Small Amazing Things, pt. 2: No OSHA

I didn't realize what a pervasive force the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was until I got to Thailand. In the past, I always considered OSHA to be silly, and their rules, standards, and recommendations to be insanely cautious.

But I didn't realize how ingrained all of that stuff is in me! There's a certain amount of common-sense safety that we grow up with, and I see things here that make me squeamish all the time. Whether it's guys at work using a precariously-balanced stepladder, bricklayers working high atop bamboo scaffolds, or people using huge cleavers to debone chickens in the market, I can't help but think about what will inevitably go terribly wrong. I've been amazed in the past that so many people here still have all of their fingers and toes.

But nothing beats what I saw this morning: there was a construction crew ripping up the road that I take to work every day. It was nothing too unusual, just a typical road-resurfacing job like what you'd see in the States. And then I saw a guy operating a JACKHAMMER in bare feet.

I really almost stopped to take a photo, but I was on my motorbike in the middle of three lanes of traffic. I'm planning on going back this afternoon to see if he's still at it.

Cubs Win, and Small Amazing Things, pt. 1

This short post is about two things that happened this week that make me happy. First off, the Cubs are the National League Central Champions! Take that, Milwaukee. Of course, this incredible event has Cubs fans all over the globe thinking just one thing: Dad, when are you going to buy a Slingbox?

I'm really going to try my best to keep up this idea that I mentioned last time of just putting up short posts about things that make me happy here. I've decided to title this series Small Amazing Things for two reasons. First, it's a rip-off of the title of my favorite climbing short featuring my favorite climber, Dave Graham. Second, it can be pronounced "small am(asia)ing things" by people in the know.

My first Small Amazing Thing is, oddly enough, Uma Thurman-inspired. In Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega takes Marcellus Wallace's wife out to dinner at Jackrabbit Slim's, and Mia Wallace goes to the bathroom to, um, powder her nose ("I said GODDAMN!"). When she comes back, she remarks, "Don't you just love it when you go to the bathroom, and you come back to find your food waiting for you?"

Yes, Mia, I DO love that!

I think Thai people must be the most observant and caring people in the world. If I sniffle in the morning, someone asks me if I'm sick before I even realize that I sniffled. When I stay up late, people somehow know I'm tired. If I try to sit in a way that is polite, but subtly shift my weight a few times, Thai people tell me to make myself comfortable and not worry about where my feet are pointing. When I was in my home stay, if I had a little bit of a hard time shelling a clam or deboning a fish, before I even knew what was going on, my Thai mom would place a small pile of extracted meat on my plate. And of course, when I'm drinking, if my glass begins to approach empty, it is instantly refilled.

I've been spending a lot of time with farang (white people) lately, but last night, I went back out to visit my Thai family, and everybody's awareness hit me like a ton of bricks. Mae Noi and co. had about twelve people over for dinner, and at one point during the meal the conversation got pretty lively, and I got pretty lost. I tried as hard as I could to listen for a few minutes, but then I figured that I would take the opportunity to slip away unnoticed, go to the bathroom and return a text message. When I got back - maybe sixty seconds later - Pi Aed was still on his rant, but my plate had a fresh pile of steaming food, and my glass was overflowing with ice cold beer. I think it was Mae Noi's small, amazing way of saying that she hadn't forgotten about me.

A really stupid post. But it's true!

Sometimes things are almost too good to be true.

Today, less than 24 hours after complaining in my PiA report about my total inability to find a decent bag in Chiang Mai, I was climbing after work when my friend Ben came by the office. After a few seconds of hellos, he asked me:

"Are you looking to buy a bag, by any chance?"

"Have you been reading my blog?" I asked.

Ben owns a beautiful, 1-year old Patagonia messenger bag that has a separate, padded pocket for a laptop and an extra strap to secure the bag when you're on a bike. It is big enough to hold a notebook and a change of clothes, but still smaller than my backpack. It is exactly (EXACTLY!) what I have been looking for.

Ben had, in fact, not been reading my blog. Ben, like some of my female friends (and I think my Mom would say my Dad, also), has a bag problem. He loves bags, and buying new bags. He even says he buys too many purses for his girlfriend. He thinks he has about twelve backpacks.

So Ben is purging some of his less-loved bags. And I happen to be standing in the right spot at the right time to hold back his hair.

On Friday, we're making it official, and I will finally be able to stop using my hated bag that causes me nothing but stress because the shoulder strap likes to unbuckle itself when I walk around or drive my motorbike.

My life will be complete.

Life, Work, and Everything

A lot of you have been asking me about more details about my daily life. I am truly flattered that you care enough about me to really want to know about all of those boring details, but I understand your curiosity.

That said, I no longer have an objective framework with which to answer your questions. I realized that this morning when a friend asked in a chat, "so what's the best thing so far?"

I honestly have no idea. I like life here quite a lot, but it's really difficult to point out or to remember all of the little things that make me happy here.

I think I'm going to try to turn this into a journaling exercise over the next week or so - I'm going to do my best to carry around a notebook and a camera, and document every little serendipitous or cultural detail that brings me joy. I think it should be fun, too.

