In The Matter of a Week

It's been a while since I've last posted. Perhaps this is because there is so much going on. Tonight Mark, the other intern, left for his home in Texas. So the past week was spent fitting in all the things he wished to do while he was still here.

One day we went to a Lahu village, which was probably the best day so far. I entirely loved the small town feel of the Lahusi and their genuine hospitality. I also enjoyed the food, some of it a bit strange. The thing that struck me the most was how different Lahu culture is from Thai culture. Yes, the Lahus came from Burmese hills, but it can't make that much of a difference, can it? Not only is the language different, but the food is also entirely different, the attitudes, values, and world views are all different also.

Thursday night I went to a Blindside concert. Blindside being a band that I've loved since 8th grade. I saw them once in high school during a summer music festival, but Chiang Mai, Thailand was the last place I would have thought to see them again. The show was good, but I have to say that the Thai bands that warmed the stage were just as good. Reckless Madness was probably the better of the two Thai bands. I'd label them somewhere in the hardcore/metal genre, but quite good at it. I should warn you that I've been a huge fan of heavy metal and hardcore for years now, and these Thai guys can really belt out some good riffs.

Friday we hired some guides from the Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Association to take us climbing in the hills outside Chiang Mai. These were world class rock faces and were entirely fun. The rocks aren't worn out from too many climbers: there's still plenty of vegetation and interesting rock outcroppings. In fact, the rocks are still sharp enough to leave good sized cuts on my hands. The guides were helpful and showed us some very nice climbing routes as well as a beautiful 180ft rappel into a cave.

Yesterday I walked down over the moat and into the old city. I grabbed some food from a street vendor then walked around for a couple hours. I passed lots of wats, I feel as if there was on every street. I stopped at a street cafe and ordered a rambutan smoothie. Rambutan is a fruit found in Thailand, you can get it at just about any market. So I'm putting a picture of some Rambutan here so you can see what It looks like.

While on the topic of fruit, I must say there's so many different kinds of fruit here, some that I love, some just aren't all that great. One such fruit is the durian fruit, a large spiky fruit that grows all over Thailand, Malaysia, and Southeast Asia. It's hard to crack open, but at once you are hit with a shock wave of stench. The odor is so bad, in fact, that there are "no durian" signs in hotels and public transportation. I also hear that eating durian with alcohol can have fatal effects. The fruit comes in stringy pods that surround the seeds. They remind me of Martian offspring arriving in a self-protecting escape pod.

Perhaps thats it for this post.

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.