Biking Chiang Mai To Bangkok This Summer In Anchorage

 Back around Fall 1981, the University of Alaska Anchorage swimming pool had a challenge - swim the Bering Sea over the semester.  In the pool.  50 miles.  I've never been as fit as I was that semester.  Each swim was not just a swim, but a leg across the Bering Sea.  That was a lot of incentive to get in the pool three or four times a week.  

So last summer I decided I should have a mental trip in mind for my biking.  I chose Santiago Chile to Concepción - a distance of about 650 kilometers, depending on which route you take.  So, as I rode last summer, I was in Anchorage, but also in Chile.  I looked at maps and pictures of the places I was passing.  Just like swimming the Bering Sea, riding from Santiago to Concepción was the inspiration I needed to get on the bike, even on days I was feeling lazy.  And once out, I never regretted it.  

So I've started already this summer and thought about going from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.  I wasn't exactly sure how far that was, but it seemed in the ballpark.  I looked on line to see if it was doable.  Not only is it doable, but there are a number of companies that will take you on the actual trip and so I picked Exo Travel because their trip was 745 km and the itinerary included a stop in Kamphaengphet - a town I lived in for two years teaching English.  I've also spent six months in Chiang Mai over two years and about a year in the Bangkok area.  

I've added up the miles from Exo Travel's itinerary and marked the distance from Chiang Mai for each daily destination.  The 165 km from Kamphaengphet to Nakhon Sawan would be way too much for me to do in one day.  I think about that trip on the main road back in the late 1960s.  It was a red dirt road.  Very dusty. Lots of rice paddies and some interesting hills jutting up oddly out of the earth.  Of course, it's paved now - they were working on that back when I was first there.  

So, as of today, I've ridden about 102km.  (That doesn't count three or four early, shorter rides on the old mountain bike before the ice was totally gone.)  

So let's look at today.  Before riding I swept the cottonwood catkins off the deck.  I have to do that twice a day right now.  

The catkins are VERY sticky.  If I don't sweep they stick to the deck, except for the ones that stick to my shoes.  Very messy period every year.  But they do smell very sweet.  

The tulips opened today.  At least two of them did.

There was a moose browsing by the trail as I went past the UAA student housing.  I'm always amazed at how such huge creatures can be so well hidden out in plain sight.  

Then up the trail toward Stuckagain Heights and Campbell Airstrip.  

Here's the north fork of Campbell Creek as it crosses under the Stuckagain Heights road.  

So given my bike rides so far since April including today, I've covered 102 kms, so I'm about 20 kms out of Lampang.  This is an old northern town that still has horse drawn carriages you can use to get around town.  There are no moose, but the elephant sanctuary is nearby.  

Here's are some links to posts I did at the elephant sanctuary in Lampang.

Elephants Part 1

Thai Elephant Conservation Center Hospital in Lampang and the Nursery (Part 2)

Visiting A Well-To-Do Thai Home - 1919

No, I didn't take this movie, I'm not THAT old. Even my mom hadn't been born yet. This was posted at Thai-Visa [not sure if you need an id to get in there, probably just to comment] and I thought it worth sharing. When I was in Thailand in the 60s some of this was still going on. I don't remember women wearing this sort of sarong except for classical Thai dancing. Eating betel nut was still popular, but only by the older men and women - these women would have been in their 60s or 70s by then. I'm guessing the hostess must have been someone pretty high on the social scale (maybe royalty?) based on how low these women prostrate themselves when they 'wai'. Though when you are already sitting on the floor, the others have to get down pretty low to show proper respect. While I often was in situations where we were all on the floor like that, I wasn't with people that elegant.









Writing this post made me remember a short video of a breakfast on the floor with farmers in Chiang Mai in 2008.  That would have been 89 years later.  And a much less elegant, but more comfortable setting.  You can see that video here  just for a comparison.  They're speaking Northern Thai dialect.   I'm not sure why the photos have vanished.  

