Sunday, November 1, 2009
Off and about again.
*We're heading out to Mae Hon Song for three weeks tomorrow for the second of our expedition courses, so I won't be posting again until around the 20th of November*
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunset Soccer
2. UHDP Soccer
At UHDP, we had the fortune to be able to play soccer (footbahn) every night, 5 o'clock sharp. We'd all suit up in our tennis shoes and grimiest clothes possible, storm the field with the local people there and sprint around the red clay field as the sun dove for the hills, purples and oranges spilling over the mountain's edges, us battering the ball clumsily (or at least, I did), attempting to put it in two and a half foot wide goalposts. The red clay seeped into every inch of our sweat-sopped clothing and dyed our legs blood red as Pi Arpot would shriek wildly with every close goal, a testament to having taken part on the pitch. One night I even managed to score a goal...on my own team. In my defense though...okay, it's not even worth defending; I'm a terrible soccer player but love watching and playing to death. I did redeem myself the next day partially however, as I managed to get three assists and help my team to victory.
3. Treasure Map
Before we left UHDP, Will and I decided that we wanted to leave notes for members in the other group, leaving them underneath the rungs of the top bunk so that they would find them when they flopped down onto the lower bed. Our creative ideas for how we could leave them notes grew larger and larger over the course of the whole week, and with the help of Alice and Sam, amalgamated into this elaborate, multiple cache treasure map being signed by our code names - Hawk Dahm, Otter Mae Nahm, Lion Doi, and Baby Panda. We hid our spoils - various snacks, cans of coke, and in one cache, Marks smelly soccer socks that he didn't change once the entire week he was there - inside of bamboo tubes that we harvested from the agroforest and sealed with banana leaves and bamboo ties and proceeded to hide in markable locations around the agroforest by headlamp. The map itself was burned at the edges and soiled with dirt. It was just one of the coolest maps of all time; hell, I was excited for the other group. We decided when we go to the islands we're going to do full on treasure maps in bottles, buried on separate islands beneath an X.
4. My Birthday
My birthday, as far as my other 19 ones have gone, wasn't all too exciting, although it definitely was a unique one to say the least. I woke at 4 AM, the typical time in which my koon mae (host mother - we stayed with host families while in the village of Mae Ta, an hour south of Chiang Mai, locked within the intermontagne basin) decided that she would awake and start rummaging around the house, cooking, clanging pots and pans, in turn awakening the roosters from their light slumber, who proceeded to make curdling, screeching calls until roughly 6:15, when I decided it was worthless to try and drown it out. I wandered downstairs and took a - wait...I haven't ever described how the bathroom system works here. A quick aside:
Squat toilets - also known as eastern toilets. Basically a hole in the ground in which one squats over, drops trow, and possesses a high chance of either A.) falling over or into the toilet or B.) missing entirely, and due to the lack of toilet paper entirely, this often creates significant conundrums for the bathroom dweller. These conundrums become much more probable when the foreigner is so desperate that he or she decides to sacrifice waiting for a Western toilet, creating a myriad of embarassing scenarios. For the most part, an overall unpleasant experience, flushed away by a plastic bowl sitting in a large Rubber Maid trash can full of stagnant water. I once had the misfortune to have to wash in that water, although after having gone and farmed Telapia in a fish pond where algae was propagated by feces, it was fairly welcome.
Bucket showers - similar to the squat toilets, sans toilet. Strip, scoop, pour, go into brief hypothermic shock from the cold water, repeat the last three until clean. Often times is just the same bucket in which water is scooped into the toilet, although in more urban areas is substituted for a point-heated showerhead.
Okay, in all honesty, they're not really that bad once you get used to them. By the end of the Mae Ta experience, I had completely forgotten about showerheads and toilets that you could sit on.
I digress. I wandered downstairs and took a nice bucket shower to wake up and then wolfed an enormous amount of sticky rice (kao nee-ow) and went with Caleb out to the soowan (orchard) for a while. Caleb's name fittingly became "beer" as the week progressed because my family couldn't remember for the life of them his actual name, and they thought that calling us "Leo" and "Beer" was hilarious. We eventually just became one in the same, "Leo Beer!" being called out as any of the neighbors came over to visit. In the orchard that day, Caleb and I planted onions for two and half hours in the midmorning sun, sweat pouring down our backs as we plugged each little bulb into neat rows. Although by the end of it, as we became more desperate to finish quickly, our rows looked like we had both smoked crack and taken some hallucinogens before having come, as they drunkenly zig-zagged every which way. We were so ravenous we inhaled lunch, consisting of a Thai version of ramen noodles and sticky rice, and passed out under the small bamboo hut erected in the middle of the field as the midday rains came spot on at 12:00, bringing temporary relief to the harsh sun. We laid rice husks over top of the freshly plugged onions (to deter weed growth) until 2, when we followed our dog Ga-fayh (coffee if you didn't pick up on that one) the thirty minute walk up the winding jungle road to home. Occasionally he and his brother (Maa Mahn - Maa meaning dog and Mahn meaning, well, I have no idea what the hell mahn means in Thai. The word "men" however, quite fittingly means "smells bad.") would harass the cows that litter the sides of the roads in packs, almost getting trampled from an occasional ornery bull. We got home, bucket showered quickly, then rode on the backs of motorcycles to the Co-op where all of the other ISDSI students were waiting. They brought a bunch of gas station ice cream out, along with a lone birthday candle that I blew out after they all sang happy birthday. We followed the festivities by listening to some village elders talk about organic farming for a few hours before retiring home for dinner, which, compared to all of my other meals there, was horrific. First off, they asked me before dinner if I wanted a shot of moonshine, which is fairly culturally offensive to refuse so I said sure. I kicked back one with my host father, the caustic fluid searing my throat on the way down. Now the shot alone would've been fine, but promptly after I kicked the shot, something skewered on a fork was put in front of my mouth, insisting I eat it. "Teenee arrai?" I asked, unsure of what it was. "Buffalo skin" he responded, slipping the piece of what turned out to be a thick piece of boiled fat onto my tongue and insisting I chew and swallow, causing me to almost vomit all over the place. I choked it down somehow and smiled politely. Rice moonshine with a fat chaser. As far as "welcome to Thailand" moments go, it was definitely near the top.
At UHDP, we had the fortune to be able to play soccer (footbahn) every night, 5 o'clock sharp. We'd all suit up in our tennis shoes and grimiest clothes possible, storm the field with the local people there and sprint around the red clay field as the sun dove for the hills, purples and oranges spilling over the mountain's edges, us battering the ball clumsily (or at least, I did), attempting to put it in two and a half foot wide goalposts. The red clay seeped into every inch of our sweat-sopped clothing and dyed our legs blood red as Pi Arpot would shriek wildly with every close goal, a testament to having taken part on the pitch. One night I even managed to score a goal...on my own team. In my defense though...okay, it's not even worth defending; I'm a terrible soccer player but love watching and playing to death. I did redeem myself the next day partially however, as I managed to get three assists and help my team to victory.
3. Treasure Map
Before we left UHDP, Will and I decided that we wanted to leave notes for members in the other group, leaving them underneath the rungs of the top bunk so that they would find them when they flopped down onto the lower bed. Our creative ideas for how we could leave them notes grew larger and larger over the course of the whole week, and with the help of Alice and Sam, amalgamated into this elaborate, multiple cache treasure map being signed by our code names - Hawk Dahm, Otter Mae Nahm, Lion Doi, and Baby Panda. We hid our spoils - various snacks, cans of coke, and in one cache, Marks smelly soccer socks that he didn't change once the entire week he was there - inside of bamboo tubes that we harvested from the agroforest and sealed with banana leaves and bamboo ties and proceeded to hide in markable locations around the agroforest by headlamp. The map itself was burned at the edges and soiled with dirt. It was just one of the coolest maps of all time; hell, I was excited for the other group. We decided when we go to the islands we're going to do full on treasure maps in bottles, buried on separate islands beneath an X.
4. My Birthday
My birthday, as far as my other 19 ones have gone, wasn't all too exciting, although it definitely was a unique one to say the least. I woke at 4 AM, the typical time in which my koon mae (host mother - we stayed with host families while in the village of Mae Ta, an hour south of Chiang Mai, locked within the intermontagne basin) decided that she would awake and start rummaging around the house, cooking, clanging pots and pans, in turn awakening the roosters from their light slumber, who proceeded to make curdling, screeching calls until roughly 6:15, when I decided it was worthless to try and drown it out. I wandered downstairs and took a - wait...I haven't ever described how the bathroom system works here. A quick aside:
Squat toilets - also known as eastern toilets. Basically a hole in the ground in which one squats over, drops trow, and possesses a high chance of either A.) falling over or into the toilet or B.) missing entirely, and due to the lack of toilet paper entirely, this often creates significant conundrums for the bathroom dweller. These conundrums become much more probable when the foreigner is so desperate that he or she decides to sacrifice waiting for a Western toilet, creating a myriad of embarassing scenarios. For the most part, an overall unpleasant experience, flushed away by a plastic bowl sitting in a large Rubber Maid trash can full of stagnant water. I once had the misfortune to have to wash in that water, although after having gone and farmed Telapia in a fish pond where algae was propagated by feces, it was fairly welcome.
Bucket showers - similar to the squat toilets, sans toilet. Strip, scoop, pour, go into brief hypothermic shock from the cold water, repeat the last three until clean. Often times is just the same bucket in which water is scooped into the toilet, although in more urban areas is substituted for a point-heated showerhead.
Okay, in all honesty, they're not really that bad once you get used to them. By the end of the Mae Ta experience, I had completely forgotten about showerheads and toilets that you could sit on.
I digress. I wandered downstairs and took a nice bucket shower to wake up and then wolfed an enormous amount of sticky rice (kao nee-ow) and went with Caleb out to the soowan (orchard) for a while. Caleb's name fittingly became "beer" as the week progressed because my family couldn't remember for the life of them his actual name, and they thought that calling us "Leo" and "Beer" was hilarious. We eventually just became one in the same, "Leo Beer!" being called out as any of the neighbors came over to visit. In the orchard that day, Caleb and I planted onions for two and half hours in the midmorning sun, sweat pouring down our backs as we plugged each little bulb into neat rows. Although by the end of it, as we became more desperate to finish quickly, our rows looked like we had both smoked crack and taken some hallucinogens before having come, as they drunkenly zig-zagged every which way. We were so ravenous we inhaled lunch, consisting of a Thai version of ramen noodles and sticky rice, and passed out under the small bamboo hut erected in the middle of the field as the midday rains came spot on at 12:00, bringing temporary relief to the harsh sun. We laid rice husks over top of the freshly plugged onions (to deter weed growth) until 2, when we followed our dog Ga-fayh (coffee if you didn't pick up on that one) the thirty minute walk up the winding jungle road to home. Occasionally he and his brother (Maa Mahn - Maa meaning dog and Mahn meaning, well, I have no idea what the hell mahn means in Thai. The word "men" however, quite fittingly means "smells bad.") would harass the cows that litter the sides of the roads in packs, almost getting trampled from an occasional ornery bull. We got home, bucket showered quickly, then rode on the backs of motorcycles to the Co-op where all of the other ISDSI students were waiting. They brought a bunch of gas station ice cream out, along with a lone birthday candle that I blew out after they all sang happy birthday. We followed the festivities by listening to some village elders talk about organic farming for a few hours before retiring home for dinner, which, compared to all of my other meals there, was horrific. First off, they asked me before dinner if I wanted a shot of moonshine, which is fairly culturally offensive to refuse so I said sure. I kicked back one with my host father, the caustic fluid searing my throat on the way down. Now the shot alone would've been fine, but promptly after I kicked the shot, something skewered on a fork was put in front of my mouth, insisting I eat it. "Teenee arrai?" I asked, unsure of what it was. "Buffalo skin" he responded, slipping the piece of what turned out to be a thick piece of boiled fat onto my tongue and insisting I chew and swallow, causing me to almost vomit all over the place. I choked it down somehow and smiled politely. Rice moonshine with a fat chaser. As far as "welcome to Thailand" moments go, it was definitely near the top.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Just dance?
