March 2008

It's been a fun start to March as we rented a motorcycle for 3 days over the weekend of March 1st, and then I went up to one of the Lahu villages on Wednesday, March 5th to try to help the villagers see why the 5000 yards of pipe they ran didn't get them water!

Our ride on Sunday March 2nd took us north east of Chiang Mai and then south into the limestone mountains. The roads are very twisty and steep and we saw a lot of coffee drying on the side of the road. We managed to get a flat tire in a small village and even though a lot of shops were closed we were able to have our inner tube replaced.

Here is the map of our trip

View Larger Map

Here are some slides of the coffee beans and our "bike". At one point the road was so steep we could not continue! As mentioned in an earlier blog, the roads are cement and quite good compared to 30 years ago but they are very, very, very steep! We also saw a Suzuki 4X4 which could not make it up a hill which we did on our Honda 125! I always thought the low gear on these cycles would take us up vertical walls :-)

Coffee and flat tire pictures


We came upon a small shop making bamboo fountains that are fun!


On March 5th I drove to Ban Paquay(about 3 hrs travel), the village where Kids Ark supports a school, to see why their new pipe for water was not giving them any water!
They do have two other pipes, each about 1000 yards long, to springs in the mountains which almost completely dry up during the 3-month dry season. The water is piped to a central tank in the village from where the villagers get their water supply from two spigots. During the dry season the villagers have to travel long distances over very hilly terrain to get water.

Through some networking I was introduced to a water resources consultant (Belgian) and a local expat (Dutch - Auke) with a GPS addiction :-) We then arranged for the villagers to meet us so we could survey the heights of the mountain spring, the village and a hill in between that could be the problem. In the past the villagers could sight the village from the spring and gauge the height but in this case it was not possible.

The "G"PS Team


In the end the villagers were fascinated with Auke's computer, maps and GPS and happy that they could once again run the pipe and know it would work! You can see the village on Google Earth quite clearly. The villagers took the GPS to the spring on their own as we would have probably slowed them down on the hike. The hills are quite steep and can be quite slippery. What is amazing is that we foreigners wear good sneakers or hiking shoes and they wear flip flops and go much faster! Here is a link to the village that we were helping. (You may need to zoom out) and you can click this link to see the 3D terrain in Google Earth if you have loaded it.

Finally, that night, I attended a Rotary meeting in Fang to support an Australian Rotary club project proposal to help some of the Red Lahu villages in the area, and then at 9:30 pm drove back to Chiang Mai arriving a midnight - a looooong day!

Well, if I don't post this soon it will never get finished! Last night (Sat March 8th) we attended the "International Heritage Festival" - first annual - with booths from 22 countries mainly with food - this is Thailand after all. On Friday night 12 couples were married in hot air balloons and on Saturday they just inflated the balloons. They then synchronized igniting the flames with the music. It was quite a sight! 13 Balloons lighting up the dark sky.

Here is an amateur video: