Today was another day full of excitement and adventure. After waking up and enjoying our buffet breakfast, we packed our bags for our two night village stay in the Chiang Dao region.
On the way, we stopped at a local market to taste some of the local fruit and stocked up on snacks for our bus ride and stay in the village. We stopped again for lunch at a nice restaurant in Chang Dao, at the foot of the mountains that we would soon be embedded in. From the restaurant, we caught a song theoy (a large tuk tuk) through the mountains to our long awaited village stay. One songtheoy had some slight trouble getting up the hill, but we had plenty of people to help push.
When we arrived at the village, we were shown our homes for the next three days. The surroundings of the village were very basic – but beautiful at the same time. There were simple huts for each of the families (some with up to fifteen people in one hut), a beautiful green mountain backdrop, a small creek running through and lots of kids running around having fun.
After a quick change and a lesson in house building we began construction on the house. We had some students mixing cement, bricklaying, levelling the floor and cutting bricks. We worked hard and half finished four of the eight wall sections before it was time to call it a day. To clean up, we all had showers … in other words, we hosed ourselves off and poured some buckets of ice cold water over our heads.
The family we are building the house for were chosen by the head of the village because of their extreme poverty. The family (a mother, father and their little girl) had been living with their relatives with no home of their own. The villagers are all Tibetan refugees, who had come to Thailand via Myanmar. They have been given the land they are living on by the Thai government, but they are not allowed to go past Chiang Dao, the closest town. The extended families all live together and help each other out in times of need. Despite their poverty, the entire family had smiles on their faces as they watched us work on their new house and experience their culture.
Some of the local village children came shyly to say hello to us and they showed us how to light a fire with a corn cob! We played fun games with them and gave them a few gifts. Our dinner was cooked by the locals and was so tasty!!! It was a great end to a tough day’s work building the house.
By Bass and Morgan
