Warm Heart at Work

The first view of Ban Arya

Greetings from the Clinic in the Clouds!

I know blogs are supposed to be spontaneous, near stream of consciousness, daily diaries, but we’ve been on top of a mountain for the past week and the mountain featured neither internet cafes nor wired connectivity. Sorry about that!

Silence should not be construed evidence of Christmas break sloth. The Warm Heart team has been hard at work, and I do mean hard at work, since December 22nd. In a week we built a “clinic in the clouds” that swirl around the small Akha village of Ban Arya (population 207 without us).

P'Ann and P'Aoy add style to clapboarding

Nung Nu and Nung Fu lend a hand

The exhausted Warm Heart crew takes five at the end of the day

You can see lots of photos of the project - what Ban Arya looks like, kids, people, construction, the Warm Heart staff at work and at rest - if you go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/WarmHeartWorldwide.

Actually, it wasn’t just us. On any given day ten Akha women with their dangling beads and high silver headdresses (wrapped in colorful dish towels whether as a fashion statement or protection from the sun, I have no idea) hoed up a storm, five men cemented the foundation or a dozen kids just buzzed around.

The hoeing crew ogles themselves on Will's camera

The Ban Arya cement team skim coating the knee wall

Young carpenter watches P'J for tips

The project really started on the 19th when a couple dozen of our friends from a Chiang Mai 4-wheel off-road club showed up to help carry our supplies up to Ban Arya. These guys have to be seen to be believed. In Texas or Oklahoma, you wouldn’t bat an eye – big, diesel Ford 250s and Toyotas with huge tires, jacked suspensions, chrome roll-bars, macho grills and winches, and, yes, snorkels. All that’s missing is the gun racks. In Thailand, however, these dudes are totally over the top and we love them. They’re all in construction and didn’t think anything to throwing twenty-five bags of cement, twenty-five bags of sand, lumber, tools, food for a small army and beer for a bigger one into the back and heading off up the mountain. The tougher the better. Good thing, too, because it was 9:00 PM, bitter cold, and pitch dark by the time they had off-loaded!

On the 22nd half the Warm Heart team bounced up the dirt path that passes as a road, dumped tools and supplies at the site and then settled in at the Queen’s cabins. The entire top of one mountain in the range is a Royal Project devoted to organic farming and the preservation of endangered flora. At the highest point are a fantastic lookout and a clutch of A-frame bungalows. The area is exquisitely landscaped with local flowers, shrubs and trees, and the views are breathtaking. We made a big fire, grilled strips of beef and sang a lot (something that Warm Heart does whenever there’s food and fun). Looking up through the tall pines, every star was in focus and the moon was brilliant. The air was clear and cold. It was perfect – and it stayed perfect for a week!

Bags of sand for the concrete work

Grandfather and his granddaugher watching the show

A village child born with fetal alcohol effect

On the 23rd almost a third of the village met us at the to-be clinic – the women in full Akha dress (which they wear all day every day) and the men in a motley of shorts, tee shirts, army uniform parts, blue jeans and traditional Akha pants. Everyone fell upon the sorry old structure that was to become the clinic and in a matter of hours stripped the frame clean. Gone were the old vertical bamboo slat walls, the sagging paneling, the piles of junk, the filth in the privy. A dozen hoes attacked the rock hard red clay around the slab to carve out drainage ditches and repair erosion runnels. By noon “Grandpa” (as the merciless Warm Heart staff dubbed our 55 year old carpenter) was hard at work framing up new walls and by evening the first of the new clapboard was going on.