How to summarize the past four weeks? I could probably type for hours and fail to do it justice, so I'll try to do my best. I apologize not having posted within that time frame, but three of the last four were spent in different villages in Northern Thailand, studying how the people there sustainably live with their environment and abide by agroecological principles. The week before leaving was a whirlwind in and of itself, filled with studying alternated with going to the myriad of bars they have here and dancing at the equal number of clubs that span the Chiang Mai streets. Moving into the apartments has brought us a new found freedom which, when coupled with our slightly improved ability to speak Thai, has given us the ability to manuever the city with ease. Most of the nights were filled with a group of 30 or so of us - farangs on parade if you will - infiltrating a certain club
(Monkey Club, Fabric, and Warm-Up being just a few), and, amidst the laser lights, skin flapping bass, and hordes of swaying Thais with Johnnie Walker heavy on their breath, we made ourselves blatantly American, dancing wildly and screaming Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold" whenever it was played. Days were filled with class and homework, attempting to learn Thai with pounding headaches and baggy eyes. A nap and a cheeseburger from Mike's was all that was needed to rejuvenate the party spirit for the night for most though, the energy of the night revived with a quick run to 7-11 in the basement of our apartment complex.
The partying was quickly put to an end though with the arrival of our first expedition course, as our group of 33 split into two separate groups of 16 and 17, parting ways to do the tour of cities in opposite order. My group headed north towards the city of Fahng, a long van ride through a series of gorgeous jungle mountain ranges, enough sharp turns and switchbacks to make me wish I could lean out the window and vom. We proceeded to hike for two days through two remote villages tucked away in the upland hills, sweat pouring from our brows as we trekked up steep hills in the midday sun, winding through sprawling hillside corn fields and rice paddies, the views from the top more than worth the wheezing that accompanied seeing them. At night, we listened to the stories of villagers there, our faces illuminated by the soft glow of a fire and the restless jungle murmuring behind us. Exhausted from the day, we would crash at no later than 9:00 in our bamboo guesthouse, nestled beneath our mosquito nets. The second night we watched the village children perform for us, attempting to sing the Thai versions of songs like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer." We then all huddled around the fire and sang some of the English versions from them, eventually becoming all of us dancing tribally around the fire.
From the villages we went to UHDP, or the Upland Holistic Development Project, spending a week there in the bunkhouse and learning how they do agricultural research and help the marginalized villages do more sustainable farming. I could bore you with long asides about agroforests and hedgerowing, but I'll just highlight the more memorable portions of being there:
1. The Pig Slaughter.
As part of our understanding of food systems and they work, we connected the full cycle of from Pig to Pork by taking part in a pig slaughter, butchering it, and cooking it, utilizing every portion of the animal to feed the entire village. That Friday, tension was thick met the pig we were going to kill the following day, petting it and thinking of giving it a name, fully embodying the American paradox of having an undying love for animals and yet possessing this carnivorial denial that they are the source of the meat we eat on a daily basis. I'm not saying that the love for animals is in any way a bad thing, but the incredible distance in which our society has allowed us to be removed from the food we eat has fostered the mental separation of pork and pig. Pig is the honey holiday ham glistening on your plate and pork is the snorting, oinking, sniffing, defecating animal that runs around in our pens. They are one in the same, the abstraction of the animal from the saran-wrapped styrofoam package of meat is easy to live with. Ignorance is both bliss and a curse, for better or for worse.
Anyway, enough of ranting. We were given a debriefing of how the whole incident was planned to go which went as follows:
1. Knock the pig out
2. Stab the pig in the heart while it's knocked out
3. Bucher and cook the pig
For whatever reason, this rundown gave us comfort, as we subconsciously pictured the pig being slain silently in its sleep. Close to accurate? We herded the pig into a cage and eight of us hauled him down to the slaughter area, a villager waiting there with a hoe. "Oh hell no. He's not going to knock him out with a hoe." I thought, slightly panicked at the thought. The door to the cage was opened, and as the pig wandered out, before we could even have time to prepare ourselves, we were met with the splintering crack of wood on bone, the pig squealing as it fell to the ground, not asleep like we had imagined, but concussed, dazed, confused. Another sickening blow of the hoe gave us five seconds to haul it onto the slaughter platform, Pi Arpat guiding the steel blade in Sam's hand into the pig's heart as some people held it down. The pig let out a hair-raising scream, roaring so loudly that its own blood curdled as it surged into the pot collecting it. I stood, unable to move, transfixed, the sound of the rhythmic blood sloshing over the knife blade the only sound I could hear. The cries of the pig were progressively more gargled as blood filled one of the lungs. Tears poured from the girls eyes. This wasn't a sacrifice. The pig did not lie his life down for us. This was violence in its purest form, the way in which people have killed animals and survived for thousands of years.
And, before we knew what had happened, it was over. The pig conceded to death, lying quietly as its eyes closed. We all looked around at each other, solemn faced, some tears still streaming silently from the girls. The Thai people, however, were stoic throughout the whole ordeal; this is their way of life, the way in which they stay alive and get their protein. Pi Arpat lied a canvas bag over it. "Go to sleep." He chuckled. We all laughed nervously, but it was enough to break the tension and the relief was almost palpable. Abiding within the paradox, that is for me when it no longer fully felt like a pig and more like pork, but later in talking to other people, that point is a huge gray scale, as some people never stopped viewing it as a pig, some didn't feel it was pork until it was butchered, and others never viewed it as a pig at all. No point is less true than another. Pig is pork, pork is pig. Sounds simple, but it's a hard concept to fully wrap one's mind around, and even a few weeks after the experience, I still sometimes wrestle with it.
Within three hours, every part of the pig was cooked and on our plates. The bones and scraps went to the dogs (who can apparently eat as many bones as they want, who knew), the organs all separated and cooked in their own respective dishes, the ears, nose, tail, and skin delicacies of their own. We ate with a greater appreciation for meat, that it's a luxury that we often take for granted. Not going to lie, and to quote Fried Green Tomatoes, it really was "the best damn barbeque I ever did ate."
***
I've been typing roughly for an hour and a half, and I'll continue this post later.
(Monkey Club, Fabric, and Warm-Up being just a few), and, amidst the laser lights, skin flapping bass, and hordes of swaying Thais with Johnnie Walker heavy on their breath, we made ourselves blatantly American, dancing wildly and screaming Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold" whenever it was played. Days were filled with class and homework, attempting to learn Thai with pounding headaches and baggy eyes. A nap and a cheeseburger from Mike's was all that was needed to rejuvenate the party spirit for the night for most though, the energy of the night revived with a quick run to 7-11 in the basement of our apartment complex.
The partying was quickly put to an end though with the arrival of our first expedition course, as our group of 33 split into two separate groups of 16 and 17, parting ways to do the tour of cities in opposite order. My group headed north towards the city of Fahng, a long van ride through a series of gorgeous jungle mountain ranges, enough sharp turns and switchbacks to make me wish I could lean out the window and vom. We proceeded to hike for two days through two remote villages tucked away in the upland hills, sweat pouring from our brows as we trekked up steep hills in the midday sun, winding through sprawling hillside corn fields and rice paddies, the views from the top more than worth the wheezing that accompanied seeing them. At night, we listened to the stories of villagers there, our faces illuminated by the soft glow of a fire and the restless jungle murmuring behind us. Exhausted from the day, we would crash at no later than 9:00 in our bamboo guesthouse, nestled beneath our mosquito nets. The second night we watched the village children perform for us, attempting to sing the Thai versions of songs like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer." We then all huddled around the fire and sang some of the English versions from them, eventually becoming all of us dancing tribally around the fire.
From the villages we went to UHDP, or the Upland Holistic Development Project, spending a week there in the bunkhouse and learning how they do agricultural research and help the marginalized villages do more sustainable farming. I could bore you with long asides about agroforests and hedgerowing, but I'll just highlight the more memorable portions of being there:
1. The Pig Slaughter.
As part of our understanding of food systems and they work, we connected the full cycle of from Pig to Pork by taking part in a pig slaughter, butchering it, and cooking it, utilizing every portion of the animal to feed the entire village. That Friday, tension was thick met the pig we were going to kill the following day, petting it and thinking of giving it a name, fully embodying the American paradox of having an undying love for animals and yet possessing this carnivorial denial that they are the source of the meat we eat on a daily basis. I'm not saying that the love for animals is in any way a bad thing, but the incredible distance in which our society has allowed us to be removed from the food we eat has fostered the mental separation of pork and pig. Pig is the honey holiday ham glistening on your plate and pork is the snorting, oinking, sniffing, defecating animal that runs around in our pens. They are one in the same, the abstraction of the animal from the saran-wrapped styrofoam package of meat is easy to live with. Ignorance is both bliss and a curse, for better or for worse.
Anyway, enough of ranting. We were given a debriefing of how the whole incident was planned to go which went as follows:
1. Knock the pig out
2. Stab the pig in the heart while it's knocked out
3. Bucher and cook the pig
For whatever reason, this rundown gave us comfort, as we subconsciously pictured the pig being slain silently in its sleep. Close to accurate? We herded the pig into a cage and eight of us hauled him down to the slaughter area, a villager waiting there with a hoe. "Oh hell no. He's not going to knock him out with a hoe." I thought, slightly panicked at the thought. The door to the cage was opened, and as the pig wandered out, before we could even have time to prepare ourselves, we were met with the splintering crack of wood on bone, the pig squealing as it fell to the ground, not asleep like we had imagined, but concussed, dazed, confused. Another sickening blow of the hoe gave us five seconds to haul it onto the slaughter platform, Pi Arpat guiding the steel blade in Sam's hand into the pig's heart as some people held it down. The pig let out a hair-raising scream, roaring so loudly that its own blood curdled as it surged into the pot collecting it. I stood, unable to move, transfixed, the sound of the rhythmic blood sloshing over the knife blade the only sound I could hear. The cries of the pig were progressively more gargled as blood filled one of the lungs. Tears poured from the girls eyes. This wasn't a sacrifice. The pig did not lie his life down for us. This was violence in its purest form, the way in which people have killed animals and survived for thousands of years.
And, before we knew what had happened, it was over. The pig conceded to death, lying quietly as its eyes closed. We all looked around at each other, solemn faced, some tears still streaming silently from the girls. The Thai people, however, were stoic throughout the whole ordeal; this is their way of life, the way in which they stay alive and get their protein. Pi Arpat lied a canvas bag over it. "Go to sleep." He chuckled. We all laughed nervously, but it was enough to break the tension and the relief was almost palpable. Abiding within the paradox, that is for me when it no longer fully felt like a pig and more like pork, but later in talking to other people, that point is a huge gray scale, as some people never stopped viewing it as a pig, some didn't feel it was pork until it was butchered, and others never viewed it as a pig at all. No point is less true than another. Pig is pork, pork is pig. Sounds simple, but it's a hard concept to fully wrap one's mind around, and even a few weeks after the experience, I still sometimes wrestle with it.
Within three hours, every part of the pig was cooked and on our plates. The bones and scraps went to the dogs (who can apparently eat as many bones as they want, who knew), the organs all separated and cooked in their own respective dishes, the ears, nose, tail, and skin delicacies of their own. We ate with a greater appreciation for meat, that it's a luxury that we often take for granted. Not going to lie, and to quote Fried Green Tomatoes, it really was "the best damn barbeque I ever did ate."
***
I've been typing roughly for an hour and a half, and I'll continue this post later.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Hard Sun.
