Site Placement

Yesterday I got my site placement and I couldn’t be happier. It turns out that I have the most remote site out of anyone in this PC Thailand group. I am going to be living with a Karen and Lisu hill tribe community in Chiang Mai province. The Lisu people originated from Tibet and while the Karen people originated from Myanmar. Both groups immigrated to Thailand in the last 200 years. The city of Chiang Mai is the second largest in Thailand, but my village will be 7 hours from it. This is due to the very mountainous terrain that is characteristic of northern Thailand. There is an interesting twist to this story. I will be living in one community, but the SAO where my counterpart will be and I will be working part of the time is 100 km away. The 100 km takes 3 hours, but this is only during the dry season. During the rainy season the road is often washed out and the villagers must take a different route that takes a long route and has to go through Chiang Mai. This means that I will have two houses, one in my hill tribe community and one in the town of the SAO. I am going to have to figure out a schedule where I work part of a week or several weeks on end at the SAO and part of the time be living and working in the village. The town where the SAO is located is very near to the highest peak in Thailand, Inthanon. I guess it is suiting that a Wyoming boy who grew up in the mountains gets a mountain site in Thailand. It is cool during the nights and warm during the day. I can’t think of much better as I sit here and sweat at 8:30 pm at my host family’s house.

In the packet I received it showed a small eco-tourism project in the community, which is excellent given my background working with groups involved in tourism projects. They also have a Royal Development Project that is just outside of town. At this site they are promoting and testing organic farming techniques and the methods and knowledge will be disseminated throughout the regions in Thailand with similar climates. From the pictures it appears that most of the community has just dirt roads and it is very rural. The site locator form said that “cell phone signal can be found in ‘some’ parts of the village.” This means that you should not be expecting too many blog posts from me in the future. As I say this I remember that they said that at the temporary SAO in the village they have satellite internet. I’m still not 100% sure about everything, but I will get it all figured out very quickly given that I am going to visit the site in less than a week.

Now on to a few other events that occurred before the site announcement and after I got back from Chantaburi. When I got back from Chantaburi I rode my bike home and just got settled down when my host dad told me that we were going out to a party. Well I had had two nights of drinking a descent amount of beer with my friends at the resort and really didn’t want to go out to a party, but really, how can you say no when the thing hindering you is not being timid but rather not knowing exactly how to say no! It wasn’t that bad, but soon we were on our way. We first went to another village that is about 4 km away. I’m not exactly sure what the celebration was about, but it was a big one. The village doesn’t have more than three main roads, but there sure were three large stages set up throughout the community and everyone within a ten mile radius seemed to be attending. The music was quite interesting. You have basically bad Thai music being sung by a singer who was flanked by six scantily clad Thai go-go girls. We sat down at a table and food started coming in by the dishful until our whole table was full. I guess I had better not leave out that the first thing on our table was a whole bottle of Thai whiskey. It was my first experience with Thai whiskey and I can tell you that as bad as you think Evan Williams is, you have never tried worse than Thai whiskey. We spent an hour enjoying the performances and then headed to yet another Thai funeral.

I started to wonder where we were going as we sped into the moonlit countryside taking what seemed to be totally random roads. There were no houses to be seen, let alone towns, but sure enough we round a corner and there it is. Out in the middle of the field were lights galore, a huge stage, at least 50 tables, and an abundance of drunken Thais. I don’t know if you have noticed, but this is a reoccurring theme. The Thais are definitely averse to drinking at any time of the day or for any occasion. Well the funeral had similar Thai singers and dancers for a short time, but soon it was time for karaoke. Well you know what you get when you mix karaoke, a funeral, and lots and lots of Thai whiskey: some ear breaking noise. Apparently when you are drunk you truly believe you are the best singer to ever set foot on the stage before you. Well in case you have not been in this situation, being very drunk and singing karaoke is probably fun for you but for everyone else it is just about equal to having straw shoved under your finger nails: or something like that. We stayed there until the bottle of Thai whiskey had seen its last delicious drop disappear into the depths of our stomachs and then made our merry way home. One little side note. Wearing your seatbelt in Thailand makes you a whoosey, well I am what I am I suppose. Drinking and driving is not a frowned upon thing here.

When I woke up on Sunday I had some visitors. A lady had come and visited me the previous Sunday, but for what reason I was not totally sure at the time. She spoke a tiny bit of English and combined with my tiny bit of Thai we didn’t arrive at the most clear understanding of each other. Well she called me while I was in Chantaburi and said that she wanted to meet again on Sunday at 9:00 am. As is Thai style, she arrived at around 9:30, but this time along with four other women and their English teacher. I found out very quick that the first time she came out she wanted to make an appointment with me to have her whole English class come out and speak English with me. Well the teacher immediately started apologizing to me not for the miscommunication but rather because only four of the 20 students that were supposed to come actually came. I tried to act as if I were disappointed! Well we spoke English for about an hour and then it was time for the ladies to take me on a little adventure. They asked me what places in this province that I knew and I assured them that I really didn’t know any places. They decided that it would be nice to go to a nearby reservoir, and off we went. The teacher had to leave to teach a class at the local university, so I was on my own. The ladies turned out to be nurses at the local hospital and were very hospitable, as have been every Thai I have met. They bought enough food to feed at least half of the 60 million plus people that live in Thailand and were relentless in insisting that I eat more and more. By the time we were done I had a stomach that was stretched out like old sock. I dare anyone to challenge me to an eating contest. We made our way back to my house and I spent the rest of the day digesting my food.

That’s all for now folks!