Long Journey Into the Night

I recently arrived back in my village after two weeks on the lamb and had only been back for three days when I got a phone call from a friend of mine living in the south. She was trying to talk me into going up to Chiang Mai for Halloween because heaps of our friends were meeting there to dress up and celebrate the great American holiday. I was certain she wasn't going to be able to convince me after having just gotten back from an excellent trip but near the end of our conversation she said something that entered my brain like an earthworm buries itself in the dirt. She goes, "You'll regret it if you don't go." Two days later I found myself on a city bus heading down to Ubon Ratchathani. Here starts my journey.

10/30/09

At about 9:30am, I jumped on the rickety, always noisy, wooden floor bus from the main city in my area down to the biggest city in my province, Ubon Ratchathani. A friend of mine who lives in the city reserved me a ticket on what is apparently the longest bus in Thailand. I arrived in Ubon around noon and waited only a half hour for my bus to arrive.

Now, I know what it must seem like, the longest bus in Thailand, 18 hours in a chair, rough rural roads, but I'm so used to it now after almost two years of living here, all the buses are the same. Whether I take a two hour pick-up truck, a five hour tour bus, a ten hour minivan, an 18 hour over-night, the variables associated with traveling through Thailand even all rides out in the end. For example, I'm tall here, like...megatron tall, so no matter what I ride in, it's almost always going to feel tight.

I read and slept the 18 hours away and arrived in Chiang Mai at about 6:30 am, Halloween morning.

10/31/09

Chiang Mai is beautiful city, save for the air pollution. It sits at the crossroads of all major antiquity caravan routes originating in China and ending in Myanmar. Because of it's strategic location in the hills of northern Thailand, ancient Chiang Mai was completely surrounded by a moat and city wall. The moat remains but only remnants of the wall still stand. Nonetheless, Chiang Mai retains a character unlike any other city I've seen in Thailand, save for the air pollution.

I checked into my guest house on the east side of the city wall and set off for breakfast. One nice thing about Chiang Mai is how easily walkable the city is, save for the air pollution. You can get anywhere in and around the walled city center by foot, which garners it extra points on my personal "Cool City" scale (to give you some comparison, Sydney, Australia has the highest score on my Cool City scale).

I set up shop at a place called Art Cafe just south of my guest house but still near the east wall. Art Cafe sits on a corner of a busy intersection across the street from one of the main city gates, making it an excellent location for people watching. Now, I've been to Bangkok countless times and I've also visited other tourist destinations within Thailand but nothing prepared me for the alienness of Chiang Mai. It's like I entered a different country - and I very well could have with how long my bus ride was - but I was definitely still in Thailand. Back in my village, I am the only white person for miles and all of my communication is in Thai or Laos. I saw more white faces on that particular street corner than I have anywhere else in my time here in Thailand. The languages they were speaking were also indiscernible. I could feel myself beginning to breathe heavy, my temperature was rising, and I felt very jittery. I was experiencing what I would describe as "inverse culture shock." What I mean by this is, I have been living here so long that, even though I'm not Thai, I feel more like a local than I do a foreigner. Once I started seeing the influx of tourists, my anxiety level rose dramatically and I had to calm myself down with a little controlled breathing. After about an hour, I was able to convince myself that it was still Thailand and that the whole city would be the same; enjoy it for what it is.

Volunteers showed up in pairs and by night fall, we numbered in the twenties. Everyone dressed up and we held a party in the courtyard of the guest house I was staying at before hitting the night scene. My costume was Where's Waldo, red and white striped shirt, red and white hat, black rimmed glasses, and sneaky hiding places in pictures - my friends have a bunch of pictures with me poking my head out in the background. The other costumes were all very well done. We had a tree, a masquerade, Lady Gaga, a pumpkin, and other random things. After pre-gaming at the guest house we moved on to a bar in the city called Cafe Del Sol. All I can say is, I don't remember much after grabbing the microphone from the stage to sing, "Billy Jean." We had a great Halloween.

11/1/09

Art Cafe, I was soon to find out, is the most popular breakfast spot for the volunteers. A group of us met up there to recuperate over cups of coffee and breakfast burritos. After breakfast, a few of us decided to get a massage. This was however, not your typical massage. I followed the group to the Chiang Mai Woman's Correctional Facility. Yeah, we got convict massages! The story goes, these women have served almost their entire sentence and so to better prepare them for the outside world, the Thai government lets them practice a trade, in this case Thai massage, before being released. I got one of the best massages I've ever had but unfortunately didn't land any phone numbers.

I slept the day away in my room and woke up with time for a run. My friend and I ran laps around a stadium north of the city - I'm currently training for a marathon which I will run on November 22nd. In the evening the same friend and I went shopping at the night market outside the city. I picked up a couple shirts and a wool hat that would have cost me $30 in the states but only cost me $2.50 here. I crashed hard once we made it back.

