Friday, January 30, 2015

A Pai Excursion

"This is a place to linger"

So we were told upon arrival to Pai by our guesthouse companion, Leo (a 30- or 40-something Aussie who has returned to Pai many times over many years). Perhaps "guesthouse" is inaccurate though, "hippie commune" may be more apt. We stayed at Giant Guesthouse, which was slightly outside of the town center. It's comprised of small, basic bungalows along the Pai River, with a central bungalow and communal kitchen. Residents were either transitory travelers like us or people who had come to visit and had been living there for months. We're pretty sure the staff was completely stoned everytime we interacted with them and flyers for dreamcatcher-making and hula-hoop classes could be found tacked up in the kitchen.

Pai is an interesting place, an expat/backpacker's haven filled with organic cafes, open-mic/jam nights, and kombucha (!). I know many Brooklynites who would be quite happy here. The first evening we arrived we saw a sign for a weekly open-mic night at a cafe called "Art in Chai" - there was no question we would be attending. Thus began a hilarious game of seeing the same individuals over and over again from this happy-hippy, bohemian ex-pat scene during our entire stay in Pai. Whether it was the coffee at the Good Life Cafe or lunch at The Om Garden, the Thursday night open-mic or the Monday night open-jam, we found ourselves operating in the same circles of a community of organically-minded fellow travelers. Our friend Leo seemed to be a focal point, a man-about-town who quickly made friends with everyone, inviting us to join a group headed to the waterfalls or the hotsprings.

The earth-tone clad happy-hippies of Pai.

Side note - a curious thing about Pai:
All of the kombucha in town (which many places carry) seems to be made by one man: Mr. Kay, a well-established, Ukranian expat in Pai. He makes only 2 kinds, original & roselle, that come in the same size, same bottles you'll see all around town. He even offers an "Art of Wild Fermentation" class (whch I'll have to attend my next time around). He seems to be a bit of a kombucha mogul. It's so popular, why isn't anyone else making it? And why only 2 flavors?? Theree are so many amazing fruits and herbs and spices here! I've been itching for my kombucha laboratory...

But back to Pai. There are many interesting and beautiful sites aroud the city, and many tourists rent motorbikes to see the area. Even though we were given looks of great skepticism, we decided to do it via bicycle. The hills of the road weren't very condusive to a shitty rented bike with 2 to 3 semi-functioning gears (no road is), but we perservered through every up and down. 

First stop: Pam Bok Waterfall.

It wasn't the height that was intimidating - the water was freezing!!!

On the road back from the waterfall we were enticed by a sign advertising passionfruit and stopped at a small road-side "farm". We walked up and were asked if we wanted to try some of their iced roselle juice. We said yes and were quickly ushered to a table and chairs. Without asking for anything we were presented with a Thai feast: a wonderful spread of various snacks and foods.

Peanuts, tamarind, papaya, unidentified jam, dried banana, roselle juice, passionfruit, potatos, salt, roselle wine. Donation based, pay-as-you-want! What entrepreneurs... 

Next stop: Pai Canyon. The "canyon" itself wasn't all that spectacular, it seemed to be more of a geographical anomaly with great views of the lush mountainside.

On to the hot springs. There are many hot springs around Pai - our friend Leo recommended a resort where they pipe the water in in order to avoid crowds and tourists. After many days of sweat and cold showers, it was luxurious!

But my favorite part of the day was the bike ride back. As the sun went down we looped our way  down curving roads:

(Kids: don't photograph and bike)

Now this is a place to linger...


