Songkran Day: A Morning in Ban Tham Seua
Today is Songkran, the Thai New Year, and although the day is usually celebrated by water fights and powder-smearing, the GVI team spent the morning exploring the quieter side of Songkran.
We were invited by Gift, a friend of GVI and mastermind of the Community Based Tourism Network, to take a tour of her village, Ban Tham Seua. We started off the morning at the tranquil Rai Preeda Homestay where we met Gift before heading off to the village's impressive local temple, which is built into a cave. It's Buddhist tradition to go to temple on Songkran day to offer food to the monks and say a pray for the coming year.
After leaving the temple, we visited a nearby pond, which by some geological phenomenon is still at first but at the sound of clapping, begins to bubble. The pond is situated near a rubber plantation at which we were able to see raw latex dripping from the trees. From there we stopped at a nearby home where Gift showed us the next steps in the rubber cultivation process, an industry vital to the village and the region.
Our last stop on the tour was Angel Cave, which although impressive, couldn't tempt half our group to make the steep climb as they'd already been engrossed in the water-throwing festivities!
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