Another Bangkok post.

Sorry for the lack of updates! The program likes to throw a bunch of assignments for us to do all at once… And then gives us nothing at all for a while.

So I guess… Two weeks ago? Yeah. I went to Bangkok to visit my mom’s side of the family. First adventure came when I got off the overnight bus from Khon Kaen to Bangkok at… 4AM. That resulted in me waiting for almost 3 hours at the nearly empty bus station for my aunt to come pick me up. And what did I do during that time? Watched kpop-related videos and snacked, obviously.

Yeah. Seriously.

So my aunt Ju eventually picked me up and sent me to my grandma’s house, which is one I remember from my childhood well. It has, like, 5ish floors and is very Chinese-y. Here’s a picture of the dining room/kitchen floor I randomly took one day while I was trying to do my homework.

Anyway, that first day, I went with aunt Ju to get some breakfast. We then walked around this park that was close to the house, which incidentally had a bunch of old people doing Tai Chi in it. We went back to grandma’s house, and I accidentally fell asleep in my grandma’s room while waiting for my cousin Lhin to wake up. Oops. When she finally did, she and I went with her boyfriend, Lek, to Siam Paragon, the big mall that I visited when I arrived in Bangkok way back in August. We walked around a bit and then saw Paranormal Activity 2 (which was absurdly horrible, btw). It’s still pretty weird to me that before every movie, you have to stand up while this slideshow of the King of Thailand and a song honoring the King plays. But, you know, nationalism, whatevs. We then bought some food at the grocery store inside the mall to cook for lunch tomorrow. Because that’s apparently what the cool kids do in Thailand: make their own food. We finally ended up at a beautiful rooftop restaurant somewhere and ate a really large dinner. Lhin and I also reflected on the last time we saw each other (10 years ago) and how we played by racing up and down the stairs of the 5-story house and how I cried, like, all the time because the mosquitoes kept biting me. I guess some things never change.

The next day, all of my aunts came over to talk to me. We had a nice little discussion in grandma’s room, and then I decided to have my mom skype in. And basically, I was so happy that I cried. Again, things just don’t change, I suppose. Afterwards, Lhin, Lek, and I made some delicious western-y food: pasta, broccoli, and steak for the meat-eaters. Then, one of my aunts and I went to the Chinatown portion of Bangkok, where I saw lots of gold shops. Shame that this can’t be a transition into my next entry about mining~ Anyway, the evening ended with aunt Ju taking me to a hot-pot dinner of sukiyaki and then we walked around some other malls in the area.

The day after that, I met up with Phan! We first went to a pretty temple near my grandma’s house!

Then, we basically walked around, talked, and caught up. We finally met Amy and Reef for dinner at a Japanese place! There was a whole lotta business-y talk at the table, and I definitely felt like a young’un. The three of them are NU graduates, and they all currently work in finance and entrepreneurship. So proud of ‘em, though.

Got my herpderp face on again. This time with extra food coma!

On the last day, I woke up and talked to my two uncles for a bit. Then, I met Tana at Paragon and had freakin’ RED MANGO! I pretty much spent the rest of the night watching movies with Lhin while she did her architecture homework. The next morning I left to go back to KKU. Which was, you know, pretty boring.

After a week, I then left to go to Loei province for the mining unit! Woo!

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!

A series of long-overdue posts: Bangkok

This has literally been the longest week of my life. I've been constantly busy and only have today and tomorrow free before we go back to the villages. Okay. Let me recap.

Last time I posted, I was in Bangkok, awaiting orientation-y things. So, I did that. 8 hours of that. I met the other 9 people in my group, and they are all super duper. That night, I went to Siam Paragon, the now-biggest mall in Bangkok (RIP, Central World).

I had dinner with A and Pup from Thai Club at NU at some delicious Thai food place. Upon Pup's awesome recommendation, I had gang som pak + goong, which is like a soup with veggies and shrimp in a spicy/sour broth. Then, we went to iBerry, which was a sorbet stand inside of the mall. If there's one thing about Thai malls that I've noticed, it's that they love one-stop shopping and ice cream/yogurt/shaved ice while they shop. But more on that later. I had a Thai tea-flavored sorbet, and I thought I was going to die from the deliciousness.

The next day, I visited Chulalongkorn University, which is arguably the most prestigious university in Thailand. I heard a lecture by a professor from their political science department about the situation between the red shirts and the yellow shirts, which are two political parties in Thailand. Thailand is pretty strongly divided, so it was difficult to find a nearly-neutral professor to talk to us (I feel like she was slightly more pro-red shirt, but that's just me). From our perspective as a development & globalization program, it seems that under Thaksin, less policies were made that disenfranchised people in rural areas within Isaan. This may be a reason that the Isaan region is largely red shirt-dominated. Under current and past leadership, regardless of color divisions, policies were put into place that forced indigenous people from their villages in Isaan, where they had worked all of their lives, and put dams, eucalyptus tree forests, and power plants in their places. So, with that frame of reference, we're examining the lives of villagers affected by such policies and powers of development, among other things. And I still don't have a stance on whether I'm pro-yellow or pro-red, so please don't strike up an argument with me! D:

Anyway, after that, we went to see the Democracy monument and what was left of Central World, the largest mall in Bangkok which was burned down by the red shirts this past spring). Then, we drove to Thammasart University, another prestigious university in Thailand, had lunch, and toured the campus. We then visited the Grand Palace, which was really beautiful... Take a look!

