After the one hour ride on the elephant on the Mae Kok through the Karen village, their hill rice fields and the mountain behind their village, we went back to our boat and headed further upstream to a Lahu village. The Lahu is a nomadic farmers tribe who came from Tibet some 80 years ago. They have been resettled in permanent villages by the Thai government in order to stop them damaging too many plots of land from their nomadic practices. They now grow rice, corn etc instead of opium.They used to be pagan worshippers but many have now converted into Christianity - evident of the efeectiveness of the Christian Missionary works in this part of the world. The children go to the school put up by the Christian missionary at the Karen village a few miles downstream. As the Karen village is located on the opposite side of the river - the Japanese government has built the bridge across the river.
The village gets piped water from the mountain streams and electricity is provided using a solar-power system.
