2/23/13
It’s Sunday night and things have been lazy and quiet at
Happy Healing Farm this weekend. The week has come and gone and I have made the
decision to go back to Chiang Mai for a few days on Tuesday morning with some
of the volunteers that are heading on to continue their travels. Thursday is
David’s birthday and I would very much love to speak and Skype with him for
that, so I will be staying in the city at least until Friday to ensure a solid
internet connection to do so.
The volunteers here seem to change over to a new batch each
week, and I have become quite cozy with our little volunteer family this week.
Most of us will be going to Chaing Mai over the course of Monday/Tuesday, and
we plan on having a little pow-wow on Tuesday night with all of us together in
the city. I am quite excited for a hot shower and a meal with no rice. The
meals here have been lovely, they have no refrigerator so everything is from
the garden or from the nearby village and is all quite fresh. With each meal,
however, we are served a large ball of sticky rice. I hadn’t eaten rice or any
other grain regularly for a year before Thailand, and the farm has just about
caught me up on a year’s worth of rice just this week. Needless to say, I am
feeling quite fluffy and rounded out, and am really looking forward to some
meat and other rice-less meals in town.
This week we killed a chicken. Jim, the owner of the farm,
breeds cocks for fighting (I would also like to mention that he was a Buddhist
monk for 12 years before this farm. The contrast never stops amusing me.) and
has lots of chickens, chicks, and roosters that are clucking about all day and
night long here. I must say, my inner 12-year-old fierce animal activist was
nowhere to be found that night, which surprised me. Perhaps it was because I
know that the chickens here live quite happy lives, and at this point in my
life, the quality of an animal’s life now matters more to me than if it lives
or dies (and they all do eventually die, as do we!) I was very excited to wrap
my teeth around a drumstick or some breast meat, but it turned out the chicken
was quite small, and instead we were served a soup that was made of garden
greens and chicken bits. By bits I mean exclusively questionable inside parts.
Moving on...
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| Jim and the chicken. RIP chicken. |
I have tried another new fruit this week that I was quite
hesitant to try: jackfruit! Jackfruit looks quite similar to durian, which a
large (very large) kidney-shaped spiked fruit that is not allowed on public
transportation here because the smell is so putrid. In fact, almost all busses
and taxis have a similar picture diagram on them, telling riders what isn’t
allowed on the vehicle: animals, guns, sex, and durian. Similar to a
non-smoking sign, each item is shown as a small picture (a dog, a gun, two
people gettin-it-on, and a spikey-durian-shaped fruit) with a slash through it.
I will try and find a picture of that asap for all of your viewing pleasure.
ANYWAY. I have heard jackfruit can also be kind of rancid. The words described
for both durian and jackfruit from people have ranged from onions to smelly
feet, so I haven’t been too keen to try them. The jackfruit I had, however, was
DELICIOUS. It was a meaty textured cross between a banana and mango flavor. I
will be eating it again asap.
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| Example of the "NO" signs here, via the internet |
Last night we were finally able to use the sauna here. The
sauna here is a dome-shaped hut with a hole in the middle that is filled with
red-hot stones. We all sat in a circle around the hole, while Jim slowly poured
water over the stones and the sauna filled with a steam hotter than I thought
my body could take. The water had been soaking all day with these wonderful
herbs and the smell was very nice. It was dark out, but the moon is almost full
so the sky was quite bright and we could barely make each other out through the
steam. We meditated in the extreme heat (I had a rough time and was ducking my
head by the ground to try and breath a little better) and eventually all were
chanting together in unison. It was quite a powerful energy, everyone being
there together. When we first entered the sauna, Jim said something along the
lines of “When people do sauna, they turn crying into laughing.” I tried my
best to do a little crying in there, the time seemed right, with all the
chanting and sweating. It seemed a good place to have a cathartic experience.
What a story! “Yes I had a complete emotional breakthrough in a sweatlodge in
Thailand in the rainforest with a Thai Buddhist Monk and 9 fellow travelers! It
was a life-changing experience and I will always remember it!” But nothing
emotional came out for me. I did find
myself chanting quite loudly with my peers, and that was quite nice. About 10
minutes in, I was damn near yelling OMMMMMMMMMMMMM, and then my voice cracked and
I could not stop giggling. Everyone else too began laughing! I couldn’t
understand why, but a great feeling of laughter came over me and everyone else,
and I understood what Jim meant by turning crying into laughing. I do love a
good laugh.
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| The forest sauna! |
Some things I have taken part in this week include weeding
in their beautiful garden, helping cook, cleaning, and getting to make coffee!
They have many coffee plants here, and produce and sell their coffee to local
villages and markets. We also get to drink the coffee made here, and it is some
of the best coffee I have ever had! I have picked the coffee berry, crushed the
berry to get the beans (there are two beans in every berry), dried the beans,
shucked the husk from the bean (all by hand), and roasted the green beans! The
grinder they have here is done by hand and is quite a lot of work and takes
quite a bit of time to grind a small amount of coffee. My appreciation for a
single cup of coffee will never be the same. :)
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| Cutting up jackfruit |
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| How many girls does it take a shell a pound of coffee beans? |
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| Our shower. Privacy is overrated anyway... |
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| Girls in the garden |
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| Making fried bread |
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| Riding the "yellow bus," which was a truck with a covered bed, three hours back to Chiang Mai |
Here is a link to my Facebook album that has all of my pictures from the farm including the coffee production process, and all of my pictures of my trip so far. The first album is of my time in Bangkok and the islands, and the second album has been of Chiang Mai, Pai, and the farm. So happy to share it with you all.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151270559293375.469573.505338374&type=1&l=0cff7764d2
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151316909813375.471911.505338374&type=1&l=a1f5f94118
Hope you are all doing well, extra homesick these days.
<3, H
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