The pre-renovation building clad in our banner

Grandpa and P'J framing the end wall

P'Aoy, P'John and P'Pleu clapboarding the clinic

Mounting the new exterior door

This stage of the Clinic in the Clouds project – preparing the clinic building itself – involved a gut job renovation of an existing structure. By the time the gutting was finished, all that was left was slab, knee wall, ten tree log posts, a roof, and a separate out house. In five days, the combined Warm Heart and Ban Arya teams squared the posts, put in wall studs, clapboarded the entire building and added the interior dividing wall, put in four big double windows and three solid core door, added solar power and wired the building for three compact florescent ceiling lights, a hanging work light where the examination bed will be and wall plugs, plumbed the out house and the examination room adding a sink and wall faucet, built a new, bamboo fence and dug drainage ditches around the building, laid concrete aprons around the building to prevent future erosion under the slab, skim coated the cinder block knee wall with concrete inside and out, stained all of the wood with anti-termite stain, and painted the knee wall around the building inside and out. It was a huge amount of fun.

The renovation project was funded by Hannah Reynolds (who also came to Thailand to help with construction) and contributions from her friends at Bryn Athyn College. (http://www.brynathyn.edu) The GlobalMed Chapter of Northeastern University is also a prospective donor. (globemed.nu@gmail.com )

NaaLay swinging a hoe

Even renovated, the clinic is a simple building that will serve many purposes. It sits on a concrete slab some 20 ft by 35 ft and stands 15 ft to a single peak. The roof is supported by 10” square posts. A cinder block knee wall runs around the outside above which rise walls of 2×3 stud covered by clapboard. The interior is split into a large room and a small room. The large room will serve as a classroom for the health volunteers and for Impact, an NGO run by a son of the village and his wife. They will use the space to teach villagers to read Romanized Akha and preserve traditional culture. The small room will be the clinic itself with an examining table, metal medicine cabinet, stainless steel instruments table, sink, and so on. Lighting is supplied by translucent roof tiles and florescent bulbs powered by a solar panel, inverter and deep-cycle battery set.

Warm Heart daughter Nung Sudah's dad

NaaLay the real leader of Ban Arya

Our hosts are a collection of remarkable people. Leading the work team is our Warm Heart daughter Nung Sudah’s father, P’AhUe. He is short, stocky, deeply tanned and weathered with broad, calloused hands. Looking into his strong, craggy face, there is no question that Sudah is his daughter; the resemblance is uncanny. Leading the project – and it seems the village, too – is NaaLay, the senior health volunteer. NaaLay is tireless. She can out hoe, out lift and out carry any person in the village, to say nothing of Warm Heart. She is everywhere giving directions or giving a hand; everyone listens to her. It’s hard not to. NaaLay has a smile that gives off light, but eyes that never leave yours during a conversation. At thirty-four she may still be working for her sixth grade certificate through Thailand’s informal education program, but this is a woman to be reckoned with.

We have made lots of valuable contacts up on the mountain. We have become very friendly with the director of the Royal Project, who is delighted that Warm Heart is providing the first ever medical facility for the people in this area. He has promised to include us in his dispatches to the palace. We have also had the opportunity to talk at length with the director of the Phrao Hospital who was touring a water project with his staff and stopped to spend the night at the bungalows. He is excited about the prospect of hosting a first class emergency medicine training program at his hospital and about the possibility of partnering with an American hospital.

Houses stacked against the hillside

Court yard of the house next to the clinic

Ban Arya is a pretty normal mountain village in most ways. What sets it apart is the nearby Royal Project which provides year around employment at 100 baht (about $3) a day. Very few mountain villages have a local source of cash income and must depend on remittances from village members working in distant cities. In other ways, however, Ban Arya is typical. Houses are built up the sides of two connecting, steep sided small valleys so that most look out over the one below. Two packed clay tracks run through town and a web of foot paths connect the homes. There are three churches, but no school, no store, no clinic (yet), no extension service, no post office or other official building, nothing but bamboo homes. There is an herbal doctor, a basket weaver, a musician. Every woman in the village is a master cross-stitcher and every man can build a house without using nails.

