Falang, My Friend, Very Good!

Return of the Navigator: What to Do With My Jeezny?

2007-04-21T00:27:00.000+07:00

It’s July 4th, 1978, and after a fun day of playing Frisbee with his dog Bruiser, 12-year-old David Freeman wanders into the woods to find his younger brother. He falls down into a ravine and awakens moments later. Or is it? In fact, David was abducted by aliens and made the navigator of their spaceship. When he awakens it’s actually 1986, and although he’s aged just a few minutes, the rest of the world has gone through 8 years of changes. His parents moved houses, his kid brother is now older than him, and he’s got this spaceship that he’s got to take care of. It’s got all the ingredients for a great 1980s movie. The Flight of the Navigator is a Disney classic, but also a great way to describe what it’s like coming back from the Peace Corps.

When David woke up from his fall, he walked back to his house, and found a different family living there. “Who are you people?” he screamed, as he tried to make sense of the situation. My parents moved to West Virginia while I was in Thailand, and I became effectively homeless. I came to visit a week ago, and can’t stop thinking, “Where am I? Who are you people? Where is my spaceship?”

It’s kind of a weird feeling walking around a strange house and seeing pictures of myself on all the walls. Or seeing all the same furniture and snacks transported to new rooms. The same cookies, different house. My Mom’s been telling me she’s going to fatten me up (I lost around twenty pounds), and I noticed that my bike tires are flat and there’s jars of chocolate everywhere.

My first task was to separate all my clothes and things into piles for Goodwill and the garbage man. I found three fake IDs cleverly hidden in all that junk. My handles, Price Meade from New York, Floyd Gandoli from Colorado, and Timothy J. Nabbofeld from Michigan, all got thrown away with old prom pictures. Never buy your kid a laminator for Christmas.

This isn’t the first time that my parents have moved, but it is the first time they’ve moved to West Virginia. WV is the punch line of every hick joke from every place I’ve lived, and I’ve heard over and over, “Why did your parents move to West Virginia?” in the same tone as, “Why are you drinking Draino?”

But it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s a little bit reminiscent of vacationing in Laos. A sparsely populated, mountainous region, with kind, hospitable people who speak a strange, semi-comprehensible dialect. Welcome to West Virginia! It really is a beautiful place. Right next to this town is Eleanor, which is the self-proclaimed, “cleanest city of WV”. Once you enter Eleanor, you’ll see a road sign directing you to turn right to go to the park, a school, and gun range. Only in WV does this make sense.

Right here in my parents’ neighborhood, I’ve been using the same skills I used to integrate into my community in rural Thailand. My mother has been kind enough to parade me around the neighborhood, while acting as interpreter. Apparently a hot topic is the local mayoral race, which includes three candidates: our neighbor, a 25-year old who lives with his parents, and a man who rides around town on a lawnmower. Now that would be an interesting blog.

And by the way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a 25 year old living with his parents.

It is nice to be back in America. Instead of holding television antennas with one foot in the air to watch a soccer game, we’ve got a game on every night in High Definition. Life is good. As my Mom and I watched the Barcelona game the other morning, I pointed out that I brought back a letter with me for Barcelona’s coach, Frank Rijkaard. A woman I worked with wrote a letter for this man, and gave it to me to give to him. Frank Rijkaard is Dutch, and is a coach in Barcelona, Spain. But since all foreigners come from the same country, and speak the same language, we would of course run into each other. Only in Thailand does this make sense.

The letter starts with “I am your dream girlfriend” and ends with “Love you for ever”, and has this 40 year-old woman’s picture in what looks like a military uniform glued next to her signature. But you bet your ass I’m gonna send this to Spain anyway.

This isn’t to say that Americans know any more about Thailand, however. I’ve been keeping track of some of the dumbest questions I’ve heard since I’ve been back. Some of them I expected (“Do you speak Taiwanese?”). Some of them I didn’t expect (“Were you working to help find Bin-Laden?”) And some of them I just can’t answer (“So… How was Thailand?”) I think the most appropriate question I got was from the customs agent that took my passport, and asked me, “Did you enjoy your trip?” “Indeed I did,” I answered.

Last night we went to a Thai restaurant, which came well-recommended to us from our neighbors. It definitely wasn’t the Thai food I’ve been eating for two years. But I did find a bit of pleasure eavesdropping on the table next to us. “I would love to live in Thailand,” a young man said. “That’s where the Dalai Lama lives, they’re Hindu, and they can’t eat pork.” I hope that man goes to Thailand, because I’ve got a letter for the Dalai Lama I’d like him to deliver.

In the Peace Corps, a PCVs “life” is put on hold for two years. But lo and behold, everyone else went on with theirs. Younger friends are now married with children, old friends passed away, my niece grew up, my parents moved. So what now? What else is there to do for a 25 year-old returned Peace Corps Volunteer to do but sit and wait for the inevitable call from NASA saying that they’ve found my spaceship?

As Alex said, in A Clockwork Orange…

“What’s it going to be then, eh?”

“What it was going to be now, brothers, was homeways and a nice surprise for dadada and mum, their only son and heir back in the family bosom. Then I could lay back on the bed in my own malenky den and slooshy some lovely music, and at the same time I could think over what to do now with my jeezny. The Discharge Officer had given me a long list the day before of jobs I could try for, and he had telephoned to different vecks about me, but I had no intention, my brothers, of going off to rabbit right away. A malenky bit of a rest first, yes, and a quiet think on the bed to the sound of lovely music.”

Well, this is it. The end of “Falang, My Friend, Very Good!” I’m no longer a Falang. It’s been a real pleasure writing this thing, and I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Hopefully it made you laugh a little bit, as I’m sure it’ll make me when I’m 80 and forgot what I spent two years doing over in Thailand.

- brian

Go Home, You You, My Friend!

2007-02-27T11:26:00.000+07:00

Well, that happened…

There’s a great line from the movie “State and Main”, where a sloppy drunk Alec Baldwin wrecks his car with an underage girl in the passenger seat. He gets out, shakes his head, walks over to a couple friends, and in a daze, says, “Well, that happened.”

I find myself saying this time and again, when something so beyond the realm of normality occurs, and I have no choice but to just smile and laugh about it. Which is to say, my entire two years here in Thailand.

Every morning for two weeks now, I’ve been eating snacks and drinking coffee with a grandmother that lives in my neighborhood. She’s pushing eighty, is partially blind, and speaks only Lao. Oh, and she’s totally insane. For whatever reason, I tend to gravitate towards these people.

“Bai-AN!,” BANG, BANG, BANG. “Bai-AN!” This is my alarm clock. After a couple minutes, she’ll try to open the doors. Then the windows. One morning, I was sitting at my computer in my boxers, and the next thing I know, there she was standing over me, warning me that the coffee was getting cool. As she left, she said, “You’re fatter in your stomach than your arms”.

Some mornings I’ll bring over French toast, and we’ll nibble at it while we talk about our town and watch workers build a new house for an Italian’s “mia-noi”, or “smaller wife”. We have some great conversations, miraculously, about her life and the history of my town. With frequent pauses for laughter interspersed throughout.

My two best friends at site are a married couple, Pi Yong and Pi Nit. They promised me months ago that they would have a going-away dinner before I left. On the menu, my favorite Thai dish- Korean barbeque. Pi Yong is a great guy, a generous person that really cares for others. At least I think so, because for two years, I’m not sure I understood a word he said.

A PCV’s last days at site are notorious for last-minute revelations. Things that we wished we would have known two years ago suddenly become apparent to us. I met a PCV who did a lot of theatre projects, who on his last day at site, happened to ride past an abandoned building that turned out to be a fully operational stage.

This particular night, I was enjoying the barbeque and the company. Conversations with Pi Yong are usually fun, but also midly uncomfortable because I usually walk away thinking, “Man, I can’t speak Thai for shit.” I told Pi Nit as much, and she revealed to me, something I wished I would have known before, that nobody understands Pi Yong. The man is a mumbler. I’m a mumbler. So for the first time, we sat across from each other, laughing, conversing, mumbling, comfortably.

I paced around my house yesterday, eagerly looking forward to my going-away party last night. Going over some vocabulary in my head, I opened my front door and walked outside. Whoa. A family of four was showering in my yard, using the water spigot in the front of my house. “Oops, sorry,” I said as I walked back in. My bad.

When I got to the office that night, I noticed a big hole in the ground in front. In a few minutes I would be surrounded by cameras and politicians, planting a tree in this very spot. “We want you to come back and see how high this tree gets,” the Nayok told me. I looked up and saw that the spot we planted it on was right in front of a giant mural of the King on the second floor. So I’m guessing that my tree with grow exactly one story high.

When the tree-planting was finished, we walked to the back of the office, where they had set out mats and had a huge sign. The making of a sign in Thailand requires multiple painters and hours of work. They really put effort into this, and I proudly examined the sign made in my honor, reading, “Biran Kaderli”. Now I’m used to having my name spelled wrong, pronounced wrong, whatever. But usually it’s the last name. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Did we write it correctly?” a friend asked. “It’s perfect.”

My counterpart asked me to put on a piece of cloth around my shoulder, explaining, “this is a Thai custom.” For the next hour or so, I was in a daze, grinning and floating along on the path of least resistance. The twelve elected officers of the TAO each wrapped a pakama (multipurpose loincloth), around my waist, and wished me success, money, and happiness in the future.

Next we sat on the mats, surrounding an ornate sculpture made of banana leaves. A woman who I’ve never met sat putting string on the leaves. We passed around a string and made a large circle, to keep out bad spirits. An elderly man sat across from me, chanting God-knows-what into a microphone. Somewhere near the end, he stopped abruptly, looked up at me, and asked, “What’s your name again?” “Bai-AN” “Doctor?” “just Bai-AN”. At the end, everyone whooped and took the strings and tied them around my wrists, wishing me luck and happiness. The woman who I’d never met before cried and told me she hoped I would come back.

After all this, we stood and the Nayok and Balat presented me with gifts. Thai fashion in general is definitely not subtle. Thais wear as much gold as they can carry, and apply makeup more erratically and abundantly than a twelve year old on crystal meth. I received a golden pendant that may or may not be helpful in locating the Ark of the Covenant. The Nayok placed it around my neck and we smiled for the cameras, looking and feeling like I’d just won the gold medal at the Special Olympics.

A week ago I visited my counterpart at her nurse’s station in a village a few kilo from here. We talked and joked about what I was going to give her when I left. We settled on speakers and a keyboard. She said she wanted to talk to me about the project we did a while ago.

I remember walking with this same counterpart almost two years ago, while she told me that no one in our community was interested in working with HIV/AIDS, and she had given up trying. So I took her to some conferences and gave her some resources, and the rest, as they say, is a gov’t funded student leaders training.

A new member of the PHA (Persons with HIV/AIDS) Group in our local hospital came to talk to her, apparently. She said that youth leaders had been giving announcements and HIV education on the village loudspeakers and that the village was responding well, treating this woman with respect and acceptance. My counterpart cries easily, and I cry easily, so you can see where this is going. This particular woman wanted to thank my counterpart for doing a project like this, and came to get treatment at the hospital because she felt welcomed by the announcements.

Since then my counterpart has already started applying for funding through the UNDP and has future projects planned, all for people who, two years ago, she thought had no interest in AIDS projects. Impressive woman.

HIV/AIDS projects are amazingly rewarding, because they’re always cost-effective. If a small business project had just one person come for training, it’d be a failure. But an HIV project that convinces one woman to come get life-saving treatment at the hospital is worth every baht.

So I biked home, peddling as fast as I could, dazed and shocked, grinning from ear to ear, looking and feeling like someone who spent two years actually accomplishing something.

Well, that happened.

Carnies Without Borders!

2007-02-16T09:46:00.000+07:00

Have you ever wanted to join the circus? Screw that, join the Peace Corps instead! So what if you can’t throw knives or walk on tightropes? Your pale skin and round eyes will have them urinating themselves with laughter and wonder like no freakish flexibility or warped pituitary gland could ever provide you. I pity the man who gets shot out of a cannon every Friday and Saturday night to put food on the table when all he’d have to do is come out here, eat some sticky rice on a mat with his bare hands, and say, “Delicious!” to put the crowds in a frenzy. Step right up, folks, come one, come all, see what all your friends have been talking about – the AhhhhhhhhhMAYZiiiiiiiiiiing… FALANG!

Today was one of those days when you get home, sit down, and say to yourself, “what the fuck just happened today?” Well, each day is a new adventure, and seeing that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to insult a midget in my blog, I thought I’d jot this all down for you.

I live on a twelve lane highway that daily prompts me to swear under my breath at the rural community I imagined when I joined PC. The way to my gov’t office is like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of how to get killed on the way to work. I play frogger with drunk, sleepy truckers and keep my eyes peeled for ten year olds piled four-deep onto motorcycles, zipping by following no lane or traffic rules. If I stay past dark, I have to swerve to avoid transsexual prostitutes who come running onto the street to grab my bike, yelling, “Sexy, you, you, I, boyfriend, handsome!” How many brothels do you pass on your way to work? I pass eight. Seriously.

So anyway, this particular day I was waiting for an opening across the highway when a yellow gas truck came rumbling into view. A man was standing on the top of the vehicle, holding a walking stick and wearing a ski mask. I repeat, a masked man was standing, unsupported on the top of a gas truck. He pointed at me, tilted his head, and stared at my strange figure as the truck rode past. God, I wonder what this guy must have been thinking, seeing something so unbelievably weird.

I eventually get to the gov’t office where I “work”, and am impressed and saddened. The local gov’t administration has built a new office, away from town, right next to the factories that pay the taxes it lives on. It’s ridiculous. It cost 1 million, 700 thousand dollars. DOLLARS. I really can’t explain how much money that is here. That’s obscene. Our old office was fine, but nothing you’d call spectacular. Well, that’s what the village fund is for! I talked with my counterpart as we sat shaking our heads at the calculator. He assured me, “the desks and chairs are included in that price.”

Our office does not have internet, by the way. That’s not a real necessary purchase. Instead we boast, and I mean boast, that we have water heaters for instant coffee in each of the twenty rooms. What I love about the place is that since Thais are scared to death to eat, sleep, or be alone, they all pack into one office and leave the rest vacated. Barren, devoid of life whatsoever, except the water heaters, boiling and re-boiling water for no one.

So anyway, I asked the President of the TAO why they built this new office, and he answered me that they paid for it through the King’s 60^th anniversary fund, and that he had hoped to teach the entire TAO English so that the King would come and visit. One million and seven hundred thousand dollars. ONE MILL>GD*Y#(*#%#.... (Editor’s Note: My head just exploded.)

As we descended the steps and walked out in front of the almost finished building, I passed and heard people start laughing. In a normal world, maybe I had toilet paper trailing behind me. In this world, that’s not necessary. I turned around to see the construction workers pointing and laughing at me, and I swear to God this is true, one of them was about six-three, and the other a midget. They were holding a rail level, the midget with his arms above his head and the tall guy looking like he was curling him, like a dumbbell. There they stood laughing hysterically trying not to drop the rail. Nowadays, I spend a significant part of my life trying to figure out if I’d entered the Twilight Zone. I thought a second, thinking, I guess it’d be impolite to laugh at a midget and a tall guy. I looked up at the President, who chuckled, put his arm around me, and led me outside.

There we stood under the giant portraits of the King and Queen blocking the front windows of the new building, as the Nayok explained to me his grand plan, and how it had included the Peace Corps. It’s too bad, he said, that we finished the new building so late, because now the workers won’t learn English and the King might not visit.

Which is exactly why the circus comes to you. From thousands of miles away in some cases.

Udon: Ahoy!

2007-01-24T13:58:00.000+07:00

“Wee-I-Pee”, I say, enunciating each syllable with care. I fork over my 80 baht ($2) and get on the bus back home. I almost missed it, I thought. Carefully dodging the women who’d boarded to sell roasted chickens, I look for a seat. Only one available, next to a young woman, dressed neatly for a Sunday. I lean into the seat and sit down, taking notice of her outfit. Black slacks, formal shoes, and a red blouse. Across her chest, written in large black letters, “Life Ain’t Nothin’ But Bitches and Money.”

Stifling a laugh, I pull the blanket over me. Thais don’t mess around with the air conditioning. I’m not sure yet which is worse- freezing or burning my balls off, but for two years I’ve been periodically rotating between the two and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to have children. There was already a movie in progress, which is great because I haven’t seen a Jackie Chan movie in at least a few days.

