Last week we enjoyed hosting a Rosedale Business Group team who came to Thailand to explore business possibilities here. Our main focus was researching some of the legal requirements for businesses and foundations, and we specifically looked into the coffee industry. After spending a couple of days in the Bangkok area, I accompanied them to northern Thailand - all the way to the Myanmar border (which we briefly crossed, just so we could say we had). The trip was a lot of fun and very interesting. I'd never been to that part of Thailand and I'd never seen a coffee farm. It's a beautiful area - and cooler than Bangkok. We learned a lot and now this group has a lot of work to do in processing what they learned and coming up with some proposals for the future.
Here are a few pictures...
The scenery outside of Chiang Rai.
We were hosted in Chiang Rai by a local Christian leader. Here we are looking at the tea farm at the development center he founded.
On our first day we visited a coffee processing plant. Here are the coffee berries still on the tree.
Then they are picked by hand.
After the beans are extracted from the cherries and soaked for a while they are spread out to dry in the sun.
After the husks are milled off the beans are sorted (sometimes by hand, sometimes by machine).
This facility had tons of coffee in their warehouse.
The following day we visited a small village that has a number of families growing coffee on their own small plots.
The lady on the right manages a small coffee "farm." She process the beans herself and then sells them by the kilogram to sellers who come to the village.
I'll post some more pictures later of some other parts of the trip.
-Tom