Shy, shy, shy

Kids mob Chiang Mai University voluteer Will to check out his iPod

Wow! iPod wins another convert

Over the top model with the mostest

Like all mountain villages, Ban Arya is a village of kids. They are everywhere. Ban Arya is a village that sends all of its school age children to the valley at age six so that they can attend school – and still it is crawling with kids. The minute we roll in in the morning, there they are, big eyed, serious, shy. It takes a bit for them to approach, but the hair on my arms is totally irresistible and once they’ve dared touch that, there’s no stopping them. And no matter how many of them infest the work site, there are always more elsewhere in the village. Raise your eyes from work and you see them climbing up the posts of porches or running down steep paths, swinging in the big Akha swing or chasing dogs down the road. You can hear them, too, yelling, laughing, talking, but interestingly never crying and never being yelled at by adults. Kids manage their own lives here. The bigs take care of the littles, and fighting, crying and running to momma are just not part of the repertoire.

Speaking of kids, one Warm Heart project wouldn’t be complete without spawning at least one and preferably two more projects, and by this measure Clinic in the Clouds is now complete. We have been talking among ourselves for several months about what to do to help a ten year old autistic boy in Ban Arya. On the 21st his mother died leaving his father to cope with him and several other children. Almost the first thing I was asked when we arrived in the village on the 22nd was could Warm Heart find a Warm Heart for him as we had found Warm Heart for Sudah. If only it were so easy.

This little boy is just the tip of the iceberg; every village I know in Phrao has an autistic person in it. Helping this little guy has to be part of finding a sustainable solution to the much bigger problem of how to deal with the large number of children with developmental disabilities who are a huge burden on extremely poor families with no place to turn. The government provides a subsidy of 500 baht per child, but this is nothing and does nothing to improve the quality of life of the child either.

What to do? Stay tuned; there will be a lot on this subject in the next few months. Honest, we don’t go looking for problems; they find us. But when something needs doing, it needs doing.

On a more amusing note, the second project that the clinic has spawned is all about bacon. Really. You may take bacon for granted, but here in Thailand bacon as scarce as teats on a bull, to change species. All of those many, many falang (as we’re called) who want bacon with their eggs in the morning have to buy it imported at the most astronomical prices. So? you are asking.

Well, here in Ban Arya the market for fresh pork is just too far away and there’s no money in selling pigs to each other. Solution? Don’t sell fresh pork; sell a higher value-added product such as bacon or smoked ham. They’ve got lot’s to feed pigs and lots of different, interesting woods for smoking; smokers can be made out of simple, local materials; smoked meat is much lighter that fresh and so costs less to transport; and no question their product will fetch a much better price!

Question: Do you know a meat smoking aficionado? One who would like to volunteer to spend a couple of months here in heaven teaching the first Thais in history the ancient art of smoking?

Smoky cook fires being tended by the Warm Heart team

Christmas. Yes, we spent Christmas in heaven. That in itself was pretty special, but it gets better. Ban Arya speaks of itself as three villages. This puzzled us no end until we finally figured out that what they mean is that the village of Ban Arya is divided (in an amicable fashion) into three confessional villages, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical. So what about Christmas? On the 25th everyone goes to their own church for a quiet service. Then on the 27th the whole village assembles for a day long Christmas celebration that includes no small Buddhist and animist representation, too. It is a do!

Kids playing next to the old building

But before enjoying the grand Christmas festivities cum thank you and farewell party, we still had to finish the clinic. We got an early start, which proved to be a mistake. The hitherto trusty diesel generator wouldn’t start. All the Warm Heart and village tough guys took turns trying to crank it over, but no go. Too cold. So we resorted to pouring tea pots of boiling water over it until after almost 45 minutes, lo, with a chuff and a puff or two of black and then white smoke, it roared to life. Action.

Pathetic puffs of smoke from cold generator

P'John screws in the last board

In a couple of hours the final two walls went up, the foundation got painted, the final wiring went in, the floor got washed and after five frantic days, the first ever Clinic in the Clouds was done!

OK, so it isn’t done. The building is ready to be a clinic and all of the equipment and medical supplies are promised. What remains, however, is the main course – the training, without which the building is just a building and the equipment is just stuff.

