Songkran madness in Chiang Mai!

Last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday was the biggest water fight on earth known as Songkran, the Thai New Year festival. It is the one time of the year when Thai is pitted against foreigner in an all out war using buckets of water, water guns, anything that can be used to be most effective in soaking your enemy best. I think of it as the time of the year when Thais can get revenge on farang. I was really excited for it because it has been what everybody has been waiting for over these last few months. On Monday around noon a bunch of us from PIH packed into the songtao and headed into town. I got the first taste of what its like when someone throw a bucket of water into the songtao. It felt like a bomb had hit us. There was so much traffic but eventually we got to the downtown area where the moat is. There were people throwing water all over Chiang Mai. The majority of people, especially foreigners, seemed to be concentrated along the moat area. Pictures and words don’t do Songkran much justice. Its one of those things that you just have to be there to really experience it. Everybody is in high spirits, it was hot and sunny and everywhere you look water is being hurled into the air. We got lunch at a restaurant near Tapae Gate. I got a tuna fish sandwhich for fourty baht and it was the best fourty baht tuna sandwhich i’ve had in Thailand. We saw Sam and his sister, who was visiting him from the US. We saw them somewhere along the moat where there was a bar and loud music and tons of people. As soon as I spotted the rope swing into the moat I had to try that. The group eventually split up and me, Bintou, and Seashia caught a topless tuk-tuk to the central plaza. Being in a tuk-tuk, especially one without a roof, is not the best idea if you want to avoid getting water hurled at you. We saw Ajarn Jessica after we got dropped off, then fought throw a crowd of hundreds of people where a concert was going on, and made it into the mall. Why we went to a shopping mall during Songkran I have no idea. At the end of the day I got dinner with Seashia and Bintou at the Amazing Sandwhich, owned by a German expat. Bintou’s friend met up with us and we all got rotee down the street, a perfect end to a good day.

Tuesday morning I got woken up with a call from Rachel, who said she was with Nola, the Burmese girl I met the day before, and she wanted to hang out. I got up to get ready and got another call from Kift and her friends from Chiang Mai University, who were all outside with a pickup truck waiting for me. We all left PIH in the back of the pickup truck. We got lunch before heading into Chiang Mai. We rented a tuk-tuk. Fill the trash barrel on the tuk-tuk up with moat water, add one huge block of ice, and you have a whole lot of ice water. Suddenly not as many people want to slash you, and if they do you get them back good. With all six of us soaking wet and packed on the tuk-tuk, we drove slowy through the crowded streets. Traffic was the most fun, because people in the backs of pickup trucks usually have multiple trash barrels of water and with all the other people on the street throwing water too there is nowhere to hide from getting splashed. After we were done with the tuk-tuk we walked around the moat area through the crowds of thousands of people. I swam across the moat with Nola and jumped off the bridge while Kift and her friends were playing in the street. I found this really awesome mudslide into the moat. I got a short running start and as soon as I hit it I went flying down the incline and into the water. It was so much fun.

Wednesday was the last day of Songkran. Everybody had left PIH the day before. Seashia, Dao, and Rachel went to Nong Khai. Shannon, Kathy, Mercy, and Laura went to Sukhothai. Reid, Misa and everyone else went to Koh Chang. All the Thai students were on summer break and even if they were staying at PIH they were gone for Songkran. Me and Bintou owned PIH for the next few days. It was only me and her that stayed back (because we’re the good students). PIH really was a ghost town after that. There was nobody. Anyway, I called Bintou and Nola around two o‘clock to go into Chiang Mai. We got a tuk-tuk and went in together. Being the smart college kids we are, we closed the windows in the songtao to avoid getting splashed, which made Thais laugh when they threw water at the window and realized it didn’t go in. We walked around for a bit. Although this was the last day of Songkran, it didn’t feel like it had died down all that much. There was still quite a few people around the moat and Tapae Gate, of course not nearly as many as on Monday or Tuesday. I went swimming in the moat again with Nola. We went to Mike’s Burgers for lunch and ate while being splashed with buckets of water. After, we walked down a side street and found a songtao to take us back to Payap. So I guess swimming in the moat might not have been the best idea because on Wedneday night I got incredibly sick and ended up going to McCormick hospital on Thursday. Songkran was the most fun I’ve had in Thailand and I’ll make sure I’m here for it next year too.

