Weekend in Chiang Rai

This past weekend we went on little vacation to Chiang Rai, a city about an hour away. On the way we stopped by a village where the HELP group last year had helped build a water pipe that still provides water to about 400 people. Pretty awesome! We’re hoping to get such a meaningful project this year. Before leaving we all took turns on the village swing. It was great!

 We like this picture because it sums up where we live: thatched roof, dog laying on the porch, scooter, clothes hanging out to dry, and jungle mountainside.

After an hour of very windy, very steep uphill driving, we got to the top of a really high mountain, and were surprised to be surrounded by what looked like swiss architecture.  We got out of the van, and asked Nat if we needed to bring anything, he just shook his head vaguely so we got out with nothing but our wallet.  That was the beginning of a lot of confusing surprises, as our truck drove away with our camera while Nat told us we were at the most important place in all of Northern Thailand.  Turns out we had a surprise stop at the royal family’s villa in a place called Doi Tung. 

Not knowing anything more about this place than you do, we bought tickets to see the three main attractions: The royal gardens, the summer villa, and the hall of inspiration.  We went to the garden first and almost cried because we didn’t have our camera! It was honestly by far the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.   Thousands of kinds of colorful flowers, bushes, and trees grown together in wild organization, with amazing fountains, pathways, and rock gardens along the way.  Luckily, everyone in the group offered to take pictures for us, so we have a few.  We spent a long time just admiring the colorful flowers grown into the beautiful tropical hillside, and looked out over the surrounding green mountains.  

 On our way to the hall of inspiration we were wondering with each other if the garden was that big when it was just the royal family who lived there, and how much money they poured into something so lavishly enormous.  It wasn’t until we got inside the hall that we realized we were completely wrong!  The hall of inspiration is well named, it was inspiring.  The whole place was a tribute to the lives of the current royal family, and an invitation to follow their examples.   We learned a ton about them, but basically they were a humble family committed to the betterment of Thailand who never thought they would be its leaders.  Doi Tung, as it turns out, was one of the major redevelopment projects of the princess mother, a woman who was born a commoner, loved gardening, and married into royalty.  Doi Tung was the area of Thailand involved in the “Golden Triangle” of opium farming.  It was a land torn apart by poverty, slash-and-burn agriculture, drug use, and sex trafficking.  The princess mother came to this place in 1988, and started her project by planting a single tree on the top of a barren mountain.  This was followed by hundreds of projects in basically what we are doing: public health, agriculture, and micro-entrepreneurship.  Opium farmers were trained in gardening, tree-planting, and other forms of farming, former prostitutes were paid daily wages to plant new trees and offer help, and in 7 years, the entire region was transformed.  The villa was built (out of recycled shipping crates) as a place the family could come oversee and help with their projects, the garden was built to attract tourism for the locals to have business, and the entire area was reforested.  The royal family had spent much of their lives in Switzerland, so the buildings were intentionally a combination of Swiss and Thai architecture. And still, the entire place was run by locals.  All the food and souvenirs were made and sold by local Doi Tung people.  It was really cool and helped us understand why the people here place basically equal emphasis on their reverence for Buddhism and the Monarchy.  On our drive back down we noticed a lot of farmers selling potted plants and flowers.  It’s amazing the impact one good person can have!

Finally made it to KFC. It lived up to our expectations and more! We’ve fallen in love with Thai chili sauce and found it hilarious that KFC offers it in packets just like ketchup. We’ll take it!

  My view for 75% of the weekend. Our little bus was way fun!

The plan was to go camping and wake up at 4 AM  Sunday morning to see the sunrise on top of the highest peak in the province, the border between Thailand and Laos. Well, we got to the little village and all the camping stuff was in storage for the season, so we ended up getting two little motel-ish room with two low beds smushed together to make one huge bed..literally a BED room. We got up early and hiked through the slightly creepy fog to the lookout point, and made it with just enough time to enjoy the beautiful view. The fog kept rolling in and out so we only got about two minutes of really gorgeous sunlight, but it was amazing. The hills rolled o n forever!

 Thick, thick fog. When it rolled in you couldn’t see anything off the cliffs. It was the coldest we’ve been on this trip because it was darker from the fog, high in elevation, and damp—like standing in a cloud!

 

 

 

 

 We had the amazing opportunity to go to the branch in Chiang Rai. Sacrament meeting was in a small room and our group practically doubled the size of the congregation! There were missionaries there who gave us headphones and translated sacrament meeting for us, which was nice because I still feel like everything Thai people say is a mystery! There were several youth talks on the doctrine of Christ, with faith-building examples from scooter crashes to Facebook posts. It was so nice to be among the saints there! We hope to be able to go often.

 

After church we visited a Buddhist temple in Chiang Rai. Apparently it’s more dedicated to the arts than most temples, and actually seen as offensive to more serious Buddhists for this reason, but the ornate decorations were cool. We’ve still only seen atypical temples so far; I’m looking forward to seeing the more traditional ones!

 The huge white temple made it really bright and hot outside.

 

 A neat wishing well with TONS of coins. People tried to get their coins in the very top tier of the underwater statue thing.

After eating pizza, donuts, French fries, KFC, and ice cream, we are all ready for another work week filled with English teaching, sink-building, and yes, plenty of curry.