Interesting, this movie is an actual Thai movie, so I don’t have to listen to awkward voice-overs. And it’s apparently about pirates, which is so wildly original I barely notice that the ticket-taker has made his way back to my seat.

Getting the bus to stop at my house is always difficult, because the drivers rarely know where my village is. So I have a prepared statement explaining exactly at which gas station to stop the bus, before what major stop, how many kilometers, etc. I’ve said it roughly two million times in the past two years, but it hasn’t gotten much easier. The first go-around, the ticket-taker will stare at me, puzzled that I’m speaking Thai, and forget to actually listen to anything I was saying. Which is reflective of my life, actually. Probably 80% of my first words to people are followed by, “What?”

“Where are you getting off?” he asks the woman sitting next to me. “Kao-Sang-Kwan”, she answers. The town next to mine. “Where is your husband’s ticket?” he asks. This is exactly why I don’t sit next to women on buses. Heaven forbid a white man travel alone in this country. “I’m going to Nam Phong,” I said as she blushes. “Alone”. “And I need to get off at blah, blah, blah.” He grunts and turns his back to take more tickets.

Udon is a city known for it’s falang population. It used to be an American Air Force base and still sports relics of the Vietnam War: fighter jets, VOA, and old, bald men with wives doubling as granddaughters. This very day, I had eaten lunch at a restaurant while a man with a tattoo of a lawnmower on his bald-spot stood reading an advertisement for an all-natural alternative to Viagra.

Sure enough, the ticket-taker turns to another falang, and having learnt his lesson, asks his young Thai wife where she and her husband are going. She gives him both their tickets and the ticket-taker moves on, having proved, as if it needed proving, that I am an idiot.

The audio/visual systems put in these buses are amazing. You will watch and listen to the movie playing, whether you like it or not. No conversations, no sleeping, nothing except you appreciating exactly how powerful these speakers kick. I imagine the driver and his rig are big hits in the local high school parking lot.

When Joe McGinn visited last year, he was impressed with Thais for putting up with this. Thais like action and horror movies, so you’re either being woken up by machine-gun fire or by five year olds screaming in terror while people are mutilated with a chainsaw. And the Thais just sit there and take it, too respectful to get up and tell the driver, “Hey maybe 2am isn’t the best time to be showing a Steven Segal movie”. Then again, when is?

Today’s movie, like I said, is about pirates. English pirates, actually, who have mobilized the Chinese to enslave the Thais. And the main falang character is now molesting a 10 year old. So that’s just great. I look back to see what the other falang thinks of this, but he and his wife are busy miming at each other, and aren’t watching the movie.

At Kao-Sang-Kwan, the woman next to me gets off, and I stretch out a little. The movie concludes with the Thais on the island expelling the English pedophiles by firing homemade rockets at their ship. As the injured vessel sails off into the setting sun, the credits start to roll. And, holy shit, there goes my stop.

I run up to the front of the bus yelling at the driver to stop the bus. I look crossly at the ticket-taker sitting next to him, who evidently didn’t tell him someone was getting off there. He steps on the brakes, and while the bus gently rolls to a stop, I exit. Just as the doors are closing behind me, I hear the driver say to the ticket-taker, “He’s very talented, traveling without his wife like that.”

I adjust my backpack, switching the cat litter to my left hand, and with the sun at my back, begin my walk home.

Send Lawyers, Guns & Money: Myanmar 3

2007-01-02T12:51:00.000+07:00

Part III: That Classic, Myanmar Hospitality

He walked briskly up to us as we exited a restaurant, on our way back to our guest house around 8pm, because 8pm is late in Myanmar. I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye, but decided to ignore him until he made his move. He pulled something out of his pocket and raised his arm, demanding my full attention. Josh and I stopped in our tracks, our only two options being to turn and run or face the music. “Hello my friend! Yipee! Come to eat at Yipee Restaurant!”

With a seedy mustache, a fake leather jacket and a long skirt, Yipee looked half used-car salesman, half you-caught-me-in-the-shower. “Yipee is new restaurant. Foreign food, very good! Myanmar food! Very close. Nobody know about Yipee.” He handed us a pamphlet, and thanked us profusely for hearing his pitch. Then he excused himself, and got on the back of a bike a woman was riding, on the hunt, again. “We’re going to Yipee’s tomorrow,” Josh said.

We were at Inle Lake, where tourists are herded to view the immense natural beauty that Myanmar has to offer. In Laos and Thailand, avoiding the herd is the key to getting a realistic feel for the country. Locals used to strange tall white people tend stop being friendly. This time we didn’t expect to make many friends since we weren’t blazing any new trails; In Myanmar it’s illegal to stray from the beaten path.

Inle Lake is famous for its boat trips, where you can visit small communities living on the lake itself in houses built on stilts. Situated between two mountains, the lake is an absurdly beautiful place to be. I could imagine waking up, and stepping out onto my porch to view the sun rise over the mountains in the distance. As we passed a school on the way, kids hopped in a small canoe and rowed to their next class. “Probably not the best soccer team in the country,” Josh quipped.

The plan that day was to visit some of the small businesses on the lake: a cigar shop, a silk weaver, a blacksmith. Josh and I each had our own personal agendas, however. I wanted to see cats jump through hoops and Josh was on the lookout for the Long Necked Lady.

We pulled up to the shop, tied up the canoe and stepped onto the dock. “The Long Necked Lady,” said our captain. Josh had previously visited a refugee camp in Thailand featuring the women of a native Myanmar tribe whose females fashioned gold rings elongating their necks. Josh’s Thai friends demanded he return with pictures of the Long Necks. We had up to this point been operating under the assumption that unfamiliarity with plurality in the English language had caused our guides to advertise these women as just one, Long Necked Lady. Sometime during our trip Josh came upon the realization that the Myanmar gov’t may just have shipped in a tribeswoman from the Long Necks and put her up in Inle Lake as a tourist attraction. But we were wrong, they didn’t ship in one woman, they brought in three. As tourists came in and out snapping pictures of the three woman weaving, they explained the gold rings that defined them to the rest of the world. Josh’s Thai friends will not be disappointed.

Our last stop on the Lake Tour was a temple famous for having trained cats to jump through hoops. I’m a cat owner, and have to poke my cats periodically to check if they’re still alive. Usually they’ll growl at me in protest and then roll over and pass out again. So I’ve trained them to roll over, and hoops are a logical next step. As we circled around the trainer, a collection of cats sat around visibly hating life and ruing the next time it’ll be picked to perform. With a reward of fried fish, the trainer eventually coerced one into jumping through a hoop. We started our way back towards town already hungry, looking forward to seeing Yipee for dinner.

As we trolled back into town, we passed women and children bathing on their docks. We saw a collection of kids splashing water and playing around. They caught sight of us, and with huge smiles waved our way. They were standing over the water by about a foot, stretching out to make sure we waved back. As we passed them, we realized that supporting them, half-submerged in the lake, were water buffaloes.

Josh and I were continually surprised and overjoyed at the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Myanmar people we met. With their wide smiles and waving, you wouldn’t know that the People’s Desire was to crush and destroy outside influence. To us it really seemed that they were happy to have us there, and we were certainly happy to be there, in the strangest of all places to feel welcomed.

That night we kept our promise to eat at Yipee’s. As we passed the landmark he told us, it became dark and we were unable to locate ourselves on the crude map on his pamphlet. We turned down a dark alley, hoping to eventually run into Yipee and his restaurant. As soon as we turned our shoulders, though, a bike came screaming to a stop next to us. “No No No! Yipee’s is straight ahead. No turn!” Yipee and his guerilla marketing campaign well at work. He escorted us to his homey, small thatch restaurant where we ate in candle light. At the end of the meal, Yipee insisted we take a shot of moonshine with him. “To Yipee!” Josh and I toasted. “My name is Mutuur,” he said. “Yipee is the restaurant. Yipee means happy. Very happy! Happy to have you!”

Send Lawyers, Guns & Money: Myanmar 2

2006-12-26T10:25:00.000+07:00

Part II: I WILL NOT BETRAY MY SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS!

Most Myanmar tour guides come with special marks indicating which attractions, transportation, and hotels are controlled by the government, so that responsible tourists can support the communities they are visiting without supporting the gov’t oppressing them. It’s a real issue. My tourist dollars can either be used by families to put food on the table, or by generals to put tanks in the capital.

For example, the moat around Mandalay’s temple was renovated by thousands of Myanmar citizens, summoned to work for no pay, and told to bring their own tools. And this is a moat, mind you. This is the 21^st century, and the gov’t is enslaving its population to build something that, at most, will keep the Black Knight at bay.

So during our two week trip to the Land of the Golden Pagodas, Josh and I made sure we spent our money wisely. Not totally because we’re self-righteous; we also were traveling on little more than our $180 monthly salaries. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t go to, say, more Golden Pagodas.

YANGON

The Swedagon Pagoda in Yangon is the most celebrated temple in all of Myanmar. The temple itself sits atop a hill, and has several levels leading to the Pagoda. Josh and I walked up, in a crowd of locals bringing lotus flowers and incense to pay respects to the Buddha. A woman jumped out in front of us, respectfully asking us to pay the $5 entrance fee for foreigners.

This is how it is all over Asia, actually. But in Thailand, PCVs usually can talk their way out of it with our gov’t official card. It makes sense, in a way, that foreigners should pay more, because they can afford to. But I get upset when I see my Nayok TAO, who owns three houses and a gas pipeline, go to a temple for free when I have to pay. It’s tough traveling the third world in the skin of a rich man, with the wallet of a rice farmer. Oh the challenges of volunteering in a tropical paradise. Pity me.

Josh wanted some close up pictures of the Pagoda, so he paid the fee. I wanted Josh’s pictures of the Pagoda, and had a good view of it from 20 meters away, so I walked around the perimeter.

I was strolling around the outside of the temple, watching people picnic and play on the fields of grass in between scattered shrines. I saw two cats fighting with each other over someone’s leftovers next to the path, and looked up to see a man washing his dishes over a sink outside.

“You travel… around the world… in 80 DAYS!”

“Um… Yeah. Sure.”

Before I knew it, I was sitting down to tea in his house, as he showed me which sections of the tiled floor the other 6 workers slept on. As he poured Chinese tea, he explained he was the temple’s representative to English speakers from other countries. After I told him I lived in Thailand, he went on to tell me how he’d met and welcomed ex-PM Thaksin a few times. “He usually came with a couple military generals,” he said, and laughed.

We chatted for ten minutes or so, and a few security guards came in to meet me. “You really should pay the fee and go see the Pagoda,” he repeated, slightly annoyed. “It’s the heart of Myanmar people. If you do not see it, you do not see Myanmar.” “It’s beautiful,” I countered, as we looked at the Pagoda through his back window. “I’m really looking forward to meeting many Myanmar people.”

With his head lowered, he looked deep into my eyes, searching for something. “I WILL NOT BETRAY THE PAGODA!” He yelled.

“Um.”

“I WILL NOT BETRAY THE PAGODA!”

“I really don’t understand.”

“Some people, yes, they will allow you enter… for free. BUT I CANNOT BETRAY IT!”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” slowly backing away. “I wish you and your family luck!”

BAGAN

West of Mandalay, in Central Myanmar, lays the ancient city of Bagan. A thriving center of the Burman empire 1000 years ago, the 3000+ temples that pepper the landscape offer a relaxing alternative to the cities of Mandalay and Yangon. Only $10 to enter the city, if you were lucky enough to be born outside of Myanmar.

A decade ago, the government forced farmers off their land, who were told to become artists to serve all the tourists about to flock to Myanmar. At the entrance of each temple, artisans, gov’t licensed to be at that specific temple, lay in wait for tourists.

As you enter the temple, you will no doubt be approached by smiling men, women, and children. “Where are you from? Where are you staying? Oh (while we talking) would you like to see my handicrafts?”

Josh and I had a lot of souvenirs to buy our coworkers, so this was a great system. For a dollar, we could get a tour guide to talk about the temple, a small painting, some pictures, and maybe even some conversation. My strategy was to buy something as quickly as possible, and while Josh haggled over the price with his seller, I would grill all the other artisans about their lives.

Bagan is famous for lacquer-ware, which is bamboo, shaped, then carved, then painted, and finally lacquered until it retains none of the chemical characteristics traditionally found outside nuclear testing facilities. Artisans were throwing them on the ground, burning them with lighters, stepping on them, with no effect. After WWIII, cockroaches will be ruling their empire in cheap, indestructible buildings of lacquer-ware.

Bagan, for us, was where we discovered the incredible hospitality of the people living there, as well as a way to throw a little money their way without the generals collecting.

As we checked into a hotel in Mandalay, Josh picked up a copy of the New Light of Myanmar, the propaganda English-language newspaper released, it must be, for the comedic pleasure of foreigners.

“They’re building a new Pagoda in the new capital,” he told me. “It’s a complete replica of the Swedagon that we saw in Yangon.”

So the country growing at the slowest pace in all of SE Asia, with relatively no infrastructure at all, and a healthcare system that I’m not even sure qualifies as a system is going to build a giant golden pagoda that they already have.

And although we as foreigners aren’t allowed to enter that city, if we were, I sure as hell wouldn’t be paying $5 to see it. Unless, of course, they built it out of lacquer-ware.

"Hello God"

Send Lawyers, Guns & Money: Myanmar 1

2006-12-23T12:41:00.000+07:00

Part 1: A More Perfect Union Chapati

You’d think living in New York for five years would mean I knew how to cross the street. I’ve narrowly escaped getting my ass run over by a trishaw multiple times in the past week. This particular day I started to cross, forgetting that traffic outside of Thailand comes from the left, and heard different horns from bicycles, trishaws, motorcycles, and cars all vying for tiny portions of the one lane I was currently occupying. I was hungry and could have made it, but I wasn’t about to let my obituary read that I was run over by a horse-cart on my way to eat Chapatis in Myanmar.

I hadn’t eaten anything since a bad batch of fried rice sent my stomach into spins more than a day ago. Last night, Josh came back excited that he found cheap food and a guy that spoke Thai to eat with. We sat down on the tiny stools set up in the Mandalay sidewalk across the street from our hotel, waiting for the 20 cent meal that would fill us up with Indian goodness.

There were a lot of people around this crowded Chapati stand in the middle of a sidewalk. We had marked the stand down in our guide we were compiling for PCVs who wanted to visit Myanmar on the cheap. It had no name, but was right in front of the Union Solidarity and Development Association. We spoke to each other many times that day in hushed tones of reverence, awaiting those delicious “Union Solidarity Chapatis”.

Sure enough, Josh’s friend strolled up minutes later, introduced himself as Ngisef, and sat down with us, making sure his traditional longyi didn’t snag on his stool. Ngisef went on to talk about his experience as a migrant worker in Thailand, when he was younger. He wasn’t sure how to use the verb indicating “ing”, but he knew how to say “police”. Thailand has no path to citizenship for foreigners, period. So for Thailand’s growing migrant workforce (80% of which is from Myanmar), police is a good word to know.

Ngisef left Myanmar to work in Thailand for a year because Myanmar is the slowest growing nation in Southeast Asia, and is oppressed by a military junta that forces its farmers to sell its rice at 1/6 of its market value.

Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in traveling in a country ruled by a military junta. Just one of my buttons, I guess. Many travelers protest traveling to Myanmar because the government would profit from tourism. But since I’m technically a government officer in another military junta, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to see Myanmar. Taking a paid vacation from one junta to visit another.

The moat of Mandalay's Palace was restored using slave labor. No, not hundreds of years ago, a little more than a decade ago.

All juntas are not equal, however, and Myanmar sets the standard for just how low you can go. So far Thailand has just provided funny headlines. Myanmar’s are somewhat less comical; “Slavery, Oppression, Corruption, Murder” are not exactly the same as “Thai Soldiers Ordered to Smile”. My Thai coworkers were very concerned about me visiting Myanmar. “There are many soldiers there! It’s a military junta! Be careful.”

Ngisef explained to us that that morning, Military Intelligence had gathered outside our hotel to question a Canadian family who had made the mistake of visiting the National League for Democracy Headquarters in Yangon. In the last election, the NLD won 80% of the seats in Parliament. So naturally, the junta chose to ignore the election, arrest the party leader, and go on as if nothing happened. The NLD headquarters in Yangon is not a tourist destination, and these unlucky Canucks had been tailed all the way to Mandalay.

