Three nights in Bangkok

After two weeks of long and occasionally gruelling days of working on the move, I’m taking what I believe to be a well-earned break for the next three nights and two days here in Bangkok. To my no great surprise, my body is shutting down now that time is my own again and I don’t expect to stray very far from the guest house – perhaps just to stroll as far as the street food sellers outside the nearby Ari Skytrain station for hot food and some cooling, sliced fruit.

I’ve been recommended some of the most popular tourist spots as places to go over the weekend; the Grand Palace, a river cruise, or perhaps the floating market at Damnoen Saduak, which is an hour or two from Bangkok by bus. The combination of Bangkok’s sultry heat and my general fatigue will probably scupper these plans but I’ve also already had good opportunities during the past week to visit numerous temples and some rather more authentic markets in small-town Thailand. However, it was not these experiences but the human encounters I’ve had here that have been so enjoyable and so inspiring for me.

The organic Jasmine rice harvest started this week in the Yasothorn region of eastern Thailand, and I was lucky enough with the timing of my visit to catch it in the company of staff from Green Net, from whom Trade Aid imports brown and white organic rice. The region was busy with farmers out bent forward in their paddies, sickles in hand, cutting ripe stalks of rice and laying them flat in the fields behind them to dry. Occasionally the puttering of a diesel-powered two-wheel tractor could be heard from the paddy of the rare farmer who could afford to use one to help to transport their dried and bundled rice stalks back to their home in a nearby village.

While the average age of rice farmers here continues to rise – it’s now over 50 – I also met with a number of younger farmers who still love the simpler, family-centred life out in the countryside and who are determined to remain self-sufficient on their tiny (by our standards) blocks of land. One young woman, Sawitri, particularly impressed me. She studied political science at her local university but sees her future to be on the land. ‘Studying at university helped me to develop an independent streak, and to become more proactive’ she explained. ‘I’ve bought just over a hectare of paddy of my own which I’ve planted out in rice. I may keep on with my part-time accounts role at the local rice mill but I don’t need to; the amount of land I have is sufficient and I can survive off it’.

A long day’s travel from Yasothorn, I also met with members of a small coconut farmer group who live near the coastal town of Ban Krut, more than five hour’s drive south of Bangkok. In a region where corrupt politicians own a lot of land and use their power and influence to create landscape-destroying development, the group originally formed six years ago to protest against plans to construct a lignite-fired power plant in their district. Their protests have been successful - so far – and the power plant is now off the agenda but their quiet, clean and sleepy part of the countryside is still under threat.

‘We’re still protesting!, explained Pongsak Budhruk, the leader of the group whose organic coconuts are now processed into milk and exported to fair trade organisations in Europe (and possibly soon to New Zealand, too). ‘Now our local politicians are trying to build a steel mill here. We’ve got an alternative idea – we want to make this region a coconut-growing capital instead!’

I often think about buying a piece of land and becoming more self-sufficient, but everyone I met in the rice and coconut farmer groups I‘ve visited is already doing it and although they admit the pay isn’t good – as low as $5 per day for a family in some cases – and the weather is unreliable, I don’t get the sense that any of them would want to trade places with me. If this doesn’t inspire me to grow more of my own food, too, then whatever would?