December 4, 2016
We are in Chiang Rai now, a town in northern Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar and Laos. There are mountains on the horizon, the air is crisp – and it takes us a moment to realise it smells different is because it is actually fresh – and time seems to have slowed down again. It is everything Bangkok was not (lovely as it was).
Against all usual travel practices, we had neither booked a car nor a hotel. But hey, this all-in field study is about getting out of our comfort zones. A few car rental places turned us away – either the town has too many tourists or not enough cars – but one place had a compact, red car, which is our sweet ride for the next few days.
Scott was right about Thailand highways, they can put some first world countries to shame. After spending a sizeable amount renting the car, we really couldn’t afford to splurge on our accommodation so we looked for the cheapest guesthouse and headed to the first one that popped up. The signs leading to the guesthouse say 260 baht in bigger letters than its name and there are two friendly pugs that greet all visitors.
Baan Nukanong is your extremely basic, no pretence guesthouse. There is an open-air dining area, right off the street, for guests to sit and enjoy their meals, alongside a microwave draped with a white knitted cover. There is a shelf nearby with tea and coffee supplies and what I’m guessing is Ovaltine milk chocolate, except the jar says ‘Oventen’. There is a steel sink on one side where guests can wash their dishes. There is also a coin-operated washing machine and the guesthouse staff will help you dry your clothes in the sun, or you can give your clothes to them to wash for 100 baht a kilo.
The room has one bed, a television that survived Y2K, one pedestal fan (air-conditioned rooms were more expensive and it’s chilly in Chiang Rai) and a cupboard with two clean towels. The bathroom has a sink with no place to put anything besides a small bar of soap, and the flush releases the same amount of water into the pot as outside it. There is a small dial on our shower heater (which looks more like an electricity meter than anything) that sets the water temperature just right if you keep it between 3 and 4. The reception folks are always ready to help, they even gave me their extension cord when I was panicking to see my laptop lose battery and there were no sockets in sight.
But this isn’t where we spent most of our day. We actually met a British man who has been living in Chiang Rai since 2002 and had graciously agreed to help us connect to different organisations working with the hill tribes. When no one from the organisation responded, Paul took it upon himself to take Yeseul and I to the Akha tribe himself. It was a funny coincidence that the coffee shop we chose to meet him was actually owned by an Akha tribe member.
The Akhas seemed very similar to Hawaiians with their love for their community and peace overpowering any other concern, even though large tracts of their land have been taken over by the government to clear out for plantations, on which the Akhas are then asked to work. We visited their village, Ban Apa, which has 230 people, most of them engaged in farming. In fact, the pineapples they grow now were brought to them by Paul nearly 15 years ago. All the food that they grow is for their own consumption, the farmers trade among each other – a kilo of chillies for a few dozen pineapples, a bunch of lychees for several jackfruits.
Until recently, none of the people in this village had any nationality, even though most of them were born here. Their ancestors had come from China through Myanmar and settled on the hills that form the haphazard border of Thailand and its neighbours.
Manop, 29, was the only person today who could speak English, which he learned in two years from foreign volunteers that worked in the area. When we asked him about his concerns for himself, he only spoke about Akhas. Young people are losing their culture, he complained. His daughter goes to school – every day for seven days much to his chagrin – where she learns Thai, English and Korean (due to missionaries) and leaves him little time to teach her about farming. He fears these children will go to town to study at universities and never come back. But all he wants for her is to study farming at university and come back to run her own organic farm in Ban Apa. On the other hand, Ameh, 55, wants his granddaughter to finish university education. He wants to see her find a job in town and his biggest worry right now is not having enough money to make sure his grandchildren complete their education.
We learned today that it is difficult to find a Thai word for ‘imagine’ but they understand ‘generations’ and ‘ancestors’. In fact, Manop claimed he can recite the names of his ancestors going back 55 generations but when I asked if I can record him doing so, he told me a story about December being the wrong month and that the lessons start in January. I understand as much about this last sentence as you do. The Akhas gave us jungle tea in bamboo glasses (which we were told to take home with us), pineapples better than I’ve tasted (even in Hawai’i) and a sense of hope.
Bangkok Blogs is a travel journal I am writing as part of the field study part of the East West Center’s Asia Pacific Leadership Program. Right now, we have 26 members of APLP spreading our leadership knowledge across Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. I include here some of the learnings my teammate, Elizabeth Yeseul Woo (South Korea), and I are making as we explore Thailand.
Beyond Boundaries 