What I was really doing ...
I sit here now to punch this out in a small, stuffy, forgotten area of the Bangkok International Airport. I decided to rest here for the night and try to stay up all night long in order to more quickly re-adjust to U.S. time. I’ve been trying to hide out in an undeveloped section I found here because the air conditioning is better, but I keep getting chased out by security guards who seem a bit too eager to show off their weaponry. That paired with the fact that my hard-sided, plastic camera case looks awfully suspicious. I must say that this is quite a fitting way to finish up my time here in Thailand, sneaking around the airport, trying to hide out long enough to pop open my laptop and punch out a blog entry. Fitting because it’s kind of what I’ve been doing here the whole time. Allow me to explain.
You see, I haven’t been completely up front on this blog or to most of you in general about what exactly it is that I have been doing here this summer. Why is it that I mentioned interviewing sources, but never told you who those sources were or why I wanted to talk with them? Why is it that I spent three months here and virtually never left the area between Chiang Mai and the northern Thai border? Well, that’s just it really: the border, or rather what’s on the other side of it. Thailand is bordered both on its north and west sides by the country called Myanmar, more commonly known as Burma. Chances are you haven’t heard much about Burma. It doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage in the states … or in most of the West for that matter. You see, Burma is kind of a bad place to be … well … to be anything but a Burmese soldier that is, their military junta government ironically called the State Peace and Development Council. There are rebel groups in the jungles all around the country opposing this government’s treatment of its people; the way they will often descend upon and burn entire villages. Or the way they have re-routed all of the country’s funds to support only the members of the already-rich military party’s interests. This, along with the country’s severely low currency worth, is causing many of its tribal people to flee into neighboring Thailand, hence where I kind of come in.
I was there trying to learn more about these people that are fleeing, dealing specifically with the problems they face before coming and once they arrive. My research involved talking with migrant workers in Thailand working in rice mills and road labor crews, working nine or ten hours a day for a fraction of the pay they would be receiving if they had either refugee or citizenship status. I talked with drug addicts who were either using or dealing (usually both) drugs produced in Burma, the largest exporter of a caffeine-laced methamphetamine called “yaba.” And I spoke with 15 and 16 year old prostitutes – girls whose parents sold them into cheap brothels both in Burmese border cities and inside Thailand to make money for the family … often for the parents’ own drug addictions. As can be imagined, it was a difficult and sad story to cover on several different levels. As a journalist, I learned so much about covering stories and conflicts in which people are still very much involved and very much afraid of things still happening to them and their families. Because of the looming stigma that surrounds this ongoing conflict, people would often times be afraid to talk to me fearing I was some sort of government informant, not to mention the fact that many of them carry a great deal of shame for their situation.
As a person, I realized that there are so many people in this world who are hurting. I’ve seen now what an oppressive government without any such thing as a freedom of speech or of the press or any rights of privacy, can do to its people. When I wrote that message on the fourth of July about how much I appreciate what we have as Americans, there was such a burning desire to write more. But, thus rises the reason I didn’t. While I was still here, I didn’t want to put the people I was working with or myself in any jeopardy by making it explicit on this blog what exactly it was I was covering here. There are Burmese intelligence monitors all over the place, especially in the city where I was based, Chiang Mai, reading the content on the Internet and scanning outgoing e-mail messages, just hoping to catch the word “Burma” in there somewhere. This was also paired with the fact that my mother and I sort of have an unspoken agreement that I don’t tell her the dangerous things I’ve been doing until I’ve returned home safely. There are times when she probably just wouldn’t be able to handle it. But she has been so strong this summer, in spite of her being a bit in the dark ;)
So if my blog never seemed really to have any sort of purpose and was confusing at times, I hope this explains why. This also, I believe, explains why there would at times be two-week gaps in my entries. Those were the times I was researching, and was so overwhelmed with what I was learning that I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and type out a chipper, fun entry that made everything seem hunky-dory. It wasn’t. And for so many of these people here, it’s still not.
The same journalism professor I mentioned a while back in this blog once said during a class on international newsgathering that students often come to him overwhelmed with the amount of sadness in the world, wondering how someone as small and insignificant as they could possibly begin to make a difference. “Do you want to know what I tell them?” he said. His answer was simple. He picked up a folded and dog-eared copy of the New York Times sitting on the desk in front of him and held it up in the air. “Learn,” he said, “and be aware of what is happening in this world around you. This is the first and most important thing we can ask, and the thing by which the most fruit will be produced.” I know what he means. We, as Americans, have this incredible access to information – to true information. The worst atrocities this world has seen have sprung first and foremost from ignorance. The only way to break the atrocities, therefore, is to break the ignorance.
