Tonight we presented our final project -- the powerpoint with the results of our survey -- to the villagers in Theperak 1, one of the communities. The villagers got really excited about the network. So did Decha and Suntaree (two community activists the program works with). They've been some of our hardest critics so far, so hearing their support meant a lot to us.
What has made this semester what it is, has been relationships -- between each other, with the communities. Tonight we saw these relationships that we have formed with some villagers expanding to include other villagers. It's so cool. At the end of the meeting, we students stood side-by-side and expressed our gratitude to the communities, and spoke about what we've learned from them. It felt good to know that they appreciate what we're doing, and no matter what eventually becomes of this fledgling network, they want it now, and they see its benefits.
What a semester it's been. I feel like a bundle of cliches right now, but it's true, I suppose. That you really change doing this here.
Tomorrow is the first day of the human rights festival. We were setting up for that all day, in addition to running around like crazy people, trying to tie up loose ends with the PowerPoint presentation. The sala, which is further on campus, is looking really cool. I am looking forward to seeing many of my past host families tomorrow, in addition to the all the performances at the human rights festival. The network members are presenting our/their powerpoint, so that too is cool.
Although last night I was up to an ungodly hour with Alyssa and Pete, planning out our vacation to Cambodia and Laos, I plan on being up late again tonight. I find myself always keeping a mental to-do list in my head of things that need to be done by next Friday (eep!), things that I kept on thinking I had so much time to complete. Well, time has crept up on us really quickly. So now it's time to get to work.
Peace.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Happy Birthday (part 1)
It's the king's 80th birthday today. The Bangkok Post celebrated by revealing the secret of his fashion sense (http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/05Dec2007_news02.php). My group celebrated early last night with a sumptuous meal at Green Leaf. In addition to the king, we were celebrating the completion of data analysis from our very own survey! To think how far we've come!
So no we are figuring out next steps in our project. Less than two weeks to go in the program.
Which I realized last night in a sobering moment, also means less than two weeks to my birthday.
And that is why this entry is entitled "Happy Birthday (part 1)".
Peace.
So no we are figuring out next steps in our project. Less than two weeks to go in the program.
Which I realized last night in a sobering moment, also means less than two weeks to my birthday.
And that is why this entry is entitled "Happy Birthday (part 1)".
Peace.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
"You Can Get Anything You Want..."
So I sit here in my dorm room, listening to "Alice's Restaraunt", mulling over the very detatched Thanksgiving I just had. I say "detatched" because it really is just another day here in Thailand.
Today final project time started in earnest. Our group, who consists of myself, Alyssa, Pete, Stevie, Anne, and Tom, is working on the organization of a sort-of network of urban scavengers in Khon Kaen. Yesterday we met with P' Kovitt, an NGO working with slum-dwellers and the landfill community. (A note here: P'Kovitt is a person; activist in Thailand routinely introduce themselves as NGOs.) This morning, Kovitt came with us to two slum communities -- Theperak 1 and Nong Wang. Neither of these was the one I stayed at. So that means, I still haven't seen any of my former host families since we've parted ways, which is a little sad. Oh well, we'll see each other at the Human Rights Festival next month.
The purpose of the meetings this morning was to get communities interested in an organizational meeting this evening back at the office. Luckily, both Theperak and Nong Wang communities were enthusiastic about the meeting. They agreed to send representatives to the dinner and meeting.
After a rushed lunch, Anne and I tagged along with another project group working with the landfill community. Their project is really cool, as Alexandra explained to me. It involves making crafts out of non-recyclable garbage for the Human Rights Festival and doing a photo exhibit using the same model used in the movie "Born into Brothels." That model involves giving cameras to members of a community, teaching how to use them, holding photo critiques, and ending with not only neat photos, but a skill for the community members. Also accompanying us were two KKU students who have written a human rights report for the landfill community, showing the first draft to the community. Paw Kham and Mae Thong were there again and it was really cool seeing them again. It really struck me how long it was since we'd been there -- consequently how long we've been here in Thailand.
Also, even two and a half months later, the landfill, the shear amount of trash, strikes me.
Paw Kham seemed excited about the prospects that a network of scavengers could be, but wary. It seems they've been promised a bit too much in the past. Still, he agreed to come with other members.
We came back with four hours until the meeting, but there was lots to organize, and we were kept busy until five. Last minute disasters sprung up -- like our Ajaans freaking out about the number of people coming to the meeting, or reevaluation of goals. When six o'clock rolled around however, we were ready to go. As the members of the communities flowed into our parking lot, sitting down to eat, every one of us was nervous. How would it go?
Anne and I sat with Ajaan Ooh, our translator for the night, P'Kovitt, and several of the leaders to set out our objectives. Paw Sompat of Theperak 1 sat with us, displaying his dark-horse tendencies. He seems to think most often aloud, and has been known to ramble on a bit. From his rambling several good ideas, brimming with excitement, have stemmed.
The meeting went exceptionally well. Just about everyone seemed optimistic of the idea to form a network, and all were in support of it. At one point, when relating stories of being accosted by the police, it was pretty chaotic. Ajaan Ooh looked like she was having a hard time, translating the cacaphony of voices coming from all sides. Still, excitement caused this. This is really great and in line with our goals for the project. We intend that this project -- starting a network -- be the communities', not ours. Our role is that of facilitator of these conversations (mission accomplish...?) and to contribute something like a PowerPoint presentation, that the network can take to presentations to portray them and arm them with usable statistics.
The communities set up meetings in the future that we're planning on attending, to check where they're at and explain our progress to them. Next steps for tomorrow include figuring out this pretty daunting process ahead of us. You see, we're planning on carrying out the survey on our own -- but none of us has ever done this. Well, it should be interesting.
Tonight, leaving the meeting, we were excited. Let's not forget this intial wave of optimism, excitement, and energy -- even if a week's time finds me in the pits of frustration!
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Today final project time started in earnest. Our group, who consists of myself, Alyssa, Pete, Stevie, Anne, and Tom, is working on the organization of a sort-of network of urban scavengers in Khon Kaen. Yesterday we met with P' Kovitt, an NGO working with slum-dwellers and the landfill community. (A note here: P'Kovitt is a person; activist in Thailand routinely introduce themselves as NGOs.) This morning, Kovitt came with us to two slum communities -- Theperak 1 and Nong Wang. Neither of these was the one I stayed at. So that means, I still haven't seen any of my former host families since we've parted ways, which is a little sad. Oh well, we'll see each other at the Human Rights Festival next month.
The purpose of the meetings this morning was to get communities interested in an organizational meeting this evening back at the office. Luckily, both Theperak and Nong Wang communities were enthusiastic about the meeting. They agreed to send representatives to the dinner and meeting.
After a rushed lunch, Anne and I tagged along with another project group working with the landfill community. Their project is really cool, as Alexandra explained to me. It involves making crafts out of non-recyclable garbage for the Human Rights Festival and doing a photo exhibit using the same model used in the movie "Born into Brothels." That model involves giving cameras to members of a community, teaching how to use them, holding photo critiques, and ending with not only neat photos, but a skill for the community members. Also accompanying us were two KKU students who have written a human rights report for the landfill community, showing the first draft to the community. Paw Kham and Mae Thong were there again and it was really cool seeing them again. It really struck me how long it was since we'd been there -- consequently how long we've been here in Thailand.
Also, even two and a half months later, the landfill, the shear amount of trash, strikes me.
Paw Kham seemed excited about the prospects that a network of scavengers could be, but wary. It seems they've been promised a bit too much in the past. Still, he agreed to come with other members.
We came back with four hours until the meeting, but there was lots to organize, and we were kept busy until five. Last minute disasters sprung up -- like our Ajaans freaking out about the number of people coming to the meeting, or reevaluation of goals. When six o'clock rolled around however, we were ready to go. As the members of the communities flowed into our parking lot, sitting down to eat, every one of us was nervous. How would it go?
Anne and I sat with Ajaan Ooh, our translator for the night, P'Kovitt, and several of the leaders to set out our objectives. Paw Sompat of Theperak 1 sat with us, displaying his dark-horse tendencies. He seems to think most often aloud, and has been known to ramble on a bit. From his rambling several good ideas, brimming with excitement, have stemmed.
The meeting went exceptionally well. Just about everyone seemed optimistic of the idea to form a network, and all were in support of it. At one point, when relating stories of being accosted by the police, it was pretty chaotic. Ajaan Ooh looked like she was having a hard time, translating the cacaphony of voices coming from all sides. Still, excitement caused this. This is really great and in line with our goals for the project. We intend that this project -- starting a network -- be the communities', not ours. Our role is that of facilitator of these conversations (mission accomplish...?) and to contribute something like a PowerPoint presentation, that the network can take to presentations to portray them and arm them with usable statistics.
The communities set up meetings in the future that we're planning on attending, to check where they're at and explain our progress to them. Next steps for tomorrow include figuring out this pretty daunting process ahead of us. You see, we're planning on carrying out the survey on our own -- but none of us has ever done this. Well, it should be interesting.
Tonight, leaving the meeting, we were excited. Let's not forget this intial wave of optimism, excitement, and energy -- even if a week's time finds me in the pits of frustration!
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Project Planning
We're in the throws of project planning now. Yesterday was a brainstorm/idea-bubbling session. A real long one. We basically came up with a lot of ideas that interested us, that fit with our vision, and then pain-stakingly whittled them down to about ten ideas to go through the project steering committee and staff. I was having a hard time finding anything really to latch onto. I suppose the many, many days of nine to ten-hour days of meetings is taking its toll on my interest level.
When I went home last night, I focused on putting together a photo-essay Kelsey commissioned for the newsletter. Originally it was supposed to deal with us as group members and our personal experience here in Thailand, but it morphed into a visual representation/illustration of our vision -- the same vision I posted two days ago. Sitting there in my room, listening to some Radiohead and editing, I found some peace that I'd been lacking. I'll try to post the fruits of my labor soon.
Coming out of that, I felt excellent. The fact that I then heard we didn't need to be anywhere until 12:30 the next afternoon helped too to lift my mood.
Today we came into the classroom where the staff presented the elligible projects to us. They weren't exactly what we had submitted. Much of them were linked to ENGAGE, the loose network of CIEE Thailand allumni, and had to do with networking. I suppose that's a little more realistic to try to accomplish in the short three weeks we're allotted for project time than other proposals. We then were told to latch onto our primary project. Whether we wanted to then dedicate ourselves to more than one project would be up to us individually.
The one I'm working on now is having to do with the scavengers that we studied back in early September at the landfill. The landfill was such a powerful unit, because many of our projects focus on it. This one has to do with linking the scavengers to international and national organizations. There's talk of organizing someone from Thailand to go to a conference on this in Bogota, Columbia next spring. A woman from India who has set up a network like this wants to make Khon Kaen the pilot city for an urban scavenger organization in Thailand. This is the beginning of an idea with huge potential, so it's pretty exciting.
I'm hoping to take this issue back when I return to the States. I know it's effecting my internship-search. Everything's pretty nebulous on our end right now, but soon that will fall into place.
Tonight is "Thanksgiving" for us. The Sofitel, the four-star hotel downtown, hosts a Thanksgiving buffet for all the ex-pat Americans. We've gotten CIEE to pay for our meal, but the catch is we have to do it a few days ahead of time -- I suppose to beat the rush. So happy (super-early) Thanksgiving! Hail the Giant Pumpkin!
When I went home last night, I focused on putting together a photo-essay Kelsey commissioned for the newsletter. Originally it was supposed to deal with us as group members and our personal experience here in Thailand, but it morphed into a visual representation/illustration of our vision -- the same vision I posted two days ago. Sitting there in my room, listening to some Radiohead and editing, I found some peace that I'd been lacking. I'll try to post the fruits of my labor soon.
Coming out of that, I felt excellent. The fact that I then heard we didn't need to be anywhere until 12:30 the next afternoon helped too to lift my mood.
