Children's Day

Yesterday was National Children’s Day in Thailand. I think the original purpose was to focus on kids: their potential, their right to be treated well, their child-like qualities, etc. I attended celebrations at my school on Friday and at the local government office yesterday.

Many of the activities were pleasant to observe. Kids might volunteer to go up on stage and answer questions, such as, "How do you help out at your house?" or "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They always got prizes for being brave enough to give an answer. A group of my fifth and sixth grade boys did a traditional northern Thai dance at the government office on Saturday morning that I thought was very impressive. Not only were they good dancers for being so young, but they also showed that they had been working hard on it. (See photo.)

Other activities were less enjoyable. Many of the kids’ performances involved heavily made-up girls in mildly provocative outfits, lip synching to Thai pop music and shaking their hips far too suggestively. I don’t know why this is so popular in Thailand, and I don’t know why it is done at elementary school. (With some reluctance, I’ve put up a photo of one of these groups of girls. I don’t really like to promote it in any way, but I wanted to show an example. It’s from among the less suggestive outfits I’ve seen.)

On the whole, though, it was nice to see kids in Thailand getting a little more recognition and approval than they usually do. At school, teachers often treat kids as an afterthought or even a nuisance – school is really more about the status of the teachers than about the education of the students. (Some schools are worse about this than others.) But on Children’s Day, it seemed like for one day the kids got to be front and center. That was a refreshing change.

Sponsorship

Before I say anything, let me emphasize that this is NOT a sales plug! My goal is just to inform.

Back in the USA, I often saw commercials on late-night television for charitable organizations of one sort or another, trying to convince viewers to sponsor a child in a third-world country. I never really bought into those things, because who knows where the money ends up?

But as it turns out, there is an office of the Christian organization World Vision here in our little northern Thai town, and they do a lot of good work. At my Monday-Thursday school (pictured), all of the students are sponsored by families through World Vision. At my Tuesday-Friday school, about two-thirds of the students are sponsored.

What does this mean for my kids? Every year, World Vision buys their notebooks, pencils, and other basic supplies. World Vision pays for their school uniforms. If you look closely at the boys' black and orange jackets, you'll see that they have a World Vision label -- the sponsored kids sometimes get additional items of clothing for certain types of weather. World Vision buys books and sometimes even furniture for the school library and other rooms. Last year, when my Tuesday-Friday school was extensively damaged by the flood, World Vision paid for many replacement items.

Additionally, World Vision will occasionally pay for a field trip for the students. Last year I went with 6th graders from six different local schools to a number of sites around our province, with all fees, transportation, and meals paid for by World Vision. They give scholarships to several students every year for study at high schools in our provincial capital. And, my co-teacher informed me today, they hold a World Vision football (soccer) competition every year.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to sponsor a kid through World Vision. However, I did want to point out that if anyone was considering doing so anyway, I can vouch that it really does work!

Just for Fun

For a little glimpse of what I do on a typical school day, here are some shots of flashcards and student work. The flashcards, as I'm sure is obvious, are "People Adjectives." The kids have a lot of fun with these.

The student work has photos that the kids selected from a folder of magazine cut-outs. After choosing a photo, they "interview" the person in the picture in English. Thus, if you were able to read some of the questions and answers, you might see that the skier's favorite sport is "skiing" and Queen Elizabeth II's favorite food is "chocolate."

Blessings

Back in November, we helped do an English camp at our friend Sean’s site. During a break time, we were hanging out at the home of one of Sean’s counterparts. An old man in the house wanted to give us a blessing before we left.

He tied a string around the left wrist of each one of us while murmuring his wishes that we have good health, good travels, and good remaining time in Thailand. He was very sweet and sincere.
Typically, when you have a string ceremony like this in Thailand, you wear the string until it falls off. The one I currently have on my wrist is from our COS conference in December.

If you can’t tell from the photos, it was yellow shirt day at English camp.

A Great Group of Kids

There are times when being a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand starts to feel rough. Emotionally... It's a difficult culture to adapt to, the weather is challenging (whether hot or cold), and sometimes I don't feel like I'm accomplishing all that much at my "job."

But the 5th and 6th graders at my Monday-Thursday school never fail to bring my spirits up a bit. Perhaps they'll insert random English words we've studied into an otherwise Thai conversation in an amusing way. Perhaps they'll joke about the "kaab moo" (baked pig skin) that Robert offered them one day. Perhaps they'll make fun of my daily breakfast -- oatmeal -- which they find to be amusing both gastronomically and linguistically.