The beauty of children is that they need no language to communicate. They're not fully socialized and bound by the cultural norms around them, their minds almost as innocent as can be. They speak in their own language, a language that's universal, one that can be understood by adults and children alike. My host cousin Ooeeng is my best friend here and we play together all the time. Last night before my final host family thank you dinner we played frog, where we hopped around on the floorboards, making sure only to hop on every second one. She followed me as I hopped around in my authentic Thai dress, consisting of burgundy fisherman's pants and a thin wool beige shirt, an elephant embroidered across the chest. I don't sweat much anymore, a remarkable feat in and of itself, considering my dad's genes have made it physically possible for me to dump any and all liquid from my body at the tip of the thermostat. We headed off to the dinner - our Suzuki needing to be jumpstarted, rattling and wheezing the entire way - and she climbed into the front seat with me. We played the "let's poke Leo's cheeks to make him into a fish" game, her squealing with delight each time she managed to make my lips pursed. "You have a big nose!" she said in Thai as she proceeded to poke it, not believing it was real. She's cute, so much so to the point that even when she farted she still was. Alright, well maybe not, but when she coyly said "fart," ("dohd."), it was. I know the word "fart" is in no way cute, just go with it.
We got to the dinner and sat down among the 175 other people there (33 students + all of their families), waiters serving us a variety of sticky rice, naam preeg awn (my favorite food here), fried chicken, and other authentic dishes. We gobbled the food, had some great awkward moments that involved authentic Thai dancing (some families taught their host students dances which were done with surprising skill - props to Britnee and Sam for getting up on stage by themselves). It was an all around good night, ending with a horrible rendition of a classic Thai song that all of us butchered, slaughtered, and posted on the meat hooks to let the flies have at. It was all in good fun though, and we presented our host mothers with traditional Thai flowers, which made some of the moms cry in the crowd. It really does feel like we've undergone some sped-up child development; when we got here we were like two-year-olds, unable to speak a lick of Thai and our mothers doting on our every word. Now it's like we're 18, moving out of the house and into the dorms, able to speak Thai (well, kind of - I'd classify it as being able to not have to rely on just hand gestures anymore) and communicate with the world.
So tomorrow, we move in, out from our host families and in with the new. Tomorrow's expected to be a fairly packed day, with Thai massages, getting situated in our rooms, and a solid welcoming party. Believe me, I'm sure it'll be a night worth blogging about.
This past week has been everything but slow-paced, hence the lack of posting. I've had so many things that I want to sit down and write about, but can't find the time to. I'll give a brief rundown of the week as a whole:
1. Four nights ago, I was absolutely worn out from the day, my eyes shutting and head bobbing as I brush my teeth for bed. It was 11:30, wayy past my bedtime, and my host father walked in and started rattling off in Thai. "What? Hospital?" I asked back, unable to catch everything he had said. He repeated it back to me, slower this time, and I understood the words, but what he meant, I had no idea. "You come with Paw and Mae to the hospital?" "Uhhh...go to bed?" I asked in Thai, pointing to my bedroom door. "Mai chai!" ("Not Right!", roughly) my host mom piped in, sticking her head through the bathroom door. It wasn't worth fighting. I threw on some athletic shorts and an undershirt and, half asleep, piled into the car with the two of them. We whizzed for a half-hour past rural rice fields, the crickets chirping softly into the black night, thoughts of me calling Ajaan at two in the morning to say that my family had abandoned me in Burma running fresh through my mind. We finally pulled into the hospital in which my parents both work, and my mom went inside, apparently manning the nurse night shift. My paw waved me out of the car and into the security booth, which turns out he is the head of for the hospital. After he milled around with some papers, he waved me back to the car and we drove home. Why the hell I went with them, I still don't know. Maybe my paw has narcolepsy. That's probably a legit theory because he spontaneously falls asleep on the living room floor every day, sitting upright with his legs crossed.
2. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but geckos line the walls here. Honestly, everywhere you turn there's a gecko skittering up the wall, trying to chase after some mosquito or fly. They get manage to get everywhere you could possibly imagine. I have two of them that come to join me in the shower every morning and a tail-less one that habitually lives in my room - I named him Ned. I suppose it's better than centipedes or millipedes, the latter of which decided to join me as well in the shower a few days ago. They have other things here too, some of which I got to know really personally:
3. Again, two nights ago, it was late at night, and I was running on empty. I managed to retire witthout having any spontaneous field trips to the hospital, and slapped the light off as I lied down on my mattress. I had the fan blowing on high, and actually was slightly cold for once, and so I grabbed my Mickey Mouse comforter and pulled it up over me. With it though, came something slithering, slimy, and straight up my boxer shorts. I jumped no less than eight feet, literally bounding to the top of my desk as it fell out into my pitch black room, my heart pounding with adrenaline as I was in shock at the prospect that my boys were in the direct line of fire of a snake. I flicked on the lights. It was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the room, looking under my mattress, sheets, pillow, until I spotted a black, slick tail poking out from my backpack. I kicked my bag over and it came skittering out: it was a jet black lizard with yellow stripes, slimy as can be and just shy of a foot long. Now I, not the most pleased with his surprise entrance into my life, chased him around the room, specific choice words echoing out of my window into the night. I chased him into my dresser, over of my clothes, under my mattress, and finally out of my room, his body just barely escaping beneath the crack in my door. If there's ever been any time in my life where I've actually come close to shitting my pants, this was it.
We got to the dinner and sat down among the 175 other people there (33 students + all of their families), waiters serving us a variety of sticky rice, naam preeg awn (my favorite food here), fried chicken, and other authentic dishes. We gobbled the food, had some great awkward moments that involved authentic Thai dancing (some families taught their host students dances which were done with surprising skill - props to Britnee and Sam for getting up on stage by themselves). It was an all around good night, ending with a horrible rendition of a classic Thai song that all of us butchered, slaughtered, and posted on the meat hooks to let the flies have at. It was all in good fun though, and we presented our host mothers with traditional Thai flowers, which made some of the moms cry in the crowd. It really does feel like we've undergone some sped-up child development; when we got here we were like two-year-olds, unable to speak a lick of Thai and our mothers doting on our every word. Now it's like we're 18, moving out of the house and into the dorms, able to speak Thai (well, kind of - I'd classify it as being able to not have to rely on just hand gestures anymore) and communicate with the world.
So tomorrow, we move in, out from our host families and in with the new. Tomorrow's expected to be a fairly packed day, with Thai massages, getting situated in our rooms, and a solid welcoming party. Believe me, I'm sure it'll be a night worth blogging about.
This past week has been everything but slow-paced, hence the lack of posting. I've had so many things that I want to sit down and write about, but can't find the time to. I'll give a brief rundown of the week as a whole:
1. Four nights ago, I was absolutely worn out from the day, my eyes shutting and head bobbing as I brush my teeth for bed. It was 11:30, wayy past my bedtime, and my host father walked in and started rattling off in Thai. "What? Hospital?" I asked back, unable to catch everything he had said. He repeated it back to me, slower this time, and I understood the words, but what he meant, I had no idea. "You come with Paw and Mae to the hospital?" "Uhhh...go to bed?" I asked in Thai, pointing to my bedroom door. "Mai chai!" ("Not Right!", roughly) my host mom piped in, sticking her head through the bathroom door. It wasn't worth fighting. I threw on some athletic shorts and an undershirt and, half asleep, piled into the car with the two of them. We whizzed for a half-hour past rural rice fields, the crickets chirping softly into the black night, thoughts of me calling Ajaan at two in the morning to say that my family had abandoned me in Burma running fresh through my mind. We finally pulled into the hospital in which my parents both work, and my mom went inside, apparently manning the nurse night shift. My paw waved me out of the car and into the security booth, which turns out he is the head of for the hospital. After he milled around with some papers, he waved me back to the car and we drove home. Why the hell I went with them, I still don't know. Maybe my paw has narcolepsy. That's probably a legit theory because he spontaneously falls asleep on the living room floor every day, sitting upright with his legs crossed.
2. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but geckos line the walls here. Honestly, everywhere you turn there's a gecko skittering up the wall, trying to chase after some mosquito or fly. They get manage to get everywhere you could possibly imagine. I have two of them that come to join me in the shower every morning and a tail-less one that habitually lives in my room - I named him Ned. I suppose it's better than centipedes or millipedes, the latter of which decided to join me as well in the shower a few days ago. They have other things here too, some of which I got to know really personally:
3. Again, two nights ago, it was late at night, and I was running on empty. I managed to retire witthout having any spontaneous field trips to the hospital, and slapped the light off as I lied down on my mattress. I had the fan blowing on high, and actually was slightly cold for once, and so I grabbed my Mickey Mouse comforter and pulled it up over me. With it though, came something slithering, slimy, and straight up my boxer shorts. I jumped no less than eight feet, literally bounding to the top of my desk as it fell out into my pitch black room, my heart pounding with adrenaline as I was in shock at the prospect that my boys were in the direct line of fire of a snake. I flicked on the lights. It was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the room, looking under my mattress, sheets, pillow, until I spotted a black, slick tail poking out from my backpack. I kicked my bag over and it came skittering out: it was a jet black lizard with yellow stripes, slimy as can be and just shy of a foot long. Now I, not the most pleased with his surprise entrance into my life, chased him around the room, specific choice words echoing out of my window into the night. I chased him into my dresser, over of my clothes, under my mattress, and finally out of my room, his body just barely escaping beneath the crack in my door. If there's ever been any time in my life where I've actually come close to shitting my pants, this was it.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Bababobo
Bob Barker apparently never had time to come to Thailand. Stray cats and dogs roam the streets in hordes, running amok among the swerving cars as they spew exhaust into the already pollution-thick air. They appear everywhere, living in the dingy, dusty alleyways, drinking from puddles the color of brown sugar. It's sad, but often humor can be found in it, espeically when one rounds a corner, finding a sea of dogs humping each other. Little known fact: dogs get stuck after copulating. The concept has presented several very interesting conversations, particularly with application to humans. I honestly don't know why I'm trying to be politically correct right now; Dogs get stuck on each other after sex. It's hilarious. Martha continually tells of how her mother runs around, yelling "Saleet! Saleet!" while hitting the dogs with a newspaper trying to get them to stop from mounting each other. "Saleet" is not a Thai word; I think you can figure out what it is.
We only have one more week with our host families before we all move out and into the dorms. There seems to be a much deeper appreciation for family here in Thailand than in the US. A week ago, my Ajaan and the coordinator of our school came and visited my house, doing a routine checkup that they carry out with all of the families and students. They babbled in some Northern Thai, a dialect that I only know one word of (that word being "lum dee," or delicious), and I sat there and smiled politely, trying to understand the context of their conversation strictly from their expressions and gestures, failing miserably. Suddenly, tears started rolling down my mother's face, a small smile cracked as tears ran over its corners. Slightly alarmed, I asked my host brother what was up. "She think of you like her son, like a baby that can't speak Thai, and now that you can speak Thai it's like you're older and moving out of the house."
The photo attached to this blog post was a raggedy teddy bear I found on the side of the road when I went to go visit my host Aunt. I snapped it quickly, not realizing that my camera was still in black and white mode, and it turned out to be one of the most depressing photos ever. I kind of like it, though.
We only have one more week with our host families before we all move out and into the dorms. There seems to be a much deeper appreciation for family here in Thailand than in the US. A week ago, my Ajaan and the coordinator of our school came and visited my house, doing a routine checkup that they carry out with all of the families and students. They babbled in some Northern Thai, a dialect that I only know one word of (that word being "lum dee," or delicious), and I sat there and smiled politely, trying to understand the context of their conversation strictly from their expressions and gestures, failing miserably. Suddenly, tears started rolling down my mother's face, a small smile cracked as tears ran over its corners. Slightly alarmed, I asked my host brother what was up. "She think of you like her son, like a baby that can't speak Thai, and now that you can speak Thai it's like you're older and moving out of the house."
