Chiang Mai adventure, pt. 2

At the end of day 2, we just chilled after we came back into the city. We also had some pretty delicious burritos for dinner. And yes, I almost forgot how delicious burritos were until that point.

Day 3, we had our huge trek. First, the trekking company or whatever picked us up from our hostel and took us to an Orchid Farm. Wasn't terribly exciting, but I got some pretty okay pictures.

A bit too lavender, but GO 'CATS.

Next, we went on our elephant ride at Kaeng Kued elephant camp. Yes, I did have a moral dilemma about riding elephants and was thus super conscious about the ethics of the place we were at. Thankfully, my elephant trainer dude was super nice to my elephant and didn't use the spike thing (a piece of wood with a metal hook attached to the end of it to poke into the elephant's tough skin and make it move) at all. But I did have a huge problem with the camp chaining a baby elephant to a large tree because it was sick and the owners were worried that it would run away if given the opportunity. But regardless, here are some pictures.

At this point, the baby elephant was poking my friends' and my hands with its trunk. It was cute.

After that, we had a nice lunch at a villager's home. Mmm, nothing hits the spot better than mediocre pad thai wrapped in a banana leaf. Then, we had a hike to a waterfall. Along the way, we got to meet some of the hill tribe villagers in the area and walked on sticks literally 5 inches wide. I couldn't handle it... Mostly because I fell pretty early on and something I fell on made a deepish hole in my leg. Oops. So while I was tending to that, I didn't get any good pictures. But the waterfall at the end was super duper, let me assure you.

Finally, we went whitewater rafting!! Definitely my favorite part of the day because rafting gives me fond, fond memories of my family and my time at Camp Broadstone as a kid. Except this time, I was much more blind without my glasses, and we were hitting class 4-5 rapids the entire way. The time we spent was pretty short, though, because the river we were on was flooding and thus wasn't safe for a longer trip. Regardless, it was a great end to the day.

When we arrived back in Chiang Mai, we had amazing Indian food again. Then, we went to a real live Muay Thai fight. We were expecting brutal fights from the best of the best in Thailand, but what we really got was 5 matches involving 12-14 year olds, one match involving 2 women, and one match involving two dudes who were around 16 in a puny stadium in the middle of a dark alley. Here, take a look.

So.. underwhelming to say the least. Except there was one "special match" with 3 Muay Thai teachers blindfolded and just beating the living daylights out of each other. The highlight came when the ref literally did a flying kick towards one blindfolded guy because he kept alternating between wailing on the air and wailing on the ref. I really, really wish I had taken a picture.

Then, we went to a nearby reggae bar because, you know, when in Thailand, right? There, we met up with 2 crazy Burmese girls who worked at the burrito shop we ate at during day 2. We also accidentally met up with the South African man we got in an argument with on day 1. After that, we went to a bar called Spicy under the recommendations of some other farangs in the area. And when I say that there were prostitutes everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. Sketchiest place by far that I've been to in Thailand so far.

Day 4 was pretty uneventful. We did a Harold & Kumar-esque quest looking for cao niew mamuang (sweet sticky rice with mango) and finally found it after walking around and asking random people for upwards of 1.5 hours. We also had a sub-par chat with a monk at one of the wats we had visited on day 1. Monk Chats are meant to allow monks to practice their English on foreigners and for foreigners to practice their Thai. But what I mean by underwhelming is that he didn't understand the terms for the 4 Noble Truths in English. Nor did he know any terms in Buddhism in English. Ah well. Later, we ended our adventure with pizza and met a completely drugged out guy from Lake Tahoe that had lived in Chiang Mai for the past 3 years. He didn't know a word of Thai, btw.

Then we headed back on the bus for another 12 hour ride. And my mp3 player was broken so... I certainly got a lot of sleep!

Tomorrow, I'm off to Sisaket province and later Ubon Ratchatani province for the water and dams unit. After that, I'll be going to Bangkok to visit my family again as well as a few friends. SO EXCITEDDD. PS. Check my facebook if you want to see more pictures of my adventures! Miss you all!

