Three Thai provinces declared winter disaster areas

[Tokay]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

OK, so that explains the kids clothes. What about everything else? People donate BLANKETS every year. I have blankets bought in Thailand that are 10 years old and they are perfectly fine. I've donated probably 50 of them over the years. Yet, these hill tribe people can't seem to make a blanket last a single year, nor do they prepare for the winter before it happens.

I no longer donate because I finally came to the conclusion that some people are beyond help, as they do not want to help themselves. We have the same type in my home country, as all of you do too. If you know winter is coming, as it has all of your life, then you will make an effort to keep your blankets. However, they know people will give them more, so... round and round we go.

The donations should stop. Instead, they should be taught how to prepare for winter, how to use natural resources to insulate their homes / shacks / huts. And of course, taught not to get rid of any winter clothes or blankets they currently have.

Most of us come from places in the world where our great grand parents survived real winters in freezing temperatures, and they had to learn how to do it. Fast forward 200 years and head to the mountains of Asia, and it is as if they just figured out how to make fire.

[fabianfred]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

So what youre telling us is they wear thick winter clothing all year till its worn out rather than wear it when it gets a bit chilly for a week in december? No wonder they feel the cold up there. Im off up there in a week or so to enjoy riding round the mountains without sweating my nads off in a mesh jacket n kevlar jeans....and no. Its not cold up there all year round.

I never said it was cold in the hills all-year-round... i said it is cooler.

It is not the people who are complaining ... they just get on with their lives... it is the Govt declaring the emergency.

The adults get on with their work and know how to dress but it's the kids who need the clothing most. They wear it all-year-round and it soon wears out. I often ask them if they are not too hot wearing the warm tops and pants even when the sun is hot and they say no. Remember that Asians are different to us from colder climates and do not sweat so much.

Blankets are good so sleep in or wear around the shoulders when sitting in front of a fire...but get in the way when moving about and working.

[theslime]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

So what youre telling us is they wear thick winter clothing all year till its worn out rather than wear it when it gets a bit chilly for a week in december? No wonder they feel the cold up there. Im off up there in a week or so to enjoy riding round the mountains without sweating my nads off in a mesh jacket n kevlar jeans....and no. Its not cold up there all year round.

on Internon its cold everyday, maybe your making a mountain out of a mole hill. get up there and see for yourself.

[alex88]

Where I live in Australia winter temperatures average around 20c in the day and down around 10c in the night. I have a Swedish friend who feels colder in our winter than she does back home in Sweden in winter, and she finds our northern Australian winters challenging! Houses here are not built for cold weather whereas in Sweden they have insulation and central heating etc. Same might apply in Northern Thailand.

[PatOngo]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

OK, so that explains the kids clothes. What about everything else? People donate BLANKETS every year. I have blankets bought in Thailand that are 10 years old and they are perfectly fine. I've donated probably 50 of them over the years. Yet, these hill tribe people can't seem to make a blanket last a single year, nor do they prepare for the winter before it happens.

I no longer donate because I finally came to the conclusion that some people are beyond help, as they do not want to help themselves. We have the same type in my home country, as all of you do too. If you know winter is coming, as it has all of your life, then you will make an effort to keep your blankets. However, they know people will give them more, so... round and round we go.

The donations should stop. Instead, they should be taught how to prepare for winter, how to use natural resources to insulate their homes / shacks / huts. And of course, taught not to get rid of any winter clothes or blankets they currently have.

Most of us come from places in the world where our great grand parents survived real winters in freezing temperatures, and they had to learn how to do it. Fast forward 200 years and head to the mountains of Asia, and it is as if they just figured out how to make fire.

They set fire to the blankets........keeps them really warm for 10 minutes.

[theslime]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

OK, so that explains the kids clothes. What about everything else? People donate BLANKETS every year. I have blankets bought in Thailand that are 10 years old and they are perfectly fine. I've donated probably 50 of them over the years. Yet, these hill tribe people can't seem to make a blanket last a single year, nor do they prepare for the winter before it happens.

