For those of you that don’t know what the Come With Nothing, Go Home Rich trip is about, I will sum it up for you. The kids show up to Bangkok with hopefully just a small backpack holding the essentials. When they are settled up in Chiang Mai, we give them the equivalent of $50 and take them to a local market where they can buy everything they will need over the next 3 weeks. Most families in the villages we visit will live off of less than $50 a month. When the kids have everything they need, we head up into the mountains spending a week in 3 different villages in 3 different regions of Thailand. During this week in the village, we have a budget of $250 to use for some sort of community service project. The project is decided upon as we get to each village and talk with the village elders about what they need.

This year, the rain wasn’t falling as much as usual, so almost every village we went to wanted a water storage tank, a well, or water pipes to the houses around the village. Usually during the rainy season, villages can collect enough rainwater to meet their daily needs, but not this year.

Our third village of this trip was a small Ahka village in Chiang Rai province. Ahka people migrated to Thailand from Tibet many years ago and have a very distinct look and dress. One of my best friends, Bay, was our local guide for this trip. He is Ahka and the village we were working at, was only a 5 minute drive from his village. One night at dinner, Bay came over and pulled Brooke and me aside and said he had something exciting to tell us. His cousin was getting married in a few days, and they had invited our group to come to the wedding. Bay had also been chosen as the best man, so he had lots of functions to go to over the next couple of days.

The couple was very poor and couldn’t afford much of a ceremony, so we agreed to buy a cow to slaughter for the wedding feast. A few of our kids were really excited about this and woke up at 6 am on the morning of the wedding to be a part of the actual killing of the cow. One of the boys was given the knife and the villager hit the cow over the head while our student stabbed it in the heart. He was so excited to be a part of that.

The rest of the wedding day was great. It was a small ceremony as the village only has around 12 houses. The village is also Christian, so the ceremony wasn’t the traditional Ahka style. Bay told us that traditional weddings last several days and involve lots of ceremonies and dancing. For the wedding, all of the ladies were in their tradition Ahka dress that is extremely elaborate and takes years to sew by hand. Bay’s mom showed us the wedding clothes for Bay’s future wife and told us she has been working on them ever since he was born.

During the ceremony, many of the old people in the village stood up and gave a blessing and or advice to the newly married couple. As this was going on, Bay got up and insisted that I get up and give a blessing to the couple. I stood up, not knowing what to say at all and rambled on for a few minutes. I still have no idea what I said, but it seemed to be accepted well.

Then came the feast... The cow that we bought had been used to make many different kinds of traditional Ahka food including my favorite, Larb (raw beef mixed with lots of spices). After a day of eating, drinking tea, and eating again, the Ahka ladies brought out all of their instruments (cymbals, drums, and bamboo poles) and all of their extra traditional clothes for us to put on. Many hours of dancing and music ensued as we congratulated the newly married couple.

written by  brookejason on August 14, 2009 from Chiang Rai, Thailand
from the travel blog: Thailand 2009
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Because of all of this, we took a warm up ride that climbed a steep road to the top of a mountain where a temple and an enormous Buddha sit. This is a very popular ride in Chiang Mai and it was packed with other cyclists. It started out great as we rode past rice patties towards the start of the climb. Slowly the road started getting steeper and one girl kept getting slower and slower. Soon, she could not power the bike up the incline anymore and just fell over.

She had not been on a bike much before and didn’t really know how to shift gears, balance at slow speeds, or how to wind up a hill well. This would all be fine except that Brooke and I knew what was in store the next day and what a disaster it could be. Every time the girl fell of the bike it was harder to get started again. The road was getting steeper and there was no way to build up momentum to start. I would hold up her bike and run behind her pushing the bike until she got enough speed. I would watch her ride off like a proud parent who has just taught their daughter how to ride a two-wheeler for the first time only to watch her fall again, and have to start the whole process over again.

Needless to say, this 15 year girl was quite embarrassed that both of her guides had to stay back with her and teach her how to ride her bike up the hill. Especially because she knew what she had to ride over the next couple of days.

That night, Brooke and I were both worried about what was going to happen the following day and were anxious to get out on the road. In addition to the girl that couldn’t ride the bike, we had a sick girl who really wanted to attempt riding even though she was feeling terrible and couldn’t keep any food or water down.

We took off over the lake, still anxious, with all five students and our bikes. The hill was tough coming off the water and heading straight up into the mountains. We dreaded what was to come, and started up the hill. Surprisingly, the girl who couldn’t ride her bike the day before was pushing through. She and the others were weaving up the hill like a snake and conquering the hill with high spirits. The sick girl was right in there with the group as well, pushing up the hill. It was an amazing turn around from the day before and was a great start to what would be an amazing journey by bicycle, foot and raft across the entire Northwest portion of Thailand.

written by  brookejason on August 14, 2009 from Chiang Mai, Thailand
from the travel blog: Thailand 2009
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

…And here it is. The plans have been made. The trips have been sold. I am finally getting to run the trip I always dreamed about.

