Clear Eyes

Two amigos came to town. Stayed a week. Had a fine time.

These are A-list friends, college housemates. Each traveled with a 13-year-old son. For them it was spring break. For me it was Thai New Year. Taking the week off to travel around and get into water fights was no problem. The five of us did some river taxiing and some wet bike riding and some kayaking and some waterfall climbing and a few other soggy activities.

Hosting newcomers to Thailand made me realize how much newness I’ve absorbed since Jip and I arrived in July 2005. My friends stopped and stared at things that no longer strike me as strange. They asked questions I used to ask.

Brad marveled at what seemed to him a mindful pace of life. Several times he commented on the daily routines that included time for offering incense to spirits, or for refreshing flower garlands that hang from taxis’ rear-view mirrors. By the end of the week, he was trying to figure out how to explain to his wife when he got home that he had become a Buddhist.

Edie appreciated the sensory stuff—“This tastes so great! That smells so great! How have we lived this long without feeling anything like this?! How come America hasn’t figured that out yet?”

The two kids also asked sharp questions about the language. “Are you serious that I never have to conjugate any verbs? I’m moving here.” They also got wide eyed as we moved to successively wetter parts of town during the height of the annual Songkran festivities.

One night we passed by a free outdoor concert. The performers were spraying spectators with big hoses from the stage. People at the back of the audience could choose to get soaked at their own pace under huge public showers.

As we used to say to each other back in college when our house would embark on similarly wacky adventures, “after this, reality is such a disappointment.”

Not Making This Up

Can your local cultural association top this offering?

The Thai Textile Society will present a lecture, “Lotus Stem Weaving from Shan State,” by Sylvia Fraser-Lu at The Siam Society on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. She will explain the development of lotus stem weaving for monk’s robes and its continued popularity today.

Lotus-fiber weaving takes place in the eastern quarter of Kyaing Kan village, the largest settlement at the southern extremity of Inle Lake. According to informants, this activity began around 1910 when a Daw Sa Oo (Madame Sparrow’s Egg) in the interest of gaining merit set out to produce a set of robes for the highly revered abbot of a nearby monastery, from the fibers of the local padonma-kya lotus plant, which grew wild in the shallows of the lake. The delighted abbot had the weaver’s name changed to Daw Kya Oo (Madame Lotus Egg) in honor of her pious achievement. Daw Kya Oo and her friends throughout their lives continued to weave with lotus yarn for meritorious rather than commercial purposes, producing one or two sets of robes a year for eminent local abbots. None of Daw Kya Oo’s progeny are currently involved in weaving, but the descendants of her friends have continued the tradition.

The obscure art of weaving monk’s robes from lotus stem fibers first came to national attention in Burma at the annual Shwedagon Maho-thingan Festival. In November 1981, a team of weavers from Kyaing Kan were invited to compete in a nation-wide weaving competition to honor a Buddhist legend that asserts that Maya, the mother of the Buddha, stayed up all night in the Tavatimsa heaven on the eve of her son’s Enlightenment, to weave him a suitable robe. Weaving in a rougher fiber than their competitors, who used milled cotton, they did not win, but their sturdy beautifully woven robe caused quite a sensation amongst the devoutly Buddhist on-lookers. Such an enthusiastic reaction was not unexpected, given the symbolic importance of the lotus in Hindu-Buddhist culture.

I didn’t make it to this lecture, but if you’re intrigued I can maybe scare up a lotus stem robe for you to honor the monk in your life.

Opening Day

Lots of people know that Thailand is famous for its elephants. Tourists often take in a show or a ride at some point during their stay in the land of smiles. Some visitors even schedule their visits around the various elephant festivals throughout the country, in order to watch elephants dance or race or play tug-of-war.

What’s not widely understood is how important baseball has become in elephant circles here. On Opening Day yesterday, the first-ever nine-inning game played only by elephants took place at a specially designed field outside of Chiang Mai.

Event organizers said that baseball was simply the next logical step in a sports evolution that began with polo-playing pachyderms. “We figured that if they could get good at swinging a mallet, there was no reason they couldn’t swing a bat as well. The ones with the sharpest eyes can even hit a curve ball,” noted Proboscidea Loxodanta, spokesperson for the group.

The baseball exhibition was part of a special once-a-year rollout of elephant talents. Alongside the display of pitching and catching, elephants were seen cooking pad thai, weaving silk pashminas, and demonstrating insight meditation. Plans for future years include elephant massage.

Hole in the Dictionary

I was joking around with one of the caregivers about how sometimes life with Jip can be just a little bit crazy—“but always interesting, never boring.” She replied with the word “headache,” which in Thai happens to rhyme with “boring.” At first I thought she had meant to continue the playful mood.

But when I thought about it later, I wondered if she really was beginning to feel frustrated by the job, and what I could do to help. I wanted to ask just how irksome she found some of the strange behaviors that come along with this disease, but I didn’t know the words for “frustrated,” or “irked,” or “it’s really getting to me.”

