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How to get around Thailand
We've received several requests for contact information for the driver and interpreter we employ to visit rural weaving groups in Thailand. Our answer is always “Sorry, no can do.” Here are 6 reasons why.1. Buses and songthaews
Bus service in Thailand is extremely good. Buses are fast, cheap and go almost everywhere. But navigating one’s way through the thousands of available buses can be challenging. Reading place names in Thai script is the first hurdle. Alleson can read a bit of Thai and speaks more than that. She also understands how place names are organized and how to interpret addresses.
Even more confusing are the various types of buses and the number of bus stations in a given place. In a big city, there are often 3 bus stations – air-con, 2nd class and intra-provincial. But there are always exceptions: for example, our recent trip from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani -- It’s a 12-hour overnight journey so we chose to spend a bit more for tickets on a VIP bus with 24 seats rather than the usual 40+. However, while our friend was waiting to pick us up at the air-con bus station, we arrived at the 2nd class station. Alleson’s Thai got us a clarification of where we were and my essential cell phone allowed me to tell our friend where to find us.BTW, a songthaew is a type of pickup truck with a full canopy and 2 bench seats that often has a designated route for intra-provincial travel.
2. Trains
We like train travel in Thailand. It's slower and more expensive than bus travel but it’s relaxing and less claustrophobic, especially for long trips. But it’s not as enjoyable or safe as it used to be. The older cars haven’t been kept up and most of the reserved seating fan cars are being replaced by hermetically sealed air-con ones that are more expensive and less romantic. More the issue, though, is they don’t reach most of the places we need to go.
3. Cars and Trucks
Sometimes we join our friend Pii Yai, rural development worker extraordinaire, in her bucket of a truck. Piled in the back are her sleeping bag, pop-up mosquito net and other basic tools for daily living as she spends most of her time visiting projects throughout NE Thailand. There’s also stuff she's gotten from one project to share with others; such as water-filters, fuel efficient stoves, plant cuttings, etc. We're grateful to her and her 15 year-old Mazda that keeps on trucking and we’re always happy to pay to fill her tank with bio-diesel.
4. Motorcycles
When bicycle travel waned here, scooters and small motorbikes (100-125 cc) became the standard for personal local transportation. We rent them when available, i.e., when we're in places where lots of other foreigners go. However, monster trucks and SUVs now crowd the road (and put their owners deep in debt) so riding on 2 wheels seems increasingly dangerous. Like most places, drinking and driving is a huge problem. Nonetheless, put Alleson on a motorbike and she’s all smiles. When she lived here, she toured to every changwat (province) over the course of 8 years, putting 50,000 km. on her 250cc imported Honda. We use motorbikes just for daytrips, though.
I’ve learned to drive a scooter. I'm too much of a bicycle rider to get the hang of the different set-up for the brakes on the geared motorbikes! I can drive myself, but not the 2 of us, so I'm usually sitting behind Alleson, often carrying bags, baskets and other large objects in the typical Asian way!
5. Air travel
This year we flew directly to Chiang Mai after arriving in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, to avoid travelling into the city only to leave again the next day. It was a good decision but in general we prefer to keep our carbon footprint low by taking ground transportation. It also saves us a lot of money.
6. Walking
Of course, our most common form of transportation is walking. Like our other means of travel, it allows us to meet Thais face to face without the isolation of a private car or the insulation of an interpreter. Walking across town or riding a songthaew to an outlying village provides opportunities for chance meetings and serendipitous discoveries that enrich our experience and broaden our understanding. In short, we’re not keeping our driver and translator to ourselves; rather, we ourselves are our drivers and interpreters.
Photo essay: Cotton Weaving in Northern Thailand
Junhom Bantan is a Northern Thai weaving group that specializes in eco-friendly, natural dyes and handweaving. They weave with handspun cotton, as well as stronger, unbleached cotton yarns. TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles has been working with this group since 2007, building a fair trade relationship. On Christmas Day, 2011, we began a 2-day visit to the small villages where group members live and work. These cultural traditions are still alive and well, thanks to the efforts of Mai, the woman who acts as the group's manager,and whose mother started the group many years ago. A keen interest in natural fibres and natural dyes in Japan, as well as other countries, continues to provide a market for their eco-textiles.
[Photos and text copyright Ellen Agger 2011. Please ask for permission to use them.]
[Photos and text copyright Ellen Agger 2011. Please ask for permission to use them.]
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| Mai, who manages Junhom Bantan now, stands in front of the small village shop with her mother who started the village natural dyeing/weaving group many years ago. Most customers, like TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles, now visit the village to make special orders. |
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| A sampling of cotton threads show some of the natural colours available from leaves, barks and insect resin. This group specializes in earth tones in interesting combinations. |
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| Juhom Bantan's breezy cotton scarf in shades of blue is available from TAMMACHAT's online shop. |
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| The dyeing area, in the shade for comfort and protection for the dyers, houses dye materials, a chopping machine for dye materials, yarns, dye pots that simmer over fires, 2 spin dryers to wring out the dyed yarn, and a drying area out of the sun. |
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| Mai's paa (father) and sister do most of the group's dyeing now. |
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| The fruit of the ebony plant creates a rich, dark brown. |
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| This machine chops bark into small pieces so it can be used multiple times to create dyes. The chips are later composted. |
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| Unbleached cotton yarns steep in a dye bath, soaking up a tan colour from bark of a local tree. |
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| Unbleached cotton is lightly dyed and hung to dry. |
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| The blue dye is created from hom, a leaf in the same family as the more famous indigo plant. It has been collected in the wild in Northern Thailand, made into cakes and used in Ban Tan to dye cotton yarns a medium and dark blue. |
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| A typical floor loom in Northern Thailand. This one is set up with a trigger shuttle and a "rocking" seat. It's under the house, easily accessed when the weaver has some time to weave. |
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| Women weave when they have time. Some use it as a main source of income when they are not growing and harvesting rice, their staple crop. Others use it to supplement their income. Some tell us they simply love to weave. |
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| This 83-year-old woman is one of the weaving group's original members. |
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| This is the second year that this group has received the Green Products certification from the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, given to small textile producers. |
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| Alleson and Mai enjoy getting to know each other in Ban Tan. Mai told us she values being friends with her customers. We share this value and also feel it's important that the weavers enjoy their work. This is "slow fashion" -- creating cloth that takes time, patience, care and love. |