There are over 5000 Hash chapters around the world. Most of these exist in metro or populated areas because plain and simple, it is easier to get more people involved if more people live there. Places with a low population might have the desire to get a Hash started, but the logistics are just too difficult. We have seen dozens of Hash chapters right here in Thailand that fails for this very reason. A few people get excited and make a few runs but then the chapter ends up shutting down because only 1 or 2 people end up making all of the runs. Then sometimes they spend a few days making a trail and almost nobody turns up to do it. It's a bit demoralizing and it is understandable why people would quit.
In other places that have large amounts of members, they face a different problem. While Hash runs are fun in a city environment, they are definitely a lot better in nature but cities just don't have a lot of nature. It can also be quite difficult to mark a "trail" when it is on cement and we have had many situations where the signs or chalk patters that were put on the ground were just wiped out by someone washing their car.
So out here in the Chiang Mai we have the rare situation where we can do both. There is around a million people that live in the city area, but we also have access to dozens of national parks and the entire city is surrounded by farms, lakes, and other off-road things that make a trail run so much better.
The only real issue we run into is that on most of our runs we are actually on private property and we don't really ask permission to use it. Mostly this doesn't result in anything bad happening but every now and then some overly protective property owner takes great issue with us being on their land even though we aren't doing anything bad to it.
Out just maybe 10 - 20 km from the city center we have access to areas that are mostly farms, and for people that have active chapters in Thailand such as Bangkok and Pattaya, they don't really have access to nature like we do. For us, it is just a short bus ride to the area and the only tough part is that some of our members have to go out there first and make the trail. Thankfully, we have a ton of members and many of them don't mind making the trails. Often it is seen as quite an honor to make the trail and while it isn't explicitly stated, it is expected of members after a certain amount of time in the group.
Many of the areas we go to are perfect provided the land owner doesn't get pissed off at us because there are small trails all over the place that have been worn down by rubber or palm farmers that drive their motorbikes in the woods. For the most part, these farmers don't complain about us being there but mostly it is probably because they don't even know we are there. The people who live on the land are generally share-croppers, meaning that they don't actually own the land, they just look after it and grow the crops for a share of the profits. From their perspective, as long as we aren't stealing palm or rubber, they don't really care why we are there. I think that since we dress silly and are mostly foreigners, they don't worry about us being there even if they don't understand what the hell is going on.
There was one time where a sign was up in the middle of one of our trails that had clearly been up specifically for us stating that no one is allowed there and we felt a little bit bad because we just climbed over the fence. It was too late at that point, we were already all out there and the run was halfway finished. Whoever put the sign up didn't approach us but because we are not going out of our way to annoy anyone, we just decided to never do a run on that land ever again.
Didn't mean to end on a low-note there, but the main point was that Chiang Mai is a really unique Hashing location in the world where we have high population as well as high amounts of nature. This is why we are able to do at least 3 runs per week here. You are welcome to join if you are in the area and our full schedule can be viewed by clicking here
ON ON!
