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.