Village life on the Thai-Burma-Lao border (the Golden Triangle!)

To start with, thanks friends, schoolmates and family for comments on our blog - we are really missing everyone believe it or not, and looking forward to getting back to school!  Here's a pic to show Room 2 that 'yes', elephants really can paint (she's in the process of signing her name - 'Suda')! 

Also sorry Room 6, but Harry might get in trouble if he tried to smuggle a baby panda or elephant home in his backpack, but he does have another treat (?!) in store for the class!  And Miss Gray,  Sophie unfortunately hasn't done a Thai massage course so can't give you a professional foot massage on her return, but she has done a full day Thai cooking course and she and Jessie now know how to make a fantastic range of treats including spring rolls, massaman curry, and chicken with vegies and cashew nuts.  See below...

Dad cooking up a storm, and Jess carving vegies at the Thai cooking course. First we went to a market to buy the ingredients then we made about 8 delicious meals and got a cookbook at the end of the day... cool fun.



Last weekend we had 3 days in the mountainous far North of Thailand, in the region of the famous 'golden triangle' where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet at a junction of the Mekong River...

Hanging out at the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos. That is Burma on the left of the Mekong River, Laos on the right and we're standing in Thailand. They used to grow opium here.

We stayed in two different villages up near Mae Salong. One with Akha people and another with Lahu people (minority groups).  They have amazing traditional costumes which they wear for special ceremonies.  They took us on an exhausting 3 hr walk up and down hillsides of rice, corn, and beans and including 3 river crossings, and later taught us some cool crafts like how to make bracelets decorated with dried seeds:

Harry with the mum of our host family, Aba

Exploring rice fields around the village, and trying not to step on snakes (we only saw a dried up one on the road!. Dad asked our hosts if they see many snakes but they said no, they stay away because we like to eat them - they taste good, like chicken!

Jaboosee village, where we stayed for one night and had a great game of soccer with the local kids!

Here's what we enjoyed about the village stays:
- staying in houses on stilts made of bamboo... you can see through the floors, walls and roof.
- playing soccer with the local kids (who had really good skills)
- exploring the village with the little kids, who followed us everywhere
- playing with cute puppies, and seeing baby piglets and chicks running around everywhere
- the effort the families went to, to cook us a range of local food - breakfast one morning was mountain rice, roasted peanuts, omelette, eggplant cooked with chilli, and pumpkin and garlic.  A bit of a change from weetbix!
- how friendly and welcoming everyone was to us!

Dinner, laid out on banana leaves, with the Akha family

Harry playing with one of the 4 puppies...there were chicks and piglets galore running around as well!

The girls join in a Lahu traditional dance around a bonfire at night

Jessie receives a blessing from a Lahu Shaman (spiritual leader) before leaving the village

Here's some things that weren't so great about staying in the village:
- being woken at 4.30am....then 5am...then 5.30am...etc by dozens of really loud roosters (one was right underneath the bamboo floor where we were trying to sleep!)
- the toilets were ummmm... a little basic...let's just say we all had to improve our squatting technique...nothing to sit on here!
- some of the local 'delicacies' served up to us by our very generous hosts e.g. these grubs breed inside bamboo and are only available at this time of year - some people eat them raw but they cooked them for us so they were a bit crispy...only Mum and Dad were willing to try them though!

Sophie looking very skeptical about the fried grubs placed in front of her!!