Malaysia

A nine-year-old girl was spending time with her grandparents in Kansas. The grandfather was away, so she was sleeping with her grandmother. Suddenly, she awoke in the middle of the night to see her elderly grandmother sitting up in bed and a man standing over her, dripping with rain and with a wooden club in his hand, ready to strike. The little girl felt a scream rising, and then her grandmother touched her hand and she felt a flood of calm wash over her. The grandmother said to the man, “I am glad you found our house. You’ve come to the right place. You are welcome here. It is a bad night to be out. You are cold, wet, and hungry. Take the firewood you have there and go stir up the kitchen stove. Let me put some clothes on, and I will find you some dry clothes, fix you a good hot meal, and make a place for you to sleep behind the stove where it is good and warm.” She said no more but waited calmly. After a long pause, the man lowered the club and said, “I won’t hurt you.” She then met him in the kitchen and cooked him a meal, gave him the dry clothes, and made a bed up for him behind the stove. The grandmother then went back to her bed and she and her granddaughter went back to sleep. They awoke in the morning to find the man gone.

At about 10 A.M., the police arrived with a canine unit that had followed the man’s scent to the house. They were shocked to find the grandmother and granddaughter still alive. The man was a psychopathic murderer who had escaped from prison the night before and had brutally slaughtered the family who were the nearest neighbors.

This amazing grandmother had created so much emotional bonding with the intruder that he could not kill her. She had treated him with a kindness and respect that had disarmed him both literally and figuratively. The fact is people do not kill people; they kill things or objects.

– Hostage at the Table by George Kohlrieser

A situation with my passport was the reason for my spontaneous weekend trip to Malaysia. I needed to go Kuala Lumpur to get a visa and with more excursions and final exams in the coming weeks, I decided it would best for me to go right away while I still had free time on my hands. So I booked a plane ticket midweek and left as soon as I got out of class on Friday. The ride to Bangkok was long, about 9 hours but still cheaper and faster than the train. I arrived in Bangkok around 5:00am the next day. Half asleep, hungry, and disoriented, I managed to plow my way through tuk-tuk drivers to find the metered taxis. I’ve become numb to the “where you go!?” yells. The minute you stop and show the slightest bit of vulnerability, they will be all over you. I picked a random taxi and got in. I told him to go to the airport. This guy was crazy. He had American pop music cranked on the radio (though I’m sure he didn’t understand any of it), with subs in the trunk, and I clocked him at 160 km/h. The fact that it was 5 oclock in the morning made it twice as fun.

My flight was at 9:00am so I had to wait around in the airport. On the plane I sat next to a guy who’s been living in KL for 15 years. He originally came for business, but ended up staying, getting married, having children, and settling down there. When I got off the plane, I walked outside and to an employee. On impulse I said “sawatdee k..” and then it hit me that I wasn’t in Thailand anymore and I was back to square one with the language barrier. I got on a bus to KL. Sat next to a guy from Brunei and he told me all about the advantages of living in Brunei. Basically, Brunei citizenship is like gold. I say this from what I’ve heard from both him and from others.

KL was first settled by the Chinese for tin mining in the 1860s. Its original name was “Pengkalan Lumpur” which translates to bundle of mud. Tin from KL was sold to America and Britain, both who become dependent on the country’s lightweight and durable metal for use in the industrial revolution. War broke out in Malaya in 1868 over the metal and Britain was called upon to help. Intially reluctant to intervene in Malaya’s politics, the British Empire agreed because of its desire for the tin. It was the beginning of Britain’s presence in Malaya. KL soon became a model city of British colonialism. In 1957 a communist insurgency pushed the British out and Malaya gained its independent. Malaya was renamed Malaysia in 1963.

