Siem Reap, renovating the inner garden

That’s the turn of the inner garden this time. Now I know I’ve got loads of pavements to use I’m going to make a border and add a new layer of dirt (from the ugly looking pile outside). First, the idea is to collect those rocks and use them somewhere else, then I will put the dirt in the garden and give some good energy to the plants. Let’s do this shall we :-)

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Siem Reap, renovating the entrance

Second big project: The entrance of the hostel. Same, it took me several days to fix this area and still, it’s not finished but the difference is largely visible already. Few years ago, the city made this road again. Like in Indonesia, they build on top of the old one which created a 30cm step. Since then, the owner never adapted the floor’s entrance. Let’s fix this :-)

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Siem Reap, cleaning the rubbish

Since Tina (the new manager) arrived, I’ve got a lot more motivation to help here. In fact, I didn’t like the last manager who didn’t give a shit about anything here. I might stay for a little while longer here and see what happens. This place needs a lot of care in cleaning, gardening, plumbing, electricity and other organisation. Since I’ve been here, I kept in mind all the things I would change or improve and today, I can finally do something :-) Let’s clean those dirty and smelly rubbish then! I’ve done this “project” during three different days but will show all the progress in this unique post.

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Ratchaburi, Still working and learning on Adobe house

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When I’m not visiting some places with Pita, I keep working on her house. Today I’m learning how to do my first window. Then we will keep doing some other walls. Stephane has left this morning to go to Bangkok. I’m going soon too for few days, only with my bicycle. I will leave most of my stuff here. Then I will come back for few days before we will be cycling with Pita towards Chiang Mai. She planned to visit her friends, stay there as long as she needs and then catch a train back here. After Chang Mai, I will have about 3 weeks left to arrive in Laos which should be long enough. That’s the plan! (kind of).

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Ratchaburi, Pee Ta’s Place, Adobe house project, second day

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Second day working on and learning about Adobe house. Build a mud house is not that complicate and it’s even easier to destroy. Today, Pita asked us to cut the sides of the walls around doors and windows because she wants to be able to open them and fixed them against the wall when the wind becomes very strong. Before we started, the wall was like new. Now it’s a mess. But that’s what she wants :-)

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Ratchaburi, Pee Ta’s place, Adobe house project, first day

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Here we are :-) Pita is showing us today how to build a wall with mud. These is not only mud of course. In that case, we don’t make bricks. To be able to build a thinner wall Pita made a bamboo frame that we are going to cover with a mixture of mud, water, straw and rice peel. Once the mixture (mixed by foot without the straw) has the right thickness, we shape by hand an handful of straw with that fresh mud. The shape looks like a long tube about 50cm long and 3 to 4cm wide. The next step is to apply the “mud pipes” on the bamboo frame by hooking them up on it and then press around to make the desired shape and flatness. This is harder to explain than to do actually :-)

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