ICU: Bangkok

Came back from the Bangkok trip today. It's been a while since I've spent any real time in Bangkok. 11 almost 12 years actually. But it was oddly how I remembered it. The only thing that I couldn't find was that smell. There is an odor deeply engrained in me memory of how Bangkok smells. Don't get me wrong, where were plenty of smells and other things to stimulate the senses, but I couldn't find this one.

On the first day, we came off the train and were not allowed to check in to the guest house right away. So we changed into our uniforms in a storage room and off we went to a canal tour. First thing I noticed was Bangkok's public transportation system. I had never been on it before because my mom's friends own cars. These were by far the cleanest subway and trains I have even been in. Everything ran on time, there were ample amounts of trash cans (something I find Chiang Mai lacks) and for Bangkok itself being a not so clean city, it has the best public transport system I have ever experienced. 

For the canal tour we took a long taxi boat and at first we just rode around the canals. There was a dramatic switch from city to residential and back again. Along with this switch you could see the switch in levels of poverty and wealth but it was never a subtle shift. Just different levels of wealthy and different levels of poverty, but still very clearly in those two spectrums only. There were big Buddhas and Wats spread through out and eventually we got dropped off at our first stop which was to look at the Royal Barges Museum. 

Big boats. Very Thai. The museum itself was a pier that had a roof with about 8 or so boats. There were many that referenced the Ramayana in some way, which I'm sure made Ajan Rebecca very happy. Our next stop was Wat Arun, where we got quite a work out going up very steep steps. There were not that many steps, but it was almost verticle.

 Next we went to the Siam Museum. It was aimed toward younger students, but I liked it for that reason. It was more interactive and they used technology in a way I would not expect to see in a museum. It was a good basic overview of the history of Thailand before it was Thailand. 

When we got back to the guest house we watched a movie about 14 October 1973. I wondered where my mom was on that day. The documentary was in Thai with English subtitles and I wondered what we lost in translation, something I wonder a lot recently. After watching the film, we were talked to by a Thai university student named Tony. We were informed before hand that his beliefs were controversial but interesting. 

The next day we went to Duand Prateep Foundation to learn about what they do to help the slums. However, their work was not focused solely on the Klong Toey slum, but to the general well being Thailand. The foundation is lead by Prateep Ungsontham Hata, who was a slum dweller herself and has been helping her community since the age of sixteen. After we had a lecture about what the foundation did we had a tour of their kindergarden where we got to play with some adorable children who would speak to us like we were all fluent in Thai. Then they took us around the actual slum. I hated this. I knew what were were going ot see and how I was going to feel before we even started. We were paraded through the slum in our university uniforms, clearly farang students and  we were meant to look at these people like specimen. They wondered what we were doing there, I wondered what we were doing there, I smiled if I made eye contact as we walked by but mostly people looked irritated to our presence there. I felt rude by being there, like I was saying "yes, you are something to look at." And while I understand the importance of seeing with your own eyes I think there was a better way this could have been done with out alienating both parties. 

Next we went to the Bangkok Refugee center. It was really interesting to hear about refugees and asylum seekers, and how we don't normally think of their struggle in urban settings, but on the borders of Thailand and Burma, for example. But they had so many kinds of refugees, from all around the world and I could not figure how they ended up in Bangkok. We walked around the center and people seemed happy to talk to us, there were some teenage boys who just got out of their english class who practiced speaking with us. We learned more about the logistics of the center then we learned that Duang Prateep Foundation, but I feel like that was because of the nature of each of the organizations. 

That night Maia and I walked around the market near the guest house. There were a lot of people who pointed at me and said to some one near by loog klirng. I didn't know how to take this, but its something that hasn't happened to me in Chiang Mai. When I was buying presents or food from vendors, they would ask me where I was from, I would answer American and if they gave me a funny look I would respond in Thai that my mother is from Lopburi, to which they would give a big head nod and a big smile and continue to talk to me in English. But this didn't just happen at the market, I noticed it whenever I went out. First off, I don't even look Thai, so I don't know how they knew, but this two, now I'm not sure how common it is to be mixed race. Apparently is uncommon enough for people to stare and point. 