So I checked with some bilingual people at work, and with my Thai teacher. Nobody knew what I was asking about. The closest they came were words that meant “agitated,” or “oppressed,” or “uneasy,” which I didn’t think really captured the sense of annoyance or vexation that I connect with frustration.

Then it occurred to me that maybe that word doesn’t exist in Thai. Is it possible that an entire emotion is missing from this happy-go-lucky culture?

Burma Update

Life sucks just as much as ever in Burma. So what to say to China, which holds lots of the cards there?

One grassroots group is calling for people to turn off their TVs rather than watch the Beijing Olympics this summer, in protest of the Chinese government’s support of the Burmese rulers. Instead of tuning in, they say, people can plan events to help end the human rights abuses.

I’m not so sure about the impact of that specific protest, but to me it makes sense to take some kind of action to sustain the story of how much the people there suffer under their weird government.

The generals there have said they’ll hold elections within two years, but almost nobody takes that promise seriously. Even if the country gets a chance to vote, Aung San Suu Kyi wouldn’t be allowed to run, because of a provision in a newly drafted constitution that seems written particularly for her. Her party won the last election, 18 years ago, but the results were never honored.

A couple weekends ago, the UN special envoy again saw his proposals rejected, including the suggestion that the government negotiate with Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma knows China will veto any harmful UN Security Council resolutions, and will continue to provide aid and weapons.

Here’s another scheme: “arrest yourself” for 24 hours around the time of Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday in mid-June. The idea is to bring attention to the dozen years she has spent under house arrest, organize some education and/or fundraising, and generally keep the pressure applied.

Change from within is unlikely in Burma, considering how quickly last September’s uprisings were squashed. The country’s neighbors, including the new Thai government, find that maintaining the status quo is in their economic interest. The prospect of swaying a giant like China feels pretty daunting, especially when you consider that things haven’t been going too great in Tibet either this past week.

Behind the Wheel in Bangkok

Word has it that Bangkok has a tenth of this country’s people, but a third of its cars. That lopsided statistic leads to lots of consequences. Tedious traffic is the most obvious, but several other odd adaptations result from the Big Mango’s auto addiction.

One is that people here park behind and perpendicular to one another, in order to fit more cars into a small space. In the States you see this kind of arrangement only at sporting events and county fairs, when for two or three hours it’s necessary to use every square inch of ground within walking distance of the stadium.

But at those events you often leave your keys with an attendant, who takes care of moving the vehicles around if somebody has to leave early. Here, the practice is to lock the car but leave it in neutral. If another car is blocking your exit, you just push it gently out of the way and carry on.

Another peculiarity of getting around in this town is the u-turn. Often the only way to turn right when merging with a major road here is to first turn left, then go quite a distance before using a horseshoe-shaped bridge built especially to allow drivers to go back the way they came.

One stretch of Sukhumvit Rd. is often so busy that it can take as long as 40 minutes in a car to get back to where you started…unless you manage to cut across traffic and enter the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through. That daring maneuver can shave about 30 minutes off the u-turn process, but of course there’s a catch.

You have to either buy something at the restaurant, or pay $1.50 for the privilege of using their driveway. People who need to do this frequently can buy a sticker for their window identifying them as members of the “KFC Turnaround Club.” Only in Bangkok.

Good Hours

Summer break starts around now for most Thai public schools. Kids are off for the next ten weeks. Everyone comments on how much better the traffic situation is in on the main roads. For me, the most noticeable result of the school holiday happens on the back streets.

I went for a run about 6:00 tonight. Right away I wondered if I was still in Bangkok. As I ran from side street to side street, it felt like I was jogging from one village to the next. Badminton games fluttered back and forth, night markets pulsed, boomboxes pounded out a steady beat on impromptu jazzercise corners. Families seemed together in a way I don’t generally see. Lots of kids were wearing pajamas, but bedtime looked like it was a long way off.

Scary Movies

OK, call me a wimp. I can’t handle movies like “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood.” It just doesn’t work for me when the bad guy spends most of the movie murdering, and we spend most of the movie shivering.

I saw both flicks in a futile attempt to stay current with American culture. (Somebody in my book group, which mostly consists of people from the U.S., suggested that we should all subscribe to People magazine). The movies didn’t help. Afterward I felt more out of touch than ever.

I could see why they were nominated for awards—they were put together by people who know what they’re doing. But when you strip down the plots to their essentials, they seemed to me no better than your basic horror movie. If that’s what resonates with the American moviegoer, then maybe I’m better off being out of touch.

Ironically, the week before “No Country” won several awards, the Thai equivalent of the Oscar-granting academy announced the winner of the best movie of the year in this country. Its name in translation is “Love of Siam.” The plot centers on two teenage boys exploring whether or not they’re in love with each other.

Family History Tour

Jip’s older brother’s wife suffered an unfortunate motorcycle accident in Jip’s home village. I took the bus down to visit her in the hospital. Jip’s younger brother and his wife had driven there the day before.