Luckily for Warm Heart and Phrao, my little sister Dr. Tenagne Haile Mariam, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Ronald Regan School of Medicine at George Washington University, will be here in a couple of months. Tenagne will work with the local hospital to develop a training program appropriate for the requirements of the Hill Tribe villages – and for health volunteers with limited literacy and Thai language skills. Once perfected, the training will provided to health volunteers, ambulance drivers, and public health clinic staff throughout the district.

Stay tuned. This should be quite a story. Thailand has no residency program in emergency medicine and currently graduates 60 EMTs annually. In a country that suffers 530,000 serious automobile and motorbike accidents per year, we have big hopes for Tenagne’s training program!

Cooking a feast in the back of a pickup

And now for that Christmas party. The moment we arrived on the final morning the backs of both pickups were converted into impromptu kitchens. An entire 50 kg rice bag full of cabbages had to be chopped, huge bundles of cilantro minced, dozens of blocks of pig blood cubed, big bunches of morning glory picked over and cut up. Two ten gallon pots of broth were put to boil on big charcoal burners. Over at the village “community center” (a covered sitting area where everyone hangs out), chickens were being plucked and pigs butchered.

Serving the stew

Finally it was time to put it all together. A parade of women let by our own P’SiPan arrived at the work site bearing big metal bowls of meat – chickens to be cut up and all the parts of a pig. More chopping. Everything was assembled in two ten gallon pots set to boil on smoky charcoal burners (where they were stirred like MacBeth’s witches kettle with yard long ladles). While the pots bubbled, the chopping and mincing continued as bowls and bowls of condiments were prepared – chopped Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, pickled cabbage, parsley, garlic, chilies, and I am honestly not sure what else.

Every kid should have it so good

At the stroke of noon – lunch is the only thing to which “Thai time” does not apply – the word went out by crier (yes, by crier). From every direction kids, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers descended upon us. People lined up by the tailgate of P’Pleu’s big pickup. They got a bowl, spoon and fork, and served themselves noodles from our 60 kilogram store – that is more than 120 pounds! With heaping bowls they shuffled past P’Oy, Mae Joom and P’Pleu’s wife who ladled out pint servings of the hot, steaming broth and meat. As soon as they had a spare hand, people returned to the old Warm Heart truck for a drink – Coke, “orange water”, “green water”, “red water”, or beer.

Two ladies enjoy their Fanta

People trooped off to find comfortable places to eat anywhere they could. The kids climbed the hill and perched on rocks. Lots of the guys just stood around and shoveled it in. The women sat in big circles; others clustered with little ones and traded bites with their kids. Our girls set up their own mat for “girls’ lunch” in peace.

Cooks eat last - NaaLay and Sudah finally get lunch

We ran out of food. I kid you not. Twenty gallons of soup. Sixty kg of noodles. Cases of soda. All gone. Everything. “Sorry, Ms., there’s no more.”

No one seemed to mind. Everyone just sat around and talked and talked and talked – and repeated shook the hand of any and every Warm Heart staff member encountered.

Ban Arya headman blessing Warm Heart at end of project

I didn’t see an end to this and the sun was getting a bit low in the sky – it is, after all, an almost four hour drive back down off the mountain – when the village headman showed up in ceremonial garb. He was truly impressive in a truly wonderful way. Over his regular black trousers and yellow golf shirt he had donned an Akha man’s smoke – imagine a long vest – made of black cotton and cross-stitched with fantastic designs, symbols and figures. On his head, he wore a brown boater with a bright pink chiffon scarf tied around it with a big bow. Wow!

Evelind and SiPan watching the end of project speeches

We all gathered around the headman and the local Army boss – the true commander of the mountain – for farewell ceremonies. First, the presents. I got a beautiful Akha bag that Evelind is not going to get off me. Then presents for the kids – kanom (snacks). From the true toddlers to the six year olds they lined up and Evelind and I were firmly requested to do the duties. It was huge fun since none of the kids had any hope of hanging onto the amount of stuff they got. (They did manage to eat most of it, however.) Finally, the speeches. Mercifully, it was now getting cold, so things stayed brief. Long and short of it? Warm Heart is invited back anytime.