It may be some time before I am able to pound the information I have gathered into some digestible form. But when I do, I will be sure to get it on my Web site or let you know where it is published (cross your fingers) as soon as I can. I learned a lot this summer, and I was changed in a lot of ways … in a lot of good ways. I can’t thank you all enough for visiting this little, poor excuse for a blog. Though I never had a hit counter, the thought that you were all reading and the comments you left were an unexplainable comfort to me in times when I felt very much alone. People like myself, those we call journalists, would have no purpose whatsoever if we did not have people to listen. People to read. So read on, and help be a part of smashing this ignorance that has forever made the world at odds with itself.
Last post from Thailand?
I’m sitting at a coffee shop getting ready to board a night train to Bangkok. I can’t believe I’m finally leaving the north. It’s been so long. The plan is to head down to Bangkok and meet some friends there tomorrow who are on their way back from Africa. I haven’t heard from them in a little over two weeks, so hopefully they will be there as planned! I’ll spend a few days there and then fly home on the 14th. So, so soon.
I wanted to let all of you know that I have an update on my Web site … a video I recently put together for Global Refuge. You can find it on the main page of my Web site: http://www.andrewprinsen.com
You can choose between small, medium, and large format for the video. After you choose, pause the video and allow it to pre-load. I’ll try to make another post as soon as I can. Looking forward to seeing all of you.
I'm not actually crazy.
I spent the last 45 minutes trying to beat the solitaire game on my iPod. I’m lying on the bed in one of the countless musty hotel rooms I’ve stayed at since being here, playing the waiting game. I was at the point where I could tell I was going to beat it - you know, where you’re finally able to start putting all the cards up into the corner. One after the other … sixes then sevens, then onto tens and jacks!! Oh, the glorious ending was so close! My mind raced back to days growing up when Dad would bring his laptop home from work and my brother and I would take time away from Wildenstein 3D to play the solitaire (God bless Windows 3.1) and when you won, all the cards would go bouncing around the screen in 10 seconds of pure, untainted digital joy! (You can’t have worked with a computer during the 90s and NOT know what I’m talking about … unless you’re really bad at Solitaire). I thought, surely with this new video iPod, some secret awaits he who completes the game successfully … perhaps some hidden video giving me the secret to wavy, natural looking hair, or maybe a treasure map to find a free years’ supply of Peeps marshmallow candy. The possibilities were virtually endless, I thought, as I raced on, fingers flying fast over the controls. Queen of hearts, queen of spades, kind of diamonds, king of spades …. And then I paused, looking at my final card … the King of Spades. I acknowledged that my life may be forever changed after that moment, and then moved the scroll wheel to place the card in the stack.
“Looks like we have a winner,” appeared the small white letters at the bottom of the screen. I sat there for a full minute waiting for more, but that was it. No fireworks, no pomp and circumstance, no “I’m going to Disneyworld” speeches. Just those words. “Looks like we have a winner. Yes. Yes we do.
This blog entry really isn’t supposed to be about solitaire. I’m trying to give you a sense of what can happen in my mind with this much downtime. One thing I am learning about being a journalist, especially one working overseas, is that you are pretty much at the mercy of your sources. That is, you will meet them when they are ready to be met, where they are ready to meet, and you will wait by yourself until that time comes. For example, today I rode my motorcycle about two hours out of the way to meet with a guy and ask him if an idea of mine would be a possibility. When I got to where he was, I pitched my idea, but he said that he had to run somewhere, and that I should hang around for about an hour until he returned and then we would talk about it. I waited for him to come back, which he did – three hours later. At this point I again pitched my idea to him, simply to have him tell me no. Really worth the extra mileage and waiting, huh? But I did run straight over a snake today that slithered right in front of me, which was at the same time horrifying and awesome; always a good combination.
Now, don’t think that I spend all of my down time playing solitaire … this was the first time, in fact. I mean, I read books n’ stuff! (please read that to yourself in as galumphing of a super-jock / meat head voice as you can). But really, I do. I’ve read several this summer. I was even becoming so desperate that I read Pride and Prejudice! (If any of my roommates reads this, please give at least a second’s warning before you punch me square in the gut for admitting that. I do deserve it, though). I justified my reading of a Jane Austen book as another chapter in my ongoing quest to figure out women. It didn’t help … (and I’m told that there really isn’t anything I can do to figure them out anyway).
I’m spending the next week or so moving from place to place up north on my own, trying to gather the last of the material I need for my research. I may not have mentioned yet on this blog that I managed to finagle some school credit out of this summer. Believe it or not, I head back home already in just two and a half short weeks. I was writing in an e-mail to my Dad just yesterday that I’m not really sure how long it feels like I’ve been here. When I think about the fact that I’m almost ready to go, it feels like I just got here. But then I take a step back and realize that I’ve gotten so used to the way of life around here that I must have been here for a while. I mean, by the time I leave, I’ll have spent a quarter of 2006 here, which is something substantial, I think.
