Karen village trip!

This weekend was a blast.  We spent three days hiking, rafting, riding elephants, and staying in Karen villages!

We went with most of our program up to Mae Tang - only about 2 hours North of Chiang Mai.  Our guides were Karen/Lahu people who have run these trekking tours about once a week for the last ten years.

The first day we spent getting out there we stopped at a local market and a beautiful waterfall to swim.

Yum.  This is why I am more vegetarian in Thailand. (And will be when I come back)

This sign says something along the lines of "stop here to throw up."  (The road is really winding)

We swam here it was amazing!

USAC girls :)

We got to the trail head around 2pm and hiked until 6- Just in time to bathe in the river by the moonlight after the sunset :)

Unfortunately, I hurt my left knee bouldering at the climbing gym in Chiang Mai earlier this week so hiking was somewhat difficult.  

Fortunately, everything else was really great and I got pretty good and walking backwards downhill!

That night we stayed in a smaller Karen village of 25 families.  We really only hung out with our tour guides and a few more people helping out on the trek and ourselves.  It was neat.  I talked to one guy named Jii for a while and learned a few Karen words.  He told me about his family and a little about the history of the village.  Christian missionaries came there 34 years ago so now this village is Christian.... weird.

slept here.  Christian and European soccer stuff on the walls.

Mosquito net

Our guide: Mr Sang

The next day we got up early and hiked a few more hours to another Karen village - this one bigger and Buddhist.  We relaxed for a bit, helped cook lunch - Ramen, eggs, cabbage, and tomatoes.
Then we got to play with the elephants!  We rode on the back of one (huge male) for about 20 min.  That was enough!  I was holding on for dear life.  Then we got to go in the river with them and bathe them.  They treat the elephants nicely here, letting them go off in the forest at night.

The chain is apparently for tracking the elephant in the morning after they are let free at night.  The chain that drags on its foot leaves a trail for the mahouts to find the elephants again.

Smile :)

Elephants are beasts!!! Gentle beasts.  Their trunks weigh like 2-3 times our weight.  Our guy just ripped off this  whole branch and ate it.  Elephants eat 300 lbs of food a day.

Later we went back to the river to see the construction of the bamboo rafts we would ride down the river the next day.  We had another delicious dinner with lots of veggies and banana spring rolls that I helped make. :) We had another fire and some of the children danced and sang some songs for us.  Good thing I payed attention in language class because I knew the songs too and we joined in with them.

We stayed up playing games with our guides (and some challenge course games!! :)) And eating sticky rice out of bamboo and sweet potatoes cooked in the fire.

Next day: RAFTING!  Don't have many pictures because it was wet and my camera was in a plastic bag the whole time.  We rafted 5 hours down a river.  Funny story:  A dog followed some people in my class from a different elephant camp on a 2 hour hike to the 2nd Karen village the day before.  He also came on my bamboo raft!  When we hit a log and our raft tipped over, the dog fell out.  He ran along the shore for 20 min or so and finally swam back to another raft and then to our raft again.  We dropped him off 30 min later at his original village and he was reunited with his other dog friends and people there.  hehe so cute.  I wonder if this has happened before... not sure.

Final destination for lunch.  

The rafting was super fun except for when we ran into rocks and fell over etc.  It was mostly peaceful.

So yeah this trip was realllly fun!

Here's some facts about Karen people:

- biggest hill tribe group in Thailand
- migrated from Myanmar - they were at war for 60 years.  The Burmese government was really oppressive. It seems to be over now that Myanmar has opened it's doors.
- back in 1997 the leaders of their army were twin 12 year old boys that were supposedly reincarnated highly respected men in the village.   Here's an article from the Baltimore Sun about it - God's army
- 6-7 million Karen in Myanmar, 140,000 refugees in Thailand
- Diverse subgroups and languages.  Some are Buddhist, some Animist, some Christian.
- Not necessary to have Karen parents to be Karen. - It's a culture thing.
- Some have Thai 'white cards' which basically means you are 2nd class citizen.

  

Mr. Sang.  He had the most hilarious laugh I've ever heard.

