UHDP trip

Last week we embarked on our final Thai studies trip. It included a two-day stay at a place called the Upland Holistic Development Center (UHDP). They work mostly with ethnic minority villages around Chiang Rai province to help them practice sustainable, affordable and eco-friendly methods of rural development. They have a center with a few acres of land where they research different techniques of farming and cultivation. We stayed 2 nights there. The first night we got a basic tour of the grounds and learned about the different plants they grow and work that is done on a daily basis. The entire next day was centered around a giant pig. First thing in the morning, we followed some workers out to a small bamboo table next to a huge caged pig. They informed us that this would provide our meals throughout the rest of our stay. I won't get into the details but basically we watched the whole process. It was amazing to watch all of these men (there were about seven of them) go through this process of shaving, butchering, and dividing up the pig, etc. (sorry to be so blunt) They hardly talked about who would do what, they all just jumped right in and the everything flowed so naturally and efficiently. It is pretty uncommon anymore for these villages to kill such a large pig like that but it was like these men just had the knowledge of how to do it in their blood. I realized that I had never really seen that process from beginning to end before. It was pretty real and a little traumatizing. But that is definitely where our bacon and our bbq ribs come from. I am not a huge meat eater and usually try to avoid pork if I can so I had a pretty tough time when it was served for lunch, dinner and the next day's breakfast. But I guess you have to realize that everything goes full circle that way. Later that day we cut down some huge bamboo stocks and made a northern thai delicacy by filling each 'bong' (thats what the small sections are called in thai) with sticky rice and coconut milk. They were fired and served at dinner that night. I preferred that over the pork for sure.