Today marks the halfway point of our journey together. We have grown a lot since those first days at Diva 3 in Chiang Mai, both independently and as a group. We now crave the sweet sweet release that all white rice meals (aka all meals) leaves us with. Our thigh muscles are rock hard and our aim has increased ten fold from all the post white rice squat toilet visits. We now feel naked without the constant layer of sweat that covers every inch of our being. We have become numb to the countless mosquito bites that plague our legs, arms, and everything in between. Hearing mysterious animals crawling on your ceiling as you sleep now acts as a comfort that we can’t sleep without. Bugs are no longer feared but rather hunted as an additional protein source. Most of our daily conversations include some reference to your last bowel movement or an update on the state of your digestive system. All and all we wouldn’t want it any other way…but none of us complained when we spent the beginning of our week in a lavish hotel provided for us by the Mirror Foundation.
We arrived in Chiang Rai after a winding 3 and a half hour bus ride and rolled into our new home for the next two nights. Once our tears of joy cleared we could see the magnificent rooms that lay before us. Picture this: lavish white comforters laid upon plush mattresses accompanied with elegant towel swans, AIR CONDITIONER, free shampoo, conditioner, AND toilet paper (GASP). After two days of not moving from our beds we decided to putz around Chiang Rai. We went to three different Wats (temples), first was a Chinese Temple that gave us a beautiful view of Chiang Rai, second was the famous White Temple where we saw more selfie sticks than we thought possible, lastly we geared up to head to the bathhouse which ended up being the Black House (our guide had trouble with pronunciation) which is a famous art installation in Northern Thailand.
After our time in Chiang Rai we headed 20 minutes outside the city to the Mirror Foundation where we would be spending the next week helping build a wall to prevent the effects of erosion. A typical day at the Mirror Foundation included breakfast at 8am and then work started at 9:30. We would spend the morning mixing cement by hand, carrying and pouring buckets of sand, rock, water, and cement mix, and tying together wire framing until our fingers were numb. At 12pm we would be summoned to lunch by the jingle of the ice cream man speeding down the road. After filling ourselves with the sacred gift of white rice and other foods (that don’t stand a chance against the sweet sweet release of white rice) we had a short break until work started again at 1:30. If we were ahead of schedule for that day we had the afternoon off. One of our afternoons we spent exploring a local waterfall and splashing around with the locals. We also filled our free afternoons with overly competitive volleyball games. We also had the pleasure of indulging in traditions from home when we got to carve into the fleshy meat of some pumpkins followed by the roasting of their delicious seedy insides. Our time at the Mirror Foundation has taught our group a lot about working hard and showed us how rewarding giving back to the community can be. Tomorrow we leave for a 3 day trek and home-stay with two different Hill Tribe Villages where we will learn about local customs and cultures. We will also be posting pictures from the past two weeks to make up for the loss of visual enjoyment in the last blog post.
With Love (and rice),
