Ploy Naratusachan

The trip started off at Hualumpong Station. Without a doubt, we had a lot of fun on the train. Luckily, the 2 cars were exclusively for MIM. Otherwise, I would feel sorry for other passengers, who could not get a good sleep because when 80 MIMs were together, we could never manage to keep our voice of joy down.

Our train arrived Chiangmai at around 10 am. After a quick breakfast, we took a van for another 3 hours till we got to our final destination. We lunched at Angkang’s agricultural station, where we were introduced to the superstar of this trip, Khun Makoo.

He was the manager of Amari Hotel, Angkang, where we were staying. During the introduction, he gave us a brief history of Angkang. More than 30 years ago when Angkang was still a hidden land of illegal drug, the King went there to promote the idea of “Helping the hill tribes to help us save the world”. He educated the hill tribes to give up planting opium. Years of the King’s hard work and several parties’ dedication had paid off.Today, the opium plantations were replaced with organic farms of Doi Kum’s fruits and vegetables, and Angkang become one of the popular tourist destinations in Thailand.

After the introduction, K. Makoo guided us around the station to see Doi Kum’s production process. Then, we went to the village school to visit hill kids. MIM brought several necessities from Bangkok for the kids. The school was not at all well off, but the teachers were trying hard to give the best education to these kids. One major source of their proceeds was the donation from Angkang’s tourists like us.
At night, the weather was nice and cool. We had dinner and chilled out in the cold. We did not go to bed too late because we knew that it would be a long day tomorrow.
We started the second day off quiet early with a long journey to discover the nature and the lives of Angkang. Our journey was led by junior tour guides, the hill kids that were trained by K. Makoo to be good hosts of Angkang. We learned a great deal from walking across the hills and coming across several people who lived in Angkang community. Several of them had a chance to meet and work closely with the King during his days in Angkang. One of them was fortunate enough that the King was at his house for a cup of tea. Another villager moved all of us with his high admiration for our King and his dream to become a Thai citizen. If someone else wanted so badly to be part of this country, shouldn’t we, who are legitimately Thai, be grateful and proud of our country? Shouldn’t we try harder to be better citizens of our country and our King?

After many kilometers of walking up and down the hills, we finally got to Angkang’s military base where we got our lunch boxes filled with local northern food. We had lunch right at the border of Thailand and Burma. It was surprising to see that the two countries were separated only by a wire fence. Several years ago, Thailand, Burma and 2 minority groups had battles in this area. There were gunshots and bombing, so all the families in Angkang had to move out of the hill for their safety. Luckily, today the countries were in peace and we got to finish our lunch safely. In the afternoon, half of us went back to the hotel for a rest, while the other half continued their adventure with K. Makoo to see tea plantations. The walk was quite long and tiring, but it was worth every moment because the landscape was beautiful and K. Makoo also taught us a lot of things about giving back to the community.

At night, we had a BBQ party at the hotel. Since it was our last night at Angkang, we went all the way with having fun, singing and drinking. Our very own MIM band performed superbly. It was a lot of fun; even though some of us could not remember much in the next morning.

The last day went by slower than usual because we were still exhausted from the party. After breakfast, we left Angkang to catch our plane in Chiangmai with good memories, bigger hearts and strong sense of being a part of Thailand. Thanks to MIM office and K. Makoo for this wonderful experience.