However, for those of you who can't wait, or who really just want to know about the nuts and bolts of my existence here, I give you my whopping six-page 3-month PiA Fellow Report. You now get to know all about wonderful things like my job responsibilities, my salary (and rent!), how much I spend on food every day, etc. The audience is really PiA applicants, but I tried to extrapolate as much as possible, keeping you all in mind.

Another post should be coming soon about the wedding last weekend. Let's just say it was fun. Very fun. Although none of my pictures turned out, so I'm kind of waiting on a few others to roll in before I post.

Finally, my DVD drive doesn't work, so I may be handing in my computer for a few days to get it replaced. In that case, I'll still have email at work, and Skype will just forward to my cell phone, so it shouldn't really make too much of a difference. Although it may waylay my wedding-blogging plans.

See you around! And thanks for reading!

Weird Week

Okay, so these past few days didn't go quite as planned. This week absolutely flew by, and what have I accomplished?

Well, I went to Burma, for one. This was not quite the trip that I had hoped for. Tachileik is not a place that anyone should ever aspire to visit. Ever. I needed to cross a border, or my Thai visa would expire, and so I figured I'd make like everybody else in Chiang Mai, and hop a VIP bus to Mae Sai, and cross the border to Tachileik, which is less than four hours away.

I figured I would be gone for about nine hours, so I packed a backpack with some water, snacks, a rain coat, a book, my camera, iPod, etc.

During all of this well thought-out preparation, I neglected to pack my passport, which, of course, was the only item necessary for a successful trip across the border. Whoops.

Luckily, all of this hit me like a ton of bricks about 10 minutes before my 8am VIP bus was scheduled to leave Chiang Mai (and VIP it was! Fully reclining leather seats, water and snack service, and plenty of room). I booked it home, grabbed my documents, booked it back to the bus station, and managed to get a seat on the 9:30 bus, which was decidedly un-VIP.

12 stops and 5 hours later, I was in Mae Sai, the Thai border town. Mae Sai is nothing too remarkable: one wide, well-paved street, some cool-looking shops, a big wat, a typical Thai market, and pictures of the King. A short motorbike taxi ride, and I was there, at the border with the "Union of Myanmar." I couldn't wait to get across, hand over my passport, and be issued a Myanmar ID card. How cool is that?!

The Myanmar immigration office was by far my favorite part of the whole country, if only because of its apparently deliberate attempts to assert its country's unique identity. In the corner were two clocks, one labeled "Thailand," and one labeled "Myanmar." The "Myanmar" clock was defiantly set one half-hour behind. On the opposite side of the room from the dueling clocks, there was a framed picture of Than Shwe, which looked like somebody just photoshopped one of Thailand's ubiquitous framed photos of the King. The immigration officers were nice, but stern. I wanted to thank them in Thai, but thought that would probably be rude. I was mildly worried that I would never see my passport again.

Things literally went downhill from there. I exited immigration and crossed over the Mae Sai river, which was seriously flooded. Half of the town's market, which is locally infamous for its cheap DVD's and knockoff everything, was either under water or covered in four feet of thick, rank mud. I'd never actually seen a major flood in person before, and it's pretty surreal to see a two-storey restaurant operating only out of its top floor.

Immediately, I made a friend who wanted to sell me Viagra. "No, thanks." He didn't get it. I tried in Thai. "I don't need that - I'm capable; phom gang khrap." What about some Chinese-rolled "Marlboros?" No? How about some heroin? I have porn, you like little girls? [Taking me by the hand] Why don't you come meet my daughter; she would think you are very handsome. Come, shop in this market, we have very nice things. You want lady? You want lady? You want lady?

This guy followed me for a quarter of a mile. I wanted to push him and scream, but I figured that the last thing I wanted was a trumped-up assault charge.

Josh, my boss, is big into experiential education literature - CMRCA uses it for all of our student group programs (like the one tomorrow!). There is a pretty popular model that we refer to as growth zones. The idea is that, when you are comfortable and everything is familiar, you aren't learning much about yourself or the world. Then, with increasing discomfort comes increased growth, learning, and understanding - to a point. At some point, things become so uncomfortable that you enter your panic zone, and effectively shut down.

It was at this point that I entered my panic zone, and stayed there for the rest of my time in Burma. This isn't to say that I had a panic attack, broke down, and cried (which I didn't!), but I was so uncomfortable and unhappy that all I wanted to do was leave, and I was unable to really experience or enjoy anything. I was unable to trust anyone, and was even paranoid about the government. I forgot to take any pictures, and even when I remembered, I was afraid, and thought that I "probably wasn't allowed."

I finally lost my first suitor, and wandered over to a little watch shop, where nobody paid me any attention (thank God). I was looking idly at digital watches when I guy came up and started speaking to me in perfect American English. We actually had a pretty pleasant conversation, although it was clear the whole time that he wanted to take me sightseeing or to his favorite shops, and I was having none of it. He was a nice guy, but his kind smile betrayed his betel-stained teeth, and his T-shirt betrayed his track marks. I nicely explained to him that I wouldn't be staying in Burma for long, thanked him for his help, and wandered on alone.