Or perhaps, like today, during a lesson on comparative adjectives, they'll repeatedly insist that OF COURSE I am more beautiful than Tata Young, the Thai singer. And they'll laugh when I tell them that's worth a few bonus points. But they said it even without the bonus points... so there!

The photo was taken on our field trip to the Mae Mo Power Plant in November. Ajaan Warangkana, my co-teacher, is posing in front of the yellow flowers with the kids.

Small Town Life

Sometimes traveling to different parts of Thailand gives us a new perspective on our little town. This past weekend we visited Pai, a hippie-mountain town in Mae Hong Son province, with a group of volunteers. More on that trip later, but for now I’d like to share a couple of rambly tidbits about our rural town.

A guidebook I once read noted that violent movies are popular in Thailand, and the farther away you get from big cities, the more violence you find on TV. This is an accurate description of where we live. Because there isn’t much to do here – no shopping, no movie theater, no major sporting events – entertainment tends to be limited to TV, cockfighting, and alcohol. Lots of alcohol. Frequent holidays and festivals are occasions for variety, and of course for more alcohol as well.

There are many good sides to being out of the big city. We know our neighbors well. It’s easy to get around by bicycle. The air is clear, aside from the smoke from burning fields. I would not have given up the opportunity to experience small town life.

We’re set in a valley surrounded by farmland and then mountains. For security reasons, I’m not allowed to name the area on this blog, but I’ve included a couple of photos from this evening’s bike ride. You might notice the cell phone towers, the smoke rising from harvested rice fields and the Casa Que Pasa t-shirt. Oh, we miss burritos.

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.

Christmas Eve at the Mission

Located a couple kilometers outside our town is a Catholic mission center run by a group of Italian priests and nuns. They serve hill tribes living in the surrounding mountains, conducting Sunday masses on a rotating schedule and helping giving kids a chance to have a regular education. We've enjoyed attending Sunday services from time to time. The Italians speak Thai better than English, so that's how we communicate!

Twice a year, for Christmas and Easter, the hill tribe people come into the Center for mass. On Sunday evening, after returning from Bryn's Christmas Eve party for volunteers, we rode our bikes out to take part.

It was freezing cold -- I was wearing a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, a hat, and a hooded fleece jacket by the end of the service, and still shivering! -- but nonetheless we enjoyed seeing the many different people. Some were similarly bundled up, but some were wearing their local clothing. During the offering, pairs of girls and women in matching outfits carried up baskets of flour, grapes, and flowers, which was quite lovely. I was proud that I understood the majority of the Thai sermon, but when the petitions were read in Hmong I couldn't follow.

After mass, we rode back home in the dark cold, lit up our tree, and made spaghetti. A very pleasant Christmas Eve.

Train Travel

One of our favorite modes of travel in Thailand is the train. We usually ride second class when traveling between Bangkok and our site. It's about a ten-hour trip, but usually fairly comfortable, with air-conditioning and two coffee breaks.

After our day in Bangkok, Leah accompanied us on a train ride north. The photo was taken at Sam Sen station in Bangkok as we were waiting for the train to arrive. You can see a monk waiting nearby, a Thai flag, and if you look closely, some Thai writing. You might also notice that Robert is wearing a sweatshirt -- a cold spell has come across Thailand, and we're freezing! (Leah, coming from America, doesn't find it quite as cold as we do.)

Wat Arun

Our friend Leah is visiting us here this week and on Monday we had a pleasant day in Bangkok. The weather wasn't too hot and though we were all tired from our 2am return from the airport, we managed to keep our energy going until after dinner.

As our 15th visitor, Leah knows we've spent lots of time showing family and friends around the major sites of Thailand. She offered to forego a few of the tourist "highlights" so that all three of us would be able to see something new, so we chose Wat Arun, the temple that is featured on the 10-baht coin. We had gazed at it across the river many times and it always looked appealing.

Wat Arun is a Khmer-style wat, and the biggest surprise was realizing that the grey towers we had seen so many times from a distance are actually, when viewed up close, composed of thousands and thousands of tiny colored ceramic pieces. Here are Robert and Leah in front of one of the multi-colored structures. The Chao Praya river and Grand Palace temple are in the background.

Christmas Visit

I invited students from my Monday-Thursday school over to see our Christmas decorations this Saturday afternoon, and it was a big hit!

Robert's cousin Karin sent us a singing wreath, which welcomed the kids when they arrived on the porch. They found it hilarious and spent a lot of time over the course of the next hour and a half trying to figure out how the motion sensor worked -- trying to sneak past it without setting it off. It played pretty constantly anyway.

