Thailand - Pai
Today is my last day in Thailand and will be my final The Nomad Speaks
until I begin my travels again somewhere else.
I spent last week in the town of Pai. It was exactly what I had been
looking for. Pai (pronounced "bye") is a small town, maybe 500
people, with no real tourism to speak of. There are other farang
around, but the locals happily allow them to blend in instead of
trying to hit them up for money. It's a wonderful place to see the
workings of a "traditional" Northern Thailand village. The street
food was great, including my staple diet of sticky rice and mango.
A small meal of rice and mango could be had for 15 baht (about 35
cents). I couldn't believe how cheap everything was in Pai. In
Bangkok, the going rate for sticky rice and mango is about 50 baht.
Pai is located about 140km outside of Chiang Mai, close to Myanmar.
The ride by mini-bus into Pai from Chiang Mai was intense. Curvy,
twisty road through the mountains at breakneck speeds. It will turn
the strongest of stomachs inside out. :)
I stayed in a guesthouse called Amy's House for 60 baht/night (about
$1.50). My bungalow was perfect. Small, rustic and a view across
the fields and river that runs nearby. Looking out across the
fields and surrounding mountains brings back memories of the first
village encountered "up river" by Capt. Willard in Apocolypse Now.
By day, everything around me is hut, by night it's lit up with
Christmas lights. :)
Amy is Thai and her boyfriend (Ryan) is farang from Colorado. One
other person was staying (Josh), from California. Ryan and Josh
met in Laos while building an earthen school for the locals. Ryan
wanted to build his own earthen house outside of Pai and involve
the community in the labor and education of the project teaching
them about the concepts behind natural-building.
Josh does organic farming and has travelled around the world doing
just that -- arranging work exchange through WOOF and Organic
Volunteers. Two organizations that I had never heard of before,
but I will certainly look up the next time I travel. I would love
to come back to Thailand and find some natural-building work.
According to Ryan and Josh it's easy ... even in parts of the U.S.,
and you can almost always arrange for a free stay while you're working.
Josh has travelled by bike all over Southeast Asia and inspired me
to travel by bike on my next trip.
When I arrived, they asked me if I wanted to help and I didn't
hesitate. I've always been interested in the concepts of earthen
or natural building but didn't have any first hand experience.
This was a perfect opportunity to get involved with the community
and to do something a little different, something NOT listed in
Lonely Planet. Incidentily I've been growing more and more
frustrated with LP ... I sold my copy a couple weeks ago.
On the first day we made mud bricks. We dug a large pit, maybe 1
meter by 3 meters and 1 meter deep. Then we made a sifter out of
bamboo and screen and sifted dirt into the pit. We poured a bunch
of water in with some rice husks and started dancing around in the
mud until it was the consistency of thick pudding (or cow dung).
Scoop up the mud, pour it into a wood frame to form the brick. In
a couple days of drying, you have the perfect building material for
regulating heat in the summer and cold air in the winter.
Over the course of the week, we leveled the foundation by adding large
rocks mixed with cement that we made by hand, sifted more dirt,
made more bricks and laughed and drank with the other locals that were
helping out. Lunch was always down the road at a place called Shark,
run by an Austrian guy who used to be a musician and his Thai wife.
I was impressed with the pride they took in their work. One worker ...
Ohm I think was name, did some very nice decorative work with the
cement and rocks. I didn't pick up much Thai, but it didn't matter.
The big joke was "buffalo skin." Apparently, the Thai guys think Ryan
talks too much so every few hours you would hear one of the Thai guys
say something unintelligible mixed with "buffalo skin." The joke
being that the Thai guys wanted to give Ryan buffalo skin because
it's tough to chew and would keep his mouth busy so he couldn't talk
as much.
On the last day, Amy made a delicious meal for us (sukiyaki -- yes it's
Japanese, not Thai) and we went to the local non-farang hangout --
The Whiskey Bar. They serve shots of homemade rice whiskey, served from
a used plastic Fanta bottle for 5 baht. I don't know what they put in
the whiskey and I don't want to know, but the Thai's seem to love it.
Ryan and Amy thanked me and seemed to really appreciate my help. I
couldn't thank them enough. They showed me a whole new side of travel
that I knew existed but didn't know how to get into. All three of them
were very nice and genuine. Traits that are sometimes hard to find
in other travellers ... especially other Americans. I was shocked to
find that Ryan was only 23 and he's been doing this type of work for
the past 4 years, travelling through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Spain.
What a way to travel.
You'll have to excuse any typos, misspellings or grammatical errors.
I haven't been able to organize these thoughts ... it's sort of a
brain dump of everything that has happened in the last week. I'm sure
I'll think of more things to tell you about but you'll have to bribe
me with food or beer to get it out of me. :)