Funny Toast

I haven't posted in a while, as we've been busy getting settled in Seattle and buying a car. The lovely cold weather, both in Minnesota last week and in Washington now, have been wonderful. This is the time of year that Jae Hom, our town in Thailand, breaks 100 degrees nearly every day. Yikes! I don't know how I survived.

Anyway, I was flipping through photos from this time last year. We had just spent a week on the beach of Ko Chang, Thailand, with Robert's cousin Karin. One morning at breakfast, we enjoyed this funny toast. Nothing like being greeted by a cat on your plate!

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.

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...

The Return of Hot Water

As I rode my bicycle along the river from school to the post office this afternoon, the smoke blowing into my face along with the hot wind, I realized that it will be several months before I am cool again! We had quite a respite over recent months. Beginning mid-December, when temperatures in our northern region started dropping below 55 degrees at night, we had a very comfortable "cold" season. Days were pleasantly warm, if not cool, and nights required layers of socks, sweatshirts, and thick comforters.

The drawback of the cold season, however, is that our showers got a little cold, too. Our little hot water heater is not too powerful, and it is no match for "wintry" weather. If we waited to shower until the sun had been up for an hour or two, and kept the water pressure very low, it usually managed to bring the very cold water up to a more standard room temperature. Combined with the cold air filling our house, this made for a series of illnesses (sore throats, head colds, etc) on our part. Needless to say, we were not bathing more than once a day if we could help it.

Now we’ve had three straight days of temperatures in the 90s, though, and as a result our shower has warmed up nicely. It’s hard to say what is more difficult to endure: pleasantly cold air temperatures with cold showers, or sweltering hot temperature with hot showers? I really can’t decide.

In any case, I know that we’ve got less than two months left in Southeast Asia. So while we might be finishing our Peace Corps service during the hottest months of the year, we can anticipate spring temperatures when we return to the USA in April. That will give us just enough time to recover before facing a hot, humid Minnesota summer!

[The photos, as you might guess, show our bathroom. Just for fun. Yes, the shower does just go all over the floor. That’s typical in Thailand for all but the wealthiest of homes.]

Burning

It's that time of year again... the air is filled with smoke all across northern Thailand. I go jogging along the river or through the rice fields, and random piles of burning material will send off plumes of smoke that fill my lungs and cause major coughing.

At night, we can look around at the mountains surrounding our town and see orange flames along the hillsides. During the day, if we're riding in a car or bus along the highway, occasional fires will be so close to the road that we'll feel their heat as we pass by.

Much of what is being burned is the leftovers of the rice harvest. Also, some set fire to underbrush in the woods. Sometimes people are making charcoal.

The mountains that are so green and sharp all through the rainy season and November and December are now barely visible, due to the combination of smoke and dust from lack of rain. It's a completely different environment!

Dry Season

Thailand has a 3-season climate. The hot season, with daily temperatures above 100F and nights rarely cooler than 85F, lasts from approximately March-April. Rainy season begins in June, in the north, and goes through September or October. Temperatures are still hot, but more bearable because of the cloud cover.

We're now in the dry season, or cool season as it's also known. It hasn't rained in our town since October. This year is unusually cold, and it's gotten down to 50F almost every night since mid-December. This is very cold if you don't have indoor heating!

The rice was harvested back in November in our area, and many of the fields are lying fallow until the next planting cycle, as shown in the brown-ish colored photo. Others are irrigated to grow other crops, including broccoli, potatoes, and tobacco. These two photos show the fields on either side of the road to my Monday-Thursday school. You can see how irrigation makes quite a difference!

Cold in Thailand

Over the last week our temperatures in Thaialnd have taken an amazing plunge. Our thermometer has been consistently reading in the upper 40s at night. This is very cold when you have no indoor heating! It's also very cold when you have a very weak hot water heater, so showers can be a chilling experience. Washing dishes is rather like bathing your hands in ice.

We've taken to sleeping in long pants, hats, and hooded sweatshirts, covered by layers of blankets. Two layers of socks are necessary for protection from our cold tile floor. We're starting to wonder if our upbringing in the northern climes has been completely useless, as we seem to have no tolerance for this weather.

I don't really mind the cold now, though, because I know that in just a few weeks I'll be roasting hot again.

I thought we were done with this!

Yesterday, in a fit of housekeeping that included washing windows and expelling dozens of spider webs from the ceiling (the spiders weren’t too happy), I decided to finally start unpacking the garbage bags we’ve had sitting around the house, filled with our stuff, for three months now. We hadn’t had much rain lately, and the river seemed quite normal. In the late afternoon, I happily curled up in the newly restored guest bedroom with a book, feeling like my flood troubles were over.