Today Malaysia is a muslim country and has a large Chinese and Indian influence. My first impression of Malaysia was that it was very much cosmopolitan and clean. The first place in the city I explored was Little India. I had the taxi driver drop me off here and I talked with some of the locals before getting some delicious curry chicken and freshly baked Nan bread. Indian food is my favorite and it was a good change from the Thai food I eat in Chiang Mai everyday. I had a lengthy talk with one Pakistani shop owner about Islam and western misperceptions of it, how it is written about in western news.

The night before I left Payap I talked with two Malaysian students at PIH that were in Chiang Mai on a study tour or something, and they suggested with my short time in KL that I should plan to go to the national reservation, a jungle with a cool rope bridge. I didn’t look into it much but after wandering after getting to KL and realizing all the time I had on my hands till Monday when the embassy would open, I wanted something to do for the weekend. For this I referred to my Lonely Planet (thnx Kaitlin!). A Lonely Planet book is a necessity for traveling, I would be lost without it. Taman Negara was the name of the reservation, 4000 sq/k of pristine jungle with lots to do. I went right to the train station, figured out how to get to the bus station, found the one and only ticket window selling bus tickets to Jerantut (gateway city to Taman Negara) only to be told “bus full already” by the man behind the window. It was really disappointing, the last bus of the day to Jerantut, and although I was 30 minutes early, all the tickets had been sold. I really wanted to go and I was upset about this for the rest of the day, but now that I think about it I think it was a good thing I didn’t go because it would have been too rushed. I found a guesthouse in my book, close to Chinatown and the rest of the night life, and stayed there for the night.

I can’t imagine how much of a tourist I looked like walking alongside the road on Sunday morning with my big map of KL, overstuffed backpack, and a puzzled look on my face as I tried to navigate my way to the National Mosque. When I got there I was given a purple robe to wear over my clothes. In Islam men must cover their knees and I had shorts on. While I was having myself a look around, one of the mosque volunteers asked if I had free time. I sat down with him and we talked about Islam for two hours. Many other tourists came and went as we sat and talked. I talked with a

woman who was also a volunteer. There is no clergy in Islam. If the president or prime minister of a country comes to a mosque and is late for prayer, he sits in the back. He also told me that on Fridays the National Mosque swells to 15,000 people for prayer, with people even outside on the streets when room runs out. When it was time for afternoon prayer, all tourists had to leave. I walked across the street and haggled the price on some Malay food for lunch.

I went to the Islamic Arts Museum, which was just down the street from the mosque. Islamic art does not depict humans or animals because this could lead to idolatry, which is forbidden in Islam and written in the Quran. Instead, beautiful calligraphy is used on pottery and manuscripts among many other things. I think Arabic is one of the most beautiful scripts and going there just to see the calligraphy was worth it. Islamic artists express themselves through this calligraphy. Another form of Islamic art is Arabesque art, which is the use of geometrical patterns on the art. Shapes are repeatedly arranged to make beautiful patterns and designs. The museum had a big display of decorative art. I saw carpets, manuscripts, woodwork and metalwork, and woven textiles, things that you could decorate your home with. There were also scaled models of mosques from all over the world, which was awesome. This museum is a must for anyone passing through Kuala Lumpur.

I went back to the Golden Triangle area of town to look for a good guesthouse. Right next to the Taj Mahol Hotel was a small hostel called Bedz KL. In front was a table and a group of young people were sitting with a Malay man. One of the guys said it had the best showers. He was right! I don’t know how to explain it but the shower inside was just awesome, cool would be a better word for it. From the outside the hostel looked basic, but inside was very clean, the rooms were dorms with 14 people in each room, bunk beds, tv and computers downstairs, and the owner was just a cool guy. This place was a good pick and only 30 Ringgit/night ($10). Later that night I walked into town to see a movie. I chose at random – Taken. And that too was a good pick, the movie was badass and I highly recommend it.

