We've been in northern Thailand for a week now and will be heading back to Bangkok this afternoon. This leg of the journey has been really wonderful.  I've been able to reconnect with several friends and visit some now-familiar sites and I've met new people and visited places I've never been before.  I'm looking forward to reading Kit's Matt's, and Kari's reflections about what we've done, but for now I'll share a few of my own.

We stayed in my favorite B&B in Chiang Mai - the Rattanaiya Residence -  from Sunday to Wednesday. This is where we enjoy a delicious breakfast every morning before going off on our adventures.

Rattanaiya Residence is owned by a colleague - a retired professor at Kasetsart University.  The woman who manages the inn, Fahrung, is delightful!  She welcomed us warmly, helped arrange transportation, gave suggestions for places to visit.  , and identified a massage center that was not for tourists - 150 Baht or about $5.0 for an hour of DEEP massage!  Feeling some pain as the masseuse works out some long-neglected muscles, smelling the camphor of the balm they use, and totally relaxing in the moment while listening to Kenny G in the background can make the whole experience seem a bit surreal!  But I can assure you that I slept well that night!

We also had the good fortune to meet with Professor Prasit at Chiang Mai University.  He is the director of the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development.  The Center focuses on the study and support of all ethnic minorities in Thailand.  They offer a masters degree, conduct research, and host short courses for youth on issues in their communities.  I'm looking forward to exploring ways that students coming to Thailand on a future learning abroad course might benefit from learning from the scholars at this Center.

As we talked with various people in the north, we heard similar stories about the challenges of the mountain peoples in northern Thailand.  As the government discovers people living in conservation or tourist areas deep in the jungle, they convince them or sometimes force them to relocate at lower elevations.  My understanding from what the people in the villages say is that the government officials want them to be closer so they can more easily monitor their activities and so they will not ruin the pristine forests on the mountains.  They also point out benefits to the people - they will be closer to schools and medical care.  However, the downside of this relocation is that it pretty much destroys their way of living.  They now have very limited access to farmland and are not able to cultivate rice and corn in their traditional ways.  So they grow some crops for their own consumption, but there's not enough to sell.  Income is most needed to pay for transportation and school-related expenses for their children, such as books, uniforms, etc.  In three Chiangrai Province Lahu villages we visited, the younger generation has basically left to find work in other parts of Thailand.  The elders become the caregivers for their grandchildren.  We visited one older man who was caring for his two grandchildren.  Their parents were living and working in the southern part of Thailand in the shrimp industry.  They sent money home and visited once a year at Chinese New Year time. 

We also traveled to Chiang Khong District in Chiangrai Province to explore the Mekong River area. 

We had the same boat captain as did Linda Buturian and I when we visited last August.  He is extremely knowledgeable about the River, having been born and lived his whole life here.

I was amazed at how far they'd come in building the bridge across the Mekong, just south of Chiang Khong.  This will be a major link for China to ship goods through Laos and Thailand to the rest of Southeast Asia.  I was told that several Chinese workers had died during construction.

It was also nice to see the fisherman out with their nets.  The fish have been greatly impacted by the dams that have been built upstream in China to produce electricity.  Currently there are tentative plans to build a dam south of Chiang Khong.  My friend, Kru Ti, and his Love Chiang Khong organization will be filing a lawsuit next month on behalf of the Mekong Network.  Their primary grounds are that there has not been proper consultation among all the vested parties, which include Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, not to mention there has been no input from grassroots groups like Love Chiang Khong, who represent the fishermen and others from local villages who make their living on the River.

I need to check-out of my room and get ready to travel south to Bangkok so will sign-off for now.

Time for me to take a turn....

Thanks to Kit's consistent blogging and picture-sharing, you've been able to read and see pictures about our experiences here in Thailand so far.  I've been thoroughly enjoying this trip with three doctoral students who are all seasoned travelers and deep thinkers.  That makes the questions coming my way both enjoyable and challenging with pushes me to also learn and get a deeper understanding of the Thai culture.  Having family members here in Thailand who have welcome and entertain us has allowed us to experience another dimension of the country and culture. 

I enjoyed returning to Wimanmek Palace last week which is the old palace in which several royal families lived.  King Rama IV (King Mongkut) and King Rama V (King Chulalongkorn) are particularly prominent here through the many artifacts gifts purchased when in Europe and received from visitors from around the world.  Those two monarchs are credited with modernizing Siam in the early 1900s.  Here is a picture of the palace and one of the U of MN visitors.

