Phnom Penh

This morning Robert and I left Bangkok at an early hour and flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We'll be spending a little bit of time in this new country.

What I can say right now is that it's VERY HOT here. Bangkok was hot, too, but at least had frequent air-conditioning to help keep things feeling semi-normal. Here there doesn't seem to be so much AC. I can also say that there are lots of tasty baguettes. Ah, bread.

We did enjoy our ride from the airport to our guest house. Lots of new sights and sounds -- very different from Thailand! I haven't taken any photos yet, but I'm sure they will be forthcoming soon.

Chinatown

On Sunday, we visited Bangkok's Chinatown with our old Thai language instructor, Pi Lin, from Peace Corps training. Her family is Chinese and lives near Chinatown, so she was able to show us around and explain everything. It was my first time touring a Chinatown, and very fascinating.

We visited two major temples, and we learned that Chinese Buddhism has some differences from Thai Buddhism. For example, Thai Buddhism has just one "Buddha" god, but Chinese Buddhism has many, of which some have female attributes.

The second wat we visited was extremely smoky because so many people were burning large handfuls of incense sticks as they walked around. It made our eyes tear up!

Pi Lin also walked us through several lanes of market stalls. Since it was probably over 100 degrees F yesterday, this was very hot, but at least they were mostly shaded. It was cool to see the different kinds of food -- fish stomachs, large ocean worms, dozens of varieties of teas and mushrooms -- and multi-lingual signs. I recommend Chinatown to anyone who wants a new southeast Asian experience!

Fancy

On Friday, we got to attend the 45th anniversary celebration of Peace Corps Thailand. It was a very big event. Former Thailand volunteers flew in from different places around the world to be present for the ceremonies. The Crown Princess of Thailand also attended and spoke! We wore fancy Thai clothes all day, and boy are they hot.

On Saturday, many of the former volunteers were kind enough to participate in a panel and small group discussions for us newly finishing volunteers. They talked to us about returning to the USA, applying for jobs, considering graduate school, and keeping up a connection with the Peace Corps experience. It was very interesting and helpful. Thank you RPCVs!

It's now Monday afternoon, so we've got just 31 hours remaining of our Peace Corps service. The check-out process includes lots of paperwork and errand-running. Then we'll be on our way to parts yet unexplored...!

Airport Farewell

We left our site for the final time yesterday morning, in style and with an escort. For two years, we've traveled to Bangkok by riding a songtaew or bus into the capital of Lampang province, then boarded another bus or train for an 8-12 hour ride. For our last trip out, we were driven to the city in an air-conditioned van, and taken to the airport instead of the bus or train station (thanks mom!).

Our landlord, Robert's principal, had arranged for a large group of teachers to see us off. I think about twenty people in all, including Ajaan Warangkana and Pi Noy, were there. We were presented with jasmine wreaths and necklaces (14 total) and stood for dozens of photos. Since we arrived at the airport a full two hours before the flight, there was plenty of time for chatting and saying goodbye to those who had joined us.

When our boarding was finally called, and we walked through the door to the security screener, it was a little difficult to wave goodbye for the last time.

Goodbye Northern Thailand

I'm sweaty, covered in dust and grime, and pretty tired after many hours of cleaning and scrubbing the little pink house. But it's nearly time to go, so I wanted to make one last post from our site. In just 16 hours we'll drive away from here for the last time!

Several people have asked if our departure from Thailand will be the end of this blog. The answer is No! I've still got much more to say about our time here, and at least 1,000 more photos to show. I'm also sure that being back in America will make me think about some different things, and start reflecting on this experience in some new ways. If you want to keep learning about Peace Corps Thailand, keep coming back.

We'll be in the country for a few more days, doing a little celebration and a lot of paperwork. Then we're off on some travels to other parts of southeast Asia for just a couple of weeks before finally flying home to the USA mid-April. I don't know how often I'll be writing, but keep checking back if you're interested in seeing where we are and what we're up to!

The Perfect Lunch

When we return to America, I'll be able to make some of my favorite Thai foods at home, and find many of the others in restaurants. I'm sure they just won't taste the same as they do here, though.

Since school has ended we've had lots of time at home (packing, mostly), and it has meant that we've been able to go out and get one of my favorite foods for lunch nearly every day. Som tam, or papaya salad, is usually made from shredded raw papaya. It's pounded up with garlic, chili peppers, tomatoes, green beans, peanuts, and tamarind. Non-vegetarians might add shrimp, crab, or fermented fish paste. I just go for salt or soy sauce.