We asked Ngisef is he was afraid to speak to us about the government. He naturally scanned the surrounding area. In Myanmar, tourists are usually ignored, but the Myanma people who talk with them concerning politics are heavily punished. Josh and I were fairly sure that the military abduction of two PCVs, though, would lead to some minor international incident. “No one here speaks Thai,” he told us. “They have no idea what we’re talking about.” And it’s true, though next door neighbors, Myanmar and Thailand can’t communicate. Maybe a good thing.

Ngisef and a few others in Myanmar asked Josh and me what things were like in Thailand after the coup. “Same as before”, we said. We were out of the country during the planned protests of the coup on Constitution Day, which is an interesting holiday considering the Thai constitution was abolished.

Military juntas, you may not know, are extremely meticulous constitution writers. Despite operating without one, all these juntas are hard at work dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the piece of paper that will provide their countries freedom, forever. Myanmar has been working on its constitution since 1992. So… look for that. 15 years of checking punctuation should make that one kick-ass constitution.

This sign, placed facing the US embassy, reads "People's Desire:

1) Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views

2) Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation

3) Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State

4) Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy

Why the Myanmar government prints signs like this, in English, for me to read, is beyond me. First of all, the language is just silly. Let's be honest, it's kind of hard to be intimidated by someone who's talking trash like a Rocky villain.

As we dipped the last bits of our Union Chapatis in bean curry, Ngisef thanked us for letting him practice his Thai, and we thanked him for talking with us. The Union Solidarity and Development Assocation- a damn good place to eat Chapatis in Mandalay.

Later during the trip, Josh sat in bed reading some background info on Myanmar as I listened to Jimmy Buffett on my bed. “Hey Brian,” he said, “According to this, the military junta has its own political party too.”

(Wait for it)

“It’s called the Union Solidarity and Development Association”

At which I sure hope they don’t speak Thai, because I know if they nabbed us, those bastards would make it look like I was run over by a horse cart for sure.

In A Fishbowl On A Mountaintop: Phu Kradueng National Park

2006-11-20T09:48:00.000+07:00

Across the eastern edge of Isaan lies a mountain range called Phu Kradueng. Jutting 5,000 meters into the sky from the flat rice paddies at its base, Phu Kradung is THE mountain of Isaan.

Most Isaaners climb Phu Kradueng with their girl/boy friends. I’ve heard it’s a test of the relationship. If you manage to reach the summit without hating each other, you’ve found the one. If not, well, they sell beer at the campsite.

My friend Dave turned 25 last week, and six of us decided to climb this thing, spend a weekend hiking around the top, and then be back down before work on Monday. It was a good plan. We brought lots of beans. What else do you need?

As we climbed the mountain, we came upon numerous groups of Thais climbing together. The typical group consisted of six or eight 18-24 year-olds carrying small backpacks, a guitar, and plenty of camouflage. Oh, and the wristbands. Thai youth go through more colored wrist and headbands than my father mowing the lawn in July.

Once we came upon a small group that stood gazing into the forest. Quietly we approached them, all with their cameras and cell phones out snapping pictures of a large monkey sitting, staring at us. “Ooh, look at that monkey,” one said. “It’s very beautiful.” Then they noticed us next to them. “O! Falangs! Look!” The Thais turned to stare at us, we stared at them, and the monkey stared at both of us. We’d better move, we thought, or they’re going to start taking pictures. “They’re very handsome!” we heard behind us.

As we hiked up, we talked a lot about how you never do get used to that. Once you speak Thai, it gets even more annoying, because you understand what they’re saying about you. Thais are absolutely blown away that a falang can speak their language. I told my fellow hikers than an ex-PCV friend of ours had gone around telling everyone that everybody in America can speak Thai. I didn’t think anyone believed him.

I heard once that Peace Corps is like strapping on a giant purple bunny suit, and then going around telling people you’re here to help them. Give that a shot in your neighborhood.

When we got to the campsite, we came upon a large field of grass, a few pavilions, a corner of land covered with tents, and what looked like a night bazaar. Here’s an experiment- take an empty plot of land, tell two hundred American strangers to take their tents and go camping on it, and see what happens. I imagine you’d find that they had spread out, finding good soft land, preferably out of earshot of the next tent. Give them a few years there and they’d probably have high walls set up so they wouldn’t have to look at each other. What we came upon in Phu Kradung showed us a uniquely Thai attitude of camping. First the concrete pavilions were taken, and all the tents were pitched right next to each other in the corner closest to the restaurants.

There were some strange laws in this campsite, outlawing fires and the sale of whiskey. The beans were legal, but we had no way to cook them. We ended up taking all of the food we brought to the restaurants and having them make it for us. There was no other way. With the exception of sleeping in a nylon tent, life at the top of this mountain was no different for any of us than at the bottom. We woke up, we walked around, got our meals at a local restaurant, used a shower, etc.

It was colder, however. Which was the reason I was excited to go. After two years of sleeping in a pool of my own sweat, I was excited to wake up freezing for the first time in two years.

Instead I woke up bloody.

As the loudspeaker blared music for our enjoyment at 6am, I opened my eyes to the first rays of sun creeping into our tent. I breathed in the fresh, cool mountain air and slowly pulled down the sheets I had up to my neck. I noticed a red spot on the sheet, then another one. I pulled the sheet down quicker, weary of what I would find. Perhaps the head of a racehorse.

Leeches. Gross.

I unzipped our tent to find a winter wonderland of Thais frolicking around in scarves, hats, and gloves. All the apparel, without the snow or cold weather. It was, maybe, fifty degrees out. This must be what it’s like filming Old Navy commercials in October.

Before breakfast, we decided to throw the baseball around. Since everyone camped on top of each other, there was a large grass field left open. Thais walked by in their winter finest, almost running into each other as they stared at us throwing this ball back and forth. One friend noted, “That guy’s wearing a New York Yankees cap, and I’d bet he has no idea what we’re doing right now.”

We spent that day walking from waterfall to waterfall, hiking through the evergreen forest of Phu Kradung. Then we feasted on beans, hot dogs, and rice at night. As the weather cooled, we put on our Old Navy fleeces and sat around candles talking about Thai politics, work, and what album and picture we’d bring if we were stuck on a deserted island for the rest of our lives. Mine were Jimmy Buffet “Barometer Soup” and Bob Ross.

I checked for leeches that night.

The next morning as we were packing up our tent, my friend came back from the shower. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but as I was walking to the shower, some guy saw me coming and said that I was one of the falangs that spoke Thai.” “Wait, how does he know you speak Thai?” “We’re legendary here,” he said. I had noticed people sneaking up to our tents taking pictures of us brushing our teeth, etc. “Well, anyway,” he said, “the guy says that he was told that all Americans speak Thai.”

So I finished packing up the tent, threw my bag over my purple bunny suit, put on my purple bunny head, and started the hike back home, proud of the misinformation that, we as PCVs, are able to spread.

Today My Grandmother Sold Me Porn: My Story

2006-10-30T11:42:00.000+07:00

We get solicitors all the time at the office. In the little time I’ve spent there I’ve been solicited children books, dental equipment, and electronic massage therapy machines. But the most business is done by the lottery. Work comes to a standstill when the small army of lottery salespeople enters the office in their flannel shirts and sombrero-like hats.

Thais play the lottery religiously. One of my friends plays the underground lottery, the gov’t controlled lottery, and the lottery on the internet. Another PCV told me that his friend spent four hundred baht on lottery tickets, won one hundred baht, and then took all his friends out for beers to celebrate.

There is a saying in Thai, “Poor people play the lottery, rich people play the stock market.” Usually the lotto solicitor will approach me, open their briefcase of tickets, and smile. And I try to think how I’d say, “Poor Peace Corps Volunteers play fantasy baseball.”

I first met Yay Nang Bo a little while after I started hanging out at the local gov’t office for the comforts of air conditioning. She’s a pu-soon-ayoo, or elder, much respected in my community. Every other week, she’ll come into our office, dressed in Khun Yay-garb, a pasin skirt and top, and sell her wares. Yays speak only Lao, and are almost impossible to communicate with. When she first approached me, her briefcase made me think she was selling lotto tickets.

This is the classic Khun Yay attire.

I pre-empted her. “Hello grandmother, no thank you.” Then she pretended not to understand my perfectly fluent Lao, and opened her briefcase. “Um, what are you selling grandmother?” “You want to buy? Many Japanese girls, very pretty.”

Yay Nang Bo sells hard-core porn.

She sold better than the lotto. There were crowds. Instead of looking for lucky numbers, people scanned the still-shots on the backs of the discs looking for Korean and Japanese girls. Women, men, bosses and subordinates all had piles of porn stacked on their desks next to their reports. And she comes every other week.

So you might think that Thai society is open and honest about sexuality. Or because simple Thai words have sexual meanings, like “to take, to help one’s situation, to do homework,” you might think that Thais talk about sex all the time. When in actuality these slang phrases probably evolved because Thais couldn’t talk openly about sex, and each connotation came with an a-tonal wink, meaning more or less, “in the Biblical sense.”

Last week in Udon Thani, we had an AIDS conference for PCVs and their counterparts, hoping to inspire projects and help develop relationships between them. To break down the cultural barriers preventing us from talking about sex without shame or giggles, we played stupid games that got the giggling out of the way first.

A PC staff member asked me why I thought Thais weren’t scared to talk, and offer opinions and ideas at our conferences. We had just finished a game where we pretended we were all condoms and penises. We sit on the floor, wear casual clothes, and run around a lot. Definitely not what a usual Thai meeting is like.

Fittingly enough, at this particular conference, my roommate and I had a visitor for a couple nights.

I awoke one night to find my roommate standing next to his bed with his back towards me, holding a blanket behind him. “Dude, go to bed man, it’s like, 3 in the morning or something.” Only it wasn’t my roommate at all, because he was sleeping soundly under the covers.

I woke up the next morning and told my roommate the story. Apparently two nights ago, he had seen a ghost standing in the exact same place, and had trouble breathing when he awoke.

And in Thailand, Halloween was a couple months ago.

So we casually told some of the Thai PC staff about our “trick of light” as we agreed to call it. “Did you remember to prostrate yourself before the Buddha the night before?” one man asked me. “No, we forgot to do that.” After carefully investigating the matter, one Thai told me that the front desk said that the hotel was built near an old battlefield, and that the ghost was probably a soldier.

One man told me, “One time, long ago, I went to hotel with my girlfriend, and we had fun together, then we fall asleep. We have the same dream. A girl with long hair visit both of us. I forget to ask her for lottery number. Please do not forget. Ask your ghost lottery number!”

After a long day at the conference, the HIV staff were together discussing all the things we messed up, when a woman came in to speak with our PC staff liaison, P-Funk. P-Funk came back into the room shaking his head, and told me, “You’re not going to believe this, but she wants to talk with you.”

“I am the hotel manager,” she said. “I hear you have seen a ghost two nights in your room. Could you describe it to me?” After retelling the story for the twentieth time that day, she asked me if I would like to switch rooms. I told her that I planned on staying in my room, that I would be sleeping with a camera at my side to take the ghost’s picture. “Make sure you take video,” she said, “it won’t show up if you use the flash.”

P-Funk generously let us borrow a Buddha image to place on the bedstand that night. We never saw the ghost again.

Four women wearing flannel and sombreros came into the office today. Yay Nang Bo had already come and gone by then. My friend was showing me all his new porn as I told him the ghost story. “I feel lucky this month,” he said, “I’m going to see if they have my lucky number. Do you want me to buy you a ticket?”

I would be a rich man, if only I could’ve gotten that ghost to talk.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Even more difficult to get than a ghost photo is one of me working. Here it is folks, caught in the act. Photographic evidence!

Environmental Art Education And My Ascension to the Second Grade (Fingers Crossed)

2006-10-13T11:27:00.000+07:00

My first two months in Thailand, Peace Corps trained me to analyze community needs, build relationships, and develop projects through a long process of community integration. We threw around words like stakeholder and sustainability. In actuality, my projects have come about via happenstance and luck. This week I did an environmental art project, and it followed this same wacky pattern.

Months ago, I brought two local nurses to an HIV conference regarding orphans and vulnerable children. We participated in an activity where we made clay sculptures of childhood memories. Most of the Thais sculpted water buffalos. I sculpted my father’s terror-stricken face the day I ran him over with my sister’s bicycle.

He had just returned from work to find me hauling ass down the hill on an oversized bike. I guess I borrowed my sister’s bike because mine wasn’t going fast enough. I did not, however, learn to use the hand-brakes on my way up. Why, exactly, I veered toward my father upon realizing I wasn’t able to stop remains a family jibe, ridden with metaphor and Oedipal speculation. But I will always remember his face when it happened. I assure you; my face had the same panic-stricken look of surprise, only younger.

After the activity was over, we collected all the sculptures and displayed them for everyone. As you see, mine was labeled simply “Brian’s Dad”. However, only ten or so people heard the story explaining it. Many of the conference attendees asked me if I was beaten as a child. To which I probably smiled and nodded.

I’m not sure if my counterparts took anything away from the conference, but they remembered that given twenty minutes and a mound of clay, I can make a discernable face. A skill! Come to think of it, two of my most developed skills are clay sculpting and handwriting, which would place me in high consideration for advancement to the second grade. I just need to work on my sums.

Last month, one of those nurses in attendance asked me to help her teach an environmental education day, but with art education as well. So I asked some PCVs who were teachers and artists to help me think of some activities. Eventually we came out with a morning of art education consisting of drawing, coloring, and National Geographic collages. Before lunch, we planned to make trash sculptures, and then take a forest walk and plant trees in the afternoon. A real project!

The site of the training would be a school in the farthest village in my town. The village is made of almost entirely of rice farmers, is very isolated, and is probably my favorite. When they’re not planting rice, all the adults are usually found sleeping in a mass hammock setup, where the nurse goes around to each hammock and does health checkups. When I’d go with her to see the village, I’d plant myself in one of the hammocks hoping to converse with someone, and then wake up five hours later.

Nurse Pun (apple) came to pick me up yesterday to take me to the training. I stepped in the car, put on my seatbelt and started laughing. “Nice shirt,” I said. “Why are you laughing? This shirt has a leaf on it, today is about the environment.” “Yes, Pun, but that’s a marijuana leaf.”

Pun at the Hospital's Beauty Pageant. I noticed the Hospital Beauty Pageants are a little different than the ones I remember from home...

The first activity of the day was me teaching the kids how to use crayons. A dark outline, filled with a lighter fill, in case you’ve forgotten. I asked the kids what they wanted me to draw. I had come prepared with a beach scene, forest scene, and a waterfall. Boy, was that dumb. I was bombarded with the entire roster of popular comic book heroes, the only one of which I knew was Superman. So I drew an entirely unsatisfactory picture of Superman, as the kids yelled out all the mistakes I was making. “The suit isn’t red! The boots are higher! Superman RETURNS!” I received an S- for my efforts.

Then we asked the kids to listen to a nature cd, and draw what they hear in the music. Pun and I drew our own drawings, and as I was putting the finishing touches on my waterfall scene, I turned around to see this:

Staring right at me.

In a previous blog I had referred to this man as Johnny Rice Farmer, insinuating in a way that he is representative of the average farmer in my town. In no way is this man average. I had met him many times, and refer to him (and to every male his age) as “father”, which is very convenient considering my limited name-memorizing ability.

The first time I saw him was at a meeting of organic rice farmers. We all sat eating papaya salad and conversing, when I noticed a man in my peripheral walking towards the pond in only a loincloth. He proceeded to walk slowly into the water, dive, and re-emerge holding a fish in each hand. He walked back up, deposited the fish in a bucket, and breathed deeply as he looked contemplatively over the water. I swear to God this is true.

He sat down on our mat, and I noticed his piercing blue eyes as he looked me over. Before speaking, he would take a deep breath, lean forward, and make it clear he was ready to speak. But he didn’t just talk, he expelled words from the depths of his lungs. I noticed he was missing a lot of teeth, but where there were none on the top, the bottom were present, and visa versa. He had one full combined row; each tooth doing the work of two, alternating like zippers.

“AH! Hello, you scared me,” I said to the owner of these menacing eyes. After exchanging pleasantries I asked him to take a sheet of paper, some crayons, and pencil. “We’re drawing pictures of the environment,” I said. “KaPOME! (yes)” he responded.

Our next activity was the National Geographic collages. I had previously cut out pictures of environmental images, to help inspire discussion. Some of the images were beavers, lions, or coral. Others were factories, motorcycles, and forest fires. I did not get the kind of discussion I was hoping for, basically a “pollution is not pretty” mantra voiced by the kids. As I was concluding that maybe the kids were a little young to be discussing the dichotomy of industrialization creating jobs and pollution, I noticed a student eating the picture of high rise Chinese apartments. I offered him a piece of gum in exchange for the photo. He declined.