Final project photo - too many people for the picture

Stay posted. We will be going to Ban Arya a lot in the five months before the rains start.

“Wanee ronn jang” is the phrase on the tip of every worker’s tongue, and the statement is undoubtedly true - today is hot. Despite the oppressive heat, dozens of Thai’s work tirelessly on the construction of the Children’s Homes, rushing to meet the May 15th deadline - the target date for the move-in of thirty kids from a not-so-nearby Karen (hilltribe) village. In the spirit of true team work, the Warm Heart staff has been laboring alongside the hired workers and sweating, not only from the demanding physical labor required for clearing the area of the future fish pond, but also from the nearby fires used to remove the brush. In short, the “Village in the Valley” project is officially underway. See some of the action in the linked short.

It’s been nine months since I first laid eyes on the Warm Heart Land, and I must say, I am impressed by developments. Upon returning, I didn’t even recognize the area that had previously been full of knee-high, wild grass and mounds of uneven dirt. Now, after two months of bulldozing, terracing, digging, and plowing, so much has been accomplished: the foundations for the main structures have been laid, area has been cleared for a full-size soccer field, and a multitude of agriculture and aquaculture projects are about to begin.

Despite everyone’s hard work, my stay has been so peaceful. Everything at the Aomdoi feels the same as last time - Pah Meh Lah has been cooking up a storm and the mountains to the West are as beautiful as always. The only thing that has changed is the season, and once again I’ve managed to miss the Lychee harvest! Aside from brainstorming with Shafer, Carole, and PiTie, watching Gaudhi box Muay Thai style, adventuring with Tara, and attempting to speak Thai with the Warm Heart staff (still no luck with the tones), I’ve been working on generating video content for Micro Enterprise and the cultural library project, visiting cooperatives around Phrao and Chiang Mai. It’s good to be back, even though I don’t have my favorite fruit handy. Expect another update when I return to Phrao at the end of April!

At the Warm Heart Office, preparation for Loy Kratong was taken very seriously and began three weeks ago with the design of the float and costumes. The next weeks were a fury of hard work and enthusiasm, as the entire staff worked to create the final float masterpiece in the intricate design of Chatree “Kru Tie” Saokaew’s father. The final details of the float were added right up made right up until the last minute but in the end it all came together very nicely. The float was made of craved styrofoam with various colorful flowers, banana leafs, and beading to accent. The dragon painted in glow-in-the-dark neon orange and yellow looked fierce. Warm Heart’s own talented costume designer, choreographer, and hair and make-up artist, Khem “P’Da” Narim’s made up the entire Warm Heart staff to look the part in traditional Thai dress.

As the sunset, lanterns were sent to the sky and krathongs floated down the river, the Warm Heart parade began led by Carole “Kru Duan” Ketnourath and Bridget Twohig carrying the Warm Heart banner. Next came the AuBauTau Maewan and Warm Heart administrative staff, including Intorn Chainurak, Chief Executive of the Sub-District Maewan and Chatree “Kru Tie” Saokaew, President & Executive Director of Warm Heart Foundation. The rest of the AuBauTau and Warm Heart staff followed closely behind holding candles or umbrellas. In addition, Khem “P’Da” Narim and Aoytip “Nong Aoy” Potima performed “Fon Pang,” a Thai Lantern dance set to traditional Thai music. The grand finale of the parade was Anchamai “P’Ann” Sodsai sitting atop the glowing float, smiling and waving to the people below.

The crowd was dazzled by the parade of Warm Heart and AuBauTau Maewan staff dressed in traditional Thai dress and traditional Thai dance, as well as a spectacular float. The Warm Heart float placed 4th and seemed to be a highlight of the parade. Way to go everyone!