The next day I woke up early, packed up all my stuff, and got a taxi to the embassy. Next stop was the Petronas Towers. I waved down a taxi and got in the front seat. I heard someone in the backseat, turned around, and there was some guy. We started talking. He said he was a professor/hostage negotiator. We both got out at the towers. He took me into a bookstore and showed me his book, Hostage at the Table. The quote at the beginning of this entry is from the first chapter of the book. Definitely some powerful stories in that book. I got some lunch a Pakistani/North India/Bangladesh restaurant (see photo). Everybody working there was really nice. I had come the night before to eat so they remembered me. I got a taxi to the airport that ended up costing me 80 Ringgit. I sat next to a man from southern India on the way back to Bangkok. He was on his way to South Korea. I ended up having to spend the night in Bangkok and caught the Chiang Mai bus in the morning. For some reason the ride seemed three times as long on the way back, made it back around 9:00pm. So the trip was a success. I got what I went there for and made it back just in time for the Nan trip and for the ajarns not to kill me for being late.

Hilltribe Museum, Language Lunch Exchange #2

On Friday the ethnic minorities class took a trip to the Hilltribe Museum in Chiang Mai, because Ajarn Otome was in Nan province. We left from Payap at 11:00 in the songtao, with Peejew as our driver as always. He stayed with us at the museum and waited while we looked around, because we were only there for an hour. The museum was on a piece of land in the middle of a lake and there were many shops alongside the lake where you could eat and drink. I thought it was a great location. The museum had lots on display and to read. I really liked the household things from the traditional houses that they had on display as well as the hilltribe mannequins in traditional clothing. It’s definitely a great place for anyone passing through Chiang Mai to check out before they go to hilltribe villages around Chiang Mai. At 12:10 we all got back in the songtao and headed back to Payap.

I walked to the canteen with Bintou, Dao, Reid, and some others for the language lunch exchange with Thai students. This would be my second one. I got gwit-diow bet (noodles with duck). This is probably my favorite Thai dish, I could never get sick of it. We all sat together. I sat at the end of the table and there were three Thai girls sitting near me that I talked to. Dao was next to me and talked with the same three that I did. We talked about basic things like where we are from, about Thailand and food, family, school in Thailand and the US, etc. The idea of the lunch exchange is to help the Thai students practice their English. As far as I know, all of them were English majors. I like doing the lunch exchanges. They are fun and a good way to interact with the Thai students.

Peck’s Birthday

Friday was Peck’s birthday and which turned out to be a really fun night. Friday was pretty routine I would say. I had Thai Studies in the morning, then Ethnic Minorities, then had a midterm in Thai Language in the afternoon. At 6:00 everybody met in the lobby. It took three songtaos to take everybody. Songtao literally means “two lanes” and it is the popular form of a taxi here in Chiang Mai. It is a pickup truck with a cap, always red, with two rows of benches in the back. I got into the last songtao, the one with the Chinese and Japanese exchange students. I didn’t know where we were going, but Peck told us it was a very nice restaurant, that’s all I knew. After about fifteen minutes of driving, the road started to get very steep. As we were driving up hill, the songtao slowed to eventually a stop and then started to roll back. It was clear to everyone at that point that it just wouldn’t make it up the hill with all of us in the back. We all got out and tried to push but that didn’t work out so well. The songtao kept stalling. We walked up the hill only to find another hill, even steeper. The songtao driver was giving the songtao everything it had to make it up the hill and it just barely made it.

The restaurant, Palaad Tawanron, was on the side of the mountain, with a picturesque view of Chiang Mai in the distance. It was night too so it was even better. This was a definitely the nicest restaurant I’ve been to so far in Thailand and a good pick by Peck. I sat at the table with the Chinese students and Sam. Unfortunately the food was a little out of my price range so I didn’t get anything. After buying meals everyday for 25 baht, seeing 300+ baht on a menu for a dish seems ridiculous. The ambiance was nice there and there was a live band playing and walking around the restaurant with their guitars as they played. We sat outside on the balcony. If I had to guess I would say there was probably 35 or 40 of us. I talked with a bunch of Peck’s friends. There were many.