After a break, we used the trash from the snacks and drinks to make trash sculptures. Most of the kids sat around in circles throwing drink boxes at each other, but one of the groups showed some real creativity. As I was getting up from asking a student to please not stick straws up his nose, I saw this other group was tying string around two plastic cups making an elementary telephone. I was genuinely impressed until they got bored of the idea, and tied the cups to their heads like headlamps. One kid spent the rest of the hour walking around the room screaming into one end of the telephone, while the other end dragged behind him on the floor.

Pun and I ended the activity by explaining decomposition, and the wonders of recycling. “What are the two kinds of trash?” I asked. I noticed a kid picking up two handfuls of trash, consolidate them, and then proceed to hurl it out the window. One thing I do enjoy about speaking English in a non-English speaking country is that no one can understand my aristocratic, high brow language. “Dude, what the fuck?” I asked him in English, followed by, “Please throw away your trash in the bag.”

In the afternoon, we split into groups and followed around a local community leader, who showed us around the forest. He identified trees for us and the kids collected and painted leaves. My community leader was a man wearing a cowboy hat and a t-shirt with a picture of a saddle on it, reading, “Ride Me.”

I asked him if, in the past year, he had seen a fire in the forest. He gave me a look of total confusion. The wrong tone look, where you are absolutely positive you said every word correctly but one, and that one word has five different tones. Fire = Fai. So I worked my way through all the tones, and he responded positively to two of them. On the walk back to the school, I checked my dictionary. Apparently in the past year, the man has seen two of these four things: a fire, electricity, an interest, or a mole on the skin.

To cap off the day, we planted trees in the school field. We attached name tags to them all, and promised to take care of them. Looking over our completed work, Pun asked me, “What’d you name your tree?” “Ralph Nader,” I said, “he ran for president on an environmental platform.” “Oh. Uh-huh.” “Did you understand that?” “No.” “He likes trees. A lot.”

As we collected all the supplies, I got up and turned around to find Johnny Rice Farmer sidled up next me on the sly. “Jesus, you gotta stop doing that (Eng.). Hello father, are you well? (Th.)” He handed me a drawing of a temple surrounded by trees and a mountainous horizon. “I FINISHED MY DRAWING!!!! AHHH!” I inspected the piece. With a bead of sweat upon my brow, I came to the demoralizing realization that the apprentice had eclipsed the talent of the master. The scale! The intuitive use of tree coloring- not only greens but blues, yellows, pinks! The road leading to the temple showed a clear understanding of the vanishing point concept. This man was obviously well beyond me, already drawing at a middle school level. I wrote an O+ on the back, and handed it back to him. “The O’s for Outstanding,” I said. The + thingy means you gotta add something, I think.

Again with the Sums.

Deadwood: A Hell of a Place to Live

2006-10-04T11:21:00.000+07:00

Kev took it out of the bag, and slapped it down on my table, letting the contents flow out over itself. Giddy from our new purchase, we began divvying it up between us. Three people, 1200 baht, not bad. This will keep us busy for a couple of weeks. Easy. Then we’ll just have to find something else to entertain us when we’re not busy working for the Junta.

Deadwood. Season 1-2.

If you’re not familiar with this show, and judging by its recent cancellation, you’re not, it’s a Western original HBO series. Based on the historical town of Deadwood, South Dakota, the series follows the stories of both factual and fictional characters as they negotiate the rough waters of corruption, greed, prostitution, and violence that define the era.

Reading the back of the package, my friend noted, “corruption, greed, prostitution, drugs. Huh, sounds kind of like Thailand.” He sat back, forgetting what he’d just said. Never thinking someone might actually take him seriously. Maybe might even watch the series with a specific eye as to how closely these two communities resemble each other.

He was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Here’s a little rundown of some of those characters, and some of their counterparts in the lives of PCVs.

Deadwood: Al Swearengen
Thailand: Nayok TAO

“I declare myself leader of this meeting as I have the bribe sheet.”

Al Swearengen owns the Gem Saloon. He’s a cutthroat, deceiving, and corrupt pimp. He is the leader of the camp because he has his hands in the most pots, stealing everything he can. Alternatively, he is the driving force behind setting up a stable government, and creating some kind of law and order, if only so he can control it, break it, and unsettle it for his own personal profit.

Minus the aptitude for violence, that’d pretty much describe the prototypical Nayok. Except that my Nayok own ostriches. So there’s that.

Deadwood: Doc Cochran
Thailand: Motivated Counterpart

“Hell, I’ll do it Pro-Bono! That means it won’t cost ya nothin’”

Doc is an educated, moral man who is probably the most useful, irreplaceable member of the camp. At no other point in the show is another doctor even mentioned, and this one serves the medical needs of every character at one time or another.

A motivated counterpart is not only the life and blood of a community, but also the saving grace of a PCV’s time at site. Without a counterpart interested in working with us, we can’t do anything at all. They’re the ones with the tools, the contacts, and the time. We’ll only be here two years, and well, are about as useful as the gimp.

Deadwood: AW Merrick
Thailand: Thai TV Channel 11

“I believe in the 4th Estate, and here I find myself- an instrument!”

Yes, that is Ned Rooney, Dean of Students from Ferris Bueller’s. Glad to see he’s still in the business. Merrick is the editor of the Pioneer, the local daily newspaper. He’s a dedicated, righteous man who intends to provide the camp with unbiased opinions and news regarding the ever-shaky political future of the camp and its stakeholders.

Thai TV is the public service station of Thailand. Formerly of the Prime Minister’s office, the network is supposed to be providing important news to Thais regarding changes in climate, whether political or meteorological. Both forecasts, according to channel 11, are sunny.

Deadwood: Calamity Jane
Thailand: Drunk Thai Guy

“Maybe I will have a fuckin' drink, for sociability's sake and 'cause I'm a fuckin' drunk.”

For two seasons, Calamity Jane is completely, and unceasingly, fall-down drunk. I fail to realize what purpose she has on the show.

Drunk Thai Guy, on the other hand, is an absolutely necessary part to Thailand. What else would I rather hear yelled at me from across the street than, “Whiskey Rice! You You Whiskey!”? Drunk Thai Guy must be commended not only for his diligence, but most of all, his endurance. There is nothing weird, in any way, about him drinking his third beer before 9am. Sometimes, during the rainy season, DTG will change roles and become Johnny Rice Farmer.

Deadwood: Ellsworth
Thailand: Johnny Rice Farmer

“A working fucking gold claim, Joanie, and thank you for allowing me my full range of expression.”

Ellsworth is the moral backbone of the series. He is hard working, well-liked, and honest. He represents the vast majority of people at Deadwood- prospectors. During the day, while all the political hubbub is going on in town, Ellsworth has his legs knee high in creek water looking for gold. He marries rich.

Johnny Rice Farmer is Isaan. He’s bent over, planting rice seeds every day for weeks, then hibernating for months before harvesting those crops. Johnny father, his father’s father, and his father’s father all planted rice. Johnny will not be marrying rich; he in fact already married his 12 year old neighbor when he was a teen too. Like every member of the majority, it’s his vote that counts. And in my village, that’ll be less than 200 baht.

Both Ellsworth and Johnny Rice Farmer win the I Have One Night Left in Town, Who Do I Choose to Hang Out With Prize.

Deadwood: Cy Tolliver
Thailand: Factory Owners

Cy Tolliver is the proprietor of the saloon competing with the Gem. He’s new to Deadwood, and to be honest, couldn’t care what the hell happens to it as long as his pockets keep getting fatter and fatter, know what I mean?

My town has over 15 factories, all contributing to the size of the pockets of the Nayok, its owners, and if you believe in trickle down economics, Johnny Rice Farmer. Unfortunately for Johnny Fish Catcher, the river is polluted and all the fish are dying. Also it smells like rice whiskey when it rains. Factory Owner is easily confused for Drunk Thai Guy.

Deadwood: Francis Wolcott
Thailand: Crazy As Shit Ex-Pat Guy

“I am a sinner that does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.”

Francis Wolcott brings money to Deadwood. As a geologist preparing the way for George Hearst by day, and sadistic murderer of prostitutes by night, this is a man whose transgressions must be protected.

Crazy As Shit Ex-Pat Guy is showing up more and more frequently at the night market, usually checking out the Army Surplus tent. But for his paler skin, CASEXPG can also be easily confused for DTG, with the obvious observation that the young teenager serving him his drinks is also his wife. Thanking God that Viagra was made generic, CASEXPG spends his foggy days wondering how it all got to be so good, and sending his young bride to beg the local Peace Corps Volunteer to teach him Thai.

Deadwood: Jewel the Gimp
Thailand: Peace Corps Volunteer

“[To Jewel] Well open your mouth, Jewel, and say something we can’t fucking understand.”

Jewel is a directorial technique to make Al Swearengen look like not such a bad guy after all. For whatever reason, he tolerates Jewel, a physically disabled and mentally handicapped chambermaid. She is certainly an oddity serving at the local brothel, and her face is handicapped in such a way as to make her permanently in mid-smile. If you’re a prostitute and you need a gun for protection from Al, Jewel is who you go to.

Like Jewel, we PCVs have very little useful skills, and a minimum of conversational ability to express those skills that we do possess. Our one ability is to bring undying enthusiasm and motivate Motivated Counterpart to help get that elusive project off the ground. We do a lot of smiling and nodding. At the TAO, our very presence makes our TAOs “Hi-So”. If you need a new ringtone on your cellphone or want to know if white people’s stomachs can handle sliced papaya, I am who you go to.

By the way, I’m pretty sure that Jewel is actually mentally and physically retarded in real life. So I’m going to hell for that one.

Deadwood: Wu
Thailand: Peace Corps Admin

Deadword has a large and hard-working Chinese community. Wu himself owns a pig farm, which is why he is important. If you mouth off to the wrong man, get caught cheating at poker, or touch up one of Al’s prostitutes, your mortal remains will be quickly digested by Wu’s pigs. (5$)

If you are a PCV, and ride your bike without a helmet, get on a motorcycle in a country where only the well-off have cars, or forget to tell your program manager you’re going to Bangkok for the weekend, your mortal remains will be swiftly taken to the airport and brought back to America. No warnings. (Free of charge.)

So that’s either proof that Thailand and the Wild West are similar scenes of corruption and treachery, or verification that given a couple hours and a keyboard, I can make anything sound pretty similar to anything else.

I didn’t even mention the prostitution and drugs. My god.

But there is one thing that Deadwood has on my town. It isn’t the immense untapped natural resources, the beautiful tamed horses, or even the cool, intimidating name.

Facial hair. The staches, the handlebars, the fu-manchus, the flavor-savers, the rollie fingers, the BURNS, baby!

It’s exquisite. Even the women can grow a better beard than I can.

Thai Free Media: (1997-2006)

2006-09-23T13:48:00.000+07:00

Thai Free Media was found dead this week in her home, after finally succumbing to corruption and government control in the Kingdom of Thailand. After bravely fighting a losing battle for independence, Media, 9, spent her final days in quiet solitude. The official cause of death, according to the coroner, was asphyxiation, apparently the result of an assisted suicide.

Media, born to People and Constitution on October 11, 1997, was temporarily to remain in the custody of the Royal Thai Government and Royal Thai Army, surrogate parents who found it increasingly difficult to part with their beloved newborn.

According to Constitution’s writings, Media was to be placed in the protective custody of her Godfather- National Broadcasting Commission. Commission, however, never appeared to assume guardianship, and Media’s consequent battle for independence would define her short, but brave life.

Constitution was unavailable for comment.

Friends remember Media for her ability to express ideas and opinions, even dissenting ones, to Thais throughout the country. More than 80% of Thais were dependent on her television appearances for their source of national news. Her stepsister, iTV (Independent TV), was the only sibling not living in the custody of the Armed Forces or Royal Thai Government. Sadly, her death coincided with Media’s (page 12).

Media’s death was preceded by that of Constitution, 9, and coincided with the death of her cousins, the Right family: Gather, Form Political Parties, Political Action, most notably. Constitution herself was born in response to the killing of hundreds of students protesting the last military coup of Thailand in 1992, otherwise known as Black May.

In an effort to build national unity, the Thai Democratic Reform Committee, on September 21, 2006, asked Media to begin filtering information that may lead to the “fragmentation of Thai society” by “encouraging political discussion”. Unfortunately, as Free Media no doubt realized, it was these very molecules of dissent that gave her life.

She enthusiastically accepted.

Beloved fans of Media have not fully accepted her passing, still looking everywhere for signs of life. The government has hired private detectives, otherwise known as Webmasters, to search and destroy any such information.

Television stations have continued to operate despite her absence. For example, Thailand’s Public Service Station, Channel 11, airs an English language news program from 9:30-10:30pm nightly. This program serves as an opportunity for Thais to learn English and also provides laughing fits for United States Peace Corps Volunteers in the region. One segment of the show involves a member of the Bangkok Post, a daily English language newspaper to come and discuss current issues. This segment, in particular, has recently given birth to a new form of Thai Media- Propaganda.

On whether there are protests going on in the country: “I think talking about it would just make people think more than they should.”

On International condemnation of the military coup: “International coverage has been, very honestly, superficial. English journalists should read Thai newspapers and translate them into English to get their information.”

On the US and UK: “They have already started an illegitimate war in Iraq and will start another war in Iran next year.”

On misinformation being spread throughout the country: “The only source you need to go to for information is Royal Thai Government dot com.”

This, of course, is a writer from the Bangkok Post invited onto Public Service television telling its watchers that the only information they need to know is found at www.rtg.com.

“Will tourists be coming back to Thailand?” the host asks while shuffling papers at the end of his broadcast, “Oh, they’ll come.” Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. “They’ll come.”

A cremation service in memory of Thai Free Media will be held at the birthplace of Constitution- the Democracy Monument. It was here that thousands of students and protesters have been killed while protesting prior Thai coups. Itself a monument to irony, the Democracy Monument was build in commemoration of the 1932 military coup, where civilians are depicted in relief sculptures as the grateful recipients of the heroism and benevolence of the armed forces.

The ceremony will not be attended due to the prior cremation ceremony of Right to Gather. Flowers and condolences may be sent to the former residence of Thai Free Media and her family.

That information, of course, can be found at www.rtg.com

Military Schmoup: Democracy Inaction

2006-09-21T10:18:00.000+07:00

Bangkok has visitors! Today crowds of onlookers are taking to the streets with their cell phone cameras, snapping pictures with the gentlemanly delegates, goggling at their oversized vehicles. Is Real Madrid in town again? No, even better. Smile! You’re in a military coup!

While PM Thaksin was in New York to give a speech at the UN, the Thai military moved in and changed the locks. Thaksin has been losing more and more support this year, culminating in his 57% majority victory in a one-party election this April. Bowing to 100,000 person daily protests, he said there would be another election, and that he would not be running. Then he said he would run. Then he left for New York.

In a very un-military-like (but very Thai-like) avoidance of confrontation, the military simply waited for Thaksin to be safely on American soil, and then rolled in the tanks and set up shop from there. I’m surprised they didn’t wait until Friday to break the news to him.

After I got the call that the coup had taken place, I turned on the tube and watched karaoke music about the King. Occasionally a very serious man would come on and say something. (I would learn the word for coup the next day). Well, that takes care of the media. I sat back, looked out at my quiet, sleeping village, and realized I was the only one who had any idea what was happening.

The man said that the next day was a holiday. Yipeee! Thanks!

Despite the day-off, I went to my gov’t office, which was closed, and started asking a lot of questions. Everyone sat around in casual clothes on plastic chairs, joking around and waiting for something to come on the TV. “What day are you leaving?” they asked me. “I’m not leaving.” I said. “But all the falang are leaving Bangkok.” “Can I have your washing machine?”

“It’s good and not good,” one friend said, “The country is divided in two.” Thaksin wasn’t popular anymore. He still carried the North and Isaan by healthy margins, but alienated the Bangkok middle class and the Southern Muslims. Nevertheless, he would be a formidable opponent and probable favorite in another election. “But you had elections scheduled in another month,” I said, “Why did this happen?” “Because the Army is powerful. Past and Present, the Army has controlled Thailand.”

Soldiers in front of the Democracy Monument, compliments of the BBC.

