Mor Te Ta Hydroelectric Project

I'm now back in Alaska, but will put in one more entry on Thailand to wrap up the trip. One of the coolest parts of the trip was getting to hang out with some "Engineering Studies Program" (ESP) students from the Mae La Refugee Camp (in the photo below). Most of them have lived in the camp for over 10 years, after fleeing from Burma (Myanmar). The Burmese Military Junta is pretty brutal. You can read about it online if you are interested. I've also put a link to these student's new blog on my blog. This trip to the village was by special pass for only 10 days and was, for most of them, the only time they have left the camp. I was also not allowed into the camp, since I had no pass to enter the camp. They cannot have gardens and are very limited in their activities. These students spoke english pretty well and have studied hard. They are very interesting to talk to, since their lives are soooo different from mine.Here is the waterfall where we built the hydro-electric project. We ultimately built a dam at the top, with a 3 in PVC pipe down to a turbine at the bottom of the waterfall. The electricity was transmitted 1 KM to the school in the village of Mor Te Ta via a pretty thick aluminim wire. Probably equivalent to a ASG 6 guage wire. Plenty for the small amp draw that the school required. There was only a small transmission loss of voltage, from about 250 V at the powerhouse down to 230 V or so at the school.
All of the materials had to be carried up and down the waterfall. Luckily there weren't any injuries, eventhough most people were climbing up and down in flip flops. The local guys zoomed up and down, while the rest of us took a little longer.
This is Chris setting the "penstock" (pipe) into place before the dam was built up.
Here is Arie putting the final touches on the dam. You cannot work with cement underwater and we could not divert the water, so we had to build the dam as a bridge over the water, then use sand bags and rocks to fill in underneath the dam when we were ready to bring the waterlevel up.



I smashed my finger with one of the big boulders that was used to make the dam. It swelled up to about twice the normal size and became really gross, puss and all.



This is what the finger looks like now, three weeks after smashing it. After about two weeks, the puss and blood that was built up underneath the nail started to stink, so I had to cut the nail out. The very end of the nail didn't get smashed and is still hanging on. Kinda gross.


This is me with the turbine. Ultimately, a small building was constructed over the turbine.
Here is Andrew (Patch) with a crew of mostly local villagers at the top of the waterfall. The project is nearly complete.

This is the area at the top of the waterfall after the dam was completed. The sections of culvert were placed to protect the dam from logs that may float down the river after a heavy rain. The dam is a weak point in the system, so the idea was to protect the dam.

The villagers are very good at Ta Kraw (spelling?), which is a game like volleyball, but it is played with a wicker ball and you can not use your hands or arms. This guy lands on his feet - believe it or not!


At the end of my trip, I got to join in an ultimate frizbee hat tournament in Bangkok. It was a good couple days. Fun to hang out with everyone and some good frizbee, overall a great time.

Back from the village

just returned to Mae Sot from a village up north. It was a Thai/Karen village in a national forest up in the mountains. It was very beautiful and the people who live there are wonderful. What an amazing place to visit.

All in all, it took 8 days to install the micro-hydro electric project. There were four main areas of work to be completed:
1. Powerhouse holding the turbine at the bottom of the waterfall
2. Dam at the top of the waterfall to collect water for the pipe to the turbine
3. Powerline from the powerhouse to the school
4. Wiring the school

The local folks are amazingly efficient at construction and did most of the work. On the last day, it was very cool to see the lights come on at the school. This was a small project and the turbine only produces around 2 kW of electricity. This is just enough for lights in all of the school buildings and not much more than that. But, it does generate electricity 24 hours per day.

I was very happy to return to all of the great cuisine here in Mae Sot. The villagers were very generous with cooking food and sharing with all of us out there. But, I was very excited to get some different food after 8 days of eating rice, ramen noodles, pumpkin, and fish paste 3 meals per day. So, I am eating everything i can, and it is sooooooo good.

Wandering Mae Sod

I've been riding around Mae Sot on my friend Patch's motorcycle. It looks like a scooter, but it actually shifts gears and goes pretty fast. I had it up to 70 or 80 kph at times. It's really fun to ride. All the motorcycles squeeze past the cars and line up at the stop lights. When the light turns green there might be 15 - 20 motorcycles all taking off at once. It feels like a race!

Just been wandering around Mae Sot today. Went to breakfast at the muslim breakfast place again. Mmmmmm... Then walked around the market looking for some flip flops that would fit me. Got lots of smiles when I pointed to my feet and said "Yai", Thai for big. Eventually, I found a shop that had a pair of flip flops that were nearly big enough for me and bought them. That was my feat for the day (bad pun intended).