One of the things I enjoy about visiting Thai temples is the amazing and varied types of designs and styles.  On the first day here, we took a long-tailed boat ride on the Chao Praya River and visited several temples - Wat Arun, Wat Pho, Wat PraKaew, and another temple whose name escapes me.The following pictures show the ornate and the unusual.

And you never know who or what you'll find lurking in the nooks and crannies of the temple walls and sculptures!

Off for a day of adventure.  Wishing you a good night's sleep!

Today was an early morning. We went to a ceremony for a man entering the Monkhood.  Not permanently, just for about 2 weeks.  It’s a right of passage for young men to do this either when they are going to get married, make a big change/re-dedicate their lives, moving away for school, etc.  This particular man will be starting his MBA in England in the fall, and this was part of his reason.  Anyway, entering into the Monkhood is a very serious thing, and is begun with a ritual ceremony filled with celebration.  There is a part with the man thanking his parents for raising him, washing their feet, them washing him (along with grandparents and the monk leading the ceremony), changing into white clothing, walking around the temple 3 times with your family and friends, throwing coins wrapped in ribbons, then changing into the burnt orange garment (after vows are spoken), and then the family eats (which as you will see is an entirely different experience in itself).  It was really cool to be there and to watch, I’m going to have to start Googling stuff to figure out meanings and such. There are several rules that they must follow and the number of rules is shown by the color of their clothing, the darker orange means more rules. Two of them are 1) No touching or being touched by women and 2) only eating at 5am and Noon (he didn’t get to eat any of the food at the celebration afterwards, and actually wasn’t there except for a pass through to take pictures and say goodbye to his family). 

Washing his parents' feet.

Getting washed. This monk seemed to take joy and kept dumping more and more water on him. And it looked pretty cold.  

Walking around the temple

Throwing out the money

Family gifts for the monastery. No there isn't any significance in the gifts, they're always really practical. It's part of the celebration of having a son admitted into the Monkhood.

Making his vows

Side note: While the family walked around the temple, we walked over to the doors of the temple. And this is where we saw the cutest little boy. He was crouched down looking at this small caterpillar-ish bug. And all of a sudden he stood up and stomped on it.  And kept stomping on it. This furor of killing a bug seemed really ironic outside of a Buddhist temple.

A little less zen outside of the temple

The food after was quite the affair. I don’t think any of us anticipated this much food! Most of it was good, but not all, and we made sure to take pictures of everything.  A member of the Monk’s family insisted that this girl (probably in her mid to late 20s and her mom sit with us because the girl spoke English from attending the University of Michigan for her PhD in Engineering). They were great, even her mom spoke some English (I think more than she let on). She helped explain what everything was and how to eat it.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves: 

This is our table before we sat down. Notice the Sprite and Pepsi bottles.

We think we're almost done with the meal, so we thought we'd better get a picture. I think this was around the 4th or 5th course...

Our friends Tanawan and Kornsiri. They were great to sit with during the meal

Pre-appatizer? Puffed chips and peanuts (with chop sticks, which aren't supper common in Thailand).

Appatizer? Top right and clockwise: Thai hot dogs with ketchup, sliced ginger (pickled), pineapple, fake crab, Fermented eggs (direct translation: Horse urine eggs, also the ONLY think I didn't try), Center: pork/shrimp rapped in kanomgeep (flower of some sort). 

This was kind of like a coleslaw. Contents: mango, peanut, carrot, little crispy fish, pork sausage, lettuce, some sort of sauce.

Foreground: Duck, Background: Shark-fin soup (actually came out before the coleslaw stuff, and it was terrible!)

Shrimps, I even tried sucking the head (as I was directed, and I will never do that again)

Sea Bass, if fish always tasted like this, I could eat a ton of it. Apparently (and I've always suspected) fish tastes best when it's supper fresh and doesn't taste fishy (who knew :P). SO GOOD!

By this point you're probably thinking, we're done right? I'm mean that was 3 different types of protein. But you're wrong. Next came more soup (by this point we're on the 8th course). Those floating things are from a bamboo plant.  Couldn't actually get the name of it from anyone. 

Fruit that they brought especially for us.  The orange-ish things are salat, then grapes up in the top. the clear ones are longgong, apples and the red lynchee.

The obligatory fried rice with pork that has been dried and shredded on the top (surprisingly good).

Dessert which was sticky rice, sugar, dates and coypeck (yellow things that are supposed to give you a long life). When we were done and old man came up and started picking them out and eating them. It was really funny.