Chiang Mai adventure, pt. 1

View from Doi Suthep

So FINALLY, after the extremely grueling Unit 3, we got a 4 day break! So 6 of my friends and I went to Chiang Mai, a province in the Northern part of Thailand. It used to be the old capital of the Lanna kingdom but has since degraded into an incredibly cheesy, tourist-y place. But don't get me wrong; the place still has history. Wikipedia it sometime.

After a 12 hour bus ride from Khon Kaen, Jake woke me up as I was about to drool all over his extremely comfortable neck pillow (sorry!). Once we got to our hostel, we decided to walk around and look at a bunch of wats, or temples. Our hostel was a cute little hole-in-the-wall place with a bunch of other foreigners, and we had a 10-bed room to ourselves with a shared bathroom - so 5 bunkbeds. Thus, it was exactly like sleepaway camp. I got the top bunk, as always. SUP CAMP BROADSTONE.

Anyway, right, the wats. They were super pretty! Oh! Maddie and I talked to three teenage-ish monks. They were actually pretty chill, although they thought I was Korean (just like every other Thai person here...). Here are but a few of my many wat pictures.

Wat Pra Singh

Wat Chiang Mun

So after that, we took a sawngtao to Doi Suthep, a mountain wat, and walked around. At the bottom of the mountain, there were tons of little shops and tourist traps. But up on the mountain, it was SO FREAKIN' BEAUTIFUL. You could see all of Chiang Mai as well as a bunch of pretty structures. Without further ado, pictures.

There was a hella ridiculous amount of stairs along the way. It was absurd.

After walking around for a while there, we came back down from the mountain, and we ladies got a massage. But oh-ho-ho, not just any massage - a massage from women prisoners. Yes, for real. There was a famous massage parlour across the street from the women's prison which was advertised in someone's Lonely Planet guidebook.

And the massage? Absolutely delightful. Wanna know what wasn't delightful? The lice that we all got afterwards. When we returned to Khon Kaen 3 days later, Sam and Babz knocked on my door saying it was a semi-emergency. I opened the door and before I knew it, Sam was checking my hair for lice, and I was throwing my sheets and every piece of clothing I own in the washing machine. Thankfully, I only had lice eggs in my hair. So that was an adventure. And hopefully they're all out now, but that was certainly annoying.

Anyway, after that, we got Indian food. Freaking. Indian. Food. We've been living on Thai food for the past two months, so this was a welcome change. And my bowels thanked me afterwards, but you didn't need to know that. Afterwards, we went to the night market and spent way, way too much money. We also got into an argument with a South African man and an Irish man about how America isn't as racist as South Africa or something. I don't really remember because it was an absurd argument.

On the second day, it was kind of a rest day. We started off the day with an Americanish breakfast, where I had poached eggs, toast, and stir fried veggies. I forgot how much I missed toast until I had it that day... And I still crave it. Anyway, after that, we ended up going to the Mae Sa waterfall in Chiang Dao national park. It actually consisted of 10 smaller waterfalls that make up the entire attraction. It was a pretty nice hike (though a little unnatural due to the semi-paved stairs and trails up and down the waterfalls. It was beautiful! After hiking the whole trail, we all split up. I had some great alone time where I looked through all the pictures in my camera and journaled a bit. I came back to the meeting place a bit early and saw 2 of the cutest black kittens I've ever seen. Unfortunately, not all of us were so lucky; Jake lost his camera in the waterfall. :( But that's why I took some pictures! So here! Take a lookee~

Maddie and Babz. Crazy farangs.

Okay, pt. 2 coming up.

Makin' history, nbd.

So, I just came back from the first international human rights conference in Southeast Asia. You know, no big deal.

These past few days have been a whirlwind experience for me. First of all, I was one of the facilitators (every unit has 3.. so I did this one and will do the mining unit later in the semester). That includes helping the group through the ~process~ of getting the most from the unit and planning briefings and workshops and all that stuff. So that also entails working with 2 other people and 2 program interns as well as really, REALLY long planning sessions. Often, we wouldn't get to go home until 1 or 2 in the morning because we were planning a particular session. Never have I ever specifically scheduled time to take a shower in my planner. Never have I ever specifically set aside time to take a poop. Until now. So... I basically learned a whole lot about how I deal with certain situations and stress and... yeah, just a lot about myself in being a facilitator.