The photo attached to this blog post was a raggedy teddy bear I found on the side of the road when I went to go visit my host Aunt. I snapped it quickly, not realizing that my camera was still in black and white mode, and it turned out to be one of the most depressing photos ever. I kind of like it, though.
Monday, September 14, 2009
My Heart Will Go On, Asian Karaoke Rendition
My Heart Will Go On, Asian Karaoke Rendition
Originally uploaded by Leo III
Every day after school, I ride home in my host brother's rickety white Suzuki, the thumping bass from the subwoofer in the trunk rattling the dashboard as we weave in and out of traffic on the left side of the road, dodging the swarms of erratic motorcycles that own the Chiang Mai streets. When I get home I usually do homework under the ceiling fan to stay cool until dinner, during which I wolf down some unknown concoction of sticky rice and meat - I still don't know half of what I'm eating after three weeks; I'm not sure I want to know - and then work on more homework with my mother until "Love Trail, Sin Trail" comes on at 9:00, during which I iron my clothes. By that point in the night, I'm exhausted, and usually just decide to retire to bed after having talked to Sam (my girlfriend) for a while via skype.
However, that schedule only applies Monday through Thursday and makes it sound like there is little variation in my days. Actually, that summation is probably borderline of being a lie, for every day here is almost impossible to predict. After school on Thursday, my host mother and father picked Claire and I up, randomly deciding that they were going to take us to my Aunt's house, whom I had never met previously. Now in Thailand, it's common for households to own small businesses that aren't defined as "businesses" in the sense we know them as. Usually they just consist of knick-knack shops that are attached to the side of their homes, selling anything from groceries to fauna and usually operate without paying taxes (illegally, of course, but the legal system here is not what it is at home - I'll get to that later). My family owns an internet cafe across the street that has about 8 computers, all of which are filled with Thai children on a 24/7 basis, glued to the screen, playing none other than "World of Warcraft." We rumble into my Aunt's compound, and through the scratched windshield I can see people in bleach white clothes, mouthes covered with surgical masks . . . making muffins. Claire and I look at each other quizically, not really understanding why the hell we're here. "Come, come!" my father says in Thai, waving for us to follow him. He leads us over to a concrete pit with a shoddily erected tin roof, and at the bottom are about 500 frogs, sloshing in the algae-ridden water as they jump on top of each other. My dad waves a woman from the muffin factory over and she pulls out a giant tub of pelleted frog diet, throwing cup after cup in, causing the frogs to go absolutely berserk as they scrambled for every last piece. "You like frahg?" He asked, a huge smile strewn across his face. "Chai kraab," I replied, returning the smile. We watched the frogs for a little bit and then as we left, I realized that the compound was not only a joint muffin/frog leg selling operation, but beneath her house was a shop selling fauna. Wouldn't be my choice for industry, but hey, someone has to do it.
I completely forgot a story from the weekend retreat. After the swimming assessment, a group of us were standing by this spirit shrine, watching as hordes upon hordes of ants descended upon the offering of food and whiskey (a spirit's gotta get his drink on too, I guess). Pi Ben came over and was telling us about the spirit shrines and how we should respect them, emphasizing that we shouldn't stand too close to them, "like Farrangotang over there," he said, pointing at me standing no less than two feet away from it, still oogling at the swarm of ants. In Thai culture, the word "Farrang" is slang for a foreigner, the name derived from a popular type of fruit the locals eat. Obviously, the 'otang came from orangutaun, a reference to my tall, lanky self. The name has stuck slightly, and Martha now calls me it all the time. That’s okay though, because seeing that the Thai can’t say an “arth” sound, her name is just Maa-taa and I don’t let her live it down.
We’re all still learning to tread carefully in the dangerous world of a tonal language. Today in class, Martha asked “Koon chawb geen kee…” pausing as she tried to figure out the next word. Our Ajaan broke out in laughter, our class confused as to what was so funny. “Kee with falling tone mean manure!” The phrase she was asking was “How much do you eat?” which, as it stood was instead “You like to eat shit?” I made a similar mistake later as well, as I went to high-five Kyle and say “Awesome!” in Thai, but just ended up yelling the Thai word for “Plate!” Epic language failures were the theme of today.
Another theme of this past weekend was my family’s desire to show me a variety of retirement parties, as I have been to three in the past four days. First off, let me say (having just gotten back from one), damn the Japanese for inventing karaoke. In America, we find karaoke fun for an hour, maybe two if you’re pushing it, but tonight after four and a half straight hours of Thai karaoke, I was praying that my 47th glass of water would induce hyponatremia and I would have to leave seizing on a stretcher. Unfortunately, its only effect was causing me to have to piss like a racehorse. In the middle of the marathon, my mother passed me a note, the letters “Ama” already drawn on it. “Write song name!” she said to me in Thai, and so, logically thinking that she meant finish the song name, I wrote “Amazing Grace.” Good idea? Nay. She grabbed the note and ran up to the front of the room and scrolled through the karaoke machine, slapping the microphone triumphantly in my hand when she finally found it. “Sing!” she proclaimed. Oh good. I thought. I get to sing Amazing Grace for these 25 high-status Thai people. For those who have never heard me sing, it’s not a far cry from an asthmatic honking goose who’s pharynx has tangoed with far too many cigarettes. Not wanting to offend them, however, I was treated to the wondrous extended edition of Amazing Grace, and six and a half arduous minutes later, I was surprisingly met with applause.
Now while karaoke was a unifying theme for all three of the parties I went to, it was about the only unifying theme, aside from the copious amount of whole fried fish. The one I attended to on Friday was a free-for-all karaoke theme, with person after person trying their hand at Thai songs for another three hours. A great comedic relief was met with a great rendition of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” I knew words wouldn’t be able to do it justice, so I took a video that you all can enjoy above.
Now the retirement party I attended on Sunday was quite possibly the most interesting of three. As I walked into the banquet hall, no less than 300 pairs of eyes were turned and fixed on me, the words tall foreigner (soong farrang) poking from the dull murmur of the crowd as I followed my father. I took my seat at the VIP table (apparently my host dad is well connected), front and center of the entire crowd, and I took a seat facing forward, sandwiched to my mother on my left and father on my right. We dug into the food and watched the ceremony unfold. Overall, it was very dignified, presentable, and well put together, except when my family failed to understand why I was close to tears when they played the Star Wars Imperial Death March and Rocky theme song as the professors received their awards. I used the word dignified deliberately, as the entertainment that followed was anything but. As soon as the Ajaan left the stage, it was seized by coke-bottle women, singing Thai pop songs and gyrating their hips seductively, scantily clad being a conservative term for their dress. A huge cultural paradox began to form in my mind, as I kept iterating “What the hell? This is a collegiate function. . .for old people.” It was furthered by the amount of men getting even more plastered off of whiskey and soda, air-thrusting the exotic dancers as they stumbled around drunkenly in front of the stage, the dancers returning the motion, the crowd squealing in laughter and approval. I looked to my mother for an answer and found none in the smile across her face, attentively sitting with her legs crossed and laughing at each drunken antic. “Sanook mai?” I asked her, seeing if she really enjoying herself. “Mai sanook. I no like.” What?! Then why are we still watching? Over the next hour, I reached a new personal record for awkwardness, rating about a 12.5 on a 1-10 scale, particularly exacerbated by one of the drunken men grabbing my arm, insisting that I shove some of my American money in her bra and/or thong (I declined, but he and several other men offered their own money in my stead), or when my host father, having the time of his life, 5 or 6 glasses of whiskey deep, leaned over and asked me, “Sexy, yah?” In short, specific expletive-ridden phrases are about the only thing adequate to describe the confusion was coursing through my mind when we finally decided to leave around 10:30. Yes, welcome to Thailand.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Thailand Zone?
Laughter, I've found, is medicine for the soul. When times are hard here, all I can do is laugh, most of the time at myself. Or, in the case of right now, laughing at my father as he tries to sing John Mayer's cover of "Free Fallin'," sounding uncannily like an arfing seal. I have to laugh as I still try to shed cultural norms that have been so deeply ingrained in me. The first example that comes to mind is that in America, we say thank you for everything, even if a person is simply doing the job they're required to do. Thank you (kawb koon kraab) carries a lot more weight here and is reserved only for tasks that were dones out of spontaneous courtesy and not requirement; my family laughs at me a lot because I say thank you when my brother drives me to school, for making me dinner, or for giving me the Johnson's lotion that helps pacify my mosquito-molested feet. Particularly after a heavy rain, mosquitoes like to drift around the house absentmindedly, brought in on the draft through an open door, biting me when I sleep or falling victim to my new-found best friend: the electrical bug-zapping tennis racquet that spits and sizzles when it meets one.
Another cultural difference that I've found hard to shed is the act of sighing. To us, a sigh is purely contextual. You can sigh when you're full, if you're tired, if you're out of breath . . . whatever it is, we have about 100 different ways to sigh. Here in Thailand, the only time someone sighs is when they're taking on a burdensome task, so whenever I sigh after dinner, after being stuffed to the brim with fried pork, sticky rice, and a slurry of insects, it comes off like I'm saying "Jesus...do I have to do this?" My family points it out every time, and all I can do is laugh.
I also get my chance to laugh while I try to teach Mae Noi English, the two of us syllabically stuttering through phrases like "Organizational Structure of Multinational Enterprise." Why the hell she's learning about overseas corporate management, I have no idea. I now understand why English is such a hard language to master; if you haven't grown up with it, learning all the irregular conjugation rules, massive amounts of slang we use from day to day, contractions, and unnatural mouth movements to form letters like L, X, Z, and S is almost an impossible task.
Miraculously, Thai culture is slowly becoming familiar to me. I'm no longer hypersensitive to everything around me; I don't stop to stare at a pile of elephant shit on the side of the road as if it's some sort amazing novelty, nor do I oogle at the foreign glyphs on the gas station sign. I can now read them, at least phonetically, and occasionally a triumph will occur when I can read a random word somewhere and know what it means.
Speaking of elephants, I got home from school the other day, and as I stepped out of the car, my host parents started yelling "Chaang! Chaang!," pointing wildly across the street. I thought they were pulling my leg, as Chaang is Thai for elephant, but as I turned around, there was a man, walking his baby elephant through the neighborhood as if it were a dog. I paid 20 baht for some celery sticks, and one by one, its long trunk reached out and wrapped around them with surprising force, tossing them in his mouth to be gobbled down. I tried to buy some time for my host father (Boon-Seumm) by breaking the celery sticks in half as he struggled with my camera, the elephant's deep round eyes following me attentively. I gave it the first half, pausing as it held it in its trunk. It let out a trumpet so loud I jumped about eight feet in the air, as if it was saying "You bitch. Give me the other half." They're terribly smart...I might be doing a month-long independent project with them at a conservation center at the end of my time here. Here's to hoping.
So anyway, enough with the theme following and asides about elephants. I apologize it's taken so long to update since my last post. The 33 of us were up in Northern Thailand for a weekend retreat.
On Friday morning at 7 AM, we piled, gear and all, into some swanky-ass silver vans and trucked north of Chiang Mai to a lake to take a swimming assessment. Now normally, a swimming assessment would consist of swimming 100 yards around some buoys, with camp kids floundering in their water weenies as you swam by, splashing you as you inhale the Giardia-infested water. Not so much the case with this swim test, except for possibly the Giardia, along with a plethora of other parasites. We swam roughly 400 meters, the 100 degree heat of the water making it feel like a viscous sludge, dragging heavily against me as my muscles made discombobulated attempts to synchronize themselves in a freestyle motion and pull me out to the buoy and back, followed by treading water for 15 minutes. We all sluggishly crawled out of the water, exhausted, 10:30 AM reading on our watches. We threw the frisbee around for a few hours, followed We then ate lunch, which consisted of a whole fish that had been dropped in boiling oil and shrimp, very much alive and jumping, that we got to perform genocide on with concentrated lemon juice.
