Farmsteading in Thailand
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new book which articulates the writer's first eight years in Thailand - and the many challenges, along the way |
 Land and Houses For Sale in Northern Thailand |
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true story of American who comes to Thailand and develops farmstead - despite
language barrier, low funds, and no prior connections.
‘Farmsteading in Thailand’ spans a variety of topics dealing with
down-to-earth interactions between a foreigner and locals - far from the tourist
trail. Woven
throughout are descriptions of regional flora and fauna as
seen from a naturalist’s perspective.
CHAPTERS
1. SMUGGLING (bringing in tree seeds / Burmese border tensions)
Excerpt: Like that sole avocado pit, I came to Southeast Asia with little
fanfare. My arrival differed from Tiger Woods’ homecoming. No no one knew me
and the Thai government wasn’t rolling out any red carpets nor offering me
honorary citizenship. Rather than being skilled at hitting little white balls in
to holes, I had some skills at farming.
2. FINGER ON THE PULSE (solo kayak trip on Mae Kok / finding rock
climbing crags)
Excerpt: I had become accustomed to climbing as slow and carefully as a 3-toed
sloth, at times placing fingers on sharp flints of finger holds - as gingerly as a Galapagos iguana eating prickly
pear pads. Few things focus the mind and body as much as clinging to a sheer
cliff face from 150 meters up – with no safety equipment.
3. SHORT ARM OF THE LAW (stolen motorcycle, and subsequent
retrieval despite ineptitude of police)
Excerpt: There’s an unwritten tradition within Thai bureaucracy; no one within the
government system can get fired for dereliction of duty, or fined/jailed for
illegal activity. The worst that might happen is a ‘reassignment to an
inactive post.’ Whether or not it was the case for the man who was transposing
my theft report to paper, he typed at about four words per minute and chose to
speak no English.
4. SLICE OF CAMBODGE (exploring Angkor Wat)
Excerpt: I checked in to a modest room that had a mini TV hanging from
black angle iron bolted to the ceiling. That first night I went to a restaurant
and prudently walked straight by the cute girls soliciting in front of a bar
strung with Christmas lights. I returned to my room alone, switched on the TV,
and the first sound heard was; “we interrupt this program to bring you this
breaking news.”
I spent the next two hours spell-bound by the sights of my country being
attacked. Early on in the coverage, one of the newscasters estimated there were
50,000 people in one tower alone.
5. ROCK LAND I (finding and securing 12 rai with limestone
cliffs / Clearing land and rock faces with Akha work crew / developing climbing
routes)
Excerpt: For months after a hot burn, the exposed clay soil can look like a
motled brown and black moonscape. One month after the first rains of May, the
entire area is a beautiful light green carpet. Closer inspection shows there are
millions of ‘nam’ seedlings – each one hoping to become a ten foot high stickery
nightmare within a few months.
6. HOUSE LAND (preparing to build / myriad uses for bamboo
and banana plants)
Excerpt: The first person I met face to face was Pajali. To what degree
courage, or innocence of youth, I don’t know, but the seven year old had the
gumption to walked up to this large foreigner, stand directly in front of him
and say ‘sawadee ka’ (hello). It was the nicest encounter I’d had in weeks. She
was way too thin and small for her age – a result of too little nutrition - but
had enough sparkle to light up a medium sized carnival.
7. BUILDING (constructing walls using lego-like earth-rammed blocks
/ comparisons of wood types and building methods between California and SE Asia)
Excerpt: Villagers indicated an elder man named Bing as the one to dig a
well. I hesitated at first because of his slight build. Digging by hand in Asia
is most often done with a large-headed hoe, rather than a shovel. Bing showed up
at 8 am with his two sons and a short-handled hoe, and proceeded to dig a hole
90 cm around. The sons did what they could at ground level, and proceeded to
build a tee-pee sized tripod overhead in order to pulley-up buckets of dirt.
Meanwhile, Bing kept digging straight down, striking water at 4.5 meters and
digging another half meter beyond that – near up to his waste in the drink.
Dutifully, one of the boys crafted a bamboo ladder to help mud splotched dad
climb out of the shallow abyss.
8. VEGE GARDEN (growing and crafting African gourds / crop
rotation)
Excerpt: When I first got my land, I had just two gourd seeds left,
and promptly planted them in undeveloped soil by the hand-dug well. Each
sprouted, and one yielded a modest-sized gourd. At least now I had fresh seed.