The next day we had a "democracy tour" with Dr Paul Chambers. We looked at houses, statues and monuments. Two of the most memorable was the 14 Oct monument, as it was not built until 2001 and there was a big fuss about even building it. The next was the deocracy monument. As Dr Chambers pointed out there are many ways that people actually view this monument and "what it is really depicting". We had lunch at Thammasat University after Dr Chambers showed us around a little more, including the red lift. This was an elevator in which students were massacred by the police when student protesters once again met at Thammasat in October 1976. The students were trying to esacape to the hopped in the elevator and the police ran down the stairs, beat the elevator down and as soon as the doors opened the police opened fire. 

After lunch we went to Wat Prakaew the Royal palace where the Emerald Buddha lives. He was very very tiny but up at the top of a lot of gold big icons that were bigger then him.

 On the walls there were stories of the Buddha's life and out side ordination hall, but still in the Wat there was an amazing mural of the Ramayana which our Arts of South East Asia class took a look at while everyone else went with a tour guide around the wat. Next, some people went to Siriraj Hostpital, to see the forensic museum there. I however, opted to go to Wat Pho, as Philly as the Mutter museum (a fantastic museum that is attached to a medical school. The museum only focuses on medical oddities.) Wat Pho is were the famous reclining Buddha is. It was funny to see the difference between the attention the tiny little Emerald Buddha gets opposed to the attention this huge Buddha gets.  

On our last day, before we got on the train Ginny, Nick, Reid and I went to Chatuchak together. However, we all go unbearably hot and went to the Siam Paragon. It was a big mall, with upscale stores and we spent out time in the book store. Then it was time to get back on the train and head home to Chiang Mai. 

Dinner

So they day before we leave for Bangkok I get a text message from Pii Spam (my mom's best friend's son) Which read: Hey Evie. I'm Now at CNX  if this evening you free just gimme a call.

I call him and he tells me he flew out, just for the day, to see if he could see me. Very important for he mother that he sees me. Mind you I haven't seen Pii Spam since I was nine. So he and hi friends come to pick me up and take me out to dinner at some place by the zoo. They all work for Thai Airways, and are known as some what of a distinctive crew. Honestly, I have no idea what they really meant by this. They used the phrase "man" in most of there sentences. At one point I was eating with a fork and one of pii Spam's friend looks at me and says "Hey man, spoon. Eat with the spoon, its all about the spoon."

They also kept referring to my brother. At first I thought they were talking about 8 years ago,when my Brother came to Thailand on his own when he was 18 and Spam and him hung out. Then I realized, they were talking about Pii Spam as my brother. This took me a sadly long time to figure out when one friend made a dirty joke and then pii Spam laughed really hard mocked covered my ears and said "This is my little sister man, don't do that."

Thats really all I have to say about that night. Hilarious, ridiculous, fun people though. Good people.

The zoo and a cancelled parade

Last night Jess, Seashia, Ginny, Maia and I were going to the gay pride parade in Chiang Mai. Itwas supposed to really big and really fun, and it's been a while since I've seen the gay pride parade in NY but I wanted to compare to two, if nothing else. As soon as we are about to leave in the Song Tao Seashia gets a call that says the parade is cancelled, there was a protest, and there were a lot of Red Shirts. We decided to go anyway, to see the protest but yet again, Seashia got a call, and we were told it was too  dangerous to go. So instead we went to the saturday night market. But as we were driving there we passed a Wat where those who were supposed to be in the parade were being held against their will. As we drove by it didn't necessarily seem to dangerous for us to be there, but we took everyone else's word for it and kept going. Inside the dates of the Wat you could see Red Shirts with machine guns.

And on a much lighter note: Today I went to the zoo. The animals were spread out, and the place was certainly not meant for walking. We had to take a shuttle from place to place and for the zoo having so much property, they kept the animals in relatively small habitats. For anyone who knows me, it is needless to say that the penguins were my favorite exhibit. There was one who kept floating around in the water and trying to scratch and itch he had on his butt, and not looking where he was going he repeatedly swam into the glass. Penguin squish. 