After lunch, we piled back into the vans and trekked north about an hour to Mo Fak National Park, the potholes tossing us around like ragdolls as the engine groaned up the steep mountain side. After unpacking into our hospital ward style bunkhouses, six guys and I decided to go exploring downstream. Not more than 50 meters in did we find a waterfall, so picturesque that it was like something straight out of The Jungle Book. We swung from the vines like Mogli, our toes skimming over the water's surface before we let go and came crashing down, soaking wet.
The next day we went to the waterfall and got to swim in it for a while. I'm not going to try and describe it so I'll wait for pictures to get posted later.
Another cultural difference that I've found hard to shed is the act of sighing. To us, a sigh is purely contextual. You can sigh when you're full, if you're tired, if you're out of breath . . . whatever it is, we have about 100 different ways to sigh. Here in Thailand, the only time someone sighs is when they're taking on a burdensome task, so whenever I sigh after dinner, after being stuffed to the brim with fried pork, sticky rice, and a slurry of insects, it comes off like I'm saying "Jesus...do I have to do this?" My family points it out every time, and all I can do is laugh.
I also get my chance to laugh while I try to teach Mae Noi English, the two of us syllabically stuttering through phrases like "Organizational Structure of Multinational Enterprise." Why the hell she's learning about overseas corporate management, I have no idea. I now understand why English is such a hard language to master; if you haven't grown up with it, learning all the irregular conjugation rules, massive amounts of slang we use from day to day, contractions, and unnatural mouth movements to form letters like L, X, Z, and S is almost an impossible task.
Miraculously, Thai culture is slowly becoming familiar to me. I'm no longer hypersensitive to everything around me; I don't stop to stare at a pile of elephant shit on the side of the road as if it's some sort amazing novelty, nor do I oogle at the foreign glyphs on the gas station sign. I can now read them, at least phonetically, and occasionally a triumph will occur when I can read a random word somewhere and know what it means.
Speaking of elephants, I got home from school the other day, and as I stepped out of the car, my host parents started yelling "Chaang! Chaang!," pointing wildly across the street. I thought they were pulling my leg, as Chaang is Thai for elephant, but as I turned around, there was a man, walking his baby elephant through the neighborhood as if it were a dog. I paid 20 baht for some celery sticks, and one by one, its long trunk reached out and wrapped around them with surprising force, tossing them in his mouth to be gobbled down. I tried to buy some time for my host father (Boon-Seumm) by breaking the celery sticks in half as he struggled with my camera, the elephant's deep round eyes following me attentively. I gave it the first half, pausing as it held it in its trunk. It let out a trumpet so loud I jumped about eight feet in the air, as if it was saying "You bitch. Give me the other half." They're terribly smart...I might be doing a month-long independent project with them at a conservation center at the end of my time here. Here's to hoping.
So anyway, enough with the theme following and asides about elephants. I apologize it's taken so long to update since my last post. The 33 of us were up in Northern Thailand for a weekend retreat.
On Friday morning at 7 AM, we piled, gear and all, into some swanky-ass silver vans and trucked north of Chiang Mai to a lake to take a swimming assessment. Now normally, a swimming assessment would consist of swimming 100 yards around some buoys, with camp kids floundering in their water weenies as you swam by, splashing you as you inhale the Giardia-infested water. Not so much the case with this swim test, except for possibly the Giardia, along with a plethora of other parasites. We swam roughly 400 meters, the 100 degree heat of the water making it feel like a viscous sludge, dragging heavily against me as my muscles made discombobulated attempts to synchronize themselves in a freestyle motion and pull me out to the buoy and back, followed by treading water for 15 minutes. We all sluggishly crawled out of the water, exhausted, 10:30 AM reading on our watches. We threw the frisbee around for a few hours, followed We then ate lunch, which consisted of a whole fish that had been dropped in boiling oil and shrimp, very much alive and jumping, that we got to perform genocide on with concentrated lemon juice.
After lunch, we piled back into the vans and trekked north about an hour to Mo Fak National Park, the potholes tossing us around like ragdolls as the engine groaned up the steep mountain side. After unpacking into our hospital ward style bunkhouses, six guys and I decided to go exploring downstream. Not more than 50 meters in did we find a waterfall, so picturesque that it was like something straight out of The Jungle Book. We swung from the vines like Mogli, our toes skimming over the water's surface before we let go and came crashing down, soaking wet.
The next day we went to the waterfall and got to swim in it for a while. I'm not going to try and describe it so I'll wait for pictures to get posted later.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Remember to Look Down
Making mistakes here is a part-time job. If it paid well, I'd be rolling in a steady bankroll.
Two days ago my host mother (Mae Noi) asked to see a picture of my girlfriend, and so I pulled up a picture of the two of us on my computer. "Ohh! Boot-tee-full," she said with the charismatic Thai smile, "How ole?" Still wrestling with Thai numbers, I thought to myself, Okay she's 21 so I have to say "sip-et" and not "sip-nyeung." "Sip-et." I said confidently, only to recieve what was quite possibly the most disgusted look I've ever seen from everyone around me. Oh shit. Sip-et is 11! "Oh no no! Yee-sip-et! Yee-sip-et!" Again, they looked at me quizically, counting out on their fingers the way up to nine. I was confused. What's so weird about a two year age difference? I wondered. "Nine years difference?" my host brother Thom asked, trying to clarify. Wait. What? Nine years? Ohhh they thought I said yee-sip-paedt (28). "No no...yee-sip-et!" I said with particular emphasis on the et, and finally they got it. Only in my failed attempts at Thai could I go from being a pedophile to dating a cougar in two seconds flat.
I've been to two night markets in the past two nights, people milling about from stand to stand, the smell of fried squid and freshly squeezed sap-ah-rhot seeping through the crowd. Here in Thailand, much like Japan, putting a smattering of English words on a shirt is hip, regardless if there is any true meaning behind it. Sometimes I don't think that the people truly know what they're wearing, although I suppose American shirts with foreign script probably are about the equivalent. I bought matching shirts with my host brother, that read "Latino Groove Work Out" in big letters, mine lime green and his neon yellow. Although, I could've opted for the VIRGINS WANTED shirt, but I decided declaring being a manwhore wasn't really on my to-do list. Now with my height, coupled with the contant barrage of new stimuli, I rarely, if ever look at the ground. Right after I bought it, I turned around and took one step, feeling the ground squish slightly beneath my feet. I looked down, my Chaco having made a perfect shoe imprint into a now squashed pile of shit. Everyone in sight laughed at me, and I couldn't help but laugh...I was that American kid that stepped in dog shit.
Two days ago my host mother (Mae Noi) asked to see a picture of my girlfriend, and so I pulled up a picture of the two of us on my computer. "Ohh! Boot-tee-full," she said with the charismatic Thai smile, "How ole?" Still wrestling with Thai numbers, I thought to myself, Okay she's 21 so I have to say "sip-et" and not "sip-nyeung." "Sip-et." I said confidently, only to recieve what was quite possibly the most disgusted look I've ever seen from everyone around me. Oh shit. Sip-et is 11! "Oh no no! Yee-sip-et! Yee-sip-et!" Again, they looked at me quizically, counting out on their fingers the way up to nine. I was confused. What's so weird about a two year age difference? I wondered. "Nine years difference?" my host brother Thom asked, trying to clarify. Wait. What? Nine years? Ohhh they thought I said yee-sip-paedt (28). "No no...yee-sip-et!" I said with particular emphasis on the et, and finally they got it. Only in my failed attempts at Thai could I go from being a pedophile to dating a cougar in two seconds flat.
I've been to two night markets in the past two nights, people milling about from stand to stand, the smell of fried squid and freshly squeezed sap-ah-rhot seeping through the crowd. Here in Thailand, much like Japan, putting a smattering of English words on a shirt is hip, regardless if there is any true meaning behind it. Sometimes I don't think that the people truly know what they're wearing, although I suppose American shirts with foreign script probably are about the equivalent. I bought matching shirts with my host brother, that read "Latino Groove Work Out" in big letters, mine lime green and his neon yellow. Although, I could've opted for the VIRGINS WANTED shirt, but I decided declaring being a manwhore wasn't really on my to-do list. Now with my height, coupled with the contant barrage of new stimuli, I rarely, if ever look at the ground. Right after I bought it, I turned around and took one step, feeling the ground squish slightly beneath my feet. I looked down, my Chaco having made a perfect shoe imprint into a now squashed pile of shit. Everyone in sight laughed at me, and I couldn't help but laugh...I was that American kid that stepped in dog shit.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Welcome to the Jungle
Life would be boring without mishaps. If everything went according to plan, there would be no stories to tell, no adventures to be had, no mistakes to be made. Some of the beauty of life lies in the unplanned anarchy that takes over our lives now and then, burning our expectations, and from the ashes growing something surprising, something beautiful. As a foreigner in Thailand, anarchy is King, and I love it.
Every Friday our class has what has been cheesily dubbed “Fantastic Fun Fridays,” where we all pack up and head on a trip somewhere. In the case of this past Friday, we headed up to Crazy Horse Buttress to go rock climbing and spelunking. After taking the hour-long Rhot Dhang (the sketchy-ass red Suzuki pickup taxi) ride, we all piled out and split into our groups, mine heading off for the rock climbing portion first. I’ll be honest. This is the point in which language fails to convey adequate meaning, in that it is impossible to describe exactly how beautiful and mesmerizing the bamboo jungle was. One point I can accurately convey though with words: it was hot as hell. As a novice climber, climbing up the hundred foot jagged rock faces in approximately 110% humidity was a nothing short of a workout; adrenaline coursed through my every vein as my hands held on for dear life, trembling violently across the razor-sharp holds, slicing my hands in a few places. My pores were dilated as wide as they would open, pumping gallons upon gallons of sweat, trying to cool my overheated body down and not stopping short of sweating like a whore in church (thank my dad for that wonderful phrase). After drenching ourselves (having one of the best times ever doing it, might I add) we trekked up the mountain, everyone wheezing when we finally got to the top; even our guide had to put his hands on his knees and take a break. We squeezed into a tiny hole in the side of the mountain - tiny by my 6’4” standards at least – and proceeded to explore the internal cave system. Again, words nor pictures do it justice, although I did manage to finally find that Flickr lets me download my photos at a snail’s pace (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41999588@N08/). We ziplined across this deep crevice to a wall, hooked into a rappelling system, and rappelled the 120 feet down. It was unbelievable. Maybe when the onslaught of pictures are posted on facebook, I’ll try and upload some to give some semblance to how gorgeous it was.
One shower, meal, and thrashed pair of running shoes later, I was exhausted and passed out in bed for 12 hours until 9 the next morning. Saturday was spent doing laundry, reviving my shoes and clothes from the crypt. I washed my underwear by hand, because in Thai culture, it is forbidden to wash your clothes with your socks and underwear because they are seen as impure and personal belongings. I’ve actually become fairly domestic, seeing that I iron my shirt and pants for school every night in front of a rousing episode of “Love Trail, Sin Trail,” a melodramatic Thai soap opera that my family loves to watch while taking part in the ritualistic nightly ironing process. The show, at least as much as I can understand, follows a Thai village 1000 years ago and a bunch of women who try to poison, stab, or use a myriad of different ways to kill each other because they all want the same man. Kind of like a Thai version of Grey’s Anatomy, but slightly more violent and everyone’s pregnant.
But I digress. Later in the day, I asked my host brother what he was up to later that night.
“…Up to later tonight?” He asked, confused. We don’t realize it, but we have about no less that 100 different ways of greeting each other, especially if we use slang. After spending quite a while explaining what that meant, he asked,
“You want to go to the pub with me later?”
