Doi Suthep pictures

This post is mainly for pictures, since I haven't posted any in the last few posts. This morning I climbed Doi Suthep with three other farangs and a Thai woman. On the top of the mountain there is a wat, or temple. This particular wat is somewhat of a tourist attraction and now costs 30 baht per person for entrance. While walking up this staircase Linda was able to strike up a conversation with some Mong children. I didn't get a picture of them because they were charging a fee for pictures of them. I think its kind of sad that these children are being used for a sort of child labor.

On the way up we passed through several wats so I took a few shots of them. There's a picture of a cave with something like eleven Buddha images. Then below that I have two stone lions protecting the wat from spirits. These are actually very common all over in front of every wat you find. Sometime I'll have an opportunity to attend a monk talk, I think I'll ask them about these lions. Lastly I took a mountain outlook of Chiang Mai.

Success and distress

Today I find myself feeling very successful. I summoned a song tao and negotiated a price for Billy, Mark and I to get to the mall. I tried negotiating in Thai, but the driver knew his English numbers and so the scene was with me holding up three fingers and saying "houg sib", and him holding six fingers and saying "sixty". Apparently we were saying the same thing, except he was multiplying 20 and 3 in his head.

I also successfully ordered khao soy at the mall. I think it's my favorite dish here. Melinda took me to an export store this morning and I bought three shirts and two pairs of pants suitable for work all for 420 baht ($12). These clothes of course all have some sort of defect, some of them nasty dirty, of course not the ones I picked up though. This is how it is possible for Thais to live on 170 baht a day.

Towards the end of the work week I had been feeling somewhat glazed over all day long. You could say its from the stress of a different culture or language, or from the jet lag, or the lack of coffee, or any number of things. I don't really know what it is, but it gets hard to work and even harder to communicate effectively later in the evenings. I end up feeling somewhat cut off from society both here and back home.

One of my biggest desires is to be able to hop on a song tao or walk into some public place and strike up a meaningful conversation with a Thai person. I don't really care much what language this conversation should be in so long as it's meaningful. There's so much I'd like to learn about this place. Someone here told me about how he liked living in Papua New Guinea because he was very motivated to learn the language and integrate himself with the culture. Here in Chiang Mai, however, he doesn't feel like there is a need to learn Thai, and that even if he did the social structure wouldn't allow him to really form strong relationships with Thais. There are people who have learned the language and penetrated the social ranks, but they've dedicated themselves to the task; if I were to do this I would have to split my attention with working on software engineering at the office.

Flaming Lips Disease

After nearly a week of living here I'm finally able to stay up a little later than 10 without getting overly tired. The jet lag is wearing off. I'd like to blog to you today about a disease I discovered and very quickly contracted upon my arrival here in Thailand. I call it flaming lips disease although in reality it's just a syndrome involving the consumption of normal Thai food under the impression that it is like normal American food.

Normal Thai food is defined to be a fairly typical East Asian dish like rice with pork, chicken, or beef with the important addition of approximately 30 flavors of the most intense peppers thinkable. A popular theory among my co-workers is that the extraordinary release rate of endorphins heightens the subjects' happiness level and therefore causes addiction among Thais and farangs alike. Whatever theory you like, there is definitely something exciting about food that causes one to sweat and grunt in a heavily air conditioned room.

The second point on my agenda is that song tao's are a display of Asian ingenuity. The simple phrase, song tao, means "two row" which is exactly what it is: a pickup with two bench seats and a roof overhead. Of course you can't forget the handrails standard to most public transportation, and of course the platform in back for tall farangs like me to stand. I once rode on a song tao with 21 other people, not counting the driver. Another time there were only 16 people but six of which were hanging off the back. Probably the best way of getting to work!

Crash Course in Thai-ness

Between the 1.5 days I had in Chiang Mai and the 2 days in the mountains, I've seen more than I thought possible. There is too much to write about so I've decided to talk about a few points that have been on my mind.

Thai culture is service oriented
In Thai, thank you is Kup Koon Kup. When you interact with a waiter/waitress/shopkeeper, they say Kup Koon Kup, as if saying "thank you for allowing me to serve you" and if you say it to them they will often be embarrassed.

Farangs have little use for Thai Language and Culture
A farang is a person of European descent, however it doesn't carry the negative connotation that gringo does in Spanish. I've observed many farangs that I work around that have lived in Thailand for more than 5 or 10 years that can get themselves around the marketplace, but that's where it ends. It's true, you can get most anywhere in Chiang Mai on just English and hand motions, but I feel like something is out of place. Why are they so eager to learn about us but we can care so little about them?