Today we came into the classroom where the staff presented the elligible projects to us. They weren't exactly what we had submitted. Much of them were linked to ENGAGE, the loose network of CIEE Thailand allumni, and had to do with networking. I suppose that's a little more realistic to try to accomplish in the short three weeks we're allotted for project time than other proposals. We then were told to latch onto our primary project. Whether we wanted to then dedicate ourselves to more than one project would be up to us individually.
The one I'm working on now is having to do with the scavengers that we studied back in early September at the landfill. The landfill was such a powerful unit, because many of our projects focus on it. This one has to do with linking the scavengers to international and national organizations. There's talk of organizing someone from Thailand to go to a conference on this in Bogota, Columbia next spring. A woman from India who has set up a network like this wants to make Khon Kaen the pilot city for an urban scavenger organization in Thailand. This is the beginning of an idea with huge potential, so it's pretty exciting.
I'm hoping to take this issue back when I return to the States. I know it's effecting my internship-search. Everything's pretty nebulous on our end right now, but soon that will fall into place.
Tonight is "Thanksgiving" for us. The Sofitel, the four-star hotel downtown, hosts a Thanksgiving buffet for all the ex-pat Americans. We've gotten CIEE to pay for our meal, but the catch is we have to do it a few days ahead of time -- I suppose to beat the rush. So happy (super-early) Thanksgiving! Hail the Giant Pumpkin!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Vision.
Today's ten hours of meetings resulted in the draft of our group's vision. This is to shape our final projects, but was crafted like a sort of manifesto. Ten hours of crafting this was in no way fun. We haggled over words, compromise, tone, everything.
I view this struggle we've been having to try to get everyone's voices heard while maintaining coherency, specificity, and personality as a reflection of broader systems of democracy. What's sustaining me through all these meetings is the thought that if we can't make this work here -- where we all have access, education, shared touchstones, and some semblance of equality -- when will this broad sense of consensus and democracy ever work?
Without further ado, our vision for fall 2007:
We are a group of individuals from diverse backgrounds, uniting in a place that is not our own. We have come to see that issues parallel each other and transcend borders. We recognize the interconnectedness of local and global struggles. We acknowledge that our local actions have implications on a global scale and accept the responsibility that entails.
As a group of global citizens and life-long students, we cannot deny the problems in the world. We see the deterioration of traditions and the exploitation of natural resources by systems that limit choice. We see political, social and economic institutions that fail to fulfill their responsibilities to represent people and the environment. As a result, people’s voices are ignored and their knowledge and local resources are commodified. We see a system that is a collection of all of us -- our behavior, and decisions. There is a disconnect between the consumer, corporation and producer.
Every one of us is an actor in this system that violates the rights of humans and the environment. It’s not just those at the bottom who are hurt. Issues are not black and white; there is never one cause and never one solution.
Our newly formed relationships have reinforced these realizations:
• Globalization has perpetuated unsustainable management of our finite resources.
• By remaining indifferent we legitimize a system that routinely violates the rights of individuals and communities.
• As consumers our choices impact both the distribution of resources and the lives of people.
Our Guiding Principles:
To make positive change in the world we need to act on our firmly held principles of nonviolence, human dignity, and consciousness of the earth.
An effective movement is dynamic and responsive to the changing needs and beliefs of the world. It must be owned by everyone so that it dies with no one. As equals we recognize the potential for everyone to be leaders.
We believe in a world where government policies are made in conjunction with the people.
As individuals who have adopted these principles as the core of our consciousness, we resolve to fight for them on all levels: within ourselves, among one another, in larger structures, and with respect for the earth. Only through strong relationships, which build global solidarity, can sustainable and just change be achieved.
Our Goals:
• Create widespread consciousness of local and global issues.
• Build a larger global network through the cultivation of personal relationships.
• Understand and support necessary mechanisms for communication between all members of society.
• Make informed and responsible decisions by understanding our roles within the system.
• Reduce our impact on the earth through our lifestyle choices.
• Advocate for improved transparency in the current system.
Activism begins with awareness.
We believe in a world where no one is overlooked. We will act deliberately and with foresight to achieve these goals.
We are the people. We have the power to be heard.
In related news, I've heard about this communist bar in downtown Khon Kaen that I am excited to explore sometime soon. I hear they play Songs for Life -- incidentally the subject of my radio documentary.
In solidarity, comrads.
PS - I've been meaning to post this for a while, but here is the link to my group's second newsletter of the semester. I didn't contribute any writings this time, but my photography is featured throughout.
http://ciee.pfacs.googlepages.com/newsletter2-fall2007-highquality.pdf
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Gender in the City
Friday. Two very different exchanges. Two different experiences of the struggles people face regarding gender. At the fairly frustrating check-in in the morning we tried and kind of failed to prepare for SWING exchange. SWING -- or Service Workers' IN Group -- is a group of male sex workers in Bangkok bonding together to provide support and education about sex work. After the exchange with the volunteers and workers, we were to tour the sex clubs, and many of us were nervous. Some worried about seeing things they didn't want to, that they would feel really uncomfortable. Whitney, I remember, at breakfast told me she worried that she would get visibly uncomfortable, possibly offending someone. Others were fascinated by the subject matter -- studying this was the primary reason Shayne and others even came here to Thailand -- but were afraid that when faced with everything they had only studied in theory, all their beliefs would be proven wrong. My feelings were kind of mixed. I was most worried that it would turn into a voyeuristic show on my part; that I would just want to see the "worst they got" just to see how much I could take, and lose sight of the actual issues and people behind those issues.
With that weighing on our heads we loaded up into the vans in the cramped parking garage of the Viengtai Hotel. During the hour drive to the next exchange we chatted and tried to clear strip shows and sex workers from our minds. This exchange was to be something, um... rather in a different vein.
We met and spoke with Dhammananda, Thailand's first fully-ordained female monk at her home in a monastary in the Bangkok suburbs. The monastary is called Songdhammakalyani Monastary and houses not only herself, but three other female monks, several novices, a small school, and devoted laypeople. It's a beautiful wat complex, more subdued artistically than other monastaries we've seen.
The issue of female monkhood in Thailand is such an issue for several reasons, but most importantly because of the sangha (or monk-clergy)'s tie to the state. The monks that you see in Thailand, all decked out in bright orange robes, are under the control (at least somewhat) of the government. Buddha declared that both women and men could become monks, but the ordination of women monks has to be overseen by women monks. Before the venerable Dhammananda, Thailand had no lineage of female monks, so it could not ordain women. In the 1920s, a progressive monk tried to ordain his two daughters, but the supreme patriarch of Buddhism here declared that illegal under Thai Buddhist faith (Thammayut and Mahanikaya sects), disrobing and jailing the monks. Since then, women have only been allowed to be "nuns" who don't get as much support. While it gets you karma points if you feed monks, feeding nuns gets you jack.
Until Dhammananda came around.
She's this reallly awesome lady. When she enters the room, she eminates an aura of cheerful peace. Before ordination in 2003, she was a professor at Thammasat University (Bangkok's second most-popular University) and had her own talk show. As a Buddhist scholar, she is well-versed in the faith and speaks fluent English. She talks about her former life, and it's difficult to imagine that less than ten years ago, Dhammananda was another Thai woman. As she tells it, one day as she was putting on her make-up in the morning, she stopped, looked in the mirror, and asked herself what she was doing? From that day on, she started on the path to monkhood. Now her head is shaved and she wears the orange robes of monkhood -- albeit a darker orange color than the men we've seen.
We talked about much during the three-hour exchange. One thing that struck me was her talk about forming a support group. Dhammananda likened it to washing potatos. You gather potatos of all shapes, put them in a bucket with water, and stir. As you stir faster, the motion gets faster, sometimes too faster for individual potatos. The motion gets too much for one, and pop! Out of the bucket it flies! "If a potato jumps out of the bucket, it rots away," she said. So communities really need to watch out for their own, I guess. This is a hard thing to hear now, seeing as our own group often is pulling away, wanting to jump out of that bucket. We can't just let those lost potatos rot; we're all here together, whether we like it or not.
I'm enjoying learning more about interpretations of the Buddhist faith -- both in its social activism and its downfalls. Such cool ideas are worth hearing about, even if you don't subscribe to the beliefs. "Talk about today. Talk about now."
I left feeling much better, cheerful, relaxed. Ajaan Dii took a Flat Stanley picture with us all (I'm cursing myself for not having my camera handy!) that his friend's small son in North Carolina sent him. That kid will win the coolness contest at his school's show and tell for sure.
Coming to the monastary, the van ride took about thirty minutes. Leaving several hours later, it took at least two hours. Bangkok's traffic is brutal, snail-slow gridlock. At one point, stuck in an unmoving caravan for fifteen minutes, Ajaan Dii walked out of his van to ours and told us we would be late for the SWING exchange. "This is once in a lifetime traffic!" he exclaimed proudly. Indeed.
Several hours later we arrived in Patpong, the seedy red-light district. Well, one of the seedy red-light districts of Bangkok. The main one at least. With bar names like "Ball Club" and "Pussy Galore", these clubs don't beat around the bush. SWING's headquarters is a tiny office, up five flights of a seedy office building in the heart of the bar scene. The elevator didn't go all the way up to the fifth floor, so as we climbed the last flight of stairs, we walked by a group of women sex workers putting on their make-up for the evening and chatting. The office is cheerfully decorated -- bright posters about safe sex practices and simple English posters adorn the walls.
The staff was smiley and eager to meet us. P'Thon, the only woman, is the project's coordinator. She graduated with a drama degree and wanted to get involved with drama work. She got interested in the annual show that EMPOWER puts on. EMPOWER works with female sex workers, as opposed to SWING. Thon helped start SWING when male sex workers kept wanting to come to the programs offered for women. They follow the same basic model. SWING is a community-based organization, which means that it's run almost entirely by former sex-workers. It offers a cocktail of activities, counseling, English classes, sex-education, "edutainment", and outreach work, as well as being on of the few place to reliably collect sex worker demographic data.
They specified the term "service workers" in the organization's title, because that's what they want to be seen as -- offering a service. If they can get sex work categorized under the labor law, this will allow sex workers to get the same rights under the government as factory workers. For a job that docks you pay if you skip a day, having things like paid vacation and health care is damn essential.
We heard some of the staff's stories of how they came to be involved in SWING. All the men had worked as sex workers in the bars. One thing that was suprising was how many of them had higher education. P'Tiem, a graduate of Thammasaat University in Bangkok in information technology, had a job in the IT sector, but was fired because his boss wasn't comfortable with Tiem's homosexuality. While sending out his resume, Tiem started working as a waiter, then tried out sex work when the pay wasn't sustainable. He did that for a few years until, like something out of an O Henry story, he accidentally left his resume in the disc drive at SWING's office. He's been working there ever since. Small and impecably-dressed, it's not hard to imagine him in classes.
Another staff members have faced discrimination against transgender. After a botched Botox injection to the face, she was left with a sagging face and money drained because of multiple attempts to fix it. Patpong is always there for those who know how to knock.
One thing that struck me was the intensity of community felt there. Sometimes the support group takes a break from the English lessons, or safe-sex workshops and just goes out to a movie or to dinner together. It becomes, in the truest sense, a support group because it's built upon genuine relationships. As P'Thon said, "we are all human. This is our family."
We broke into smaller groups of students, accompanied by a translater (Ajaan DIi for us), and a SWING staff member. They took us to a male and a female bar. It was nice to have someone experienced with the ways of Patpong to guide us down the close, garishly-lit streets. With all the loud touts around, promising exciting shows of all kinds, it becomes kind of necessary to know where you're going.
The male bar was up a narrow,red-lit, carpeted stairwell. The bar owner seemed to know our guide and friendly greeted him while we were lead to our seats in the front row. I couldn't help catching a glimpse of the men in the audience. Mostly older men, about 60-40 farang vs Asian. Some already had much younger men as companions. Some just sat alone in the dimly-lit room. Earlier as a group, we had discussed non-judgement -- not only of the sex-workers, but of their clientelle. Still, when faced with it, it's hard to really digest.
