"I don't like ants", said the bright little boy from the Middle East, as he stamped on hundreds of them in a smart western park many years ago. "I don't like them, but you have to admire them."

I asked him - why?

"I don't like them because they're not like us at all. They mill around, dashing backwards and forwards, creeping and crawling along, and if they get too close they might bite you!" Stamp, stamp, stamp. But why do you admire them, then?

"They work hard, they always seem to know what they're doing, and they're very well organised. Look - there are a dozen or more and they're carrying a larger, dead, insect back to their home for dinner! Disgusting!" Stamp, stamp, stamp.

But if their lives are totally different to ours, how do you know about their home?

"Oh, I can tell you! We just moved into a big house, and long ago the people there had stupid children who left all their toys out in the garden" proclaimed the confident 10 year old. "It was my job to clear all their old things away and help the gardener get things straight again. There was one of those silly little toy wheel barrows upside down, so I picked it up. Do you know? They'd left it upside down, full of earth! Somehow the ants had got up inside and made it their home. You could see all their little rooms and what they were doing - one big room for what seemed to be the boss, little caves for sleeping - even a place where they dragged in their dead bodies to store! Now I'm going to give them some more!" Stamp, stamp, stamp.

I wasn't old enough to judge, but I couldn't help feeling that, despite his education, super-confident attitude and smart clothes, he was wrong. I looked over to his elegant parents, sitting on the bench nearby, tending to a baby in a pram. They paid no attention to his enthusiastic annihilation of this big, sophisticated, apparently successful community which had certainly done no harm to me. Or him.

I was only 9 but I felt intuitively that there was something badly wrong. Killing because "they're not like us at all!" Yet, along with that, some sort of sneaking admiration.

The memory came back to me just after the 12th of last month…..

Apologies for lateness

If this magazine reaches you a little later than usual, our apologies. This issue was originally planned to have a humorous main feature, which we felt inappropriate in the light of world events, thus many late changes had to be made.

Loy Kratong

- A time for love, hope, fears and forgiveness.

Michael Psciuk

Schedule of Loy Kratong Festival 2001

Tragedy at the Pentagon

Rick Hudnall

Why massage? Why Thai?

Tassanee Boonsoom

Famillies go rallying

Hot Dog

Chiangmai and the North

My Chiangmai

David Hardy

The Drinks Page

Night Fowl

Ric Klein

Nong Khai, etc, etc

Riverbank Stone

Letters

Heart to Heart

Mountain People of Northern Thailand

THE PADUANG
(LONG NECK)

Big bikers are coming

All 5 enthusiat big bike clubs in Chiangmai, led by the North Comets, will stage 'Bike Week' from December 8-10th. (...).

MISS SENGSON. I am a 35 year old Thai woman, 49kgs weight, 152cms tall and single. My interests are travel, cooking, reading and more (...).

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