In the early morning rain, I sat in the bed of a pick-up truck, crushed between fellow staff members as we lurched up the rocky mountainside. Finally, I was traveling into the “field,” to visit the hill tribes, to meet face-to-face with those who were the basis for our community development efforts. Our mission was simple—to open a dialogue with our hill-tribe friends in hopes of discovering ways to work with the community to achieve their basic needs—or so we thought.
Journeying up the mountain through wet mud and on broken paths, we passed steep cliffs where I noticed bamboo structures carrying water to the people. I remembered how I drank fresh mountain water from the same bamboo spouts when I first experienced my mother’s homeland of the Philippines as a little girl. After an hour of sliding and getting stuck in ditches, we reached the first village. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon surveying families, discovering future Warm Heart products, and waiting for our saving grace – a caravan club of off-road trucks called Free Life Off Road Club. This off-road club offered their time, trucks, and donations to Warm Heart’s weekend in the hills of Phrao.
The brigade of super-sized trucks came rumbling to the top of the mountain in time to view the setting sun over the valley of Phrao. The entire Warm Heart staff camped on top of the mountain and I felt a rush of happiness as I experienced another adventurous outing—eating delicious food and singing songs late into the night, the Warm Heart way. The cold night air reminded me of the autumn season at home in Vermont, but I was happy to be with the people here, who I so greatly respect and admire for their desire to solve problems within their own community.
In the morning, we visited three villages. I recognized some of the children who attend the Sanhokfah children’s home in the lowlands of Phrao. This is the children’s home where Warm Heart hosted our health-oriented day camp. Having the children there greatly enhanced the experience of visiting their families and villages. I wanted to, right then and there, make it possible for every child to have the same educational opportunities as I’ve had, as they deserve. Yet while in many of our interviews, parents were certainly concerned about their child’s future in education, they also expressed their concern about their child’s wellbeing at the children’s homes. However, with limited income generated in the mountains, the parents can hardly afford education and the costs of putting their children in better homes doesn’t even seem possible. I felt the struggle of a hill-tribe parent first hand. Warm Heart has identified and is now working to resolve issues with access to healthcare, education, and poverty in these villages to build a better future for these children.
By experiencing and learning of the lives of people living high in the mountains here in Phrao, I felt that I grew closer to my mother who was born in similar situation in the Philippines. As for me, growing up on the other side of the world having anything I ever wanted, I have always wanted to understand my mother and what her life was like so different from mine. I came to Thailand because I want to be part of the change to reduce poverty through micro enterprise. But on a deeper level I’m also learning about both of my parents; how my father lived during his Peace Corp experience in the Philippines and what it means to be my mother’s daughter.

Written by: Emily Turner

Northeastern University

Minutes out of Thailand, walking through the land that was ‘No Man’s’, I turned to look back a few feet at the four Warm Heart Staff Members I had traveled with. What I saw for those few seconds would be an image that would epitomize my weeklong stay in Cambodia. It was a picture of a Warm Heart staff member, Gaudhi DeSedas, awkwardly flanked by two young girls in tattered clothes struggling on the tips of their toes to shade his much larger form from the sun with a faded and dirty umbrella. It was a picture of a hustle that had been perfected out of necessity and motivated through desperation.

From sun up to sun down, “Cambodi” people were relentlessly energetic in their pursuit of what they thought we had to offer – which was mainly money and/or food. It was an unnerving experience forced us all to stop and count our blessings. Nonetheless, Cambodia wasn’t all poverty and hungry faces. There were many times I found myself lost in my appreciation for the natural beauty of the land and taken back by a stranger’s beautiful smile. It is true that Cambodia is a land with a very marred past, but, like every dark cloud has a silver lining, the destruction of much of Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime has produced a place that is now ripe with opportunity. There are many entrepreneurial souls that have all the motivation and only require a little direction. One business that I saw that provided this direction exceptionally well was an NGO called Friends-International. Friends-International is an NGO that works to keep children off the street. They do this in a variety of creative ways like training/employing parents to make fun products out of recycled products in exchange for keeping their children in school. After visiting their store, restaurant, salon (etc.!) and seeing their success first hand all of us were inspired and excited at the solid evidence that we too can be a success story. All it takes are some good ideas put to work. Warm Heart took notes and we’re on our way.