The show started. Off to the side, a red light came on a shower scene, with two naked men lathering up. Their routine (because that's what it was) was a highly-choreographed dance of intimacy. It was like someone going through the motions. This show was pretty hard-core with not only strippers, but full-nudity and intercourse. Watching made me feel really uncomfortable, not only because this isn't something I encounter everyday, but because it really makes me reexamine love and sex in a whole new way. To have something we think of as so personal, so tied to romance, just acted out like a play felt... strange. I don't know still exactly how I feel about it. Having our guide there was incredibly helpful. We got to ask questions throughout the show. For example, the two men having sex with each other a few feet away from us we learned are active members of SWING and nothing more than good friends and collegues outside of work. In fact, a majority of the men who work at such bars are straight. It really is just a job for them.
The part of the evening that brought home the business side of the industry was right before we left. All the "available companions" stood onstage, wearing tight, white briefs with a number pinned onto it. There they stood, showing off their goods, slowly rotating their formation so potential customers could check them out. It reminded me of a car showroom. That's what really disturbed me the most because of its dehumanizing aspects. To their customers, these boys are products. Ah, capitalism, shine your light down on us.
Moving onto the women's bar, there was a marked difference. Whereas the men's show had felt more serious about its work, the women's bar has a sense of lightheartedness. When they aren't dancing or doing tricks (no, not turning tricks) onstage, the girls walk around among the spectators. Some men -- once again a lot of creepy farang -- buy them drinks (how you make a deal here), but if they don't, the girls seem fine joking among themselves. One who sat within earshot kept calling up to her collegues onstage, while they responded with giggles or retorts of their own. The girls' set-up is a rotation of stripper show and "tricks" like ping-pong show, or blowing out candles, or smoking cigarettes, or writing with a permanant marker -- all done with a vagina.
Tang, a worker, sat down next to Christie and me. We bought her a drink so we could talk. It turns out, most of the girls who worked their come from Isaan, traditionally the poorest region of Thailand. Unlike the guys, who we found were more likely to have higher education, the girls will work more likely for survival or to send money back home. Tang pointed to one girl, sitting by the bar heckling her friend. "She's from Khon Kaen too," Tang said. The Khon Kaen woman stopped talking to her friend as the music ended, and climbed up onstage, removing her bathrobe. She was totally naked, except for a pair of socks she wore under her heels. Walking around in heels all day is tough no matter what profession you do. Holding a marker in her vagina, she squatted over a paper and wrote the word "Hello" in English.
Tang left about ten minutes later, after we shot the breeze about her family; she had to go dance. Later, I saw her flirting with a farang couple. I found her to say goodbye. Going to these clubs is expensive. You are required to buy at least one drink, but when they're 200 Baht ($7ish) for the least expensive ones, it adds up really fast.
I'm really glad I've gotten this experience. Sex work isn't pretty, and I still don't exactly know how I feel about the industry. Thon says, "everyone has sex. It just depends on sex for free or sex for sale." While I see the truth that, I can't really support an industry so essentially dehumanizing. In the end, I feel it is most important to see the humans behind the machine, the people who fuel the industry's very existence.
It was a very interesting day of gender difference, indeed.
With that weighing on our heads we loaded up into the vans in the cramped parking garage of the Viengtai Hotel. During the hour drive to the next exchange we chatted and tried to clear strip shows and sex workers from our minds. This exchange was to be something, um... rather in a different vein.
We met and spoke with Dhammananda, Thailand's first fully-ordained female monk at her home in a monastary in the Bangkok suburbs. The monastary is called Songdhammakalyani Monastary and houses not only herself, but three other female monks, several novices, a small school, and devoted laypeople. It's a beautiful wat complex, more subdued artistically than other monastaries we've seen.
The issue of female monkhood in Thailand is such an issue for several reasons, but most importantly because of the sangha (or monk-clergy)'s tie to the state. The monks that you see in Thailand, all decked out in bright orange robes, are under the control (at least somewhat) of the government. Buddha declared that both women and men could become monks, but the ordination of women monks has to be overseen by women monks. Before the venerable Dhammananda, Thailand had no lineage of female monks, so it could not ordain women. In the 1920s, a progressive monk tried to ordain his two daughters, but the supreme patriarch of Buddhism here declared that illegal under Thai Buddhist faith (Thammayut and Mahanikaya sects), disrobing and jailing the monks. Since then, women have only been allowed to be "nuns" who don't get as much support. While it gets you karma points if you feed monks, feeding nuns gets you jack.
Until Dhammananda came around.
She's this reallly awesome lady. When she enters the room, she eminates an aura of cheerful peace. Before ordination in 2003, she was a professor at Thammasat University (Bangkok's second most-popular University) and had her own talk show. As a Buddhist scholar, she is well-versed in the faith and speaks fluent English. She talks about her former life, and it's difficult to imagine that less than ten years ago, Dhammananda was another Thai woman. As she tells it, one day as she was putting on her make-up in the morning, she stopped, looked in the mirror, and asked herself what she was doing? From that day on, she started on the path to monkhood. Now her head is shaved and she wears the orange robes of monkhood -- albeit a darker orange color than the men we've seen.
We talked about much during the three-hour exchange. One thing that struck me was her talk about forming a support group. Dhammananda likened it to washing potatos. You gather potatos of all shapes, put them in a bucket with water, and stir. As you stir faster, the motion gets faster, sometimes too faster for individual potatos. The motion gets too much for one, and pop! Out of the bucket it flies! "If a potato jumps out of the bucket, it rots away," she said. So communities really need to watch out for their own, I guess. This is a hard thing to hear now, seeing as our own group often is pulling away, wanting to jump out of that bucket. We can't just let those lost potatos rot; we're all here together, whether we like it or not.
I'm enjoying learning more about interpretations of the Buddhist faith -- both in its social activism and its downfalls. Such cool ideas are worth hearing about, even if you don't subscribe to the beliefs. "Talk about today. Talk about now."
I left feeling much better, cheerful, relaxed. Ajaan Dii took a Flat Stanley picture with us all (I'm cursing myself for not having my camera handy!) that his friend's small son in North Carolina sent him. That kid will win the coolness contest at his school's show and tell for sure.
Coming to the monastary, the van ride took about thirty minutes. Leaving several hours later, it took at least two hours. Bangkok's traffic is brutal, snail-slow gridlock. At one point, stuck in an unmoving caravan for fifteen minutes, Ajaan Dii walked out of his van to ours and told us we would be late for the SWING exchange. "This is once in a lifetime traffic!" he exclaimed proudly. Indeed.
Several hours later we arrived in Patpong, the seedy red-light district. Well, one of the seedy red-light districts of Bangkok. The main one at least. With bar names like "Ball Club" and "Pussy Galore", these clubs don't beat around the bush. SWING's headquarters is a tiny office, up five flights of a seedy office building in the heart of the bar scene. The elevator didn't go all the way up to the fifth floor, so as we climbed the last flight of stairs, we walked by a group of women sex workers putting on their make-up for the evening and chatting. The office is cheerfully decorated -- bright posters about safe sex practices and simple English posters adorn the walls.
The staff was smiley and eager to meet us. P'Thon, the only woman, is the project's coordinator. She graduated with a drama degree and wanted to get involved with drama work. She got interested in the annual show that EMPOWER puts on. EMPOWER works with female sex workers, as opposed to SWING. Thon helped start SWING when male sex workers kept wanting to come to the programs offered for women. They follow the same basic model. SWING is a community-based organization, which means that it's run almost entirely by former sex-workers. It offers a cocktail of activities, counseling, English classes, sex-education, "edutainment", and outreach work, as well as being on of the few place to reliably collect sex worker demographic data.
They specified the term "service workers" in the organization's title, because that's what they want to be seen as -- offering a service. If they can get sex work categorized under the labor law, this will allow sex workers to get the same rights under the government as factory workers. For a job that docks you pay if you skip a day, having things like paid vacation and health care is damn essential.
We heard some of the staff's stories of how they came to be involved in SWING. All the men had worked as sex workers in the bars. One thing that was suprising was how many of them had higher education. P'Tiem, a graduate of Thammasaat University in Bangkok in information technology, had a job in the IT sector, but was fired because his boss wasn't comfortable with Tiem's homosexuality. While sending out his resume, Tiem started working as a waiter, then tried out sex work when the pay wasn't sustainable. He did that for a few years until, like something out of an O Henry story, he accidentally left his resume in the disc drive at SWING's office. He's been working there ever since. Small and impecably-dressed, it's not hard to imagine him in classes.
Another staff members have faced discrimination against transgender. After a botched Botox injection to the face, she was left with a sagging face and money drained because of multiple attempts to fix it. Patpong is always there for those who know how to knock.
One thing that struck me was the intensity of community felt there. Sometimes the support group takes a break from the English lessons, or safe-sex workshops and just goes out to a movie or to dinner together. It becomes, in the truest sense, a support group because it's built upon genuine relationships. As P'Thon said, "we are all human. This is our family."
We broke into smaller groups of students, accompanied by a translater (Ajaan DIi for us), and a SWING staff member. They took us to a male and a female bar. It was nice to have someone experienced with the ways of Patpong to guide us down the close, garishly-lit streets. With all the loud touts around, promising exciting shows of all kinds, it becomes kind of necessary to know where you're going.
The male bar was up a narrow,red-lit, carpeted stairwell. The bar owner seemed to know our guide and friendly greeted him while we were lead to our seats in the front row. I couldn't help catching a glimpse of the men in the audience. Mostly older men, about 60-40 farang vs Asian. Some already had much younger men as companions. Some just sat alone in the dimly-lit room. Earlier as a group, we had discussed non-judgement -- not only of the sex-workers, but of their clientelle. Still, when faced with it, it's hard to really digest.
The show started. Off to the side, a red light came on a shower scene, with two naked men lathering up. Their routine (because that's what it was) was a highly-choreographed dance of intimacy. It was like someone going through the motions. This show was pretty hard-core with not only strippers, but full-nudity and intercourse. Watching made me feel really uncomfortable, not only because this isn't something I encounter everyday, but because it really makes me reexamine love and sex in a whole new way. To have something we think of as so personal, so tied to romance, just acted out like a play felt... strange. I don't know still exactly how I feel about it. Having our guide there was incredibly helpful. We got to ask questions throughout the show. For example, the two men having sex with each other a few feet away from us we learned are active members of SWING and nothing more than good friends and collegues outside of work. In fact, a majority of the men who work at such bars are straight. It really is just a job for them.
The part of the evening that brought home the business side of the industry was right before we left. All the "available companions" stood onstage, wearing tight, white briefs with a number pinned onto it. There they stood, showing off their goods, slowly rotating their formation so potential customers could check them out. It reminded me of a car showroom. That's what really disturbed me the most because of its dehumanizing aspects. To their customers, these boys are products. Ah, capitalism, shine your light down on us.
Moving onto the women's bar, there was a marked difference. Whereas the men's show had felt more serious about its work, the women's bar has a sense of lightheartedness. When they aren't dancing or doing tricks (no, not turning tricks) onstage, the girls walk around among the spectators. Some men -- once again a lot of creepy farang -- buy them drinks (how you make a deal here), but if they don't, the girls seem fine joking among themselves. One who sat within earshot kept calling up to her collegues onstage, while they responded with giggles or retorts of their own. The girls' set-up is a rotation of stripper show and "tricks" like ping-pong show, or blowing out candles, or smoking cigarettes, or writing with a permanant marker -- all done with a vagina.