The newly admitted monk

After that Cathy’s brother-in-law took us to the weekend market (Chatuchank Market). It was crazy busy and really hot. We kept being warned about pick-pocketers and how it wasn’t safe, to be careful with our money, etc. We didn’t have any problems. We did get to see some crazy stuff though.  It was an extremely hot and humid day and it was really miserable to be out in the sun, and the parts that were covered were often just as bad because people were cooking food to sell so there was heat radiating from that too.  I’m not sure how they manage it.  I suppose if that’s all you’re used to.  We started wandering around the covered part, and ended up in the animal section. It started out with cute puppies, and then steadily when down hill. Thankfully it didn’t smell too badly, but booths after booths of caged animals got old really quickly. And we couldn’t find our way out.  They were selling everything: fish, dogs, bunnies, squirrels, rodents, etc. Some of the squires weren’t even caged, just leashed up. That was odd.  At one point we did find our way out, and decided that we needed to cool down; We found a place that was enclosed with air conditioning. It was a restaurant so we stopped to get drinks. I got mango juice, which is probably more detail than you care about, but it was really good mango juice. Mostly because it was cold, but it tasted really good also.  We shopped around for a while and bartered a bit. After only a few hours though, we were done. 

Research in Thailand

Today was more low key, but still really interesting.  We’re staying at one of Thammasat University training hotels. Which means that for their hotel management program, they have two hotels that the students train at as they learn how to run hotels. Most of the staff are students, this particular day they had several training in the skills of room cleaning. I had forgotten something in my room that morning and ran up to get it, and there were about 6 students in my room all milling about. Keeping in mind that the room is really small anyway, and they were all chatting away, with one instructing the other. My bed is pushed up against the wall, and each morning they move the bed entirely to be able to tuck in the sheet properly. The do such a thorough job, and they all take off their shoes before they will walk into your room to clean it. I’m very impressed by the rigor that they are training their students. 

Since we are on campus (just the edge of it, and you wouldn’t even really know unless you venture out through the back door), there are all kinds of other thing that are here too. We stopped by the bakery to check that out, this is part of the training for a different program. And the students all where uniforms too, which I have a hard time imagining going to undergrad wearing a uniform.  We had lunch with a few professors. Dr. Kitipat Nontapattamadul who did his doctoral work in Calgary, Canada. It was in some sort of social science. Dr. Marid Kaewchinda who did his degree in Counseling and Clinical Psychology at the University of Minnesota and Dr. Arunya Tuicomepee who got the same degree from the same program. We got to talk with them about research in Thailand and various topics of culture.  Then we had a meeting with them after lunch as well. 

Kit, Dr. Kaewchinda, Matt, Acharn Cathy, Dr. Nontapattamadul, Dr. Tuicomepee, Kari

Dr. Nontapattamadul did his dissertation on Loas refugees in Canada and studied how these couples would give you different information when interviewed alone verse together. He also discussed issues of trustworthiness that went along with this.  Dr. Kaewchinda talked about family therapy at The Bridge (a homeless shelter in Minneapolis), which was the topic of his dissertation. He also discussed the stigma of mental health in Thailand and how people would rather go see a monk to get blessed rather than see a doctor or get medication, which is a challenge to his work. Dr. Tuicomepee has been doing a lot of research about families affected by the tsunami in 2004.  She also has done some work with women who have been arrested for prostitution working from a rehabilitation standpoint. 

 At dinner we spoke with Dr. Poonsuk who does a lot of curriculum development at a distance university. Basically it’s independent study and online learning, and the university primarily reaches nontraditional students. She was telling us about a student she has that is 82 right now (she’s been working on her degree for 12 years).  

Kari, Dr. Poonsuk, Kit, Matt.  Some of us fit into Thailand a little better than others.

It was really interesting to talk with each of them about their research and the challenges that they face because the research infrastructure is so different and sometimes non-existent. Dr. Kaewchinda said that there were only 10 psychologists and 10 psychiatrists in the whole country (maybe an exaggeration, but probably not too far off), and how challenging that is.  It was a completely different day, but really interesting and fun to learn from people who are pioneering the mental health profession here in Thailand.

First day, first impressions

Breakfast here, is like most countries where you have very different types of foods that are not considered breakfast in the U.S. I had a noodle dish that Cathy recommended as well as some veggies and chicken.  And then some toast. The juice was okay; it was sort of a tangerine-ish tang type, not my favorite, but okay. They also had pineapple juice, which I think I’ll opt for (although this morning it was really sweet).