So for the human rights unit consisted of one day of prep, 3 days of going to Bangkok and going to the human rights conference, and one day of debriefing of sorts and writing a group paper about our experience.

The going to Bangkok bit was great. The conference itself was also super interesting; the 2 days of the conference were split up into 2 keynote speakers, 2 plenary sessions (one about ASEAN and the other about sexuality an human rights), and 4 groups of parallel sessions which included about 6-7 focused panels in each session. I attended panels on the rights of indigenous people and ethnic minorities, self-determination and development, rights of children and disabled persons, and rights-based approach to economic and social issues. I would say that I'm satisfied with going into those sessions, and I definitely learned a lot. Even though I didn't get to go out into Bangkok because we were planning so much (sorry grandma, aunts, cousins, Phan, and Tana!), I was still okay with the trip as a whole.

So the drama mainly came when the group wrote the report about the conference. I love the other two facilitators like they're my own brothers. I have absolutely no problems with anyone in the group. But the fact that we facilitators had an aggregate 5ish hours of sleep every night or less mixed with the fact that all three of us were sick BECAUSE of the stress and lack of sleep (currently, one has acute tonsillitis, one has an infected eye, and I have hopefully just a cold) made for a day full of emotional breakdowns (for me) and a not-so enjoyable experience for the rest of the group members. But I guess from all of that, I learned a lot about myself and my limits, as I mentioned before.

Sorry guys, I'm really, really sleepy now. Tomorrow, a few of the members of the group and I are taking an overnight bus and going to Chiang Mai for 4 days! And we also have to finish like, a zillion assignments before then. So time to get those done and finally take care of myself! Yay!

Landfills, slums, and old friends.

So last unit, we learned where all of our food comes from. This unit, we learned where our food goes when we're done with it.

First in the urban unit, the group visited Kham Bon landfill right here in Khon Kaen. Many of our Thai friends don't even know where the landfill is, as it's tucked away off of a highway in the middle of seemingly nowhere. But here we were, standing on, quite literally, mountains of trash.

As soon as I got out of the van, the stench of rotting food and something I can only describe as just yucky attacked my nostrils. I looked up and towering over me was tons upon tons of waste. After putting on some fisherman's boots, the villagers said that we would have to walk down the road to get to the entrance of the landfill. But apparently, the dumptrucks got lazy one day and just dumped all their trash in the road. So we would have to walk on a road of trash to get to the mountains of trash. Great.

About 3 minutes into the trek, my friend walking in front of me stepped on something and half-rotted tomato and some questionable vomit-looking substance spewed on my left leg. That made for quite an interesting walk around the landfill for the rest of the day for sure. We ended up climbing a mountain of trash, and I stood on top of it feeling like the king of the mountain. You know, that game that we played as elementary school kids. Remember? Anyway, that's neither here nor there. As I looked down on my kingdom of trash, I saw a green field which was... a field of sugarcane and cassava, it seemed. I'm sure the rainwater mixed with the most likely toxic and, again, yucky substances doesn't do those plants justice. Or so I thought until our tour guide decided to pick up a Thai melon off its vine on the ground. He said the melon grew thanks to the water right beside the landfill.

Oh. Okay. Makes total sense.

We then went back to the entrance to the landfill to look at the incinerator which looked pretty dangerous... You know, not to mention the blood vials that were haphazardly strewn around it.

Picture thanks to one of our program facilitators. I was too creeped out to take one.

Then, the villagers explained that lots of hospital waste was dumped there, too. As we walked along the trail, we couldn't help but notice all the catheters that were either visible under the flimsy piece of red plastic that the villagers used to mark the hospital waste or obviously poking out of the ground. We climbed a smaller mountain of trash when my right boot got caught in a boot trap. Yes, that meant that my boot fell off into the trash, and I took one careless step in the pile of... well, I don't know what. That was also extremely uncomfortable, to say the least.

We finally got to our host families' houses. There, the smell of the landfill was gone! Living arrangements weren't bad either. And Sam, my roommate for the urban unit, is a vegetarian like me, so we had super delicious food there, surprisingly, including the best som tum I've ever had. Other students got to eat some grasshoppers and veggies that the families found in the landfill.