11/2/09

It's a Full moon: Thais are celebrating. Loi Kratong is a holiday in Thailand, my favorite holiday as a matter of fact, in which the Thai people make little boats out of banana tree trunks and leaves, flowers, candles, and inscents and float them down rivers or in canals, really anywhere there's water. From what I understand, the symbolism is that the person doing the floating is appeasing the water spirits and asking for "mother water" to cleanse the body of bad karma. This may not be the academic definition, but it's close. The reason I like Loi Kratong is simply because it doesn't involve copious amounts of alcohol. Thai holidays can get crazy but Loi Kratong is much more laid back, chill, and relaxed than most.

Specifically in Chiang Mai the Thai's float lanterns made of paper into the sky for the same reason mentioned above. The sight is truly amazing, watching the sky fill with hundreds of glowing orbs. The only word I can use to describe the scene is, magical. A group of about ten friends and I sat up on the rooftop of a bar that overlooks the city. We were able to watch the sky fill with lanterns for about three hours while listening to reggae, drum and bass, and dub music. After the bar, some people split up to watch the chaotic scene down by the river and the rest of us ate burgers before crashing out.

11/3/09

In the morning I went straight to the bus station where I boarded a bus that terminated in a rural town where my friend Cameron lives. He's about three hours southwest of Chiang Mai (Lii). He lives in a high, flat valley surrounded on all sides by mountains. We walked around his village, went for a run, and relaxed with a couple glasses of whiskey before eating dinner and crashing out. Nothing crazy.

11/4/09

I left Cameron's village early in the morning just as the morning rain let up. My next stop was farther west yet, near the boarder of Burma. In the main city of Lii, I met two Monks that were headed in the same direction I was headed and so for the next four hours, I proceeded to hitchhike with these monks until our paths no longer continued in the same direction. One thing to note about our on again off again transportation: while walking down a desolate but beautiful mountain pass, I asked the older monk if he thought we should hail a car. Prior to this we had just allowed the vehicles to pass. His answer was simple, "If someone wants to stop, then we will take the ride." I thought that a very Buddhist thing to say and I allowed my inner spirits to absorb the idea for...oh...about five more cars, until finally I waved one down and we were picked up. Patience Tony, patience.

I finally made it to Mae Sariang by about 3:00 and checked into my guest house. I changed my clothes and went for a run up a big hill to check out the view, which overlooked rice fields, rivers, cityscape, and mountains. It was very pleasant indeed. That night I talked to some NGO workers helping with Burmese refugees but they were uninteresting and actually very dull so I hit the sack early.

11/5/09

The pickup truck ride from Mae Sariang to my friend Peter's village is a five hour snake, up and down, left and right, near upside down ride between two mountain ranges which separate Burma from Thailand. I passed the time by watching the view weave it's way by. I finally reached his place but nothing could prepare me for what it looked like.

The Karen people are ethnically mountain folk who live in the hills which straddle Burma and Thailand. To make a long story short, the Burmese Junta and Karen people don't get along. Thailand has lent support for these people but only as refugees. As a result, the boarder between these two countries is littered with refugee camps (a total of seven in all from what I've been told). The largest refugee camp, which contains approximately 40,000+ people - there's no real way to count - is only about 10 kilometers from Peter's village. The site is incredible. Words, nor pictures, cannot do this Swiss Family Robinson-style land grab justice. The Karen people have built their houses on rolling valley hills out of bamboo and tree leaves, sunk in behind a mountain vista of sheer cliffs that loom over the people like a barrier to freedom. The west side is guarded by the main road that connects Mae Sot and Mae Hong Son and the east side is blocked off by impassable mountains that seem to reach the sky. We walked along the road and I couldn't help but stare in awe of the huts that litter the landscape.

Within Peter's village are Karen people who are nationally Thai. They smoke these huge cigarettes that look like stogie cigars and wear colorfully decorated clothes with tassels and fringes. They are short people, even shorter than Thais, but smile just as often. After dark, Peter and I had a couple of beers with his neighbor and I was able to learn a little about the history of Karen clothing. Once it got late, Peter and I headed back home and went to bed.

11/6/09

TODAY! I'm caught up with my blog. Well, at least until tomorrow, right?

I'm currently sitting at an internet cafe in Mae Sot, a boarder town near the southwestern part of northern Thailand. I came down here to shop for souvenirs and eat foreign food - there's a strong foreign community all along this boarder due to the refugee camps. Who knows what's next, but I'll be sure to blog it all.

Dry needling

For the past week, I've been in Bangkok. Peace Corps fit the bill for my bus ticket and per-diem but it's not all glitz and glamor in southeast Asia's sin city. Let me explain.

