MY HOME TOWN

                                     http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/

                                                                 http://www.rindarealm.com/

 

(Note:  This is a re-posted blog entry from my old Xanga account.)

 

I share in this post about me and my home town, the town where I grew up:  Chiang Kham, Thailand.  I was born in Bangkok, Thailand, in the mid-1950’s. When I was two weeks old, my parents moved back to a house in Chiang Kham, which is about as far away in Thailand from Bangkok as you can get, way, way up in the north, about forty miles from the Laotian border, in the Golden Triangle. Thailand is my country because it is my birthplace.  America is my country, too, because my parents were American.  I was thus born with dual Thai and American citizenship. So I am Thai-American but in a different way than most people think.

 

I have not seen color photos of the area where I grew up since I left Thailand at age fourteen, but with the help of Google, I found some links with color photos.  So, I’ll comment on the links I found, and you all can pick and choose and cruise as you wish:

 

Many of people who lived in and around Chiang Kham, where I grew up, weren’t Thai at all but members of a minority Thai hill tribe called the Tai Lue:  Here is an excellent photo of how they dress; the clothing is  elegant and comfortable to wear:

 

http://www.tatnews.org/emagazine/2209.asp

 

Here is information on Phayao Province where Chiang Kham is located:  Scroll down to see two photos of temples near my village, one with very interesting and old teak wood architecture:

 

http://www.thai-tour.com/eng/payao/attractions.html

 

This is a fascinating and extensive private site about Thailand by a young Thai man who has also dealt with drug addiction, a serious problem in Thailand as it is in America:  Check out his trip to the long-neck tribe!

 

http://www.thailandlife.com

 

Chiang Kham has large refugee camps near the town:  These camps do not have a good reputation, but you must remember that this area of Thailand was a very poor area long before the refugees came pouring over the border during the Vietnam war.  Life was harsh and often very short then in Chiang Kham as it still often is now.

 

Thailand is not a rich country and has a government that lacks adequate resources to serve its own people well much less new, huge groups of refugees.  The poor condition of the camps is, to my mind, due far more to the neglect of other, richer countries who could have done much more to help quickly in this crisis situation but did not. 

 

So my little village’s image has gotten shabbied up badly on the Internet now, and it’s not fair.  I love my home town and am very proud to be from there.  Sometimes, the hill tribes and the Thai did not get along so well in Chiang Kham, even way back when, and the camp situation exacerbated those problems also.  Thailand was and still is facing severe problems with deforestation of its mountains not to mention its drug and child trafficking problems.  

 

Just don’t make a judgment on my town and my country before you investigate further.  That is all I ask.  If you really want to understand more about Thailand, where I grew up, travel there, dress simply and preferrably modestly, don’t flash your big money and fancy electronic equipment and expensive clothes around, try to learn some good Thai manners and some Thai words, eat Thai food, buy Thai handcrafts, and just be willing to learn about the culture.  Slow down, take time to appreciate the small good things of life there.  Smile a lot. The people in Thailand are very friendly.

  

Here is a closeup of the refugee camps near Chiang Kham, when the camps were in use:  I saw this sort of thing all the time when I was growing up in Chiang Kham, and so this photo is not as shocking to me as it probably is to most Americans:  Lots of poor housing existed back then as now.  Some people had no homes at all.  It is the rainy season in this photo and flood time; during that season, everything gets messy and dirty for everyone.  It is life the way it was and is in this area.

   

And yes, many small children still go around naked or dressed only in a shirt or bib in Thailand.  It is perfectly acceptable.  The poor folk have no diapers, and there are always chickens around.

 

http://www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/collections/sea/seaexhibit/pic23.html

 

This is an image of the Buddha in a temple near Chiang Kham:  I was only actually inside a temple once, so I’m not sure if this is the image I saw then or not, but something about it seemed familiar .  There are dozens and dozens of temples all around this area, large and small, and not a single little white church with a steeple…

 

http://www.tatnews.org/photo_gallery/detail.asp?id=342

 

 

I found an actual map of Chiang Kham town:  We lived, I think, just off that main highway just outside the main market area, but on which side, I can’t figure out. The only identifying feature on the map that I could find was the post office.  The entire market area burned down two weeks before we left Thailand, and so, this makes it difficult for me to pinpoint the location of my home.  The village is still very small but of course had no 7/11, paved roads, electricity, etc., back then.

 

http://www.travelfish.org/map_detail/thailand/northern_th iland/phayao/chiang_kham/21

 

The land up north near Chiang Kham closer to the hilly parts is often polluted by use as a tourist motorcycle area now.  The terrain is so rough, however, that off the main road, travel becomes very difficult on a motorcycle.  I suggest that you don’t ride a motorcycle there.  Ride an elephant!

 

Now, we are in the plains area, between the mountains, in the dry season:

 

http://www.gt-rider.com/photogalleries/thailandgallery/pages/62.htm

 

Ahh, here in these photos is a sight that you will never find in the U.S.  These Bhuddist monks are blessing and learning how to use the fire department’s new extinguishers for this ancient carved teak wood temple near Chiang Kham!  Thai people love rituals and the longer and the more intricate the better! They also love to take and get photographs–even the monks!