Oh, didn't I mention that? Our families were all scavengers, meaning they rake through ALL of the trash that comes into the landfill looking for plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic bags, copper wire, and whatever else can be sold to be recycled. So the next day, we all helped our families scavenge. Sam was absolutely incredible at tearing the bags open to find even the smallest bits of plastic as well as adept at using the two-pronged rake-looking thing to easily move away food waste, dirty diapers, and other things that were just distractions to finding the good stuff. I, on the other hand, worked for about two out of the 5 total hours and spent the last 3 hours gagging and trying not to vomit. I know, I'm weaksauce. But during the time that I did work, I felt like I was really straining myself. Whenever a new garbage truck came by, tens of villagers flocked behind it and crazily raked through the fresh grossness. Some of the students found huge red, poisonous centipedes, and others of us just found dirty diapers and maggots everywhere. I fell into the latter category. Even enduring the sweltering heat and unbearable smell all day and night, these villagers take shifts; some scavenge during the day, and some do the deed at night. And to think that these people do this every day? I couldn't even imagine.

Sadly, we only spent 2.5 days with this community. I really wanted to stay longer, I really did. But my stomach was telling me otherwise. So we moved on and spent the other half of the day exchanging with the villagers in the Nong Waeng Slum community. Slums can be defined by the fact that the residents don't technically own the land but reside on the premises. In this particular community, no one owned the land, and it was built around railroad tracks. Now, the railway company "needs" to build a high-speed railway, so they are evicting the residents, who couldn't get a lease on the land. Though the government is helping them find new land, many are bitter that they have to leave the place that they've always called home. Here are some pictaurz.

Last, we spent 2 days and a night in the slum community close-by called Theparak-1. Though I'm not sure why it's a slum because many of the residents owned the land. I stayed with a woman who singlehandedly supports a family of 2 daughters and 1 granddaughter through cooking and selling at a local market. Oh, yeah, and she's also a public health representative who goes around her community to see if children need any immunizations or if the elderly need any special medicines. Then, she delivers super detailed reports to the government. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that she only has a 4th grade education? Basically, homegirl was a badass. Freaking. Badass.

Sam and I got to help her at the market. And guess who else came? Our homestay kids from Suan Sanuk school! YEAAAAH. It was certainly nice to have them around! They helped out a lot with the families, too, even though they didn't have to. Love the kids. More pictures!

The slum community.

Host mom doin' her thang. Took these for a photo essay assignment.

Crazy kids. Pictures belong to Brett and Sam respectively.

Next unit is human rights. IN BANGKOK. Sadly, I won't have much free time in the city, but it should be fun nonetheless!

Urban livelihoods and... massages?

Right now, I'm in Khon Kaen and will be staying here for the next week.

Yesterday was my first personal day in about two weeks. One thing about our program is that they really, really keep us busy. They don't give us weekends off, and they randomly give about 2 personal days every two weeks. But even in those days, I feel like I've had to work at least a little bit to keep on top of my assignments and such. I finished half of the work I had to do, so I decided to capitalize on the free 2-hour Thai massage that the program allowed us to have.

In order to find a picture of this, I had to google "thai massage." For future reference, don't do that. So here's a nice picture of Khon Kaen city shrine that walked by today when I participated in a protest. Will get to that later.

So I get to this place, and I immediately had my feet washed and had to put on a loose-fitting white cotton shirt and huge brown, loose-fitting linen fisherman pants. The woman that was preparing to do the massage asked if I was Korean, as usual. Seriously, I don't even get Chinese anymore. It's either Korean or Japanese. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

I laid down on a super comfortable mattress-ish pad and pillow, which was quire a relief from the floor that I've grown accustomed to sleeping on. The massage started at the feet and legs and went all the way up to the head. At the feet/leg and arm/hand stage, they would be massaged and then put into odd yoga positions and then lotioned with some mint/lavender mix. For the back, she also massaged it and lotioned it. And, oh yeah, there was an outside-the-clothes butt massage. I mean, it was fine but.. I was super caught off guard, mostly because I had been falling asleep until that point. And honestly, the head massage was kind of weird because it was like a scalp massage that turned into rubbing my temples and neck. Also fine, but kind of strange.