Thursday, January 29, 2015

Haikus Inspired by Sahai Nan

Hippie clothes drying
Shower nude under bamboo
I wash, my hands wet

Banana in sun
Does it translocate or does
It whiten my teeth

Shave legs by clothesline
Cover nicks with bitter bush 
Wet legs, dirty feet

Squatting under stars
What a beautiful relief
Orion spies me

Monday, January 26, 2015

Sahai Nan: Away Laughing on a Fast Camel

Thanks to a recommendation from my sustainability gurus Kelly McGlinchey and her sister, Thea and I decided to spend time volunteering for a permaculture project in northeastern Thailand called Sahai Nan. (Follow along with the development of their project at www.sahainan.com). Sahai, which means "friend" in Thai, is the grandson of a Thai shaman and did not realize that his way of living as much off the land as possible with clever energy and matter recycling designs had a catchy term in the West: "permaculture." When a visitor offered up this label, Sahai re-branded his project and started a permaculture course that mostly attracts Westerners interested in starting their own farms or yearning to live in greater harmony with nature -- eating from one's own vegetable garden, using energy from the sun, even harvesting fresh medicines from herbs and plants. In addition to teaching foreigners (who can volunteer or take a course), Sahai is also committed to inspiring his neighbors and interested local people to live more sustainably, as he has seen more and more monoculture farming, deforestation, and other destructive practices become popular in Southeast Asia.

The Thung Chang project that Thea and I visited is only 4 months old because Sahai was compelled to close his former project near Pai due to heavy tourism scaring away wildlife as well as drawing too many "happy hippes" as he calls them, or volunteers more interested in hanging out in a hammock on a farm than getting their hands dirty. In that short time, Sahai has already built several small bungalows for volunteers:

...part of his own house for him, his wife, and the baby on the way, and this beautiful main kitchen/dining room area:

Let's zooom in on the dining room table, where we enjoyed delicious, organic meals together cooked by Sahai's Chinese-Malaysian wife, Shen, and, as she proudly noted, sans the MSG or fish sauce ubiquitous in most Thai street food:

Most meals featured spicy curries or stews with mustard greens from the garden, sweet potato or pumpkin, and eggplant sopped up with the all-important sticky rice; dessert would be a simple but satisfyingly sweet papaya or banana.

On the farm, we worked on a wide variety of oustanding projects, such as a bamboo bridge to cross a stream bed. Bamboo is an incredibly strong yet flexible material found in great abundance in Thailand, and was a crucial material at Sahai Nan. Bamboo wood was used for walls, floors, roofs, utensils, brooms, even as durable "string"! Sawing through bamboo was much harder than I thought it would be:

Or gathering rocks to build a clay oven:

But with Sahai's ever-present, radiant smile and mantra of "we have time," there was never any rush or reason to shortchange relaxation or bonding time together, whether chatting, playing music, or doing yoga. Thea often spent the early morning hour before breakfast journaling to this mountain view, while I explored calf-burning running routes up and down the hilly dirt roads:

The mountains in the distance mark the Thai/Laos border.

I felt very lucky to celebrate my 24th birthday at the farm, surrounded by peaceful nature and an inspiring group of people committed to caring for the world in their own unique, thoughtful ways. A Portuguese couple who live on a permaculture farm/communal living project serenaded me with their community's birthday song: "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to me, every day we are born, every day we are free."


Thea spent the afternoon in secret preparing this goregous coconut sticky rice birthday cake, a veritable work of art: 

Needless to say, it was hard to leave. We ended up staying 10 days rather than the original week that we had imagined. I left feeling most inspired by Sahai's 100% commitment to pursuing his dream, no matter how much work it demands of him, and living in a way that he believes in, despite lying outside many social norms and notions of "success." Often I get wrapped up in questions of how to make big impact, systemic changes to better our environment, but Sahai Nan was a humbling reminder of the power in bravely setting an example with your own life and sending off the small ripples of potential and inspiration from there. 

I leave you with Sahai Nan's 12 Principles of Permaculture, which I find as resonant for farming as for your day-to-day life:
1. Observe and interact
2. Catch and store energy
3. Obtain yield
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
5. Use and value renewable resources and services
6. Produce no waste
7. Design from patterns to details
8. Integrate rather than segregate
9. Use small and slow solutions
10. Use and value diversity
11. Use edges and value the marginal
12. Creatively use and respond to change

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Chiang Mai: The Monk's Path

Yesterday we re-emerged into the world of internet connectivity, so this post is 13 days delayed. It's been an eventful 13 days since then, so stay posted for more updates!


Our time so far in Thailand has been fascinating. First Bangkok, then Chiang Mai. Every day you see something completely new on the streets. That being said, after a week here both Anna and I were feeling a little nature-deprived. It's so easy to get pulled in and consumed by what's going on in the city streets around you that it's easy to forget that there's a whole other kind of world out there, a world much more saturated with green.

