OK, a week or so ago I posted a drone vid on some rice fields heading towards Soem Ngam. After showing a few friends the vid they said they had some friends up there and they own a homestay and are kicking off a big deal to get people to visit the area.
Anyway they said they would pay for the van and up to 10 people so our friend lined up 8 of us and we took off. The agreement was we had to take their tour and stay at a local home stay as part of the deal and give them feedback at the end.
So we packed up some clothes, junk food and booze and the van picked us up at 8am sharp at our house.
So we all started drinking in the Van by 9am with the 5 women drinking girly drinks like Spy's and Breezers. I brought some Tequila and the other guy was tippin Regency. The 3rd guy doesn't drink.
Anyway the road trip isn't all that far from our place. Like 80Kms or so.
Here are a few random pics of the event.
The sales pitch and the plan. Hell if know what the guy said. I had my pre-tour beverages so I was good to go. He could be selling me swamp land and I'd just have nodded.
Off on the tour we went
We visited their local pottery factory. It was really clean and they make a lot of ceramic items for the Royal family. The last picture of the lady shaping that big pot said the pot she was working on was on its 10th day as they have to add then trim numerous times to make them that big.
This guy carves miniature boats out of Teak, takes him about 2 months to finish one. He had 2 in process. That's one in process with his tools.
The tour day ended and then came the party at night. But first we had to head off to the home stay. I was really impressed. I expected to have to sleep on the floor on a Thai bamboo ground pad in a garage with mosquito nets. Not at all. These folks were quite nice and had a good set up and my wife and I had a private room. We had about 3 hrs so we all started drinking again. The pic is the view from the backyard area where we were sitting and drinking.
I brought a long a few cans of this beer and a few lemons. Was really quite good. I drank both while the rest drank Chang and those girly drinks.
The van picked us up at 5:30 and off to the main event.
Well for some unknown reason I hit it off right away with the Ya Dong gal and then it goes a bit blurry. I must have had about 8 shots and she kept bringing them to our group while we sat on the lawn.
This gal served Hot tea and the Ya Dong
This is the only pic I have of the show, they kicked it off with floating lanterns.
After about 11pm and the dancing had stopped we went back to the home stay and the gal gave us half of a jug of the Ya Dong to take with us and off we went. We all played cards until early AM.
We got up this morning early as hell and off we went on some tours.
Lady spinning silk old school style
Of course no trek can go without a temple visit.
We went to a coffee bean farm after and man I was needing caffeine something fierce, I was ready to chew the raw beans. Fortunately they had a shop and I doubled up. Big Life saver
We had a big group lunch, talked about the tour and ideas to make it better and the van took us all back.
The entire trip and tour was free.