A Geography Lesson

Krabi, Thailand

I was poking around on Google Earth the other day, trying to find out where exactly I was in Thailand. Right now I’m in Krabi Thailand, where the biodiesel reactor will be built. Krabi is a hop, skip, and a jump away from all the big tourist hubs on the beaches down south; Ao Nang, Railey (rock climbing), Phuket, and Koh Phi Phi are all within 50 km away from here. We’re a bit more inland, as you can see by the map, but it’s only 20 km from the beach. PDA helps villages all over this area, on a map here at work there are little dots scattered all over the map where PDA has a project in the area.

To give you an ideal of the scale of the PDA, they currently employ of 1,000 people. There are at least 10,000 volunteers. They have programs in over 11,000 villages. Imagine that. 11,000 villages. That’s really big. In each province which PDA operates, there is a hub center. The center in that province assesses what is needed in the villages close-by, reports to the Bangkok master center, and then does whatever can be done to help. Pure bottom up. No top down. Very excellent. (Apparently for this biodiesel project, fisherman complained that a huge percentage of their income went to purchasing diesel fuel. Hopefully, this will be an alternative).

Bangkok, Thailand

I also made a map of my life in Bangkok; when I’m in Bangkok I’m staying at my friends apartment (called “Joey’s Apartment”) and work at the PDA center. It’s not too far away, but it’d take hours to get there by the road (traffic is always rot dtik, or traffic jam, in BKK), but by taking the SkyTrain it only takes around 20 minutes. I put all the other cool stuff I like to do on the map also. Far lives across the river around an hour away by bus. So that’s that; life in Bangkok is crowded, dirty, and metropolitan (but I’ve come to like it), and life in Krabi is… in the country.