The following year, we planted those seed, and the baby plants were attacked by
a multitude of orange leaf-eating bugs. Instead of spraying, I picked off some
by hand and otherwise let nature take its course. The year after that, we
planted in the same spot and noticed only a few of the rapacious critters.
Apparently, its predators got wind of the bounty and kept the menacing orange
guys in check.
9. BRUSH WITH THE LAW (Thailand’s version of the FBI - and how I
frustrated the efforts of nine of their agents - who tried to bust me up on
bogus charges)
Excerpt: The big Chinese-looking guy tried to take me to a back
room. I wouldn’t let him, and asked again to see ID. He yelled at me in the
police hallway. I looked askance and noticed a few brownshirted cops plastered
in place as they watched the spectacle. Quite a contrast to the guidebook advice
about Thailand, which says in effect, ‘Thai people disdain shouting in public.’
By this time, the big guy was a very frustrated special agent. It started when
he couldn’t keep his grip on my wrist, and continued when I wouldn’t let him
strong-arm me into a backroom - then I had the gall to demand that he show me a
real ID.
10. BARREL SCRAPS (a low point during which ‘trusted’ workers were
caught stealing / funds run low / developing in-house craft products for export)
Excerpt: Thai loan officers who, weeks earlier had been doling out chunks
of cash like hotcakes at a Christmas street fair – were soon hiding behind walls
of excuses. Not surprisingly, no bank officers in Thailand ever got in trouble
for the orgy of irresponsible loans that brought the economy to its knees.
Deadbeat borrowers were barely called on the carpet, because Thailand is steeped
in the Asian tradition of; “no confrontation = no one loses face.” Keeping
‘face’ takes precedence over doing the right thing.
11. SECOND STORY (construction methods and materials / quirky
interactions with sub-contractors and workers / asserting ownership of land -
Thai style)
Excerpt: Then there’s a neighbor who spends considerable time,
perhaps thirty hours per week, weed-cutting nearby hills and valleys. None of
the land has title, but the sparsely populated region’s inhabitants have seemed
to resign themselves to the inevitability that the ballsy man with the
weed-cutter must be the owner of all those many rai - because he’s out there
mowing. Even after the sun goes down, his motor can be heard echoing across hill
and dale. It’s gives a new twist to the term ‘land grab.’ Perhaps he should give
seminars titled; ‘How to Gain Property by Weed Cutting.’
12. ROCK LAND II (controlled burns / science of mulch and
compost / planting 250 pines / amorphophylus and other weird plants /
descriptions of odd insects and animals)
Excerpt: Giant geckos get amorous in late spring, around the
beginning of monsoon season. Males beckon in a distinctively loud two-note call.
To start, they suck in air, which in itself elicits a distinctive low tremolo
lasting a few seconds. Then the two note call with one second intervals
immediately comes forth. The greater and louder the length of his mating song,
the stronger he is, and therefore the more enticing he is for a female. A wimpy
tremolo start will result in a less dynamic mating song consisting of about
three calls in succession. On the other hand, a dynamic start will result in as
many as nine robust two-noters. He calls until he runs out of breath, so the
last note sometimes has a comical-sounding descent – eerily like the sound a
human makes when expressing disappointment.
13. NEPAL (trekking / frolicking with locals / dissertation
on Kagyu lineage of Mahayana Buddhism / impromptu serenade by village kids)
Excerpt: Little by little, other children appeared, all dressed in ragged
clothes. Rather than the clunky body shapes that one usually associates with
awkward pre-pubescents, all those kids were well proportioned mini-versions of
thin adults. Another difference was their eyes. Whereas western kids often have
the semi-dopey look that one expects from youth, these Nepali village kids had
penetrating gazes. Some stood and watched, while others began to similarly sing
and dance – all competing to get eye contact with me - each pair like lasers.
14. ROGUE HAULERS (author participates in protest against
illegal dumping of garbage, including the blocking of an access road)
Excerpt: I expected to see the blocking truck still in place, along with
a crowd of protesters pressing their point. Instead, the truck was gone and
trash trucks were continuing to roll down my road. I was the only foreigner on
the scene and as such, couldn’t actively engage in the dialogue between
residents and trash hauler reps – because of language barrier. So, I went to the
intersection and made quixotic motions to wave away newly arriving trucks.