There's a mountain that overlooks Chiang Mai, and if the light is right and the day is clear you can see a brilliant gold spire glinting on the mountain. That is Doi Suthep, home to the golden wat of Wat Prathat. It's a popular tourist spot, and it's easy enough to get on a songthaew (a converted red pick-up truck, one of the main modes of transportation here) from the city to take you up the windy road that climbs 1000 meters up to the base of the temple. But we had heard that there was another way up, a way much more suited to adventurers like ourselves: a mountain trek!

With Google Maps and a helpful blog post, we set out northwest from our hostel, The Green Tulip, to where the city becomes a little less built up and the ground starts to climb upwards. After only a little confusion (farang, or foreigners, were uncommon and most signs were in Thai), we found the trailhead.

The path up to the temple was originally used by monks as they traveled to and from the wat, and the path is marked by cloths the color of monk's robes tied around the trunks of trees. 

We were completely removed from the city. The terrain was lush green and jungle-like and the air humid. With the orange cloths guiding our way, it felt like a holy journey -- I couldn't help but immagine the pilgrimages of the monks before us, making their way up the mountain to the temples. 

Eventually we emerged at Wat Phalat (also known as Wat Phalad or Wat Palad). Wat Pha Lat was unlike any other temple I had seen so far. In both Bangkok and Chiang Mai, wats are everywhere. Sometimes it can feel like there's one on every block, and in some cases, there is! They are usually grand structures of bejewelled gold - very beautiful, but you can start to become ruffled by a sense of repitition. After a while, wat's the point? (Side note: major props to Anna for putting up with my puns thus far).

But Wat Phalat was different. It was not overclad in gold, but rather set into the mountain with beautiful stone figures of Buddhas, dragons, and other fascinating mystical creatures.


My favorite part was the staircase of white dragons that undulated down the mountain, echoing the river and waterfalls that wound their way through the temple. It was peaceful and quiet with few visitors.

The trail forward was unmarked and unclear. We climbed up and found ourselves out onto the road, confronted by the songthaews full of tourists buzzing up the mountain. We started to hike up the road in hopes of finding where the trail began again. No luck. We ended up meeting a group of 3 fellow travelers at a rest stop and flagging down a truck up to the top. We had almost 4 miles to go and if it was going to be all road we decided we'd rather go up to the top and find the right way down.

We got dropped off at the top of the mountain at the base of Doi Suthep, directly into the middle of a buzzing tourist village. Peddlers hawked wares to the throngs of foreigners carrying selfie-sticks and wallets full of Thai baht. 

The wat was beautiful and overwhelmingly gold and overwhelmingly overrun with people. 

My favorite part of Doi Suthep were the murals depicting the story of the different stages of the life of the Buddha.

It wasn't long before we started making our way back down the mountain. We walked down along the road until we saw the nearly impossible-to-find trail entrance and descended away from the throngs of tourists and back down into the green.

 We stopped again at Wat Phalat - a beautiful and refreshing contrast from the chaos we had found at the top of the mountain - to rest and refuel.

We had been walking since 8 am and returned to our hostel around 7 pm. We had managed to avoid an unexpected storm for a beautiul (albeit sticky) day, and what a day it had been! I find it's the adventures you make for yoursef that tend to be the most worthwhile....


Saturday, January 10, 2015

Food & a Cooking Class: Chiang Mai

One of the things that has fascinated me most about our trip so far has been the food - from the everyday street snacks to perusing extensive menu lists, the edible options have ranged from green, gelatenous dessert balls to fried crickets, with a generous sprinkling of backpacker-friendly items such as müesli and banana pancakes. You can learn a lot about a culture through the food, and Chiang Mai has been no exception.

I spent the day yesterday at an organic farm outside of Chiang Mai at a farm cooking school learning to cook many of the Thai dishes popular with Westerners - pad thai, curries, noodles with cashews and basil, mango sticky rice, etc. Though 80% of the ingredients were grown on the farm, we (8 other travelers from around the world + me and our lovely chef, Liam) stopped at a local market on the way to pick up various products we needed (fish sauce, palm sugar, etc.), then headed north to the farm. What an amazing experience! Informative, fun, and something I will take with me for all of Thai dishes in my culinary future!

