Adventures in South East Asia

16 ~ Tourism Talks

The next morning continued at a leisurely pace. My mood was caught somewhere between enjoying the tranquility and an underlying restlessness, aching to get to volunteering already. I had become so used to travelling alone and only following the beat of my own drum that idle time felt like wasted time, especially in an exciting foreign country where I could be helping and exploring. Api picked up on my slumped mood and helped by listening to my disappoints. At least, the laundry I'd been doing to pass the time would be dry soon.

A few hours later, we headed over to a nice looking hotel for a tourism conference. Api and I were asked to join Som-o even though most of it would be in Thai and we'd basically just be there for show. Months working in a school run by Thai administration had conditioned me to the routine and given me the ability to sit gracefully on the floor. As a result I could smile through ceremonies where I understood maybe twenty percent of the content, including the English parts.

Once we entered the large, air-conditioned conference room, just a touch late, the panel discussions commenced. Som-o was kind enough to explain the event to us afterwards, but for most of it were just sitting ducks. The discussion all involved ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which would be in full swing by 2015. The past year, the staff at our school had introduced us to the idea and we used ASEAN countries as themes in our summer camps. My contributions entailed organizing Burmese and Malaysian influenced games and crafts for all the students in the sweaty, non-air-conditioned gym.

ASEAN, much like European Union,  opened up borders and allowed free movement for citizens of the member countries. Borders with Myanmar and Laos would open up more and Chiang Rai would essentially become the gateway to Thailand from the North. This meeting's agenda entailed sustainable community-based tourism to protect the local and hill tribe people while still benefiting economically. Som-o went up on stage with some other program leaders for a discussion their successes to date with the Akha organization to preserve culture and attract international volunteers for home stay visits (hence why we were probably there).

After a pretty good free lunch, we sat down to group discussions. Again, it was all in Thai aside from the one or two people interested in mine and Api's role in this whole ordeal.  A man who had designed a website to help travellers arrange home stays in local villages showed us the site he was putting together called 'Local Alike' and I really liked the idea. I would probably chose to book a stay with them next time I went out and visited Northern Thailand.

By late afternoon, we returned to the Akha house. More visitors, friends of Som-o and Api, stopped by to visit. The couple, an Akha man and a younger Japanese woman, came back from the hospital where doctors and nurses had been tending to their premature and sick baby. Poor Miki had only given birth days ago and was still sitting on a pillow to ease the pain. She had started her Thailand adventure as a volunteer and then fell in love with this man, choosing to leave her home and family behind. They were both nice and pleasant people.

Her husband gave me his business card after he expressed that my one week stint would hardly suffice to really learn much about Akha culture. I agreed with him and felt a bit guilty had been simply to help a community and not also to learn about their culture. His village could offer a more in depth look at the Akha culture, should I be interested. I thanked him and hung onto the card in case I came back up North to visit. We wished good health to their burgeoning family before they headed back to the hospital.

Som-o's wife and teenage son came by and we headed out to their village to volunteer. The trip wasn't complete without stopping at the market for food, a hardware store and a warehouse to pick up bag of cement.

Our drive took us right into the mountains, so far West we could have spotted Myanmar, had the smoke dissipated. I learned a new thai word, 'Doi', meaning mountain based the fact that half the towns had the word 'doi' in them. Som-o confirmed my theory. I jotted the new word in my little language notebook to remember for later.