Elephant Beggars Follow Up

Elephant and mahout coming to beg at Chiang Mai restaurant 2008

Four years ago, I posted about elephant beggars in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Today I got this email:

"I typed a response to your post about elephants begging in Chiang Mai, but when I clicked the preview button the post disappeared. That is why I am emailing you now."

[I get complaints now and then about how hard it is to leave comments.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but enough spam messages get through with the Blogspot obstacles, that I'm not ready to turn them off.  I trust my readers to be persistent enough to stick with it until their comment gets through, or, as Tim did, just send me an email.]

"In late 2010, a mahout, using as a weapon his metal-tipped wooden mahout stick, severely beat a couple of Australian tourists, who'd attempted to lecture the mahouts on the ethical treatment of animals. The mahout, and several others who'd been with him at the time of the beating, were arrested. The mahout was charged with some minor offense. All were released the following morning and were back with their elephants on the street within twenty-four hours of the attack. The Australians required hospitalization. The fallout of this awful event was such that the local Thai authorities decided it was time to rid Chiang Mai of the mahouts and their elephants. To that end, the police and the mahouts had a little meeting, which resulted in the mahouts and their elephants being shipped back from whence they came, a province along the Cambodia border. The mahouts, having successfully argued that they must beg in order to feed their elephants, are now subsidized. Or so the story goes. I was living in Chiang Mai at the time, and still am, but was away from Thailand when all this transpired. I've read the seder guest's comment about the elephants being owned by wealthy Thais. That makes this story even more interesting. Living in Alaska is a life-long fantasy of mine. Someday I'll get there. Best wishes, Tim"

I emailed back to Tim to get permission to post his email and found out he's a musician living in Chiang Mai but working in other Asian countries.  He also sent a Bangkok Post article on the attack.

I did some check up on this, including contacting Josh Plotnik who'd we met in Chiang Mai when he was doing his doctoral dissertation studying elephant behavior at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang.  Josh is now doing post-doctoral studies at Cambridge University, though he's spending most of his time in Northern Thailand where he's set up an organization called Think Elephant International.  The website explains the reasons behind of Think Elephant:

Why We Think Elephants

The loss of natural habitat, poaching for ivory, and human-elephant conflict are serious threats to the sustainability of elephants in the wild. Put simply, we will be without elephants, and many other species in the wild, in less than 50 years. Although conservation and wildlife management are not new ideas, clearly new approaches are needed. Think Elephants International is a non-profit focused on practicing science in the field, and teaching it in classrooms. Through research on elephant (and other animal) intelligence, we hope to better inform conservation practice in the wild by helping to formulate action plans that along with focusing on the needs of local human populations, take advantage of what we know about the animal's needs as well. Our research focuses on how elephants "see" their natural world – through smell and sound – and how they navigate this world – through problem solving and cooperation. Equipped with a better understanding of how these animals live, we hope to better help protect them in the wild.

Think Elephants is something else as well – an organization focused on conservation through education. But we don't just teach kids about the conservation battle, we bring the battle to them by bringing the elephants into their classrooms.

Josh confirmed Tim's report:

"The begging elephants situation is extremely complex -- yes, most of the eles were removed from the streets of Bangkok, and went home to Surin. In Surin, the government does subsidize the elephants and thus the mahouts get to stay home for 7,500THB [$240] a month (approximately). Unfortunately, I hear the eles are slowly making their way back to the streets in outlying provinces."

He also sent me to John Roberts' blog for the Golden Asian Triangle Elephant Foundation
(GTEAF*).  Their website describes (in part) their work:

"Yet, despite the strong bond between Thai people and their nation’s most genteel species, there are still a worrying number of elephants forced to walk the city streets to make their mahout a miserly living by begging from tourists.

In an ideal world all elephants would live in the wild and there would be no need to discuss elephants' work.  But until that point is reached, the GTAEF also aims to create and promote ethical work for the elephants and mahouts that are capable, whilst providing care for those that are unable."