When dinner was finished it was decided that we would go to Fabrique, the best club in Chiang Mai, to celebrate Peck’s birthday. We got there early so we were able to get two tables for our group. Peck brought whiskey for everybody. There was a live banding playing and sometimes they would play English songs. They played “I’m Yours” and it seemed like everybody liked this song. I remember the first time I heard that song I was on Koh Phi Phi wandering around at night and one of the locals had it playing on the radio. I left Fabrique around midnight to get food because I was so hungry. I asked some people across the street where there was food and they offered me a ride on a motorbike. I had kow mung gai across the street at a shop along the main road. My friends saw me as they were driving by and stopped to say hi. After being in Bangkok I’ve noticed how quiet it is in Chiang Mai at night, it’s really nice. I walked back to Fabrique, saw Evie, Ginny, and some others outside. They were ready to back to PIH, so I went back to say bye to everyone and went back outside. There were a lot more people outside waiting to go when I went back outside, I think because word got around that some people wanted to go back. We walked down the street, flagged down a songtao and were on our way back to PIH.

BKK

When I ask Chiang Mai people about Bangkok I usually get one of two answers: I don’t like Bangkok..or..Bangkok is so fun, it has everything I need. Well I was able to see for myself from the four days I was there with students and teachers and now I have an understanding of both of these perspectives. But to begin this entry I’ll start from the beginning. Last Tuesday we caught the 6:00pm train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. The train ride to Bangkok was long but the time passed quickly and we were able to sleep most of it through since it was an overnight train. Someone had the good idea to take the train rather than the bus.

I woke up the next morning around 7:00, gathered my stuff, and literally within three minutes we were off the train and on our way to the guesthouse by foot. After spending a month in sleepy Chiang Mai and rural mountain villages, I was a little overwhelmed with Bangkok at first. There were lots on the agenda for the first day. First was a canal tour of Bangkok, which was both amazing and relaxing. We stopped to see Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn). It was an intense climb to the top of the Wat and on the way up I heard someone say that foreigners have fallen off it in the past! After the boat tour was lunch along a street lined with vendors. The group split up. I ate with Bintou, Nick, and Ajarn Marcus at a Thai restaurant with aircon and had gwit-diow geng (noodles with curry) and rice. We went to the Museum of Siam. It’s a newly built interactive museum. The exhibits were great and there was lots to read about. I think everybody was just happy to be out of the heat and in the aircon. I think it was the walking around that got to people, not so much the heat, but it was noticeably more humid in Bangkok than in Chiang Mai. After the museum we had free time to ourselves, so naturally everybody went back to the guesthouse to take showers. We had a movie showing in the lobby at 5:00 about the 6 October 1976 Massacre of students during peaceful protests around Thammasat University. We also had the honor of hearing from the very outspoken Tony, a political science major at Chulalongkorn University in the heart of Bangkok. I was stunned by his English. It was some of the best I’ve heard from a Thai student so far. He seemed to be very passionate about Thai politics and gave his honest and unorthodox opinion about the political climate in Thailand now and prospects for the future of Thai politics. Okay so after the discussion is when the night started getting interesting. Let me just say that I didn’t know what a “ping pong show” was before that night and when Reid asked me to go with them to a “ping pong show” I thought he meant this literally. Anyways, that’s later on. First we went to an Irish Pub close to the guesthouse and hung out there for a while. My friend from Bangkok stopped by briefly with her friend from work. Mercy and I set out on a mission for rotee but instead decided to follow the others to the market for shopping. Looking like a tourist, I approached a man selling very illegal and very pirated DVDs. He sounded firm when he said 100 baht for the DVD I wanted. But when I used my Thai and said I was a student he immediately dropped the price down to 70. We wandered around the market for a bit, always getting separated and meeting back up. Around 11:30 I went back to the hotel, because the Ajarns clearly stated that we should be in before midnight. But everybody else had other things planned, so I ended up going back out and meeting up the others again. Tony, with honest and good intentions I think, brought us all to an upstairs club for the ping-pong show. For those who don’t know about it, you’re going to have to google or wikipedia it because it would be inappropriate for me to go on any further about it. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but I’m sure it would of made an interesting facebook album, don’t you think so?