But, for now I need to keep my head in the game here. It’s easy to let my mind begin to wander at how soon I will be home, and the prospect of spending time with my family and seeing a certain special someone doesn’t make it any easier to do the work a guy’s gotta do. There’s enough of it left. Looking forward to seeing all of you, though … wherever and whenever that may be. Thanks as always for reading. More to come soon.
P.S. I’ll throw a few of photos down at the bottom, just to please my mom.
A few little girls performing at the Sunday night market in Chiang Mai. Cute.
A woman harvesting tea in a field just south of Mae Salong (near Thoed Thai). The area has a huge Chinese immigrant population, and they sure do love their tea.
This is my Dad, Jan, with a huge muskie he caught during a fishing tournament. This photo has nothing to do with Thailand, but a) it’s a great photo, b) that’s one heck of a muskie, and c)I love my Dad.
Photo slideshow
Hello friends. I know, I know … it’s been over two weeks since my last post. But I do have an excuse. Over the past week I’ve been away from Internet access up north with a medical team here from Colorado. I tagged along and took photos while they held clinics for hill tribe people, giving them free medical care and medicine. It was a long, good week. I put together a short slideshow, narrated by Shaunessy - the Global Refuge team leader. I threw it up on my Web site, so rather than reading a long blog entry, you should just check it out:
Only about three weeks left here now, so most of it will be spent finishing up the research for the story I’m doing to get some school credit. I’ll try to get a more detailed blog post up soon. Hope everyone is well.
Fireworks over Chiang Mai
It’s not easy getting a barbershop quartet together in the middle of Thailand. So instead we had three older, grey-haired women, carrying the tunes to songs like “America the Beautiful” and “This Land is Your Land” in a manner that would lead most spectators to believe harmonizing was never invented. I was inside the U.S. Consulate grounds in Chiang Mai and as I walked around, I felt like I had been transported back to the Newburgh Summerfest for the evening. The balance of faces was suddenly very heavy on the white side, kids running around with puckered little drying American flags painted on their faces. There were hot dogs and McDonalds hamburgers and pizza and apple pie, root beer and Dr. Pepper. There were people in gaudy red, white and blue hats and American flag shirts. There was even a bouncy castle that remained incredibly enticing throughout the hour and a half I was there.
The tune crept quietly over the loudspeakers. I didn’t even hear it until, “what so proudly we hail,” and by the time it got to “the twilight’s last gleaming,” the entire place was standing straight up with hands over hearts. And then, in the middle of Asia, about six or seven hundred American citizens belted out “And the rocket’s red glare! The bombs bursting in air!” BOOOOM came the first explosion from behind the flag we were saluting. We sang the rest of that song with fireworks exploding every few seconds, the kind of fireworks that are so close you can feel them in your chest. But I think this feeling was amplified a bit by another tightening in my chest.
I remember a conversation I had with my mom just a couple of days before I left for Thailand. I had been practicing a few key Thai phrases and sauntered into the kitchen to practice them on her. She asked me if I knew how to say “My name is Andrew” and “Where is the bathroom?” Then she asked me if I knew how to say “Where is the American Embassy?” and I kind of chuckled and made some remark about how I would likely be telling people I was Canadian anyway to avoid certain problems Americans can often face overseas with our image in lots of places. And then she said to me, “You know, it’s really too bad it has to be that way.”
As I stood there tonight listening to that song and the rumble and tightening in my chest, I realized a couple of things. There are a lot of things our country does very wrong. There are many policies we goof up on and our greed as a world power often makes us do things that go against our own founding principals. But … there are also a lot of things that we have done and continue to do right. I think that being at the place I am in my life, a college student at a fairly liberal school, I am taught to think that our nation and our leadership is pretty jacked on everything, and that most everything American is gluttonous and selfish and greedy and bad. And don’t get me wrong, much of it is.
But there is also freedom, and freedom is a darn beautiful thing. It’s often times not until you are in or very near a place that has much less freedom and independence that you realize just how much these freedoms afford us … not only physically, but intellectually. We have a freedom to think how we want and to tell people what we think. We have the power to change our situation if we don’t like it and to make a difference in the things around us if we choose to.
The fireworks display lasted about four minutes, and by homeland standards was a pretty weak show. But I have to say, I’ve never felt as patriotic on a fourth of July as I did tonight, standing in the middle of a city in Asia with my hand over my heart. Take a moment today to really consider what it is that these things, these freedoms, afford us. Look at the first amendment, and try to imagine what your lives would be like without it. I’ve seen what lives can be like without it, and it’s not a pretty sight.
What is it that defines what “An American” is? We’re taught to think it’s our leadership and our wars, and often times unfortunately, to the rest of the world that’s exactly what an American is. But the truth is that you define what an American is. As the body of America, as its citizens, we are the ones that can show the world what we truly value as a nation and as a people. Let’s think about how good of a definition we’re putting out there.