Roberts, who is the Director of Elephants at Anantara Golden Triangle’s on-site Elephant Camp, wrote in a blog post just over a year ago (again, in part):

. . .You see, I believe (& I do have some idea which elephants are out there and what their history is) that there exists a perfectly reasonable (and improving) alternative back in the home town of these mahouts, an alternative provided by the Government (& improved for as many as possible by The Surin Project).
Not only is a viable alternative provided it has been very strongly explained to the mahouts that the penalties for being on the streets will be enforced.  “Go back home”, the authorities say, “we may not be able to make you rich there but we’ll keep you & your elephant there in the bosom of your family and, what’s more, if you come back out it’s ‘no more mister nice guy’, powerful people have noticed you, we’ll have to make your life a misery”
To me, that the message has hit home and so many elephants are still in Ban Ta Klang (in previous times when this approach was tried the elephants would stay until their existence became untenable: the food ran out or the money ran dry) means that this time, this IS a viable alternative.
So, I believe that the mahouts out there on the streets now, at least the ones I know about, have few excuses left (...a tendency toward an itinerant lifestyle?  ...a nagging wife?) - it is my belief that they are there for financial gain.  Believe it or not, the natural graze out on the streets may, at times, be better than can be found back at home but I believe the decision to go back out (most came home then went out again) was a purely financial one and has very little justification in ‘traditional lifestyle’ or ‘elephant welfare’ terms and none at all in the ‘no alternative’ terms. . .

You can follow Roberts' blog, Elephant Tails , here.  The most recent post is about selling coffee beans that have been processed by having elephants eat them before they are roasted.  Come on now, it's not that strange.  After all earlier this year I did a post about acacia trees whose seeds had to go through a giraffe's digestive system before they could germinate. 

Clearly there is a lively 'elephant world' out there that I've only glimpsed into. 

This post is long and convoluted enough.  I'll try to do another one on elephants soon though.

*GTAEF, from what I can tell, is a project of Anantara, a luxury hotel chain, that caters to the wealthy (I checked on a room in their hotel by the elephant camp and it started at over $1000 per night.  We stayed a night once in nearby Chiang Rai, in what we thought was a pretty fancy hotel for $35 per night.  That was an internet discount, but they weren't losing money on that price.)  This could be a great example of what's known as social entrepreneurship - using the market to support important non-profit causes.  Or it could be using green issues as a marketing ploy.  I just don't know enough about the organization to evaluate. 

Blogging Rewards - Connecting With Far Away Reader With a Post

Recent Email:

Hello,

I found your email address on your blog... and I found your blog because I've been searching bird song in Thailand for about two hours and I narrowed my search to trying to order Tony Ball's CD from a company in Holland that won't accept my Thai address and my French bank info... who could blame them. Somewhere in the Tony Ball google search your blog was quoted because you bought volumes one and two -- as it turns out, after actually going out with him as a guide!

I just want volume 1... and it feels like it SHOULD be easy to get since I'm IN Thailand!

I am NOT a birder. . . [She provided some personal information - an American living in Thailand who'd lived in Europe.]

You can't help but notice the birds here -- and I have seen at least one magnificent one that I can't find a picture of on line. But what is driving me crazy is that I am surrounded by their calls all morning and all evening but I can never find the one that's making a distinctive sound -- so I can't match sight and sound.

I don't want to study ALL birds -- I just want to know who's in my neighborhood... and I want to do that by sound.

That seemed simple until I started googling this morning!

Can you please help by sending me contact info for Tony Ball?

(When I go to his site, all that kind of info is in Thai!)

Thanks in advance,

EM

Google makes it possible for EM living in Chiang Mai, Thailand to find me in Anchorage, Alaska to help her get in touch with Tony Ball, back in Chiang Mai.  So I contacted Tony and emailed her back with his email address and a link I made to a post about ten common birds in Chiang Mai. It also let me revisit our wonderful Saturday morning birding with Tony Ball.
I got a second email:  

Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo

Oh I am so SO excited! There he is! Yes, of course Tony Ball is exciting too, but I mean "my" magnificent and heretofore nameless bird is number 2 on your blog list! A Racket-Tailed Drongo! 

And that fat one with the rust-colored wings is a Greater Coucal?

My computer (like me) is old and slow and can't download the latest Flash whatever, so I can't see your video... but because I had the names now, I could go to youtube, and there I found the sound I've been looking for! 