At 9am, General Sondhi, a Muslim appointed as head of the Army by Thaksin to put a friendlier face on the government’s oppression of Southern Muslims, came on and declared martial law, abolished the constitution, and declared that the Army had no intention of ruling Thailand. My friends and I gathered around a tin-roofed hut decorated floor to ceiling with pictures of the King, where we watched the General on the security guard’s tiny black and white TV. When he got done speaking, everyone sat back down, and engaged in a heated conversation about how to replace the reflector on the back of my bicycle. “Isn’t this a big deal?” I asked. “Thailand is like this,” they said, “Sometimes the military will come in and take power. They always give it back eventually.”

We boiled a chicken and then ate sticky rice. It was any other day in Thailand. A few hours later, everyone jumped up to look at the TV again. What could it be? Big news from England- Newcastle came from a goal back to win in their latest Premier League match. Then we sat back down and had an hour-long conversation about English soccer.

On my way home, I jokingly asked a woman at the local store in anything was new. “Portsmouth is in first place in the Premier League!,” she said, “It’s unbelievable!”

I went to check the internet with a friend of mine because I just couldn’t believe that in the middle of a military coup, we were receiving karaoke to watch instead of news. I checked Yahoo! News, who apparently thought “Military Coup Ousts Thai Prime Minister” was the fifth most important story of the day. Number one was “Pudgy in Paris? A Recent Diet Bestseller May Have it All Wrong About French Women’s Waistlines.”

After printing out and reading a bunch of articles from the BBC, including English transcripts of all the “communiqués” being released from the Army, I handed them to my friend (who can speak and read English) and said, “Here you go, Press Free.”

I asked him, “Do you think other governments will recognize a government that came to power after a military coup?” “Burma will,” he said.

As I’m writing this, I just saw video from the international conference that confirmed almost all the developed world did exactly that. Thaksin wasn’t a very good “populist” if none of his constituents cares that he was undemocratically removed from office. No matter how corrupt he was, it seems to me the really unpopular losers are elections, which will take place in over a year, instead of next month.

Edit: The United States has since publicly "denounced" the coup, although have not gone so far as to pull buesiness out of Thailand or demand that the gov't revert to its democratic predecessor. This means I still have a job. And also marks a moment in history when the views of the US gov't are in unison with my own. Kudos!

One reason that everyone here is so calm and unconcerned about the coup is that there is widespread faith in the military leaders to return power to the people, which they have vowed to do. And that this has happened numerous times before. I am not well enough informed about the situation to judge the new government. But I am a keen observer of hypocrisy, and it seems to me that countries so concerned with building new democratic governments should be just as concerned with protecting existing democratic institutions by refusing to recognize the military governments that overrun them.

According to the news from Bangkok (where Thaksin was exceedingly unpopular), more than 80% of Bangkok residents approved of the bloodless coup. 100% of my co-workers were ecstatic about getting the day off. “Weren’t you supposed to get two days off to vote for senate and parliament next month?” I asked. “Yeah, why?”

Parents capturing an historic event for their children- their first coup! Gee, I remember mine like it was yesterday...

This is my second coup, my second ousted democratically elected leader, but my first Junta (temporary one, anyway), First Aristide, then Thaksin- two men I would most certainly heckle upon meeting, but would much rather their powers transferred through a hole in a ballot than a barrel of a gun.

The government is calling itself the Administrative Reform Group under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State. Wanna play a game? Look at a map of Asia, then see which countries have “Democratic” in their official name, and then count the number of elections they’ve had lately. The council has promised to appoint a non-military PM within two weeks, who will smile wider and more naturally than the soldiers telling him what to do and say for the next year. They have asked heads of the former Ruling Thai Rak Thai to report to the council, where they have been “invited to remain in military custody indefinitely”. Another Thai Rak Thai leader was “invited to remain” in jail for gathering in a political group of more than 5, which is now illegal, carrying a term of up to six months. Smile!

I was speaking on the phone with my friend who was walking around Bangkok today, and he was upbeat. Crowds were walking the quiet streets, taking pictures of tanks and giving flowers to soldiers. My friend said the soldiers were stopping cars, asking where people were going, and then amiably giving them directions to their destinations. “There are a lot of soldiers congregating around the Democracy Monument,” he said, “I guess that’s kind of funny.”

Disclaimer: The views enclosed in the previous document do not necessarily represent the views of Peace Corps, its volunteers, and most certainly not the US gov’t. They are merely musings of a confused, naïve 25 year old who takes great pleasure in finding humorous irony in serious subject matter. They cannot, in whole or in part, be taken seriously, believed, reproduced or sold without the express written consent of Major League Baseball or its partners.

Misguided Speculations of a Two-Week Traveler: Lao Part 2

2006-08-22T12:02:00.000+07:00

After spending the better part of a week traveling along the beaten tourist track from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, I was overcome with surprise at how similar Laos was to Thailand. This made sense, in a way, considering that all the territory we had just covered used to be part of Thailand until the French colonized the area. Thailand used to be quite a bit bigger, but traded land to the French and British in exchange for their continued sovereignty. I wonder; if Thailand hadn’t been the only country to accomplish this feat, would it have followed the same pattern as its Southeast Asian neighbors- colonization -> oppression -> exploitation -> poverty -> resistance -> communism -> more poverty. The second half of our trip revealed to me the real differences between Thailand and Laos- real poverty and, what I speculate being, the residual effects of colonization.

Luang Prabang was the last stop on our trip that was assumed for us. When you arrived at any bus station in Laos before this point, they would immediately point you to the bus making its way to the next tourist stop on the path. After Luang Prabang, you had choices to make. We chose to head Northwest towards the Chinese border, probably because basic proximity to China made us feel like we were accomplishing more on the trip. No matter what direction you chose, the ride was similar. Our bus would periodically rise above and dip below the wispy clouds that capped the lush mountains. Unlike Thailand, rice patties were rare, but the little huts that served as refuge from the rain or lunchtime hangouts periodically speckled the landscape. Take the beauty of a Bob Ross classic, but take away all his colors except green and brown (Van Dyke brown, of course). Then exchange the jagged Alaskan mountains for round, rolling ones, and the crystal lakes for burgundy rivers. Then with five minutes left in the program, he’ll tell you, “Now if you want to, you can put a nice little thatched hut here in the middle of the field. Yeah, that’s nice. A happy little hut there for you to lie down in. Because remember- It’s your world, you can do anything.”

When we arrived at our next stop, Namtha, the bus dropped us off at one of the town’s three guesthouses. The woman at the desk proudly brought us up to the fourth floor rooftop to see the town from the top of its tallest building. During the next 48 hours, it would rain unceasingly, and this small town famous for being on the way to other small towns would fill to its brim with water.

As we ate dinner at the restaurant downstairs, we were approached by a pair of women wearing formal pasin skirts, black cloth on their shins, t-shirts, and black hats decorated with coins and metal beads. They approached us with handicrafts and we politely said, “No thank you, we don’t want any.” To which they replied, “Want!” Josh, the more enthusiastic Lao speaker of the group, attempted conversation with the pair while we listened in. The two women were Akha, a hill tribe spread throughout the mountains of Laos. They were in Namtha to sell some handicrafts and then would head back when they were sold. This was our first experience speaking with the hill tribes, who spoke Lao only a little better than we did, if at all.

This was a conversation repeated many, many times during our trip. We were trying to converse, gain some knowledge about the lives and culture of Laos, while they were concerned only with getting us to buy something. After it became clear to them that we really weren’t going to buy any bracelets, and that they might do better business elsewhere, one of the women pulled out a bag of opium and made a last-ditch effort for our business. After all those commercials on TV, I was a little surprised to find my pusher to be an Asian grandmother wearing a funny hat, shin guards, no shoes and no bra.

After a night of constant rain, the road to our next destination was blocked by flooding. We played cards at a restaurant next to the bus station while in rained all day. Might have been the best day of the trip, actually.

While walking around the next day, we saw a crowd gathering down the road. We thought maybe there was a market or something, so with nothing to do, we followed suit. As it turns out, Namtha is made up of a northern and southern section. The new town (northern) was set up because the old town kept flooding. Well, our “market” was the flooding of the old town, and we traveled with the crowd of revelers to see the damage done.

Although the road itself was clear, houses on one side were all being flooded by the water flowing relentlessly from the northern hill. Families waited on their front porches for the water level to increase, then moved up to the second floor when it overtook their living rooms. Groups of men threw nets in their front yards, fishing. Pigs were tied up to fences along the road, oblivious. One older man said he’d never seen it flood this bad in his life. One other man said it floods like this every other year. At dinner that night, a woman told us that two people died.

We made up our minds that we were moving on, one way or the other, the next day. Come hell or high water, as they say.

The next day, we boarded a truck somewhat resembling a military transport vehicle. Two planks along the truck bed served as seating for more than twenty of us, crunched together, hoping that we would make it to Muang Sing, despite the weather. This truck was a good representation of the ethnic diversity of northern Laos. There were Chinese, Laos, Akha, Thai-Lao, all speaking their own languages. Then there were four Americans, two Dutch girls, and a German guy. If our truck had tumbled down into some remote, inescapable mountain valley, we would have made for an interesting spin-off of Lost. I decided that since we were rolling four strong, English would probably be the spoken language of this new lost tribe, and either way, we would eat the German guy first.

Our truck was heavy and high enough to make it through the new rivers running across the road. Motorcyclists put their bikes on bamboo rafts and floated them across. It reminded us of Oregon Trail (For those of you who didn’t grow up in the 90s, this is an absolutely legendary computer game fondly remembered and spoken of in hushed tones by my generation, representing the sum total of our schools’ efforts to teach us how to use computers), where upon meeting a river, your choices were to ford it, wait a couple days for an Indian guide to help you across, or just close your eyes and hope for the best. I always chose the latter. My goal was to make it from Boston as fast as humanly possible, my family’s food rations be damned. If you loaded up the game on the Apple 2e after I was done, you just might run across the tombstone of my five year-old daughter, MRMYERSISABUTTHEAD, who tragically died of dysentery on the trail. There’s something to be said about a person by how he plays Oregon Trail, doctor.

After fixing a busted radiator, we ran into a mudslide. Clear across the road was at least a foot of mud that had fallen down onto the road from the steep incline of the mountain. Shirtless men with shovels were expending great effort, accomplishing little, trying to make a path for the trucks waiting on both sides of the obstacle. Finally an NGO vehicle plowed through without a problem. NGOs, no matter what country you’re in, drive white Land Rovers. A brave driver in front of us decided to give it a shot in a similar truck to ours. He made it half way, tires spinning out of control, finally catching and sending him safely to the other side. The crowd cheered. Our driver was next, also successful. Then came a mini-bus. As it rolled by us, we saw the two Akha women from Namtha waving at us. I guess they had sold enough goods and were able to go home. Except for the fact that their mini-bus only made it half-way, and the engine said its final words as a black puff of smoke spat out from the exhaust.

Long story short; we made it. Next stop- Muang Sing.

In Muang Sing, we stayed at the most beautiful guest house of our trip. Located in the middle of rice paddies only 2 kilos from the Chinese border, our little hostel was surrounded by hill tribe villages. Our plan for the first day was to walk to the border, say hello to China, and get back while we still had some daylight.

Twenty minutes down the road, we saw a pool hall, a volleyball court, and a sign that read, “Customs”. I guess this is the Chinese border, we thought. By the time I got there, two of my friends were already in the volleyball game. Thanks to an F in calculus and a temporary semester of ineligibility in high school, I played volleyball instead of track my senior year. Best failing grade I ever got, and I am thankful for that opportunity every Memorial Day picnic I attend.

Since we were at least a half-foot taller than anyone else on the court, the six Chinese/Lao setters had a field day lofting up balls for us to spike over the regulation net. After one spike in particular went onto the road and over the border, I realized that for the rest of my life, I’ll be able to say that I spiked a volleyball all the way to China.

We got back that night for TV time at the guest house. Kids from all the surrounding villages came to watch Thai soap operas. Every single night of our trip (except for those in Namtha where the electricity was cut) Laos watched Thai television. For one hour, thirty or more kids, from various tribes stood around the television, fixated at this program that they undoubtedly couldn’t understand. The program was part love-story, part adventure, starring a pituitary giant and a midget. I couldn’t make that up. Then when the TV shut off, they all scattered back to their homes up the hill.

The next day we followed them. We wanted to do a couple things while we were here. 1) learn something from these hill tribes, about their way of life. 2) buy gifts for people in Thailand. We passed the gate to an Akha village, decorated with machine guns and bombs, not meant for humans to pass through, but to keep evil out of the village. We got about half-way into the village before anyone really noticed us, and then motioned for us to come up to their house. Ascending the stairs, we met a family that showed us what their house was like, and then talked with us about their community. One of the young men spoke Lao, so we had a decent conversation about their living conditions. “People in Thailand are very rich!” he told us. While we sat, an older woman made me a bracelet with beads and a string, and then tied it around my wrist. I noticed the coins on their hats were all old French coins, and I wished I had brought the Susan B Anthony silver dollars collecting dust somewhere in a box in my parents’ new house.

After we left that house, we were met by a young Akha woman who spoke Thai! She was studying in Muang Sing and wanted to eventually move to Thailand. She invited us to her house, where we sat and drank tea and signed her guest book. Her father walked up the steps, squinted at us through glassy eyes, and then entered the house. A very strange reception, explained immediately as he sat on his side smoking opium. “He can’t live without it,” she explained. “Do you want any?” she asked us. My friend Chris asked to take a picture of him if he could, to which the man replied, “Only if you pay me.”

The village next door to the Akha was a Yao village. They speak a totally different language, and wear different hats. Again, as we got about half-way into the village, an old woman in a blue headwrap and red, fluffy scarf noticed us, and motioned for us to follow her. She alerted the rest of the village to our presence, and one by one, they entered her house, setting out their wares on the floor, handing us bags and bracelets and other things for us to buy. My three friends each bought crazy hats, if only so that the woman would agree to take a picture with us. When the wallets were put away, everyone left, and so did we.

On the ride to our next town, Sieng Kok, an Akha woman sat across from us nursing a newborn baby and holding another young one. She gave another kid some money to go buy some crackers before we left and they ate them together on the ride. Halfway through the ride, she started vomiting all over herself and the back of the truck. My friend Chris asked for toilet paper, and handed her a roll. She accepted it matter-of-factly, wiped herself off, and threw the remaining roll on the floor, never saying a word. When she got off, she asked the driver the price, then gave him half that price, and told him to get going.

The relationship between Laos and the hill tribes obviously wasn’t affectionate. Is it the chicken or the egg? Chris asked. Are they like this because Laos treat them like shit or do Laos treat them like shit because they’re like this?

While I was walking towards the market of a Muang Sing, an old Akha woman approached me saying, “Ganja, ganja, ganja, ganja…” I was just in the process of thinking that Laos would be the perfect place for the Peace Corps. There were so many opportunities for development here, projects that could have real effects. Thailand is often frustrating because the most help I’ve been to anyone in the past week has been assisting the gov’t office in changing the ringtones on their cellular phones. And yet it seems the most help that foreigners have been providing Laos is offering a demand for drugs.

My hopes for the trip were less about the mountains, views, and bracelets, and more about learning something about Laos themselves. I failed in that, miserably. I might have had two really insightful conversations with a Lao. Maybe it’s bias for Isaan, maybe I was too close to the beaten track, maybe it’s just plain narcissism, but I felt like Laos didn’t give a damn whether I was there or not. I felt like a three year old on the first day he becomes an older child, rather than an only child.

In Thailand, if you say hello to a group of people in Thai, they will give you a thumbs-up and say, “You speak Thai very well.” In Isaan, if you say anything in Lao, any woman in the general vicinity will unleash a “oooooooowwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeee!” And if you say, “sep ilee ilaw gadaw gadia”, they will go absolutely apeshit. Thais are so interested in us that sometimes it’s too much. Oh, you speak Thai? That’s soooo cute, you’re such a smart little falang, aren’t you? Ooocheee goocheee goo. One PCV made us all shirts that had the answers written in Thai to the ten questions that every single Thai will ask a foreigner. My frustrations here have never been engaging with Thais, but getting past their initial intrigue and continue on into real conversation.

Laos, for the most part, didn’t really want much to do with us, past selling us bracelets. So why the divide? And I don’t want to give the impression that we were treated poorly, because that’s absolutely untrue. Just with general disinterest. Why is it that this particular region in Thailand, famous for its hospitality, considering itself to be culturally and ethnically Lao, treat us so different than Laos treated us themselves?