It's perfect eaten with sticky rice, and in this case, with some Diet Pepsi on the side. At night, it's great with a beer!

Bittersweet

If I were to do my Peace Corps Thailand service over again, and I could design my own project, I would be not an English teacher but a public health worker. I would be based not at schools, but at the local hospital. And much as I have loved and enjoyed my two co-teachers over these past two years, my counterparts would be the women in this picture, nurses in our town.

Last night this group of four single women, all of whom work at the hospital in town, took us out for dinner in the city. It was a fantastic evening, in part because we don’t usually get to go “to the city” for the evening, but mostly because they are a wonderful group of people. We first met three of them when they came to our house about a year and half ago asking whether we were available to teach them some evening English lessons. We taught them and a few others for about two months, and they were a great group. The fourth we met when we tried getting involved with the local HIV/AIDS organization, as she is the hospital’s liaison to that group.

These women understand the problems facing Thai society more than anyone we’ve talked to in our two years here. They’re dedicated to working with real people and real situations, not just filling in their time cards. Much of the evening was spent talking about alcohol problems, domestic abuse, teenage abortion, drug addiction, suicide, and of course AIDS, all problems rampant in our district but ones that teachers at our schools are generally not interested in discussing.

It was a rather bittersweet night, as we spent time with people who cared about the same issues we do, and who actually try to do something about it, and we wondered how our two years here would have been different if our assignment had been to work with them instead of in schools. Of course, we did try on numerous occasions to get involved with the hospital for “secondary project” work, but for a variety of reasons it never seemed to work out, and we continued teaching English. With just five days remaining in town, all I can do is hope that at some point in the future I’ll be doing a job in America that matters, and that Peace Corps will send another volunteer with the purpose of working with nurses like these. They’ve got great ideas and motivation on their own, but every little bit helps.

The Perfect Size

One thing Thailand does right is Dairy Queen Blizzard Sizes. There's a DQ at the Big C in our province, so every time we go to stock up on supplies I indulge in a little ice cream goodness.

This is a Thai small, for twenty-five baht, or about 76 cents in American money since the dollar dropped over the past few months. It's big enough to make you feel like you've had a real treat, but not so big that you're worried about calories or uncomfortably stuffed afterward!

You can get an "American" small-size DQ Blizzard in Thailand. It's called a "large"!

A little update on our air quality situation: yesterday morning the Peace Corps office called us to ask if we needed to evacuate. We declined, since we have too much to do during our last six days in our town, but I thought it emphasized the seriousness of the situation! I didn't see any ash falling yesterday, but the air isn't noticeably improved.

The Burning Skies...

About a month or so ago I wrote about our dry weather. It is of course the dry season here in northen Thailand, but this year is apparently much drier than usual. To be clear, it HAS NOT RAINED here since OCTOBER. It’s now mid-March. That is nearly five full months without rain. The effects of this dryness, combined with the fires that are constantly burning around town and on the mountainsides, are becoming unbearable.

We’re no longer able to do much exercise in the evenings, be it jogging, aerobics, or bicycling, because the smoke gets into our lungs and is quite painful. I’ve been going in the mornings, when the previous days’ fires have burnt out and new ones have not yet started. Smoke creeps into our house during the day from multiple directions (especially our next-door-neighbors’ back yard) and our outside surfaces are constantly covered in dust and ash, no matter how frequently I sweep. (Inside is not much better.)

When Robert went to the market yesterday evening to buy groceries, he came back and reported that in addition to choking on the smoke, he was seeing large pieces of ash falling from the sky all around. I went outside and sure enough, I could see them too. We took a photo of this one that had fallen in the road in front of our house. You might also notice in the photo that the sky is white, not blue, due to the thickness of the smoke and other dry dusty stuff in the air.

Today’s Bangkok Post had an article headlined, “Government set to declare state of emergency; One-week deadline for haze to improve,” about our air quality. You can read it by clicking on the link. If you do read it, be sure to notice the theory promoted by the Chief of the Chiang Mai Environmental Office as to why the air is so bad this year...

Cheers!

On Friday evening, our neighbors across the street hosted a little dinner gathering for us. For over four hours we sat, chatted, ate, and drank.

I've been fond of this group of people since we first arrived in our town. It was with them that we spent the day of the flood -- on the second story of one of their houses, after escaping from our own -- and I trust them completely. Many of them are semi-related in one way or another, and they break a few of the "rules" of Thai culture, which is part of why I enjoy them so much.