We were then off on our “get to know Bangkok” day.  We took the bus over to the area where the Grand Palace is, and the bus was really funny. It did have a roof, but it was still very open-aired (all the windows were open).  And it had fans in the ceilings. The ceiling was also quite low and I will constantly be watching out for my head. On our way to the Grand Palace we came across this man who started talking to Cathy; we ended up taking a Tuk-Tuk (motorized taxis) that are meant to hold 3 at best, but really probably just 2. We ALL (four of us) piled into one and the driver took us to a boat to ride through the river and canals for a few hours. 

 We saw many wooden dwellings that were on stilts and a lot of people hanging their laundry out for the day.  Most of the time we zipped around and all of a sudden our guide stopped our boat and started going backwards. He stopped completely and started pointing excitedly at the rocks at the base of a house. We looked, and were confused, not realizing for a little while what he was pointing out. But it was a huge lizard (he said alligator, but a non-biting one), it was definitely a lizard.  I was amazed that he saw it so well. This happened a couple of times, he must always have a look out for them for the tourists he drives around. In other places people were feeding the fish and they would all be up at the surface, so many that some were half way out of the water, flopping around. It was quite a spectacle. At one point, he slowed down and a few ladies came over with their little paddle boats filled with their wares to sell, they were really cute. He also let us stop at a temple area to take pictures. There was this HUGE statue of Buddha with some other buildings and figures that were in the Thai temple style. It was fun to walk around and see things. I’ve seen a lot of places where you can burn incense for luck (and of course places to donate money for luck as well).  And usually in these areas there is a floor that is raised up above the ground level by just a few inches, and it is considered respectful to take of your shoes before walking on it. 

 

He let us off at Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn), which had spectacularly steep steps to climb to get to the top level of the structure.  There were a few levels to climb up and the whole thing was covered with ceramic mosaics and designs. We got to see beautiful panoramas of the city from up there. 

 

Next Cathy took us over Wat Pho (the Reclining Buddha). It is just how it sounds, it’s the Thai Buddha in this side-ways position laying down, and it is MASSIVE!  According to Wikipedia (the source for all truth and wisdom) the statue is 15 m high and 43 m long, for all of us who don’t regularly think in terms of meters that is almost 50 feet tall and 141 feet long. It’s all covered in gold leafing except the soles of his feet which are some sort of black stone and mother of pearl decorations.  Cathy didn’t go inside with us (she’s seen it a million times), instead she met a monk and started conversing with him outside. According to him, the Buddha was built first but it kept getting too dirty so they then build a temple around it.  The certainly planned for space for people to walk around in there, but not so much for the height of the Buddha, because if you look closely at the roof, the point of his had/crown almost touches a corner of it.

After that we took a break for lunch and then it was off to the Grand Palace to see the Emerald Buddha. In size comparison it’s a bit of a let down after the reclining Buddha, and it’s made of Jade, not Emerald. But it was still a spectacular site. You walk into the main temple on the grounds and it’s this huge room full of gold and sparkly material (mostly colored glass and gem stones).  The grounds were extensive. The grounds had several buildings and it was interesting to see all the details that went into each building.  The moldings and the sparkle of it all were really incredible, and everything is so colorful. 

 

After that we took a taxi ride to a mall to pick up a phone for Kari while she’s here an extra week without everyone else.  The taxi driver asked us if we could do him a favor: stop at a shop and look around so he could get 5L free in gas. Apparently this is a common thing, bring tourists to our shop and we’ll give you free gas.  So we did and it was a funny thing. They took us through a pretty fancy jewelry store. First we saw the men at work carving and shaping the rings. Then this room full of all the products (rings, ear rings, pendants, etc.) where they had all the sales people. One lady seemed to be convinced that if she followed me around long enough, I’d buy something.  Poor woman. She kept at it though taking me through the next room with all the pearls and textiles.  I’m sure they all do that, pick a customer and stay with them to pick up the commission, but in my case it wasn’t very effective, I just felt stalked rather than being helped. 

After that it was on to get a phone, and plane tickets for when we go to Chang Mai and Chang Rai. We took Tuk-tuks for this, but opted to take two rather than our smushed adventure of that morning.  Then it was on to dinner and the cab ride home. Driving here is a little crazy, but seems fairly comparable to what I saw in South Africa and Russia.  Except their nicer to pedestrians here.  By this time, as you can imagine I was EXHAUSTED. We hadn’t been in Bangkok for 24 hours yet, and all of that was one day.  Very fun! But I did fall asleep on the cab ride home.