Tang, a worker, sat down next to Christie and me. We bought her a drink so we could talk. It turns out, most of the girls who worked their come from Isaan, traditionally the poorest region of Thailand. Unlike the guys, who we found were more likely to have higher education, the girls will work more likely for survival or to send money back home. Tang pointed to one girl, sitting by the bar heckling her friend. "She's from Khon Kaen too," Tang said. The Khon Kaen woman stopped talking to her friend as the music ended, and climbed up onstage, removing her bathrobe. She was totally naked, except for a pair of socks she wore under her heels. Walking around in heels all day is tough no matter what profession you do. Holding a marker in her vagina, she squatted over a paper and wrote the word "Hello" in English.
Tang left about ten minutes later, after we shot the breeze about her family; she had to go dance. Later, I saw her flirting with a farang couple. I found her to say goodbye. Going to these clubs is expensive. You are required to buy at least one drink, but when they're 200 Baht ($7ish) for the least expensive ones, it adds up really fast.
I'm really glad I've gotten this experience. Sex work isn't pretty, and I still don't exactly know how I feel about the industry. Thon says, "everyone has sex. It just depends on sex for free or sex for sale." While I see the truth that, I can't really support an industry so essentially dehumanizing. In the end, I feel it is most important to see the humans behind the machine, the people who fuel the industry's very existence.
It was a very interesting day of gender difference, indeed.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Bangkok
Today was day two of our four-day Bangkok trip. Unit five focuses on people's movements and trends, so we've come here to the capital, the other "city of angels", to meet and exchange with several NGOs, government representatives, and personalities. Take yesterday, for example. We met with this amazing social critic, Sulak Sivaraksa. He is a seventy-four year old man who has written prolifically on Thai-ness, socially-aware Buddhism, and life. Twice he has been charged with les mageste (or criticizing the king, a serious charge here, where one must love the monarchy by law); twice he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And we got to question him and get his insight.
But that all was yesterday.
Today we had an exchange in the morning with Jon Ungpakorn, an activist and national chair of NGO-CORD, the coordinating organization in Thailand of the country's NGOs. He not only has amazing insight into organizing and facillitating all these different bodies, but he has a personal history of activism and social awareness. His father founded one of the major Bangkok universities (I forget... I think Thamasaht), and Jon was educated abroad. When he returned in the early '70s, Thailand's student revolt -- and the resulting bloody reaction from the regime -- was going on. He got involved with the students, and worked with many of the early NGOs emerging in the eighties.
Like many of the "wise old men" we meet, he not only had a fascinating history, but has insight into the current situations here in Thailand. He gave advice as to how we, as socially-interested students and individuals, can continue to be so. After the sessions, I grabbed the voice recorder I borrowed from Pete to get his comments on record for my project. My role this unit is so-call "unit production." Basically, I do a project this unit. I'm doing a radio documentary on the Thai protest songs that resulted out of the above-mentioned students' movement of the 19070s -- plang pua chi wit ("Songs for life"). Watch out Ira Glass. I'm excited to be improving my interview skills, plus I hope to be able to play this on the radio for What the Folk (my college radio folk show) next semester.
You know, despite everything the Khao San Road represents in Bangkok -- the garish lights, consumerism, and tourist trash -- you have to hand it to them for the aray of good, cheap vegetarian food. At a tucked-away Israli restaurant, I dined on falafel, as Sasha, Kevin and I discussed what we've seen here and where our group's at. Our group has decided to have a "group vision" to guide our final projects. Last night we started forming that vision, and now it looks something like a manifesto. It's exciting to think how our ideas shape the world. Little Che Guveras rest inside each heart, I guess.
viva la revolution.
Post lunch, the vans battled through the treacherous Bangkok traffic to the National Human Rights Commissioner's office. The woman, Sunee Chaiyarose, seems really cool and well-informed, but I was mentally a little checked-out from the whole proceedings. I just remember though, that the room was overly-air conditioned. I could see city-scape from the skyscraper's windows. It reminded me of DC in the winter. Sigh.
Decha -- adviser, activist, and friend of the program -- met a few of us at a wat downtown after the session. His mother died yesterday. CIEE, I suppose in the spirit of friendship, was one of the hosts at the funeral. We as students, representatives of the program, were to pay respect as hosts. We entered the wat. The casket was at the front of the room along with at least twenty huge bouquets, wreaths of flowers. In front of the casket was a small table with incense burning on it. The visitors wore black, so our street clothes looked slightly out of place. However, it wasn't disrespectful.
From my understanding, a Thai funeral is different from an American one. Alejandro, at the slum homestay, arrived the day after a member of the family died. He was invited to the funeral and describes it as a celebration of life, not a mouring of death. He said no one cried, except the man's little niece in the corner. Thai's readily invite outsiders like us students.
We lined up to pay respect. First we waied to the Buddha image, three times as is customary. Then we, kneeling before the coffin, lit sticks of incense together. We briefly waied the coffin. Returning to the rest of the congregation, they passed out refreshments -- cough drops, hard candies and water. The monks, wearing their orange robes, entered and sat on their raised platform to the side. They would begin cycles of chanting that lasted a total of about thirty-five minutes, five minutes each. Each time they began chanting, everyone held the wai position -- kind of like a prayer position in the Christian church.
It's strange thinking of this view of death. I guess I don't fully understand it; I still have only seen it as an outsider. Watching Decha sit silently, still-ly with the rest of us, he was impossible to read. Same thing for his younger sister and father. I started thinking of why the world developed funeral rights. If a loved-one dies, your anchors are cut in a way and I guess it would be easy to just go crazy doing nothing. These strange death rituals we have are a way of having a pre-defined path, having something definite and concrete to do to guide the devastated.
It's late now. Alyssa, Pete, Anne and I have been wandering around the Khao San Road the past few hours after dinner, and I hadn't realized the time until I sat down here at this internet cafe. I'll wrap up now. Tomorrow we have a late night potentially. We speak with another Nobel nominee, the female monk Dhammananda, in the morning, and in the evening we're speaking with sex-workers' NGO as well as touring various bars. It promises to be another experience.
Good night.
And we got to question him and get his insight.
But that all was yesterday.
Today we had an exchange in the morning with Jon Ungpakorn, an activist and national chair of NGO-CORD, the coordinating organization in Thailand of the country's NGOs. He not only has amazing insight into organizing and facillitating all these different bodies, but he has a personal history of activism and social awareness. His father founded one of the major Bangkok universities (I forget... I think Thamasaht), and Jon was educated abroad. When he returned in the early '70s, Thailand's student revolt -- and the resulting bloody reaction from the regime -- was going on. He got involved with the students, and worked with many of the early NGOs emerging in the eighties.
Like many of the "wise old men" we meet, he not only had a fascinating history, but has insight into the current situations here in Thailand. He gave advice as to how we, as socially-interested students and individuals, can continue to be so. After the sessions, I grabbed the voice recorder I borrowed from Pete to get his comments on record for my project. My role this unit is so-call "unit production." Basically, I do a project this unit. I'm doing a radio documentary on the Thai protest songs that resulted out of the above-mentioned students' movement of the 19070s -- plang pua chi wit ("Songs for life"). Watch out Ira Glass. I'm excited to be improving my interview skills, plus I hope to be able to play this on the radio for What the Folk (my college radio folk show) next semester.
You know, despite everything the Khao San Road represents in Bangkok -- the garish lights, consumerism, and tourist trash -- you have to hand it to them for the aray of good, cheap vegetarian food. At a tucked-away Israli restaurant, I dined on falafel, as Sasha, Kevin and I discussed what we've seen here and where our group's at. Our group has decided to have a "group vision" to guide our final projects. Last night we started forming that vision, and now it looks something like a manifesto. It's exciting to think how our ideas shape the world. Little Che Guveras rest inside each heart, I guess.
viva la revolution.
Post lunch, the vans battled through the treacherous Bangkok traffic to the National Human Rights Commissioner's office. The woman, Sunee Chaiyarose, seems really cool and well-informed, but I was mentally a little checked-out from the whole proceedings. I just remember though, that the room was overly-air conditioned. I could see city-scape from the skyscraper's windows. It reminded me of DC in the winter. Sigh.
Decha -- adviser, activist, and friend of the program -- met a few of us at a wat downtown after the session. His mother died yesterday. CIEE, I suppose in the spirit of friendship, was one of the hosts at the funeral. We as students, representatives of the program, were to pay respect as hosts. We entered the wat. The casket was at the front of the room along with at least twenty huge bouquets, wreaths of flowers. In front of the casket was a small table with incense burning on it. The visitors wore black, so our street clothes looked slightly out of place. However, it wasn't disrespectful.
From my understanding, a Thai funeral is different from an American one. Alejandro, at the slum homestay, arrived the day after a member of the family died. He was invited to the funeral and describes it as a celebration of life, not a mouring of death. He said no one cried, except the man's little niece in the corner. Thai's readily invite outsiders like us students.
We lined up to pay respect. First we waied to the Buddha image, three times as is customary. Then we, kneeling before the coffin, lit sticks of incense together. We briefly waied the coffin. Returning to the rest of the congregation, they passed out refreshments -- cough drops, hard candies and water. The monks, wearing their orange robes, entered and sat on their raised platform to the side. They would begin cycles of chanting that lasted a total of about thirty-five minutes, five minutes each. Each time they began chanting, everyone held the wai position -- kind of like a prayer position in the Christian church.
It's strange thinking of this view of death. I guess I don't fully understand it; I still have only seen it as an outsider. Watching Decha sit silently, still-ly with the rest of us, he was impossible to read. Same thing for his younger sister and father. I started thinking of why the world developed funeral rights. If a loved-one dies, your anchors are cut in a way and I guess it would be easy to just go crazy doing nothing. These strange death rituals we have are a way of having a pre-defined path, having something definite and concrete to do to guide the devastated.
It's late now. Alyssa, Pete, Anne and I have been wandering around the Khao San Road the past few hours after dinner, and I hadn't realized the time until I sat down here at this internet cafe. I'll wrap up now. Tomorrow we have a late night potentially. We speak with another Nobel nominee, the female monk Dhammananda, in the morning, and in the evening we're speaking with sex-workers' NGO as well as touring various bars. It promises to be another experience.
Good night.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Vacation time to get away
So this week was my fall break. I just got back this morning from the adventure that it was. Gather round, children, and you shall hear of the week-long trip of Abigail.
First, let me introduce the players:
(from right to left: Anne Kirkner, Gill, Christie, Anne Sheldon, and Kevin)
Our group all peeled off around mid-afternoon on Saturday. It was after our Thai final and presentation of our final Thai projects. My group -- who included Alyssa, Kelly, Christie and Whitney -- made a video parody of the Wizard of Oz. We swept the popular vote, which I'm pretty proud of. If we get the video up on YouTube, I'll post a link. Until then, just know it was life-changingly funny and heart-warming. And mostly in Thai. Our prize promises to be a dinner with our Ajaans (professors).
After a mid-afternoon drink with the gang, I finished packing and headed off to the bus station. All six of us piled in for what proved to be an eleven-hour bus ride. It was advertised as a twelve-hour trip, but I suppose we lucked out there. My seat was next to Anne Sheldon, and we had a fine time, zonked out like we were. Anne Kirkner and Gill behind us, were not so lucky. The airconditioner dripped on them throughout the entire journey, and their position in the back of the bus made reclining difficult.
We drove through the night, ending in Chiang Mai around eight in the morning. Chiang Mai is one of the biggest cities in Thailand, the center of the north. Saying it's a big city, however, doesn't really necessitate comparison to Bangkok. Bangkok is a metropolis; Chiang Mai's importance comes as a regional center, historical monument, and marketplace. It's still really beautiful, but overrun by farang (foreigners). I haven't seen or heard this much English spoken outside of us students since Bangkok. Strange.
Renting a songtaew (minibus) to the guest house was easy. The drivers all line up on the parking lot and come up to you, asking, "Where you going? You want a tuk-tuk? You want a songtaew?" Useful when you need a ride. Overbearing when you are just enjoying walking. This transportation hawking was to be a common theme throughout our Chiang Mai adventures. Usually we responded in Thai.