We stayed in the Bangkok Christian Guesthouse off Silom Road. Thursday was a day for us to hear from what some of the local NGOs are doing. We took the skytrain to Klong Toey and went to the Duang Prateep Foundation. This NGO helps people living in Klong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum. This NGO is doing a lot of really good things for the people who live there. Without education early on, slum life can be easily become a vicious cycle of poverty and the Duang Prateemp Foundation is doing a lot to work against this by helping the children. We took a tour of the Klong Toey slum, which I think some of the other students had some mixed feelings about. But poverty is not something that should be ignored and we don’t see much of it in Chiang Mai, at least not around where we stay. It felt much hotter and I felt a little claustrophobic as we walked through because everything is so close together. A lot of the people there have problems with debt. I’m sure the others wouldn’t agree with me, but I feel this may have been the most meaningful thing we’ve done this semester. The next NGO we went to was the Bangkok Refugee Center, which dealt with people living in exile in Thailand. When I think of refugees in Thailand the first thing that comes to mind is ethnic minorities from Myanmar and Laos along the border regions. So it was interesting to hear about urban refugees and I was surprised when I heard how many countries the refugees come from. I talked with sat and talked for a while with some students around my age from Sri Lanka. They said that they want to go back to Sri Lanka but they cannot. Thailand is a good place for refugees because, especially Bangkok, it is ethnically diverse and they are able to blend in easily, especially among the countless tourists. The Refugee Center is a safe place for them to go to if they are ever in trouble. According to what we were told, the Thai police cannot enter the complex.

From 4:00pm on it was free time. At night we went to the same market again not far from the guesthouse. It just so happened that the street with all gay bars happens to be the most fun place to hang out at night around there. So we drank at a gay bar, called 9 Nine I think, towards the end of the street. Some of the others were drinking at a bar at the other end. The Cabaret Show with katoeys (ladyboys) was the highlight of the night, there’s no doubt about that one. One katoey sang a really slow and I guess sad Thai song, way melodramatic and way over the top to the point of unnecessary (but I guess that was the point). Anyway, she was pretending to cry when suddenly large amounts of snot started to just run all down her face, it was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen and too awesome to describe. I’m not sure how they did that with effects but it was well done. I’m so mad nobody got a picture of that. I looked around and everybody in the club was laughing hysterically. For a minute I think even she was laughing when she put her head down.

Friday morning I woke up two hours before everybody else and made sure I was visibly downstairs to eat breakfast, the first one, at 7:00am sharp. I’ve been running a little late for things and so I wanted to get make sure I was up and ready for Friday. Strange enough, when I went back up to the room at 9:15 Reid and Nick were both still fast asleep. If I hadn’t gone back to the room I’m not sure if they would have woken up in time. We set off for the democracy tour of Bangkok with Ajarn Paul Chambers at 9:30. All of what we were being taught on this tour was all new to me and it was great to visit the places where events took place. We went to the street near Thammasat University where most student protests in Thailand have taken places and the point where people congregate during protests. We ended the tour at Thammasat University and saw the red elevator that students were machine gunned down in by Thai soldiers because they were not able to close the door in time. I had lunch at the university with Tony and some others. After lunch, some people went to see some wats, but I went with Ajarn Marcus and some others to the Forensic Medicine Museum. We took a boat across the river. The museum had bodies of murders, dead babies in formaldehyde, brains of people that had died in every way imaginable, and all kinds of other stuff. There were some really good exhibits too. After that we went to Wat Pra Kaew, which is the most sacred wat in Thailand, site of the Emerald Buddha, and often visited by the Royal Family. This place was incredibly beautiful and the temples were very impressive. The Emerald Buddha is actually made from jade, as our tour guide told us. No photographs were allowed to be taken inside the temple. You were only allowed to stand outside and take a photo looking in. I went inside and sat down and watched as many tourists around me snuck photos of the Emerald Buddha, with total disregard for the Thai man standing behind us as he repeatedly said “no photo.” If I had his job I would hate foreigners. The one thing that they ask people not to do is to take photos of the Emerald Buddha, and still people did, even as they were being told not to by an employee standing nearby. I don’t like being around touristy places and it upset me when I see people being so blatantly disrespectful. I walked around and talked with Dao for a bit while we tried to find the rest of the group.