They admired the presents under the tree, played butting heads with the musical reindeer antlers, and ate some chocolate pieces I had found at the store up the street. When they had seen enough of Christmas, they moved on to exploring the rest of our house -- books, magazines, photos, large-sized shoes, shortwave radio, Western bathroom, and maps.

It was fun to be able to share a little Christmas cheer with someone in our town!

The Pink House

This is our house in Thailand. It's a one-story, three-room house. (One main room and two bedrooms.) And it's very pink! If I had included a photo of the bathroom, you would have seen that it, too, is very pink.

This photo was taken just a week or so after we moved in. I think things look a bit messier now -- the lawn is a little overgrown and patchy, the potted plants are relocated to a corner and replaced by bicycles, and the laundry is usually hanging on the patio. The pink paint is also a little faded in dirty in some areas as a result of last year's flood.

It's a very comfortable little house for two people to live in for two years!

Party Meat

Before coming to Thailand, I expected it to be something of a vegetarian’s paradise. All those fresh fruits and vegetables! Plenty of soy and tofu! Just like at the Thai restaurant down the block from our apartment!

In reality, though, I have found the Thai people to be some of the most gung-ho meat eaters I’ve ever known. No meal is considered complete, it seems, without a large portion of pork, beef, or chicken. In most northern Thai dishes, in fact, the meat is the main component of the meal – simply chopped and seasoned with locally grown herbs, and eaten with sticky rice. Tofu, if eaten, is usually mixed with fish or pork. I have yet to meet another vegetarian in our town. The closest I have come was about 20 months ago, when I met a teacher from another school district who eats vegetarian on "Buddhist days" – approximately once every eight days, according to the cycle of the moon.

When I say that I am vegetarian, most people assume that either a) I eat meat most of the time, excepting a special days, or b) I am probably crazy. When I tell them that I haven’t eaten meat for over 11 years, they look momentarily befuddled, and then decisively pronounce that that’s why I have such good skin.

On Sunday evening, we celebrated Robert’s birthday at the house of some school district friends. The meal was a typical Thai celebration meal for a large group of people, called "sukiyaki." (I think the concept originally comes from somewhere else in East Asia.) A large cooking device, slightly resembling a wok, is kept constantly heated. Diners sit in a circle around the heat source. Different bowls are scattered about containing a variety of ingredients, usually including raw pork, thin rice noodles, chopped vegetables, and chili sauce. Each diner has their own mini-bowl and set of chopsticks. Diners take turns using their chopsticks to arrange the meat on the heat source for cooking. A large bowl of broth is also kept constantly on the heat source, and diners will add scoops of noodles or vegetables as they desire. When satisfied as to doneness, diners will transfer cooked ingredients to their own bowl and then eat them with the chili sauce. It’s a very festive way to eat!

Sunday night, the main ingredients included fresh pork, processed pork balls, processed fish "tofu," processed shrimp "tofu," eggs, rice noodles, cauliflower and water spinach. I had my own separate bowl of pre-mixed noodles, boiled vegetables, and regular soy tofu (not shown in photos). It was a chilly night, so the heat in the middle of the mat kept us warm as we talked and ate for over three hours!

COS Conference

Last week we traveled to Cha-am, three hours south of Bangkok, for our Completion of Service (COS) conference. 50 volunteers arrived in Thailand on January 14th, 2005, and 45 of us made it to this conference – an impressive statistic!

Our last date of service will be March 27th, 2007, so to help us wade through paperwork, medical tests, packing, and planning during these last three months, Peace Corps puts on the COS Conference. Over the course of three days, we spent time reflecting on our original goals for our time in Thailand and what the highs and lows of our experience have been. They gave us lots of information about our upcoming doctor and dentist appointments, how to deal with future health issues resulting from PC service, buying our plane tickets to go home, and how to find RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) groups in America. We also spent lots of time working on our resumes and talking about graduate school applications, job searching, and networking. Several former volunteers from different countries who are now living in Thailand came and talked to us about what we might expect our post-PC experience to be like.

There was lots of laughter, as well as a few tears. Time on the beach, in the pool, and at the ping-pong table. Buffet meals, "coffee breaks," noodle stands on the street at night. A wedding invitation. Nervousness and excitement about what lies ahead.

The photo doesn’t show the whole group, but if you look closely you might find both Robert and me.

Hitchhiking!

