Perchance

I often forget that I am living in Thailand. No I am not going senile at the age of twenty-three. But I find that I simultaneously forget I live in an elongated country in South East Asia, and that I have ever lived anywhere else. I walk out on to my balcony and expect to see the undulating mountains of Doi Suthep – now masked in summer haze. I drive my motorbike and expect stands frying roti, whole salted fish and spiraled spicy northern sausage to dot the sidewalks of every block. I sit in the corner foodstall – dirt floor, low-slung naked bulbs and large blackened woks, and expect to not understand the conversation of my fellow diners.

But then there are also those moment – perhaps strolling into one of the hundred glittering Wats around Chiang Mai, when I am almost bulled over by that realization that I am living in the same country where a musically inclined teacher sang frustrations at a king. That favorite childhood musical seems both very close and very far away from my life in the north.

At times it feels dream like, other-wordly. I half believe I will wake up and be back in my bunked bed in a gothic dorm with sleet pounding the windows. But at the same time snow and gargoyles seem so distant both mentally and physically from the present that I might as well believe that I am a cat and have had multiple separate lives, and to which this life has known neither. Even cheese, that amazing invention that I once inhaled three times a day and more, and thought I could never live without, has slipped into intangible memories only.

Somewhere in between driving miles on dusty late night highways out into the countryside, where the roads swoon unexpectedly to the right and to the left, and parading in front of a multitude of chalkboards, I have forgotten what it is like to be anywhere else. I have grown trepidatious about returning to America, as it no longer feels like I will be returning, but instead arriving for the first time.

Some might look on this year as a blip, almost as a semester abroad, a break from normal life. Its not. Chiang Mai is life like anywhere else. Sure we might have palm trees, golden temples, orange clad monks in long procession. But we also have work, we have our rainy days, our broken bikes. And when I say it is life I mean that it is also the place I call home.

But here we are in April, at the start of another Thai year. Outside children, women, old men have been dousing cars with water drawn from the moat around the old city. It is hot, a tad muggy, sometimes you can hear the chants of monks, the cackles of roosters. There are waves of smoke laced with chili oil that make any passer by bend over hacking. Today I will go to the morning market. I will buy bags of bamboo shoots – spicy, and leaf bundles of sticky rice and egg custard. This afternoon I will get on a plane and start the day plus journey back to a country I have called home for twenty-two years of my life. But I will also be leaving home. Coming and going. Going and coming.

I have been internally fortunate to find such great friends, such a supportive community, and blessed with so many hilarious, moving, striking moments. It is near impossible to pack up, to sell my bike, to lock my apartment door, to give last rounds of hugs. It is only possible because I know I will be back. It is that simple I will need to come home, and I will need to come home soon.

Sawadee bee mai!

Running sopping into the new year!

The Thai New Year falls amid the hottest months of the year. In Chiang Mai the air is thick with exhaust and smoke from field burnings, the pollution so bad that I can make out the outline of Doi Suthep only. During these hottest weeks, when temperatures routinely rise to 100 plus, all anyone can talk about is Songkran – the Thai New Year. The holiday lasts three days from April 13-15, but spills over into the days preceding.

Songkran originated in the temple, as most Thai holidays did, this particular one involving a ritual cleansing for the new year by pouring scented water atop Buddhas and each other. Today this has evolved into a countrywide water fight, with Chiang Mai at its epicenter.

Similar to Loi Kratong it is near impossible to fully understand or appreciate Songkran without experiencing it, with this in mind I will attempt to paint a sketch only. There is no possible way to stay dry during Songkran (unless of course you hibernate indoors for three days and refuse to leave the confines of your house – a practice that some Thais do follow.) Indeed I have never felt wetter in my life then I have during the holiday and that includes any time I have ever gone swimming. The feeling comes from having bucket after bucket after bucket thrown over your head in rapid succession while simultaneously being shot at by about five water guns from odd angles. Sawadee Bee Mai! (Happy New Year) people intone as they pour icy water over your head.

Songkran is the closest I have ever got and hope to ever get to warfare. I started off the holiday by driving into the old city on the back of a friend’s motorbike, watergun cocked and ready taking out targets as we dodged buckets, hoses, and streaming jets.