There must be a very large and very lonely Asian Male Koel in the neighborhood because you can hear that mating call on all three "soys".

I love that most of my "mysteries" are already solved AND that I am now able to consult the bird expert directly!

I can't thank you enough!

God willing and the creek don't rise I will be able to "book" Tony for a walk around my neighborhood -- I'll be sure to send you a report on that!

I'll send a separate email to Tony Ball -- I'm really looking forward to meeting him!

Best regards,

Just got an email cc from Tony that she's going to come by and get her CD and they'll plan a birding walk in her neighborhood.   And I love the drongos with those long tails with the feathers at the end.  You can hear them and the koel on the video here.  And it took forever to get that picture of the drongo flying.  Living on the 5th floor surrounded by tree tops helped. 

Golden Fronted Leaf birds and Black Drongo Say Goodbye

The birds were out this morning as we did last minute packing. The video is not good enough to see the details of the birds, so I put up this picture of the leaf bird from our Thai bird book. But you can see the drongo chase the leafbird off its perch and hear the leafbird singing. There are two leafbirds. The one on the far right is singing.




I'll set this to go up when the Anchorage folks are just waking up and we should be waiting in the Taiwan airport to fly to San Francisco.

Last Night Before Mystery Trip as Volcano Diverts China Air Anchorage Flights

Our trip home gets more exciting each day. As I mentioned earlier, the first report from our travel agent was that China Air had diverted the Taipei-Anchorage-New York flight to Vancouver to avoid the volcanic ash around Anchorage.

Then we saw on China Air's website that flights were stopping in Seattle. Well, that's ok, we can see our daughter.

But today I checked and the first flight listed to Anchorage this week is on Friday. But our ticket on the the China Air website still lists us leaving for Anchorage on Tuesday. But the New York flight with our flight number is listed as non-stop to New York. What if they decided it was better to fly non-stop and skip the Anchorage stop altogether even after the volcano stops erupting. That would be awful for us.

Anyway, we have no idea what's going to happen in the next couple of days. All the offices were closed on Sunday so we couldn't try to rebook through LA or San Francisco. So, adventure lies ahead. Since my mom's in LA, our son's near San Francisco, and our daughter is in Seattle, we may get to see at least one of them.

I've tried not to think about this being the last evening as we first met Rachel for sorbets at Iberry.







Then as the sun was just setting behind Doi Suthep, we all went over to Khun Churn where we had dinner with Matt and Rit.







Khun Churn is a vegetarian restaurant that serves tasty and imaginative all vegie meals.

Here's Rit after we finished off most of the dinner. We met him first at Swe's village where he works through an NGO working on education and cultural preservation.


And Songkran begins next week, so the waterguns I couldn't find anywhere when we first got here (for J to ward off menacing dogs) are now everywhere in preparation for Chiang Mai's giant water fight in a week or so. I shot this on our ride back home. We're much more comfortable now riding in the street (there's no place else to ride) and going with the flow of traffic at lights. Our bright red flashing tail lights making sure that drivers can see we're there.

Then, finally, we stopped to pick up our last sticky rice and mango to take home for a snack.

Birding - Not the Video Game

Tomorrow we move out of our fourth floor bird viewing nest. We've had some great birds this week. J definitely saw an owl (she thinks a barred Asian owlet) and I saw either a brown hawk owl or maybe it was a besra. Today we saw a pair of leafbirds - probably golden fronted leafbirds, but they weren't quite the same. One looked like the one on the bottom left. The other looked like the bottom right, but all green on the belly too. Picture from นกเมืองไทย







All these pictures have birds in them. Enlarging the picture will make them easier to see. This one is a big grey bird that flew off before we could even start to identify it.
This pictures has three drongos in it. Double click it to see it bigger.

With the leaves gone now from most of the trees, it's much easier to see the birds. Here's a picture of the same trees back in January.