The guest house was clean and simple, but centrally-located in the old city -- a real plus. Gap's House, as it was called, was only a half-hour's walk away from the bus station to Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai's mountain temple. After dropping off our bags, we took a leisurely walk to the station, admiring wats and monuments along the way. One of Chiang Mai's most famous monuments, the Three Kings Monument, is on the way. Although we hummed the Christmas carol, that's not actually what it's refering to; this references three ancient kings of South-East Asia.
Doi Suthep lies up a twenty-minute, winding mountain road with breath-taking views. Honestly, the ride alone is probably worth the trip. The north of Thailand is dotted with mountains, each more beautiful than the last. Where the temple is, swarms of tourists -- farang and Thai alike -- fill up the parking lot, and with them come the locals hawking their wares. You could buy a wide aray of products up on that lonely parking lot -- anything from fruit to masks to hilltribe souveniers.
Like many mountain temples, the climb up the naga (snake) stais is the first - pardon the pun - step. Once at the top, the wat complex shines of gold, clammers with conversation, music, and advertisement. At first, we circled the outside, where you can see the city and valley, surrounded by hazey mountains. After that, we entered the inner temples. You are supposed to walk clock-wise around the central, gleaming gold spires. Along the way, there are oodles of Buddhas, shrines, and donation boxes for pilgrims. On one side, there were pots of oil with wicks burning. If you pour oil into each pot with a ladel, it is supposed to mean long life will follow you. I did it, so I expect now to live past eighty.
We met a woman originally from Laos, now living in New York City, visiting the temple for the first time. She was fun with her New York accent and white sneakers, usually claimed by Americans everywhere. We started off speaking Thai to her, but she was far too wise for our skeletal Thai, countering with her significantly more fleshed-out English. You win here, superior language skills.
We stopped the songtaew by Chiang Mai University, choosing to walk the last mile and a half. Probably some of the motivation for this, honestly was the various and sundry cafes, each promising different cuisines from all over the world. That's one thing about the food here. I love Thai food, it's more that I'm accoustumed to more of a variety of food. Well, after this week I am satisfied to eat Thai food and only Thai food to my heart's content, after filling my belly with delicious pasteries, fresh coffees, pastas, baked bread, and falafel. And plus, next week we're going to Bangkok, so we are guarenteed some sort of Western cookery at our disposal.
That evening, we made our way back through the night market, where various hilltribes sell wares. The night market is bustling as always -- even moreso than here in Khon Kaen. Our practicing Thai with the vendors paid off -- literally and figuratively. I was able to barter 150 Baht off of a wall-hanging (fun!) and we met some nifty people, including a drink saleslady who works with organic agricultural NGOs in the north!
I've been thinking lately, especially in conjunction with my exploration of the North, that a CIEE Khon Kaen program would tranfer really well to the North of Thailand. They are dealing with many of the same issues as Isaan, namely natural resource loss, cultural erosion, and struggles with the government. The North has a huge issue with tourism, noteably dealing with the hilltribe villages and letting foreigners treat their culture like a "living museum." It brings up really cool issues with tourism, sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, and frankly elitist tourism. Plus the north is hella pretty.
More coming. Organic farms. Backpacker. Mountain roads. Hippies!
What more could you ever need?
First, let me introduce the players:
(from right to left: Anne Kirkner, Gill, Christie, Anne Sheldon, and Kevin)
Our group all peeled off around mid-afternoon on Saturday. It was after our Thai final and presentation of our final Thai projects. My group -- who included Alyssa, Kelly, Christie and Whitney -- made a video parody of the Wizard of Oz. We swept the popular vote, which I'm pretty proud of. If we get the video up on YouTube, I'll post a link. Until then, just know it was life-changingly funny and heart-warming. And mostly in Thai. Our prize promises to be a dinner with our Ajaans (professors).
After a mid-afternoon drink with the gang, I finished packing and headed off to the bus station. All six of us piled in for what proved to be an eleven-hour bus ride. It was advertised as a twelve-hour trip, but I suppose we lucked out there. My seat was next to Anne Sheldon, and we had a fine time, zonked out like we were. Anne Kirkner and Gill behind us, were not so lucky. The airconditioner dripped on them throughout the entire journey, and their position in the back of the bus made reclining difficult.
We drove through the night, ending in Chiang Mai around eight in the morning. Chiang Mai is one of the biggest cities in Thailand, the center of the north. Saying it's a big city, however, doesn't really necessitate comparison to Bangkok. Bangkok is a metropolis; Chiang Mai's importance comes as a regional center, historical monument, and marketplace. It's still really beautiful, but overrun by farang (foreigners). I haven't seen or heard this much English spoken outside of us students since Bangkok. Strange.
Renting a songtaew (minibus) to the guest house was easy. The drivers all line up on the parking lot and come up to you, asking, "Where you going? You want a tuk-tuk? You want a songtaew?" Useful when you need a ride. Overbearing when you are just enjoying walking. This transportation hawking was to be a common theme throughout our Chiang Mai adventures. Usually we responded in Thai.
The guest house was clean and simple, but centrally-located in the old city -- a real plus. Gap's House, as it was called, was only a half-hour's walk away from the bus station to Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai's mountain temple. After dropping off our bags, we took a leisurely walk to the station, admiring wats and monuments along the way. One of Chiang Mai's most famous monuments, the Three Kings Monument, is on the way. Although we hummed the Christmas carol, that's not actually what it's refering to; this references three ancient kings of South-East Asia.
Doi Suthep lies up a twenty-minute, winding mountain road with breath-taking views. Honestly, the ride alone is probably worth the trip. The north of Thailand is dotted with mountains, each more beautiful than the last. Where the temple is, swarms of tourists -- farang and Thai alike -- fill up the parking lot, and with them come the locals hawking their wares. You could buy a wide aray of products up on that lonely parking lot -- anything from fruit to masks to hilltribe souveniers.
Like many mountain temples, the climb up the naga (snake) stais is the first - pardon the pun - step. Once at the top, the wat complex shines of gold, clammers with conversation, music, and advertisement. At first, we circled the outside, where you can see the city and valley, surrounded by hazey mountains. After that, we entered the inner temples. You are supposed to walk clock-wise around the central, gleaming gold spires. Along the way, there are oodles of Buddhas, shrines, and donation boxes for pilgrims. On one side, there were pots of oil with wicks burning. If you pour oil into each pot with a ladel, it is supposed to mean long life will follow you. I did it, so I expect now to live past eighty.
We met a woman originally from Laos, now living in New York City, visiting the temple for the first time. She was fun with her New York accent and white sneakers, usually claimed by Americans everywhere. We started off speaking Thai to her, but she was far too wise for our skeletal Thai, countering with her significantly more fleshed-out English. You win here, superior language skills.
We stopped the songtaew by Chiang Mai University, choosing to walk the last mile and a half. Probably some of the motivation for this, honestly was the various and sundry cafes, each promising different cuisines from all over the world. That's one thing about the food here. I love Thai food, it's more that I'm accoustumed to more of a variety of food. Well, after this week I am satisfied to eat Thai food and only Thai food to my heart's content, after filling my belly with delicious pasteries, fresh coffees, pastas, baked bread, and falafel. And plus, next week we're going to Bangkok, so we are guarenteed some sort of Western cookery at our disposal.
That evening, we made our way back through the night market, where various hilltribes sell wares. The night market is bustling as always -- even moreso than here in Khon Kaen. Our practicing Thai with the vendors paid off -- literally and figuratively. I was able to barter 150 Baht off of a wall-hanging (fun!) and we met some nifty people, including a drink saleslady who works with organic agricultural NGOs in the north!
I've been thinking lately, especially in conjunction with my exploration of the North, that a CIEE Khon Kaen program would tranfer really well to the North of Thailand. They are dealing with many of the same issues as Isaan, namely natural resource loss, cultural erosion, and struggles with the government. The North has a huge issue with tourism, noteably dealing with the hilltribe villages and letting foreigners treat their culture like a "living museum." It brings up really cool issues with tourism, sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, and frankly elitist tourism. Plus the north is hella pretty.
More coming. Organic farms. Backpacker. Mountain roads. Hippies!
What more could you ever need?
Saturday, October 27, 2007
A Festival
It was last night, after a final peer tutoring session that I got invited to a festival downtown to celebrate the end of Buddhist Lent. I first heard about it two days before, when we and our peer tutors went to the local (tiny!) museum downtown. They were setting up the stages at the time andI asked what was going on. I was hoping I'd get a chance to go, so I leaped at the idea when Ae (my tutor) and her friends Oh and Boi invited me. Boi is Anne's tutor, so she tagged along, as did Emily. Everyone else had meetings and homework. Bah.
The festival, which was held downtown at the big lake in Khon Kaen, was set up like an American carnival, but there are many monks around. You can go to tents on the water, contribute a donation, and get a Gratom, or small floating boat with flowers, incense, and candles. We collected our gratom, waied to the monk, lit the incense, and then set the boats into the water to float off. It was a beautiful sight to see these little lights and flowers atop the water. The lake was also teeming with tiny goldfish -- sold nearby so people can set them free. It's good luck. Along with the fish, there were little birds, eels, and turtles.
The carnival was really remarkably like an American carnival. I learned the Thai words for Ferris Wheel (chingchah suwan), and got introduced to the Thai version of a carousel. I also learned the words for "tuk-tuk is broken", but that's another story.
We spent the last part of the evening watching traditional dancing and singing on the big stage. I think the Thai traditional dancing is so beautiful, and kept trying to master it. Oh, who has been dancing since she was little, would play teacher for me. Then we both would laugh at my ineptitude.
Today was my Thai final. In the afternoon, we present our final presentations for Thai class. My group did a video to the Wizard of Oz parody. In Thai. Hmmm. I've seen the other groups' videos, and most are really hilarious. So this afternoon is it for Thai class, and school in general for a week. Fall break is upon us!
I'm going to Chiang Mai and the northern area for the week. I'll be back on next Friday late. Tonight Anne, Christie, Kevin and I depart on our twelve-hour bus ride, overnight. We'll spend Sunday in Chiang Mai city, Monday at an organic farm run by CIEE alumni, and then who knows.
It just feels really nice to know that in a few short hours, my obligations will be significantly reduced.
The festival, which was held downtown at the big lake in Khon Kaen, was set up like an American carnival, but there are many monks around. You can go to tents on the water, contribute a donation, and get a Gratom, or small floating boat with flowers, incense, and candles. We collected our gratom, waied to the monk, lit the incense, and then set the boats into the water to float off. It was a beautiful sight to see these little lights and flowers atop the water. The lake was also teeming with tiny goldfish -- sold nearby so people can set them free. It's good luck. Along with the fish, there were little birds, eels, and turtles.
The carnival was really remarkably like an American carnival. I learned the Thai words for Ferris Wheel (chingchah suwan), and got introduced to the Thai version of a carousel. I also learned the words for "tuk-tuk is broken", but that's another story.
We spent the last part of the evening watching traditional dancing and singing on the big stage. I think the Thai traditional dancing is so beautiful, and kept trying to master it. Oh, who has been dancing since she was little, would play teacher for me. Then we both would laugh at my ineptitude.
Today was my Thai final. In the afternoon, we present our final presentations for Thai class. My group did a video to the Wizard of Oz parody. In Thai. Hmmm. I've seen the other groups' videos, and most are really hilarious. So this afternoon is it for Thai class, and school in general for a week. Fall break is upon us!
I'm going to Chiang Mai and the northern area for the week. I'll be back on next Friday late. Tonight Anne, Christie, Kevin and I depart on our twelve-hour bus ride, overnight. We'll spend Sunday in Chiang Mai city, Monday at an organic farm run by CIEE alumni, and then who knows.
It just feels really nice to know that in a few short hours, my obligations will be significantly reduced.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
A storm approaches...
Arg.