Things are cheap
Food especially. We can walk across the street for lunch and eat a whole meal for 20 baht (about $.60). We were walking around a market last night and I found things like silk shirts for ~200 baht (again, 1:35 exchange rate, so $6). The coffee here can be good, but I've found out that when remote villagers harvest coffee beans they are often underpaid. Minimum wage is 156 baht per day, but coffee companies will sometimes pay only 20 baht per day (enough for a single meal at our favorite restaurant). Fair trade companies will usually pay a more decent amount, but not necessarily enough to survive on. So if you buy coffee, at the minimum please try to buy coffee labeled as fair trade.

These are the things I've been learning about Thailand. There is actually so much more, but these are the things that have been plaguing my mind. I'll try to get some pictures up later.

Thai is a great language, just really different

My flight went unpredictably well, I kept waiting for something to go wrong but nothing did. People were even waiting for me at the airport. Extremely long flight but I'm here. I think I've conquered the jet lag already, but we'll find out tonight. I came to blogspot to do another blog post but all the labels are in Thai so I'm having an unusually hard time finding my way around the site and making posts. Speaking of Thai, I've picked up a little bit from the conversations I've overheard. They have this great word, pronounced kup that can mean this or that or yes, and it's even used on the end of sa wa dee (hello) to make it formal and polite. Also, if your a girl you pronounce it ka.

Driving around here is pretty crazy, people don't necessarily stay in their own lane. There's a zillion motorcycles and they'll pass you on the right or left, two or three at a time. I saw one motorcycle with four full grown people all riding on it. When I have a chance I'll try to get some insane "you don't see this in America" shots. I'll be camping for the next two days up in the mountains somewhere so I'll be back on Sunday in time for church.

My Luck

If you are familiar with my past experience with flying you should know to be worried for me right now. The first time I flew, I was alone and I lost my luggage and on the way back the plane broke down and I had to spend the night in Pittsburgh. Last Christmas I was flying with Kerianne's family on a separate flight (and fate qualified this as flying alone) so my flight got bumped too much and I had to spend Christmas alone in Kerianne's house.

Basically the point is that whenever I fly alone, something goes wrong without fail. Since I know something is going to go wrong I can at least hope and pray that whatever is going to go wrong isn't going to be a big deal.

Visa update

Today the word is that I'll have my visa the next business day after Friday (so Monday). I'm not really sure what the hold up was, but the good news is I'll have it.

We started our Independence day by moving rocks under the scorching sun, then went to a parade in Spearfish, hoping to see the outhouse races which never happened. Later we drove through Spearfish canyon and hiked up over the bridal falls. Then we hiked to little Spearfish. After that we were all so tired we didn't even watch any fireworks.

Still Here

Unfortunately I'm still in South Dakota. I was supposed to be in Denver Right now going through security, but my visa hasn't yet arrived. My flight has now been moved back a week to July 10th. In the meantime I've been experimenting with software art. In my last entry I included a link to Don Relyea's blog, an artist who writes code to generate art. The picture I'm including is my own failed attempt at creating a Hilbert space-filling curve, but the botched attempt actually turned out pretty neat. If you're interested I can send you more information, if you ask.

I don't have much to do from now until next Tuesday except wait for my visa, call people to tell them to work faster, and entertain myself with my computer and guitars. Currently I'm working on generating a bigger and better picture like the one here, so my computer is lagging pretty bad. Pray that everything works out well and in time

Harney Peak

This morning we woke up at 5:00am to hike up to the top of Harney Peak, probably the most hiked trail in the Black Hills. It comes complete with a stone and concrete watch house at the summit used for spotting fires during the summer. Since we woke up so early there weren't much in the way of tourists, but on the way down (even at 8am) we passed another group about every 200yds. While we were up there we had the chance to hike around and check out the pregnant mountain goat and see an amazing view. We also took a billion pictures, so hopefully you can enjoy some of these.

I'm attaching one of me making friends with a US president that was frozen in bronze by the white witch, and another of Kerianne because she's beautiful. Of course the one of me isn't on Harney Peak, thats because we took some time the other day to walk around downtown Rapid City.
While we were down town we took a stroll through "art alley", as they call it. To some it might seem like the city is honoring their homeboys for graffiti, but in reality these works were placed here very intentionally, and its quite fun to walk through.

In other news, I haven't gotten my visa yet for Thailand. It was supposed to come late last week and I'm hoping and praying that it comes Monday. If it doesn't come in time then it better come by Tuesday, and if it doesn't come by then, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm scheduled to leave from Denver at 4:45pm Tuesday July 3rd and I'll arrive in Chiang Mai in the afternoon of July 5th (my shortest July 4th ever).

For those of you that are interested, I found an interesting screen saver that generates postmodern art on the fly. I'm interested in this because of the computer algorithms involved, but I imagine most of you (my mom especially) are just interested in the pretty colors. here is the link