For the past six months I've been training for the Bangkok marathon which I will run on November 22. The first five months of my training went as smooth as they could have been. I was running no less than 15 kilometers a day at one point. Then, on one of my distance days, I attempted to break through a plateau runners sometimes find themselves in. I ran 25 kilometers in the midday heat without resting and without taking in any water.

The result was not a breaking through of a plateau but a breaking of my body. I pulled a muscle in the back of my left knee called the popliteus. For a month, I couldn't run. It was devastating to my psyche after training so hard for so long and it looked like I wasn't going to be able to run the marathon.

Two weeks ago I called in to the Peace Corps medical officer and explained to him my situation. His immediate response was, "When can we get you in?" At this point, I was thinking all hope was lost because I could still feel the discomfort and the marathon was just over a month away.

I arrived in Bangkok on Friday morning and Peace Corps had me in the doctors office that afternoon. The procedure was simple: stick a long smooth needle through my skin and into my muscle, causing a twitch response which is an indication that the muscle is relaxing.


The approach is based on Western anatomical and neurophysiological principles and is not to be confused with Chinese Acupuncture. Dry Needling involves introducing fine, sterile acupuncture needles into “trigger points” of muscles. A trigger point is defined as a tight, irritable and painful spot within a muscle - exactly what I had. Dry Needling alleviates the symptoms of trigger points quickly and effectively by eliciting a twitch response. The feeling is much like a muscle cramp or sometimes a centralized electrical shock.

Immediately after my dry needling treatment, my knee was sore and it was uncomfortable to walk. But as the days progressed, I could feel the discomfort from the needling AND the discomfort from the injury melting away. I've got one more series tomorrow morning and then I'm all done. The best part is, I should be healthy enough to run the marathon. In all honesty, I would have never thought this procedure would work but I stand by it 100%.

As far as what I did in the meantime between my treatments, that's information for my personal journal.

Grasshoppers

I ate grasshoppers for lunch today. While I was eating the grasshoppers, I was thinking to myself, grasshoppers taste good but eating them just seems wrong.

What's going on and the Youth Conference

Hello again. For months, I wondered why I haven't posted regular, creative, insightful commentary on my life in Thailand. I like writing and I keep a personal journal that I haven't missed a week in. So why is this blog any different? Why? Because I don't have regular access to the internet.

In this day and age of social updates on facebook, twitter, myspace, blogspot, and the likes, it's easy to write down the thought or idea that just popped into your head. That is, if you have internet access. Believe me, I have things I want to share daily but the internet where I live is not regularly available. Then, once I do get on the internet, I'll sit at the computer, staring at the blogspot "new post" page trying to remember everything I wanted to say. It's more frustrating than helpful.

As a treat, I have included pictures of the Youth Development conference the group I'm a member of hosted during the first week of September.

I had to lead an activity in which participants broke into groups of four and had to lay on their backs with their feet facing in. I would then take a bucket of water and place it on their feet. The object of the activity was to have everyone in the group take their shoes off without spilling any of the water in the bucket.

We had the kids all paint their own designs on the conference t-shirt. Then, we had the conference participants cheer for their favorite designs.

This was our main conference room. All of the youth that took part in the conference are sitting down listening to a presentation.

I was supposed to do an activity in which students had to sit down, link arms, and then stand up using teamwork, but instead I decided to sing karaoke. The boy in front was the first and last person to volunteer to sing. He stole the show. Everyone in the background are volunteers who sang backup.

The opening ceremony was a red carpet affair and I was the host. We had paparazzi, a video camera for broadcasting, and EVERYTHING!

We ended one night with impromptu skits in which the volunteers stood in front of everyone and the audience shouted out a scene for us to act. This scene was, "Sumo." My diaper fit well but my opponents diaper kept falling off.

I was working, I swear. One of the activities I was in charge of was having students build card houses.

The proud winner of the t-shirt competition holds his design up for everyone to see. Pretty eh?

Just a couple happy faces.

We play a game throughout the three days of the conference in which you can put a clothespin on someone outside of the meeting room and if they walk into the meeting room with it still attached to them, they have to dance in front of everyone. I'm usually pretty good about checking my person, but someone got me in that spot I can't quite reach on my back.

A lovely panorama of the conference participants.

Bangkok Lights

My top five favorite things about Bangkok:
- The parks
- The food
- The night life
- The public transportation
- The opportunities

My top five favorite places in Bangkok:
- Vertigo Sky Bar
- Lumphini Park
- Chao Phraya River
- Kinokuya Book Store
- The Sky Train

My top five favorite places to eat in Bangkok:
- Siam Paragon food court
- Shabushi Restaurant
- Phahonyothin Rd. street vendors
- Thong Lor Japanese Restaurants
- Chinatown

Descriptions to come.

