Photo Friday: Scenes from Rural Thailand

I was finally comfortable in Chiang Mai when it was time to leave for the mountains. I packed up my sleeping mat, took some medicine for my swollen lip, and piled into Bill’s pickup truck for the bumpy drive into the no-name villages of Thailand’s north.

Although I had spent plenty of time in desolate small towns in the United States, particularly in the South, I had no idea what to expect from the village of Muang Nga, Thailand. What I found was one main road lined with a few houses, some more like shacks, and a few storefronts. After seeing the mega-malls, markets, and Western fast-food chains of Chiang Mai, this was quite a contrast.

The volunteers and our translator settled into one of the nicest houses on the street, complete with a working toilet. The Door Foundation was fairly self-sufficient, growing its own vegetables and raising goats, chickens and rabbits. Those roosters would soon become my morning wake up call as well as an addition to my daily meal, chicken pad thai.

Life in Muang Nga took some getting used to. We were the only foreigners in the town and likely the first many of these people had seen. Each morning I woke with hundreds of dead flies on my pillow. The bites on my arms and legs multiplied daily. I didn’t speak a word of Thai. I ate pad thai for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

When we weren’t playing with the local children, teaching arts and crafts and English, most days were spent wandering up and down the main road, being followed by stray dogs. Sometimes the children would follow along as well.

There isn’t much to this main thoroughfare. Trucks, motorbikes and songtao park anywhere they like.  Alleys spring up like roots from the road with more houses and a few schools.

The area surrounding the village is home to many Hilltribes, such as the Lahu, Lisu, Karen, and Hmong tribes. Many of the children belonged to the Lahu tribe and often wore their native garb to visit us.

From the rice paddies, you could see the Burmese border just in the distance. The family that lives in the volunteer house is originally from Burma, as are many people who live in the village. Many fled Burma, known by the government as Myanmar, for the north when the political situation became increasingly tense.

There are two large portraits of the King and Queen of Thailand on the main road and framed pictures in nearly every home. King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the longest reigning monarch in the country’s history. Criticism of the crown is punishable by law.

I didn’t expect the mountains to look so green, but even mountains seem tropical in Thailand. Winding roads took us through a national park not far from the house. I could imagine my sister hiking these hills.

My daily meal was kway teow soup and glass bottle Coke from a house cum store cum restaurant down the road. Despite the humidity outside I craved this concoction constantly. The soup had a spicy broth, to which I added sugar and more red pepper, sliced seasoned pork, noodles and cabbage. You could get it with our without MSG, but I must admit that it was better with the additive. The soup is Chinese in origin, as was the girl who served it to us.

On the days that we went to the school, we saw the students in their uniforms, chanting and singing national songs. They didn’t seem so different from my mom’s kindergarten class back home.

This post describes my experiences volunteering with The Door Foundation in Thailand in May and June of 2010. For more on this trip, click on the Destinations tab above and go to “Thailand.”