Rivers course is complete. Wow.
I am now halfway done with my time at ISDSI. Time has flown by, so I am trying to savor every moment.
Now to summarize the last three weeks…this is going to be tricky to do succinctly, so I apologize if this turns into a lengthy post.
After spending a week in Chiang Mai having lectures about rivers, and more specifically river management and dams, we headed out to Don Chai, a village in Northeast Thailand. This village was different than most in Thailand in that they were actually quite rich. The main export from the Don Chai is rice whiskey, and apparently it is a popular drink in Thailand because they do quite well for themselves. All the houses are made out of teak, collected from the forest just outside of the village, before they started conserving it. My friend Emily and I stayed with a Paw and Mae from the village, and together we tried to hold complete conversations with our host parents, which proved to be more difficult than we had hoped because Northern Thai is a different dialect than Central Thai, which is what we have been learning in school.
A meal at of spicy bamboo salad and sticky rice
The first day we met with village leaders in the morning, who told us about the history of their village, and their fight against the dam that is proposed to be built on the Yom river, which runs by the village. If the river were to be dammed, Don Chai would be flooded, and all the villagers forced to move to a different location. But these are a feisty bunch of people, and I don’t think the dam will be built any time soon. We heard a lot of sentences similar “and then another official tried to sneak into our village after we told them not to come back, so we made them leave.” In the afternoon we heard from the youth activist leaders, and their quest to teach youth about conserving their valuable teak forest, as well as leading protests against the dam. The next day was a free day to spend with our families. My parents had to go to a funeral, so instead Emily and I spent the day with some other student’s family. We went a pig farm and fed some pigs, and then went to a papaya and mango plantation. While the boys we were with hauled dirt around, Emily and I went to explore the Yom River. Later in the day we had lunch and then toured the rice whiskey making facilities. Our last full day in Don Chai was packed. In the morning we tested our canoes that we would become quite familiar with later in the course on the Yom River. As we canoed we watched a couple of Paws from the village pull in their nets. One of them held a surprise—an already dead Burmese python. Yes, it was cooked and eaten. In the afternoon, we visited the actual site on the Yom where the dam would be built, which really solidified how much is at stake.
This is some of the catch of the day
The next day we travelled from Thailand to the neighboring country of Laos. We stayed in a guesthouse in the capital city of Vientiane. We were lucky enough to be able to meet with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) the next day. The MRC is an intergovernmental organization that coordinates international efforts of managing the Mekong River. It was very interesting to see the ins and outs of such a large organization. The next day, we met with a representative from CRWRC working in Laos to see the perspective of an NGO working in Thailand. The next couple days were spent with an old Australian man named Gary Oughton, who brought us to Lak Xao, Laos so that we could see a dam in progress as well as a resettlement village. We really got to see every side of the issue we were studying.
Our guide Tony showing us the rice fields in the resettlement village
Then, we said goodbye to Laos and traveled back to Thailand to stay overnight in Don Khai, in preparation of the beginning of our paddling adventure the next day. Don Khai proved to be one of the most fun days on the trip. We all rented brightly colored tandem bikes and rode around the city. While exploring we encountered a parade that was in celebration of a wat in the city, and so of course, we joined in. Some people hopped off the bikes to dance with the locals, who were getting down in a way I have never seen Thai people dance before. That evening we sat by the river eating our sticky rice and grilled pork, pondering the days ahead.
Bright and early the next morning we set out to the riverside to haul our boats to the river’s edge. We set out excited for the day ahead. The first day was the longest, with 8 solid hours of paddling. We stopped for a hearty lunch of crackers and banana chips with peanut butter and nutella as well as some homemade jerky, which we became quite familiar with, as it was our lunch every day on the river. Upon making it to our destination, we had to haul our boats quite some way, and clamber up a steep hill to fall exhausted at the top steps of our guesthouse. Luckily, they had dinner prepared and ready for us, so we ate and quickly fell asleep. The next four days were similar stories to this, although none quite as long as the first day. We spent our final day in the field working on catching up on reflections and essays that we were supposed to be working on throughout the course, before heading back home to Chiang Mai in an eleven-hour car ride.
A day on the Mekong
First field course completed. I learned so much in three weeks time. And now, I am beginning reading for forests, which we will be leaving for next Monday. Here we go!
