SE Asia - Part 2: Adobe in Issan

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After my beach vacation in the south, I met up with an organic farmer named jo. I had planned to work on his farm, but instead volunteered with him, working on various adobe building projects. The first was in Chaiyaphum province in the northeast. We were building an entire village for a group of farmers who had been displaced from their land by a government dam.

Nov 4 2002

Hello all,
Here is yet another mass e-mail from this crazy fool. So I made it to Malaysia after my month of roaming the south and watching my bowels change their consistency and frequency in a chaotic patternless manner. Yes I saw about two minutes of Malaysia, leaving Thailand, entering Malaysia and coming right back. It was a ridiculous process of routine paperwork, but indeed, I got my stamp for another 30 days in Thailand. I took the night train to Bangkok, a 15 hour journey in the freezer car, AKA 1st class air-con. I didn't know I was riding in such frigid style; I was just looking for the quickest way. So I froze, curled up in my seat trying to cover myself with the small complimentary blanket they gave me. It's the only time Vie been remotely cold in Thailand and the last time I'll ever ride anything but third class.
Nonetheless I arrived in Bangkok at 5 AM sleepless and neurotic. For seven hours I searched the mad streets of Bangkok in search of a tent before I found one, it seems the Thais aren't much for camping. Then I hopped on a bus following the directions I had to the natural building project. My vague directions misled me to a town of the same name in the wrong province. I was let off the bus in a small village. I tried to explain where I was trying to go, not knowing where I was. No one spoke English so I struggled with my phrasebook to express myself. Finally, one person in the crowd that had formed around me took me in their car to someone who spoke English. He figured out where I needed to go and brought me to the bus station the next morning and let me sleep on the floor in his family’s home.
The next day I got on a bus and was brought to the right town. From there I paid a man to bring me to the project in his truck. It was all a very frustrating experience, but I was kept in awe of the friendliness of everyone and their eagerness to help me.
So I've been at the soon to be village for 3 days now. So far we have been making bricks and mortar out of sand, clay, water and rice husk. The best part is mixing, when a group of ten or so squishes around bare footed in large mud pits. Yesterday we started building walls with our wondrous mud bricks. It's quite the learning experience and quite fun working with the great group of people we have. The group is mostly Thai, with the largest minority being Americans. It's kind of culture shock being around Americans again after a month of not seeing any. It's strange the things you get used to.
I'll be here for the rest of the month camping, playing in the mud and building the Adobe village. Nothing left to do but say goodbye. It's an hour and a half to this computer, so I won't be writing for a while. Mud mud mud, if I could eat it I would, Steve

Nov 13 2002

hello hello hello hi( or "sawat di khrap" in Thai), I made it back to a computer, after a long bumpy ride in the back of a pickup truck, so once again I will torture you all with my writings.

Monks knee deep in a pit of mud, stomping in satori, to make their Buddha bricks.
The cop slapped me on the butt and tried to hand me a chicken (really!!).
Wake up before dawn and listen to the rooster’s crow and the monks and nuns chanting while the sun rises.
Away from the mud madness and into the paddies, I harvest the rice, hunched over searching for bundles of rice to cut with my small sickle.
The Buddhist harvest ceremony: Threshing the bundles of rice in lamplight under the November half moon.
"Don't go to the creek, at least not alone", we were told, "That's where the python that ate the dog lives".

Not much new and exciting going on, still building an adobe village in the middle of nowhere Thailand and occasionally helping to harvest rice with the villagers. Things are as good and bad as they ever are anywhere, but I'm glad to be happy and sad, content and frustrated here in Thailand. Goodbye goodbye goodbye bye. Love ya all, Steve


Nov 13 2002
And I forgot to mention the best part about being Thailand is that you get to say Crap all the time. It's "crap" after every thing I say in Thai, in order to be polite.
The worst part about being in Thailand is when you get Giardia and you have to crap all the time.

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Photos

Children in Mud
Can you guess which one is me?