This is a trip that aims to cross the entire northwest portion of Thailand by our own power. Vehicle transport will be kept to a minimum as we travel across the most remote parts of Thailand. These are parts that foreigners have not visited until now. When I scouted the trip, I was the first foreigner to stay in the village where we will teach at the school. This area was dangerous because of drug trafficking until only a few years ago. Luckily, it is safe now and we will be the first group to attempt such a journey through the region. Trekking is common around the areas where we will be going, but no one has made the full trek that we will be doing.

This trip starts off with riding bicycles from Chiang Mai north to Chiang Dao. We will do this over 2 days. While we are cycling, we will take ferries over lakes, stop at waterfalls, ride elephants and spend a night at an organic farm and sustainable building home stay. From Chiang Dao, we will begin our trek to Pai. Along the way, we will plant trees in community forests, trek through many different environments, spend the night in villages, and teach school children English. We will cover about 50 miles and do it in 6 days with one rest day in the middle. From Pai, we will rest and explore some of the caves and rivers in the area before heading out on a 2 day whitewater river trip down the Pai river to Mae Hong Son. This river canyon is one of the few areas of Thailand where animal life is still abundant and the jungles are untouched by humans.

Hill Tribe people inhabit most of the mountain areas of Thailand. They kill all the wildlife for food and cut down the jungle to grow crops. It is extremely rare to find untouched places in Thailand where wildlife can still be seen. Even if it still exists, they have learned to be very sneaky and stay out of sight of the humans because if they are seen, they will be killed.

This trip turned out to be an amazing journey and was everything I thought it would be. We used vehicle transports a little more than I would like, but it was necessary to make the trip safe and doable for the students. There is no better feeling than to have conquered a great distance by using your own power.

written by  brookejason on August 21, 2009 from Chiang Dao, Thailand
from the travel blog: Thailand 2009
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Ok, so it wasn’t really a bus station, it was more of a muddy alley that old buses were crammed into. Mini starts running around asking which bus goes to Nagarkot and finally puts us on one that is going in the right direction, but we would have to switch to another bus at some point along the way. The bus ride started off nice. There were just a few of us on the bus and it was a nice relaxing ride. As we moved through town, we started picking up more people. The bus started getting crowed and soon there was no more seats… standing room only. Before long, we were crammed in as tight as we could go and Brooke and I had squeezed in our seat to allow an old lady to join us. The bus being crammed with people didn’t stop the attendant from recruiting more people and trying to fill every last nook on the bus. So, after an hour and a half of stop and go through the city, we finally reached the place to switch busses. A man from the bus overheard where we were going and helped us get to the right bus.

This bus was not any better. This time, we couldn’t get a seat and had to stand for the next hour crammed into a corner of the bus. In the part of the bus where we stood, I could not even stand up straight without hitting the ceiling. So, I slouched my way up the mountain to Nagarkot. As we climbed, the scenery started and changing and the air turned much cooler. Even the people changed to tribal mountain people, and the bus was packed with their rice and potatoes that were going to and from the market.

We finally got off the bus in the right place and stared walking through pine forests to our hotel. The whole town was dead. It was a tourist town turned into a ghost town. We felt like we were the only tourists there and all the locals were just waiting for us to arrive. Tourism has dropped sharply in Nepal due to the Maoist rebels and the trouble that they cause. We finally made it to our hotel, which was made to look like an old castle although it was only built 2 years ago. As soon as we walked in the door, we were assaulted by the 6 or 7 staff that had nothing to do since we were the only guests staying there. We had tea and then went up to our room. The room had a nice balcony that looked out over an amazing view of the Langtang range of the Himalayas and on a really clear day, you can even get a glimpse of Mt. Everest… Unfortunately, all we could see was white as we looked out into the middle of a cloud. Visibility was about 30 feet. All this was made worse by the amazing pictures all over the hotel of the spectacular view of the mountains.

We decided to leave the hotel and go get some Tibetan food that we had seen on the walk over. After eating, we walked around, trying to make sense of the area and get a better feel about it all. We eventually found a really cool restaurant that had tables outside overlooking the mountains below. By, this point, the clouds were starting to thin a bit and we could see all the foothills below. We decided to head back to the hotel, sit on our balcony, and have some tea.

We celebrated by having a great dinner at the restaurant we had found earlier. We ordered Tibetan noodles and then found out that this particular dish was auspicious and helps to give you a long, healthy life. It was a perfect meal to celebrate our engagement and our future life together.

written by  brookejason on August 23, 2009 from Nagarkot, Nepal
from the travel blog: Thailand 2009
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...