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Published: October 23rd 2006
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Our house
The room on the left was ours for the last 4 nights, no need for fans or air conditioning in this place thanks to the wonders of earthen buildings It looks like Rachel took the (good) weather with her back to Leeds and kindly left us in the monsoons of Bangkok in September, yes the rainy season has arrived good and proper. The monsoon style down pours have to be seen to be belived. The major problem with this is that Bangkok being the 'Venice of Asia' ie built on a whole load of canels, it is very close to sea level and when it rains many of the streets and buildings, particularly next to the river are flooded. And like Venice, the whole place is sinking apparently which is a rather depressing. By the way it appears we have neglected to mention that there has been no obvious signs of the coup in Bangkok (or anywhere else we have been in Thailand), so all nice and safe here - as far as we know!
On that note we booked our ticket out of the capital on one of the many V.I.P (read: 'tourist') busses. It was not quite as jazzy as the one into the city but it did the job and after only a couple of snack breaks and unscheduled stops at the side of the road
we had made good progress and were on our way to Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. There was one hiary moment when the coach hit an ox and the windscreen was smashed and front corner crumpled but not one to be put off though the driver proceeded to drive the next 5 hours with a completly broken windscreen and one headlight, what a trooper.
Everyone was absolutly exhausted when we arrived in CM and were happy to hearded off to the 'tourist information' which is bascially a hostel who gave us a lift into town - to their hostel to try and sell us rooms and jungle trecks. After some free coffee and the hard sell we decided to walk into the main city centre and have a look for a hostel on our own. We were suprised to learn that the bus tickets we brought had been twice as expensive as some of the other passengers had paid, guess we should have shopped around, tut tut bad backpackers.
Although we had planned to stay in Chiang Mai for a few days and maybe do a treck we recived an email back from the owner
The farm
What a stunner of an organic farm and seed saving centre north of chaing mai who invited us to come and stay so instead we headed out into the countryside about 50km north of the city. We had contacted the farm after reading about it on the internet and frankly we had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be an amazing place full of some great people.
We got to the farm by a daily minibus loaded up with veggies, fish and stuff which were then dropped off en route to various villages and markets. A bit like a Thai style Tecos Online/postman pat, the driver had a list and money he picked up from people in the morning, and he dropped the goods off in the afternoon. It was amusing to sit for those couple of hours amongst some very strange looking fruit and vege.
The farm itself sits on a hill about a little village which is then surrounded by dense forest/jungle. There's loads of rice growing in the fields below giving off different colours for the different varieties. The farm is largely a collection of new age mud huts with loads of banana trees
The communal area/kitchen
We stayed at the top of here for the first few nights, very cool and other tropical fruits growing inbetween. Our week's stay was a comfortable routine of yummy veggie food, a couple of volunteer hours work in the morning, rest and lunch during the heat of the day, couple of hours more work, then more rest and more food. The work was good fun and not too back breaking. Mostly spent our time digging new beds for the vege patch and planting tomatoes and aubergine (eggplant). Using our hands to break up ox manure - love it! Other stuff we did was paint Peggy and Joe's new house with mud and tile their floor, scoop mud and puddles of water off the soggy road with a bucket, and clear round tent sized plots in the jungle for the immenent arrival of 20 visiting monks.
After a hard day's work, a shower with views of the sky and banana trees and then off to rest in our handmade mud house. It was so well built allowing cool air to pass through easily and really funky with loads of nooks and crannies and decorated with colourful glass bottles set in the walls. The last couple of nights to make things complete we had a
bunch of kittens living next door.
Anyways as well as lots of fun and real friendly, family atmosphere, the farm cultivated a serious mission for the future - seed saving. The farm, with an international network of others, is spreading the message and also praticing what they preach. Unlike organic farming and fair trade etc. this eco idea is little talked about/understood even amongst farmers. The gist is that we should all be trying our best to keep species diversity and grow as many varieties of vegetables (and animal breeds) as possible. For example 80% of all rice grown in Thailand is now only one type. In days gone by a farmer would grow many varities on his land to spread his bets and therefore guarantee success. Growing one variety means farms are far more subseptible to crop failure from pests, disease, flooding and drought, plus the variety grown is designed both so that it cannot be harvested for seed to be used for next year (instead seeds have to be annually bought from seed companies) and is also especially dependent on fertiliser and pesticides. In the past the seeds of the most successfull varieties were keep year by
year, improving all the time to local conditions. The current monoculture trend is unsustainable (yep I love those 'planning' words) and increases costs to the farmer as he becomes increasingly dependent on chemicals and seed handouts from the seed companies. It's an international thing, tomatoes for example are becoming more tastless and consumer choice is being harmed as farmers only grow 2 or 3 varieties with hard skins which can survive a bounce off supermarket shelves whilst the hundreds/thousands of other tastier tomato varieties are quickly dying out as they are not being commercially grown. The current answer to this problem by the international community is to store seeds in enourmous refrigerated banks. However this is not the answer as seeds cannot be frozen for long as they deteriorate even at low temperatures. The answer for all you food and eco lovers is to grow as much as you can from as much varieties as you can - and make sure it's a variety which produces a seed at the end which you can keep and grow again. In this day and age you can easily and cheaply order seeds from catelogues on the internet. Like all eco stuff you
can ignore it at your own peril but don't say I didn't warn you!!
Other than that brutal message we had lots of hippie fun. If a times the chat became a bit too serious Tan (Joe and Peggy's little two year old boy) in particular ran about playing and laughing with everything and everyone in sight. One night lots of banana puddings were made and consumed at Christian's birthday party. The three farms got together, danced bare foot with the many little ones and sat in candle light swaying to a quintet of guitar strumming singers. Strange to be back in the real world now, away from mud huts, cold showers, mud, bugs and bananas.
Last stop in Thailand was a night in Chiang Rai before we headed off to Laos. We liked the place. A good honest working town, not much to see but a far better night market than Chiang Mai. The market had loads of everyday stuff such as cheap clothes as well as a few stalls for the tourists selling things like pretty woven rugs made by northern hill tribe women. We got armfulls of stuff.
Now off to Laos - famous
for.........? We'll let you know!!
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