As part of our Peace Corps training, we females were warned that to drink any alcohol in public would be our downfall as volunteers. Thai women who drink are supposedly seen as loose and immoral in this very conservative culture. I adopted this new attitude quite well and, when I did have a half glass of beer during my last week at our host family's home, I felt guilty for days afterward. So, imagine my surprise when, upon our arrival at site in April of 2005, I saw the women across the street drinking merrily every night and not seeming to suffer -- or worry about -- any social consequences.

I later discovered that the supposed social prohibition against women drinking is a bit of a myth these days, as I watched female school district employees, teachers, and others all over our town enjoy alcohol on many occasions. It took me nearly a year before I was willing to ignore the Peace Corps warnings and drink in public, but when I finally did it was with this group. I still feel a bit weird whenever it happens, but on Friday night, I enjoyed the party. For, as you can see from the photo, what's not to enjoy?

My Husband, the Teacher

I’ve featured several people on this blog lately, all of them important in my life here in Thailand, and today I’ve decided to feature Robert. He’s pretty important, too!

Mostly I just want to show off a photo of him teaching. I think he does an excellent job. Like me, he teaches at two schools. Mondays and Tuesdays he goes to the big school in our town. Class sizes are in the 30s and 40s, and most of the kids are relatively wealthy for this area (which isn’t very wealthy, but it’s still noticeable). Wednesdays he is at the office with me, and Thursdays and Fridays he teaches at his village school. It’s three kilometers from our house – not all that far, but much farther than I want to ride a bike in 100 degree heat! It’s a very small, very poor school, and the kids have been just thrilled these last two years to have Robert there.

In December of 2005, the village school organized a little birthday party for Robert. The kids brought in gifts from their homes, including a bath towel, a mug, some potato chips, and a big bottle of Sprite – the last being collectively purchased and offered by a group of enthusiastic young boys, as shown in the second photo. (The other farang in the photo is our friend Calin, who was here visiting at the time.) Robert: a loveable guy!

Bouquets

In typical Thai national education fashion, the end of the school year is filled with dramatic schedule changes. My last day at my Monday-Thursday school was supposed to be tomorrow, but my co-teacher, Warangkana, was suddenly summoned (along with many other teachers) to a 12-day workshop in Chiang Mai. So my last day at that school was, actually, last week. So much for saying goodbye! Warangkana will be back just in time to help drive us to the airport on the day we leave town.

The unexpected departure of nearly 30% of the teachers at our schools means that going-away parties that were originally planned for next week have instead already happened. Last night was the first, and tonight another. Both were dramatic stories in and of themselves that I don’t have the energy to tell, but I did want to highlight some beautiful gifts we were given.

If you look closely at the flowers in these bouquets – Robert is being given one by our landlord, his principal, in the first photo, and I’m getting one from Warangkana in the second – you’ll notice that they are made of... money. Thai baht bills in different denominations. Teachers at each school folded them into lovely flowers of different varieties. We’ll be leaving Thailand with a bit more cash than we expected! They are so pretty that I’ll hate to unfold them when the time comes, but we were repeatedly reminded to "spend the money" and not let it get mistakenly thrown away!

Personal Feature: Ajaan Waewnapa

The end of our Peace Corps service is approaching more quickly every day, and last week I had the sudden news that I’ll be saying goodbye to one of my co-teachers this very week. Waewnapa, with whom I teach at my Tuesday-Friday school, will be spending the summer break in another province in order to start working on her masters degree. This means that she has to leave before the school year even ends. I’ve got just one day left with her! I thought I’d better use the opportunity to tell her story now.

Waewnapa was born the youngest of five children to an extremely poor family of farmers several kilometers north of our town. Her parents were unable to provide for her, so a childless couple in their village happily took her to be their own daughter. Until her teenage years, Waewnapa didn’t know that her birth parents, brothers, and sisters lived just across the street. She knew the people she now calls her "foster" parents as her own family.

At age 19, newly graduated from high school and wanting a more exciting life than the village could provide, Waewnapa moved with some friends to Bangkok. She worked as a salesgirl in a shopping mall, barely earning enough to get by. During her first few years there, she observed that a college degree would help her find a better job. She enrolled in night classes to study an English major. It took several years, but finally she finished and found a job working as a receptionist for an international company.

