Organic Living

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Alan decided to head home early, so I pushed on towards Chiang Mai by myself.

I took the taxi to the outside of Bangkok and waited for a ride to Chiang Mai at a truckstop. I talked to one driver who was going to Tak, which is 2/3 the distance. He told me talk to another pickup driver, which he said what going to Chiang Mai. The guy wasn't, and my Tak ride has disappeared during that time. I waited around some more for a ride, talked to an old Thai man with a really cool headband, then decided I'd just trying hitching from the road. But as I was walking on the yard, a truck drove by me slowly, then stopped and opened the window to ask me where I was headed. They were headed for Chiang Mai as well! What great luck! They said they had to make a 2 hour stop in one town, which was absolutely no problem for me. Anyway, they were very happy to take me on this 8-hour ride. I rode in the box for at least 4 hours, until it started raining. At that point, they let me in. In the truck were 2 men and one woman engineers who were en route to fix some machine at a sewing factory. They knew English well enough that I could talk to them.

We made the 2-hour stop in Mae Sot, which is right on the Thai-Myanmar border, but still part of Thailand. While the two men fixed the machines in the factory, the woman told me about the situation there. All the workers were from Myanmar, because while Thailand protects it's workers with a minimum wage, a company can pay less to the Burmese. And 90% of the workers were teenage males about age 14-18. I'm sure this wasn't a sweatshop, but it's the closest I've been to seeing one, definitely. Why are people so obsessed with manufacturing cheap clothing? I don't understand.

After the job was done, we ate at a small eatery and kept on driving. At one point, the two men were both so tired from driving, that they wanted me to drive their company truck. I would love to have, but I wasn't sure if my license was valid here or not. It was okay, they managed well enough. And when we hit Chiang Mai, they were really close to all the guesthouses, so I jumped out, thanked them graciously for the ride, and obtained myself a room for the night. I had given myself 3 days to ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and had done it only a day. What good luck.

I bummed around Chiang Mai for those two days before heading for the organic farm in Samoeng, run by a monk. He is not really what you would expect from a monk. He has a (slow) satellite Internet connection, likes to watch movies on Nick the German's laptop, and likes to swim in waterfalls and splash us a lot. He, as most organic farmers, eat strictly vegetarian. He has a frog that lives in his kitchen and leaves it be. He will not kill a mosquito if it bites him. He was living in the village temple until he wanted to start farming on his parents land, at which point he had to retire. Monks are frowned upon if they work. So he is an independent monk now. I had my own room at the farm, which was a wood and bamboo structure covered with teak leaves. My bed was made of bamboo. The monk made it clear that there was no certain amount of work required of us, just to work when we felt like it, and not when we didn't feel like it. But I did manage to help plan the rice field, weed the garden and plant a few random seeds, help the villagers pick beans and peanuts, build mud bricks and make walls, go for a walk in the bush to find bamboo shoots and mushrooms for supper, cook vegetarian food, etc. I managed to read On The Road entirely within my stay there, which was almost a full two weeks. One time, the monk asked us if we felt like going for a hike to another village to stay at his friend's house. This was his way of saying he did. So we went for a night and came back the next day. Towards the end of my stay, I was set to teach English for a week in an Isaan village, but I backed out due to lack of good communication. So I headed back to Chiang Mai to bum around some more. I am now staying at the amazingly "low-budge" Rose Guesthouse for 100 baht per night.

I have frequented the night market, in specific the Indochina instruments store and another guy who does painting and playing of Isaan-style music. I first noticed him because we was building his own Phit (Isaan-style guitar) and it caught my attention. I've returned there about 4 times since. One of his friends obtained for me a gourd mouth organ of some tribe in Thailand -- I forget which one. It's pretty cool. From the Indochina shop, I picked myself up a khaen.

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