There were otters we could almost pick up, an elephant all by himself who we could feed, another roaming around the zoo watering flowers with his trunk, a white tiger, lions,  primates, giraffes that anyone could pet, alligators, reptiles, rhinos, a nocturnal section and an aquarium. We spent about 5 hours there, and at least an hour of that was us lost trying to orient ourselves. All and all a very productive day. 

ICU : American culture and customs class and English camp

On the 12th Ashley, Misa and I went to be guests in the Cultures and Customs in English speaking Countries class. We introduced ourselves and eventually spit the class unit three groups so that they could ask us questions about American student culture. Because it was around valentines day, we mostly got asked about what we did in that regards. turns out its all very similar. What I found more interesting was the Thai students view on plagiarism. Apparently to plagiarize is common and one guy named Buff said "Of course I do that. I have many papers it is a part of writing them" We spent the second half of class making valentines by writing out names on a piece of paper that would get passed around, and every student would have to write a love phrase on it. Some phrases were written on the board that were taken from candy hearts and some students just wrote phrases that came to their head so I had a valentine at the end of class that had things written on it such as "text me" to "May you have a good love. God loves you." I'm still adjusting to the fact that this is a christian college and frankly I dont think it's something I sill adjust to. Religion has never been a consistent presence in my life. My mother was raised  Buddhist, my father is an atheist , I went to a Quaker elementary school and my grandmother took me to a Unitarian church for a few years just so I could see what a church was like. Actually at the sunday school there they took us to places of other religions just incase one of those really seemed relevant to us, and we wanted to convert, although most of us said we didn't consider ourselves a part of any religion. Really I was told by all of those religions it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are good to the people around you. But I digress...

English camp was fun.  It took place on the 19th at a wat/school. Ashley, Ginny, Kelly, Misa, Ray and I were all assigned a base to teach and play an English game. I was at a base where I would show the kids a piece of cardboard that had a color written on it like pink, but it was written in green. The children split into two teams and had to say the color that the word was written in rather then the one that it said. Whoever got it first got the point.  I explained the game in English and the students of Dr. Pearl translated what I had said. Then we played another game where I would show them a card with a verb written in Englsih and Thai to one student, he or she  would have to act it out, and the other children would have to say what the verb was in English. Some of them were quite simple like "jump" but some were hard to act out like "send". The kids ranged in ages but they were all primary school students. The Thai students of Dr Pearl's class  did all of the planning and most of the work, I felt like there was something more we could have done, but they took care of everything.  I look forward to speaking to some of them again at the language lunch exchange when I get back from Bangkok.

Doi Suthep

On Sunday Reid, Kelly, Ginny, Kanako, Rachel and I went to Doi Sethep, which is a mountain with a little village somewhere on it. As I've been told by the ethnic minority class that had a field trip there, the village is named after the mountain. We walked around and I saw a little bit of the houses but I mostly followed the others who have been there as they walked through the market. There was a lot of jewelry, clothing and food, but at the end of the winding streets (which I normally had to double back through as they lead to dead ends) there was a beautiful beautiful garden. At the last fork in the road you could either go left, and pay to see the poppy museum, or right which lead to the garden. Seeing as a I would spend a lot of money that day, I went to the free garden. 

There were tons of flowers that I had never seen before, and a tall but lightly flowing waterfall that had bamboo pipes that spat the water out in a more concentrated burst so that those who walked by could cool themselves down. Ray ran into one of her ajans from last semester who she really liked. He was playing in the waterfall with his kids when we found him. We worked our way back through the market eventually where Pii Ju was waiting in his song tao to take us to our next stop; Bhubing Palace.

Bhubing Palace is the king's summer palace (one of his summer palaces?) that tourists and I suppose Thais can go to when the king is not there, of course. (I asked Ploy about the name when I got home and she gave me a much longer one) We had to cover ourselves up: no short skirts no shoulders exposed. I was wearing a dress that went down to my knees, nothing short, and Kanako who was wearing shorts down to her knees, but she was told that she had to rent a long skirt before entering, I however was not. Apparently its more modest for a female to wear a skirt than shorts. 