We spent our days wandering the moat road of the old city – the center of action due to the easy, albeit unhygienic water source - the muddy moat. The roads become packed with crawling trucks by 1 pm and stay so till 7 pm. The truck beds are filled with people dumping water on others from large plastic buckets and ceramic urns. Between the cars and trucks are motorbikes, also crawling, drivers half blinded by the water that is getting thrown on their heads and into their faces. People crowd the streets filling up the places between motor vehicles – men, women, young people, old people, monks. To walk one side of the moat took an hour on average, a distance that normally requires fifteen minutes max. Along the sides are stands selling food – most sopping wet, water fight casualties. Other stands sell water-guns: backpacks with squirters (hello kitty, Doremon, elephants), small hand guns, long range shooters, classic models of varying lengths. There are bands playing at intervals on raised platforms, some complete with foam machines. While there is supposedly a “no-alcohol” policy, beer is everywhere and crushed cans are used to prop up the hoods of all the cars to prevent over heating. The roads are flooded along the edge so that you end up walking in ankle deep moat water.

For some unknown reason many people feel the need to buy large blocks of ice to chill their ammunition. Traveling in a pack we devised a scoring system for those who shot us with bone-chilling water, covering each other by aiming at sensitive areas – 50 points for the mouth, 60 for the teeth, 75 for the ear and 100 for the eyes. Others stick to the moat as their source, which is pleasantly warm in comparison though has the minor downsides of probably being filled with diseases. At one point along the north-east side of the moat there is a stretch where you are never not being doused with a bucket. To prepare myself for the days I stuffed essentials in a waterproof pouch, filled my water guns, threw on a bathing suit, jean shorts and donned a yellow shirt that said in Thai “Chawp Len Nam” (I like to play in the water).

Perhaps what was most startling about the three-day holiday was that it was not startling. True there is nothing else like it that I have ever experienced and probably will ever experience, true I was wetter then I will ever be again, true I danced to Lady Gaga in the streets of Chiang Mai with strangers, doused monks with water and got thrown into a water cooler by friends from the climbing wall, but despite all this the entire experience did not feel not normal. Rather it felt decidedly normal. I had this thought specifically on the third day hemmed in by thousands of soaking Thai people completely clogging Huak Kaew road, dancing and screaming to Thai bands while being sprayed with nozzles of water from above. Oh Chiang Mai how I love you. What a way to welcome in the new year! Sawadee Bee Mai!

Offerings in the forest

When you fly up to my home city of Chiang Mai – on Thai Airways, Bangkok Air or Air Asia (I have flown them all) you can look out over the forests, plains, rice fields and see the land literally sparkle. Wats (or temples) are everywhere and everywhere they are covered in gold and mosaiced mirrors that catch the light and juggle it back and forth. When surrounded by the walls of some of the more elaborate wats in the midday heat, the effect is so powerful you must squint. From the air it is as if glitter was strewn across the landscape.

Out of the hundreds of Wats that dot Chiang Mai, my favorite is Wat Umong – the reclusive forest temple tucked behind Suthep road and the back gate of CMU. Along the walkways the trees are wrapped with orange – a sign that they are blessed and protected. And strung on many are green plaques bearing Buddhist wisdoms and proverbs. “Physical charms attract the eye. Goodness attracts the mind.” “The lures of love often lead to the grave.” “There is no preventing a fire from emitting smoke.” “The mad dog hates water, the sex crazy man hates dharma.”

The temple there is not the most grand, though there is a large stone, cloth-wrapped, Chedi. There is a small museum with murals on the walls and there are tunneled caves with nooks holding cross-legged Buddhas. There is a pond and an island reachable by a small metal bridge. Pigeons are particularly fond of the island, long nosed turtles too. There is a monastery and a nunnery.

But my favorite place at Wat Umong is none of these. Rather it is a stretch of landscape running along the wall where there is a collection of Buddha heads and Buddha bodies. They sit crooked on a low rise wall with missing arms, heads, hands. One three-foot head sits cocked at an angle behind the others, pebbled hair covered with a veil of moss. One or two of the Buddhas are draped in yellow. Nearby is a raised circle that holds a collection of offerings – small plastic and metal Buddhas, horses, imposing men in high backed chairs, wooden elephants. They are in varying states – water and sun having worn away at paint and enamel. They are heaped, crooked and jumbled.