But I forgot that in Thailand, expectations and assumptions are generally worthless. So this morning when the phone rang shortly after 8:00am with a co-teacher warning us that the water was coming, I wondered why I had dared to be so optimistic. In fact, there is flooding in 43 of the 76 provinces of Thailand right now, so the only real surprise is that we actually are not yet underwater. Reports are that there is a bizarre convergence of heavy rains with high tides, so Thailand is being deluded from multiple directions, and will be so for another three days.

We spent today – our first official day off together this school break – doing myriad errands, chatting with other neighbors about flood worries, and checking the level of the river near our house every hour or so. (It did not actually reach our house today, though it came within a block or so.) It has gone down nearly two meters since it’s high level of the morning (shown in the photos), but who knows what tonight will bring? We plan to stay at our house to guard our things, unless there are any dramatic changes...

Parents, don’t worry, we have kind neighbors with 2-story houses.

One Year Ago

In honor of the one-year anniversary of our big flood, I am posting a photo of our house as it was seen that day from our neighbors’ upstairs window, where we had temporarily evacuated. Yikes! And, there’s also a photo from several months later, for comparison.

Weather has improved dramatically lately – the river has been down at normal levels for five days now. We heard reports today of a typhoon over the Philippines that might travel this far, but I have my doubts. In the meantime, things are looking good.

There was much grumbling over the past few days over the new uniform requirement. No one likes having to do so much laundry!

The Rain Still Falls (But More Lightly Now)

Since media is being censored, I’ll be cautious about giving too many descriptive details here, but I wanted to share a bit about what our first day of living under martial law was like.

For the most part, the average visitor would not have noticed any big differences in our town before and after the coup. Life seemed to be proceeding as normal, despite the post office, banks, and government buildings being closed. In fact, you might not even known that the school district office was closed. When we arrived late morning, it was full of people. A big meeting for area teachers that had been previously scheduled was still going on, and other employees who hadn’t wanted to sit at home on the surprise day off were milling about. On the whole, I might just say that things were quieter than usual yesterday. We didn’t even have our nightly serenade of Thai pop music blasting from the house next door.

A fellow Peace Corps Volunteer wrote a blog about the easily changing allegiances of Thais during the World Cup in June. Describing the atmosphere of watching a game with a bunch of Thai friends, he noted that they took the side of whoever was winning! Robert and I wondered if, at least publicly, that was also happening with respect to this coup. We live in the rural north, where support of the ousted prime minister has been traditionally high. But yesterday you wouldn’t have known that anyone here ever liked him. At one point, in a conversation with some employees at the school district office, Robert referred to what happened Tuesday night as a "coup." (To be fair, he used the Thai word for a regular coup, as opposed to a bloodless coup, which has a different word, we learned later.) The three women present looked shocked, and hurried to correct him that it had not, absolutely not, been a coup, it had been POLITICAL REFORM.

Right... Political reform. With tanks.

Sunshine

It hasn’t rained for 26 hours, and the sun has been shining most of the day, so our river has gone about halfway back to its normal levels. I am now expecting a calmer weekend. Hooray!

Of course, while sunshine is welcome today if it keeps the floods away, it still does make it awfully hot. It’s currently 93°F in the shade. Ah, well.

Expertise We'd Rather Not Have Had

After last year’s flash flood, I lamented many of our lost items – letters from friends, photographs, teaching materials, books, and clothing – and plotted how I might try to attempt to save them if the occasion happened again. Before we left for the USA a few weeks ago, we put most of our irreplaceable items into large plastic garbage bags, hoisted the bags on top of beds and tables, and hung smaller bags from curtain hooks. When we returned to our town, we unpacked a few of the bags in an attempt to have a more normal-looking household.

Yesterday, everything went back into the bags, and we ourselves went off to spend the night on higher ground in hopes of sleep and safety. As of this writing on Friday afternoon, our house is still dry, but I expect a very interesting weekend! Here is how the last 44 hours have passed:

Wednesday, 5:10pm: I board a songtaew in the city after sending my mother and stepfather to the airport at the end of their visit. I notice dark clouds in the sky, but it’s not raining. By 5:30pm, though, the rain has started to fall.

Wednesday, 6:10pm: Still raining. I check the level of our river as the songtaew enters town. It isn’t too high – still about 8 or 9 steps below the road. (There are intermittent staircases along our side of the river bank – used by fisherman, washerwoman, and young swimmers when they want to enter the water.) Over dinner, Robert and I decide that if the water rises to within 2 steps of the road, we will move to higher ground.