Hill Tribes- Hmong

Just got back yesterday from a great weekend trip with my Hill Tribes studies class!  I will do 2 posts: One about a day trip to a Hmong village a few weeks ago and one about our weekend trip to Karen villages.

First some basic info about the Hill Tribes in Thailand:

- They are not indigenous Thai people. Most came from China or Myanmar a few hundred years ago escaping from some kind of oppression.
- There are nine different tribes living in Thailand.  In my class we study six, and visit five of them.  All have distinct languages and culture that is different from the dominant Thai culture.
-  Most aren't Thai citizens, and a lot of Thai people hate on them because they think they are dirty communists, and they sell drugs, and they slash and burn the forests to plant their crops.  Not all true.
-  Here is some basic info slash-and-burn agriculture.


Hmong people:  Migrated out of China to South East Asia around 1800 because of war.  During the Vietnam war, the US recruited Hmong people to fight against the Vietnamese in the CIA Secret War in Laos against communism.  30-40,000 Hmong died in war.  Then the Laotian and Vietnamese people really hated the Hmong so they were refugees again.  Basically these people have been refugees forever.  In the 80's the US said 'okay, you can come live in the US' and now actually more Hmong live in the US than in Thailand (200,000 > 150,000)

So we visited a Hmong village a few weeks ago for a day trip.

Indigo dye painting - traditional craft.

Where the Shaman does his work

Crops in the hill side

School in the village

So most Hill tribe people used to grow a lot of opium.  This was their cash crop.  Now this is illegal and  more heavily enforced.  Some hill tribes still grow it, but not the ones we visit obvs.  Another way hill tribes get money is through tourism.  Parts of this are a little controversial.  Some tribes relocate to somewhere they normally wouldn't live, and practice old traditions that they wouldn't otherwise just for tourists.  Some see this as a sort of human zoo.

Example:  Long neck Karen people.  

The rings on the neck push the collar bone down and suppress the rib cage.  Most women stopped doing this a while ago to protest against the exploitation of their culture.  Other tribes started doing it again for tourism.  

This is not the type of tourism we did.  Many other villages have homestays where tourists can stay in a village and learn about their culture.  This is more of an eco-tourism thing.  The guides are hill tribe people and they are the ones that make the money. 

When we went to the Hmong village we learned a little about the Royal Project Foundation.  

The Royal Project is a program by the King, Queen etc.  where they said to the Hill Tribes - "Hey stop growing opium and stop slashing and burning the forests so much.  We will give you these animals and plants and crops to grow if you please stop!"  It's a good thing.  Many villages have embraced it.  We went to one that did. 

On one hand, the slash and burn agriculture is actually a pretty sustainable method of farming in terms of land management - but it has to be done correctly so the forests have time to grow back.  Also it is complicated because most of these people aren't even citizens, and they don't own the land.  

So the Hmong village we went to was neat.  They grew a bunch of crops.  They were into Ying and Yang and there were a lot of similarities to Ionia that I noticed.  ...Basic things like living in a community and living sustainably.  They believe in animism - where everything has a spirit.  They have  shamans, but they also have motorbikes. 

Basically even though these villages are separate from the dominant Thai culture, it's 2013 and they aren't as much anymore.  Not a bad thing. 

Forests in Thailand

The other day in our Sustainable Development class we had a guest lecture from a professor from the Biology Department.  He specializes in forest restoration.  

Unfortunately due to agricultural expansion, teak deforestation, etc. the forests in Thailand aren't what they used to be.  Between 1945 and 1975 forest cover in Thailand declined from 61% to 34% of the country's land area. Over the next 11 years, Thailand lost close to 28% of all of its remaining forests.  

Basically this guy and his team re-forest deforested areas.  You might think this is as simple as just planting trees.  Yeah, sometimes they do plant trees.  But other times, depending on the state of the forest (5 different stages) they just have to make places for birds to post so the bird will land and drop seeds.   Seems kind of boring, but it was a really engaging lecture. 