None of us realized that the palace itself would be an all day event. There was a water reservoir were we spent most of our time, and most of our time getting to,  some giant bamboo, a fern garden and a lot of flowers everywhere. The weird thing was, at the kings palace I saw a lot more flowers that I recognized opposed to the garden at the market where I recognized none. Regardless, it was all still quite something to look at. 

Although the palace is closed to visitors at four fifteen, so we had to cut our visit short in order to get down to the exit in time. Our next stop was Wat Pharthat Doi Suthep. I have no idea why this Wat is/was important but it was huge, intricate, and had more icons of Buddhas and monks than I cared to count. I should really ask someone about that...

There was another market at the foot of the Wat. A lot of good food and a lot of shiny things for tourists to stare at. We eventually started to walk up a set of very long, very steep stairs to the actual Wat. There was a sign that says "foreigners this way" with an arrow pointing toward a ticket booth. We got to the booth and told them, in Thai, we were Payap students and they let us in for free. This is one thing that keeps coming up. I am in Thailand, I am a student here, I am a farang, yes, but I am still a student here. As much as I know that I have to haggle down the prices at street markets, I always walk away wondering what they would charge a Thai for whatever I was trying to buy. There is a part of me that enjoys just going to the Carrefour because I know that we are all paying the same fixed price. But this is all a side note. So the Wat:

On our way up Ginny and I got asked by a university student to take her survey about tourism. It asked basic questions like age and gender and what we were doing there and how satisfied were we with everything. In the purpose of visit section of the survey the options were tourist, pilgrimage, religious, art and other. Around the Wat there were people making merit and donations while others only took photos. There were monks roaming around and a few novice monks laughing loudly and knocking on the bells.

There was a gorgeous view of Chiang Mai that was covered by the thick air which made it hard to see. There were flowered trees and a lot of statues of something my mother has told me the name of many times, but I forget what they are called, again. They are the protectors of the wat though, and they look rather fierce. 

We returned to PIH exhausted and full well after dark.

ICU Assignment Two: Observational Exercise

Friday night (The 6th) Some of us went to se a Muay Thai event. I laughed to myself on the song tao ride over because before I left SLC my friends and I thought we would watch the movie "Ong-Bak Thai Warrior" with Tony Ja, which was a hilariously entertaining movie. Muay Thai for the western audience. 

We didn't stay for the whole thing but we watched 9-12 different fights as a group, and a few of us wondered around alone to get the feel of the place. There was even a guy from Iceland who went up against a Thai boxer. He did not fair too well.

From the point of view of a tourist, the two most interesting fights where the youngest boxer who looked six years old and couldn't have been more then eight and another fight that was labeled in the program as "The Big One." 

As I looked away from the fight, I saw a very clear distinction between what farang were doing and what the Thais were doing. Most of the foreigners sat and looked intently at t

he fighters, laughed loudly, made sound effects, and only looked away from the fighting in between rounds. All of them were sitting in the chairs provided. The Thais were more spread out. some wondered around for the best view, and while their focus was on the fighters, of course, they would tap each other in the arm and make what I assumed were jokes (about the fighting and the farang) But most of the Thais were centralized on the left side of the ring (in relation to the entrance) where all of official betting was taking place. There was not a single non-Thai in the bunch. This has been the first time I have seen Thai people get as animated about anything as I would expect an American. Those who were not betting though, seemed as reserved as the sitting  farang. Who would have thought farang  to be the reserved ones?

It was hard to tell who actually worked at the place, with the exception of the door guard and the two men who were wondering from the food stand to sell beer and chips. 

Even the idea of respect plays out in Muay Thai, and not just for the opponents. Before each fight the fighters would ritually warm up as they wore what I can only describe as an oversized ping pong paddle that was hollowed out to make space for their head. There was rope decoratively wrapped around the frame. I asked someone what it was for and he replied "to show respect to their teachers and the training camp they come from. Respect and the head." 

I saw no religious symbols in the are, but about half the Thais that I saw had a Buddha or pendent with a monk on it around their neck.