So I'm now dwelling in a world of slow computers and oodles of work. I've got a tone of projects -- all due in some completion form before break starts on Saturday evening. I filmed a Thai final project with my group yesterday and this morning and we are now in the process of editing the movie. I have to write some journal enteries (in Thai... oh lordie), and finish an art project to respond to the last unit's problematice. In addition, my Thai final is on Saturday. I have an article that I'm doing with my Buddhist-buddy, Whitney, on kathoey, or Thai ladyboys. In addition, my Social Research Methods class assigned an interview, to be recorded somehow.
So that's what's on my plate now. And to add some icing to the cake, my beloved child, my Mac, is dying of a mysterious ailment. I'm getting on the phone soon with Apple International to figure out why it keeps freezing and dying. Must be hypothermia.
So this is my complain-fest, version October 2007. I can't promise to be updating anytime soon if this persists. Hopefully, I await a recovery with my computer. Till then, I'm backing up files and using internet cafes.
Till soon?
So I'm now dwelling in a world of slow computers and oodles of work. I've got a tone of projects -- all due in some completion form before break starts on Saturday evening. I filmed a Thai final project with my group yesterday and this morning and we are now in the process of editing the movie. I have to write some journal enteries (in Thai... oh lordie), and finish an art project to respond to the last unit's problematice. In addition, my Thai final is on Saturday. I have an article that I'm doing with my Buddhist-buddy, Whitney, on kathoey, or Thai ladyboys. In addition, my Social Research Methods class assigned an interview, to be recorded somehow.
So that's what's on my plate now. And to add some icing to the cake, my beloved child, my Mac, is dying of a mysterious ailment. I'm getting on the phone soon with Apple International to figure out why it keeps freezing and dying. Must be hypothermia.
So this is my complain-fest, version October 2007. I can't promise to be updating anytime soon if this persists. Hopefully, I await a recovery with my computer. Till then, I'm backing up files and using internet cafes.
Till soon?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
There and Back Again
So I left before I could catch up as much as I wanted to. I hope to update more often in this short week before fall break, but no promises. We got back from a five-day trip on our fourth unit, the land unit, which took us to Udon Thani, about two hours north. Udon used to be the site of an American military base during the Vietnam war, and now is the proposed site of a potash mine. We had two homestays examining various issues having to do with the region.But more on that later.
First, an anecdote, if you will. Last night, it was shortly before midnight. We'd been asleep for about forty minutes, Amanda, Anna, and myself on our mats under the mosquito net. Out of nowhere, Amanda shoots straight up in bed, screams, and scampers down to the end of the net. Anna and I were quick to react, jumping to the foot of the bed, pressed against the net. Amanda was yelling about a spider or something for a moment, but then woke up -- it was nothing more than a half-dreamed hallucination of the fan at the foot of the bed.
Well, that deception didn't stop everyone from hearing the screams, and come running to see who was being apparently murdered in our bed; P'Jim came from her room next door, Mae rushed upstairs in her patung, even Ajaan Ooh, staying down the street, heard our screams and called Amanda's phone. So there we stood, two very confused, worried Thai women and three shaken, but actually alright farang women, with a limited communication channel. Somehow, it landed on my shoulders to explain what was going on. I managed to say "Amanda dreamed of a big bug," but Mae still didn't get the story. For some reason, one of them suggested, "show Mae the scorpion."
At this point it becomes necessary to tie in another point from earlier in the evening. Before bed, Anna was on the phone and spotted something. "Hey guys, come here and check out this cool bug!" she called. However it was no bug. Yessiree, a little scorpion. No one wanted to kill it, so we trapped it under a glass, leaving it to be dealt with in the morning. Flash forward to our story again.
I show Mae the scorpion. She has just heard her farang daughters freaking the heck out in the middle of the night, where the only explaination is in broken Thai and saying something about a big bug. Then there's this scorpion. Plus, at that moment, I absentmindedly scratched a fresh mosquito bite. Mae got this look on her face and asked what I can only assume to be, "did that bite you."The only thing I could think to say was "mai" or "no". I was trying to get out that this actually was okay, and yes we were fine, and there was no bug afterall, but all that came out from my sleep-befuddled mind was "mai, mai... mai... mai." As she bent down and started killing the scorpion, she asked why the screams. I couldn't remember how to say "I don't know. I don't get it," which in Thai is something like "mai ru. Mai khao jai." The only thing to come out however was "mai au" or "I don't want."
God, Mae must have been confused.
Luckily, we somehow sorted it out and we're okay. Lots of laughing at ourselves afterward.
So I guess this story has a moral. One, language use is essential, even when you're tired and loopy. Laughter is essential, especially when you're tired. And never have scorpions on the mind when sleeping near anything that can be misconstrued as a giant spider in your bed.
Till soon
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Pak Mun Dam 10/5-10/7/2007
The ride to the Sirindhorn dam on the Mun River was a long four hours. We all slept, or remained quiet for most of it, dressed in our nice clothes. The government demands respectful attire, so no exposed shoulders, knees, or toes. It’s like the children’s song, except now it’s a rhyme of don’ts. Being folded up into a van for so long really does a number on one’s concentration, so when we pulled into the Sirindhorn parking lot, I was in no mood to exchange.
Our exchange was to be with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, or EGAT, about their role in dam building, engineering, and maintenance. I still know little to nothing about dams, so my questions took a broader view – the effects, the consequences on a social and individual scale. Sirindhorn Dam is an unfortunately beautiful place. The reservoir is peaceful and full of greenery. I walked around between lunch and the exchange to un-cramp my legs and take in some pro-corporate beauty.
The exchange itself was one of the best ones I’ve had so far. We honed in on specific questions and tried to dance around the major issues as little as possible. Take for example, the inquiry into EGAT’s role in the Burma debacle. It seems that most people seem to think China’s influence is the greatest one in Burma, but Thailand is actually the largest importer of Burmese energy – not to mention its neighbor and recipient of a significant number of refugees. EGAT admitted they import some of the energy from outside countries – Laos and Burma. The reasons they gave were that it was cheaper and they wanted to offer customorship to the impoverished nations. Dams are easier to build there, they said. In Thailand, the people are too vocal against dams. The Lao people can’t stand up to their government. The EGAT representatives acknowledged this in some way, in the way of someone who feels helpless to change just embraces it.
But then something humanizing happened. We pursued the Burma question until we got to the question of ethical responsibilities of corporations. The representatives couldn’t precisely respond? Well how could they? True, they are representatives, but can they, should they be held 100% accountable for their company’s actions? Anyway, one man gave some pat non-answer, but then, the mask came down for a brief moment. I don’t know how to respond, he said, but I watch the news too. I read the newspaper.
This was a really interesting exchange, one of the first that we got at really important questions. What made it even better was that we did it not with a really cool, really “wise” NGO leader, but with a mouthpiece of the big-bad corporation. I think we’re definitely on our way to being more inquisitive human beings and students.
Afterward, we toured the Sirindhorn dam briefly, then drove to Pak Mun, about a twenty minute drive. In the shadow of the dam lie the echoes of the Mae Mun 1 Protest village (“the Mun River Protest village”). The villagers who have been protesting the dam in all its various stages set up here in 2003 (maybe?) for a few months. They were kicked off. Now there remains but a few artifacts to mark their presence – some boards, barbed wire, a hammock.
We took a boat ride to where the Mun and Mekong Rivers intersect. This is called the ci song, or “two colors”. One river is blue, the other is red, the way the Mississippi is a muddy brown. Where they intersect, it is a swirling mass of the two colors. You can even feel the difference in temperatures.
Off in the distance, our professor Ajaan Di (note: Ajaan is a title like “professor”) pointed at the mountains in the distance. It was Laos. Our boats pulled up on the far shore, into this new country. It’s funny, the cultures of Isaan and Lao share the same roots, but now are somehow completely viewed as separate. Thailand wasn’t even Thailand until threats of colonization encouraged the nineteenth century rulers to mark borders and rename ethnicities “Thai.” The loosely-defined Lao territory extended into Isaan. Even today, Isaan people especially out in the villages will speak Isaan – a dialect of Lao – as a first language, not Thai. I’ve picked up some Isaan, but move past saying “that was delicious” and I’m at a loss.
Anyway, it’s strange to see how a mere river and political regime can divide a culture that comes from essentially the same cultural soup. In Laos, the small village that we stayed in for about thirty minutes was devoted almost exclusively to the sale of cheap goods, the equivalent of a duty-free airport store. The kids on the road sold brooms, the road-side stores hawked cartons of cheap cigarettes, silk scarves, and whiskey. Some of the whiskey had cobras preserved in the bottle along with the alcohol.
Coming back on the river, we encountered a strong rainstorm. The four of us at the front of the boat stood without roof, without jacket while the wind and rain raged around us. Everyone else huddled under the thin tarp, acting as a roof. The cold of the rain felt warmer when we embraced the fact that, like it or not, we were going to get wet.
I showed up at my homestay an hour later completely saturated. Stay tuned for waterfalls, temple, protest stories, and all the bamboo shoots you ever thought you wanted to eat.
Our exchange was to be with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, or EGAT, about their role in dam building, engineering, and maintenance. I still know little to nothing about dams, so my questions took a broader view – the effects, the consequences on a social and individual scale. Sirindhorn Dam is an unfortunately beautiful place. The reservoir is peaceful and full of greenery. I walked around between lunch and the exchange to un-cramp my legs and take in some pro-corporate beauty.
The exchange itself was one of the best ones I’ve had so far. We honed in on specific questions and tried to dance around the major issues as little as possible. Take for example, the inquiry into EGAT’s role in the Burma debacle. It seems that most people seem to think China’s influence is the greatest one in Burma, but Thailand is actually the largest importer of Burmese energy – not to mention its neighbor and recipient of a significant number of refugees. EGAT admitted they import some of the energy from outside countries – Laos and Burma. The reasons they gave were that it was cheaper and they wanted to offer customorship to the impoverished nations. Dams are easier to build there, they said. In Thailand, the people are too vocal against dams. The Lao people can’t stand up to their government. The EGAT representatives acknowledged this in some way, in the way of someone who feels helpless to change just embraces it.
But then something humanizing happened. We pursued the Burma question until we got to the question of ethical responsibilities of corporations. The representatives couldn’t precisely respond? Well how could they? True, they are representatives, but can they, should they be held 100% accountable for their company’s actions? Anyway, one man gave some pat non-answer, but then, the mask came down for a brief moment. I don’t know how to respond, he said, but I watch the news too. I read the newspaper.
This was a really interesting exchange, one of the first that we got at really important questions. What made it even better was that we did it not with a really cool, really “wise” NGO leader, but with a mouthpiece of the big-bad corporation. I think we’re definitely on our way to being more inquisitive human beings and students.
Afterward, we toured the Sirindhorn dam briefly, then drove to Pak Mun, about a twenty minute drive. In the shadow of the dam lie the echoes of the Mae Mun 1 Protest village (“the Mun River Protest village”). The villagers who have been protesting the dam in all its various stages set up here in 2003 (maybe?) for a few months. They were kicked off. Now there remains but a few artifacts to mark their presence – some boards, barbed wire, a hammock.
We took a boat ride to where the Mun and Mekong Rivers intersect. This is called the ci song, or “two colors”. One river is blue, the other is red, the way the Mississippi is a muddy brown. Where they intersect, it is a swirling mass of the two colors. You can even feel the difference in temperatures.
Off in the distance, our professor Ajaan Di (note: Ajaan is a title like “professor”) pointed at the mountains in the distance. It was Laos. Our boats pulled up on the far shore, into this new country. It’s funny, the cultures of Isaan and Lao share the same roots, but now are somehow completely viewed as separate. Thailand wasn’t even Thailand until threats of colonization encouraged the nineteenth century rulers to mark borders and rename ethnicities “Thai.” The loosely-defined Lao territory extended into Isaan. Even today, Isaan people especially out in the villages will speak Isaan – a dialect of Lao – as a first language, not Thai. I’ve picked up some Isaan, but move past saying “that was delicious” and I’m at a loss.
