GreenBkk.com Tourism | MAE KAMPONG High on Hills

The ride from the Chiang Mai airport to Mae Kampong, a Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold Award-winning village, is almost reason in itself for the journey. One crosses the flat Chiang Mai Valley and begins climbing up its eastern rim, in the process exchanging lush rice fields for forests, and plains for a narrow gorge where the temperature is fully ten degrees celsius lower than the flatlands below.

The road climbs through an area that looks like Chiang Mai 50 or 60 years ago when it was still covered in trees. The journey along the winding mountain road ends 90 minutes later at a rustic village that has gained fame for its green approach to tourism.

Here, streets are virtually steep enough to require ladders to get up and down; houses cling to the hillsides. Open land is more often vertical than horizontal and is in such short supply that it is at a premium for cultivation. In these somewhat striated circumstances, the farmers of Mae Kampong have had to capitalize on their only competitive advantage. To their credit, they have done it by going green and pursuing chemical-free agriculture.

Because they lack the land to grow rice, they grow miang — a plant used in a fermented snack popular with northerners — and coffee. Both crops thrive in a cool, moist climate, clinging to hillsides that deny other crops purchase. Augmenting their income from these two crops, villagers have turned rustic houses into homestays for visitors who relish a bit of Switzerland in their holidays in northern Thailand.

The driving force behind Mae Kampong’s growth has been provided by its impressive paw luang, the village father elected by his neighbours. Paw Luang Promin understood early what his villagers were up against and guided them in cultivating niche crops in an agriculturally sustainable manner, free of chemicals. The food one eats in the village is organically grown, often plucked fresh from bushes and gardens.

Mae Kampong is set so deeply in a notch in the mountain that night falls early here, the moon rising through a dusk sky of burnished copper. So peaceful is it that at night all one can hear in the mountain stillness are the songs of the Nok Khao Non bird, the ring of insect calls and a rushing brook.

The sun doesn’t rise until 7.00 am, but during the miang season between August and October villagers set off for the fields at 4.00 am. Visitors are welcome to join them. One is taught not to pluck the leaf because it would allow fungus to enter the node and kill the plant. Instead, one is instructed to rip the leaf in half, leaving a ragged edge. This way, the tree can still breathe. After two months, new leaves sprout and the plant regenerates itself. The remainder of the leaf is dried and use to stuff pillows which the villagers sell to outsiders.

Once the miang season is over, villagers turn to harvesting coffee beans. The season runs from November to March. Again, visitors can join them in pulling ripe berries from the trees and dropping them in baskets.

Gabriel's Trumpets perfume the air

When the visitor returns from harvesting (or just as late-rising visitors are tumbling from their beds), Mae Kampong, which until now has seemed deserted, is gradually repopulated. Everywhere one breathes mountain freshness and the fragrance of flowers such as Gabriel’s trumpet. Wood smoke permeates the air, sifting through the roofs and into the cool morning. In front of the houses, kids, adults and dogs huddle around small fires, absorbing the warmth that will not come until much later when the sun crests the tall horizon. Given the meagre amount of land, the villagers don’t raise pigs, cows or water buffalo as valley farmers would. Chickens are more often heard than seen.

By 6.30, parents are sending their kids off. The former village school was closed because there were too few students. Thus, each morning, they travel to a school at Ban Huai Kaew some ten kilometres down the valley. A baht bus makes regular school runs morning and afternoon.

The visitor is then invited to give alms to the two monks who pad barefoot through the village collecting food and donations, uttering benedictions at the villagers kneeling before them.

One of the delights of a stay is simply to wander through the village. As in most Thai villages, life is lived in the open so all activities are readily accessible to the passer-by. After a cup of hot coffee brewed fresh from the harvested and roasted beans, one sets off along the winding lanes to watch the villagers settling into their day.

Vegetable gardens utilize every bit of the meagre space. Vines and bushes tumble over split bamboo fences, fruit trees reach for the sky. This is intensive farming at its best, cultivating vegetable and flower gardens that thrive in the cool damp air. The visitor is always assured of dining on healthy fare free from chemicals.

Along the way, one becomes aware of Mae Kampong as a community, where neighbours help each other. There seems to be no competition, no strident declarations of independence. Voices are raised for children, but only to call them from a distance, and then softly.

As in most of Thailand, village life revolves around the Buddhist monastery. A walk through the western end of the village eventually takes one to Wat Khanthapruksa. This pretty little monastery is worth investigating for the beauty of its paintings and decoration. It is a little gem framed by the lush hills from which it seems to grow.

It overlooks Huai Mae Kampong. Mae Kampong is named after the hot season kampong flower with its long yellow and red leaves. Mae refers to the river that flows down the length of the village. One hears it and its tributaries everywhere one walks, a cooling, soothing sound. Providing counterpoint, are Nok Kajaab (sunbirds) that chirp merrily in the trees. Tall flowers rise from the banks, adding bright colour to the greenery. At intervals along the stream, villagers have positioned small turbines that supply the village with some of its electricity.

During the day, visitors take hour-long treks into the hills to learn which plants are edible, which are medicinal — and which are neither. The villagers rely on herbal doctors who gather all the ingredients for their medicines in the forest or grow them in their gardens. Down the road is the Flight of the Gibbon zipline.

Fermented bundles of miang, bound in bamboo and ready for market

In the afternoon, one can watch the various processes of creating miang from the leaves they have torn from the bushes. It is first steamed, and then placed in a water-filled vat. Stones are placed atop the tea leaves to keep them from floating to the surface. The vat is left to ferment for one month before it is ready. From the nearby hills, the villagers cut ten-month-old bamboo, which they smoke to kill white ants. When it is properly cured, they slice the bamboo into strips one niew (inch) wide by one sok (elbow to fingertips) and a muu (the distance across the back of the hand) or about 60-cm long. It is wetted for one hour to make it flexible and then is wrapped around bigger bundles of miang for transport to the market in woven bamboo baskets.

Try some miang. It can be eaten by sprinkling salt on it. There are three varieties: sour, astringent and sweet. Aficionados who chew it do not get high as with betel, but experience an effect more like that produced by caffeine.

Visitors generally spend two days in Mae Kampong, harvesting miang, trekking in the hills and just relaxing in its idyllic peace.

Credit: TAT News (www.tatnews.org)