Now he explicitly said pub. Since I had had a fairly boring day, I decided why the hell not. I threw on a polo and he suggested I wear some jeans. Either it’s getting cooler, or I’m getting used to the sweltering temperatures, because I didn’t sweat the whole night. We drove an hour in some unknown direction and pulled up outside of a building, the neon yellow words “Monkey Club” glowing over top of it.
“Uhh…Thom…are we going there?”
“Yeah! It’s like my second home!”
I laughed. Clearly, there was a slight language barrier, and after explaining the difference between a Pub and a Club, we walked inside, people packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines. The smell of Johnnie Walker whiskey wafted above the crowd as they awkwardly swayed to the live band playing on stage and watched the Liverpool/Bolton game on the screens above the dance floor. I got more looks than Big Bertha at the freak show as I towered over the people, most of which who were about 5’6”. Now the Thai night out is different from our interpretation of a night out. Every group gets a small high round table and generally orders a fifth of whiskey, the type of whiskey denoting your status within the club. Most college-age people were drinking 100 Pipers or Johnnie Walker, so I’m assuming that’s the low end of the social totem pole. Our table got a fifth of Johnnie, and after that fifth, in addition to three 40’s of Heineken, our group was pretty relaxed to say the least. After the live band was finished, a DJ came in and got the place going with American music, mostly rap, although they slipped in Green Day’s “Wake me up when September Ends” randomly. We weren’t standing all that close to the speakers, yet I could feel my skin flapping from the bone-jarring bass, unable to hear anything other than the music as Thom’s friends tried to talk to me in broken English. I think I toasted no less than 72 different things, most of them being to my favorite Futbol team, which I randomly decided was Chelsea because it was the first team that came to mind, although it’s really Bolton or AC Milan.
It was an epic night, to say the least.
Just as a side note, I ususally am writing these posts when I'm horrendously tired, so I apologize if some of my sentences make absolutely no sense or my grammar is off. Just to clarify if you're staring at the computer screen trying to figure out what the hell I'm trying to say.
Every Friday our class has what has been cheesily dubbed “Fantastic Fun Fridays,” where we all pack up and head on a trip somewhere. In the case of this past Friday, we headed up to Crazy Horse Buttress to go rock climbing and spelunking. After taking the hour-long Rhot Dhang (the sketchy-ass red Suzuki pickup taxi) ride, we all piled out and split into our groups, mine heading off for the rock climbing portion first. I’ll be honest. This is the point in which language fails to convey adequate meaning, in that it is impossible to describe exactly how beautiful and mesmerizing the bamboo jungle was. One point I can accurately convey though with words: it was hot as hell. As a novice climber, climbing up the hundred foot jagged rock faces in approximately 110% humidity was a nothing short of a workout; adrenaline coursed through my every vein as my hands held on for dear life, trembling violently across the razor-sharp holds, slicing my hands in a few places. My pores were dilated as wide as they would open, pumping gallons upon gallons of sweat, trying to cool my overheated body down and not stopping short of sweating like a whore in church (thank my dad for that wonderful phrase). After drenching ourselves (having one of the best times ever doing it, might I add) we trekked up the mountain, everyone wheezing when we finally got to the top; even our guide had to put his hands on his knees and take a break. We squeezed into a tiny hole in the side of the mountain - tiny by my 6’4” standards at least – and proceeded to explore the internal cave system. Again, words nor pictures do it justice, although I did manage to finally find that Flickr lets me download my photos at a snail’s pace (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41999588@N08/). We ziplined across this deep crevice to a wall, hooked into a rappelling system, and rappelled the 120 feet down. It was unbelievable. Maybe when the onslaught of pictures are posted on facebook, I’ll try and upload some to give some semblance to how gorgeous it was.
One shower, meal, and thrashed pair of running shoes later, I was exhausted and passed out in bed for 12 hours until 9 the next morning. Saturday was spent doing laundry, reviving my shoes and clothes from the crypt. I washed my underwear by hand, because in Thai culture, it is forbidden to wash your clothes with your socks and underwear because they are seen as impure and personal belongings. I’ve actually become fairly domestic, seeing that I iron my shirt and pants for school every night in front of a rousing episode of “Love Trail, Sin Trail,” a melodramatic Thai soap opera that my family loves to watch while taking part in the ritualistic nightly ironing process. The show, at least as much as I can understand, follows a Thai village 1000 years ago and a bunch of women who try to poison, stab, or use a myriad of different ways to kill each other because they all want the same man. Kind of like a Thai version of Grey’s Anatomy, but slightly more violent and everyone’s pregnant.
But I digress. Later in the day, I asked my host brother what he was up to later that night.
“…Up to later tonight?” He asked, confused. We don’t realize it, but we have about no less that 100 different ways of greeting each other, especially if we use slang. After spending quite a while explaining what that meant, he asked,
“You want to go to the pub with me later?”
Now he explicitly said pub. Since I had had a fairly boring day, I decided why the hell not. I threw on a polo and he suggested I wear some jeans. Either it’s getting cooler, or I’m getting used to the sweltering temperatures, because I didn’t sweat the whole night. We drove an hour in some unknown direction and pulled up outside of a building, the neon yellow words “Monkey Club” glowing over top of it.
“Uhh…Thom…are we going there?”
“Yeah! It’s like my second home!”
I laughed. Clearly, there was a slight language barrier, and after explaining the difference between a Pub and a Club, we walked inside, people packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines. The smell of Johnnie Walker whiskey wafted above the crowd as they awkwardly swayed to the live band playing on stage and watched the Liverpool/Bolton game on the screens above the dance floor. I got more looks than Big Bertha at the freak show as I towered over the people, most of which who were about 5’6”. Now the Thai night out is different from our interpretation of a night out. Every group gets a small high round table and generally orders a fifth of whiskey, the type of whiskey denoting your status within the club. Most college-age people were drinking 100 Pipers or Johnnie Walker, so I’m assuming that’s the low end of the social totem pole. Our table got a fifth of Johnnie, and after that fifth, in addition to three 40’s of Heineken, our group was pretty relaxed to say the least. After the live band was finished, a DJ came in and got the place going with American music, mostly rap, although they slipped in Green Day’s “Wake me up when September Ends” randomly. We weren’t standing all that close to the speakers, yet I could feel my skin flapping from the bone-jarring bass, unable to hear anything other than the music as Thom’s friends tried to talk to me in broken English. I think I toasted no less than 72 different things, most of them being to my favorite Futbol team, which I randomly decided was Chelsea because it was the first team that came to mind, although it’s really Bolton or AC Milan.
It was an epic night, to say the least.
Just as a side note, I ususally am writing these posts when I'm horrendously tired, so I apologize if some of my sentences make absolutely no sense or my grammar is off. Just to clarify if you're staring at the computer screen trying to figure out what the hell I'm trying to say.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Running on Empty
Oftentimes we don't realize how much we truly rely on familiarity to get us from day to day. We see the same friends, all talk in the same common dialects, and are always bound by the same cultural expectations and norms. It's a predictable system, one that we find comfort in. Being here in Chiang Mai, I now know what it feels like to be that awkward ass exhange student, smiling and nodding at what someone is telling you although you don't have the slightest clue as to what their saying. I am constantly walking on eggshells as I try not to culturally offend my family, trying my hardest not to put my feet up on the table or pat my cute host cousin on the head when she stands next to me, calling me "giant" in Thai.
Hell, familiarity comes in forms that we take so far for granted that you don't appreciate them until they're stripped from you. In the past three days - which have been a nonstop whirlwind as it never seems there are enough hours in the day or just enough available brain cells to separate the Thai word for shower from the hundred or so we now know- I have been clamoring for some sort of familiarity, not out of desperation, but for simple comfort.
For example, take what I've ingested today alone. This morning I woke up around 5:30, showered, and wandered out to the breakfast table still half asleep to find a large bowl of rice porridge (I'm assuming that's what it was, either way it was some base rice dish) with what looked like insect legs poking out from the soupy abyss. Halfway through my breakfast, I bit into something crisp. I stopped mid-chew as an aqueous fluid spilled into my mouth. Fire bathed my tongue, causing me to choke from surprise as tears began streaming down my face. Apparently, as I found out after my host family had stopped being doubled over in laughter, I had bitten into some pepper that was hotter than a jalepeno. Don't get me wrong, the breakfast was delicious though, knowledge of what the contents were aside.
Later that morning, our class went to the market, assigned to complete a scavenger hunt to utilize the first parts of our crash course Thai language base. We felt like fools as we ran around and awkwardly stumbled through phrases like "So-wat-de kraap. Teenai Dok Rrug kraap?" (Hi. Do you know where "Dok Rug" is?") We managed to buy everything on the list after consulting upwards of twenty people, and proceeded to eat our spoils on a bridge over the market street. We ate fried silk worms, deep-fried grub, and some sort of spicy sausage. Silk worms tasted remarkably like lima beans, with roughly the same texture, and we all decided that the fried grub resembled the taste of Bugles.
We took the taxi (covered pickup truck) back to ISDSI (the International Sustainable Devlopment Studies Institute, or where I go to school) for lunch. They had two pans of a delicious chicken dish, which I assumed were just a copious amount of the same recipe, as did a few other people. Five minutes later, several of us were continually rushing back and forth from the water cooler, trying to drown the fire raging in our mouths.
Later in the evening as I sat down for dinner, I wished for the first time in my life I wasn't a biology major. I gazed into my dish and saw, without a doubt, what was stuffed pig intestine. I knew it was intestine because it still had the mesentery tissue connecting the ileum together. It had a rubbery texture as I chewed it, and I closed my eyes and pretended it was a just a rubbery sausage. Once I was mentally convinced it was sausage, it was actually not half bad.
Every once in a while though, something familiar does appear. My host family still thinks I love bananas - which I do - so it's nice to have a taste that I recognize after being constantly bombarded with new scents and flavors, although I discovered by word of mouth on Tuesday that bananas are the one fruit that are a natural anti-laxative. Even with only three days of intensive Thai under my belt, I can start to communicate with my family in very basic sentences, and when they talk to each other, it now sounds like conversation rather than like they're uttering complete gibberish. My class began learning the Thai alphabet yesterday, - a lot more sounds and letters than just 26 latin-based ones - and on the ride home, a recognizable letter would appear amidst the jumble of other heiroglyphic consonants and vowels. We even spelled my name in Thai in class with only a few hitches, but when we tried to spell Ellen's name, all I could think of was how much we probably looked a gaggle of illiterate dyslexics, making failure after epic failure in trying to ram random letters together to phonetically form "Eh-lehnn." Honestly, we sounded like Hellen Keller trying to say her own name for the first time as we repeated it over and over again, mapping out each syllable. Ajaan (professor) Wilasinee was laughing so hard tears were streaming from her eyes.
These probably sound like really insignificant things to be appreciative of, but when in a world where nothing is familiar, it's nice to have the little things every once in a while.
Oh, and speaking of familiarity, to the Thai, my name is associated with a very popular type of beer: Leo Beer. I get asked if I drink Leo Beer every day.
Hell, familiarity comes in forms that we take so far for granted that you don't appreciate them until they're stripped from you. In the past three days - which have been a nonstop whirlwind as it never seems there are enough hours in the day or just enough available brain cells to separate the Thai word for shower from the hundred or so we now know- I have been clamoring for some sort of familiarity, not out of desperation, but for simple comfort.
For example, take what I've ingested today alone. This morning I woke up around 5:30, showered, and wandered out to the breakfast table still half asleep to find a large bowl of rice porridge (I'm assuming that's what it was, either way it was some base rice dish) with what looked like insect legs poking out from the soupy abyss. Halfway through my breakfast, I bit into something crisp. I stopped mid-chew as an aqueous fluid spilled into my mouth. Fire bathed my tongue, causing me to choke from surprise as tears began streaming down my face. Apparently, as I found out after my host family had stopped being doubled over in laughter, I had bitten into some pepper that was hotter than a jalepeno. Don't get me wrong, the breakfast was delicious though, knowledge of what the contents were aside.