Wednesday night: Rain continues to fall all night, though Robert says he heard it stop once or twice.

Thursday 9:20am: It’s still raining as I ride my bicycle to school. Crossing the bridge, I notice that the river has risen dramatically over the night. It’s now only 3 steps below the road at the point nearest our house, and it is moving very fast. After I arrive at school, I call Robert, who is still at the house, and tell him to pack up the computer and passports in a safe place.

Thursday day: It continues raining throughout the day, sometimes harder, sometimes just drizzling. My co-teacher, Ajaan Warangkana, says that in the event of a flood we can stay with her in a second-story room. I check in with Peace Corps, who says we can stay in a hotel in the city if needed.

Thursday, 3:15pm: As the teachers are gathering for a meeting, one gets a call on her cell phone reporting flooding in the district north of ours, upstream. A few minutes later, Robert calls to say that his school is closing early and sending all of the students home.

Thursday, 3:30pm: Parents begin showing up at school, asking to take their kids home because the town loudspeakers are warning of floods. When 30+ children hear the word "flood," they begin hollering and running around. The teachers dismiss them. I ride my bicycle home along with the students. On my way back over the bridge, I see that the water has risen just a few inches since morning, but is still moving quickly.

Thursday, late afternoon: Robert and I pack our backpacks and the house. I take the computer across the street to a neighbor’s second-story room. Robert listens to frequent announcements from our nearest loudspeaker, reporting more villages upstream that are being flooded. I check the river once and see that it has risen above the second step. Despite our earlier plan, we are reluctant to leave our house.

Thursday, 5:30pm: Robert and I go to look at the level of the river. It has risen above the first step and after a few more inches will be spilling over the brick pathway. (See photos!) Houses across the river, on lower ground, are beginning to get water. As Robert and I go to buy noodles for dinner, we discuss our options. Finally, we decide that leaving the house overnight would be more responsible. We compromise by planning to take care of our showers, toothbrushing, etc, before leaving, so that all we need to do at our safehouse is sleep!

Thursday evening: We eat dinner, finish packing, and get ready for bed. Plans are made for us to sleep at the house of Ajaan Lamduan, a teacher at one of Robert’s schools who lives less than a kilometer away but on significantly higher ground. She lives alone and has lots of space.

Thursday, 8:00pm: We say goodbye to our neighbors, put on our backpacks, and walk to Ajaan Lamduan’s house. We set up in her daughter’s room (she’s away at school). By 10:00 we’ve gone to sleep.

Friday, 2:00am: After a trip to the bathroom, I lie in bed listening to distant roosters and wondering about the state of the river. Suddenly the loudspeakers on the street are blaring. I poke Robert awake. The only words I catch are "water is here," "help each other," "safe already," and the name of our village. We aren’t sure what this means. About 15 minutes later, we hear the speakers again, but the ones nearest us aren’t turned on this time, so we can’t make out anything. Finally, after another half hour, a much more clear announcement comes. "Village 9, pick up your things. Move your refrigerators. Help each other. The water is flowing. If it reaches the road it will enter Village 9." It repeats a few times and then is quiet again. We lie awake until nearly 4:00am, wondering if the water has crossed the road and entered our neighborhood.

Friday, 6:00am: We wake up and get dressed. Ajaan Lamduan has brought us some desserts for breakfast, and she tells us that the water did not reach the road. 45 minutes later we head back to our house. It is indeed dry and the neighborhood has not yet been flooded. We get dressed and go to school.

Friday, 8:30am: On my way to school, I look at the river again. It has spilled over the banks and is covering the red brick pathway and the road alongside it. I can’t tell how high it reached in the night, or whether it is rising or falling.

Friday day: Although the morning was turning sunny and optimistic, rain has been falling on and off and now the sky is definitely cloudy. My teaching for the day is finished and I’ve retrieved the computer for the time being. I think there’s no way of knowing now if the water will rise again or not – it will depend on tonight’s weather! In any case, we’re ready to leave the house in a hurry again if need be. Ajaan Lamduan will welcome us at her house for as many nights as necessary. And that’s where we’re at!

PS: If you try to call us on our cell phones and can’t get through, try adding an "8" before the rest of the number. (after the country code) It might be a new policy thing going into effect today, but it’s not clear yet.

Planting Rice

Way back when we first heard we were coming to Thailand, I got it into my head that I wanted to plant rice. Not necessarily often or regularly, but at least once. The thought of living in a country where there is truly a "staple food" made me think that I ought to experience how that staple food is produced.