Earlier this week, I made reference to our disappointing travel over last weekend. Perhaps I spoke a little too strongly in referring to it as "calamitous," because we got several concerned inquiries from home wondering what happened. I have now edited out that wording, and I will explain a bit more about why we felt it wasn’t our best travel weekend ever. Please know, though, that several days later we have pretty much forgotten all about it!

Thailand is at a fascinating developmental stage, in which large numbers of the population live in poverty – including a majority of the students we teach – while large numbers also live very well, in fact, quite comfortably compared to the United States. In addition, Thailand’s huge tourist industry has quite an impact. Most tourists, of course, are quite wealthy compared with most Thais, and they pour lots of money into the economy.

Our Peace Corps living allowance is designed to enable us to live at the level of the people in our community, in particular the people with whom we work. What this means practically, for us, is that we are much wealthier than the families of most of the students we teach, but nowhere near as wealthy as the teachers we teach with, except the very young teachers who have just started in the civil service. We are "poor" compared with the tourists, even the backpackers, which occasionally causes frustration when we travel because Thai people expect us to have bottomless pockets of cash like the other foreigners they have encountered.

In any case, the area we traveled to last weekend – the Golden Triangle area in northern Chiang Rai province – is not designed for people with limited budgets. We had assumed that, like most places in Thailand, we could use local transportation to make our way between destinations for an affordable price. As it turns out, it’s not worth visiting that area unless you have 1) your own vehicle, or 2) a large budget, useful for renting vans and chartering songtaews. Even the Thai tourists we saw traveled almost exclusively in rental vans, hired complete with driver. Public transportation was infrequent and difficult to find.

As a result, we spent more money than we had planned on last-try transportation, including an extra 100 baht apiece for a "VIP" bus that we hoped would get us to a particular destination on time but didn’t. We walked at least 3 kilometers along highways, not in itself a long distance but one that feels considerably longer when you are walking in the sun with a large backpack on your back. We skipped a couple of meals. And we "hitchhiked" twice, once in the back of a pickup along the Mekong River during the day, and once in the back of a station wagon on the highway back to Chiang Rai at night. And for all that, we never did reach our primary destination: a Chinese mountaintop village.

But, six days later it doesn’t seem as bad as it did then. We did enjoy the Hall of Opium museum, the shiny statues at the Golden Triangle, and of course, our dinner by the Mekong. And we got to see a nice fat rat digging through our bags in the middle of the night at our guest house in Chiang Saen. (Avoid Gin’s House unless you want a similar experience.) So, unpleasant though much of it might have been at the time, I think it will make a good story someday!

[Note: Robert says it was not really hitchhiking because we didn't flag these cars down. We just looked pitiful and they offered assistance, which we accepted. But I think "hitchhiking" sounds more exciting than "accepted help."]

Love Those Dried Bananas

Several years ago, as part of a drive to improve the Thai economy at the local (village) level, the OTOP program was started. OTOP stands for "One Tambon, One Product," a tambon being a unit of local government approximately equal to a township. Every tambon has the opportunity to specialize in one or more products, and these locally-made products, when approved, will have a special label on their packaging marking them as OTOP. They can also be rated with a certain number of stars (1 to 5) indicating their quality. Examples of OTOPs in our area include cloth weaving, banana chips, and sweetened rice cakes. OTOPs I have seen from other parts of the country include dried mushrooms, wood carving, silk weaving, and all sorts of sweets and snacks.

After our school visit to a village north of town yesterday, we were taken by Pi Nongnut – a very enthusiastic woman who is part of that area’s governing council – to visit the local OTOP makers. We were taken to a lovely piece of property with a very large and beautiful traditional northern Thai house. Outside the house were two long tables covered in plastic. Looking under the plastic, we were able to see rows of "sweet water" bananas (a popular variety) drying in the warm sun, protected from bugs. We also went inside the packing building, where Pi Nongnut showed off the clean facilities and machines for sealing the bananas in plastic packaging.

Not only did we get to taste several of the delicious bananas fresh from the drying tables, but we were given ten boxes to take home with us! Our refrigerator is now very, very full.

Signs Again

In a typical five day work week, our Peace Corps project has us working in 2 primary schools apiece, 2 days a week, for a total of four regular days in school per week. They may or may not be full days, for example, I usually don’t leave for my Monday-Thursday school until about 9:30am because we don’t teach English until 10:00. The fifth day of the week, Wednesdays in our case, is flexible. We might work at the school district office, or help judge an English competition, or do official paperwork or reports for Peace Corps, or visit a school that we don’t usually attend. Today we did a school visit.

