Chiangmai experience - You Sabai
Duration: 1 day (29-30jan)
Place: Yousabai (& a short visit to Pun2 & Baanthai)
Location: Northern thailand,~60km fr chiangmai
Activities/Highlights: Chatting with eco-organic folks, Overnite@ little earthern dwelling, Plastering wall, Yummy thai veg. homecooked food.
An interest in eco-community & a slight turn of fate brought me to You Sabai.
Perched on a little hill, it has a main hangout sala /eating area, a decent bathroom-cum-toilet, a few adobe(earthern) huts, & an 'eagles' roost!
There is also a 2nd showerroom in progress - i helped to plaster a small segment of e walls :)
The place is owned & run by a young thai couple, Krite & Dao who used to operate a guesthouse in chiangmai. Both are jovial, welcoming & speak english. They built a lot of the stuff themselves, and planted banana trees & a small veg. patch. The place is set up as an organic-food cooking school, and the 1st batch of students was due to arrive 1st week of Feb.
Advice & support comes from neighbours (1) Punpun, experts in adobe dwelling constructions & natural/organic cultivation (2) Baan Thai (3) Volunteers & visitors
I enjoyed the novelty of staying in an earthern dwelling (yup, all to myself ) & would love to learn to build my own. One of my dreams is to build my own home & Bed !
The food was vegetarian, and fabulously flavoured with spices & Dao's creativity.
I learnt more about organic farming over conversations with Andy & Michel. And had fun chatting with Sharhar, Vishall (i hope e spelling's right) & ...oops (forgot e name), a very nice korean-australian gal who had been at Yousabai since 1-2 weeks earlier. Andy used to farm organic pineapples, ginger & papaya for 30years in hawaii, Michel is the resident expert in composting & manages the Pun2 seedbank.
Some interesting things:
* Andy pointed out a field of corn, & from the color/ type of green, commented that it uses nitrate fertilizers! Golly.
* Cultivating EM bacteria is easy, its just a natural process. Just get some good micro-organisms, grow them at favourable temp/ humidity conditions. And the stuff that is made is also good for intestinal flora(healthy probiotics), samething. Hmm.. ;)
* You Sabai - means to be well, happy, relaxed, comfortable, at-ease
Main takeaways:
* there is an alternative & viable way of life which is responsible & beautiful, an alternative to the urban city way, which tends to be unsustainable & stressful.
(Hmm.. somemore that i heard, & need verification)
* organic farming productivity =/exceeds Conventional Chemical Farming, with know-how and genuine understanding & care for the land.
* Cost of organic food can be equal/less than conventional.
* Pests are attracted to weak plants, & nitrogen overdosed plants. Healthy plants have lower risk of a pest attack. Law of e jungle, e weak is prey'd/ pest'd.
Well, there's much much more to good cultivation, its both a science & an art.
This trip, I got in touch with nature & learnt a little.
Links :
http://tribes.tribe.net/baanthai
www.punpunthailand.org
Extract from a writeup by Baanthai:
".. hopefully it provides a joyful example of another way of living that not only provides all a person needs and more, but in a way that is fun, and aids in the appreciation of life, family, food, and all that is. For the planet? Well, we won't be: watching T.V., shopping at Wal-Mart, eating at McDonalds, or getting road-rage. We will be stewarding our land in a way that leaves it healthier than we found it."
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posted by cloudz1 @ 9:23 PM
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