And to sum everything else up, I’ve spent the last week and a half traveling around with Global Refuge. We happened to be passing through Chiang Mai for the evening, just in time to celebrate with our fellow countrymen, and will be heading north again either tomorrow or the next day. The village I’ll be in up north hasn’t exactly heard of the Internet yet, so I don’t expect to be able to make an entry from there. But I do have to renew my visa before the medical team gets in from the states, so hopefully I’ll be able to make a post then. Hope your summer is going well. Thanks, as always, for reading, and God bless.
It's no Harley, but it's still a whole lot of fun.
My motorcycle wails as I near the top of the rise, the low gear being the only that can handle the pitches of the windy mountain traverse a few kilometers south of Chiang Dao. But the noise is matched by an astounding silence as I hold the shifter of my Honda between gears, giving me a false neutral. The tiny, 100cc engine can’t even be heard then as it effortlessly glides down the backside of the mountain, silently like a hang-glider blowing in the breeze. I look down at my wheels to be sure they’re still rotating, and when I see that they are, raise my eyes to the speckled tea fields scattered on the steep mountainsides all around me.
I left Chiang Mai a couple of days ago with young women from Global Refuge who are here to coordinate the organization’s efforts before they begin bringing over teams of doctors and nurses. We found a house to rent in Thoed Thai, a small mountain town about as far north in Thailand as you can get without crossing the Mekong. Over the next few days they’re hoping to make the rounds of as many of the northern villages (or “Ban” in Thai) as they can to assess the medical needs. I’ll be tagging along on these trips, making photos and trying to gather enough film to help tell their story.
With my time in Chiang Mai at an end, I’m excited to get back up here and start on some new projects. I came here to tell the story of a people, and there is really no better way to prepare myself to do that than to live with them. And that’s what I’m hoping to do up here; immerse myself in the culture as best I can with the time I have.
The photo is our trip over the last couple of days. (You can click it for a larger version). The first was from Chiang Mai to Tha Ton (near Mae Ai) and was about four hours. Today we drove from Tha Ton to the city of my last entry, Chiang Rai, where we are checking out the medical facilities as it is likely to be the nearest city with a hospital. Sorry about the lack of photos for today. I’ll try to do better next time. Have a great day!
Run for the border
Night bazaars always seem to have a bit of a carnival sort of feel to them. As a photographer, I have a somewhat unnatural reaction to different kinds of light. Just ask my friends at school, who always have to roll their eyes when I make the request that we flip on a lamp rather than the bland, bleaching overhead fluorescent. Sitting at the night market in Chiang Rai, I became keenly aware of how interesting the light in these places was, for these nighttime markets hold no government-sponsored street lamps or consistent illumination. They are a collection of carts and tables, each with a small umbrella protecting its goods from the ever-present threat of the Southeast Asian monsoon. Under each umbrella is a simple light bulb that floods its canopy, casting a red, yellow, blue, or green film across the rice or paintings or women’s underwear that the table holds. If you blur your eyes you’re presented with a free kaleidoscope, floating in the smoky haze lying before you.
I sat down for some dinner near one of the stands and listened to a man sitting on a small stage with his guitar, bringing a calm to the atmosphere, singing and whistling in Thai. It wasn’t until after I had ordered that I spotted this sign on the food stand (pay particular attention to the bottom):
I hadn’t chosen the “clean and safe” option. Perhaps my stomach would be getting some new cultural immersion all its own.
I had stopped on Chiang Rai on a return trip from the northern border where I had to go in order to get my visa renewed. Every 30 days, and no more. Unfortunately I had read my entrance stamp wrong and stayed in country two days too long, the lady border guard sticking me with a 1,000 baht fine (about US $25). Never a welcomed occurrence when you’re a freelancer trying to make it on a shoestring budget. I got an e-mail recently from one of my professors who is a very accomplished photojournalist, spending the majority of his professional career shooting for National Geographic. He told me that he had spent a lot of time in Chiang Rai back in the 80s when it was still “the Wild West.” As I walked back to my four and a half dollar hotel room, it wasn’t hard to see the town as just that. Back in the 80s, Chiang Rai had big problems with opium trafficking and prostitution. They seem to at least have gotten the former under control.
As I punch this out now on my laptop, I’m headed back down to Chiang Mai on a bus. I somehow ended up on a nicer one for my return trip, which I guess I sort of deserved considering my ride on the way up here. It was Friday when I ambled onto the green, 40-foot tin can on wheels and began making my way to my seat. I found it on the bus’s right side, with two of the bigger Asian men I have yet to meet already occupying the bench that, unfortunately for me, is built to hold three. There was only about five inches left on the bench, so I smiled at the man closest to me, who was older and I believe a bit senile, and motioned that I was also to join them for our pleasant, five-hour jaunt through the hills. He looked at me, looked at my ticket, nodded his head, and went back to staring straight forward without scooting a bit. “All right, I thought,” since I can’t ask the man to scooch over a bit, perhaps I’ll just take a seat and when he sees how uncomfortable I am, he’ll take the hint and give me a bit more space.” So I balanced myself on that five inches of plastic, and waited for a response. It never came. Now, I’ve been told before that I have a small butt (or was it a cute butt? I can’t remember) but never before had I considered it small enough to stay perched on five inches of seat for five hours winding recklessly through the mountains of northern Thailand. Which reminds me, be sure you think today as you’re driving just how thankful you are for a good highway system. It’s more of a blessing than we often times recognize, I think.
