For the past 3 months, several of our workers have been helping to wash the gravel and sand to fill up the regeneration zones of the pond. This last week it is officially finished. At this point, we are now done with the pond digging, the sand retaining walls, the pipes to run the water from the bottom of the regeneration zones to the circulation pumps, the circulation pumps themselves, the washed gravel on top of the pipes, and the washed sand on top of the gravel.

We still have to wait for 50cm more rainfall. According to the meteorological averages, since we are now beginning the dry season it probably won’t be until May that the water fills up. And as the water level rises, we will begin planting the water plants in the regeneration zone.

But still, the construction is completely done!

So, I decided to throw a little party for the workers to celebrate the completion of the pond and thank them for all of the hard work they put in. When I asked them what kind of food they wanted, they asked for grilled seafood, so we got a pretty good selection.

Here we have some shrimp and horse crab (at least that is what they call it in Thai) on the grill:

 On the left is some squid ready to go on the grill.

In the lower right, you can see some grilled saba fish wrapped in foil and in the lower left are “blood cockles”:

I’ve never had blood cockles before, but they have a nice salty (kinda bloody) taste and texture. In the back are sliced papaya and jack fruit.

And here is a picture of grilled mussels in the foreground and the grilled squid to the left of it:

And the green sauce in the upper right is the obligatory spicy dip whenever Thai people get together and eat seafood.

And although it isn’t seafood, what is a Thai BBQ without a bit of grilled pork?

I’ve never had pork ears before (or blood cockles for that matter), but hey, I tried it:

It tasted like pork, but had the cartilage texture I guess one might expect from eating an ear.

That’s probably enough pictures of the food at the BBQ. In case you are interested, I took a few pictures of what the pond looks like now.

Here are a few photos of the smaller regeneration zone that was finished this week:

The pond actually has 4 sections. In the previous picture, you can see the smaller regeneration zone in the foreground, the main water section in the midground, and the larger regeneration zone in the upper right background. After the larger regeneration zone is a smaller water section we hope to put up a “sala” (wooden pavilion) next to to have a place to hang out by the water. Here is a view of the pond from that side:

The sala will go in the foreground right side. There is about 1m of water over this section now (1.5m once the water is filled up), but the water is covered in morning glory vines, except for the section where we just did some work to adjust the pipe for the smaller circulation pump on this side.

For completeness, here is a closer up picture of the main regeneration zone finished a few weeks back:

 (The black speck on the left is a dog enjoying the sand. He thinks we built the whole thing as a beach for him.)

I’ll make sure to post pictures as the water level rises to cover the sand and we start planting the plants.