6th April, village homestay with a local ethnic minority!

the place where i stopped for lunch. lots of buses stop here for lunch everyday...

I had planned to stay for only a night but they kept offering their home and asking me to stay for a longer period and to stay for 10 days until the local Water Splashing Festival which they say is a very important event in their local culture and its a rare opportunity for me to experience it. after much persuasion, i decided to stay there and not follow according to my initial plan because i am travelling and i have got loads of time anyway! who cares about the plan... i can always go back home later loh hehe =D thats the good thing about travelling without any definite timeline, i dun have to rush for a plane or train to somewhere or get to a hotel because i dun make reservations for hotel... i jus sleep wherever i want to, anytime i want to, with whoever i want to (ok, i dun exactly sleep with other ppl...)

btw they were members of a local ethnic minority, called the 傣族, so i got to experience and get to know about their culture and practices over the next few days.

typical hole in the ground latrine in the village with some kinda bugs squirming inside. i think they are attracted to the feces and prob help to degrade it?

the typical village toilet.

what i found really interesting is that the big well/pool of greenish stuff is actually connected to a huge hole in the ground with the latrine and it actually produces gas for cooking food! so whenever you shit or pee in the latrine, it is all funneled into the huge hole and when there is enough biofuel (literally), you can use the gas to cook some dishes! (the gas pipe is linked to the huge hole in the ground)

海云(his bro) picking water melons at the field. he is really strong for his size... kinda surprised when he carried so many watermelons because he is like half my size! ok mayb not half, but he's about 60kg but prob much stronger than me

i only carried 10 watermelons but they didnt let me carry any more else after that because they knew that my leg was injured and they didnt want me to exert myself too much. so they jus asked me to carry 2 watermelons (1 in each hand) instead while they continue carrying the rest haha...

human chain to transload the watermelons.

there was a huge truck that came to buy watermelons from the family and they will subsequently drive it to other big cities to sell it at a higher price. i had a really swollen leg that day so i had to see the doc and he said i kena infection and had to rest for the next few days. sians... he said its because of the wound i got in vietnam when i fell down and i continued cycling after that so it kinda got worse. prob also because the conditions are kinda dirty hence the infection.

anyway, i couldnt go out with them to help collect watermelons because i could barely walk but the family (including the cousins, uncles etc) went to the field to collect all the watermelons to sell it to the big truck and what i found really nice is that they actually helped their cousins for the entire day even though its not their own watermelon field and they get no money at all from helping. guess its a village thing to help each other whenever somebody needs help and nobody asks for any rewards or anything like that.

when they got back, they had to offload all the watermelons into the huge truck so we formed a human chain to toss the watermelons in. the truck driver and his assistant stood at the end of the line and they were kinda like quality assessors and rejected bad watermelons because it wouldnt make sense if they buy the watermelon, transport it all the way to the big city, and cannot sell it because it is rotten.

got a little nasty when some villagers thought that the watermelon was perfectly fine but the truck drivers still rejected it. i can understand it because i carried the watermelons before and i can assure you it is no easy feat to carry it from the field out onto the road and loading it on the small tractor. i only carried 10 watermelons in 1 trip but my shoulders were alr aching... when the villagers saw so many of their watermelons being rejected, its like carrying the watermelons from the field and not getting paid for it, which can be kinda frustrating.


dropping corn seeds into the field... hope it turns out good!

went with them to the mountain where they had a plot of field which they planned to use for planting corn. i didnt have shoes with me (actually i did but i was too lazy to take it out from the bag) so i wore slippers to the field and it was damn hard to move around with it! especially because the field was literally on the hill and it was a rather steep incline and climbing up and down wasnt exactly a walk in the park. anyway, my job is to drop 2 seeds into each hole that they dug out, and then cover it lightly with some soil. not too much (or it cant grow out), and not too little (not exactly sure why haha) but its not as easy as it sounds because the holes are almost everywhere and very close to each other so i have to be careful not to step onto the holes or the seeds wun be able to grow out of it because too much soil is covering it. only got the hang of it after a few hours of "experience" haha

taking a rest on the hilly field and me eating watermelon hehe =P