Once I arrive in Chiang Mai I’ll be meeting with my Global Refuge contacts, the folks who I will be doing some volunteer work for here and there throughout the rest of the summer. (You can find a link to their Web site on the right side of this page). They arrived just this morning, so I am really looking forward to having some new friends to show around. And they speak English, which is almost always a plus in my book. We’ll be heading to the far north in a few days to establish a base in a small, mountain village. I would tell you the name, but you probably won’t find it on a map. So for now, thanks as always for reading, and I hope you and all of your families are well. Please don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail to keep me updated on yourself. I love getting e-mail from home.
Sometimes it's better not to ask.
So I’ve decided to dedicate an entry to talking a bit about the cultural oddities and humor I have thus far encountered here in Thailand. I think this is probably better done sooner than later … you know, before I get too used to things like driving on the left side of the road.
FOOD
The food here in general has been wonderful. It’s cheap, it’s fresh (sometimes a bit too fresh) and it tastes great. There are a couple of choice situations I have found myself in, though, when my eyes and my mouth were opened to whole new ideas about eating. Take, for instance, the other day when I was in a street-side restaurant with some friends (mostly Thai) and I was told I should order the papaya salad, a Thai staple. They asked me if I would like crab in it and I, picturing nice, white, fluffy pieces of crab meat, said “Why of course I would! And why don’t you go ahead and put in extra!” with a big, goofy grin on my face, I’m sure. The salad came and I dug right in without giving it much of a look-see, and it was good. Spicy, but good. Until … “CRUNCH.” I chomped down on something very hard and, taking a quick glance around the table to be sure my friends were preoccupied, turned whatever it was around in my mouth. I was staring down at a complete crab claw that I had begun to spit out of my mouth, poking out as if to grab something out of the air directly in front of my nose, when a friend glanced at me with an almost sad look on her face, as if to say “Don’t you like it?” I then, of course, had to make up for it by getting an extra big smile on my face and devouring the entire crab that I found in different sections within my salad, piece by piece … shell and all. I will never look at friends’ hermit crabs the same way again.
Another day a while ago, I was sitting down to a family-style lunch with some other acquaintances, commenting on how good the food was when they decided to plop down in front of the guest of honor a big bowl full of winged bugs. The only problem was that the guest of honor happened to be me, and as I turned to the host sitting next to me, he was already spooning a large helping of the little critters into my rice, turning the bowl slightly to the side so that he could use the spoon as more of a shovel. “We only eat female,” he said with a big smile. “Male have very bad taste.”
“Bugs! Have a bad taste? I could never imagine such a nutty thing as that!” I thought sarcastically. “All the bugs I’ve tried in my day have been positively delightful!” The next 40 minutes were painful as my hosts happily watched me enjoy this backyard-gathered delicacy. Just for future reference to any of you planning some insect dining parties, go for the ones with less flight capability. The wings scratch going down.
TONES
So, the Thai language is tonal, that being that the exact same word to us can be said five different ways, with five different tones, and mean five completely different things. This can understandably prove to be rather challenging for Western speakers such as myself who are trying to learn to speak the language … and rather embarrassing as well.
For example, I studied a few important phrases in a book and Online before I came, wanting to be at least somewhat prepared for daily interaction-type situations. I spent the first couple weeks of my trip saying “Khor toat krap” when I would get in someone’s way, because it means “excuse me” … or so I thought. The other day I was at one of Chiang Mai’s many street markets when I happened to get in the way of a particularly cute bunch of Thai girls. Putting on my biggest lady-killer smile, I belted out a loud and proud “Kor toat krap,” only to have them all burst into laughter right in front of me … a couple of them trying to suppress it, but most of them just letting it go without any restraint … a reaction not altogether common in this reserved Asian culture. I kept my smile, figuring that they were surely just flustered by this cute, young American with his perfect Thai accent. “Yes ladies, I’m here all summer,” I thought, beaming from ear to ear. But then I glanced around and saw several other people with grins on their face, including an old man chuckling behind me. “Either this old man has a crush on me too, or something’s not quite right,” I thought.
I made my way back to the center of the market where I found my friend and asked her what exactly it means when I say “Khor toat krap,” and received about the same reaction, except she couldn’t stop laughing, and was having to keep a hand on my shoulder as she was bent double laughing, I standing there impatient, looking up at the ceiling. Eventually she controlled herself and told me that I had asked the girls, in a perfect Thai accent, “May I please fart?” Yes … I am a language genius. What I had, in fact meant to say was “Khor tooat krap.” I hadn’t held my toat quite long or high enough.
