The Amazing Ricefield's Base

Our home for the two weeks we were in Thailand was the gorgeous Ricefield's Base. It was amazing, like a resort in the middle of a bustling village.

Here is a picture I stole from Rustic Pathways that shows the layout of the base. It was basically a huge piece of land with ricefields, ponds, and palm trees scattered around.
Along with the kids from our program, Ricefield's, Monks, and Smiling Children, the medical kids also stayed here. This wasn't too big of a deal the first week since there were only around 15 of us in our group and maybe 10 from the other but when 60 new kids plus a school group came the second week, the base got a LOT more crowded!

Here is the front entrance, what you would see if you were just walking in. 

Here is the view from our rooms or hongs every morning. It was absolutely gorgeous. That building in the picture is the sala where we ate all of our meals. Eating here is a totally different experience from in America. 

 First of all, when we entered the sala we had to take off our shoes. This was something we had to do often, so most of the time around the base no one even bothered to wear them. Second of all, we ate all meals on the floor in circles. Both of these things are big in Thai culture, and were surprisingly fun to try out. The last thing is that for all of our meals we always only had a fork and maybe a spoon, never a knife or a napkin (I don't know if the last part was a mistake or that's actually a thing with the Thai). Sometimes, when the really sticky rice was served (there's a billion different kinds) we used our hands to eat it, which was a totally accepted thing here. I tried to bring this culture back to America and it pretty much failed...

The cook on the base was awesome, his name is Chris, here he is in the picture. 

The food was pretty good, we usually were served some sort of chicken and noodle dish or on a good day, spicy papaya salad or spring rolls. And never forgotten was the sticky rice! We ate the same rice every day for lunch and dinner and after about two meals at the base, I was done with it. 

Here is the best hang out spot on the base, the Golden Burma Cafe, run by the Burmese counselors. 

It was a slow process to order, but the milkshakes were the closet thing to American food we could get once our goldfish supply ran out. 

The Golden Burma was an urban cafe by day but when the sun went down, the colored strobe lights and speakers came out. Most nights there was music playing so loud we could hear it in our hong next door, but it turned out to be a really great system for us! 

Back to our hong, here is a picture of the main house we stayed in. 

(from the Rustic Pathways website)

And here is the inside, "lobby area", there were a couple of other hongs who also stayed in this house and the counselors upstairs. 

The first week our hong was just the four of us, Sophie, Wallen, and Lauren and me. At night Wallen and I would do our daily wall sits and blast music if the cafe wasn't already. 

Near the end of the first week, it started raining like crazy, a tropical thunder storm! Here is a photo of our hong in the rain, it was really raining a lot harder than you can see...

This tree even fell down in the storm! Also an entire bunch of coconuts fell from one of the palm trees into the pond-watch your heads everyone! 

Here is our hong the second week, with the addition of three girls, Meryl, Sarah, and Francesca. Our room was a total mess here since we were packing up on our last day.

Last but not least, the base house had an awesome pool.

Many night swim parties were held here along with it being the place to jump in after hosing off from working in the ricefield's. One of my favorite service projects was also done here, bobbing and floating, where we taught the kids how to swim, but we will post about that later! 

One of the bobbing and floating classes in action

And of course, I can't forget to mention the many dogs that randomly appeared all over the base. This one in the photo, Snuckers, seemed to be a permanent resident since he never left. Actually he mostly appeared during the eating hours, where he was impossible to get rid of! Right after I took this picture he stuck his head into the cookie jar next to him-what a mess. 

And the other dog, at the end of the path in this picture, we named Scruffy, for obvious reasons. One time we found him rolling in the muddy ricefield and then he chased us into our room! It was really an adrenaline racing experience...

Here are a couple more of my favorite photos I took of the base. 

Whether it was waking up to water buffalos milling outside your room or having dance parties in the cafe or just simply hanging out in the hong, life here proved to be a crazy amazing experience!

These flowers were all over the base and made great hair accessories!

XOXOXOXO RANA