Buddist New Year

This past week we have stayed with 2 different Akha hill tribes after spending a week at a children's Akha hostle. The first hill tribe was way up in the mountains. It was a 2 hour drive in the back of the truck switching between road and off road. (our backs and butts have permanent bruises) Arriving in the first tribe we were greeted with the many many children claubering us wanting us to chase them and play with them on their bicycles (no chains and no handle bars) we offered them toothbrushes, paste, coloring crayons, paper and all had a drawing session. Amazinly the kids had really really good drawing skills and made us pics of elephants, butterflys and other jungle animals. Jeff then played about 2 good hours of marbles with the kids who also had really mad skills and had all these really good moves!!
Dinner consisted of different plants gathered from the jungle (fiddle head ferns, wild golden raspberries), small birds which were caught with handmade bamboo traps and rice, of course.
We woke up and helped to take down a bamboo hut and rebuild the roof of one...we brought the old remains to different piles to be burned. (very polluting, but makes for great amazing sunsets)
Later that day we headed to another hill tribe in San Chai where we drove way into the hills and planted over 200 trees on a super sloped hill...digging the holes and planting the baby trees. We had lunch then went to help build a pool. Mixing concrete and laying down the layers to build the pool for the locals. A random monk on a horse stopped by to say hi to us after his treck from Chiang Mai to Chaing Rai.
After that long day we attended a reception of a 16 year old couple who had gotten married earlier that day! They served us dinner and traditional food and Akha water aka cheap whiskey as we all proceeded to drink and do kareoke to Eifel 65 (Im blue) and Lou Vega (Mambo #5) and of course....Country Road.....
After taking over the wedding we went back to our bungalo and had a dance party from one of the volunteers ipod turned on full blast.

Next day....
wake up
make cups out of bamboo with machettes, shooting Akha guns, while we wait for our Traditional Akha herbal Sauna to heat up (herbs from the jungle with ginger infused the air) mean while doing yoga on logs....

Yesterday commenced the beginning of the Buddist New Year. The festivities run from roughly April 12th - 18th, or whenever seems appropriate to begin or stop. It is seemingly random. Basically, the event has become one huge water fight. As I am sitting inside this internet cafe looking outside, I am seeing trucks loaded to the brim with Thai teens in the truck beds. They have garbage cans filled w/ water and buckets to throw said water on passerbys and other fellow trucks. Everyone gets wet. We are both totally soaked right now. There is no mercy. Val threw a bucket of water on an elderly lady yesterday. She smiled and waved Happy New Year, waving w/ the hand that was not holding her cane.

You can haul about 10 people in the back of a pickup and have enough space, as long as 3 people are standing up and 4 are sitting off of the sides of the truck. Safe, right? Now, add in the fact that the sober (thankfully) drivers are passing beers and Thai wiskey back to the passengers. That was our situation yesterday on our day off of Volunteering. We went on a field trip to the boader of Burma and passed through 5 police checkpoints. At each spot we waved at the police with a beer in hand, in the back of the truck, and they waved back. Evidently, this behavior is ok in Thailand. Further, the only thing that the police checked at the checkpoint, was to see if we had enough water in our water cooler. Seriously, they even filled it up for us a couple of times. These are the priorities of the Thai armed forces neverminding the empty bottles of booze floating around in our makeshift swimming pool that we constructed threw the usage of silly putting in the cracks of the truck tailgate.

ok, we are out of time!!!!!
much more to come!
So much mucho loves!!
V & J