Anyway, it’s strange to see how a mere river and political regime can divide a culture that comes from essentially the same cultural soup. In Laos, the small village that we stayed in for about thirty minutes was devoted almost exclusively to the sale of cheap goods, the equivalent of a duty-free airport store. The kids on the road sold brooms, the road-side stores hawked cartons of cheap cigarettes, silk scarves, and whiskey. Some of the whiskey had cobras preserved in the bottle along with the alcohol.
Coming back on the river, we encountered a strong rainstorm. The four of us at the front of the boat stood without roof, without jacket while the wind and rain raged around us. Everyone else huddled under the thin tarp, acting as a roof. The cold of the rain felt warmer when we embraced the fact that, like it or not, we were going to get wet.
I showed up at my homestay an hour later completely saturated. Stay tuned for waterfalls, temple, protest stories, and all the bamboo shoots you ever thought you wanted to eat.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Digestions: Both Intellectual and Vegetarian
It's odd being in a place with no winter. The changing of seasons remind me of time passing during the year. Certain things that are associated with the autumn, with the winter, I don't see them now. Because of this, suddenly I'll wake up and realize, wow, it's mid-October. I see monsoons, palm trees, and sleeveless now, not leaves turning all different shades and apples. It's funny too, to encounter all those things I associate with different seasons too, but not be immersed in that atmosphere.Take for example music. I got in the mood for classical music a few minutes ago, and brought up this gorgeous album by Morten Lauridsen. I will always associate it with the winter. That's when I first heard it, concert choir, senior year of high school. We sang selections from his Mid-Winter Songs, and I remember the cold, dark nights, and this cathedralic music. To take that in a completely different context, say Thailand, brings me out of this study abroad mindset and suddenly, I have my own little autumn.
I'm not sure why I'm all musey today. Last night, we were at the P-fac (program facilitator)'s house for a pseudo-party. I sat in the corner with Adam and Alejandro and had a fantastic conversation about... well, everything, but specifically about outlook on the world. It's fascinating to think about how everything that we believe is imperceptibly influenced by all these factors you can't touch, can't recognize. It's conversations like this that excite me. We three, tiny people in a big, big world came up with our own views about the world. Not for a paper, or a book, or a thesis, but just because we are three enquiring minds. I find that exciting.
Once again, I'm struck by how exciting learning from ones peers is. I even learn when I'm not trying. For example, today Sasha and I trekked downtown to the city to eat at the Asoke restaraunt (which we finally found). I learned a lot of great things about her. Our conversations fed off of each other.
Welly, welly, welly, no more time for musings about the universe and every atom within. I've got two papers due tomorrow and am only through my first draft.Rat dii sawat. (Good night)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Back from the fields
Our caravan pulled into the office a few hours ago. The ride was about four hours from the last village, Thap Yai, until KKU. Today was Elly's birthday, so we've been singing to her, passing around the cake (kanom), and giving rice whiskey. Tess and I shared an iPod and even belted out tunes for a spate. A lovely time, but still a four hour van ride. Let's be real.
So now I'm back with a backpack full of dirty clothes, a cell phone empty of batteries, a bottle of soymilk, and over 490 photos of the past week. Updates galore to follow. Now I'm tired and foresee much paper-writing and unpacking to come, so rat di sawat (good night).
Friday, October 5, 2007
Crooked Rain
So tomorrow at the crack of dawn we leave for the east for a week to study the effects of dams on the villagers living by them. Judging from the reading, it'll be intense. I'm just glad to be another participant and no longer a u-fac. My sleep will improve and hopefully my mood.Rained all day. At one point, rain covered my ankles while slogging through a puddle. The briefing was well-done and although I arrived utterly saturated from my umbrella-less walk, I am thoroughly excited about the unit. The rain, I have discovered, leaks through my roof (I live on the top floor), so I have a little piece of the outdoors (a puddle) in my room. I tried to clean it up, but just in case I told Ajaan Ooh -- our professor who looks after apartment-related stuff -- about my room's problem. Dada comes back tomorrow after I leave, so I'd like to leave the room and her stuff in good condition. Hope her stuff is alright. She already thinks I'm disaster-prone, seeing as I shorted out the electricity the first day, and pulled the patio door off its hinges. Whoops.
We have a new girl, Vanessa, who is studying dams' social effects worldwide. She just got in from China this morning and is staying with us until late October. She helped us map out one of the up-coming exchanges, and seems really fascinating. I look forward to picking her brain about China, dams, and her research.Finally, I gave a mini-lecture today on photography, seeing as the group has been recently talking a lot about sharing knowledge. Well, only two people showed up, but I had fun sharing what amounted to be a twenty-minute summary of last semester's Intro to Photo.
In other news, I finally posted my thoughts from the slaughterhouse visit (was it really only last week?). It's a bit graphic, but... well I just needed to write it. The delay is explained by the experience's intensity.
Sawasdee-ka! See you in a week.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Group Process Love
This'll be brief, mainly because after a sixteen hour day of facilitation, meetings, planning, and evaluation, I'm pooped, but also because I believe that this statement is in its purest form right now:I think our group and our process is awesome, inspiring, and terrific. We're starting to come together as a working and supportive unit, and that is amazing to be a witness to and participant in.
Bahd-dah-bah-bah-bah i'm lovin' it.
To quote Alejandro, "Spread the love."And I'll just end that here. "Master of Delicious", enjoy.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Some Breaking News from Bangkok...
From the Bangkok Post: Trouser Snake Kills Cambodian ManThai English-language newspapers have a history of bizzare or just plain funny headlines with us CIEE students. It started back in late August when a group of us came across a Nation front page headline about opposition to "same-sex underwater marriage".
In more pertinent news to me, workshop today. We came up with some really cool ideas for further projects:
+ list of alternatives to 7/11 so we don't support CP, a corporation with really creepy ties to the Thai government.
+ organizing a possible reprise of a Thai farmer-tour in the US. Continuing the work that has been done in that field.
+ maybe get ENGAGE (our network of former CIEE Thailand students) a booth at music festivals or county fairs. Spread the word about fair trade rice and our other interests.
+ looking into traditional knowledge of farming and its integration in alternative education here in Thailand.
Overall, I feel a bit more of an informed consumer and am encouraged to keep seeking out this information. If anyone reading has any insight, comments, suggestions, or outlets that we could use in approaching these projects, I know I always appreciate the help.
Last Night in September
It feels like my life this past while has been an endless chain of meetings and food, sandwiched (pun alert), one right after another. Although yesterday was a bit of a break, where I did little but sleep and update flickr, today it was back to the old routine. So the weekend isn’t that relaxing afterall, is it?Waking up at eleven like I have been doing this weekend is really nice, but something I can’t get used to. Because Dada is back home for a week, I have the room all to myself and can stay up later reading without feeling guilty about keeping her up. Plus, this week I can access all the internet I want – both a positive and a negative. Positive as a means of keeping in touch. Negative as it is an immense time-waster. You know the internet.
I got “breakfast” at the crack of two at the bakery-coffee shop down the road from KSS with some friends. Although we CIEE students all hang out together a lot, some weekends I feel certain people disappear. They aren’t actually going anywhere – our paths just don’t cross. These group outings for meals or to the student activities room at the office are essential for keeping up with the latest in group social news.
This bakery is a weird combination of American and Thai ambiance. When I first saw the décor, my initial association was with a diner. The same glass cake display racks, white vinyl booths – different food. Much of the offering maintains the appearance of American diner food, for example, they offer French fries with fish. When you actually bite into the oversized fish stick, it has a distinctly Thai flavor. I can’t explain what that means exactly. It’s not worse or better, just different.
My coffee obsession continues. I got a cappuccino that tasted like a dream wrapped in a caffeine covered blanket. Mmh. Kat got what she thought was a green tea smoothie. It ended up tasting more like Grape Nuts. Once again, not better, not worse than green tea. Now that’s what I should be getting for breakfast. Too bad the bakery opens at noon.
We U-facs met for what promises to be one of the last times, this time to plan the final workshop, which is bright and early Monday morning. Hopefully, this will tie up the unit into a tidy, little package. Two hours later, Anne, Kat, and I headed downtown on a song taew in hopes of eating at the Asoke vegetarian restaurant. The Asoke movement is a sect of Buddhism in Thailand (fun fact: started by a former TV entertainer) that focuses on self-reliance. They grow their own food, very organic, very vegetarian. I hear delicious too, but wouldn’t know because our journey turned out to be in vain. By the time we found their restaurant – a small building in what looks like a deserted part of the pseudo-suburbs – it was closed for the night. Luckily, a nearby organic restaurant was open. We had really delicious food – Kat especially. Her coconut milk curry came in an actually coconut. Tasted like Thai food from the states; nothing I’ve yet had here. Isn’t that funny.
Somehow, we rolled our stuffed stomachs further downtown to the night market. A little shopping, some necessary, some pleasure-driven, before we hailed a tuk-tuk home. Alas, no lolly-gagging at the clothing stands for we had more meetings to go.Again with the U-facs (we have dubbed ourselves “Team Food”), this time to start a self-evaluation paper. Although I will not miss the added meetings eating precious hours of my days away, we’re a pretty fun group. Full of opinions, yes. Sometimes over-exact to a point, yes. But fun – heck yeah.
PS - I was tempted to title this post "Wake me up when September ends", but I'm resisting the cheesy song titles as post titles tonight. No promises about the future though.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Slaughterhouse Tales
[So this post may be a little graphic...]
The slaughterhouse looks like a horror movie – red walls from five feet down, heavy-looking metal doors on sliders, the municipality butchers wearing long aprons. They are blindingly white, and the men carry the sharpest knives I’ve seen. They are acute as triangles, sharpening their edges on tinny plates.
Outside, eighty-odd pigs lie on top of each other in pens. It’s night, so they sleep now while they wait. They will be let in, three at a time, to the holding pen indoors where they will be systematically killed, taken apart, and made ready for the morning’s meat market.
This is your meat, your meal tomorrow, and it’s beginning to snore.
We CIEE students are the witnesses. The Follow the Food activity has raised awareness in our consumption, but probably none of the groups has had as emotional an impact on us. The meat group isn’t even my own. I decided to join them because I thought, as a sometimes carnivore, I should face the reality of slaughter. Now I stand here rethinking my decision. The air is smothering and smells like the foulest outhouse you can imagine. I guess this is what death smells like.
Yesterday, the meat group watched a cow die. I spoke with select members of the group hours after it had happened and something was shaken. Tess showed me pictures of the whole thing. As she was flipping through her camera’s photos and video, she mentioned how viewing through the camera lens had allowed her to feel detatched. A picture of the moment of death. She shrugs. It’s a screen, she explains. It doesn’t feel real.
For a moment I am reminded of a novel I read in Germany, Homo Faber. As the narrator transforms from a disconnected, self-repressed man to a feeler of emotions, he transforms his view of the world from behind to in front of a lens. The screen acts as a barrier; it’s called a “screen” isn’t it?
The pigs are getting restless, they know what’s coming. How could they not? The butchers are excited. It’s not that they’re blood-thirsty. This is their job, and we farang are interested in it. The fact that we care is important. They will make it a good night.
A butcher walks into the pen, holding a thick steel pipe. He corners a pig, kicks the others aside, and bludgeons the animal. The pig goes down. Swiftly one man holds down the unconscious animal, one slits the throat, and another catches the blood in a bag. As the blood is draining, they apply pressure to the stomach to hasten the process. Air escaping the throat passes between the vocal chords and they vibrate. Pig’s swan song, a hoarse call, rushes out, first high-pitched then falling until it fades away. This animal’s life is over, but it will now serve another purpose.