Later that morning, our class went to the market, assigned to complete a scavenger hunt to utilize the first parts of our crash course Thai language base. We felt like fools as we ran around and awkwardly stumbled through phrases like "So-wat-de kraap. Teenai Dok Rrug kraap?" (Hi. Do you know where "Dok Rug" is?") We managed to buy everything on the list after consulting upwards of twenty people, and proceeded to eat our spoils on a bridge over the market street. We ate fried silk worms, deep-fried grub, and some sort of spicy sausage. Silk worms tasted remarkably like lima beans, with roughly the same texture, and we all decided that the fried grub resembled the taste of Bugles.
We took the taxi (covered pickup truck) back to ISDSI (the International Sustainable Devlopment Studies Institute, or where I go to school) for lunch. They had two pans of a delicious chicken dish, which I assumed were just a copious amount of the same recipe, as did a few other people. Five minutes later, several of us were continually rushing back and forth from the water cooler, trying to drown the fire raging in our mouths.
Later in the evening as I sat down for dinner, I wished for the first time in my life I wasn't a biology major. I gazed into my dish and saw, without a doubt, what was stuffed pig intestine. I knew it was intestine because it still had the mesentery tissue connecting the ileum together. It had a rubbery texture as I chewed it, and I closed my eyes and pretended it was a just a rubbery sausage. Once I was mentally convinced it was sausage, it was actually not half bad.
Every once in a while though, something familiar does appear. My host family still thinks I love bananas - which I do - so it's nice to have a taste that I recognize after being constantly bombarded with new scents and flavors, although I discovered by word of mouth on Tuesday that bananas are the one fruit that are a natural anti-laxative. Even with only three days of intensive Thai under my belt, I can start to communicate with my family in very basic sentences, and when they talk to each other, it now sounds like conversation rather than like they're uttering complete gibberish. My class began learning the Thai alphabet yesterday, - a lot more sounds and letters than just 26 latin-based ones - and on the ride home, a recognizable letter would appear amidst the jumble of other heiroglyphic consonants and vowels. We even spelled my name in Thai in class with only a few hitches, but when we tried to spell Ellen's name, all I could think of was how much we probably looked a gaggle of illiterate dyslexics, making failure after epic failure in trying to ram random letters together to phonetically form "Eh-lehnn." Honestly, we sounded like Hellen Keller trying to say her own name for the first time as we repeated it over and over again, mapping out each syllable. Ajaan (professor) Wilasinee was laughing so hard tears were streaming from her eyes.
These probably sound like really insignificant things to be appreciative of, but when in a world where nothing is familiar, it's nice to have the little things every once in a while.
Oh, and speaking of familiarity, to the Thai, my name is associated with a very popular type of beer: Leo Beer. I get asked if I drink Leo Beer every day.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Shock Price! Just Buy!
For anyone who's never woken up to roosters, they are loud. Apparently they crow at approximately 4:30 in the morning, as soon as the first crack of sunlight makes it over the horizon. One rooster lives right outside my bedroom window, and loves screeching across town to the others, forming a choral harmony with the stray dogs and crickets who start barking and chirping at about 4:40. How they sleep through it, I have no idea. I asked my brother Thom this afternoon why they crow so early and his response was, "They do?"
My host family gets up very early and is in bed usually around 10 or 11 at the latest. Tomorrow I start school, so I'll be able to at least get a little routine down.
My host family has seemed to come to the belief that I absolutely love bananas and have given me no less than a dozen in the past 24 hours. Every meal I've had so far is some base rice dish with these little fried anchovies with little beady eyes that look up at you from the sticky abyss as if they're saying "Help...I'm drowning in rice." I'm trying to coax my family into cooking something spicy for me, but no luck so far. My host father at least put out red pepper this morning for breakfast to spice things up.
This afternoon I went with Thom, rocking out to Brittany Spears' "Circus" as we made our way to the mall in an ancient Toyota that rattled so violently that I was sure it was going to fall apart in the middle of the road.
We drove to a sidestreet somewhere and picked up his girlfriend. The Thai drive on the left side of the road, which you don't even realize until your mind wonders why the hell it's taking so long to make a right turn. Some man walking his elephant walked out in front of us and blocked traffic, causing mopeds and cars to go screeching around him. Motorcycles - which are more like dirtbikes than what we think of as motorcycles - are about what half of all the people here drive to get around. That, or they ride in the back of pickup trucks. The lines in the road are more like guidelines, the motorcycles swerving inbetween the cars and building a pack in front of the light.
The mall was fairly overwhelming, much like an American mall, with but more intensified color and advertisements plastered in every available location. The billboards here are absolutely massive and span long stretches of the street. There Thai culture is slowly start to make my mind feel like a word search; everywhere I look is completely foreign and then every now and then there is a glimpse of familiarity that comes in the form of an English word, perhaps in an advertisement or a familiar label such as Coke. The Thai mall is humorous, with many advertisments using words that are clearly lost in translation (i.e. "SHOCK PRICE!!" which is supposed to mean that the price is so low that it will shock you...I tried explaining that in America we just have the words sale and clearance and failed). Their was also a Ronald McDonald who was Wai-ing. Slightly bizzarre. The Thai mall clowns are just as creepy as American ones though.
After five hours of shopping, I bought a cell phone for about 1000 baht, which is the equivilant of about 30 dollars. Everything here is dirt cheap. I can call the US for 1 Baht/minute...once I figure out the instructions that are entirely in Thai.
This evening I celebrated my host cousin's birthday, which was met with a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" where they just repeated "Happy Birthday to You" over and over again. The fried pork over open coals in red-pepper sauce was delicious though.
Tomorrow is my first day of school, so more to come later.
My host family gets up very early and is in bed usually around 10 or 11 at the latest. Tomorrow I start school, so I'll be able to at least get a little routine down.
My host family has seemed to come to the belief that I absolutely love bananas and have given me no less than a dozen in the past 24 hours. Every meal I've had so far is some base rice dish with these little fried anchovies with little beady eyes that look up at you from the sticky abyss as if they're saying "Help...I'm drowning in rice." I'm trying to coax my family into cooking something spicy for me, but no luck so far. My host father at least put out red pepper this morning for breakfast to spice things up.
This afternoon I went with Thom, rocking out to Brittany Spears' "Circus" as we made our way to the mall in an ancient Toyota that rattled so violently that I was sure it was going to fall apart in the middle of the road.
We drove to a sidestreet somewhere and picked up his girlfriend. The Thai drive on the left side of the road, which you don't even realize until your mind wonders why the hell it's taking so long to make a right turn. Some man walking his elephant walked out in front of us and blocked traffic, causing mopeds and cars to go screeching around him. Motorcycles - which are more like dirtbikes than what we think of as motorcycles - are about what half of all the people here drive to get around. That, or they ride in the back of pickup trucks. The lines in the road are more like guidelines, the motorcycles swerving inbetween the cars and building a pack in front of the light.
The mall was fairly overwhelming, much like an American mall, with but more intensified color and advertisements plastered in every available location. The billboards here are absolutely massive and span long stretches of the street. There Thai culture is slowly start to make my mind feel like a word search; everywhere I look is completely foreign and then every now and then there is a glimpse of familiarity that comes in the form of an English word, perhaps in an advertisement or a familiar label such as Coke. The Thai mall is humorous, with many advertisments using words that are clearly lost in translation (i.e. "SHOCK PRICE!!" which is supposed to mean that the price is so low that it will shock you...I tried explaining that in America we just have the words sale and clearance and failed). Their was also a Ronald McDonald who was Wai-ing. Slightly bizzarre. The Thai mall clowns are just as creepy as American ones though.
After five hours of shopping, I bought a cell phone for about 1000 baht, which is the equivilant of about 30 dollars. Everything here is dirt cheap. I can call the US for 1 Baht/minute...once I figure out the instructions that are entirely in Thai.
This evening I celebrated my host cousin's birthday, which was met with a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" where they just repeated "Happy Birthday to You" over and over again. The fried pork over open coals in red-pepper sauce was delicious though.
Tomorrow is my first day of school, so more to come later.
"Saa-waat-dee kraab."
Alright so I’ve stopped moving and now I have no idea what to do. We made it to Chiang Mai safely after having bummed around the Bangkok Airport for three hours at 5:30 in the morning their time. We’re all sort of punch drunk and fairly lost; somehow it’s Saturday afternoon after taking off on Thursday. The airport is kind of humorous and seems like something out of a sketch comedy act…most people walk around holding masks on their face in fear of swine flu (“HEY YO. SWINE FLU!”)
So to give you an idea of Thailand…there really is no way to summarize it in a simple blog post. First off and not surprisingly, it’s hot. Not like it gets at home where it pushes 85 and everyone dives into their air-conditioned houses, but a sticky, sopping heat that saps every ounce of moisture out of you as soon as you step outside. Honestly, if the Thai find sweat offensive, then I’m straight up SOL thanks to my dad. Inside isn’t all too much different; Thailand seems to stay cool by utilizing archaic oscillating fans straight from the 1950s. Hell, I’m sitting in front of one right now writing this.
Second of all, when they talk about it being the rainy season, it lives up to its name. The skies open up here like God wants us to build another Ark and round up all the animals. The rain clouds come at 11:00 every day, almost predictably right on time, ominously overtop the mountains and black as the darkest night. The raindrops are just under the size of silver dollars and have the ability to give a rock concert a run for its money in the ability to deafen someone. Speaking of mountains, I realized I’ve never seen legitimate mountains before now. Michigan’s “hills” seem as flat as a Kansas cornfield.
Third of all, the culture here is very interesting. Here is an abridged breakdown of some of their beliefs/cultural values:
1. The King is the shit. Do not diss the King. Everyone loves the King here (as evidenced by the two King calendars posted around my host family’s house – I’ll get to them in a second)
2. The head is the most sacred part of the body, with the feet being the most impure. Don’t pat anyone on the head, especially kids. Or the King…that might yield instant death. Don’t point at things with your feet. Especially at a monk; showing the soles of your feet towards someone is like flipping the bird.
3. Thai families are very generous, especially when it comes to food. If I lose weight while I’m here and they notice it, it’s apparently regarded as poor caretaking on their part while gaining weight is a sign of a good host. Good thing I’m not picky. Although, I’ve already eaten quite a few things where I honestly have no idea what the hell I’m eating. My host father gave me these cookie-like biscuits that have some sort of fruit in them and I can’t decipher the almost hieroglyphic-like text on the wrapper to figure out what they are. That, and I had something on the plane called Puff & Stuff, which, might I say, was not in any way puffy or stuffy. It was more like solidified blue gel with coconut inside. I’m still excited to try real Thai food though.
So anyway, I’ll share more Thai culture with you later. After arriving in Chiang Mai, we got our baggage and piled into the back of trucks (covered pickup trucks that have been converted into taxis) and went to the ISDSI for orientation (the ISDSI being the institution that is hosting our whole program). The air pollution here is pretty rough…I don’t think I’ll be running on the ghetto treadmill that my host father showed me that was essentially a tread on 18 rolling pins. After orientation, our host families arrived and took us off to our respective houses. My host family consists of my host dad, mom, two sisters (one around 16 or 17 and the other who can’t be a day older than 3; she’s adorable), and two host brothers. None of them speak a lick of English except for my host brother Thom, which I just found out via phone a few minutes ago (he’s probably about 24 and works all day). When I figure out the names of my host family, I’ll let you know. Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s a riot. I gave my host father a miniature statue of the Grand Haven lighthouse…try explaining the concept of a lighthouse to a man who’s never seen one nor a large tanker before and the only words he understands are “very good” and “hello.” Not that I really can complain; the only words of Thai I know are hello (“Saa-waat-dee kraab”) and thank you (“Kawb-koon”). They’ve gotten me by so far…I’ve been smiling and playing a lot of charades. The language barrier is actually quite comical. My family was showing me my desk which doesn’t rise more than eight inches off the ground and trying to tell me that they didn’t know I was so tall and that I wouldn’t fit in front of it and that they would get me a new one. I just spent the last 20 minutes defacing the top of my door with my host father – literally defacing with a band saw and a hammer – to install a locking mechanism on my door to keep my belongings safe. It’s a strange culture, if anything.
