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.