After the whole ordeal, I was treated to a cup of tea that tasted kind of like the herbal tea that the herbalist in Yasothon gave us during one of the exchanges, except this one had an extra kick of vanilla. Overall an awesome experience, I would have to say.

Our next unit is about urban livelihoods, which includes a homestay at a landfill as well as exchanges with the members of the Khon Kaen Slum Network. We're also going to visit a community of people who live beside the railroad and have a market over those railroad tracks. Whenever a train comes, they quickly close up their things and... Well, just take a look at this one in Bangkok.

So today, at 8 AM, some of the members of my group and I went to a march for World Habitat Day, where members of the Slum Network as well as other organizations that are similar came out and marched around downtown Khon Kaen. They were fighting for more money devoted to the slum community as well as other rights. They appealed to the mayor at the municipal office, and theyw ere promised that the upper levels of the provincial government would also look at their demands. Then we listened to a few speakers who went into more detail about the issues at hand. It was super hot, but I was really happy to see so many people coming out and participating on a Friday morning. Can't wait to learn more about it! :D

When, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" became a legitimate question

Okay, so I've failed at updating this. But to be fair, I lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere for a week. So. Yeah.

Last week, we all took a trip to Yasothon and Roi Et provinces to do our study of agriculture. WOO.

The first village we went to was called Baan Dong Dip in Roi Et province. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of this place because, you know, I often forget to do these sorts of things. But imagine a village with dirt roads and shacks made of wood, and you've got it. The majority of the villagers are organic farmers who make their own natural fertilizer from the animals (don't think about this one too hard) as well as natural pesticides and herbicides. In addition, they are contract farmers, which means that the cash crops that they grow go straight to the company. This creates a guaranteed market, but if their food goes to the company, is the village truly self-sustainable? Well, yes, it seems so. But from the formal teachings that we got from readings and lectures, it seemed that contract farming was the devil because of transnational, evil companies or giant conglomerates. I suppose this particular village was just super duper.

Anyway, we took a tour of the villagers' land where they primarily grow sugar cane, cassava, rice, and banana. We even got to try some fresh sugar cane, cut down about 3 minutes before we ate it. Apparently, sugar cane contains some chemical that whitens your teeth! But it also rots your teeth at the same time because, well, it's sugar cane.

If I had taken a picture, this is what mine would have looked like.

We had an exchange with the villagers there that night and then went to our mini-homestays for a night. We got paired off for these homestays, so my bbgirl Abby (henceforth, Babz) stayed with me! Our family in this village consisted of a paw (dad) and mae (mom), and they apparently had 2 older daughters that are currently working in Bangkok right now. And this is a trend I'll get to later, so just trust me. It's relevant.

The father showed us the back of his shack, where he kept 4 pigs and 5 piglets as well as an in-ground pond full of baby catfish and frogs. He explained that the community center area also had a community garden, several more pigs, cows, and water buffalo, as well as an abundance of rare mushrooms in their mushroom-growing hut. Because that's totally something you see everyday. The next day, we hung out with mae and the rest of their neighborhood in their backyard. Their house really had the "front-porch mentality" where everyone just kind of gathers. It was certainly delightful to see, as most of those front porches are slowly disappearing from our suburban and rural areas in the US.

After a 3 hour van ride, we got to Yasothon! Babz and I were able to meet our family that night in a village called Gut-choom (or so it sounded like), and boy, did we have a family. It consisted of a paw, a mae, an older sister, an aunt, two girl cousins, a yai (grandmother), and a tha (grandfather). They are organic rice farmers, as all of the villagers are. They are also members of the Green Market (an organic market in the area run by the villagers) and AAN (Alternative Agriculture Network). They had cows, a water buffalo, 3 dogs, chickens, ducks, and pigs as well. Their farm was divided into 6 areas: the building with the bedroom areas, the building with two bathrooms, the building for the kitchen, the building for the cows and water buffalo, the building for the pigs, ducks, and chickens, and the field. And in the neighboring area, dogs and chickens just walk around freely. So like, our van had to stop for dogs sleeping in the road as well as for chickens who decided that they really, really liked the other side of the road.

