“Rak Tamachat in Thailand is building a four dome cluster around a central pool designed as a natural pool. This is an ambitious project where you will see the complete build cycle from start to finish. To assist with that they are hiring a Thai work crew to help with the labor so that those who’ve come to learn can focus on learning the techniques involved and not just spend their time filling and tamping (although, there will be plenty of that). Everyone should get to experience setting of foundations, windows, doors, plumbing and electrical, exterior and interior plasters.
This project will provide housing so that we can host local english camps and other events to improve life and culture here in Thailand. The project dates are from Dec 2013 to Feb 2014, three months. We expect to complete one dome fully and possibly two depending on turnout.
Spend your holidays learning to build a house, while helping others. Our design inspiration comes from the Hua Hin resort in Thailand.
Rak Tamachat Natural Living Education Center is a broad scale working farm, located in rural Northeast Thailand. Rak Tamachat means “Love Natural” in Thai. We feel our name sums up our Thai lifestyle in the simplest form for both international and local Thais to understand. We follow both Permaculture principles & ethics, and the King of Thailand’s “Sufficiency of Economy Theory”. We practice Permaculture on a broad scale with integrated animal systems. We have a core community of Thais and Westerners living and working together to make the transition from a monoculture rice and corn farm to an Integrated Dynamic Permaculture Farm. This is the basis for our Education Center. We all strive to educate anyone who comes to the farm be it a student, guest, a day visitor, or a Thai member of our local village. We believe in “PAY IT FORWARD” to make the changes you want to see in the world, we work to do this every day with our choices and actions. The large farm and daily operations and transition give us the perfect classroom environment to educate others on how the transition from a monoculture to a sustainable “Permanent Agriculture” is done. We like to think of this as “Our style of Permaculture”, we value diversity and love to know that there are so many other successful prospering examples of Permaculture ranging over and infinite scale from balcony gardens to thousand acre farms. We are 75 acres supporting 13 community members and hosting guest and students year round so we are on the large size. Our facilities have been designed based on Permaculture principles to deal with our large community. We like to say “Permaculture does not mean Poor” we use this to teach the locals that by sharing their wealth, working and living in community they can all be rich. We would love to share our lifestyle with you and hopefully help open your horizons to what is possible, when people live and work together in harmony with guiding Ethics and Principles and a common goal.”
More at the source: Rak Tamachat
Wow, this place sounds really nice! Think what you could do with 75 acres. They offer extremely affordable home stays/farm stays so you can stay a while and check things out. Vegetarian meals for instance are only about $8/day. You can bring a tent, stay in a dorm or rent a private bungalow for very low cost.
My only worry is Thai people will attend one of these English camps, learn English, and then start listening to those that would tell them to eat Fast Food, become a slave to a Corporation, destroy their own environment, spend a fortune on mortgages, live in moldy flammable toxic houses, and all the rest of the bad habits many (most) English speaking people have developed over the years.
What was that about “Improving” the Thai culture?
Thankfully, not all of us are so irresponsible.
I just hope that the Thai people are better at detecting who is trying to take advantage of them than most English speakers are.
The problems of Western culture are spreading worldwide. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are skyrocketing in Thailand and now at almost epidemic proportions due in large part to Western foods. All within a relatively few short years. You’d think people would figure out what’s going on. Most of the older people are slim and healthy (those who grew up on and still eat traditional local foods), while younger people are becoming obese and getting all the degenerative chronic diseases. It’s not hard to figure out.
Next time you’re at the supermarket take a look at what other people are buying. Most people it seems live on cupcakes, soda pop, candy, TV dinners, potato chips and other processed foods. No wonder people are sick.
It’s really great to see people who work together to accomplish something that’s so beneficial to the local people. My hat’s off to all of these really great people. My thanks to “real” people who want to help mankind and not obliterate it. The planet needs more people like these.
Tomorrow’s blog post will be a warning about building domes in rainy climates such as Thailand. Roofed structures are far more durable in these these situations. Unprotected domes are fine in the desert, but will likely fail before too long in rainy climates when water leaks through cracks in the plaster. If you’re set on building a dome then consider building a roofed dome. Our Projects page shows several roofed dome designs that look quite good.
http://earthbagbuilding.com/projects/projects.htm