Also working at that company was a young man about her age, who had moved to Bangkok from southern Thailand. They were married in a traditional northern Thai ceremony at which both her birth family and foster family were present, and returned to live in Bangkok. Life was unpleasant, though. Waewnapa’s husband drank and gambled frequently, and wouldn’t allow her to go out with her friends. To pay his gambling debts, he sold the car she had bought herself. Pregnant and sick of marriage, she moved back up north five years ago. He occasionally called her family’s house looking for her, but she refused to see or talk to him.

When her daughter, Nong Muk ("pearl"), was born, Waewnapa knew she needed to find work that would allow her to both make a decent salary and live near her family. She returned to school again, this time to get a teaching degree. After several more difficult years, she finally found a regular teaching job in our town, just before we arrived here ourselves.

Today, Waewnapa continues to work hard. She helps to support both her birth mother and her foster parents, as well as her daughter. She wants Nong Muk to have a good education, and eventually that will mean sending her away to school in the city. In the meantime, she is determined to keep advancing her own education in the hope of finding better job security and more pay. She is also determined to remain single. I asked long ago if she knew where her ex-husband was. "I don’t know, maybe he’s dead for all I care," she responded. As a divorced single mother, she’s at a definite disadvantage in Thai society. She’s not bitter, but believes that marrying another Thai man would only mean a loss of the independence and self-confidence that she worked hard to find.

You wouldn’t know it from the photo, but Waewnapa is 36 years old today! She’s roasting mushrooms for one of my favorite northern Thai foods: nam prik het.

Kao Man Gai

We’ve lived in Thailand for almost two years now, and there are still things that are new to us, even in places we’ve visited many times before. This weekend we made a final shopping trip to Chiang Mai, where we met up with some fellow volunteers who introduced us to a fantastic little restaurant that we must have walked past dozens of times on previous trips. If only we had known!

On a similar note, a new food craving has taken over my last weeks in Thailand. It’s a food I saw other people eat frequently over the past two years, but only recently did I encounter a vegetarian version, and suddenly... the world seems different! I like it so much that I’m going to post the recipe, here, today.

In Thai, it’s called "Kao Man Gai." [And now, I must insert a sentence or two explaining how, after writing just the previous two paragraphs, I was seized with an overwhelming desire to eat some kao man gai sauce now, immediately, with some cucumber slices. So I’ve gone and arranged that and am now munching as I type.] "Kao" means rice, "man" means oil or fat, and "gai" means chicken. So, translated into English, this dish would be called something like "Chicken with rice cooked in chicken fat." Of course, I make it with tofu, so that’s what I’ll describe.

Start by mincing up large quantities of garlic and ginger. Boil the tofu, sliced, along with some minced garlic, ginger, and soy sauce, for about ten minutes. Remove the tofu, save the flavored water, and set both aside.

Saute some more of the minced garlic and ginger in your preferred fat. I was told by Pi Noy to use margarine, but the margarine around here frightens me with its ability to stay very solid in 90+ degree heat, so I go with liquid vegetable oil. (In America, I’ll probably use my preferred canola oil.) Add uncooked rice, still dry, and saute for several minutes. When the rice starts to change color, add the saved water from the boiled tofu, and more water as needed to cook. Cover and cook until soft.

For the sauce, put more heaps of minced garlic and ginger in a food processor. Add a couple of small fresh chili peppers (the ones that are about an inch or two long, and quite narrow). Add fermented soybean sauce, which comes in a bottle with cooked beans and looks orange or brown in color – I imagine it would be easy to find at an Asian grocery store. Add soy sauce and a bit of sugar, and hot water for thinning as needed. Puree it all together and test for flavor.

Slice a bowl full of cucumbers, and chop another bowl full of cilantro and green onion. Arrange all dishes on the table and let diners arrange their desired proportions on individual plates. Yum!

A Little Project Completed

The world map project at my Monday-Thursday school is finally finished! It took a good three months, due to numerous school cancellations and schedule adjustments, but now it’s all painted and framed. Well, to be honest, there’s one small island that has yet to be labeled... a small island that has a large number of people wanting independence from the large country to whom the small island currently belongs... we still need to write that island’s name up there. And there are a few other small island nations that didn’t get drawn or labeled, due to a variety of circumstances. But aside from those items, it’s finished! (And with far fewer mistakes than last year’s map...)

So, the kids might not have learned too much English during my time here, and the teachers may or may not have picked up too many new teaching methods. But at least I can say I did some world maps. Now the kids can find all the countries that play in the World Cup soccer tournament each year.