Dinner for Friday night was originally scheduled to be at Little India, but plans got changed and instead we ate at an Indian restaurant not far from the guesthouse. It was definitely the best meal I had while I was there and one of the highlights of the trip without a doubt. It was expensive, and we had to pay for the ice, but it was worth it. After dinner we went to the night market again down the street, where all the shops and bars are. We drank at the same gay bar again, it seemed to be everyone’s favorite and I liked it too. We went to another katoy show but tonight was special because it was the “Grand Opening” (every Friday was the “Grand Opening”). This just meant the show was a bigger. It was 200 baht, double what we had paid the night before. It was a great show and I think everybody had a lot of fun. I talked with a Thai man and Canadian man who both lived in Canada and were in Bangkok for a while visiting. After the show it was rotee then back to the guesthouse.

Saturday we had to ourselves. I woke up to a text message from my friends, Oh and Moo, saying that they would be at the guesthouse to pick me up in a half hour. I met them downstairs in the lobby and we decided to go to the aquarium, which happens to be the biggest aquarium in Southeast Asia. When we got there I saw that we could pay extra and get a package deal to see the 4D movie and the boat ride. I read the sign – 950 baht. Oh kept saying 500 baht but I didn’t know what she was talking about because what I was reading said 950 baht. Then she told me that the sign next to it, which was in Thai, said 500 baht for Thai people. It was written out in Thai so foreigners couldn’t read the different price. I told the guy at the counter that I was a student, showed him my Payap card, and paid the 500 baht Thai price. We had a lot of fun at the aquarium. I want to go back again next time I’m in Bangkok. After the 4D move (its called 4D I think because it was 3D and also had motion and other effects too), we got lunch upstairs in the Siam Paragon mall upstairs, one of the biggest malls in Asia. We all got different food so we split up and I got lost when I tried to find our table but luckily Oh saw me and called me over. It was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, food court I’ve been to. We got back on the skytrain and I went back to the guesthouse, packed up my stuff, had a meeting upstairs to discuss our time in Bangkok with Ajarn Adam, and got back on the skytrain with everybody to go to the train station for the 13 hour train ride back to Chiang Mai. I woke up on Sunday to bright lights and Ashley shaking me telling me to get up. Within minutes I was off the train and back in Chiang Mai. Bangkok was so much fun but I was glad to be back in Chiang Mai.

Holistic Health Seminar

The Worldwide Holistic Health Seminar on Friday was held at the Empress Hotel Convention Center. We  missed Thai Studies class and Ethnicity class but from what we were told the seminar is a very big event and the Ajarns felt that it was an important one for us to see. We left PIH around 8:45 in the songtao and got there early. By the what I first saw in the hotel it seemed to me like this was a pretty official and well organized event. There were stands set up everywhere both downstairs and upstairs selling products related to holistic health. The hotel convention center itself was very nice and a great place to have an event like this. Before we went in I heard somebody say that the president of The Gambia was not here to make his speech. I felt bad for Bintou because she was suppose to present flowers to him and had dressed up for it. We sat together in the back for the seminar. There were people from so many different countries that had come to attend this seminar and they were introduced in the opening ceremony. There was a powerpoint presentation given about holistic health. Although I don’t know much about this it was a good presentation but to be honest I didn’t understand everything that was being said. The topic was “Spiritual health is the basis of all health.” The president of Payap gave a speech too. The president of The Gambia had not come, but someone from The Gambia had come to represent him and give a speech. Bintou presented flowers to him. At the end, they asked all students and teachers from Payap to join in on the group photo. It was a great seminar and I think it would have been interesting to hear the rest of the speeches and go to the rest of the seminars over the weekend if we could.

Language Lunch Exchange and Warorot Market

The language lunch exchange on Tuesday was a great idea. I wasn’t sure which table to sit at but I started talking with a couple Thai students when I got there and so I sat with them. I sat at a table with about eight or nine other Thai students and Seashia. I got gwit-diow (noodles) and I think everybody else did too. It seemed like they were a little nervous at first. We talked in English the whole time about things like where we were from, about of family, and about Thailand. I think this lunch exchange was a great idea and it would be great to do again during the semester.