I no longer donate because I finally came to the conclusion that some people are beyond help, as they do not want to help themselves. We have the same type in my home country, as all of you do too. If you know winter is coming, as it has all of your life, then you will make an effort to keep your blankets. However, they know people will give them more, so... round and round we go.

The donations should stop. Instead, they should be taught how to prepare for winter, how to use natural resources to insulate their homes / shacks / huts. And of course, taught not to get rid of any winter clothes or blankets they currently have.

Most of us come from places in the world where our great grand parents survived real winters in freezing temperatures, and they had to learn how to do it. Fast forward 200 years and head to the mountains of Asia, and it is as if they just figured out how to make fire.

They set fire to the blankets........keeps them really warm for 10 minutes.

better keep your day job.

[BlessingCoffee]

Nice and warm in CNX, this is another way how to make easy money, as previous mentioned will never reach ??? (winter disaster areas)

[BlessingCoffee]

Have a lot of land in the hills (coffee farm) and cannot find worker for less then 400thb a day

[ratcatcher]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

Your shitting me,,,Winter comes around every year,,,,No matter how much money you have or not you bloody cater for that,,When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed and a coat that my Mam made from pieces of cut offs and left overs so that I kept warm to walk to school The temp went down sometimes for weeks on end from anything of 10C to 20C Below 0 . I even seen people sleeping under a layer of Hay or Straw, They don't know what winter is here in Thailand,They cry for help to easy, To bloody lazy to help them self.

"When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed...."

My god you was lucky, we never even had a bed and as for newspapers, who could afford them, and a coat, that was sheer luxury.

Off we go.......................

[ratcatcher]

Have a lot of land in the hills (coffee farm) and cannot find worker for less then 400thb a day

Is that the cost of their daily grind?

[Longstaff]

Some of these posts remind me of the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch:

Cold is a relative thing; what's warm to an Inuit would be cold enough to kill most people. Same goes for heat; it's what you are used too, look at the Aborigines. Generally speaking people, like all animals, adapt to their environment and also modify their environment in order to survive. I don't know the history of the hill tribes, and I'm happy to be informed, but my assumption is they have experienced life in the hills for many generations.

This is not a disaster, the boxing day tsunami was a disaster; though it might be disastrous for some individuals.

Here in Chiang Mai it struggles up to 30 degrees each day and is a lovely time of year for a farang. Previously I would have been sweating cobs in a 30 degree heat wave back home, but now its a pleasant temperature. It's chilly at night here in the city, I'm wearing a jacket now on the motorbike, which means it must be a few degrees cooler still up in the hills.

Again, I don't know the history as it applies here; but a general observation would be that as nations develop indigenous people sometimes become dependent and seem to lose their ability to look after themselves. You see this in marginalised indigenous communities all over the world, many of whom have been displaced from their traditional lands and now lack the resources (farm land and forests) to fend for themselves. We also tend to measure their behaviour against our standards which is a little unfair; and too much to expect when they've been accelerated through a development process in decades rather than the centuries it took us to sort ourselves out. And lets not forget that in those nations we farang come from there is a percentage of the population looking for the same handouts one year after another, and displaying an ongoing inability to plan ahead, look after possessions, maintain property etc etc.

I noted the news item a few days ago about the difficulty some of these people have in gaining Thai ID and thus an education....not easy to pull yourself out of hardship in a self sufficient way without an education. I suspect that most of us writing on here, if we look back a couple of generations, have emerged from poor family histories because our parents generation prioritised and funded our education.

Before leaving the old country I donated all my electric heaters to charity thinking I'd never need them again; can't believe they've got a display of oil column heaters down at Global!

[The Deerhunter]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

OK, so that explains the kids clothes. What about everything else? People donate BLANKETS every year. I have blankets bought in Thailand that are 10 years old and they are perfectly fine. I've donated probably 50 of them over the years. Yet, these hill tribe people can't seem to make a blanket last a single year, nor do they prepare for the winter before it happens.

I no longer donate because I finally came to the conclusion that some people are beyond help, as they do not want to help themselves. We have the same type in my home country, as all of you do too. If you know winter is coming, as it has all of your life, then you will make an effort to keep your blankets. However, they know people will give them more, so... round and round we go.