Today, a hot, sunny day near the end of the planting season, after over 19 months of living in Thailand, I finally had my chance. Robert and I got up around 8am, ate some oatmeal, jumped on our bikes and rode a little ways north of town. We found a spot along the road where a few people were planting, got off our bikes and looked around hesitantly. As I expected, within 20 seconds there were calls to "come help plant!" We said, "Ok!" and they laughed.

Not knowing quite what to do for proper footwear (and having a healthy fear of Asian liver fluke and whatever else might be in there), we encased our feet with plastic bags, socks, and rubber bands. Finally set, we waded in and immediately sank several inches in the mud. The rubber bands helped the bags stay up to our ankles, though, so at least the soles of our feet were protected!

The four women – one of whom is a grandmother of a 2nd grader that I teach, it turns out – showed us how to carefully take a few stalks of rice out of a bundle and stick them into the mud in neat rows. I wasn’t surprised to find that it’s harder than it looks to get it right, but eventually I got into a slow groove. The women, of course, flew by Robert and me and occasionally came to help us finish a row or a section. They seemed happy to have us, though, and kept up a lively conversation. I could see how rice planting is a community activity.

The current wage for a full day’s labor planting rice is 100 baht, or about $2.50. For perspective, a bowl of noodles is 20 baht, a bus ride to the provincial capital is 30 baht, and an electric rice cooker is 400 baht. We lasted only 90 minutes, at which point I was sure I had sweat out all my sunscreen. Three hours later, after a good scrub and some lunch, my legs are still tired from pushing through the thick mud.

As we were leaving, the women said we should come back in October to help with the harvest. I’m looking forward to it!

Update

The floods did not come to our town. However, the four provinces that were hit were hit much harder than we were last year. Massive mudslides and that sort of thing. Three volunteers were flooded out of their houses, but are otherwise safe.

Our town gave a big sigh of relief when the rain stopped on Friday. Things had been pretty tense here for a few days. Now we're just back to roasting hot. Always something!

Here We Go Again...

It's happening. The endless days of rain thanks to typhoons around Southeast Asia are having their effects on northern Thailand.

Yesterday evening our next door neighbor told us that several northern provinces have already flooded in the last couple of days, including ours, though still over a hundred kilometers from our house. With that information, we gathered our passports and a few other emergency supplies into backpacks that are now sitting ready in case of a quick escape. At midnight when the rain came heavily again I couldn't sleep, and stood out on the patio watching it until Robert got me to come back in.

Today it's the first topic on everyone's mind. Our supervisor at Peace Corps called at 7:30am to check in. She reported that another volunteer has been flooded already, two provinces south of us. As soon as we arrived at the school district office we were asked, "Did you pick up your things yet?" (Meaning, did you prepare your house?) We'll be doing a lot of that tonight, I think. My goal is to preserve as much of our material goods as possible this time around! Not that material goods are all-important, of course, but it would be much better if we didn't lose them all the same.

I do like rain. But I don't think I will ever feel quite the same about it again.

Early Rainy Season?

We are continuing to see evidence that the rainy season will be coming soon. Or, perhaps it’s already here...

We visited Ko Chang – an island off Thailand’s east coast – with Robert’s cousin Karin this past weekend, and we had the opportunity to see a tropical rainforest in the rain. Note how the two of them are standing under their umbrellas, while other wet tourists walk in the background. We had hiked out to see a tropical waterfall and swim in its pool, but instead we just got soaking wet waiting to see if the rain would eventually stop. (It did, after we hiked back.) It was quite beautiful, anyway!

While we were experiencing rain along the rainforest coast, our northern town was visited by a "cyclone." (The correct term might be "tropical depression," but both the English-language newspaper The Bangkok Post and the Thai speakers in our town referred to it – in English – as a "cyclone.") For those of you who may not remember, it was Tropical Storm Domrey that brought us last year’s flood, so the news that a "cyclone" had arrived well before the heart of the usual rainy season did not ease my fears that we may be in for more this year!

Hot and Cold

I have never been a person who takes well to heat. I remember not liking hot weather even when I was young. Thailand has, therefore, been a bit of a challenge to my physical abilities.

Today probably wasn't hotter than 95 degrees, but I was completely sweaty and wilted by about 11am -- even before Annie and I had arrived at our first tourist destination. I look around at Thai people, and even other tourists, and none of them seem to have this same problem! Annie herself was fine, despite having just arrived from the cooler climes of northern Europe less than 24 hours before.

I was happy to spend some extra money on air-conditioning for our lunch spot. And after returning to our guest house around 6pm, I was even happier to take a nice cold shower. Mmm.

The only good thing about April weather, in my opinion, is that it brings mango season. I have had delicious mango shakes for the past two days. Yum.