I come here to read, to study Thai, to eat bags of fresh cut fruit, to draw and to think. I have photographed this one spot in every season - hot, raining and cold. Out of all places it is the most peaceful in Chiang Mai.There is something about the place that is so full of life, despite the lack of distinction it holds compared the other sites in the temple complex. There is an acute presence and absence of people – all those who brought offerings for a milliard of reasons. The place is untidy, un-manicured, real - and for all this, enchantingly beautiful.

Wai-ing Michelin Men

My diet is almost entirely sustained by food sold on the streets. While we have grocery stores and convenience stores I rarely step inside their air-con interiors, but sometimes when bored I peruse the neon lit aisles for fun. In many ways the commercial landscape mirrors any you might find in a US city. True we have Tesco and Carrefour instead of Walmart, but you can find practically anything there all the same – hair products, tea brands, Skippy Peanut butter – as long as you know where to look and don’t mind paying extra. (I do, so I forgo these comforts of my former life on a regular basis). However most of those familiar brands and stores come with a Thai twist if you look closely. Starbucks sells Thai Ice Tea and McDonalds Thai Tea McFlurries along with Mango McFlurries.

Driving along the moat road of the Old City I often pass a garage selling Michelin tires. Outside they have propped up one of those life-size cardboard cutouts. He’s got the normal rippled dimensions of a man constructed out of tires, but his arms are not raised in a wave or stretched out in a muscular stride. Rather they come together at his chin in a Thai Wai (traditional bow).

A Thai 7-11 has all the usual trappings, but then you look closer and start realizing that you are not in Kansas anymore. Let's take as example Lays potato chips, which we have in abundance. We do have some of the common flavors: Cheese and Onion, Sour Cream and Onion, Salt and Sour, Barbeque, Extra Barbeque. Even Hot Chicken and Lemon is not too out of the ordinary. But Lays varieties do not stop there, indeed most of the shelf space is taken up by the following flavors: Sweet Basil, Spicy Seafood, Spicy Lobster, Nori Seaweed, Shrimp Tempura, Hot Chili Squid, and of course Pla Sam Rod (Fermented Fish). I have sampled almost all of these and can attest to the shocking realization of biting down on a crunchy, oily, familiar looking potato sliver expecting Extra Cheese and tasting Spicy Seafood instead. In such instances I’d rather forgo the semblance of the familiar altogether and head over to the nearest late night food stand for some grilled intestine– at least that way, I’ll be prepared for the taste.

Raining Strawberries and Flowers

It seems that in the past weeks I have been attending increasing numbers of festivals. After sampling a wide range I can say with some authority that there are more similarities than differences between the differing celebrations. The venue and the occasion remain unique. The food stands however, do not. It is perhaps comforting to know that you will always find piles of noodles in varying widths that can be heaped with bean sprouts, peanuts and sugar. There are without question always stands frying tiny pink splayed sausages and others with vats bobbing with silky meatballs. There are also, the same variety of souvenir stands – Lana woven bags, frilled and bowed shirts, odd wooden plaques, and overlarge key-chains. It is as if the same vendors are on constant rotation between towns.

What changes is the theme, at least a few more stands of a particular item, or in some cases a profusion of one particular item. In Bo Sang it was Umbrellas, In Sappong it was Strawberries, in Chiang Mai it was flowers.

But my intention is not to dismiss festivals with a “seen one seen them all” attitude – though I might feel this at times. Instead I continue to seek out and happen upon festivals, specifically in search of the quirky idiosyncrasies.

To offer an example – when TaReva and I drove out to Chiang Dao (72 km away from Chiang Mai) we found ourselves in the midst of a local Winter Festival with all the usual trappings and in addition: beauty pageants, fried toast on a stick and the most bizarre pet stand I have, and probably will ever see. It consisted of a wall of pastel colored cages each containing a miniature bunny that could fit into my palm. Not weird enough? Now put small baby doll clothes on all the bunnies.

