Mae Hong Son by Motorbike part 2: Chickens for an alarm clock

Beware: this is a long post

After a great night's sleep in Mae Sariang, we got back on our bikes and turned north. There was a lot of uphill driving today, with lots of gorgeous scenery. My arms were burning a bit from the sun exposure yesterday, and even my hands were a bit burnt. I wore the raincoat again because it was quite sunny in the morning, felt a bit stupid but it was more important to keep the sun off my skin.
The road up to the villages was quite an experience too. It was unpaved and quite bumpy, and because of yesterday's rain there were parts that were quite mushy. Off-road adventure!! I managed to stay on my bike but carefully made my way up the mountain in 2nd gear the whole way. The 2 apples I'd bought in the morning and had placed in my basket were worse for wear by the time we got to the top :(

Here's a short clip of me driving through the Thai countryside:

The first village we stopped at was Huay Hom, where we visited a lady who grows coffee for Starbucks (Laura had been to the same village & seen the same house). She was kind enough to show us her vege garden and rice paddies; she grows a variety of things including coffee, aubergines, beans, morning glory (a type of local bok choy/spinach vegetable), papaya and a whole lot of different herbs. She even has ponds where she raises carp and some kind of giant goldfish for food as well. I tried the coffee - delicious! The proudly showed me photos of an important farang (white guy/foreigner) who'd come from America to visit the village and help install clean water supply and irrigation, turns out he's a bigwig at Starbucks. She also showed me a picture of when the Queen visited her village :) She asked me to sign her guestbook and I found Laura & Stacy's entry! I then pulled out my own little photo album and showed her photos from home, she was quite interested in the picture of mum holding a basket of beans from the garden, and also the photos of me fishing.

Daeng on his bike
The ladies looking at my photosCoffee beans
Her vege garden and fish ponds

In these villages the whole family lives under one roof, and they keep their own pigs & chickens in pens out the back. The grandmothers and many women still wear traditional clothing & jewellery. Here the ladies were wearing hand-loomed sarongs and woven cotton tops. The grandmother had these cool strings of orange tribal beads on.

Me with the grandmother

After Huay Hom we jumped back on our bikes for another bumpy ride to Ban La Up (La Up village) where the people are of the Lawa tribe, where we would stay the night with a homestay family. This is the village with the silversmith, where Laura and Stacy made their rings. You can read about her experience here:
http://stacy-laura.blogspot.com/2010/03/northern-thailand.html

They made friends with the son of the family, a guy called Wijit, who also showed me around. He's 20 years old and had learned to speak English in Mae Sot (a town to the South of here) from Christian missionaries. Interestingly, a lot of these villages are predominantly Christian (with a bit of Buddhism mixed in - you can't stamp it out completely in this part of the world), it's evident by the number of churches around and we had to say grace before dinner. Wijit told me they even celebrate Christmas, with a tree and everything. Maybe it's just me, but Jesus seems a little out of place in a Thai mountain village...?

Anyway, I gave Wijit a parcel from Laura containing some NZ coins and photos of their visit and he was over the moon! He is really happy every time visitors (farang) come to the village so he can practise his English. They don't have many resources, so if there are no visitors he doesn't have a chance to use it. I think I'm gonna buy a copy of Harry Potter from one of the bookstores here in Chiang Mai and send it up to the village with Daeng :) Wijit said he'd seen the movie but hadn't read the book.

Wijit's grandmother and her friend were hanging out at the house chewing betel nut and all sorts of tree bark when I arrived - I think that's just what they do all day long when they're 80+ years old. They also had hand-loomed sarongs and tribal beads on.

We spent the afternoon walking around the village, saying hi to everyone, checking out the school, the church, the temple and various other parts of the village. There are so many animals running around, pigs with piglets in tow, tons of chickens with chicks following behind, it's a completely different world from home but I like it :) And of course, everyone uses motorbikes to get around. 10 year old kids are driving their younger siblings around, carrying baskets and bags full of shopping, I wonder what the accident rate is... best not to think about it!

Me and Wijit's family

We stopped by a hut where some women were weaving things on a loom. I asked if I could take a picture, and the lady jumped up and said I could have a go! So I got in the loom, but didn't want to mess up her work so didn't actually weave anything. It's cool to see how they're all made, gives you a new appreciation for the stuff you see at the market and teaches you to see the different between hand-spun and machine-made. Although the quality of the hand-spun stuff is so good, it looks like it could be machine-made!!

Me on the loom

Wijit by the sign outside his house
Wijit's family's house in La Up village
Pigs!
Wijit's mum weaving on a loom

Back at the house, Wijit showed me the silver things they make. Business is a bit slow at the moment, low season but again, the situation in Bangkok has affected the number of tourists which affects demand for souvenirs. His dad and brother are the silversmiths, they can make anything from a picture or pattern, and can also make their own designs. I bought a bracelet that has bits of old tribal money on it - little beads of silver stamped with a miniature floral pattern that were used as currency.

Those little beads in the bowl are old Lawa tribe currency

That night, I 'helped' the mother make dinner. I was mashing chillies & garlic in a mortar & pestle, while a chicken was boiling away in a pot with lemongrass & other assorted herbs. The cooking fire is just in the middle of the house, I guess it keeps them warm in the winter as well (it can get COLD up here). When the chilies were sufficiently mashed, she told me to stop and took the chicken out of the pot and started chopping. To my surprise the chicken was whole - as in head, feet AND insides! No gutting of chickens here - bowels, liver, heart and partially formed eggs are all on the menu. Dinner was chopped chicken with the chili mash, broth from the pot, and a big bowl of rice. Simple but delicious! She even made a separate bowl of chopped chicken bits for me with minimal chili :)

Later that night Wijit & I went to find Daeng who'd been missing all afternoon, all I heard was "clinic" and "hospital". turns out he and his mates were hanging out at the clinic cos one of them is the resident doctor (read: glorified plaster-sticker-oner and panadol-dispenser), drinking beer and gossiping. They were quite excited when I arrived, an Australian tourist had left behind a deck of Uno cards and they couldn't work out how to play it. So that evening we played Uno (pretty much Last Card) and drank beer, and I learned the Thai words for yellow, red, blue and green - all by osmosis haha! I can now also count 1 to 10 and multiples thereof. Quite an accomplishment!
I slept quite well that night, again because of the cool dry climate. But I was rudely awakened at 5am by a very vocal rooster, who was soon joined by several other vocal roosters. This had been happening most nights while out of town, not a good thing for someone who's not a morning person. Wijit said to me later that day that they have chickens as alarm clocks; I thought it was very fitting and the phrase has stuck with me ever since :)