I took some more pictures, but it was raining really hard (it's the rainy season here), so they didn't come out too well. So anyway, after that, I saw my dad, aunt, and grandma for a little while before I had to go to a mandatory dinner with the people involved in my program. There, my program, CIEE, paid for the entire meal, including cocktails for those who wanted them. There was a RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF FOOD. Also, the program director, Ajaan Dave, definitely had a jagerbomb with one of the other students in my program. Awesome.

Then, last Saturday, we left Viengtai hotel at about 7 AM and had an 8 hour van ride to Loei. I slept most of the time. :) Next post will be about Loei!

I'M HERE.

YESSSSSS. I'm so excited! I chronicled my plane ride there just so you guys could witness my cray. It gets progressively more ridiculous the closer I got to Bangkok, it seems, haha. Enjoy~

So this morning before I left, my aunt (mom's younger sister) called and told my dad that she was essentially creepin'. She said that she went to the Viengtai hotel (my orientation hotel while I'm in Bangkok) and somehow extracted the information that we would be staying there for 3 days and that the rate per night at that hotel was 1200 baht (maybe $40) per night. She also got the phone number of the program director and my address in Khon Kaen so she will be able to contact me whenever she wanted. My parents and I had a good laugh about that one; my aunt has always been pretty nosy. Just thought that was a funny little situation.

(10 hours, 45 minutes until Incheon) If I ever travel to Asia again, there's no way I'm not going to use Korea Air. First, there are individual touchscreen consoles installed to the backs of every seat, complete with remote control. On it, you can watch tons and tons of movies (so far, just watched Date Night and How To Train Your Dragon for the second time). Most of them are Hollywood-based with many language options, but they also have some Korean movies (English subbed!), Chinese dramas, and some European movies I've never heard of. You can also play games (Tetris, of course, chess, lots of other random sports-y games) and listen to their huge collection of audio. And yes, since it's Korea Air, all of my favorite k-pop songs are here! Currently listening to Super Junior's 3rd album, Big Bang's 2nd album, and 2PM's DSCS. Do I have all of these albums? Yes. But it just makes me happy that they offer them to everyone on this plane. Am trying out a few albums by Wonder Girls, 2NE1, and KARA, too. They also have old school k-pop (Seo Taiji and the Boys, anyone?) and a huge collection of trot and traditional Korean music. And the "recent" music is a few months old, which I was okay about; featured is Rain's "Back to the Basic," SNSD's "Run Devil Run," and even KARA's random cheer song for the World Cup, "We're With You." But overall, this is awesome. For dinner, I had a delicious make-it-yourself-style bibimbap. Yum! Though the gochujang in a tube was kind of a weird concept to me, I'll be honest. Now I'm about to settle into either a nice nap or continue my orientation readings while my laptop still has the battery.

(~5 hours until Incheon) I'm sitting in between two children crying. I mean, seriously, when one stops, the other one starts. It's ridiculous. Watching Iron Man 2 didn't help; it was a pretty horrible film. I'm really surprised that my dad was able to fall asleep.

(Incheon) The flight was delayed, so my hour-long layover time, in which I was planning on looking through the stores and buying cheap kpop-related merchandise, turned into a 10 minute layover. Sad.

(~3 hours until Bangkok) Just had dinner and had an awkward 2 sentence-long conversation with the flight attendant who spoke Thai. And so far, I've been mistaken as a Korean, Japanese, and native Thai. Awesome. On a completely different note, I really don't understand Korean airplane food and odd packaging. I just ate a Thai-style seafood curry with some rice, and on the side, they gave me a pudding cup filled with... silken tofu. Served with their oddly thick soy sauce and sesame seeds, it's delicious, if you were wondering -- but very strange. I was expecting, you know, pudding. Or at least yogurt. But then they gave me some cheesecake-flavored ice cream, and thus, I'm on a sugar high... Which doesn't make sense, since it's about 5 AM in the US right now. Man, I'm looking forward to that jetlag in the morning.

(~1 hour until Bangkok) I'm pretty sure I just got molested by an 85 year old white woman. So first, I was sleeping, and she was apparently trying to reach across me to grab some headphones that the flight attendant was handing out and definitely whacked me in the chest. Hard. And just now, she tried to get up and my bag was in the way.. So she kicked it across the aisle and then tried to lift my foot off the ground. Like, literally... Was bent down on the floor clawing at my feet to try to get me to move. I mean, she could have tapped me or something so the situation that happened wouldn't have happened -- that is, almost connecting my knee to her face. Oops. Yay, sleep deprivation.

(Bangkok!) I'm all settled into my hotel room! I'm an absolute cray at this point, but I have a roommate that is supposedly coming in soon.. And I don't want to creepily be asleep when she gets here. Anyway, so at the airport, my dad and I exchanged some of our money and got our baggage from the baggage claim. Unfortunately, one wheel of my suitcase was apparently knocked off en route, so my dad really wanted to switch our stuff. So on the way to meet the person from CIEE that was supposed to pick me up, we ran into my uncles on my dad's side who were there to pick us up too. Cue awkward car ride to the hotel where the CIEE coordinator was trying to explain the schedule and program to me while my dad was catching up with his brothers. But at least on the car ride, I got to catch a glimpse at the King's Palace and a few wats (Buddhist temples). My hotel is on a street that was meant for tourists; in fact, the whole time we were driving on the street, I don't think I saw a single non-white person... Except for the waiters and waitresses that were serving food to the tourists on their restaurants' outside patios. At.. 12 AM? Okay, tourists, whatevs.

But oh well, now I'm here!! Using grossly overpriced wifi, yay!! Tomorrow, I have workshops from 9:30 until 5:30, and then I'm going to meet with some Thai Club ladies for dinner. After that, I'll hopefully get to see my grandmother and aunt on my mom's side (the silly creeper one). Woohoo!