Today I went to the Warorot Market with Ashley. It was my first time going there. As we were walking I heard Ginny call to us and she was with Evie, Jess, and Seashia. I ate lunch with Ashley in the basement of some food market. We sat down at a table to eat our gwit-diow and there were two monks sitting at the table behind Ashley. They were eating gwit-diow too. I thought that monks weren’t allowed to buy anything? And even if that was given to them, I thought they were only allowed to eat from their alms bowls?

Movie Theatre Observations

On Wednesday, February 11 I went to the movies with my friends after dinner. Although I’m sure it’s not the most interesting place I could have chosen for this assignment, I’ve decided to write my observation about what I noticed here. As we waited and talked in the lobby before the movie I noticed so much happening around me that reminded me of home, but my inability to understand any of the conversations people around me where having, including my friends, was a constant reminder of where I was. Going to the movies is something I’ve done with my friends back home for as long as I remember and now I’m at the movies with my friends here in Thailand. The first difference I noticed was when we were getting tickets. We chose our seats in the theatre, which I’ve never had to do before. Also, seeing a movie at the theatres is notoriously expensive in the United States, while here a single ticket is only about three dollars, it seems expensive to me because that three dollars could go a long way. I didn’t see any foreigners as I sat in the lobby with my friends. There were young people all around me that looked to be around the same age as me. Each one was with a friend or in a group and seeing this made me realize that we are not really that much different. From what I see, the younger generation of Thai people are in more ways similiar than different from Americans.

It’s not difficult to see globalization at work here. The theatre lobby is strikingly similiar to one I would see back home. Popcorn, soda, all the things I would get at a movie theatre back home is available at the concession here. Even the movie we saw, Defiance, was an American movie. When we first walked into the theatre everybody was standing. I didn’t know what was going on, but when I saw the King on the movie theatre screen I assumed that what was playing on the screen was to pay tribute to him and that was the reason for everyone standing. I was not told about this by anyone beforehand so it came as a suprised to me. This is what stood out most to me during my time at the theatre that differed the most from what I would see at a movie theatre in my country. The movie was in English and I sat and watched, while my friends beside me had to read the subtitles in Thai to understand what was going on. The place of American films in Thailand is further evidence of globalization at the movie theatre.

My Third Week in Chiang Mai

This is the first time I’ve ever had a blog so I’m not sure exactly what to write about, or rather what people want to hear. I’ll start by saying that my name is Zach and I’m an anthropology major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I’m in Chiang Mai, Thailand studying at Payap University for this spring 2009 semester. I was in Myanmar and Laos before coming here. So far everything has been incredible and I’ve landed in a really good place with some of the nicest people. I’m really interested to see what other people write as I will most likely be part of their experiences, or at least hear about them before they get posted.

This is the first week of elective classes so I’m beginning to get into a routine, which is good for me. Last week was the Thai Studies village stay in Mae Chaem. There’s a lot to say about that. Nick, Reid, Champ, and I stayed with Nick’s host family from last semester. Our “meh” (mother) and “pi sao” (big sister) treated us like family. Dinner was something I looked forward to everyday. Swimming in waterfalls, helping construct a village crematorium, and making “kanoom” (Thai dessert) with the locals were some of the highlights of that week. It seemed like gathering for meals was when we had the most meaningful conversations. It was very peaceful there and I hope to visit again soon.

If there is one thing I get out of this semester I hope it is to grasp the Thai language. That is my goal while I am here and I’m glad I have the opportunity to study Thai here at Payap. I also hope to establish good friendships with students and locals here as well.

This program seems to be well structured and so I have no doubt that it be a good experience for all us farang (foreigners). I am hopeful that we will all have close friendships with one another as well as with Thai students here by the end of the semester. I also hope that I can learn Thai by both studying it and using it here in Chiang Mai. I think that we will all have some great experiences during the excursions we do with Payap this semester.

Blog for Intercultural Understanding