My data collection trip to a Shan (Tai) village

Dear friends,

The day before yesterday, our group went to a village which was about 6.5 miles distance from Kunhing. We went there for practical work for the need assessment of the village.

First, we went to the monastery in the village. I found villagers were gathering for community work - there was some knowledge sharing session and I realized that the monastery was like a community centre for the villagers. We separated our group into smaller teams of three people and went to the village households for collecting data.
We found that the village has about ninety households and their livings depends on growing paddy and crops - mostly maze and raising pigs, chicken, cows and buffalos.
For electricity, the village is still off-grid but many households have electric turbines installed at the stream flowing near the village. When the water flow is not good enough in summer time to produce electricity, they use solar power instead.
There are beautiful paddy and corn fields around the village and below are some of the photos taken while we were visiting the village. We found that most of the houses in village were built with bricks and some are beautifully painted. And I inserted a video clip of a beautiful green paddy field near the village at the end. It was a fun and rewarding trip for me because I have not visited a Shan village in this region before.

_{Photo above: The monastery that we went first}

_{Photo above: Our group gathering before visiting to village households}

_{Photo above: A brick house in the village}

_{Photo above: Another brick house in the village}

_{Photo above: Small turbine for generating electricity}

_{Photo above: I was the eldest in my team :D}

_{Video above: A beautiful paddy field near the village}

@princekham
Myanmar
14th Oct 2023