Three weeks later...

          I sit here in my balcony in Chiang Mai. I have been back for roughly 48 hours, and it’s crazy over here. I got so used to…not being in the city. But I only have to make it through this coming week and then I’ll be gone on my Forests course!

First, let me tell you about my Rivers course (I’ll keep it short, I promise!). The name of our course was Human Rights and the Environment: Rivers, Dams, and Local Struggles. I will explain now how I learned about all those things.

Week 1

After being split up in two smaller groups, my group started in the village of Don Chai. We were paired up and placed into host families for the week. During that week, we visited the Kaeng Sua Ten National Park, which is the site for a proposed dam project and is not far from Don Chai. We learned about the relationship the national park has with the villagers, which is a good one, since they fight against the dam project together. Don Chai is one of the many villages that would be displaced if the dam was built. We got to swim at the national park after our meeting, on the Yom River. We also met with some members of the village headmasters, who told us general information about the village and answered many of our questions. We met with one of the leaders of the youth group in Don Chai, who told us about their efforts to bring back young people who go to university in the city and instill in them a love for the village, agriculture, and the desire to fight against the dam. We learned, quite quickly, that the Don Chai village is a whiskey village, which means that many of the people are involved in the making, packaging, and selling of lao-cao or lao-gluay (whiskey from rice or whiskey from banana). Not going to lie, it’s pretty good.

It was also in Don Chai where I got food poisoning for the first time in my life. After Emily, who I was staying in the house with, fell sick on our first night in Don Chai and was bedridden for the whole next day, I fell sick the day after. So, our second day in Don Chai I spent it in bed. Emily and I bonded over throwing up and laying energy-less in bed. What a great thing to bond over, right?!

We paddled the Yom River two days during that week, and camped out on its bank one night. This was such a beautiful experience. Watching the forests, gardens, agriculture, and fishing on the banks of the Yom was fascinating. Two Paws from Don Chai came with us on this trip and taught us about fish (the ones they caught for our final meal together) and what they knew about the river.

At the end of the week, we drove to Laos to meet up with the other half of our group.

Week 2

            Vientiane, Laos, just across the river from Si Chaing Mai, Thailand (although I didn’t know this until the last week). Vientiane is the capital city of Laos, a country with 6 million people (compared to Thailand’s 66 million). The city was tiny, especially having been in Chiang Mai for so long. It was also strangely comfortable: full of farangs, English, bakeries, guesthouses, and farang food. After being so outside of my comfort zone for so long, Vientiane was a weird adjustment. Luckily, we were kept quite busy.

            We were in a fancy hotel for a day doing mid-course debriefing with our ajaan. That was alright. We had a presentation about hydropower by a fancy Englishman and his accent. I didn’t particularly enjoy that talk, mostly because I didn’t really understand much of it. We also visited the Mekong River Commission, which is an inter-governmental organization composed of representatives of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, all countries through which the Mekong runs. It also runs through China and Burma before it hits any of these four countries, but they are not part of the MRC and we’re not going to get into that right now. The MRC is kind of a think-tank to decide which country has the right to do what on the Mekong—essentially, the MRC’s purpose is to make sure that the development that countries plan for the Mekong is sustainable. It’s a pretty complicated situation, and would require a long conversation to explain. It was also in Laos that we visited the Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Company. We visited their dam site, met with some dam workers, learned about the dam project, and the dam resettlement and relocation that had to be done when the dam was built. It’s so fun to use “dam” before another noun. Anyhow, we learned about their relocation and resettlement program (relocation is when people have to be moved but still have their fields somewhere; resettlement is when people have to be moved along with their fields). Again, this is a long conversation, but we basically got to learn about their program, visited one relocation and one resettlement village, and see the dam. We spent a night at the resort at the dam site. Yes, it has one.

           

Week 3

            We separated again from group B and made our way to Chiang Khan, back in Thailand. To put it simply, I left my heart in Chiang Khan. It’s another touristy town, except for all the tourists there are Thai! We were only there for one afternoon/night, so we made it the best we could. Well, I did. We walked about two blocks from our guesthouse and found a cozy restaurant to have a late lunch. The owner, Mae Teng, took us under her wing right away. She stayed by our table and chatted with us the whole time we were there. I really liked here. When we were leaving, we asked her where a nice coffee shop was and she proceeded to walk us right across the street to Pi Duan’s coffee shop, which was also a nifty little store. She stayed around for a while, left, and came back to pick me up on her motorcycle to take me to 7-11 to buy snacks. She kindly paid for bread and jam for our group and told everyone we saw that I was her new daughter. I returned to the coffee shop, where I was peacefully doing homework, being taken care of by Pi Duan. Not much later, N’praewa, Pi Duan’s five-and-a-half-year-old daughter woke up from her nap, came to sit by me, and stole my heart. She sat in front of me watched me work for about two seconds before she began to talk non-stop. Few things are more humbling that being corrected by a five-year-old. Oh, well, gotta learn somehow.

            N’praewa and I proceeded to play house for about two hours. We took family pictures, drank milk, and shared snacks. Then I went to dinner with the peeps, did some shopping, and quickly made it back to the coffee shop. N’praewa and I played for a good long two hours again. When I told her I was going back to Chiang Mai, N’praewa cried and clung to me and told me not to go. My heart broke.

            The next morning we set off to paddle the Mekong for four days, eight hours a day. Yes. Nutella, peanut butter, banana chips, beef jerky, and crackers were the banquet we were given for lunch every day. Yes. We had to stay close to the right side of the river because if we went too far to the left side, we’d be in Laos (the part of the Mekong that we paddled was all the border of Thailand and Laos). It was interesting, to say the least, to see the differences between each side of the river and as we made our way downstream.

            We stayed in a village called Kok Wao for two nights and learned about it through a town meeting and a village survey, like in Don Chai. This was another village that would be flooded if a different dam was built on the Mekong (they were only one kilometer upstream from the proposed 82-square kilometer reservoir). It was interesting to see the differences between what Kok Wao was doing against the dam project and what Don Chai was doing.

            Heidi and I got quite attached to our host family here. It was comprised of three sisters who lived with their parents. They were 36, 34, and 27. Mae Nok has a 15 and an 11-year-old daughter, and Mae Da has a 4 year old daughter. Pi Nit works for customs on the border of Thailand and Laos, just upstream of their village. Being in a house full of women (and a very sweet man) was quite fun…not to mention empowering. They loved us a lot and we loved them. The night before we left, I made us all matching bracelets from two of my bandanas, and they all loved it. Now I wear a bracelet that is the same as my family in Kok Wao J.

            We stayed in guesthouses on the river bank the other nights, enjoying some time with each other and debriefing about our experience in the river and in the families.

            Now I am back in Chiang Mai, getting readjusted to the city life. The traffic, the noise, the people, the pollution, everything is such a change from three weeks on the move, in peaceful rivers. But I’m doing well. Friday was our first full free day. I explored places of Chiang Mai that I hadn’t seen yet, took lots of pictures, dressed like the farang I am. I owned my farangness, and it was an incredible day. I walked everywhere with a map, a big camera, a huge water bottle, and my backpack. Farang!

            Anyhow.

            And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the short version of my adventures. There is so much more to say about each thing I did but, to be honest, my heart and my brain are so full and I am still processing much of it. I do, however, look forward to having conversations about this once I’m back. For now, brief versions and pictures of my travels will have to do J

            Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts. I’m keeping you in mine.