Written by: Tara DeWorshop

Rutgers University

Huyen and I arrived in Koh Samet at our hotel the Ao Phai Huts. Our room was 600 baht a night - in Chiang Mai, 600 baht gets you A/C, breakfast, nice beds…in Ao Pai on a weekend it gets you a run down “bungalow” consisting of a piece of foam on a raised platform, sheets full of stains and holes, a run down bathroom, and a lot of bugs. Unfortunately Koh Samet is a favorite of Thais. It is close to Bangkok and there are low amounts of rain during the rainy season so everyone heads here on the weekends. We managed to talk our room rate down to 500 baht per night and opted to sleep on top of our towels, cover ourselves in bug spray at night, and hope for the best. Overall, it didn’t turn out to be so bad, as we were only a 2 minute walk to one of the nicest beaches on the island!

The next morning we got Thai massages on the beach. The massage was 200 baht massage with the sound of the ocean in the background, not bad. I could have done that all weekend if I’d had more money!

We had met a woman from England, Becky, while waiting for our bus in Bangkok and we randomly ran into her again on the beach. We had lunch with her and her friend Les, an American from D.C. who is spending a year teaching English at a girls’ school in Bangkok. After parting ways for some time at the beach, we all met up again for a seafood dinner on the beach. We all had a great time trading stories, drinking beer and eating well.

From there we wandered down to some of the full moon parties, enjoying a fun night of dancing and drinking. Of course, by dancing, I mean that Huyen and Becky danced, while I kind of bounced, and Les just looked annoyed. But it was still a great time!

Saturday night was spent wandering Khao San and Rambutri in search of a place to spend the night. Six guesthouses later, we ended up with adjacent rooms at Orchid Guest House on Rambutri. Huyen and I ended up eating Thai curry at an Israeli restaurant.

After spending Sunday at the beach we began the long journey back to Phrao, refreshed and ready for the week ahead!

Written By: Shannon Pallone

University of California San Diego

The best travel experiences happen without a plan or a guidebook. My journey to Burma became such an experience when myself and Andrea, another Warm Heart volunteer, journeyed through the winding mountain roads to the Thai border town of Mae Sai. Andrea and I rented motorbikes to explore the Golden Triangle and as we zipped by rice fields, I felt the wind on my face and the excitement of being at the heart of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand.
Later that day we climbed to a beautiful scenic and appropriately named spot, Doi Wow. As I sat overlooking the small houses nestled in the valley of Mae Sai with the mountains of Burma in the distance, I thought about the different countries. They could have been one country, but the history and governments are like night and day.
The following day in Mae Sai, Andrea and I met two teachers and a Burmese student (contacts of our Warm Heart co-workers) that worked for a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Mae Sai. Their NGO provides free education to Burmese children at-risk of being trafficked. They escorted us over the border and instantly we noticed a stark difference. Beggars of all ages came from every direction in the tourist market.
We walked to a village that was installing electricity for the first time. The roads were unpaved and lined with garbage. We visited with families of the girls who crossed the border everyday to go to the school in Mae Sai. Sitting on a dirt floor in a dark bamboo hut, we listened to a mother talk about how she took her young daughter out of the free school to sell eggs in the market. Most families in the village had recently lost their farming land to the government. We discovered they now buy vegetables and sell them at the market for a 1 Baht profit.
The level of poverty that I had experienced in Burma was visible only ten minutes from Thailand. Walking back to the border, I watched an elderly couple standing quietly in front of a food store. The man was blind, holding an empty bowl in one hand and a stick that his wife guided him with in the other. They stood unwavering and after watching them for a few minutes, I bought a package of crackers and handed the bag to the beggar wife. I walked on my way feeling like I had done something wrong and at the same time kind. 

The last time I gave anything to a beggar, I was still young enough to hold my mother’s hand. Sometime between then and now, I had decided that I would do something that would help the poor feed themselves. But I realized that I had not been around poverty like this since becoming more educated and I have never sat in someone’s house to talk to them about poverty. I gave in to that couple and I don’t feel like it was particularly compassionate, but it was just something I had to do at the time. It confused me, and the difference between what is right and wrong and what is just human.

