Thursday, April 15, 2010

A Visit to Wat ChongLom

Wat ChongLom is a Thai Buddhist temple situated in SamutSakorn province, south of Bangkok.
This temple is quite famous that there are many swiftlets live inside.

I went there yesterday from Bangkok by car. It took us, me and my family, around one hour drive to the temple.
We arrived there around 6 pm. The temple front is facing to the sea. We saw a group of seagulls flying around 2 meters above the sea fishing for their dinner.

Seagull

Inside the temple, at 6 to 6.50 pm, we saw swiftlets flied in and out of the temple at almost equal amount.
But when it was getting darker at 6.50 pm onwards, not many swiftlets flied out, all of them were rushed into the temple. As outside was getting darker and darker,they were more and more bird flied in quickly.

At the peak time around 7 pm, my count was around 300 birds per minute!
At 7.15 pm, it was so amazing to see that it came to a total stop, not a single bird flied in.
It seemed like all of them were already inside the temple.

Pictures below showed inside of the temple at 6.18 pm, there were not so many birds at the wooden walls.

At 6.35 pm

At 6.36 pm

At 6.38 pm

But at 7.08 pm, after most of them were back, there were many of them perching on the wall, compared to the above pictures.

At 7.27 pm

At 7.28 pm

At 7.29 pm

In fact the hall of this temple at 6 meter wide and 16 meter long is serving as a roving room for these swiftlets. the nesting room is situated behind through an entrance hole of 40*40 cm. in the inner area.

Entrance to Nesting Area

My estimate from the bird count and the size of the this temple is that there are around 5000 birds in this temple.




Are they afraid of light? Don't think so.
Every day around 7.30 pm, a monk will close all the fluorescent lights and close the temple windows and doors.
In the morning around 5.00 am, a monk will then open all these windows and doors.
So they knew pretty well that they were all very well protected.

First Column Erected

The first column was erected on April 15, 2010, at 9.09 am as planned.
Although April 13th-15th were during Songkran's holidays, thanks to the contractor
and his workers who were kind enough to work during these days so the ceremony
could be performed on this auspicious day.

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Piling started

Piling started since yesterday, April 12th, 2010!
We will use two 30 cm., 10m., piles per column.
The first pile was driven down by a piling machine up to 9.3 m. only.
So the data from the constructor are pretty accurate. He told  us earlier that
from his prior project nearby, the 10m. pile could not be driven down completely.
We trusted him and didn't do any soil testing!

So the first column will be erected on April 15th as planned.

I 've learnt to work on my design with Google Sketch-up program recently.
So many new things to be learnt in relation to this bird house project, beside the Sketch-up, I also learnt how to use the Audacity sound editing program to eliminate the unwanted noise/sound from the bird sounds we have had.

Below are my 2D pictures from the Sketch-up design,(in fact the program is a 3D one, but I don't think I can put it in 3d here).
Any comments are welcome.


The front of the building facing north.
FrontNorth

Inside
North InsideNew

Back of the building, south side.
BackSouth

Inside
South Inside New

East side
East

Inside
EastInsideNew

West side having double walls with stair cases in between the two walls.
West

ใส่ราวบันได

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Construction is becoming a reality.

After a long 4 months delay on the process of dividing the title deed, I had decided to go ahead with the construction instead of waiting for the usual process of buying the land before construction. Today I heard good news that the land department told my partner that the title deed dividing process is about to be done soon. So I hope I can go down to Surat by next month to officially buy this piece of land and to see the progress of the construction.

So the contractor started to clear the land this morning.
This land is currently a palm oil plantation, today we have to clear out four palm oil trees for the building.

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The piles will be delivered to the land tomorrow. It will take 2 days for piling.
We expected to have the first column erected on April 15th, which is the date my partner personally picked according to the ancient belief. It is belief that if we picked the right date for the first column, we will be blessed and will be good luck all the way for the construction and the operation of the building.