I was in Thong Pa Phum in Kanchanaburi this weekend. Thung Pa Phum is about two towns away to the Thai-Burmese border. It is a village up in the mountains and it’s the closest commune I had with nature, so far. No electricity, no phone signal. It was heaven. Unfortunately, I spent only two days there. The house where my friends and I stayed is made of bamboo with roofs made of grass. The house was actually a big room with smaller rooms connected to it with covered “bridges.” There were trees around it so it felt like a tree-house (it felt like it was out of the movie the Blue Lagoon—minus the lagoon). The house is built on top of a hill and there was a stream down below. The stream was accessible through stairs carved out of the hill. On our first morning there, my friends and I trekked the mountains where an orange orchard was taken care of by Father Pairat’s staff, Karen people. That was about a 2-kilometer walk. The most exciting part of the trek was following the flow of the stream for about 1 km until we reached its lowest drop—about 3 feet. Father Pairat kept talking about a beautiful waterfall. This turned out to be his “waterfalls.” But waterfall or not, this was a terrific trip. I loved the way the water wound around the roots of the trees. (It made me feel like a poet but no words would come out—I guess the pictures I took will be tribute enough). I was amazed how flowers can bloom even when there was a canopy of leaves above them. It’s just a reminder that there is a God.
