floating fishing villages

So the past few days a whole bunch of us from the orphanage went out to Pillokhi village on the border by Myanmar. We started friday morning with all our stuff ready to load the rafts and go. Dada (the guy who runs the orphanage) as always way underestimated how long things would take and we didnt finish the rafts till 5pm. By rafts i mean some polls tied together with string and metal ties, floated on a bunch of barrels, with our fishing nets on the top. still it took ages and considering it was about 35 degrees (or hotter) and we were outside with no shade it was hot!! I discovered the meaning of elbow grease that day (seriously you actually get grease in your elbows..). so we headed back to Baan Dada to have a half-nights sleep, and got back on the truck at 3.30am to head back to teh rafts. we actually got onto the boat and headed off at 5.30am, thought 30 minutes into the trip they informed us teh boat (which was about 11 feet long, 2 feet wide, with 11 people and all our gear in it) was too heavy, so three of the girls hopped onto the raft. i quickly realised that was a much better place to be, so 4 hours later when we stopped at an island for a toilet stop i switched boats. the raft was really good to be on. we had nets to lie on rather than just the wooden floor of the boat and it didnt vibrate constatly like the boat. It was really funny to see because there was this really little boat with a little motor dragging these two massive rafts loaded with gear and people (as the thai people were on the other raft). we literally moved about the speed of me walking. it was really hot and i was really glad i had my umbrella for shelter. we also figured out that we could lie on teh polls and put our head in the water to cool down. i eventually hopped in totally just holding onto the polls - the water was so warm it was great. of course in true thailand style the rains then came so i huddled under my umbrella (it turns out i can fit my entire b ody under my travel umrella) to keep warm as my rain jacket is useless. at 4.00 Dada came on a boat to bring us some cold lunch - our first meal of teh day, and we were very happy to eat. we then hopped onto Dadas boat and they took us to Pillokhi so the raftw ould be lighter and travel faster. Dada predicted teh trip would take 8 hours - we were on a boat for 11 hours and teh raft finally arrived after 12.5 hours. One very long day.

we then stayed at this really nice house in Pillokhi on land. For tea we had v egetarian food - and whole deep fried fish. you can imagine how impressed i was with a plate of deep fried whole fish (eyes in and everything) in front of me while eating! The next day we headed off early back to teh fishing area to sew nets. between two of us, sewing for 6 hours, we completed half a net! the boys made the poll and barrels for the nets to go over,, and we finally headed off at 5pm. fortunately the boat ride was only 1 hour this time, but we then had a 3 hour truck drive to get to Baan Dada. the truck is essentially a ute with a top onn it, we had 12 people in the back with all our gear.. was nice and cosy.. we finally arrived back at Baan Dada at 10.30pm tired and very dirty..

Anyway must really go now as there are people waiting for the computer here. will write more in a few days.

Ingrid