Written by: Emily Turner
Northeastern University

Sunday is a day of rest for many. After a long week of work, most people use Sunday for barbeque’s, days at the beach, or family gatherings. Here in Phrao, however, things are a little different. This past Sunday, we woke up bright and early to transplant rice at our Thai coworker’s, Monwipa “P’ Kung” Sangkamwon, rice paddies.

As we tried to walk down the hill and through the paddies in our flimsy flip-flops, we realized we were not properly equipped. We quickly removed our shoes and proceeded barefoot. We were initially greeted by many stares, smiles, and eventually laughter from the rice farmers. There were nearly twenty people on the rice paddies already, some removed rice, or tied bundles together, and a select few cut the tops off the bundles. We arrived, eager to help and ready to do something that we had never done before.

Our first job was to tie bundles of rice with thin bamboo strips. It looked very easy but it turned out to be a difficult and tricky job. By the time we finished tying one bundle, the Thai woman next to us had already gone through five and when we gave it to her hoping for a nod of approval, she would just undo the knot and redo everything. It wasn’t until our 15th try that we finally got the hang of it and were able to do it correctly. Of course, then it was time to switch jobs.

The cut up bundles had been thrown and floated around in the surrounding paddies. Our next task was to plant these bundles in neat rows of three or four bunches. It looked easy. We all hiked up our pants, jumped in the water, and our bare feet sunk deep in the mud. We crotched over to plant rows of rice and found it very difficult to maintain our balance, let alone keep our rows of rice straight. Several times, we had to go back to remove the rice, and plant it again because our rows slanted. On top of everything, from time to time we would feel slimy creatures going around our feet below the muddy water.

After fours hours of hard labor, we were done. As we ate lunch, we reflected on our experience and appreciated each grain of rice in our bowls.

Written By: Andrea Castillo
University of California San Diego

This past holiday weekend, six Warm Heart staff members took a trip to Pai, the “Switzerland of Thailand,” to see all that Thailand’s northernmost mountains had to offer. Getting there was a bit like racing a slalom course, but there were some spectacular views of isolated farming villages and mist-shrouded, emerald-green mountains. After spending a day exploring the sinkholes, bat nests, underground streams and ancient teak coffins of Tham Lod Cave, the group decided to “conquer the Pai River” on a white-water rafting day trip.

The group booked a trip with a local rafting company and showed up bright and early at the office for an American breakfast and words of reassurance. Admonishing our staff to “move our asses,” our Thai guide suited us up and gave us a few simple commands so that we would not start rowing the raft in six different directions. He assured us that by the end of the day we would all have “sexy bodies” from the rowing.

For the first few hours we paddled along the Pai River, seeing hornbills, kingfishers, iguanas, huge colonies of water spiders, and a family of monkeys. The forest was cool and misty from the rain, and one could see columns of steam rising from the hills above the river.

The first stop on the trip was a waterfall with several scalable levels and wading pools. Following lunch, we picked up a new passenger: a Lahu villager who needed medical attention. To give an idea of how remote this excursion was, the only way to get him to a doctor was to raft down the river for four more hours and then drive another hour to the nearest village. He was remarkably calm (or feverish) the entire time. This stood in stark contrast to the Warm Hearters and our guide, who were hollering every time we went through the rapids and gave each other “paddle high fives” each time we cleared a rock without falling over.

Most of the time, the river was calm enough for people to jump out of the raft and swim behind the boat in the deeper parts of the river. We stopped at a hot spring, where our guide helped us cover ourselves in mud. The pictures our guide took were kind of shaky because he was laughing so hard at us as. The last attraction on the ride diving cliff was about twenty feet above the river. We ended the evening lazily cruising along the Pai River. He was very proud of us, as we did not hit each other with our paddles, fall overboard and panic, or cry. Even if we were to fall out of the boat and smash against the rocks, we were to keep smiling. And we had no reason not to keep smiling.

Written by: Paul Mutter

Rutgers University