It was a very delightful day. The school was located about 15 kilometers north of town in a small village. It was clear to us that this community takes a lot of pride in their school – the grounds were well cared-for and decorated, and teachers enjoyed showing us various student projects including agriculture, basket-making, and raising fish and pigs. In the morning, we did a 90-minute English lesson with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders, and in the afternoon with did the same with 4th, 5th, and 6th.

One of my favorite things about this school was the abundance of signs with interesting sayings nailed to the trees. This is a very Thai phenomena – I have seen it at other schools and temples. Usually they remind the reader to live in moderation or take time to reflect on their life. Some of the signs at this school, however, had some unexpected sayings... Take the time to enlarge the photos and see what you can read!

When we asked about the "villains" saying, we were given a long complicated explanation about people who grow up in poor villages, then suddenly become rich, and eventually forget who they are and where they came from. We weren’t sure about the English translation.

World Map #2

It’s that time of year again. Last year I did a World Map project at my Tuesday-Friday school. This year we’re doing one at my Monday-Thursday school. It’s great fun! This year’s World Cup got kids particularly interested in knowing where different countries are, especially the ones with good soccer teams.

We do it the old-fashioned way. Using a guide from Peace Corps, I made color-coded guide sheets for each sector of the map. We drew a grid on the wall, and the kids used the grid and guide sheets to draw all the countries in pencil first. (I had to fix Europe and part of Africa, but on the whole they did a nice job.)

Now we are painting. So far we’ve done yellow, green, and red. Aside from a few paint-related issues (too much water added at first, not enough containers for leftover paint), it’s going well and starting to look nice. I do spend a lot of time patching up border areas, but I find it to be fulfilling work!

A Pocket of Nice on the Mekong

Having just returned from a rather calamitous four-day weekend trip to Chiang Rai province, which perhaps I’ll describe another day, I’m trying to remember that it’s the little things in life that can bring us joy. Not every vacation will be fun, even when you’re using two of your precious Peace Corps vacation days. Not every "must see" in Thailand will be seen during our two years here, even if it is only 7 hours by three vehicles away. But even when a four-day weekend turns out to be just a lot of money spent to sit on buses for nothing, there are still a few small pleasures to be celebrated.

Although I’ve considered myself to be vegetarian for over ten years now, I did start to eat some fish in particular circumstances about five years ago. Being vegetarian in Thailand has saved me from many an unpleasant dining experience – I don’t have to worry about being served raw meat, processed fish shaped like mouse faces, or other such "delicacies." But I know that it has also meant that I’ve missed out on trying a lot of the local cuisine, which is very much meat-based.

On occasion, when far away from anyone who might recognize me, I do take the opportunity to try a little fish if it’s prepared in a special "local" way. In Laos, I tried some of Robert’s fish "laab" – minced fish salad with spices and herbs. Last April, I enjoyed grilled mackerel on the beach. And Friday night, one of the few parts of this weekend vacation that worked out, I enjoyed "fish steamed in bamboo", a local specialty of Chiang Saen town in Chiang Rai, while sitting at a little table overlooking the Mekong River after sunset. It was positively a delightful meal – also including sticky rice and spicy papaya salad – and despite the various disappointments of the weekend, I am still left feeling quite fond of the Mekong and its culinary offerings.

Vientiane -- A Relaxing Town

This is the tenth and final chapter of our Laos journey.

To complete our time in Laos, we spent one day in the capital, Vientiane (pronounced "Wiang Chan"). A pleasant city situated on the Mekong River, we found Vientiane to fit with the understanding of Laos we had developed over the week: similar to Thailand in many ways, but calmer and more expensive.

We spent several hours at the Lao National Museum, focusing on the exhibits that included English labels but paying some attention to the Thai and French as well. Most fascinating was the emphasis on the "greatness" of Communism and the strong antipathy towards the "American imperialists." After reading label after label decrying the actions of the United States during the 1970s – most of the strong language probably deserved, though not what I’d expect to find in a historical museum – I began to feel a bit uneasy about my own presence in the country. It was a strange – not fearful, but maybe a little guilty – feeling. I’m very glad we got to see it, though, because I think it was an experience I couldn’t have had elsewhere.

We also visited Laos’s most important temple, Wat Pathat Luang. The gold lotus glinting in the sunlight was hot, but it was fun to see a different design style than we usually find in Thailand. Two major tourists sites were enough for us for one day, though, so we spent the remainder of our time strolling the parkway along the river, eating baguettes, reading, and enjoying one last Beer Lao. It was a true vacation.