The Rural Poor Of Thailand... Some Surprises

[billd766]

All this stuff about food-source animals being abundantly available in the paddies is a crock in my experience. First of that's certainly never been true in drought conditions as much of the countryside is experiencing right now.

More significantly, the commercial agribusiness vendors assisted by the government have been pushing chemical fertilizer + pesticide + engineered crop varieties for many decades now, and that's certainly taken over the fields around the villages I've spent time in, and those places no longer have wildlife available for harvesting.

The old people talk nostalgically of these Edenic conditions that I assume posters here are parroting from old texts.

Or perhaps there are some areas of the country where they still use traditional organic methods in their rice cropping, but I doubt these are the norm.

And decent fruit rarely "just grows", proper orchards take a fair amount of work - and are usually very regularly and heavily sprayed.

Respect to the OP for his post. I've lived in Bangkok for six years and never been to a rural village. I've holidayed in Chiangmai, Samet (a lot), Phuket, Pattaya (too much) and Samui but never been to a real rural village, I've no idea what it's like and don't want to find out but I'll take the OP's word for it that it's better than Nigeria!

Cheers

Then I would say you haven't been to the real Thailand, haven't met the best people here. But that's just me.

And me too.

Never been to Nigeria but Angola and Papua New Guinea are none too good.

Edited May 19, 2012 by billd766