This year, here's where I spent the regular, 2-day weekend:
At a small village doing a situational analysis to gather background data of the community, and its school, that is joining the project I work with. It's that small clump of houses in the middle of nowhere on the right side of the photo.
It was a 2-hour drive from Pang Mapha (which is already 4 hours away from Chiang Mai and more rural than Nan) to the village, through beautiful mountains on unpaved roads that are completely inaccessible in the rainy season.
We spent most of our time at the school because improving the school is the focus of our project. (That isn't a volleyball net that's shorter for kids. Thai people play a game called "takraw" which is like volleyball but with your feet.)
This is the view the school looks out on.
There was no electricity in the village, and because it hadn't rained there recently, also no water. Oh, and also - no white people. One 60-year-old teacher told the others that I was the first foreigner he'd ever seen, and the children were afraid of me. I sat next to a little girl who was playing with some toys we brought, and she stood up and ran out of the school grounds all the way back to her house. After that, I tried to keep a low profile and not spook any more children. As Madre pointed out, thank goodness I'm Thai-sized and not 6 feet tall.
The situational analysis took 2 days, so we stayed overnight in the village. This is where 3 of us slept. The single light bulb is being powered by a battery that was charged during the day by solar panels. The Thai government has a program to give solar panels to people in remote areas where it's hard to have electricity. Your move, Obama.
We were in the house where the family we stayed with stored (and I think dried) their vegetables. No Cullens were getting in because the ceiling was covered in garlic.
While highly effective at preventing vampire attacks, the garlic was sadly completely ineffectual at stopping the what-sounded-like 8,000 roosters crowing at 5:30 am. They were accompanied by a noise I couldn't identify that I was later told was the rice-sifting machine. When I finally gave in and got up at 7, there was a crowd of people looking in at us because the door of the house was now open because the mother of the family was cooking us breakfast over the open flame inside the house in the designated kitchen corner and she was trying to let some of the smoke out.
Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Just when I think Thailand doesn't have any surprises left for me.