In Sappong we perused a whole roadway of stands selling exactly the same strawberry products made by exactly the same company: dried strawberries, strawberry jam and locally produced, vinegar tasting strawberry wine.

The Chiang Mai flower festival is not complete without a flower parade with massive floats composed of flower creatures, flower maps, flower temples, flower elephants, flower kings. There was even a bevy of Indian Princesses pulled in a fleet of rickshaws… I am still confused about their presence.

Then of course there was Chinese New Year that turned Wararot Market red and gold. There were more beauty pageants – this time with three year olds and there were lion dancers balancing on poles.

And then there was one of those moments that I have had on a number of occasions where I am strikingly reminded that I am not in Cambridge anymore. Walking up the line of food stalls and souvenir stands, Lauren and I spied a dragon dance – an impressive many legged, electronically lit body that bobbed and swayed above the heads of the crowd. But terrestrial dancing and swerving were not enough so up it went, wrapping itself around a pole. All of this could have been viewed in a chinatown in the states, but this feat was still too tame for Chiang Mai. And so lets add fireworks into the dragon’s open mouth and set them alight so that they shower the gathered crowd below with sparks!

Day by day

It is unfathomable to me that our second semester is coming to a rapid close and our final classes are this week. CMU feels natural. That striding and dancing in front of classes of forty students basically my age, has come to be exactly what I feel I should be doing. Why then is the semester wrapping up?

Over the last nine months I have come to love much about my new home – swerving between cars on my motorbike, slurping gummy rice noodles, struggling to reshape my mouth so as to make some of the more challenging Thai sounds. But I’ll say with utter confidence that more than anything else I have experienced here, I love the teaching and I love my classes.

Yes there are the frustrations – students not understanding, complications with the institution, the finer points of English grammar. Yes there are the worries - how do I explain a vocabulary word on the spot? Will a certain game or assignment work? Yes there is the loss of sleep – the hours spent grading piles of exams at coffee shops, or trolling through websites and youtube clips simply to compile a single hour and a half lesson.

But I would say that all of these are inherent to teaching. Indeed, in a perhaps ironic way, they are essential to teaching, because it makes those moments – a student’s dawning understanding, a game that gets students jumping up and down, even simple laughter – mean the world to me.

Last week I spent hours preparing a review scavenger hunt for my 202 classes. I had students racing all over campus – much to their incredulity – “we have to actually go all the way there?!” Seeing my three successive classes excitedly huddled in circles, flipping through textbooks and huffing back up four flights of stairs after finding a clue on the teacher room’s door made it all worthwhile and more.

In the last two weeks many of my classes have been devoted to presentations, and again and again I find myself close to tears with laughter. There have been the commercials advertising: “ghost wax” and “cupcake perfume.” The skits describing new products – a hat that makes you dance, exercise, or play guitar depending on the music played, and where the students slyly chose a “random” subject to test out the dance function…namely me. There have been the presentations where two of my art student ladyboys dressed and danced in the style of a “Traditional Thai woman from Rama V” and the other as a “Traditional Thai woman from Rama the IX” in order to discuss the changing roles of women in Thai society. Students have sung songs about condoms, lathered their faces with mustard yellow “magic cream” who’s secret ingredient was cow piss; they have impersonated terrible teachers to illustrate the country's educational failings, and they have serenaded us with guitars.

In my own struggles with learning how to teach I often seem to forget how hard English is to learn. I can get easily frustrated with the education system and with the language barrier that still stands partially erect between my students and I. But I think back to my own struggles with language first in high school and then in college. I remember hating to be called to answer questions, let alone to perform - so worried was I that I would make a fool of myself. In this last week I have watched all hundred and forty students of mine get up in front of the black board and put their all into not only practicing English, but doing so with confidence and creativity. I cannot be more inspired.

In the end though, it will be the small things I will miss most – the certain exuberant way one of my social science students greets me every morning, or how one of my art students will admonish the others to “speak English” in a copy of my tone and voice. It is that grin of a specific political science student who sticks out his tongue when he understands a grammar point or when something is particularly funny, or it is the exaggerated way that a collection of my art students greet me with when they stroll in ten minutes late. It is all the many personalities and characters, the class cohesions and the class quirks that I have been honored to take for granted for an entire semester.