The three of us traveled back to Bangkok together. On impulse I bailed out at Petchaburi, about the halfway mark. I knew Jip had gone to middle school there, and through the bus window I’d admired a hilltop palace that’s visible from the main road.

The palace turned out to be a very cool spot—crawling with monkeys, and full of many more attractive buildings than I could see at first. I roamed a couple hours, then decided to head for the nearby coast. Even though I’d never heard of anyone going to this beach, I figured it’s hard to go too far wrong when it comes to the Thai seaside.

But it wasn’t a good sign when the first bit of scenery I came across as I walked along the sand was a dead dog. Things got a little more dubious as I realized that the buses had stopped running and that a hotel I’d been pointed to turned out to be the rent-by-the-hour kind. Jip wasn’t too happy when I called to say I wouldn’t be home till the next day. Frankly, I wasn’t either.

Shortly after a mediocre sunrise the next morning, I left the coast and was home in time to spend most of the afternoon with Jip. When I told her which beach I’d detoured to, she surprised us both by sounding pleased: “My grandmother was born there.” Maybe my instincts aren’t so bad after all.

Khu Gam

I still say there are few better ways to tap into a culture than through its epics. Somebody at work mentioned a movie that sounded like it fit that description. Khu Gam (literally, “karma couple”) has been called Thailand’s Gone with the Wind.

The story line, based on a famous Thai novel, follows a classic mismatched lover formula. A Japanese navy officer, part of the force occupying Thailand during World War II, falls for a Thai woman who is not only already committed to someone else, but fiercely committed to the underground movement to free her country.

You can guess the rest. Its Thai-ness, I suppose, comes from the way the heroine and the other patriotic characters in the story try to neutralize their aggressors by blending with them rather than overpowering them. Some would say that martial-art-like approach explains why Thailand, unlike all of its neighbors, was never colonized.

Click here if you just have to know how it ends. I plan to check out one of the dozen-plus film versions, or perhaps the musical. Probably I’ll skip the 26-episode miniseries.

Updates

Here is the rest of the story about a few things mentioned here recently:

· Cracks in the tarmac at Thailand’s biggest airport made for a big story when the place first opened. That news has disappeared from the headlines since the former airport reopened to relieve some of the domestic flight traffic, and since the coup government left office. Let’s hope that scare was overblown in an attempt by the coup leaders to embarrass the prime minister they ousted.

· At work we tried to interest Gates Foundation in partnering with us on some big-money ideas that would have doubled our budget. Those conversations never took off, but we’re optimistic that one day the seeds we planted will blossom.

· Learning Thai is still a two-steps-forward-one-step-backward kind of process. But my morning Thai lessons continue, and every day I’m able to tune in to more of the conversations swirling around me. Some advanced vocabulary is simply a stitched-together combination of basic words (medicine + numb = anesthetic; touch + horoscope = to hit it off together), so the more I already know, the easier it is to guess what I don’t know.

· Laughter is increasingly common around our place. Jip and her caregivers know each other quite well by now (no turnover for six months). When she’s relaxed, her funny side trumps her fussy side. I plan to take advantage of the stability to make a trip or two to the States this year.

Job

The day job remains pretty good. The various departments within CDC here have gradually come to view me as a sort of in-house consultant. Often I’m asked to take on projects that I haven’t tried before, so the work stays fresh. My nights and weekends still belong to me, which wasn’t generally true when I was teaching school.

The tradeoff is that I hardly know any kids anymore. Most people I spend time with are over 30 and under 50. When colleagues bring their children to work, I find myself curious about them right away. One little guy, a regular visitor, doesn’t mind if I grab him for a ride on my shoulders. Someone caught us on video recently. Click the arrow to see us doing our little cubicle dance.

Princess Mourning Continues

In memory of the princess, the whole country still is refraining from color and general expressions of brightness and glee. Government buildings, even in the smallest towns, are decked out with black and white bunting. It’s an impressive display of national unity and patriotism.

An American friend and I tried to think of a single person in the U.S. whose passing might inspire even a fraction of the population to show up on the streets in funeral garb. The only name we cold come up with was Oprah.

The dress of ordinary citizens will probably return to normal in a few more days. But people at work tell me that our office, because it’s part of a government ministry, will follow the official mourning period of 100 days. My wardrobe won’t last that long. I’ve got some clothes shopping to do.

Live to Eat

A company that provides phone service at our office sent over a New Year’s gift of appreciation. We opened the huge container to find a selection of ice cream cones and popsicles, surrounded by dry ice.

Someone immediately filled a large bowl full of water, placed it on the floor in the middle of a busy hallway, and started playing (“doing experiments”) with the dry ice. Most everyone ignored the ice cream. A large crowd appeared to suggest new ideas for “research.” Yet another reminder that I work with scientists.

It also struck me again that generally Thais eat to get flavor, rather than simply to get full. In some countries, office workers looking for a late afternoon sugar hit would have devoured frozen treats, regardless of what they tasted like. In this case, because the brand name on the ice cream hinted that it wasn’t top of the line, the gifts were allowed to melt and then were tossed in the trash.