Sunday night near Yasothon
The Sunday night after the rocket festival I spent in a nearby village - maybe 20 or so kilometres outside of Yasothon. No running water, outside loo, outside (cold) shower but, thankfully, one air-conditioned bedroom. Before you start getting excited about Eskimo hospitality, it was a single bed and I was very tired. I'll comment about the "dating" Apps later on
In the morning, before we set out for Yasothon town and then the airport, my host walked me around part of the village. I was again impressed, as I have been on previous visits to Isaan, at the large wealth transfer that seems to be going on. There were close to a dozen new and nearly new houses, all costing in the two-to-four-million baht range, funded by remittances from Bangkok and, in a couple of cases, Australia. The sons and daughters are off in the big city, working their arses off (sometimes literally), and sending the money home. In return grandmothers and aunts are raising their children for them while they work in the factories and shopping malls - rarely the offices, not a high enough level of literacy - and houses of the rich as well as - perhaps less often than you might imagine - in gogo bars. Few young people remain at home - just enough to do the farming. I did see one very handsome young lad who would certainly have made his fortune servicing the latintopxxxs of this world in Bangkok but his story was "married at 15, father at 16" - not uncommon, and he was a farm labourer
It had rained heavily while I slept, and was very wet underfoot but there was livestock in abundance - chickens everywhere, pigs and cows all being fattened up for slaughter. Despite the chickens being everywhere, apparently their owners are able to identify them simply by sight (so I was told)