The donations should stop. Instead, they should be taught how to prepare for winter, how to use natural resources to insulate their homes / shacks / huts. And of course, taught not to get rid of any winter clothes or blankets they currently have.

Most of us come from places in the world where our great grand parents survived real winters in freezing temperatures, and they had to learn how to do it. Fast forward 200 years and head to the mountains of Asia, and it is as if they just figured out how to make fire.

Yep! Help people help themselves. I get tired of helping people to whom help means me doing everything for them. If people want help but give no indication of trying to help themselves then they picked the wrong guy to ask. I'm 67 now & finally figured this out about 15-20 years ago. People have to be seen to try to help themselves before I get excited. Yes, blankets & warm clothes do keep from year to year with the proviso that kids grow & often there is no-one to get hand-me-downs from. The authorities could supply plastic storage bags with the blankets and have a sign (in script the hill-tribe people will understand) advising people to keep blankets & warm clothing secure in supplied bags for next winter. I would suggest that they record recipients but I realize that many of these people have no I.D. to show.

Edited December 5, 2014 by The Deerhunter

[The Deerhunter]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

Your shitting me,,,Winter comes around every year,,,,No matter how much money you have or not you bloody cater for that,,When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed and a coat that my Mam made from pieces of cut offs and left overs so that I kept warm to walk to school The temp went down sometimes for weeks on end from anything of 10C to 20C Below 0 . I even seen people sleeping under a layer of Hay or Straw, They don't know what winter is here in Thailand,They cry for help to easy, To bloody lazy to help them self.

"When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed...."

My god you was lucky, we never even had a bed and as for newspapers, who could afford them, and a coat, that was sheer luxury.

Off we go.......................

Right, Obediah, We slept in a cardboard box in a hole in the road. It were a home to us! But, you try telling the young people that today & they wont believe you.

[elgordo38]

It's a freaking blizzard out there! There are penguins in the front yard pecking my poor dogs! It was so cold my nose fell off yesterday! 31 degrees celsius! We can't take much more of this ya know! Any colder and I don't know what we'll do!

Are you really a Postman? Me to

[alantheembalmer]

Villages up in the hills are several degrees cooler than down in the valleys... all year round. They are mostly hill-tribes who are looked down upon by thais as second-class people. Although hard-working and not wasteful they are still poorer than the Thais and have less opportunities to work at good wages. The kids wear clothing out in a year so yes, they do need new each year.

Those who sit back and scoff about 'where has the last lot gone..' do not deserve the plenty they enjoy with their superior attitudes..... I feel sorry for them...and probably never donated a thing in their lives.

Your shitting me,,,Winter comes around every year,,,,No matter how much money you have or not you bloody cater for that,,When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed and a coat that my Mam made from pieces of cut offs and left overs so that I kept warm to walk to school The temp went down sometimes for weeks on end from anything of 10C to 20C Below 0 . I even seen people sleeping under a layer of Hay or Straw, They don't know what winter is here in Thailand,They cry for help to easy, To bloody lazy to help them self.

"When I was young in the Netherlands we had newspaper and cardboard on top of our bed...."

My god you was lucky, we never even had a bed and as for newspapers, who could afford them, and a coat, that was sheer luxury.

Off we go.......................

Right, Obediah, We slept in a cardboard box in a hole in the road. It were a home to us! But, you try telling the young people that today & they wont believe you.

OK then. When I was a kid and lived in poverty in London, we used to huddle around a candle when it got cold. When it got really cold, we used to light it.

[doublephil]

Local people in Chiang Mai tell me that declaring an "emergency" for cold weather allows local officials to get money from central government to provide assistance to those who need it - but, of course, very little of it, if any, actually goes to the people who really need help - I will leave it up to the reader to guess what happens to the money

[Bonno1971]

Don't know where or when it has been below freezing in Victoria during the day for months on end. Next minute we will have stories of people living in cardboard boxes in the middle of the road.

[mogoso]

Up here in Chiang Mai, my dogs are cold, or so I'm told. I'm wearing only shorts around the house and my wife insists we provide our dogs warm mats to sleep on. I keep telling her they've fur coats, but I'll not go to war over mats.