea and tick removal, while others are merely fed occasionally by a part-time owner, and yet others seem to be completely on their own scavenging from rubbish and whatever else they can find.  It seems that people often get a dog and then move on, leaving the dog behind.  

Eddie does not actually own Billy, but had more or less adopted him and feeds him because the houses are on Billy's 'patch'.  So, Eddie has temporarily passed on this guardianship to us.

We found that the local supermarket sells dog food.  (Yes there is a supermarket - it has only been open a couple of years but somehow the smell of it is so revolting it doesn't encourage us to shop there much - we tend to go to the open air fresh-market street or a wholesaler that supplies the resorts and has some Western foods.)  And so we have been feeding Billy for the last month or so.

Billy hanging out with me today, while I blog

Billy is an old dog, he has a crooked ear, a scarred face and an unruly coat.  He is quite slow and blind in one eye.  He spends most of his days asleep in the shade of a tree in the garden, digging out a hole into the cooler ground below.  He occasionally heads out to forage in the longer grass behind the houses.  He wags his tail and comes to greet us when we arrive home.  He will sit, and shake hands on command, so has obviously been trained at some point.  He is always curled up on the patio outside in the mornings.  Right now he is sitting a short distance away from me in companionable silence.  We all feel quite affectionate towards him. 

However none of us want to touch him.  

His long coat is flea-infested and when he lies down we can see a whole throng of ticks escaping from his coat into the surrounding area.  I am now well versed in the art of tick identification, tick squashing and even what a tick biting/sucking down under your fingernail feels like.  Yueeerk!  For this reason we had dissuaded him from sitting on the patio when we are around.

One day last week Billy started looking even slower and was clearly having difficulty seeing.  He nearly fell in to the swimming pool and kept walking into things in the garden.  He also seemed to be almost crippled.  I thought things were looking grim and that Billy's days were almost certainly numbered.  I was running through scenarios in my head of how this might play out, and the reaction of the children.  Was he just going to walk off and find a quiet hiding hole in which he felt safe and we would never see him again ?  Or would we wake to find that he wasn't going to get up from the patio in the next morning or two ?  The former scenario seemed more likely as he had already been absent for a day or so since I had last seen him looking in such a sorry state.

As a measure of the quickly developing responsibility and compassion I was already feeling for our newly acquired pet, I found myself worrying about him as I went to sleep, and in the middle of the night.  This certainly wasn't something I had expected in our trip.

Our Spanish/Australian neighbor Jose has been a wealth of information on the dogs around here and their temperaments and histories.  We often chat with him as he makes his twice daily walk up and down the beach with his own adopted dogs & picking up various bits of rubbish that have washed up on the beach.  He suggested that Billy may have a tick borne parasite paralysis which they all get from time-to-time but is harder for the older dogs to survive.  He gave us some antibiotics which he had had for his own dog and needed administering 12 hourly.

I knew the only way we were going to get antibiotics into Billy was disguised in his food.  Billy wouldn't tolerate us interfering with him in anyway or forcing him to take anything he didn't want.  So for the last 5 days I have been getting out of bed at the crack of dawn hoping to catch BIlly on our patio before he is disturbed and takes himself off somewhere.  Hiding a small tablet in his canned meat seems to have been fairly successful, assuming he is hungry enough.  Likewise we seem to be able to find him at some point during the evening.

And he is improving greatly.  His appearance has become more predictable as he has become more well.  He is wagging his tail once again.  And we are moving back to feeding him once a day.  We will try to get some tick medicine this weekend.  Meanwhile he seems to have crept back to hanging out on the patio - it felt unfair to chase off a dog that could barely walk - and now we are just happy to see him looking healthy again

We are here for another month, then there are a few weeks after we leave and before Eddie returns.  I'm not sure what this will mean for Billy.  He is an old dog, in a country where dogs have shorter lifespans than when they are fully looked after by their owner.

Meanwhile our neighbor Jose is also leaving and taking one of his dogs with him, to Spain.  And he has asked us to feed another dog - Spot !  

Spot is younger and his territory is further up the beach at Jose 's house.  He seems reluctant to eat at our place, possibly because he is not in his own patch, and can often be seen out near the rubbish bags of a neighboring resort.  Jose has given us piles of food for Spot including some very expensive imported French dog food.  However we have not been able to interest Spot in being fed by us, and Jose's house is now rented by someone else so we can't really go there to attempt it.  Jose left a few days ago and we saw Spot today, looking pretty good and quite uninterested in us - I guess he is surviving by some other means.

It seems that by and large the dogs adopt their carers, rather than the other way around.  Whether it be for a few days, weeks, months or years  - if you are on their patch you are adopted !  Maybe this is the way it should be - it saves decision making, although dilutes responsibility.

The kids are still reasonably enthusiastic in their feeding duties.  However, I do seem to be holding primary physical and emotional responsibility for them.  

It is an interesting foot-in-the-water of dog ownership (albeit without the need for walks), and while Billy is an engaging animal, I can't say that I am any more persuaded than before we arrived that I want to commit to being a dog owner.  That being said, I doubt it is the end of discussions in our family - it will be interesting to see!

PS (Pet Script) : We also have fish in an outdoors fish pond!  The kids have fun trying to catch them periodically.  We have discovered that these fish can jump - when caught in a small plastic container they jump out and commit suicide on the tiles in the process.  So we don't do that any more.  The loss of two fish didn't seem to effect us nearly so much as the potential loss of the dog.

A photo of the front of our house - Baan Sunshine.
Billy just decided not to be in the photo !