Chiang Mai and Village Home Stay

Friday, September 23, 2011
Chiang Mai, Thailand
     We had been told that life in Thailand moves at a slower pace than in North America, but I personally didn't notice that until we were on the overnight train to Chiang Mai. We climbed on the train at 7:30 in Bangkok, and our estimated time of arrival was 9:30 the next morning. As 11 o'clock rolled by, we realized that we'd have to play Parcheesi at least one more time.
    Our train finally rolled into the station at 1 pm and we all piled into one giant taxi . We dropped off our huge backpacks and headed out of the city to Wat Doi Suthep. Wat is the Thai word for temple. The Wat was perched at the top of a cliff and had a brilliant view of the whole city. Even after zigzagging up the mountain for about 20 minutes by taxi, we still had 300 stairs (Alexia counted) to climb to reach the Wat.
    What I thought made this Wat unique was the prayer bells. Visitors could buy the bells from vendors outside, scratch a prayer into the bell and hang it in the temple. I heard that every time the wind blows and the bells ring, the prayer is said again.

We spent that night in a hostel in Chiang Mai. The next day, after lunch, we traveled about two hours outside of the city to the small rural village of Mae Jo. This is where we would live for the next full week, with our first home stay families of the trip.   

    When most people think of farming in Asia, they probably imagine huge expanses of rice in water soaked terraces .  But this past week we saw a very different side of farming. PunPun is an organic farm and seed-saving operation perched on a hill above the village of Mae Jo. Only the strong of heart can get to PunPun, for they must brave the slippery path through the rice fields and small rickety bridges across multiple streams to get there.
    We started our days at PunPun at 9 am and worked until about 11 or 12. Our jobs included fixing up old garden beds, making mud bricks, and lots of weeding and digging trenches to stop erosion. Our lunches were always delicious, and of course organic and very healthy. In the afternoons we would help with projects around the village. We picked up trash, worked on an herbal sauna, made spring rolls and learned from the residents at PunPun. All the residents were so welcoming and thankful, especially Krit, Shaina, and Pop.
     Some of our favorite moments in the village included playing volleyball, walking up to the reservoir, and learning from the masters.
     We played volleyball with some of the village kids 3 or 4 times during our stay . Sometimes it would be North America vs. Thailand, or sometimes it was mud volleyball, but there were always smiles and it helped us learn how to count in Thai.
    One of our afternoon jobs was to walk through town and pick up trash. We managed to gather quite a following of children by the end of the town, so the trash picking up kind of slowed down. We continued our walk until we reached the reservoir above town. Most of us, and all of the younger kids, jumped in to swim. After splashing around for a bit a rainstorm overtook us, so we headed for the shelter of a large outdoor building.
    We decided to play some games while we waited out the storm. We taught the Thai kids some games, and they taught us some games. It was cool when we had games in common, like Duck Duck goose and London Bridge. In the Thai version of London Bridge the losers have to perform a dance about chickens. Even though we could barely talk to each other, we all had tons of fun and laughed a lot.
    The master classes we took were Thai massage, jewelry making and Thai boxing.
    The only real problem any of us mentioned was that after staying in this small rural village for 6 days, we were all pretty sick of rice.
    We will all miss our host families a lot. They welcomed us into their homes even though we are complete strangers and we found so many ways to relate to them and learned a lot from how they live.
    Tomorrow we head off into the mountains for our first trek!
Katie

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