Oh. Quick note about yais. I REALLY WANT TO BE A YAI WHEN I GROW UP. It's legitimately a life goal. Why? Because yais can do whatever the hell they want. They can sleep wherever and whenever. They can talk/yell any time, especially in a conversation which doesn't involve the yai herself. They can criticize you. They can talk to themselves. They can work if they want to. Or not. And our family's yai was no different. I would say that all yais are legitimately my heroes.

So, Babz and I ate some awesome cabbage + eggs with a local variety of red sticky rice that our paw and mae grew themselves. Little did we know that we would have this same exact meal for 4 days at every mealtime. I mean, occasionally Babz would be able to partake in a skewer of meat, and we would also get som tum, a spicy salad made of local tomatoes and green papaya. But the cabbage (which, don't get me wrong, it was delicious) and sticky rice was pretty much it.

So here's the bathroom situation. Babz and I went to the bathroom which consisted of a squat toilet and two huge vats of water with a bucket inside each for bathing. So the biggest problem with this is setup is that I can't defecate into squat toilets. Like, I'm literally physically unable to do it. Also, when bathing, the idea is to throw water on yourself using the buckets and the two big vats of water. But wait. The water is icy cold. Yeah. I'm pretty sure the first time I took a shower, I yelped in shock when I had to throw the water on my back. And I'm pretty sure the family thought I had, like, drowned or something. Also, later that week, Babz and I were going to shower, no big deal. And then we realized that there were two gigantic toads in both of the bathrooms. So after screaming in fear and getting our 6 year old cousin to help chase it away, all was well... Until the next day when we tried to get a chicken out of the squat toilet-area through light kicking by Babz, who was brave enough to do so. And then we found giganic spiders hanging from the rafters. That was nice.

Anyway, that first night, we slept on the floor beside our older 26 year old sister's room, who I kind of bonded with when she asked me to translate a song by Mariah Carey into Thai for her. And I dislike Mariah. But she's cool; she's a science teacher at a local school and expressed that the only thing she wants to do is stay in the village and educate the children while taking care of the land. And like I mentioned before, not many kids do that; most go to Bangkok or find work in other urban settings. So mad, mad props for her.

The next day, we awoke to our cabbage and sticky rice, and we were able to help our paw cut down some of the tall grasses in order to feed the cows and pigs for that day. That was fine, but feeding the pigs was sort of disastrous. Mostly because pigs are aggressive when they're hungry. And the cows were freaking tricksters. One of them in particular liked to step on and move the rope which attached her collar to a fencepost as we walked by, thus tripping us up every time. Anyway, after that, we planted about 50 tamarind trees in little bags to sell later at a green market. In terms of work, though, we didn't do too much; the next day, we had to sort white from red rice to sell later at the market. The kids helped a lot, so that was fun.

We basically bonded with the other family members for the rest of the week. And it was really nice to be able to speak and understand Thai.. It definitely made the process a lot easier. I feel like if I ever came back to Isaan, I would definitely visit that family again and try to help out more with their harvesting or whatnot.

Other stories from the other kids in the group: two girls had to eat lizard that the family dog had brought in. Two girls as well as two other guys had to deal with ridiculously violent and out of control children. Two guys had to construct a wall-like structure using rice bags and mud.

So, yeah, after a series of exchanges with the villagers, we had to come back to Khon Kaen. Here are some pictures!

The group + all of our maes at the Green market! Jacked this from facebook, so credit to whoever had this picture.

The kid's nickname is Im. And that's Babz being the most adorable living thing that has ever existed ever.

Im being ridiculous with her older sister, Oom. Excuse the rank-looking bangs. I blame the bucket baths. I think I took this picture from Babz, so credit to her.

The rice paddy at sunset. Yeah.

I feel like I really learned a lot about the benefits of organic farming, where our food comes from, and how farming is so, so important. I'm still struggling to figure out the stigma behind the farming occupation as well as how we've let all this corruption in the food industry go on. Everyone, just watch Food Inc. if you want to know more. Woo.