Perhaps it’s a residual of colonization. Laos may not be used to having falangs around them, but their culture sure is. I said in the first piece on Laos that it was very similar to Thailand, but in some regards, surprisingly enough, what it really reminded me of was Haiti. Colonization -> exploitation -> poverty -> exhaustion of natural resources -> inescapable poverty. One of Laos largest exports is its forests. Huge Chinese trucks filled with Lao lumber were headed to China, getting stuck in the mud and blocking our way throughout the trip. I couldn’t help but think if that continues, what will this landscape look like? Then I remembered I know exactly what a totally deforested environment looks like. Now that Haiti’s forests are gone, its chief export is dirt, to make cement. The largest export of Haiti is, literally, its own island. Think about that.

According to the US State Department’s website, “More than 500,000 tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) left over from the Vietnam War causes about 120 casualties per year in Laos”. Notice it doesn’t mention who put them there, when in actuality the US dropped more bombs on Laos in the “Vietnam Conflict” than all the bombs dropped in World War II put together. And apparently 120 people per year still feel the sting of that fact, US “ordnance” causing well over 3000 deaths since the fighting stopped. So we were treading lightly, realizing that for one of us to be annihilated by a dud bomb would be irony defined: one product of the US Defense Dept killing another.

What I’m getting at here is that Laos doesn’t have a reason to treat me like they do in Thailand. I’m surprised they let me into the country actually. Does the US let representatives of organizations whose bombs kill 120 per year into the country? I hope not. Hell, Cat Stevens can't even fly these days. Ride on the Peace Train!

Forgive me if that got preachy. This blog supposed to be serious. But it is about the experience of being an American in Thailand (or Laos, as the case may be). And I’ve found that my interactions with people of both cultures don’t start at the initial Wai. A falang’s interactions in these two countries are intricately connected to the pre-conceptions of foreigners by Thais and Laos, and those pre-conceptions have histories, histories that affect everyone in that culture. It’s my speculation that Lao culture has felt the hand of Westerners somewhat differently than Thai culture.

And I collected all those pearls of wisdom in two weeks. So take my word as Gospel.

Our last night in Laos was spent in Sieng Kok. Bordering Myanmar, and a short speedboat ride away from Thailand, Sieng Kok overlooks the Mekong and is little more than a boat launch and a guesthouse. We got off our songtao, and as we entered the guesthouse, we stumbled upon a party. “Come on in,” the owner said, “eat some food and drink some beer, we’ll send over a single girl to drink with you.” I checked the map to make sure we hadn’t accidentally stumbled back across the Thai border too early. No, indeed not. Thailand would have to wait one more day.

That was the end of my twelve days in Laos. By all standards, a great trip. I learned a few things, and enjoyed the view.

Our return to Thailand wouldn’t be complete, however, without a trip to Big C. Big C is a Wall Mart-like superstore that is absolutely packed with Thais looking at new cell phones and buying washing machines. It’s impossible to walk without bumping shoulders, or in my case, bumping heads with shoulders. Falang food is everywhere, Auntie Anne’s and Mister Donut, KFC and McDonald’s, all screaming out their specials over loudspeakers, competing with each other for the limited cognizance of overloaded passerby. I go to Big C because it’s the only place I can get cat litter. Well, while one of my friends was in line for an ice cream cone, the other on his cell phone, I spotted a woman leading an older woman through the mall. The one being led wore black cloth on her shins, worn clothes, a black hat with beads and old French coins, and an expression of utter fear. Wonderland was scaring the living shit out of Alice.

And I thought about what that must be like, for the rest of the world to “develop” in front of your eyes.

And if you made it this far through the blog, congratulations, we’re obviously related. But I think my entire trip and subsequent blog can all be summed up a lot better by a few lyrics…

And what’ll you do now, my blue eyed son?
And what’ll you do now, my darlin’ young one?
I’m going back out before the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk through the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many, and they’re hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where their home in the valley meets the damp, dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
It’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall…

- Bob Dylan

To view the complete picture set from this trip, visit my Flickr page

Crowded Planet: Laos Part 1

2006-08-15T11:08:00.000+07:00

A vacation to Laos has become a rite of passage for Thai Peace Corps Volunteers, especially since some of us are situated in a region next to Laos, and are surrounded by people who make our lives infinitely more frustrating by insisting on speaking some form of Lao. A typical conversation of mine with a group at my site goes something like this: I’ll ask a question in Thai, whoever is first to understand what I said will translate this to the rest of the group in Lao (Isaan), then they will confer amongst themselves in Lao, and someone will eventually get back to me in Thai. It’s like the scene in Snatch when he’s negotiating the price of a caravan with gypsies, but without the subtitles. If by some miracle the water and air pollution of my town results in a superpower instead of a tumor, to have subtitles magically scroll across my field of vision at all times would be far better than x-ray vision or shape-shifting.

Three other volunteers and I decided that the end of July would be a good time to take the plunge up North. We’ve gotten enough Lao under our belts to get us from place to place and keep our stomachs full. And of course, we’ve got more vacation time than we know what to do with, and less than six months to use it. The plan was to meet up for my friends’ birthday party in Northern Thailand, then cross the border and spend the next twelve days hitting up the interesting sites in central Laos, eventually crossing through the Northwestern border, returning to Thailand after a boat ride along the Mekong in the Golden Triangle of Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. Hopefully we’d get back with some good stories, memories, and an improved ability at speaking Lao in our communities.

My fellow travelers: Gary, Josh, and Chris

Before our trip, we did our best to gather information on where we should go, how much we should expect to pay, and other interesting things to keep an eye out for. Phone calls, emails, and casual conversations with other volunteers who’ve gone before us revealed they either never made the trip or are boldface liars. Misinformation was the theme of our trip, and time and time again, we found ourselves relying on the advice of a PCV who admittedly had not been within miles of the border. Eventually we realized that Laos was a far cry from what anyone or any travel book said it would be, to its credit, I might add.

Speaking of misinformation campaigns, one of my favorite pastimes is checking the US State Department’s website to see if it is safe to leave the house, which unfailingly it is not. Whatever country it is, the US State Dept. advises against going there, usually accompanied by a vague warning of danger. It’s warning to US tourists to Laos was surprisingly mild, saying only, “the Department of State recommends that U.S. citizens traveling or residing in Laos exercise caution in public places and be alert to their surroundings, since the locations of future incidents are unpredictable.” They forgot to mention not to step in front of moving cars, jump from bridges, or stick your fingers in the electric sockets. Bring plenty of duct tape though.

As you’ll see on the accompanying map, my first stop was to meet up with my fellow travelers at a birthday party in Sakon Nakon. Blessed with a site location next to the border, Chris held hands-down the best PCV party to date, basically turning his house into a karaoke and casino for his neighbors. I mention this party only because one of the gifts he received was a lovely cake brought by a neighbor, with white icing wishing him, “Happy Birthday Christ”.

In a couple days, after working out the inevitable delays with visas, we were in the capital of Laos- Vientiane. Vientiane doesn’t have a whole lot going on, unless you are a sleezy Thai man on vacation. “Sao Vientiane” means woman from Vientiane technically, but really means prostitute, about which the US State Dept warns, “Any foreigner who enters into a sexual relationship with a Lao national may be interrogated, detained, arrested, or jailed. Lao police have confiscated passports and imposed fines of up to $5000 on foreigners who enter into disapproved sexual relationships”.

I did manage to see the second Arc d’ Triumph of my life, possibly exceeding the first in its ridiculousness. At the entrance to my provincial town in Haiti, on a road peppered with potholes and jagged rocks, was an Arc d’ Triumph decorated in neon lights welcoming you to a city frequently without electricity. Laos’ Arc d’ Triumph is the result of tons of unused US concrete sent over to make an airport before the communists won the war. It is a grey, bland monstrosity that actually has a sign at the bottom apologizing for the eyesore.

We rented bikes, adjusting ourselves to using the right side of the road, and spent the day visiting temples and various places of mild interest to us. We were told that there was only one ATM in the entire country and passed at least four on our way to a temple. Our real goal was to make it out into the countryside as quickly as possible and escape Vientiane- a city that is so similar to, and used to be part of Thailand. I stepped into a bookstore to do some research on Laos, and was told that the store had absolutely no books about Laos. How about that! Ten minutes later, the proprietor slipped me a piece of paper with a list of ten Lao history books worth reading. “Where can I get these?” I asked him. “Thailand,” he answered.

One book that was certainly in circulation was Lonely Planet: Laos. On the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vien, every foreigner sat reading his copy, preparing to blaze his own trail through the unexplored backpacker wilderness. Backpackers in Laos are more seasoned, experienced, and rugged than Thai backpackers. Their sense of adventure is more acute, their dreadlocks longer, their tie-dyed shirts more faded, all enabling them to scoff at each other while they all look at the same book, following the same beaten path, all trying to get away from “other falang”.

We entered Vang Vien and stumbled upon a town built for tourists. Situated in a picturesque mountain valley, the town follows the Nam Song River and has become a necessary stop for tourists on their way to Luang Prabang, our next stop. Our first day was spent biking and hiking toward a cave, where we met a young boy willing to take us to see the Buddha image inside. The jagged rocks of the mountainside made biking impossible, and his father watched our bikes as he gave his son an old, weak flashlight connected with a wire to a battery for our trip through the cave.

The walk was not a short one. Carrying a bag filled with a raincoat and my camera, affectionately known by other PCVs as “The Clunker”, my shoulders were tired and I was thinking that this Buddha image damn well better give me enlightenment, having no idea that the bulky picture-taker would soon save our lives.

As we entered the cave, we immediately noticed the temperature dropped by at least ten degrees, cooling us off as we started our descent through the unpredictable passageways of the cave. Our guide, probably no more than twelve years old, had a difficult job of illuminating the way for four people in complete darkness, trying to navigate around holes that seemingly had no bottom. As our guide occasionally pointed out bats, we held on to each others’ shoulders and sent warnings down the line of upcoming jagged rocks and holes, slowly managing our way up and down sets of slippery stairs leading to a Buddha image that managed only to enlighten me that it was one hell of a long way to go to worship an idol. Buddhists have an affinity for placing Buddhas in places that are ridiculously difficult to get to. If there was an active volcano in Laos, there would be a Buddha image in its core.

After we got our fill of the Buddha image, our guide turned to lead our way back out of the cave. Shining his weak flashlight periodically in front of each of us, he managed to get us to a staircase of rock made slick with water cascading down the ancient walls of the cave. He held the flashlight close to the ground in front of the next step in my way, evidently too close, because I slipped and knocked the wire out of the battery and the flashlight went out.

Total darkness.

The boy fiddled uselessly with the battery and flashlight easily twice his age as we exchanged language lessons, each of us learning “Oh Shit” in the other’s native tongue. Feeling our way back out of the cave was not an option- there were holes large enough for two of us that would sent us falling into the depths of the mountain, and waiting for the boy’s father to realize we were lost and then go get another flashlight didn’t sound appealing. The Clunker came to the rescue, or at least the flashlight beam that it, for some reason unknown to me, emits when it focuses in the dark, offering a bleak but manageable light that led us out of the cave.

That was the last cave we visited on our trip to Laos.

Vang Vien is better known for the tubing trip down the Nam Song River, offering a view of clouded mountains and forests, with locals extending long bamboo poles to pull tubers in for a cold refreshment of Beer Lao. After being dropped off a few kilos down the river, we set out on our tubes planning on stopping at each and every chance offered us. The first couple stops were pretty standard- locals making a few dollars buying beer in town and selling it downriver to a bunch of crazy foreigners. We met a man named Kayo, who used to live in my province, and we sat cross-legged, practicing our Lao while we passed around a cup of moonshine his mom made, probably for lack of gasoline. We set off again, regaining our equilibrium on our tubes as Kayo yelled his phone number at us as we followed the current downstream.

Our next stop was on the opposite side of the river, and as we grabbed the ropes thrown our way, falangs were jumping off a ledge on a rope into the river. We threw our tubes onshore and trudged up the muddy ledge to find huts packed with foreigners, a volleyball game in action, and a full bar busily serving drinks to one and all, everyone dancing to music blaring over unseen loudspeakers. MTV Beach House had set up shop long before we had gotten there; some of these people had obviously been there since morning. What kind of dream world had we walked into? After a short respite, we were back on the river with more questions than answers.

The next stop on the paved road “off the beaten track” of Laos is Luang Prabang. The favorite city of the 600 or so French colonials, Luang Prabang used to be the capital of Laos and its southern coast until Thailand gave up all the land from the current Thai border north to the French in exchange for its continued sovereignty. The French changed the capital to Vientiane because Luang Prabang was repeatedly sacked by China and Burma via two major rivers bordering the city. It is a World Heritage Site known for its temples and markets, and is a Mecca for backpackers. The streets of Luang Prabang are lined with stands selling French bread sandwiches. Amounting to little more than a hoagie to you, these were the first real sandwiches most of us had eaten in a year and change. Thais not only dislike bread, they will tell you that they are unable to eat it, so one of our goals of the trip was to photograph a Lao stuffing a hoagie into his mouth and show it around Thailand as proof that, yes, it is physically possible for Asians to eat bread. We failed in this endeavor, and no one at my site believes a word of this story.

Laos had been repeatedly described to us as “Thailand 40 years ago”. Lao culture and Isaan culture are presented by Isaaners as one and the same, but after a trip to Laos, it’s evident how much globalization, Bangkok, and MTV have taken their toll on Thai culture. I was on a bus yesterday sitting next to a young man wearing one glittering half-glove on his left hand, with a T-shirt that read, “REBEL”. On a side note, re-reading that last sentence, when did I start sounding like a grandfather? If I had a cane, I would be shaking it at someone right now, attempting but failing to remove myself from a rocking chair on my front porch, then mumbling to myself about “kids these days” as I succumb to a nap from overexertion. Anyway, one reason we were excited about Laos was because apparently the women wore formal, long skirts (pasins) to the disco and instead of hip-hop there was line dancing. Well, guess what? That rumor turned out to be wrong. In walked woman after woman, short skirt and halter top like their southern neighbors. The initial stage of the evening consisted of slow dancing and line dancing, as advertised. It was very reminiscent of a high school dance, but with the alcohol out in the open. After a few Lao songs, the band stepped offstage, and the hip-hop began. Expecting to be witness to formally-clad women line-dancing, we were immersed in a mob of Laos grinding on each other to Black Eyed Peas singing “My Humps”. Where’s that cane?

The first stage of our trip was following the prepared trail for foreigners to experience Laos, provided conveniently by Lonely Planet and PCVs before us. Other than good coffee, good bread, and bad language proficiency, Laos had been pretty much the same as Thailand. We had purposely made it this far early enough to allow us time to head North, towards the Chinese border, into the mountains and out of cell phone reception, to try to find something uniquely Lao.

The times ahead would include massive flooding, mudslides, deaths, hill tribes, the sweet smell of opium, spiking volleyballs into China, and speedboats down the Mekong back home to what hopefully can’t accurately be called “Lao 40 years from now”.

Stay tuned…

I will have a Flickr page set up as soon as we consolidate our photos from the trip, hopefully with the second installment.

World Cup 2006: The Month Thailand Stood Still

2006-07-06T11:36:00.000+07:00

One of the ten questions that every single Thai will ask a Falang when they meet is, “yoo prated nai?”, which means, “What country are you living in?”. What they’re really asking you is “where you are from?”, but the concept that you are actually living here doesn’t register. When I answer that I am from America, I am usually greeted with a thumbs up, and a “America, Very Good!” “Our countries are friends,” they’ll explain.

The other week, I walked into the local gov’t office, floating on that cloudy level of consciousness that means I either drank two shots of Nyquil or stayed up all night. As I plugged in my computer, a queue formed at my desk. One by one, my friends and co-workers took turns shaking their heads in disapproval, either laughing or showing disgust, summed up by a collective thumbs-down, saying in unison, “America is bad, America is finished.”

The night beforehand America had been eliminated from the World Cup.

Thailand has never qualified for the World Cup, and is well behind other Asian nations in the development of their national program, so there is no reason to believe they will ever qualify in the distant future. Yet Thailand is totally bonkers about the World Cup.

Some things to consider…

• Thailand is expecting a huge economic downturn this month as a result of the World Cup. Gambling is expected to be rampant, and there have been gov’t campaigns giving encouragement to “keep working”.