Plus the next say we went on a field trip to Doi Suthep National Park - right next to the University.  We walked around the forests and he showed us some super interesting plants!  Nerd Alert.

Dr. Elliott talks about this type of palms that can re-grow easily after a forest fire because it's meristem is protected by a woody base in this deciduous forest!

Surprise!  A very rare orchid!  It doesn't have leaves because it gets its nutrients from a fungus underground, not photosynthesis. 

This epiphyte plant is cool.  It grows on tree branches so it can't get its nutrients from the soil.  The leaves are swollen and hallow and ants make their homes inside.  The matter from the ants nest provides nutrition, and the plant grows roots inside of its own leaf to feed itself.  Neato!

Roots inside of a leaf.  

Then we went to a cave on Doi Suthep.  People believe that caves are where spirits live.  The spirit of the whole city of Chiang Mai lives here at this one on the mountain.  Our professor told us a story of how back in the day Buddha asked some cannibal people/gods/monsters? to stop eating humans.  They asked 'can we eat babies?'  Buddha said no.  They asked 'can we eat water buffalo?'  Buddha was silent because he didn't want to say yes, and this was better than humans. Now every May, Thai people sacrifice a bull to please the gods or something. A real person representing a spirit will climb inside of the carcass and actually eat the raw meat of the animal.  This is not as popular of a festival as Songkran or Loi Krathong

More forest pictures:

Woody Crawlers

Strangling Fig tree - grows on top of a tree (or rock in this case) first.  Then puts all its energy into growing roots  down to the trunk of the host and out competes it for nutrients while getting the light from its canopy up high.  In this species, pollination is dependent on fig wasps.  And fid wasps depend on the figs to grow inside of.

These trees have grown all over Ankor Wat.  Stay tuned for this because I'm going to Cambodia next week!

Blind School/ Wat Phra Singh/ Shambhala!

Amanda, Sam and I volunteered at the Blind school the other day.  It was English Day Camp 2013 (probably didn't matter that they used an old sign...).   The staff were happy to have us there helping with English pronunciation in the games we played.  There were students there from ages 5-18 or so.  All of them were blind, most had developmental disabilities too.  I think this might be due to a vitamin deficiency... :( but not sure.  I felt like I was at the Challenge Course playing a communication game or something.  First there is the language barrier, then they can't see you, and some of them are mentally disabled.  It was pretty tiring and required a lot of patience, but the kids were sweet and cute.  It also helped me with my vocab.  Were going to try to go back on a weekly basis to practice English with the kids and teachers.

Afterwards we walked to a near by temple called Wat Phra Singh.  Here's some pics:

Reclining Buddha - Symbolizes Buddha at the moment of death, or final state of Nirvana/enlightenment.

Relics are usually inside of a Pagoda 

lots of buildings on the grounds where the Wat is...  

We actually weren't allowed to go inside the main Wat without paying because we are Western.  Even though we said "Di-chan pen nak-sik-sa ti Moor Choor!" (I am a student at CMU)  So I don't have pics of the actual Wat.  They are all pretty much the same anyway.

...

We also stumbled upon this awesome bar/art gallery/house.  The owner told us about a hippie festival going on that weekend, and we went to it!  

This is Su-wat.  He was an art professor and then he opened this cool cafe/bar/studio.  He told us about the festival and we hung out there this weekend.  He's super cool and you can't see his dreds in this picture.

Chang Dao- Shambhala Festival. We are going back to hike that mountain. 

The festival was started by "the biggest hippie in Japan" and his partner from Thailand only 4 years ago.  It was pretty small which was nice.  We camped by the river, went to hot springs, chilled out and listened to music.  There was a cool fire dancer one night, a beautiful night sky, and we met interesting people from all over the world!  It reminded me of Ionia- living outside, Teepees, Japanese hippies and food.... etc.   The miso soup was excellent, lots of veggies (daikon).  And they didn't really wash their dishes that well - so now I'm sick!  Blech.

Cool Japanese band.  

New friends!  Tiago is on the left - we played a lot of soccer and will more because he lives in Chiang Mai too.

Campfire and stage at Shambhala in Chang Dao

 :)