15. GRAFT IN THAILAND (comparative methods for grafting
scions on to rootstock / personal experiences with organic growing and the use
of beneficial insects)
Excerpt: Chemical spraying creates an imbalance, both above ground
and in the flora and fauna below. In extreme cases, a farmer will wind up with
gray colored soil with no tilth - devoid of worms and micro-organisms that give
life to the soil and whatever is grown in it. There are potato farmers in Idaho
who supply Macdonalds, who forbid their families from eating any spuds grown on
their farm. In contrast, the soil at my farmstead is dark chocolate brown and
teeming with tilth and earthworms.
16. WELL ON ITS WAY (drilling water wells)
Excerpt: Similar attitudes survive in Mexico. The retort there is
‘por la madre,’ literally; “for the mother,” meaning; ‘mother nature can handle
it.’ Some observers excuse tossing trash by saying it has a long tradition,
because everything used to be bio-degradable. Granted; such things as banana
leaf plates and water-carrying gourds degrade – but that’s no excuse for
latter-day litterbugs.
17. EDDY IN, EDDY OUT (crafting world’s first raft made from
one-liter plastic bottles)
Excerpt: A long-tailed taxi boat took me and the craft one third
the distance upstream to Taton, the Thai town that sits by the Burmese border,
where the Mae Kok enters Thailand. True to my hare-brained character, no
pre-tests were done - so my first moment sitting in the craft was out in middle
of a monsoon-swollen current, sixty kilometers upriver from Chiang Rai. Five
hours of floating and paddling brought the craft and me back to the ‘Boat House’
– none the worse for wear other than a sore lower back from sitting so long in
one position.
18. THE RAKE AND THE HOE (musings on moth-to-flame
relationships between foreign men and Asian women)
Excerpt: If a man finds a lady in a bar, should he be surprised if
she acts like a bar-girl? In reality, every man who gets serious about such a
woman, deludes himself into thinking that she’ll change to suit him. Put another
way, he firmly believes that his affections will be like a magic wand that
transforms her from being an exotic butterfly in a steamy jungle - to a
beautiful canary kept within his chromed cage of domestic allegiance.
19. ROAD TO MANDALAY (exploring central Burma with daughter)
Excerpt: Burma is a land of endless discovery. Each stroll I took
had magical undertones. Once I found myself in a large plain alongside the
river – with no dwellings, roads, people nor domestic animals for miles – just a
few meandering trails interrupted by steep gullies running down to the Irrawaddy
river. Along the way I found basketball-sized chunks of gray-colored petrified
wood. Nestled in one particularly large gulley was a secluded monastery that was
devoid of people.
20. RAZORS, SPORTS & OPINIONS
Excerpt: Occam’s Razor: ‘The simplest possible explanation for a
natural phenomena is probably the correct one.’ One day, while strolling around
on the ‘House Land,’ I spotted a young tree with two distinct types of leaves.
The majority were small legume-type leaves that were expected for that type of
acacia – the remainder were larger. The next day, I walked by and stared at the
tree for a few more moments and was still miffed at how a tree could produce two
different shaped leaves. The third day I cracked the puzzle. From up on a
ladder, I saw a gnarly mass of roots had impregnated themselves within a branch
of the tree….”
21. HOSPITALS, UP CLOSE & PERSONAL (true stories of emergency
trips to hospitals)
Excerpt: As the days went by, the girl’s broken arm was wrapped in a
loose bandage. I offered to re-wrap it with a bamboo splint, but because
the family knew I wasn’t a doctor, I was good-naturedly waved away. She had
endured intense pain for the first two days and then slowly relaxed as the pain
subsided and her arm began its healing process. On the sixth day, she was rolled
into surgery. The arm was re-broken and an incision made to wrench the bones to
their proper position. That brought two more days of pain and a four inch scar
for prosperity.
22. SUMMIT (rock climbing excursion)
Excerpt: At the top of the little valley we made an arc to the east
and after some more scrambling, wound up at the highest point, directly over the
sheer cliff which plunged 150 meters straight down to the forest floor. The kids
were righteously jazzed as they yelled their victory cries to the mom, now a
speck alongside the truck. On the descent, they noticed a rock shelf trailing
around a bend to the primary cliff and began to explore that route. Knowing it
was too dangerous a detour, I dissuaded them and brought them back to the
moderate danger of our Hidden Valley.
'Learn Thai' book avail. in paperback or e-book
Lali's Passage
- Romance in Burma
Bundled Bamboo
Drum Sticks
