Even after Thailand opened the country back up and even created incentive schemes for people to come back to visit, it seems as though at times that our once great numbers of participants in our local Hashes has kind of waned. Many of our members decided to leave during Covid and must have gotten comfortable at one of the many places that they moved on to. Some of them come back to visit every now and then but it appears as though most of our previously large membership has decided that Thailand is no longer their home.
This is sad, but not entirely unexpected. These things happen and when the country made it so difficult for everyone to reset their "roots" here. Only those who owned businesses, were married, or had a work permit were allowed to stay. Not many of us work at all so work-permits are rare in our circle.
So the outings have had quite a few less participants that we had several years ago by far. We don't get disappointed by this though. Ok, that isn't true, of course we are disappointed but it's only because the people are not here that enjoy it and that we don't ever really recruit at all that it is like this now.
Globally speaking, the Hash House Harriers doesn't really advertise or try to get new members. It's not a cult and none of the Hashes actually make any money so it isn't really an objective of ours to have as many members as we can. Basically, people find out about us by accident and if they come along and like it, they become a member themselves. We don't advertise or anything. We are a club that is so exclusive that most people don't even know we exist here in Chiang Mai.
When we have these reduced numbers the shenanigans don't step down a notch, it just gets focused on the same 6 people over and over again. Also, when there happens to be a low turnout, we normally bond a lot better because there are only half a dozen people that you can possibly pick on.
I suppose the only disappointing thing really is that these runs still take quite a lot of time for the Hares to prepare and it can be a bit frustrating for that person or persons to spend a day or more preparing a trail only to have 10 or less people actually participate in it.
This doesn't mean that we are going to stop doing them though because if there is one thing that Hashers are totally dedicated to it is tradition. We have never cancelled a run because of poor turnout and I strongly believe that even if no one turned up that the Hares would do the trail by themselves and then drink all the beer.
I have been to Hashes in other countries where the only people that turned up to the event were the people I brought with me from abroad.... So I guess we are doing better than they are. It's not a competition though, it is a global group of drinkers with a running problem!