A interaction between two people I saw was between two of the three people I could identify as workers. One worker carried a bucket with ice and beers in it while the other carried chips in a small plastic basket. The area in which I was sitting had a lot of foreigners. The two did not yell over the crowd though to communicate. The language they used was much more  with their eyes. While they seemingly (and I assume some of the time really did) just wonder through the crowd seeing if anybody stopped them for drinks I also saw one look at one person then look at his co-worker. His co-worker would either nod, shrug or shake his head. If they nodded their heads or shrugged they would go in the general area of that person and spend an extra two minutes asking people around the person they looked at if they would like any snacks or drinks.  While it may seem like a silly example, it reminded me of the importance of body language and facial expressions and how Thailand is the place of many smiles, with many meanings. 

There was a shop outside the actual building where the fighting was taking place but it had boxing magazines in it along with overpriced boxing shorts, jerseys and other things that I can only assume a Thai would not buy. I briefly looked at the cover of the magazines and they all had fighters standing alone in a fierce pose, looking directly at the camera. While I did not get a photo of any of them, some of the magazines had English headlines with Thai written underneath it. 

Flower Festival and a Movie

So the flower festival in Chiang Mai was today. The amount of effort and labor that must have gone into the float alone is mind boggling. When I was told that the flower festival would take place when we were in town the first thing that came to my mind was a doctor in Bangkok.

When I was nine my mother sister and I came out for my mom's friend's funeral, as well as to see her friends and family. My mothers friend's decided to take us around to more touristy parts of Thailand as it was only our second trip in Thailand and I was 3 for the first one so needless to say the memories are fuzzy. Anyway, long story short we were in a water park in Pattaya and since safety rules run a little different here I broke my sister's nose (Its okay though, she had broken mine earlier in the year. I see it as Karma). Luckily my mother and all of her friends are nurses, and it was pretty easy to get Lydia into a room in the Bangkok hospital. 

Since she would be in there for a few days and, as my nine year old self perceived it, got some special treatment, there was a teacher who came in to teach Lydia and I how to make Malai. Her name was Apple, and we spent a few days with really long pointy needles folding rose petals, and although she only formally taught my older sister how to make the body of the  malai I was proud of myself for figuring out how to loop them around and attach it to the pieces that would dangle down (which is what I was taught to make). Before Lydia was discharged from the hospital the doctor told us that every time we smell Jasmine, we should think of him. I still do. My sister and I would go home to the states remembering this skill, one in which I took pride in. The flowers we learned to fold could not even compare to what I saw today. 

We left Paradornparp at 9:30 and didn't leave until 3. There were stands full of  Thai food (authentic and touristy), clothing, crafts ect. It was a good excuse to work on some of the phrases we've been going over in class which relate to bargaining prices down. Normally when I try to speak Thai everyone just replies in English but I'd like to say that only half of the vendors did that today. Improvement Woo! But I still get nervous and forget half the phrases anyway. I ate a lot today. A lot. 

Once everyone was ready to leave half of us went back to the dorms and the other half went to see a movie in the mall. Champ was able to drive us there in his car but it was a tight squeeze. We saw a Thai comedy called Red Cliff 2. It certainly was not an American comedy. There was a lot of slapstick, silly sound effect and some jokes I'm pretty sure I didnt get simply because the subtitles didn't translate to well. But it was interesting to see when the entire theatre burst into laughter and the farang just looked a little confused.

Tomorrow, my roommate, Ploy,  has her mother coming to visit. She wants to meet me and Ploy told me that I should bring Ginny along. (I can only assume that Ploy told her Ginny was my friend from home.) I have no idea what we are doing but I know we are going out, and I think Ploy mentioned something about elephants. One thing to know about me is that pretty much all animals (with the exceptions of spiders and centipedes) make me swoon. I love them all. When I decided I was coming to Thailand one of my first thoughts was, "man, I'm going to  get to play with elephants. I will make it happen." 

It seems a little weird to me that  Ploy's mom would take us out to see elephants, but if htat actually what's happening I'm pretty excited. Elephants. Yes.