So I just arrived at the "farm". I guess it's a farm. It's very cool whatever it is. So I mentioned we are on a university. It is actually more like a trade school. School is out right now. maybe for the week, maybe the end of a longer vacation period. I'm not sure. It looks like there is a palm tree orchard on the grounds. There is a pond and 7ish cows. However, life so far has been very cool.
Bangkok was neat but kind of horrible. I mean it was just kind of a big dirty city. I probably told you already that it was really not that unlike any other cities I've been to. I was deffinatly singled out as a toursit very often. It was also very hot and just kind of gross. My hostel there was cool. I paid 4 dollars a night to stay in the dorm and then I spent my last few nights on the roof for free. They had the roof set up with a few hammocks and beds, a shower and bathroom and a few sinks. There was also a cover over the roof and 1/4 height walls giving you more of a chance of catching a breeze at night. The door to the roof locked from the roof, so I felt really safe staying up there as well.
My friend Vickie and I took an over night bus 11 hours north to Chang Rai. They served us meals on the bus and we watched Thai TV (which was a very very strange slap stick comedy show). We arrived at the and called our host. He came and picked us up at the bus station. Our host's name is Silapa. He speaks very clear English. There is also a family that lives on sight. A husband and wife and there three teen agers. The two older teenagers (Din and Nam - boys) will go back to college in a few days. They go to school in Chang Mai which is a larger city south west of here. I think students are in university younger here. Maybe 16 and up?
The youngest of the tree is a girl (Fon).
The family cooks all of our meals for us in there house. If we show up at the right time and ask many times they will let us help. We eat on the floor. Every meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) consists of rice and stir fried vegetables. Every meal tastes completely different from the last and is very spicy (even when tuned down for our sensitive Western tongues).
All the ingredients are fresh and organic. What doesn't come from the farm comes from farms near by or from the produce market at the end of the road. The fruit is incredible. The bananas are as sweet as grapes.
Silapa is an herbalist and medicinal wine maker. There is also an herbal winery on sight. He actually just left a few minutes ago on his motorcycle to gather herbs in the forest (no joke). I feel like I am describing a fairy tale. For work we are eventually building a mud brick house. Right now we are working on the bricks. In the morning we make the mud - soil, water, rice husks, and crushed clay. We mix it with our feet in the mud pit. This takes a few hours in the morning. The afternoon is often dubbed too hot to work ... so we take it off and return to work for an hour before dinner. This is when we put the mud in the frame and set it to dry for two weeks.
This is all for now. Love,
Emily
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