Breakfast was prepared to order this morning and we ate it looking out as the sun started to rise over the hills. Left just before 08.30 and stopped a short distance out of the town so we could walk over the old iron bridge moved from Chiang Mai in the 1930s, traffic now uses the new adjacent concrete bridge. It took over 3.5 hours to reach Fang, the first part of the journey was up and down mountain sides and via hairpin bends and as a consequence I was feeling queasy after about 90 minutes and took one of Fiona's magic sea sickness pills which she takes to help her sleep on planes. I swapped queasiness for sleepiness which was preferable. The last hour or so was on a fairly decent dual carriageway mainly on the flat. We pulled into the Phumanee Homestay Hotel, Fiona says its the nearest she will ever get to staying in a hostel, its clean but basic and needs some TLC. Its run by a lady who is the granddaughter of the original headman of the Red Lahu tribe in the area, his son (her father) was murdered by a Burmese drug lord in 1983 after he moved the tribe from growing opium to growing tea and coffee.
Its run as a community project employing tribespeople and the money goes to helping the tribe maintain its customs and support its people living in the hills. She gave us a quick talk about the tribe and then it was into a new 4WD Toyota for a 45 minute drive to the village at the top of a mountain, most of it was good road, the last few miles 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 climb but the last mile was very rough track, would not want to drive my new 4WD on it!
We were driven by one of the tribe, a lad of 20 also called Yo. We went into one of the dwellings where his parents live, on stilts, open plan, split bamboo flooring over joists, hay roof. His mum was cooking our lunch over a charcoal fire, I didn't have to help out this time. Chicken, sticky rice, pork mince with rice, chilli paste and vegetables. We sat on the floor to eat it drinking tea from their plantation. They had a box of whisky bottles in the corner but they were full of honey collected from wild bees in the forest, unfortunately not the sort of thing to put in our luggage, we did buy some tea.
After lunch we went out to pick some tea, after about 20 minutes we had only 10% filled our baskets but it was enough for the next stage, a quick dry roasting in a giant slanted wok set in a concrete base, drying took about 10 minutes, then it was a kneading session (like bread) to release some oils for about 5 minutes. Then the leaves are spread on a wicker tray and will be sun dried for about 2 days.
We were then shown how to weave a small wicker basket, not easy, we have that as a memento.
Yo's family are quite enterprising, they have tea and coffee trees, they sell collected honey plus they have several properties they rent out for homestay vacations, must be doing something right as the new Toyota belongs to them!
It was then down the mountain a short way in the 4WD and we stopped off at a waterfall for a quick look around before returning to Phumanee. As I mentioned these are Red Lahu people, the people we visted yesterday were also Lahu, but Black Lahu.
Our dinner was included in our stay and very good it was too, perhaps not the best place to eat overlooking the small car park but great food.
2025-02-09