I won’t ramble any more … though surely I could. This is a wonderful, weird place I have found myself in. As always, thanks for visiting. I will end with a photo of a statue I saw inside a temple. I have absolutely no explanation for this, so here it is:
And yes, that is in fact a huge silver and gold dragon with sharp teeth.
Writers and Monks
So I just finished reading this book called Blue Like Jazz, which was a good book. I found it even more interesting at this point in time, though, because the author, Donald Miller, talks a lot in the book about being a writer. He talks about waking up around noon and stumbling into the kitchen to fry some eggs (the only thing he can afford because writers make so little money) after which he usually reads a book for a while before throwing it across the room, muttering about how it must just come so easily to that writer, and then feels bad and ashamed because he threw the author’s book across the room. He says that he then sits down and tries to write, but usually to no avail.
I found this all very amusing, because I’m starting to understand what he means. Being here as a journalist, I do a lot of waiting … a whole lot of waiting. And I do a lot of reading, and wishing that I had something to write about, and then wishing I could find the words to write it when I finally do have something to write about. I found a translator a few days ago, which is great. My translator is also sort of my cultural interpreter and feeler-outer. The problem is that, now, I have to rely completely on her … something I’ve never been good at.
“So, did you talk to so and so today,” I will say, seeing as my entire existence here focuses on whether I can set up new appointments and have interviews. “Oh, no, not today, but I can do it tomorrow.” “Sure, that’s fine,” I reply, knowing that I now have another 24 hours to burn. It’s good though … definitely the kind of down time I never find at school. So here’s some advice: If you ever find yourself desperately in need of time to read, write and think, most of the time staring at blank walls, stick yourself in the middle of a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. You’ll have lots of time to talk to yourself all of a sudden!
Chiang Mai is still great, though. I got up early yesterday morning to go observe something that happens on the northeast side of the city every day. This, apparently, is the fasting season for monks here in Thailand, and they won’t eat anything after noon or so. But what happens is that every morning, starting at about 5am, they take their little food pots and walk up and down a 1/2 mile stretch of road. People stop on the road and buy things from vendors set up just for this purpose, and give the monks food, after which the givers kneel and the monks chant a blessing for them. I walked up and down the road for a while, snapping a few photos. Lots of the monks were just kids of 12 or 13 years old. Almost all Buddhist boys here enter monkhood for about three months, and then often later return. This happens to be the time of year that is taking place.
So, I continue to learn a lot, and am just soaking in the culture here. There’s quite a lot of it to go around. I’ll try not to wait so long before my next post. We all know I have enough time to write!
P.S. > Another book I can recommend if any of you are looking for summer reading material: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder. This is an inspiring and heartbreaking book about a doctor who does the majority of his work in Haiti. It’s the kind of book that will push you to reevaluate the way you look at poverty and the way aid is distributed around the world.
Viva la Chiang Mai
The water poured over each ledge like grain out of a silo, flowing and cascading generously into pools that lie beneath the mossy terraces. The further you followed the river, the further it went, winding up and up through the density of Mount Doisuthep on the western outskirts of Chiang Mai. In some places the sound was a light trickle, like filling a water glass at your kitchen sink, a slight, high-pitched pour. In others, the water created a deep, guttural resonance, like standing next to a dam when you can’t hear your friend calling your name from a few feet away. Gripping my camera tightly in one hand, I plunged my sandals into the water, slowly plodding my way through the pools and up the stream. The further we trekked away from our motorbikes at the bottom of the mountain, the further we knew we would have to make it to get back down before the grey rain clouds that were looming overhead decided to unleash on top of us. But there was something so intriguing about this river, tucked quietly, almost secretly, back into the side of this mammoth mountain that made us continue, onwards and upwards.
We did get caught in the rain on the way down, it hitting out faces like pins as we shot down on our bikes, luckily finding a small shelter in which to wait out the worst of the rain. I had made the trip up with two new friends. One is a professional photojournalist named Chris Sinclair whom I was put into contact with before I came. I’m staying at his apartment in Chiang Mai for a while with he and his friend who is passing through town. I’ve added a link on the right side of the blog to Chris Sinclair’s Web site if you would like to see some of his work. He is quite talented. A far, far better photographer than I am likely to be anytime soon.
My stay in Chiang Mai has been great thus far. It is a bit odd, though, going from living at the orphanage without even showers to this apartment with Internet access. I think I am going to use my time here to work on a couple of stories. I have some sources that I need to get into contact with here in Chiang Mai, so hopefully that can happen soon. Chris has told me that, of all the places he has been in Aisa (which is substantial), Chiang Mai is probably his favorite city. And I can understand why. It has everything that he needs as a professional right here (there is a Macintosh store a few streets over) but still has the feel of a Southeast Asian city (the prices are still cheap). And, within a motorbike ride of a couple hours, he can be in the northern Thai hills, cruising past rice paddies and the grass huts of village farmers. I’m looking forward to exploring Chiang Mai bit more over the next week. The following is a photo of Chiang Mai from above.