Anyway, I will write more later, but I’m starting to crash from lack of sleep. I have to stay up as late as I can to make the jetlag transition easier, but unfortunately it’s only 3:34 in the afternoon and I’m lying on my mattress with my wonderful Mickey Mouse covers.
So to give you an idea of Thailand…there really is no way to summarize it in a simple blog post. First off and not surprisingly, it’s hot. Not like it gets at home where it pushes 85 and everyone dives into their air-conditioned houses, but a sticky, sopping heat that saps every ounce of moisture out of you as soon as you step outside. Honestly, if the Thai find sweat offensive, then I’m straight up SOL thanks to my dad. Inside isn’t all too much different; Thailand seems to stay cool by utilizing archaic oscillating fans straight from the 1950s. Hell, I’m sitting in front of one right now writing this.
Second of all, when they talk about it being the rainy season, it lives up to its name. The skies open up here like God wants us to build another Ark and round up all the animals. The rain clouds come at 11:00 every day, almost predictably right on time, ominously overtop the mountains and black as the darkest night. The raindrops are just under the size of silver dollars and have the ability to give a rock concert a run for its money in the ability to deafen someone. Speaking of mountains, I realized I’ve never seen legitimate mountains before now. Michigan’s “hills” seem as flat as a Kansas cornfield.
Third of all, the culture here is very interesting. Here is an abridged breakdown of some of their beliefs/cultural values:
1. The King is the shit. Do not diss the King. Everyone loves the King here (as evidenced by the two King calendars posted around my host family’s house – I’ll get to them in a second)
2. The head is the most sacred part of the body, with the feet being the most impure. Don’t pat anyone on the head, especially kids. Or the King…that might yield instant death. Don’t point at things with your feet. Especially at a monk; showing the soles of your feet towards someone is like flipping the bird.
3. Thai families are very generous, especially when it comes to food. If I lose weight while I’m here and they notice it, it’s apparently regarded as poor caretaking on their part while gaining weight is a sign of a good host. Good thing I’m not picky. Although, I’ve already eaten quite a few things where I honestly have no idea what the hell I’m eating. My host father gave me these cookie-like biscuits that have some sort of fruit in them and I can’t decipher the almost hieroglyphic-like text on the wrapper to figure out what they are. That, and I had something on the plane called Puff & Stuff, which, might I say, was not in any way puffy or stuffy. It was more like solidified blue gel with coconut inside. I’m still excited to try real Thai food though.
So anyway, I’ll share more Thai culture with you later. After arriving in Chiang Mai, we got our baggage and piled into the back of trucks (covered pickup trucks that have been converted into taxis) and went to the ISDSI for orientation (the ISDSI being the institution that is hosting our whole program). The air pollution here is pretty rough…I don’t think I’ll be running on the ghetto treadmill that my host father showed me that was essentially a tread on 18 rolling pins. After orientation, our host families arrived and took us off to our respective houses. My host family consists of my host dad, mom, two sisters (one around 16 or 17 and the other who can’t be a day older than 3; she’s adorable), and two host brothers. None of them speak a lick of English except for my host brother Thom, which I just found out via phone a few minutes ago (he’s probably about 24 and works all day). When I figure out the names of my host family, I’ll let you know. Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s a riot. I gave my host father a miniature statue of the Grand Haven lighthouse…try explaining the concept of a lighthouse to a man who’s never seen one nor a large tanker before and the only words he understands are “very good” and “hello.” Not that I really can complain; the only words of Thai I know are hello (“Saa-waat-dee kraab”) and thank you (“Kawb-koon”). They’ve gotten me by so far…I’ve been smiling and playing a lot of charades. The language barrier is actually quite comical. My family was showing me my desk which doesn’t rise more than eight inches off the ground and trying to tell me that they didn’t know I was so tall and that I wouldn’t fit in front of it and that they would get me a new one. I just spent the last 20 minutes defacing the top of my door with my host father – literally defacing with a band saw and a hammer – to install a locking mechanism on my door to keep my belongings safe. It’s a strange culture, if anything.
Anyway, I will write more later, but I’m starting to crash from lack of sleep. I have to stay up as late as I can to make the jetlag transition easier, but unfortunately it’s only 3:34 in the afternoon and I’m lying on my mattress with my wonderful Mickey Mouse covers.
Just. Keep. Moving.
Airports have a funny way of bringing people together. People who have no commonalities, other than that they happened to have bought a ticket for the same flight and have seats next to each other, would have never crossed paths if it weren’t for this random series of events. Take, for example, my flight from Traverse City to Denver this afternoon at 4:30. After it was delayed a half hour due to pouring rain, we finally were herded on like cattle, baggage spilling out of the stowaways to the dismay of the stewardesses. I plopped down in my seat and scanned for who would sit next to me as more people were prodded onto the plane. A somewhat greasy man wearing a jet-black leather jacket with three wolves clawing through the embroidered moon on the back sat down in front of me, his long scraggly hair and body odor creeping over the top of the seat. Behind me, as my dad had predicted long before I got onto the plane, hopped two little children who proceeded to dribble their legs against the seat for the next two hours. Next to me sat a pleasant blonde woman who was white-knuckling the seat as we taxied out onto the runway.
“Don’t like flying?” I asked, trying to make conversation.
“Nah it’s not so much of the flying as it is the claustrophobia of these small planes. My next flight should be better. I hate these puddle jumpers.”
We got to talking and I told her about how I was heading to Thailand to study abroad for college.
“Oh where do you go?”
“Kalamazoo College…it’s a small liberal arts school down in Kalamazoo.”
“Oh no way! That’s where I graduated from in ’99! I went to Ecuador!”
I’ll save you the rest of her life’s story. No matter where I go though, the world seems to get smaller and smaller.
We landed into Denver at 5:59 and taxied into gate 89. I looked down at my ticket to LA…it took off at 6:15 from gate 44. Shit. I had fifteen minutes to make it to the door. All of my running over the summer came in handy as I sprinted the 45 gates along the moving walkways, rushing past baby strollers and absentminded tourists. The last few people were filing through the gate as I ran up, entirely out of breath. No more than two seconds after I got there, an Indian man clad in a business suit and red power tie sprinted up and sidled up along side me, the two of us wheezing together as we handed the stewardess our boarding passes.
“Shitty day, eh?” He joked as we started walking down the hallway to the plane.
“You said it.” I joked back. An announcement came over the plane’s intercom, announcing that the overhead storage was full for the plane and that the last few passengers would have to ride with their carry-ons on their laps. Turns out, the Indian businessman was sitting next to me.
“Good Lord. This shit would never happen with Continental,” he sighed, “Do they take credit cards? I need something to drink like it’s my job.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do. They have to at least take Visa.” We got to talking again, and I gave the abridged version of what I was doing, hiking around Thailand and whatnot. He began telling me his life’s story, coming from India at 22 to come work as a software engineer and working his way up to the senior engineer for a decent sized company. He stopped in the middle of his story to text his partner ten rows up about how hot the brunette stewardess was. When she came down the aisle with drinks, he bought two beers and slammed one down onto my tray table.
“I like you kid. You look like you might need this.” Considering I’m 19 and the last thing I needed for my 17 hour flight to Bangkok was to be dehydrated, I said he could have it.
“Alright! Bonus beer!” He proceeded to show me photos his last trip to Israel and India. It amazes me how friendly some people are. In comparison, the older gentlemen across the aisle gave us no less than nine death glares during the trip, one with particular menace when I asked him about his girlfriend[s] (jury’s still out on if there was a plural involved).
~~~
Now it’s 24 hours later, and I’m still on my flight to Bangkok with about two hours to go. My watch reads 4:25 PM, yet we have been in darkness for over 12 hours. I apologize if this post really has no direction…I’ve been running on a cumulative five hours of interrupted sleep. They’ve fed us three surprisingly American chicken concoctions, with the exception of some bizarre jello-like substance that had coconut in it and their offering of free wine or Cognac to drink. The reality of that I’m entering an entirely different culture is starting to sink in, particularly when the pilot comes on the intercom and speaks in what sounds to be like a completely fabricated language, followed by choppy English. The past 24 hours have been a rollercoaster of emotions, bowing out at missing home and my friends and then rising to extreme excitement with the reality that this whole trip is happening. This is the moving phase, the adrenaline phase. I’ll let you know when we stop.
“Don’t like flying?” I asked, trying to make conversation.
“Nah it’s not so much of the flying as it is the claustrophobia of these small planes. My next flight should be better. I hate these puddle jumpers.”
We got to talking and I told her about how I was heading to Thailand to study abroad for college.
“Oh where do you go?”
“Kalamazoo College…it’s a small liberal arts school down in Kalamazoo.”
“Oh no way! That’s where I graduated from in ’99! I went to Ecuador!”
I’ll save you the rest of her life’s story. No matter where I go though, the world seems to get smaller and smaller.
We landed into Denver at 5:59 and taxied into gate 89. I looked down at my ticket to LA…it took off at 6:15 from gate 44. Shit. I had fifteen minutes to make it to the door. All of my running over the summer came in handy as I sprinted the 45 gates along the moving walkways, rushing past baby strollers and absentminded tourists. The last few people were filing through the gate as I ran up, entirely out of breath. No more than two seconds after I got there, an Indian man clad in a business suit and red power tie sprinted up and sidled up along side me, the two of us wheezing together as we handed the stewardess our boarding passes.
“Shitty day, eh?” He joked as we started walking down the hallway to the plane.
“You said it.” I joked back. An announcement came over the plane’s intercom, announcing that the overhead storage was full for the plane and that the last few passengers would have to ride with their carry-ons on their laps. Turns out, the Indian businessman was sitting next to me.
“Good Lord. This shit would never happen with Continental,” he sighed, “Do they take credit cards? I need something to drink like it’s my job.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do. They have to at least take Visa.” We got to talking again, and I gave the abridged version of what I was doing, hiking around Thailand and whatnot. He began telling me his life’s story, coming from India at 22 to come work as a software engineer and working his way up to the senior engineer for a decent sized company. He stopped in the middle of his story to text his partner ten rows up about how hot the brunette stewardess was. When she came down the aisle with drinks, he bought two beers and slammed one down onto my tray table.
“I like you kid. You look like you might need this.” Considering I’m 19 and the last thing I needed for my 17 hour flight to Bangkok was to be dehydrated, I said he could have it.
“Alright! Bonus beer!” He proceeded to show me photos his last trip to Israel and India. It amazes me how friendly some people are. In comparison, the older gentlemen across the aisle gave us no less than nine death glares during the trip, one with particular menace when I asked him about his girlfriend[s] (jury’s still out on if there was a plural involved).
~~~
Now it’s 24 hours later, and I’m still on my flight to Bangkok with about two hours to go. My watch reads 4:25 PM, yet we have been in darkness for over 12 hours. I apologize if this post really has no direction…I’ve been running on a cumulative five hours of interrupted sleep. They’ve fed us three surprisingly American chicken concoctions, with the exception of some bizarre jello-like substance that had coconut in it and their offering of free wine or Cognac to drink. The reality of that I’m entering an entirely different culture is starting to sink in, particularly when the pilot comes on the intercom and speaks in what sounds to be like a completely fabricated language, followed by choppy English. The past 24 hours have been a rollercoaster of emotions, bowing out at missing home and my friends and then rising to extreme excitement with the reality that this whole trip is happening. This is the moving phase, the adrenaline phase. I’ll let you know when we stop.
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