the king has been making this journey for more than two decades,spending some two months of each in the north and developing a special relationship with such groups as the hmong,lahu,yao,akha and karen,many among the hilltribes regard this relationship as something very special and concrete.
i love the king because when he came so did the water,ja phu,a lahu living near the burmese border,once told me.life had been harsh for him,his cight children and two wives. then in 1980,the king initiated several linked projects which struck at the core problems faced by the villagers of kae noi.
japhu said total dependence on the rains was replaced by a 75,000 cubic metre dan personally engineered by his majesty and stocked with fish for good measure The surplus baskets of corn he how harvested could be sold to buy clothes for the fanily. and if the harvest,nonetheless,proved too meagre he could rice and seds from the village "rice bank."
Before,one or two of his cows,pigs and chickens die each year from disease,he explained,and the children grew up illiterated and largely ignorant of the world beyond the village fields.a veterinarian now comes around to vaccinate the livestock. two of his children attend a new elementary school just acrooss the road frome his house while a thile a getting a higher level of education at a town which earlier had seemed a universe away.