I was on a bus a couple of weeks ago having a quasi-English / Thai conversation with a Thai university student when I made the observation that there just didn’t seem to be very many gas stations as we drove down the highway, and told him about how there seems to be one every mile in the states. He agreed and sat there for a while as the bus lurched down the road. I could tell that he was putting an English sentence together in his mind because he was staring at the ceiling, his lips moving without words, then retracing those words adding new ones and so on, a tactic that I am already all too familiar with in my pursuance of Thai. When he had finally gathered his thoughts, he turned to me and said, with his smile on his face, “In America, you have many gas station, but in Thailand, we have many temple.” As he said this, I could see one of the pointed peaks, encrusted with golden dragons and Buddha images move past the window behind him.
He was right. I don’t have any official statistics on it, but just in my short travels thus far, I have been amazed by how many Buddhist temples there are in this country. They do line the streets, literally, in the frequency of gas stations in the U.S. And so, we made another visit to another temple, this one sitting at about 3,400 feet up 5,500 foot Mount Doisuthep, having a huge hill of stairs one must ascend to reach the main building. I’ve included a couple of photos below.
Thanks for all of your comments. I’ve really enjoyed reading them, and it makes me feel good that people are reading about what I’m doing over here this summer. I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date on any stories I write as they happen. So for now, keep enjoying your summers, and do yourself a favor by taking some time out every day to read a book. It’s been great for me so far.
Devil monkey
May 24A couple of days ago I made a trip with a missions group here from the U.S. to "The Golden Triangle," the place where three countries (Thailand, Burma, and Laos) meet at the conjunction of two rivers. We hopped on some long river boats that had about as much character as their captains, and jetted off across the Mekong in front of our wailing outboards. We did a quick loop towards Burma and then down the other direction between Thailand and Laos. Our pilot eased the boat into a small, sketchy looking dock, and I made my most unimpressive country entrance yet. As we stepped up onto the bank and climbed the dirt stairs, we were greeted by an unsmiling man behind a small, tiki hut-looking desk who was there to collect our 20 baht (about 50 cents) for entrance to his country. I paid him my fee and he handed me a small scrap of paper that had some scribbly Lao writing at the top followed by: "LAO P.D.R. [more scribble] Wel Come To DonSao Is land." No, those are not typing errors on my part, this is exactly what the paper said. Great tourism PR if you ask me.
As I continued my way down the path I realized that this "Is land" was just a collection of tourist shops. I wondered how far one would have to trek through the jungle wilderness to reach an actual Loa city. I turned to one of my companions, a Shan from Thailand, and commented that I didn’t think this was what Laos was really like. "Yes," he replied with a sly grin, "this fake Laos."
As I meandered further towards the back of the village, I noticed a small, wooden sign with orange lettering that pronounced (in English only, mind you) "Wild Animal" with an arrow pointing off to the right. Always giddy for a visit to the zoo, I plodded right along, thinking that there might be a petting farm up ahead. There were two cages and the first one held an animal that I quickly decided I would not be trying to pet. It was some sort of bear, called a "buffalo bear" in the best Shan to Thai to English translation I could get. The cage was the most shoddily-built contraption for holding a deadly animal I had ever seen and I stayed a few feet away. Soon, one of my companions gave the bear a carton of soy milk, which he proceeded to suck down on his back like a baby. Not so tough any more.
The other cage held a little monkey, the likes of which conjured memories of Curious George, getting in to all kinds of trouble. I stood and watched him bounce around in his cage, emitting a happy little chatter every now and again. He was just so human-like that I wished I had something to give him to play with or to eat. The best I could find was a piece of trash on the ground next to his cage, so I bent down to get it. As I did this, my head apparently broke the invisible barrier around the cage, and the monkey shot not one, but both of his spindly little arms through the space between the bars, grabbed a hold of two monkey handfuls of my shaggy hair, and then proceeded to draw them back in to his cage, ripping them from my delicate noggin. It all happened so fast that I wasn’t even sure why my head was in so much pain until I heard hysterical laughter around me and looked, dumfounded down into the cage to see the monkey glaring up at me with two handfuls of beautiful, dark blonde hair. Then, I believe just to spite me, he sat there and chewed off what I’m assuming was the dead skin left on the tips of my hair follicles. Ouch. In my amazement, I even forgot to take a picture of the little devil, so I’ll just post one of the bear. (The other photo is just riding around in the back of a pickup as is our mode of transportation everywhere we go. Cute little girl, isn’t she?)