The Odd, the Absurd, and the Embarrassing

Being a tall white farang living in Northern Thailand odd things are normal (I might go as far as to say normal things have become odd). Here are just a few examples of the bizarre quirks of everyday living, and more than one instance of me making a fool of myself (something I assure you happens to me regularly). 1. I will never cease to be amazed and amused by the fashion of Chiang Mai (and indeed Chiang Mai is very fashionable). Most recently I have spotted: pink ruffled shoulder pads that resemble new-age armor and a black and white polka dotted one piece. 2. This is a story that I alluded to months ago, but figured it also belonged here. While driving back late from a dinner party my bike happened to be caught up in the fiercest windstorm I have experience in Thailand. Dust, leaves, and twigs were flying everywhere, but the real measure of the storms strength was that it was able to untie the back of my dress. Normally I would discretely pull off to the shoulder and put myself back together, but that night I happened to be intently following a friend so as to find my way back to my side of town. Thus I was forced to drive one-handed through the outskirts of Chiang Mai with my other hand on my back attempting to remain fully clothed. 3. About halfway through the school year the following sign was taped up over the toilet in the female teachers' bathroom at CMU. “Due to poor ventilation we request no heavy duty use here.” 4. My apartment building has a very kind small Thai woman called Broom Loom (loom means wind in Thai), who sits in the front office every day. And every day I wai her, but sometimes our conversations attempt to go farther. This is greatly hindered by my mediocre Thai and her non-existent English. Suffice to say our conversations never last long, they are however great incentives to keep studying. My favorite encounter was when once I couldn’t understand her (as per normal) and so she proceeded to write out in Thai what she was trying to tell me… 5. 7-Elevens are rampant in Thailand. Indeed they are so numerous that it is not uncommon to stand on the steps of one and look through the front door of another across the street. Struck by the excess experienced in Bangkok I decided to do a little research. There are approximately 5,700 7-Elevens in the country (apparently half of which reside in the capital alone). The population of Thailand is currently at roughly 68,000,000. Lets assume that there are approximately ten people employed in some capacity at each 7-Eleven. That could suggest that roughly 1 in 1000 Thais works for the 7-Eleven corporation. 6. There is no official transliteration from Thai to English. This leads to numerous complications, one of which is the pronunciation of Thai-English nicknames. Take for instance one of my students who spells her name M – I – L – D. How would you pronounce that? If you are a native English speaker, then chances are you pronounce it like the adjective that describe things that are not too strong. Unfortunately you are wrong – its actually pronounced like the English word “My”. Ok that’s not that bad you might say and it really isn’t…for the most part. But you have to be careful, as students will not always correct your butchering of their names, despite their corruption of conventional English pronunciation. I have a student in one of my classes that spells her name: Koi. Take a moment to sound that name out. Now imagine me doing that for most of a semester. Well its unfortunately not pronounced Koi, but rather “Goi”. Close you might say, forgivable… yes for many names it might be…it just happens that my pronunciation translates into Thai as “dick”…oy vey! 7. At English camp two weekends ago I happened to be on the losing side of a game and was obliged to cover my teeth with strips of deep green seaweed and smile broadly for a picture.  8. After nine months I appear to have taken to heart the Thai attitude of sabai. While driving on the highway a couple of weeks back my left-hand mirror flew off. In past times, or in past places this loss of my motorbike's mirror would have caused me some alarm, or perhaps at least a touch of concern. Past selves would have pulled over to the side of the road in an attempt to retrieve it while dodging speeding cars. Even if I didn’t stop I would have, in another mindset, considered such possibilities. None of this happened. I did not dart between traffic, I did not pull over, I did not even turn back and ponder its loss wistfully. Instead my stream of consciousness when something like this: “I love driving. Oh wait was that my mirror that flew off? That was indeed my mirror that flew off. Hmm that’s interesting. Actually that’s sort of funny. Ok more importantly where is the turn I need to take to meet my friend?”

9. After careful observation I have determined that back bumpers and license plate decorations come in two, seemingly opposing, flavors - either Hello Kitty or the Playboy Bunny. Occasionally I have seen both adorning a single car. But none of these can top the exhaust pipe we discovered the other night while pulling out of the parking lot...