 

If you think you know all about Buddhism, do travel to Thailand and find out how much you don’t know about Thai-style Buddhism. The Dali Lama is not very important there; the King and Queen are. And if you are an evangelical and think Catholics are irritating and all wrong with all their rituals…well, well, well…in Thailand, religion and rituals are part of daily life to a colorful and intense degree that even most Catholics could never imagine. 

 

I don’t know why most Americans, when confronted with the complexities of Thai life still can’t seem to grasp the fact that nothing, nothing in Thailand is ever, ever simple. My parents, particularly my father, never made that mistake…possibly part of the reason why they were both so well accepted and loved in Chiang Kham when we lived there.  The country is old, old.  It had the oldest Bronze Age civilization in the world, existing long before the Greeks.

 

http://www.fara.ksc.th.org/monk2.html

 

I love this excellent photo of the airport of Chiang Kham, with background scenery:  The airport was just starting to be built with the help of American Seabees when we left our town for the U.S.  That’s when my childhood ended, when the soldiers, helicopters, bombs, and refugees came. The hills just across the border in Laos were heavily bombed in attempts to eradicate communist guerillas.

 

http://www.thaiflyingclub.com/linkairportchiangkham.html

 

Here are lovely photos of the superb needlework style of a northern Thai tribe, the Mien or Yao, also well known in our town:  Missionaries played  and still play a large role in helping so many of these tribal people preserve and take pride in their traditional crafts and language–a fact that many Americans don’t even know.  This site is a good place to buy handcrafts, a fair trade site:

 

http://www.novica.com/artistdetail/index.cfm?faid=2074

 

Her are the rice field scenes are of fields seen from Chiang Kham:  How happy I was to see these lush fields and to know that the rice is still being raised and harvested there exactly as it was done when I was a child.

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=246221

 

There will be a good harvest.  No one will go hungry this year.  I am glad to know that the rice fields are still so close to the town.

 

This web page gives you a good idea of where we lived in relation to the rest of Thailand:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phayao_Province

 

I spent six months in this city, Chiang Mai, attending eighth grade:  I liked the city much better than Bangkok.  Chiang Mai is called the Rose of the North.  It is much cooler there than in Bangkok!  If I were a tourist, I’d head right up to Chiang Mai and not stay in Bangkok for more than a day.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai

 

This Chiang Kham temple flooded during the rainy season:  Yes, the flood water is ALWAYS that yucky looking, every single year!  It is rice paddy country after all.

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457556054427660gJazPs

 

Here, farmers replanting the young rice stalks by hand, one by each precious one outside Chiang Kham:  The women and children must work, too.  Nothing much has changed.  Rice is rice. Who cares if anyone gets wet either!  The rain is warm.

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131456091054427660NDRzmq

 

I’m grateful to the person who took this photo of my village at night.  Still not too bright.  Still able to see the stars!

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131455985054427660ssEFvH

 

This is a closer shot of the mountain scenery from the plains:  So beautiful!

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457312054427660LltgaN

 

Another shot of Chiang Kham at night:

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457492054427660lxfYaL

 

Mountains and rice fields!  And Chiang Kham nestled in between…it used to take us three days to get out of the village in rainy season—by oxcart!  But there is a paved, modern highway now, running right through the town.  Chiang Kham is still a dusty, little, obscure town in many ways.

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/11319082/1327415421026738363vlQeQp

 

Here is another excellent photo of Thai Lue dress and information about the tribe:  I saw villagers dressed this way all the time when I was growing up, in not quite so new clothing, but lots of silverwork was worn. 

The striped skirts are a type of sarong, so cool and comfortable and yet elegant to wear in the hot weather. I wore one as a child many times.  No one in their right mind today would want to wear tight pants in any Thai weather—except for touristy types or imitators thereof!  The weaving of these cotton sarongs with lots of bright colors against a darker blue background is still done by the Thai Lue women on hand looms and is prized for its practicality and beauty.

 

http://web.ku.ac.th/AmazingThailand/Boonsom/tailue.html

 

Surprise!  Once in a blue moon, my family got to take a short vacation down to the beaches of southern Thailand–quite rarely–as my parents were poor missionaries, very poor by American standards.  We stayed in cheap Chinese hotels like most Thai travelers do—not in modern, pricy,  tourist hotels, or else we stayed in the modest homes of other missionaries, some of whom could not speak English!  So Thai was our common language then. 

The mainland beaches in Thailand have gray sand, but take a boat out to the islands, and the sand turns white under the water and on the beaches, and the water turns this incredible, brilliant blue:  The water, however, does contain some very poisonous sea snakes and jelly fish, sooooooo…Paradise, I fear, is not perfect in Thailand….no matter how lovely the scenery….but I loved living near the beach and water.  We children never got hurt.  We knew what to look out for and what to be careful about.  We learned early.

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/315920413/1316603624026738363TrpSby

 

Sooooo….how do you like my little home town?  Do you think you would liked living there?  I loved living there.  My childhood home is still standing in Chiang Kham, changed and rebuilt and enlarged but….it is still a Thai house with much of it made out of the dense teak wood which survives even Thailand’s tropical climate!

 

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