Thailand "the land of smiles" The weather was sweltering. The sun always spitting hot. Wind was almost non existant. Clouds continually hid away from the sky, and there was no escaping the excellence of it all. The heat, the humidity, the jungle. Addictive in a sacred kind of way. Living in the jungle, amongst the Koran people (Burmese refugees) and doing as they do was one of the most fulfilling and testing things I've ever done. I've never gone and done Humanitarian Aid in a place so primitive and remote. Just somewhere deep in the jungle, along roads that can only be traveled by foot and are unceasingly steep and never seem to end. The rivers were glacial as the water ran down from the Himalayan Range, and the wildlife was thick. I've never seen so many gloriously colored insects, or been exposed to so many different and shocking cultural traditions and rituals. To live amongst these beautiful people; to set rat traps in the morning and frog traps at night, to go out and harvest our rice by hand, bath in the freezing river. No electricity what so ever and nothing more than a bamboo matt and a mosquito net... to live that way for a month was cleansing. I loved sitting around the fire in the center of the village, drinking our milo which was a luxury, and privilege, and gift. We'd gut the rats and screwer them onto the ends of small pieces of bamboo that we to had to carve. To roast them and then eat the tiny bits of meet of the legs and back.. and then watch the boys shove the entire head into their mouths.. all of it.. cleansing. It was beautiful. There were many things that I feel I don't ever need to see again in my life. The ritual pig killing for instance. All making a circle around the pig and the 4-5 fighters armed with cricket bats, beating the animal until it's head finally drooped and the heart stopped beating. I never need to witness something like that again. The belting, the screaming of the pig, the excitment of the villagers are drinking the scene it. I'm glad I was there, that I experienced it... but now it's done- and I won't ever participate in that again. When the couple we're caught in adultery and all the village stood around and wipped with him thin, sharp pieces of bamboo and then chased them out of the village, or when there was said to be a "glue sniffer" hiding in the forest and the men went out "hunting". It was a good experience, and getting fresh water to that beautiful village was something that will remain in my memory forever. I've never walked up such steep hills for that amount of distance. It was hard.. took us hours...days to get all the pipe to the water shed on top of the mountain. All in the heat of the day, covered head to toe as to not be eaten alive by mossies and black flies. Digging the trenches all the way back down to the village and connecting the pipe along the way. Heaving who knows how many bags of sand and piles of stone and gravel up the treacherous hills. Mixing the heavy cement and building the molds with which to make the tents. Every morning I woke up with something NEW sore every day. My neck.. my jaw even. Insane. But when we connected that last bit of pipe, and released the water into the village none of it mattered. None of it. Not the scratches, the infections, the food poinsoning, the insect bites, the ants in our food, the flea covered dogs sleeping around our heads, the shortage of food and water while we worked, all the inconvenience.. None of it mattered. And still doesn't matter. Because they have clean water for their animals, and more importantly.. themselves. What a beautiful country. What beautiful people. What a beautiful experience. Thank God I went.