Other than that, things are still going fine. I have decided to spend another week or so here in Tha Thon, or at least until I get a hold of a friend of a friend in Chiang Mai who is a professional photographer who I will be spending some time with. Please just keep me in your thoughts and, if it is your way, in your prayers.
A safe arrival
May 20My face burns.
When I bought those razors at the tiny shop in Tha Ton I gave the frail Thai woman a big smile paired with a joyous “Khorb Koon Khrap!” (“thank you very much”) and then pranced along my way. Had I known how painful and humiliating an experience it would be actually using the tiny, paper-thin pieces of metal to scrape across my skin (with cold water and no lotion) in an attempt to remove some of my several-day-old whiskers, I may not have been so plum chipper. But, seeing as my toiletry kit was lost somewhere over the many thousands of miles of flying before I arrived in Bangkok, I didn’t really see myself as having much choice in the matter. We’ll just look on the bright side and call my first shaving drama another step towards “cultural immersion.”
So, as you’ve probably gathered, I arrived safely in Bangkok on Thursday just before midnight (which would be Wednesday at about noon for those keeping track as I am 12 hours ahead of you in [northern] Indiana now). I crashed at a guesthouse for the night and spent the next morning and afternoon wandering aimlessly around Bangkok, a city much like other large cities I’ve visited in southern Asia. When I’m in places like these, I’m constantly reminded of the way there seems to be no middle class: you’re either driving a BMW or a Mercedes or you’re peddling trinkets and living in a room with dirt floors. I did take the opportunity to play tourist and visited Wat Arun, a temple in West Bangkok. That is what the first few of photos are from. I’ve never been one for big cities in the first place, so it was a relief to get on the train that evening headed for Chiang Mai, a town in northern Thailand. The trip was about 13 hours and went straight through the night, which was nice as my car was a “sleeper” and the seats fold down into beds. I’ve always enjoyed the rocking of a train, so it and jet lag teamed up to knock me out by about 10pm.
I woke up the next morning and looked out the window to find myself in the middle of the jungle. There was more overgrowth and thickness than I had ever seen. It was quite beautiful really, even if I did expect Tarzan to come swinging out of a tree and wave at me as he was passing. As you move further north in Thailand the terrain gets much more mountainous. When we finally came to rest in Chiang Mai, the panorama held layers upon layers of cascading hills, a deep, lush green at first, and then a hazy blue and grey as they went into the distance.
From Chiang Mai I caught a bus to Chiang Rai, a city further north still. It was only about three and a half hours and it was there that I was to be picked up by a man I had been put into contact with before I left … or so I thought. When he wasn’t there upon my arrival I gave him a call and found out that I would need to take another bus, the one that goes to Mae Sai. Let me just type out what he told me from there as best I can remember…
“You take the bus to Mae Sai but you don’t go to Mae Sai, you get off at Mae Chan. Then when you ah in Mae Chan you see the big, blue gas station and you get on a green truck. The green truck goes to Mae Ai but you don’t go to Mae Ai you get off at top of mountain by military checkpoint. When you are at top of mountain sometime yellow truck come and you take yellow truck to Tha Ton and you call us an we come pick you up.”
Haha … yeah. Let’s see, I did find the bus to Mae Sai which had a super-sketchy driver that said I didn’t need a ticket but should instead just pay him … which I did. There was no real stop in Mae Chan, the bus only slowed for a few seconds while a few locals hopped on. When I looked at the woman next to me and said “Mae Chan?” she nodded her head in agreement about a half second before I threw my pack out the open bus door and dove out after it. When I had finished brushing myself off I stopped to look around and was met by silence and a few Thais sitting on a median staring at me blankly as they chewed on some unfamiliar fruit. Welcome to Mae Chan. They finally yelled something at me in Thai (of which I can speak about 25 phrases, the one they were using not being one of them) and we eventually determined that I did not speak Thai and they did not speak English. But I did figure out that I had to sit next to them to wait for the truck to Mae Ai (where I wasn’t actually going). We sat there and stared blankly at each other for a while, one of the men sitting in a lawn chair bursting forth in sing-song voice every once in a while with his apparently favorite phrase “Sorry, I doa nota speaka English,” in as perfect a British accent as he could muster. Pretty priceless.
I did make it to Tha Ton though and am staying at an orphanage that has almost 60 children, most of which have come from the Shan nation of Burma. They have been taking good care of me and I spent the day pouring a concrete floor and eating laichee, a succulent little fruit that sits inside a red, spiky shell. The last photo is an example of the way we mixed concrete. Some sand and concrete mixture compiled in a volcano-like shape with added water. Tomorrow I’m hoping to go to another village nearby where there are lots of Shan people with a woman who teaches English there on Sundays before the small church service. 
Thank you for taking the time to check up on me. I’m not sure how often I will be able to update this, but I will surely do it as often as I’m able. Hope everything is going well with each of you!