This isn't to mention our regulars - all the drongos, the bulbuls, the sunbirds (harder to see and photograph as the picture of the olive backed sunbird shows, but if you double click it you can see it better), the doves, the coucal - one flew lazily right past us today, it's brown wings contrasting to the rest of its black body - and the koels, heard more than seen.

Here is this free show, this game - spot the birds, identify the birds - that is available to all. Yet somehow electronic games, using up energy, usually inside, usually costing money is far more accessible to most than watching birds. But the ability to sit and wait for birds, the ability to know the different kinds of birds by sight and by their calls is something that has to be built into our genes. It's how humans survived for all but the last 100 years on earth.


Verlyn Klinkkenborg writes today in the NY Times about the importance of watching birds,

There’s an insouciance about birds in their element that always feels to me like a comment on the human species. I see a vulture looking side to side as it slides by overhead, and it looks to me as though it’s artfully and intentionally ignoring the skill of its flight. I saw the same thing in the Chilean fjords a year ago. We sailed past dozens of black-browed albatross, and every one of them — serenely afloat — looked up at me from the waves with the self-confidence of an athlete, effortlessly drifting on the tide and wondering what element humans call their own.

Chiang Mai Morning Bird Sounds - Mostly Koel

I'm taking the day off today and we're headed to see elephants with JP, who's doing his doctoral research on elephant behavior. But in the meantime, here are some morning bird sounds recorded this morning and yesterday. The scratchy noise in the background are the cicadas. There are other miscellaneous sounds like dogs barking and a couple of motorcycles. Enjoy. Just click on the yellow button with the black arrow.

Chiang Mai Morning Birds - Koel April 1, 2009 by AKRaven

Playing With Mud for a Good Cause

One of my neighbors found my blog and sent me this invitation to help build a meditation space for single mothers. [The picture is from Canvas Art Program Volunteer Blog. ] For people in Chiang Mai - it looks like a good day's fun today, tomorrow, and Thursday.

 THE UNWINDING WALL

**VOLUNTEERS NEEDED**

Build a mud bottle wall! play with mud, recycle, and give to
Wildflower; a single mothers' community. Cultural Canvas Thailand, a
local arts NGO, will be creating a meditation space with single
mothers to provide them with a place of refuge and quiet. So come join
us!

Tuesday 31st of March, Wednesday 1st of April and Thursday 2nd of April
09.00 am- 04.00 pm
Lunch and Transportation Provided

Contact- Amp (Thai) 089-110-8860
Melissa (English) 083 -683 -2065

To learn more about Cultural Canvas Thailand visit
http://www.culturalcanvas.com/canvas_projects.php

For more information about "The Unwinding Wall" see our blog:
http://volunteercct.blogspot.com/

Saturday Morning - Catching Up

[Saturday morning, March 27, 11am Thai time] My impending departure seems to be sinking in at the office. "But you just got here." Our housesitter emailed "You are welcome to stay where you are for a few years if you like. We'll keep an eye on things.." Yesterday we had our most serious meeting about the website. I had made some mock up pages and so with the printouts in hand, plus my mockups projected on the whiteboard, we got through a lot of stuff. It won't be done before I leave, but it's getting closer.

The air has been much cleaner this week. You can see the mountains. We've had attempted thunderstorms several times - gusts of wind jump up like sleeping cats briefly batting at flies then die down, clouds appear in the sky, there's a flash or two of lightening and distant rumbling of thunder. A couple of times it actually rained hard, but mostly just some scattered drops or nothing at all.




The picture on the left was yesterday. You can actually see that the sky has a suggestion of blue in it compared to the picture on the right from a couple of months ago. And you could actually see things on the mountainside, not simply the faded silhouette in the picture on the right. You can also see this teak tree had a lot more leaves then.

Firefox 3.07 as soon as I had loaded it about two weeks ago had seriously slowed down my internet access, so this morning when 3.08 asked to be downloaded, I immediately said yes and things are moving much faster.

But I'm moving much slower. Somehow I've done something to my right ankle and walking is a less than easy, but I'm determined that we're not going to spend our Saturday inside. We only have one more Saturday after today before we head home. Tonight is Ann-Marie's good bye party. She was a volunteer at my office for two years and had been away a while when we came last year. She's been working at Chiang Mai University and is headed for a job in Paris.