They dip the pig into a vat of boiling water to scald the hair off. The butchers use their knives to shave the hair. Suddenly, the head is removed, the pig hung upside-down from its feet, and the meat is gradually transformed from animal to meat. Corpse to commodity.
It is a difficult event to witness. It may have been the close air, or the fact that I’ve never before seen something so animal-like die, but at several points I become short of breath and feel faint. I step outside and crouch down while the blood returns to my face. People are mostly quiet. We all are affected – no denying that. Some cry, some disconnect, some just stare.
Afterwards we discuss, trying to make sense of it. It’s respectful in that these butchers take pride in their work. I hear at the cow slaughter, they wai-ed, or bowed, to the animal before killing it. Alejandro describes it as a sort of dance, and that’s kind of true, a ritual at least.
I am a vegetarian, and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. My reasons are varied and multi-faced, but I now have learned this has nothing to do with the experience tonight at the slaughterhouse. Animals will eat other animals. As long as the process is not disrespectful and clean, I’ve come to terms with it.
Whatever your views on the subject, I think it is an incredibly fascinating experience. If you get the chance, give some consideration to going. Examine your food – be it meat, tofu, or Coca-cola.
Don't you deserve to know where they're coming from?
The slaughterhouse looks like a horror movie – red walls from five feet down, heavy-looking metal doors on sliders, the municipality butchers wearing long aprons. They are blindingly white, and the men carry the sharpest knives I’ve seen. They are acute as triangles, sharpening their edges on tinny plates.
Outside, eighty-odd pigs lie on top of each other in pens. It’s night, so they sleep now while they wait. They will be let in, three at a time, to the holding pen indoors where they will be systematically killed, taken apart, and made ready for the morning’s meat market.
This is your meat, your meal tomorrow, and it’s beginning to snore.
We CIEE students are the witnesses. The Follow the Food activity has raised awareness in our consumption, but probably none of the groups has had as emotional an impact on us. The meat group isn’t even my own. I decided to join them because I thought, as a sometimes carnivore, I should face the reality of slaughter. Now I stand here rethinking my decision. The air is smothering and smells like the foulest outhouse you can imagine. I guess this is what death smells like.
Yesterday, the meat group watched a cow die. I spoke with select members of the group hours after it had happened and something was shaken. Tess showed me pictures of the whole thing. As she was flipping through her camera’s photos and video, she mentioned how viewing through the camera lens had allowed her to feel detatched. A picture of the moment of death. She shrugs. It’s a screen, she explains. It doesn’t feel real.
For a moment I am reminded of a novel I read in Germany, Homo Faber. As the narrator transforms from a disconnected, self-repressed man to a feeler of emotions, he transforms his view of the world from behind to in front of a lens. The screen acts as a barrier; it’s called a “screen” isn’t it?
The pigs are getting restless, they know what’s coming. How could they not? The butchers are excited. It’s not that they’re blood-thirsty. This is their job, and we farang are interested in it. The fact that we care is important. They will make it a good night.
A butcher walks into the pen, holding a thick steel pipe. He corners a pig, kicks the others aside, and bludgeons the animal. The pig goes down. Swiftly one man holds down the unconscious animal, one slits the throat, and another catches the blood in a bag. As the blood is draining, they apply pressure to the stomach to hasten the process. Air escaping the throat passes between the vocal chords and they vibrate. Pig’s swan song, a hoarse call, rushes out, first high-pitched then falling until it fades away. This animal’s life is over, but it will now serve another purpose.
They dip the pig into a vat of boiling water to scald the hair off. The butchers use their knives to shave the hair. Suddenly, the head is removed, the pig hung upside-down from its feet, and the meat is gradually transformed from animal to meat. Corpse to commodity.
It is a difficult event to witness. It may have been the close air, or the fact that I’ve never before seen something so animal-like die, but at several points I become short of breath and feel faint. I step outside and crouch down while the blood returns to my face. People are mostly quiet. We all are affected – no denying that. Some cry, some disconnect, some just stare.
Afterwards we discuss, trying to make sense of it. It’s respectful in that these butchers take pride in their work. I hear at the cow slaughter, they wai-ed, or bowed, to the animal before killing it. Alejandro describes it as a sort of dance, and that’s kind of true, a ritual at least.
I am a vegetarian, and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. My reasons are varied and multi-faced, but I now have learned this has nothing to do with the experience tonight at the slaughterhouse. Animals will eat other animals. As long as the process is not disrespectful and clean, I’ve come to terms with it.
Whatever your views on the subject, I think it is an incredibly fascinating experience. If you get the chance, give some consideration to going. Examine your food – be it meat, tofu, or Coca-cola.
Don't you deserve to know where they're coming from?
Friday, September 28, 2007
Corporate Tools
Following the food [Coke] lead our happy band down to Khorat province in central Thailand. At the crack of dawn – 5:30 AM to be precise – we loaded our tired bodies and pillows into the van for the four-hour drive. Stopping at a rest stop down the highway several hours later, I had a delicious latte. This is noteworthy, I swear. Seeing as Nescafe has sunken its overly sweet talons into Thailand’s coffee culture, every drink I seem to get is sugary.
The Thai Naam Thip factory is located in an industrial park, guarded by more security than I usually see. I suppose that’s only natural, given our previous experience with Coke’s Khon Kaen distribution plant. We arrived at the office and were cordially greeted. Our presentation was held in a conference room, a small, grey, corporate room, the ubiquitous PowerPoint blazing on the plain white wall. Of course there was the Coke “swag”: Thai Naam Thip water, Coke trucker hats, sweet snacks, and obviously a cold bottle of Coke, condensation dripping down the sides of the glass, forming water rings on the table.
Our liaison for the day, a Mr. [something], gave us a presentation about the processes covered under Thai Naam Thip’s Khorat factory and what humanitarian efforts Global Coke (“Mama Coke”) is producing. Thai Naam Thip, (which means “Thai Supernatural Water”) is the company which bottles, develops, and distributes Coca-cola products around Thailand. The factory we were at produces plastic bottles for Sprite, Coke, Fanta, and bottled water; in addition they have a glass bottle reuse program.
The recycling program seems really cool in theory. From what I understand, it works similarly to the German concept of Pfand, in which one buys a product in a glass bottle at an artificially inflated price, but if you return the bottle, you get some money back. Thai Naam Thip will sell cases of beverage to distributors. If the distributors want to continue buying products, they need to return a case of empty bottles for every full one they purchase. These bottles return to the factory where they are rinsed and checked to see if they still look presentable, then filled and sold again. We had heard about this program earlier from the manager of a scrap dealership in Khon Kaen the previous day. If this idea works, I think it’s a great start to a recycling program. But still, it’s not perfect. How well does it succeed in the day-to-day? We still had questions.A brief tour of the factory followed. They said not many pictures (I guess they don't want us, in an act of corporate sabotage, steal their information), but I'm a rebel photog, and took some anyway. Arty ones!
The world’s largest advertiser, and top corporation was actually very pleasant to us. I guess
that’s understandable; they didn’t get to their position by being assholes openly to people of certain statuses. Still, while I was skeptical throughout the exchange, it’s really hard to keep up this when the other party is being so personable.They fed us a lot of Coke too. That might have had something to do with it. I don’t even like Coke that much, but I do like free stuff.
After a cordial farewell, my fleeting delusions of corporal fuzziness were shot down. Our next stop was three hours north at the Mitr Phol sugar factory. This factory acts as a sugar cane refinery, bagasse board producer, ethanol plant, and biofuel manufacturing center. The same type of presentation room was offered. The same Power Point presentation. The same whitewashed walls.
What was different was in the way the conversation went after that. After having spent about two weeks where all we were reading and experiencing pointed toward organic and small-scale as the solutions to many of today’s farming issues, I’ve just come to see organic as a vital system. Mitr Phol and I break in our thinking at this point. The company is blatant in its support of large-scale, chemical farms that practice monocropping. They provide funding for loans to farmers interested in procuring chemical fertilizers. They even lead demonstration of these techniques. At one point, someone asked what the company thought about the harmful effects on the health of those applying the fertilizer. Their response: “What problems? I don’t think they exist, because everyone uses it.”
What a smack-down back to reality.
Later, at the company-owned and run sugar cane farm, we spoke with the manager. When asked about the debt the company might be inflicting on smaller farmers – the fact that these farmers might not be able to pay it back – he brushed it off as unimportant. Seeing as we had just spent the prior week with indebted farmers, this is really – for lack of a better word – fucked up.
The exchange was really stilted. I just couldn’t ask the important, probing, possibly inciting questions that needed to be asked. Eventually Elly and Alyssa stepped up and asked about some of these contradictions milling about in my mind. My reporter’s ability is lacking, I suppose. Before I can become a better journalist, I need to build up the courage to ask “rude” questions.Mitr Phol was no less polite than Coke was, they were simply… painting a less rosy picture. Not that this was something they meant to do. They clearly believe what they are doing is right. It just conflicts so fundamentally with my current world-view, that I can’t get over it.
We drove back to Khon Kaen, tired from travel and with a little more confusion, a little more understanding of the corporate world we live in.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Follow the Food: Part Saam (3)
So today was a long, long day. I can't quite get to it now, but the coming attractions include coke factory tour, sugar cane monolith, and pig slaughter.Check this space soon.
Follow the Food, part Song (2)
At the crack of ten O'clock, our follow the food group (pictured partially above) set out on the quest for Coke. Being as our tour of the Coke factory is tomorrow, we didn't have anything too specific to do. Our solution to get to know our product better was to go straight to the source -- that is brewing our own batch.
First stop, the bakery! Surprisingly enough, the bakery had almost all of the ingredients that our recipe called for. On that note, our recipe was found off the internet and apparently is from the papers of Coca-cola creator John Pemberton himself. On another note, we raided the bakery for delicious fresh bread and other sweets.
Here was the fruits of our labor. That is fifteen pounds of sugar right there, along with the essential oils of various and sundry fruits and herbs.
The only things our immensely helpful bakery staff couldn't find were the citric acid, citric caffeine, naroli oil, and alcohol.
So off we went to the medical supply store, in search of the missing ingredients. What we found was creepy medical implements -- clamps and whatnot.
How do we put this all together then? The CIEE office has no kitchen to speak of, neither do our dorm rooms. Ajaan John, our faculty advisor/translator, says his house has no kitchen either. Luckily, before we were stuck with an ungodly amount of sugar, Ajaan John called up a friend of his who lives in town to let us borrow his hot pot and porch. Below, Elly and Stef set up the cauldron on the hot plate.
We went about figuring out the recipe. If you haven't looked at it yet, you won't really realize just how vague it is in quantities of ingredients and exact steps to take. We did our best approximating.
This is what our pot of boiling water, sugar, lime juice, and recently added brown sugar (instead of caramel) looked like initially. Aroi mai? (Delicious?)
When it dissolved and cooled, we added the flavoring oils. Until then, we amused ourselves, talked, played with the cat, ... and ordered pizza. Seeing that we were in Thailand, it was a very American afternoon.
Us stuffing ourselves while the pot cools.
We eventually got impatient, trying to cool the concoction by adding ice cubes. Needless to say, they didn't do much but melt exceptionally quickly.
So then we decided stirring would expose the coke to more air flow, thus cooling it. This plan worked much better. (Stevie stirs the coke below)
Our cooking had caused some overflow. We cleaned up the area. Incidently enough, the house we worked in is actually a dog breeder's house. There were golden retrievers in pens in the room behind the hot plate.
Stirring with ice cubes. The consistancy wasn't quite syrupy, but still thicker than water, real Coke, or most liquids. It was kind of similar in texture to orange juice.
Soon it cooled enough. The time had come to taste test!
Not everyone was a fan.
We bottled the sugary syrup up in water bottles. In my opinion, it tasted like a really sweet version of coke, but with more lemon flavor. I think we may have added a tiny bit too much lemon. Not bad if you mix with seltzer.
Our end product.
Can you spot the difference between ours and Coca-cola's products? Me neither.
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