Fruits galore! The variety and availability of fruits in Thailand has been incredible. There are fruit vendors on every street - want some fresh mango? Papaya? A coconut for breakfast? It's yours! Pictured above are some of the fruits available here that you don't come by often in the States. The red bell-pepper/apple looking thing is a Rose Apple, the bag with the 75 on it are ground cherries, and the bags going for 80 baht/kilo contain fresh tamarind. 

Fried crickets and worms! Supposed to be a great crunchy snack. I haven't had any yet but am open to the idea. When in Thailand...

"Bird's eye chili" - apparently the 3rd hottest chili in the world.

Liam in the garden looking at a young coconut tree and cutting some lemongrass below.

Pad Thai Deconstructed

The mango sticky rice I made - the rice is green from soaking pandan leaves (like the one sticking out of the mango) in the coconut milk, which add an almost vanilla-like flavor and a green hue. On top of the rice are dried mung beans, a fun crunchy little snack.

Anna discovering what tamarind looks like right off of the tree. Who knew?!?

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Thai Massage with Miss Wanna

Yesterday Thea and I finished our three-day Thai massage course with Miss Wanna, a practitioner of Thai massage for over 20 years. (For those of you unfamiliar with Thai massage, it involves specific pressure rather than 'kneading' as well as active poses into which the practitioner pulls and pretzels the client.) We gleaned that tendonitis in her wrists and hands compelled her to begin teaching Thai massage to foreigners rather than massaging full time. Thea and I were expecting to learn about the theory and history of Thai massage, but as Miss Wanna told us on the first day, "I don't speak good English. I teach with touch." So, Miss Wanna demonstrated on both of us the 130 different moves and poses of a full Thai massage, like this:

Miss Wanna has perfected a touch that is gentle yet firm, delving into muscles knotted with stress and tension without causing too much pain. She brings you just to the edge of discomfort so that you emerge from her touch feeling loosened, opened, and relaxed. And, she makes it look effortless. After Miss Wanna demonstrated a series of moves, it was our turn to practice:

This pose required pushing Thea's legs down towards her chest while she was supposed to resist with pressure. Like I said, Thai massage is very active, at times bordering on acro yoga. Even though the fingers and hand are crucial tools, Thai massage practitioners also use different limbs to massage, such as the forearm bone, elbows, and even the knees:
It was challenging to achieve that perfect level of touch, firm and almost painful but not too painful. For example, pointy elbows must be used with great caution and the client's shoulder bones carefullly avoided:

Thai massage thoroughly works on all parts of the body, from the large muscles such as quadriceps and biceps to the fine joints of the hand and the third eye of the forehead:

Sometimes we pulled and twisted each other into alignment (hopefully):

For those of you interested in geeking out a bit with me, Thea and I researched the theory and history of Thai massage after our course. The legendary founder of Thai massage was Jivaka Kumar Bhaccha, a contemporary of the Buddha and personal physician to King Bimbisara. Dr. Bhaccha is also viewed by Thais as the "Father of Medicine." His massage art likely reached Thailand with Buddhism around the 3rd or 2nd century B.C., though this history remains obscure.

The theory of Thai massage is based on the concept of inivisible energy lines running through the body, known as the 10 Sen in Thai. According to this practice, massaging important acupressure points along these lines makes it possible to treat certain diseases and relieve pain.

Historically, Thai massage was never merely a job; it was a spiritual practice intertwined with the teachings of the Buddha. The establishment of massage practice and teaching outside of temples is a new development. Giving a massage was a physical application of "Metta," a word in Buddhism for "loving kindness," so practitioners strived to attain a state of mindfulness in which they were fully concentrated on the client and thereby able to intuit the client's individual needs. I think this level of mindfulness is equally important for healing in Western medicine but highly underrated, so this is a memorable experience that I will carry with me on my path to starting medical school next fall.

A final good-bye from Miss Wanna (unfortunately we did not have a selfie stick -- those are very popular among the tourists over here):

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Chiang Mai Day 2: A Haiku

Bobas are bouncing
Down hot alleys drowsy dogs
Skip rope on railroads