Several days ago I noticed a stack of king-sized mattresses in the laundry room. I immediately asked if we could have one. Even when you put two twins together, there's inevitably a crack that interferes with marital harmony. And the next day our two twins were bridged by our new superhard (I always liked the mattresses in Asia because they are so hard, but had never seen it so clearly stated. I bet there'd be a market for harder mattresses like these in the US. The line above LADY is clear in my photo and if you double click on it.)





I'm looking around at miscellaneous photos that never got up. Here's Matt standing next to a tiny little red Rover about two weeks ago.









Here's a building they've been working on while we've been here. It's just before I get to work on my bike in the morning. The first picture was March 3 (thanks to digital cameras that keep track of the date) and the second one was March 25.



And here's the mural across the street that I pass as I pull out of our building's little parking lot every morning.








And here's an artist who was sitting at the table outside my office one evening as I was leaving for home. This wasn't any parricular village, but a mix of features from a number of villages.

J Went to a Thai Cooking Class

Food was big yesterday. Got Vegie Thai lunch, then J came home with the results of her cooking class today. It was most of the day. They got to do six items each. I think it was 900 Baht (about $25). So for dinner we had som tam, tom kha kai, and green curry. All quite good. She thinks she can get what she needs back in Anchorage. We'll see.

The som tam picture was just not good enough to post. But it was definitely good enough to eat.

Vegie Thai Part 2 - West Chiang Mai Vegie Option

So yesterday we went to Vegie Thai for lunch. Today they delivered. I have to say, the food was really good. And I like that it's not delivered in styrofoam, but in a reusable plastic (I know, but a little at a time) container. Here it's on my desk after being delivered. 30 Baht (US$0.84 on my computer conversion table) delivered. It's vegie healthy and tastes great.



Why didn't I figure this out before my second to last week here? But some of the others in the office are happy to know about this option. He still is working on the English part of the website. The tabs have English, but then there is almost none on the pages. I'll try to help, but I'm not here for long. But he does speak English so if you call or email, you can probably order a lunch or dinner to be delivered. Don't worry about what to order, you'll get what they are making that day.

And he's using produce from small scale farmers.

For Chiang Mai vegetarians, I translated some of the instructions for how to order:

Note: Please circle the days when you want to receive a meal. Then underline to show you want noon or evening. The food is all vegetarian to promote health. There is no MSG.

Delivery Area: Chiang Mai University; Nimanhamen Road, Sirimangklajan Road (?); Suthep Road; Soi Wat Umong and Bong Noi.
Outside the delivery service area, the cost of delivery will be calculated based on distance.


You can choose which day you want to receive a meal.
Lunch will be delivered by noon. (30 Baht per person)
Dinner will be delivered by 6pm (You will receive three items for 120 Baht for 2-3 people OR two items for two people for 80 Baht. Or two items for one person for 40 Baht. Brown rice is 10 Baht extra per person.

Contact Vegie Thai (Bento without meat): 0 eight seven-324 97two eight

Vegie Thai and My Own Cicada Shots

Tok had shown me the VegieThai website. It's run by a friend of his who is an accomplished chef and who has started a business that includes delivering vegie meals, as well as special meals based on health needs. You can also pick up food or eat at the place. Which was near my office, but I couldn't figure out the map on the website. It is in the foothills, west of Wat Ramphoeng on the southwest side of Chiang Mai. It's good for people around Nimanhamen and around Chiang Mai University.

So, today Ew called early (last week we called too late) and booked us for lunch at the place. I say 'place' because it isn't exactly a restaurant. It's a private house with some tables in the yard. But even though it's close, it isn't easy to find. There were two Thais and me in the car. They called him and still went the wrong way. It took three phone calls to actually get there.