• Thais, generally, go to the temple in the morning of their birthday to make merit. As described in a recent article in Reuters, some Thais who have the misfortune of having their birthday this month are met by monks too tired to perform the ritual. Why? Because they were up all night watching the games.

• A Thai friend of mine in BKK actually quit his job so that he could give sufficient attention to the World Cup. Again, the World Cup is at night.

• This year the Di Vinci Code wasn’t the only film suppressed by the Thai censors. A Thai comedy about Laos hosting the World Cup, and as a result getting an automatic bid for the tournament, was protested by the Laos gov’t and eventually cancelled. It defamed Laos culture, which is, more or less, Isaan culture.

• The sixtieth anniversary of the King’s coronation took place this month. In an effort to remind everyone that this event was taking place, they showed footage of fabulous ceremonies in the Palace with foreign dignitaries. For a week, this footage was broadcast instead of the first World Cup game of the night, and is responsible for the only time I’ve ever heard a Thai badmouth the King.

• The viewing population of all the games combined is expected to equal 54 billion viewers worldwide. The population of the earth is 6.6 billion. Think about that.

This is the equivalent of having multiple Super Bowls broadcast every night for a month. Is it strange that Americans have absolutely no interest in the World Cup? I have grown to appreciate soccer during my time overseas, but I can remember what soccer meant to my generation growing up. Soccer is the most popular sport in America, among 7-11 year olds, and then well, we move on. I mean no offense to any former or current soccer players, but in my recollection, you continued playing soccer only if one of the following applied:

1. You were born to immigrant parents

2. Your parents wanted to see if you were athletic. If it turned out that yes, you could run in a straight line, when you came of age you were given a helmet and shoulder pads and told to run into each other at speed. If no, have you any interest in the band? If you couldn’t manage “It’s a Small World” on the recorder, then you embarked on a journey through the second-tier pantheon of high school sports- soccer, lacrosse, or tennis. Like my friend Brent Fenneman explained to me, “If you can’t hack it, grab a racket.”

3. You were a hot girl. (Can I even say that anymore? I’m turning 25 this weekend, and I’m unsure if I can refer to a high school girl as hot. Let’s move on…)

Am I generalizing? Of course. But look no further than the US soccer teams. The men are led by Claudio Reyna, Pablo Mastroeni, and Oguchi Onyewu. The US women are hot and famous for tearing their jerseys off after victories.

US Women's Soccer. Why do I feel obligated to tip them?

This, by the way, is no indictment of soccer. Is football any better? Who in their right mind can look back at a ten year-old running around in a plastic bag so that he can drop ten pounds and be able to go out and butt heads with a classmate, and think, yeah that’s intelligent? I remember in college, a coach had collected all the battle scenes from Braveheart to show us before a game. Any sport in which it helps to watch a man being speared with a trident beforehand probably should not be played.

Who’s wins? Definitely the bowlegged kid who’s parents felt sorry for him and bought him a guitar. For the rest of his life, he’ll have the uncanny ability to pick up women, while I can throw an oblong ball forty yards in the air. Like my mom would say, with that and a quarter, I can make a phone call.

One area that American soccer is unmatched is our youth team names. In my own youth, I had the honor of taking the field for the Pac Men and the Gremlins, which are the best names since Dirk Diggler came up with Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell. In no other sport are great names like these even considered. Although in college, there was a movement to change the Columbia mascot from the Lion to the Ghostbusters, with theme song and all. Now that would have been a cool name.

During my own youth soccer days, some of the proudest moments for my family occurred while I was in goal. Anyone who’s ever seen a youth soccer game can attest to the fact that it rivals curling and competitive walking as the most boring sporting events in the world. And curling is growing on me. As a player, I would grow bored with the game and amuse myself by getting tied up in the netting of the goal. Someone would eventually have to come untie me and continue play. But one time, as my parents would tell it, when the ball finally made its way to our side of the field, the crowd noticed the goalie (me) had disappeared only to come running from the bathroom minutes later. I don’t remember much of my early youth, but I remember that decision, and it wasn’t a difficult one.

Unlike Will Ferrell, Americans aren't very serious about their soccer.

My own appreciation of soccer grew out of my time in the Peace Corps, specifically in Haiti. I remember taking my host-brother to the local soccer field early one morning to kick the ball around. As we were about to leave, a group of men came on the field ready to play. In a country with 95% unemployment, playing soccer on a Wednesday morning is a popular activity. My kreyol wasn’t at all good at this point (and really never got there), but I got the idea they wanted me to take some penalty kicks with them. I set the ball up about 15 feet from the goal, with a tall, athletic man guarding it, obviously not about to let me score in front of his friends. Line anyone up in front of a soccer ball, and there is some percentage, albeit very small, that he’ll kick the ball true and accurately in the corner of the goal. There’s also a small percentage chance he’ll do this on his first try. The stars aligned and that’s exactly what happened, as the ball left my foot and curved past his outstretched fingertips and went into the street because there was no net to stop it. While his friends nodded in acceptance and appreciation, I bid them goodbye and left quickly, terrified they’d ask me back for more. Best to quit while ahead.

In Thailand, I’ve continued to follow international soccer, if only to end uncomfortable silences. As my vocabulary has grown, my ability to hold a real conversation has extended from two to ten to maybe twenty minutes. But then the person I’m talking with and I will just nod our heads, realizing we’ve nothing more to say, and I’ll offer a “So, how about France beating Brazil? How about that?”

My TAO office invited me to watch some of the games here. They used the projector and covered the side of my friend’s house with whiteboard, so that we’d have a giant screen. No matter what the game is, everyone here watches it. Trinidad & Tobago vs. Sweden even drew a crowd, which evidently only funny to me, had to ask which team was which. For the first couple weeks, games took place at 8pm, 11pm and 2am. I came here to watch a few of the games, and experience a few peculiarities of how Thais watch soccer, specifically who they root for.

I dare my father to buy a bigger screen than this

So you have absolutely no vested interest in any of the teams in the tournament, yet you enjoy watching the games and want to support a team. Who to root for? Naturally inclined to root for the Asian teams, my friends initially supported Korea and Japan. But I quickly found out that most Thais root for whatever team is winning. I invited friends over to watch the US vs. Ghana, only to witness them change sides with each goal scored. In the final minutes of the game, all my friends said they cheered for Ghana, because they’re better. “You can’t do that,” I complained. “You can’t just root for the winning team based on that alone.” That’s like rooting for the Yankees, cancer, or the Republican Party. Thais are no fan of the underdog.

And this weekend, as Italy and France face each other in the finals, my neighbors won’t go to sleep disappointed, because either way, they win.

For the past month, when I meet new people and tell them I’m American, they laugh and shake their heads. “You’re not very good at soccer then,” they’ll say. In another month, it’ll probably go back to “Very Good!”, but for now, at least we have something to talk about.

The Military Industrial Complex in My Town Stinks (When It Rains)

2006-06-30T13:45:00.000+07:00

You can see the green hills ‘cross the rooftops
And the pressure wind blows past the end of our block.
In the evenings the mist comes rolling on down
Into a northern industrial town.
- Billy Bragg

I write to you today while sitting at home, staring out the window as the monsoon rains pour into the already ankle-deep puddles in the street. I sit here, carefully drinking the slightly delicious, yet viciously addictive Nescafe 3-in-1, which as some of you may remember, was responsible for the drowning of Toshi, my old friend and laptop. Usually, these rains bring a sense of relief and excitement, ensuring that in the next few hours, I won’t pass out from the heat. Lately though, they’ve brought with them a stench that vividly reminds me of the day that my mom and I went digging in the middle school dumpsters for my lost retainer on grilled-cheese and tomato soup day.

I ran into a new counterpart last week, who works at the office for environmental conservation and communicable diseases at the hospital. It took a year and 5 months for me to figure out this place existed, which actually isn’t unusual. Most of our contacts occur by accident. The health worker I refer to is named Oi, which means sugarcane, and I could tell right away this was a motivated person who had a lot of things going on. I’ve heard from various sources that the industry in my town is a double-edged sword, providing jobs and tax money, but ruining our river (which the town is named after), and causing that horrible stench when it rains.

Oi had organized an organization of interested parties, consisting of village leaders, health professionals, monks, teachers, rice farmers, soldiers, and factories. The organization’s goal was to identify community problems and utilize their collective resources to implement solutions. When I met Oi, she was preparing for an educational camp held at the local airfield, for children of various ages, and I was invited to tag along. My goals for my own participation was to develop a relationship with the environmental conservation office workers and learn about the industry in my town, but above all- to find out who was responsible for that smell.

Next to the military base where I had a previous training, we turned into a guarded forest entrance, and continued driving for a few miles until we reached the hangars of an airfield. On the way we passed trees with laden with monks’ robes, to prevent the locals from chopping them down. After we unloaded the truck, we set up for the opening of the training, which was evidently an important one, because there were seven couch-people present. To my right was a dilapidated billiards table, with ornate wooden legs and bits of torn thread in the pockets. On it laid all kinds of tools and machinery, collecting dust as it apparently has been for years.

This training was sponsored by the local military, both Army and Air Force, and the local factories. The first speaker of the opening was the commander of the airfield, who explained the history of the base, and the reason for the pool table. Apparently the War Corps has done capacity building work in my town before the Peace Corps, in building for Nam Phong an airfield in the middle of a forest during the Vietnam War. It consisted of a huge parking lot, an airstrip, and three large hangars. I think I’ve already written a little about my appreciation for the Thai military- the adornment of Navy ships with bright Xmas lights, and the admirable ability of Thai soldiers to sleep during the daytime. The Air Force impressed me even more. “Where are the planes?” I asked the commander. “Hahaha, we don’t have any planes,” they’re all in Udonthani. “This is just an emergency landing strip. As you see, the lot is empty and the hangars are filled with vans.” I remember hearing a story on NPR, and this is true, that the Thai Gov’t bought a couple fighter jets from Russia in exchange for millions of frozen chickens, which they froze during the bird-flu scare. To their credit, they spend most of their time hosting trainings like this. The commander pointed to the airstrip and said, “That airstrip is the Vietnam and Laos wars. We don’t do that anymore. This is what we do now.”

After the opening, the commander introduced the students and teachers to local villagers, who would lead us through the forest. There were seven older men, with dark leathery skin, worn clothing, and maybe five teeth between them. I caught the eye of one of them, who had spiked grey hair, fiery bloodshot eyes, and a white scar on his hand, extending through the vain on his right arm. He came over and started speaking English, and this is what he said…

“HELLO! I LIVE IN SNAKE VILLAGE! EVERYONE IN MY VILLAGE HAS SNAKE!”
“I’ve heard of this place, in Nam Phong, King Cobra Village, right?”
“KING COBRA!”
“You don’t have a snake with you now, do you?”
“I NO SNAKE! IN MY VILLAGE, I HAVE THAI COBRA AND KING COBRA! EVERYONE HAS SNAKE! WE GIVE SHOW! YOU COME SEE THE SHOW!”
“I hate snakes, I am scared of snakes, and I can’t ride my bike there.” (This is the standard-issue excuse for PCVs)
“SNAKE BITE ME! LOOK!” He points to his hand, “BUT THIS IS THAI COBRA! NOT KING COBRA! KING COBRA SPIT VENOM! BUT THAI COBRA, NO SPIT VENOM, HE BITE, VENOM VERY STRONG!”
“So why do you have a snake if it bites you?”
“I BELIEVE SNAKE SAME SAME CAT OR DOG! TAKE CARE SNAKE! YOU COME TO SHOW! YOU SEE SNAKE!”
And then I broke into Thai, with the ultimate way to end a conversation/turn down a request/not break face- “Kit doo gon”, which means, “I’ll think about it before.”

As the local elderly led us through the forest, most of the kids and the teachers had trouble understanding them, which shows the speed at which the Isaan language is evolving. I don’t think I need to mention that I caught very little of what they said, except when he pointed at a plant, put his two fingers together, placed them at his mouth and said, “You can dry this and then smoke it.” I nodded, turned to the monk walking with me, and smiled.

I was walking through the forest with a monk who lives at a special temple that serves as a spiritual development center. This center is becoming involved in AIDS education, and home-based care, but has been providing spiritual services to drug addicts for years. Traveling with him were two kids about ten years old, taking pictures of the monk taking video of the forest. I had seen these two kids at the temple before, and gathered that the monks were their care-takers. One of the kids was half-Thai, half-Falang, and wore a shirt that read under a picture of a machine gun, “To err is human, to forgive divine. Neither of which is Marine Corps policy.”

The next part of the training, and for the next two days, was visits to various environment landmarks of the community. The future stops would be the landfill, the paper factory, the fisheries, and an organic farm. Today, however, was the best day for me to be present, because we would visit two factories, a water plant, and the military base. Hopefully I would find out who the hell was making the rain smell.

My town has many factories- making motorcyles, sugar, paper, Panasonic electronics, just to name a few. Today our first trip, fitting for a group of 130 middle school children, was the factory that made glorified moonshine from rice. I was able to speak with the factory representative for a few minutes, and this is what transpired, in Thai…

“So this factory makes only rice whiskey, right?”
“Right, we use sugar from the sugar factory, and market throughout Khon Kaen Province.”
“So is there anything special you’ve done regarding the environment lately?”
“Not really, we have been certified by the regulations of (some company I don’t remember). We’re very clean, when you make a product, you will have waste, but we are very clean.”
“Any idea where that smell comes from whenever it rains?”
“What?”
“When it rains, it really smells. You live in my neighborhood, I’m sure you’ve noticed it.”
“Oh yeah, that smell. That comes from the pig farm. That’s pig feces you’re smelling.”
“How’s the presentation going so far?”
“These kids don’t seem very interested in hard alcohol,” she said as she shook her head in disbelief. “We usually don’t present to little kids, but this was about the environment, not the product.”

Our next stop was the water cleaning plant, which is enough to make you go off water for weeks. I wouldn’t drink the tap water here, and I don’t know anyone that does. This was a pretty useless venture, but I did squeeze in a minute with the foreman. He told me that the rain smell most definitely comes from the sugar and alcohol factories. “Not the pig farm?” I asked. “The pig farm? What’s that got to do with the rain?”

After the water treatment plant, our bus pulled into the army base, where I had previously had an AIDS training. That training went well, except for the lack of electricity in the middle of the hot season, which they neglected to tell us. The military, as I’ve indicated, are sponsors of this camp, and a trip to the army base was a necessary, yet had nothing to do with the environment. We walked through a museum dedicated to a former prime minister Dinsutlanon. As we entered the mini cinema, we enjoyed a fifteen minute tribute to him while the air conditioning blasted us. Each room consisted of a life-size statue of the man in different stages of his life, with audio commentary and synchronized lighting. This museum reminded very much of the Ronal Reagan library, which my Uncle took me to see in California. As you walk through the hall of communist leaders that Reagan brought down, you may notice that like his public addresses, there is a distinct denial of the emergence of AIDS during his tenure. I asked when this prime minister died, and was told that he’s still alive at 87 and will come to see the base next week. At least they waited until Reagan died to start the propaganda. The rain smell, a soldier told me, doesn’t make its way out to the army base, because it’s in the middle of a forest.

Tired, knees aching from standing all day, we made our way back to the Nam Phong Airport, which is, to my knowledge, the only airport in the world without airplanes. To summarize the activities, Oi asked the group of students to draw pictures of their ideal communities, their ideal environments. Despite living on a plateau, almost every one of the students drew the same picture of a mountain landscape, with a sun shining onto grassy fields and a blue river flowing down into the foreground. Bob Ross would have been proud- there were happy trees scattered about, a few houses here and there (there weren’t any Van Dyke brown crayons, I checked). There were no factories in any of their pictures, although to be fair, there were no people either.

Laying to rest any doubts that Thailand is a developed country, a hospital staff member ended the day with a presentation, projected for everyone to see, of the Nam Phong river. The presenter flew over mountains and valleys, trailing the river from its source to our town, passing factories and fisheries, in a neat little vehicle called Google Earth.

Fittingly, as he wrapped up his presentation, the raindrops started pounding against the tin roof of the hangar. Building up until eventually, we couldn’t hear each other talking, the sound of the rain made any training impossible. We just sat and listened to the downpour, looking out the window, waiting for it to stop so that the boys could leave the girls and go sleep in our own hangar. And sure enough, it smelled. But instead of smelling like a dumpster, it smelled like rain, which I can’t remember smelling for a while now.

