The crane lowers the manhole into the excavation. A couple of hard-hatted workers get down there with it and push it this way and that, getting it lined up, while other workers up on the edge of the pit help out by shoving on it with a big stick. Finally it settles gingerly into place, atop its prepoured pad. The foreman clambers in, takes a transparent green disposable lighter from his pocket, and sets it down sideways on the top of the manhole. The liquid butane inside the lighter serves as a fluid level, verifying that the manhole is correctly positioned.

With a few more hours' work, the conduits have been mated with the tubes built into the walls of the manhole and the surrounding excavation filled in so that nothing is left except some disturbed earth and a manhole cover labeled CAT: Communications Authority of Thailand. The eventual result of all this work will be two separate chains of manholes (931 of them all told) running parallel to two different highways, each chain joined by twin lengths of conduit - one conduit for FLAG and one for CAT.

Farther west, another crew is at work, burdened with three enormous metal spools carrying flexible black plastic conduit having an inside diameter of an inch. The three spools are set up on stands near a manhole, the three ducts brought together and tied into a neat bundle by workers using colorful plastic twine. Meanwhile, others down in the manhole are wrestling with the world's most powerful peashooter: a massive metal pipe with a screw jack on its butt end. The muzzle of the device is inserted into one of the conduits on the manhole wall and the screw jack is tightened against the opposite wall to hold it horizontal. Next the peashooter is loaded: a big round sponge with a rope tied to it is inserted into an opening on its side. The rope comes off a long spool. Finally, a hefty air compressor is fired up above ground and its outlet tube thrown down into the manhole and patched into a valve on this pipe. When the valve is opened, compressed air floods the pipe behind the round sponge, which shoots forward like a bullet in a gun barrel, pulling the rope behind it and causing the reel to spin wildly like deep-sea fishing tackle that has hooked a big tuna.