But it was rather special. It was just us. The food was beautiful and delicious. And the price was more than reasonable. We spent a good part of lunch talking about English translations of the Thai menu. I didn't think 'condiments' conveyed what he meant. His condiments included lots of fresh greens. We talked about the possibility of memberships, paid in advance, like a gym membership. As long as people have to call in beforehand - even at the house - he needs some sort of system to let people know how and when to order. At this point you don't have a choice of food, just a choice of days, and you take what is cooked on that day. But there is a full monthly menu in Thai. The English one doesn't quite capture the sense of things. And I too was at a loss for how to say it better.


I'm not sure this is a business plan that can work - especially given his location. You need to make several turns this way and that after you get off what is a through road, but certainly not even close to a main road.

But I wish him luck. It's a great project if he can pull it off. And his working with some of our farmers and pushing for more organic vegetables. We had a great papaya ice for dessert.


And as we left I spotted these two cicadas - after having posted a borrowed picture yesterday. This first one, I think, has a live animal inside.

The second one is an empty skin. And not even the first one was tymbalizing.

They're about the size of a walnut.

Sustainable Farming the Old Fashioned Way - Karen Village

All this is in the context of the modern debates on global warming, sustainable farming, and land rights for the various hill tribes living in official forest land in Thailand. What we saw yesterday was a bit of paradise in some ways. Westerners looking at the pictures of the housing might cringe, but all things considered this is much more comfortable than a lot of the housing in rural Alaska villages. And, what I learned 40 years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Thailand, what Westerners have over less wealthy cultures is a physical standard of living advantage (one that has shrunk considerably in the intervening years, at least for Thailand) and what the Thais have is a social, cultural advantage - things like connectedness to the land and to each other, traditions and ceremonies that tie them together, friendships and family connections that are close and supportive. This advantage is also shrinking.


Of course these are generalizations for both sides. But that discussion seems a pertinent preface to the pictures and comments below.

J's been helping S get his oral English ready for his nine month's training program at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. He leaves next week. Yesterday he picked us up at 7:30am and drove us the not quite two hours up into the mountains. The following will be a bunch of pictures with some description. At 1200 meters above sea level, it was delightfully cooler than Chiang Mai at about 600 meters up. After we passed the tourist elephant camp, the road up got steeper and windier. J's stomach usually isn't too good, but S drove slowly. Then he stopped at a little shop and came out with a plaster (I'd say band-aid, but it wasn't really) that he said to stick on her belly, which she did. She had no problem up or back.



We got to the village and then his house where we met his mother, brother, sister, and niece. All but the sister were in this picture. They were looking at the Alaska calendar we brought them. We were given Karen style shoulder bags she made - a beautiful burnt orange color.

Here's the house. This has been added on to over the years to get to this stage. The original house is what is just the kitchen now.










And just like in any family anywhere, his niece's artwork is up for everyone to admire.



I had to go to the bathroom and I was led to a little building out back with a row of blooming orchids in front. The bathroom had running water and a regular toilet. He said they have a natural draining system with different materials besides a large hole. Unlike tanks, this one drains well and never fills up. My understanding was they used various natural materials as a drain/filter.



In their English lessons, S had told Joan that they had what he called a "lazy garden" around the house. It's where they threw things and let them grow on their own - unlike the more cultivated fields away from the house. We had passed rows and rows of beautiful lettuce, but I didn't get a picture. The lettuce and some other crops are part of the Kings Project and they get picked up and sold at organic vegetable markets, but he's not sure where.
And not everything in the lazy garden is quite so casual either. Here are some seedling avocados. Avocados were also introduced through the King's project.




And a macadamia nut tree.










This is a fishtank where they can get dinner when they need fish. Though we had fish that didn't come from the tank for lunch later.








This earthen house was built by a friend - there's a big hole still next to it where the earth was dug up. It's in there on the edge of the lazy garden.














And this bamboo, look at S standing at the bottom of it clump. It's huge! You may have to double click to enlarge the picture to see S.







Here's a pig pen right next to the house. Ordinarily this could cause some serious odor problems.









S's holding a bottle of a mixture he's concocted to make the pig pen's smell better, well, not so bad. It's got honey, salt, garlic, oyster sauce, ginger, and I forgot the other ingredients. It's mixed with water and put into the pig sty. And it really did not smell bad there at all. Not like the factory pig farms we passed that were pretty disgusting to smell.