Visited a few of the Wats (Buddish Temples) in Mae Sot. Here's a couple photos. They are quite magnificent.

Here are a couple pictures taken by a Taiwanese friend who was living in Mae Sot and shared some photos of town with me.

My friend Patch and I will be heading up north to install a micro-hydro electric project. Though, it sounds like there may not be much work for me to do there. There are going to be many many people there to work, but, even if I don't get to work, it will be an interesting trip and I will learn a lot about renewable energy.

I'll be returning to Bangkok on Feb. 10th and hope to be able to post some photos then. Will be playing in an ultimate frizbee tournament there, which will be really fun.

Guest House and Muslim Breakfast

This is the nice guesthouse in Mae Sot where I'm staying for a few days before heading out to the village.

There is this place called Muslim Breakfast in Mae Sot. They have awesome food. It is more Indian food than Thai. The staple is naan. A really tasty and elasticy thin bread that is cooked in a wood fired oven. You can tear off a small piece of naan and use it to "grab" some curry or chick peas. Samosas are a good side dish, as well as, some sweet milk tea. Mmmmmmm...

The naan dough is flattened and then stuck to the roof of the oven to cook.

Fairbanks to Seattle to Bangkok

Just arrived in Bangkok last night. I was here in 2000. It is fun because I still remember my way around a bit. I'm on my way up north to Mae Sod tonight on an overnight bus. I catch the bus at 10:30 PM and arrive at around 6 AM. Hope I can catch some zzzzz's along the way.

I haven't taken any photos yet, but when I do, I'll try to post them. I hope to capture some of the work that will be done while i'm here to install a micro-hydro electric project in a refugee camp along the burma border with Thailand. Should be a pretty neat project and will take approximately 2 weeks to complete. I'm excited to learn more about renewable energy.

Also, I just got to spend the weekend in Seattle with some of my favorite people around. It was a great weekend. Wish I could see those folks more often!

I had forgotten how there is so much crap in the air in Bangkok. You can walk around and see the air pollution. So many interesting, nice, gross, smokey, and food smells all at once. Overwhelming to the nose at times. The only thing to do is to try to isolate one of the smells and focus on it, cause otherwise, it's just too much all at once.

Also, just soooo many people. Maybe I noticed this is because I live in Fairbanks where there aren't that many people. But, really, I think there are just a whole lot of people here. I've enjoyed people watching and just wandering around. I'm getting excited for my next meal too. I've already eaten a number of my favorite things and am looking forward still to eating some pineapple, some curry, and some pad thai. I also remember a fried thing with bananas, condensed milk, and chocolate syrup that was pretty yummy, but I haven't been able to find that yet.

I hope to add photos soon.

Hawaii

My roomate and I found cheap tickets to Hawaii (the Big Island) in September. It's a low season for tourists, which ended up making the trip really easy.

The highlight was night scuba diving with mantarays. All of the lights from the scuba divers attract Krill (or whatever it is that the Mantaray eat). Then come in the giants. They are 12 feet across and supposedly weight over 1000 lbs. It is amazing to see how graceful they are in the water. They swim around with their enormous mouths' open trying to catch as many of the little krill as possible. And, if you hold the light out in front of you, they swim right at your head and then detour up just in time so that they don't take your head off. Occasionally, they will do a loop-d-loo right over you and come back down for another pass. Oh, I forgot to mention that you can't touch them cause they are protected, so you have to kneel on the bottom of the ocean. We were close to 40 ft. down.

Unfortunately, I have no underwater photos of the mantarays. Other than scuba diving and snorkeling, Ed and I did some hiking and checked out Volcanoes at Volcano National Park. All and all, Hawaii is a great place.

Volcano National is huge and very interesting. This is me with a big crater.

Me with a Lava Flow

The next two photos are of lava flowing into the ocean.
This is Ed at the Captain Cook monument. Cap. Cook was the first European to visit Hawaii and was ultimately killed in the bay where this monument stands. There also happens to be very good snorkeling at this spot and a long hike to get there.

My bro visit's ak

Here's some photos from when my brother came to visit this summer. We traveled around to the Matanuska Glacier, McCarthy, Kennikott, Root Glacier, and Valdez. We only had a week, so we mostly just car camped, hiked, fished, smoked cigars, drank whiskey, and hung out.

On the Matanuska Glacier.

On to the Root Glacier near Kennikott.

Caught some Coho (Silver) Salmon in Valdez.