The Rainy Season

The ominous low lying clouds moving steadily across the sky have brought rain, the fields are flooded with light brown water and the rice sown only weeks ago is a wash of flowing neon green that resembles the color of a nuclear reaction. Rice planting season in Thailand is under way.

Rice is undoubtedly Thailand's most important commodity, not only within the country's boarders as sustenance but also as an incredibly valuable cash crop. The country itself is the world's leading rice exporter. As an American growing up eating rice once or twice a week (I always had other options for my daily caloric intake) I never realized just how important rice was until I came to Thailand and began eating the simple white grains every single day, three times a day. Rice is the most important staple food for a large portion of the human population as many poor people rely on rice for survival. Like other foods, rice is consumed without much thought as to how it got from the field to the plate. Movies or documentaries on Asia portray the poor rice farmer wading through waterlogged paddies wearing a conical Vietnamese-style hat. They always fail however, to explain the dedication, patience, resilience and effort that goes into cultivating the most important food in the world.

No one plants rice in the dry season. The technique involved in pushing the rice through the mud is impossible if the earth is hard and dry. Rural Thai farmers bide their time during the dry season by either working in Bangkok or lounging around the village, performing odd jobs and taking care of their family. The dry season surrenders to rain halfway through the summer which allows farmers to being preparing the fields. The dirt must be soft and malleable before the farmers can even start tilling. The rice paddies are essentially small plots of land quarantined by earthen ramparts that serve as walls which hold water when the land is uneven. Agriculturally, rice is a crop that needs copious amounts of water, not just for nourishment but also as a stabilizer while the stalks are young and weak. Each plot is designed as a basin for holding water at shin level. If plots at lower elevations are collecting more water than those higher up, farmers will use pumps to defeat gravity and flood the entire field.

The saturated fields are tilled using a automatic push-style tiller which has two wheels about four feet in diameter that look like thin metal waterwheels attached to a gas engine mounted in between and controlled at the helm by long lawn mower-like handles. Before mechanical tillers, farmers relied on beasts of burden to prepare their soil, but now water buffaloes live the good life (wallow, eat, and sleep). The farmer tills the field down and back, covering each corner of the paddy until it resembles a muddy off-road race course.

Before tilling even begins though, right around the very start of the rainy season, depending on the size of the field, a number of plots are set aside as rice stalk nurseries. The farmers carry sacks full of rice seeds through the plot and sow handfuls at a time, covering the ground evenly with the little white pellets. The field will begin to produce a thick green blanket just in time for the rain. Once the rice has reached half-maturity it is bunched together in bundles and cut to the same length, looking like thick bouquets of flowers with the tops cut off. Finally they tie a thin piece of bamboo around the stalks to keep the bunch tight. The rice stalks are incredibly buoyant and just float in the water during planting. When someone needs more stalks, they simply grab the nearest bunch and continue working.

The planting process itself is rather simple but physically straining. The farmer grabs a bundle of rice stalks with his/her off hand holding the roots facing outward. With his/her strong hand, the farmer pinches about ten stalks away from the bundle just above the root, inverts his/her hand facing the ground and pushes the rice through the water and into the mud, letting go when he/she feels resistance. The process is repeated along rows and columns about a half a foot apart until the entire paddy is filled with a bright green grid of lined rice stalks. Quick planters can move at a feverish pace, pinching the stalks, entering the mud, shuffling backwards and grabbing for more stalks without hesitation. But most people talk and laugh, listen to music and take water breaks without hesitation.

But why do they have to plant the stalks by hand? Why don't they just throw the seeds throughout the entire field like they do in the rice nurseries? It's simple: the total grain output would be much smaller considering the distance at which the stalks would grow next to one another. By planting by hand, farmers can determine exactly how close they want their stalks to be, ultimately increasing efficiency. Plus, once the fields are flooded, the seeds are unable to survive under water and will not grow stalks.

In a few months the fields will begin to dry out and fill in and the bright green grid will slowly transform into a sea of top-heavy dark greens that look as though something is weighing them down, bending like a weeping willow; that's the grain itself. In a few months it will be time to harvest the rice.

A poem about chickens

Is this a chicken conspiracy?
Sleeping soundly sounds impossibly
preposterous, sending me sliding steeply into lunacy.

Like pawns placed perfectly
around the perimeter perniciously
forming a feather flapping filibuster
preventing me from dreamily freely floating far from reality

Tossing my torso to and fro
'til the tumultuous throaty torture tips me too far
flipping, flying, frustrated
further towards the floor in a furious fixated fervor
fearing finally my mind to me must meticulously muster energy to main my enemy
maliciously.

But honestly, can it really be
that the enemy with a brain like a pea has it in for me?
Or is it me and my conspiracy theory convincing me subconsciously
of an imaginary chicken wake-up spree.

I hate chickens.