Here's another one of the pigs.








Now we are in the kitchen. It was pretty dark in there and they didn't turn on any lights. There is electricity, but I didn't notice it on - except when his sister was ironing. I took some video tape of him explaining how the kitchen works. It's pretty dark, but I'll try to get it up eventually.







There's a lot of stuff sitting around. But it didn't look like a junkyard. Rather things all seemed to have a place. This is a 'modern' electric rice huller.










Next to it is the more traditional type of rice huller.










And there was a cow too. I think elsewhere there are some water buffalo but we didn't see them. And, of course, there were chickens and chicks running around. They eat the eggs, if they can find them. The eggs we had for lunch later were from the market.





And there's a coffee plant too.










Then we got back in the car and drove up what became a more and more marginal road for a couple of kilometers and then got out to go for a hike. One of the joys of this location is that the vegetation change is most notably visible by the existence of pine trees.









Another ethnic Karen, R, who works at this village through an NGO in Chiang Mai, joined us for the hike. He actually comes from a different province neighboring Chiang Mai.




It was nice to see greener scenery than we generally have in Chiang Mai, now well into the dry and hot season.




It was a bit late in the day to see birds. We could hear some, but it was also very hard trying to find them hidden in the trees. But S showed us some bird calls. I have a video of this too and will try to get it up in a post later. None of the other three of us could make a sound this way, but then they couldn't copy my whistling with two fingers in my mouth. I was able to get some sound out later in the car and I'll keep practicing.



We stopped here in this spot dedicated by Buddhists, animists, and Catholics who are all represented in the village. There was a sign that S translated as "This Forest Forever."










I posted the insect pictures from there in the previous post. Here are some fungus we saw. They do look fairly similar to things we have in Alaska. Also saw some ferns that - at least superficially - looked like ferns we have too. I suspect they're different.











It was a lovely hike back.












When we got back S began gathering greens for lunch - a late, 4pm lunch. The food would be better, he said, because we were so hungry. These are from a tree which reminded me of greens that our friends in Beijing collected on a trip out to the country side in 2004. But I'm sure there are lots of things that look alike. These ended up inside omelets.







Here's what he collected.










S started the fire in the kitchen. A lighter and a piece of soft pine got things started quickly.





J and S were working on the greens.










There was also some Pak Bung, another key vegetable in Thai diets. But he cooked this up with a bean sauce and some honey and it tasted different and delicious.
















Here the greens go into the egg mix. That's S's niece under the blue plastic basket.












And the Pak Bung gets cooked.















And in less than 45 minutes, lunch was ready.











And we all helped clean up. Really, I did more than take pictures.













The dishwater sink drains out to a small culvert and the grey water gets recycled into the garden and the chickens are the garbage disposal getting all the bits of rice and green that were still on the plates when they were washed.



Things are not perfect here, and there are issues of land ownership, and the government is still trying to get people out of the forest areas. But you can also see that this is a pretty sweet place to live. All sorts of tropical and semi-tropical plants grow, with little effort. S's family - and village - lifestyle is pretty in synch with nature and all the stuff we are trying to relearn in the West. Imagine what he will learn after nine-months of training on an organic, sustainable farm program in Japan.






S also pulled out an album and showed me this document which was a work contract for his great, great grandfather to work for a British timber company. He was hired because he had an elephant that was important for getting the logs out from the deep forest and out onto the roadways. I still think we should consider this in the roadless areas of Southeast Alaska. There are still elephants in Thailand who know how to do this, but they are pretty much unemployed as much of the forest is protected. (The elephants in the earlier pictures are now for tourists to ride.) The document is dated 1908 and shows that S's family has been here for at least 100 years. This is of significance because many argue that the Karen all really came from Burma, but this shows a long provenance in Thailand. The Consulate is in Chiang Mai and the other language is Thai, not Burmese. It is interesting to me, because unlike most Thai writing where the words all run together, in this document, each word is separate like in English.





And here are S's sister with her youngest child as we were leaving.