Saving Lives and Riding Bulls

2006-06-12T15:36:00.000+07:00

A couple weekends ago, after a HIV/AIDS meeting in the capital, a few volunteers and I made our way to the beautiful beach city of Hua Hin. Our plans were to enjoy the annual jazz festival on the beach, and make it back to Bangkok in time to ride a mechanical bull. My friend Dan, who liked the Peace Corps so much he stayed here for three years, was finally leaving, and we thought it’d be a good idea to throw him on the back of a bull as a farewell. Who knew he’d save someone’s life in the interim.

Hua Hin is best known as the home of the King of Thailand. His majesty is celebrating his 60th year on the throne this month, and took his doctors’ suggestions to move away from the smog of Bangkok for nicer climates. Who can blame him? Hua Hin is a fun town, far enough away from the capital and not overrun with tourists.

The beaches of Hua Hin are guarded by Royal Navy ships covered in Xmas lights, outlining them against the black night sky. Only the Thai Navy would throw aside any considerations of stealth for optimal tackiness. I could make a killing here if only I can get a bulk shipment of pink flamingos sent over.

That night, we brought mats and a cooler of jungle juice to the beach for the jazz festival. Passing around the cooler, we enjoyed a night of Cuban jam sessions as the ocean breeze provided a brief respite to the balmy hot season. Thais danced on the beach, occasionally looking awkwardly at each other when the singer would request, in Spanish, for them to clap their hands.

The next day, after lunch, we decided to walk on the beach on the way back to our guesthouse. The Hua Hin beach is peppered with colorful, old fishing ships, tilted on their sides waiting someone to rescue them from the sewage flowing from the streets into the ocean. Apparently this isn’t where people swim. A friend of ours was walking closer to ocean, and yelled our way that she found something on the edge of the tide. “It’s a human!” she yelled.

Lying face down in the sand, with the tide already meeting his face, was a Thai man, either passed out or dead. We decided we should probably wake this guy up before he drowned. When we grabbed his legs, he woke up, grunted, and passed out again. Dan asked him politely, “Do you mind if I lift your legs so you don’t die?”
“Ughh”
“Okay, I’m going to pick them up.”
The man shifted, sat up, and passed out again sitting down. But out of harm’s way, at least. We looked back when we were about a hundred yards down the beach, and he was washing himself off in the surf, getting ready to tackle another day.

Peace Corps Thailand – Saving the World One Drunk Thai Guy At a Time

When you think of Bangkok, you probably think of prostitutes and strip clubs. Despite what anyone tells you, you are correct. The bright, modern metropolis that is Bangkok in the day is overpowered by the neon electricity of its nightlife. Under no circumstances should anyone be allowed to study abroad here.

For Dan’s farewell fiasco, there could be no better place than the epicenter of the sex trade- Pat Pong Road. There is really no good excuse to be near Pat Pong. Whoever discovered that there is a mechanical bull to ride right in the middle of this circus won’t identify himself. With good reason. Pat Pong should have its own question on blood donation screening tests. Have you ever been to prison? How about Pat Pong? Thanks for coming, but…

If you stay on the bull for more than one minute, you get a free beer. The bull technician, or “stripper”, laughs maniacally as she throws you off onto the mats that surround the mechanical beast. Few PCVs have ever reached the magical 60 second mark, but many more have woken up with bruises, thinking, “What the hell did I do last night? Oh yeah, the bull…”

Dan’s goal was to reach that mark, while wearing American flag spandex underwear.

Unfortunately, no one stayed on that horrible steed for a full minute. Despite his enthusiasm, dedication, and intense patriotism, Dan fell early. But despite that failure, we all managed to accomplish the third goal of Peace Corps, which is to give Thais a better impression, or understanding, of Americans.

God help America.

Friends Corner AIDS Training

2006-05-30T10:59:00.000+07:00

“It was done through official channels, and half-heartedly. What they’re short on is imagination. Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic. And the remedial measures they think up are hardly adequate for the common cold. If we let them carry on like this they’ll soon be dead, and so shall we.”
- Albert Camus, The Plague

I always like to start these logs off on a pleasant note. After reading The Plague and the latest Newsweek, I feel like stabbing at my eyeballs with chopsticks, so I’ll try to keep this light.

The national response to AIDS in Thailand, in terms of preventative education, is something like Camus would expect- half-hearted and inadequate. It’s a serious need in my own village, where there are plenty of health professionals interested and motivated to work with AIDS, but without the support from schools and government sources.

When my counterpart, Tuum, asked me if I could help her design a project to motivate youths to take a more active role in educating their peers, I jumped at the chance. Her idea was to ask 39 youth volunteers (3 per village) to train their peers and villagers in the areas of sex, AIDS, and life skills. The entire project would take place over the next year, and the initial training was last month at the Army Barracks of Khon Kaen. Here’s what happened…

Whenever any kind of official event takes place in Thailand, the couch people are there. They come alone, or in twos and threes, but never more than can sit on two cheap, plastic loveseats. I have been at official events in every major region of Thailand except the South, and have seen the exact same couches every time. While everyone else sits either on cheap chairs or the floor, the same blue grey couches with accompanying black, glass coffee table are present everywhere. Sporting the blue-grey scheme of my old Ford Tempo, these couches offer the greatest amount of class that 1,500 baht can buy.

Who sits at the couches? Not you.

If you want an elected official, principal, senator, parliament member, policeman, doctor, fundraiser, etc. to come to your event, you better have the couch set. And if you really want to show them how appreciative you are of their presence, here’s a tip- why not send the white guy over there to serve them cold water? Don’t forget the coaster.

The lives of couch people are like their seat, which is to say, comfortable. The uniform of the couch people is the formal Thai shirt. It’s a short-sleeve shirt that tries to be a suit- the result of trying to tailor a shirt of class, formality, and expense in the hottest climate imaginable. Each and every couch persons’ hands are adorned with gold watches and massive, tacky rings that can be redeemed at the Jersey shore with 2,000 points of coupons from Skee-ball. But in Thailand, tacky equals flashy equals wealthy equals respect. And it’s this select group of people who you need to open your project, or for that matter, to have a project at all.

Usually rolling into the event fifteen minutes to an hour late, they can be counted on to take up an inordinate amount of time opening your event. Entire mornings of scheduled education have been lost to the couch person with a microphone. The spectators don’t try very hard to hide their inattention, either, usually yawning or making telephone calls during the introduction. Despite not understanding most of what he’s saying, I’ll try to pay attention by watching the couch person’s mouth moving incessantly, accomplishing little. I find the experience very similar to when I used to feed my dog peanut butter.

At my training the President of my TAO was able to come and offer his thoughts of our project. Thirty minutes late, shirt, rings and formality strolled through the doors of the Army Barracks meeting hall.

“We don’t have any couches,” said Tuum, “or a microphone.” I could see from her face that she honestly didn’t know what was going to happen.

In the next fifteen minutes, the President of my TAO went on to shock the entire audience by speaking succinctly, informatively, and let’s even go as far as to say eloquently, about our project. Unplugged! Students turned off their telephones, no one fell asleep, and we started our training on time. This was turning out to be a great training.

To make the students more comfortable talking about sex in an unfamiliar environment, Tuum began the first day with a session on slang. She gathered them in teams to create an all-inclusive list of sex slang words. Some of my Thai friends from the TAO and I made our own list, and in a dashing display of linguistic ability (or emotional immaturity), my list was the longest and probably the most offensive. Certainly a proud day for me and my family.

Over the next two days, the community nursing staff gave a training written mostly by another PCV’s counterpart, and a Thai NGO called Teen Path. They incorporated games and singing to keep the event upbeat. As essential as the couches to any event are the drums and tambourine, which was quickly usurped by a nurse who seemed genuinely disappointed I was playing it incorrectly.

The last day of the training was spent in groups talking about community networking. In the future, these 39 student leaders will have offices next to the community nursing stations in their villages. What services would they like to provide there? How would they like to train their peers? What other organizations could they collaborate with? The results of these sessions were mostly what we expected. The leaders all had a pretty good idea what they wanted out of the project, and what they needed to make it successful. An interesting surprise we got was when two different groups asked to be able to give information on abortions, and where they can be performed. Abortion is illegal in Thailand, and my nurses are strictly against the practice, so this created somewhat of a stir. “What do you think we should do,” the nurses asked me the next day. “I have no opinion,” I answered. But I will certainly enjoy writing my completion report and telling the US gov’t that I just created a volunteer group that is handing out condoms and wants to advertise abortions. Anyone want to bet this is my last project?

One of the advantages of training at an Army base is that we were granted access to a trial of the obstacle course. We separated into groups and made our way to our respective stations, ranging from the log walk to the rope swing. We negotiated obstacles, laughing and enjoying ourselves, me hoping all the while that around the next corner would be Nitro or Blade waiting for me behind a tennis-ball machine gun. Then, the smiles just leaving our faces after the previous activity, we came to the barbed wire mud pit.

Apparently the soldiers didn’t see anything odd, or maybe even sadistic, about making students crawl upside-down through a mud course covered with barbed wire. While I stood by taking pictures, amazed that this was even an option, the kids made it through, one by one, hating life for a few minutes. "There are red everywhere!" they cried. After that obstacle was completed, we were told that the remaining five obstacles were closed down. Apparently the flamethrower evasion drill was closed for repairs.

The camp’s success remains to be seen in that the future village trainings are really our measure of effectiveness. Hopefully the student leaders picked up enough during the three days to help their friends understand AIDS and feel more comfortable about sex education in general. The training itself was similar to what students would receive if they were actually subjected to AIDS education in Thai schools. Hopefully the hospital, TAO, and schools can start to work together more frequently in this area. Officialdom, despite Camus’ caution, is our only option in PC Thailand, but thankfully, imagination is one of the only tools PCVs come equipped with.

P.S.- more about PC Thailand’s work with HIV/AIDS can be viewed at www.pcthailandgigs.org, a resource website we created for PCVs in Thailand and other PC countries.

All the photos from this event can be viewed at my flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75904300@N00/sets/72157594149291930/

Phuket Vacation, One Year Mark

2006-05-25T14:44:00.000+07:00

“There are times when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, and ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Or if it made any difference at all, really. Particularly in comparison with other men’s careers. I don’t know if that kind of thinking is very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time.”
- Colonel Nicholson, The Bridge on the River Kwai

I got on the night train from Khon Kaen to Bangkok last month, after having a few beers to make the noisy sleeper car more bearable. I usually only go to Bangkok for HIV meetings or doctor’s appointments. But this week was my Mid-Service conference, and it finally hit me as I tried to fall asleep on the train. I have less than one year left in this place.

The quote above is from the end of the Bridge on the River Kwai, and struck a chord with me because I can relate to every one of those sentiments. Before leaving for Haiti, we had a training conference to introduce us to the Peace Corps, and the facilitator asked each of us to draw a picture of our deepest fear of our upcoming service. I drew a stick figure with a butt-chin and a very large question mark above his head. That was me, on the day I wake up, look around, and ask myself, “What the hell am I doing here?” I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get past that feeling, or that day.

During times like those, it helps to have a push and a pull as your reasons for coming here in the first place. Escapism and wanderlust are two of my favorite pastimes, but this time, I had chosen to come to Thailand specifically. Student loans and election results aren’t enough to keep you in the Peace Corps. Well maybe student loans. But thankfully I have Thailand pulling me in, my community, work, and friends, and over a month of vacation days to spend in the next year.

The most important reason for me to attend the mid-service conference was to ask my program manager which race track the horses would be running at that Sunday. After a week of reflection, we all needed to go out and do something stupid. Before our beach expedition began, the sport of Kings was just the distraction we needed.

“I’m talking quick bucks. I’m talking magic money. I’m talking sick piles of money. I’m talking lay on your bed in your Vegas room, throw the money in the air and dance as it showers down upon you money. I’m talking frosted-glass limo money. I’m talking big cowboy hat and silver turquoise buckle money. I’m talking GAMBLING.”
- Tom Wilsonberg, Home Movies

Six of us pried ourselves out of our cab, and made our way towards the track, stopping only for binoculars and 7-11 hotdogs. Surprisingly large, all three tiers of the stadium were filled with Thai men, all studying programs, hoping to pick the pony that would let them move back to Isaan. What was even more amazing was that none of them were drinking. I still can’t believe this last sentence; I’m tempted to erase it.

In America, I’d taken quite a liking to horse racing, and had gotten good enough to usually pay for my beer and a hot dog at the end of the day. The trick for me was to pick out the horses in the race that didn’t have a chance to win, and then bet on whatever remaining horse had the longest odds. Well here there are fourteen horses per race, so I was overmatched and didn’t pick a correct one all day. Even in Thailand, there really is nothing like that feeling when your horse is rounding the track, racing down the homestretch. It’s a great social sport, too, as it doesn’t pit fans against each other. It’s everyone against the track.

The first time I went up to the betting window, I was nervous about holding up the line. We only had a few minutes left to bet, and I had noticed a horde of impatient Thais behind me trying to beat the bell.

“Next race, Horse number twelve, two hundred baht, to win,” I said to the already snickering ladies taking the bets. Great, I think they understood. I can get out of here before they run me over.

“You speak Thai. Do you like Thailand?” she asks me.

“Yes I do,” I countered, “Horse number twelve to win, 200 baht please.”

“Is Thailand hot?”

I could already hear the collecting grunting of thirty or so men behind me, swatting flies away with their programs, wondering what the hell was holding the line up. “Thailand is very hot,” I answered.

“Are you married yet?”

“No I am not.” Please print the ticket before I get stampeded. “Horse number twelve, to win, 200 baht please.”

“Do you like Thai people? Are Thais hospitable?”

It was starting to get scary. She was protected by bulletproof plastic in her little hut. The fact that no one was drinking made me realize how serious this was to them. “What’s going on? What’s the problem up there?”

“Can you eat spicy food?”

“Yes I can, I ordered some food already and it’s getting cold. Please let me bet 200 baht on horse number twelve for the next race.”

“Sure, here’s your ticket. Good luck.”

Ding, ding, ding.

“Salt water is good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on land.”
Jimmy Buffet, A Pirate Looks at Fifty

It’s funny, the Thailand on the front of the welcome booklet is not the one that I’ve been living in the past 17 months. I remember drooling over the photo of palm trees and white-sand beaches, thinking I had won the lottery. Then I came and got to experience life on a plateau. A plateau is a hideous, waste of clay. A plateau is where God got lazy. But a plateau is not without irony- constantly hot and dry, flash floods appear at the first drop of unexpected rain. It was high time that I set out to go see those crystal clear waters and jagged mountains of Southern Thailand.

We decided to go to the ultimate tourist beach of Thailand- Phuket. 90% of the beautiful pictures and tourist tsunami stories we associate with Thailand come from Phuket. The beaches were bare, no tourists at all made their way to our portion of the island. And since Thais are scared to death of the sun, we basically had the beach to ourselves every day for two weeks.

For me, vacationing is about relaxing. Having any kind of schedule is anathema. So for us to get all the fun we had in mind out of our systems, we needed a couple of weeks to let them happen at their own pace. I went down with two other guys, and it was a friend of a friend of a friend that lent us the house we stayed in, that made those two weeks affordable.

There were plenty of days that blended into each other, spent sitting at the beach, reading a book, daydreaming. Plenty of time spent pondering how strange this landscape was, the perfectly straight horizon on the sea interrupted by this vertical monstrosity of rocks. How did they get there? They look like they dropped out of the sky, or like giant molars covered with moss.

On the second to last day, we broke the bank and went on a snorkeling trip. Well worth the money. We sped from coral hotspot to famous beaches all day, with 30 minute snorkeling opportunities at each stop. It felt like swimming around in a giant, stuffed aquarium. Fish swam all around us, colorful coral swayed with the tides below us, while we swam around in euphoria, the threat of jellyfish our only worry. We laid out on the beach from “The Beach”. The movie is much more believable while you’re on the island, because you can’t help but fantasize about staying there, and thinking of how you could pull it off.

After the vacation was over, we were all ready to move on. For two of us, it was back to our sites and a new beginning: our final year. For my other friend, it was goodbye. He had served out his two years, plus one year of extension, and was headed back home to the States.

This next year it will be tough to keep my mind in Isaan. I finally have the language ability to get work done at my site, yet will undoubtedly be distracted by the thought of starting anew wherever I land next. For the first time in my service, I’ve stopped counting up when thinking of how long I’ve been here, but started counting down the months I have left.

I don’t know if that kind of thinking is very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time.

View photos of this vacation at http://flickr.com/photos/75904300@N00/sets/72157594148302315/