Bamboo Season

Around August its bamboo season in my village which means lots of people who normally works outside the village like in Bangkok come home because the bamboo is starting to sprout its shoots and these can be harvested and prepared for eating then sold to large companies. Any village (such as mine) that has a good source of bamboo close get to do this (£6-£12) in a day which is much more than they can get doing any of their normal jobs (£3-£6) for the large population of none highly educated farmers that live in this area.
Well this all sounds like fun to me and a chance to earn some extra money so time for me to give it a go:

Here's a couple of pics in my mossie prevention setup which consists of long sleeved top, coat over top, hat with face protection, wellies and thick combat trousers.

This is the view from a viewpoint while climbing up the mountain/jungle:

The view down the carefully trodden slope of the mountain.

A pic of me and Team at a resting point up the mountain.

This is what we are after this is the new bamboo shoots sprouting out the ground.

We cut the bamboo shoots with a long slim shovel called a "siam" in Thai as one type of bamboo that we are mostly after today is thorny bamboo and it has thorns all around the branches but luckily not on the shoots themselves. This is Team with some cut off bamboo shoots and his job was to skin them and pack them in the bags so and then pile them all back up in base camp.

This is out base camp with all the freshily cut and skinned bamboo.

Homeward bound with bags packed tight, I ended up carrying 35kilos on my back this day and team about 28kilos through the jungle a few kilometers and down the treacherous mountain path.

The bamboo is all cut into smaller pieces ready for cooking and then consumption in plastic bags these are then sold to someone with a pickup truck who then I guess sells them to large companies. This is probably close to about 1 ton of bamboo here.

Yay I am home from a day in a bamboo forest which is mosquito breeding grounds without a single a mosquito bite :) My following days weren't so lucky but still not too many bites. It is quite hard to wear all that clothes in Thailand's heat and also trekking through jungle/mountains.