I bought some sunglasses from a guy, and paid too much for them, because I figured Ray-Bans would make me feel better, and I just wasn't in the mood to haggle over sixty cents. Plus, as he pointed out, they have real glass lenses.

The rest of my time there (about 15 more minutes) was a blur of the same cheap stuff being hawked at me over and over again. Strangely, a popular item was a pack of U.S. Most Wanted playing cards, with Sadam Hussein on the ace of spades. One little girl offered a pack for "100 Baht!" No, thanks. "Okay, 50 Baht!" Really, I just don't want them. "10 Baht!" Umm, no.

I walked back to the border (I figured 30 minutes was long enough for them to process me, and I wanted to catch my original VIP bus back home), past a gaggle of Viagra dealers and begging, starving children. I handed in my Burma ID card (and instantly regretted not photographing it), and was relieved to get back my passport, complete with a Tachileik stamp.

I can honestly say that I have never been so happy to be anywhere in my life as I was to be back in Thailand. Seeing the huge picture of the King in the Mae Sai town square made my heart overflow with warmth, and as I snuggled up behind my motorbike taxi driver and looked around at the totally average markets and stores and read a few signs in the now-familiar script, I was proud to call Thailand home.

---

In other news, I'm going to a wedding this weekend: Kwang, a guide at CMRCA, is getting married. I'm really really excited. I promise to take lots of photos and write about that one soon.

Also, I finally got around to posting pictures of my apartment. These photos are predictably boring. I did my best. I was just going to take photos of my motorbike, too, but after reading Max's post, I figured that [insert your clever name here!] deserved better, so I'm going to hold off until I take [him/her] someplace a little more scenic. No, my bike does not quite look like Max's.

I love and miss you all. Thanks for reading!

Weekend Update

Just got back from a 3-day cultural orientation/leadership training/teambuilding seminar/retreat that CMRCA ran for the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute. It was a good weekend, surprisingly fun, but a little long, and I'm exhausted.

Because of some work permit difficulties, I may be making a border run to Burma on Tuesday or Wednesday. Don't worry, this isn't scary Burma. This is nice, organized, touristy Burma that sells knockoff DVDs and T-shirts for a fraction of what they cost in Thailand. There is actually a whole industry based around  expats in Chiang Mai and elsewhere that have to cross a border to renew their visas, and there's a little border town in Burma that has taken this to the extreme. I pretty much jump across a line, buy something really cheap, and then get my passport re-stamped as I enter Thailand. Takes 7 hours roundtrip.

As I mentioned below, you can all call me now. Really! It's true, it won't cost you a thing. It makes me sad that nobody has taken me up on this yet. I've been away all weeekend, but I'm going to start initiating my own calls tonight, so brace yourselves.

That promised post about my bike and apartment is poised to hit newsstands tomorrow night. Miss you all.

[Update Update: About 5 minutes into calling my sister, I barely nudged my desk lamp, and the light bulb exploded into a thousand pieces and scattered all over the room. It took me over an hour to clean up because:

1. Although we have a broom, we have no dustpan, and I thought it was irresponsible to sweep broken glass out our front door and onto the sidewalk. Somehow I had to coax everything into a plastic cup.
   
2. Glass managed to land in my hair, in my Nalgene, in my guitar's sound hole, in my backpack across the room, in between the seams of my leather desk chair, and miraculously on the other side of a 6-foot tall Japanese screen/room divider.
3. We have no potatoes, so I had to find another way to get the broken bulb out of the lamp.
4. I spent at least five minutes trying to decide whether or not it was okay to walk around my living room in shoes. This thought process was complicated by the loud bang and "Oh Fuck!" that I was sure had woken up Dao, who I really didn't want to see me wearing shoes in the house. I tried to put on her slippers, but she has tiny Thai woman feet, and my size 14 clunkers just weren't going to fit. I ended up wearing my flip flops. Dao did not wake up.]
   

A Series of Tubes

No, this post isn't about everyone's favorite new political sensation from Alaska!

It's about the latest (and certainly the greatest) way that you all can contact me! Today I bit the bullet and signed up for a Skype subscription, so I can call any line in the U.S. (and also Spain and Singapore!) for free. Which means expect calls to your phones in the near future.

The big bonus is that it also gives me a U.S. number that you all can call, which will then route to my computer, and possibly eventually to my cell phone. You can access this magic by calling:

The bottom line: I now have a U.S. phone number. That's all you really need to know.

This was, of course, spurred on by a complete lack of calls, and a number of emails/text chats with people who "haven't set up Skype yet." This makes it extremely convenient from your end.

However, if you'd like to video chat, or speak completely for free, I'd still recommend getting Skype. You can download it by clicking here; setup takes exactly three minutes. They couldn't possibly make it simpler or easier.

I'm also constantly on Google Chat. I'd recommend getting Google Talk, because it's a Gmail notifier and chat client wrapped up in one. Also, Google Talk supports voice, which gChat through Gmail does not.

Okay, that's enough for now. I look forward to actually speaking with you soon!

Hunky-dory

Hey everybody,
As things are getting a little intense (like camping) down south, I just wanted to check in and let you know that everything is totally normal and safe up here in Chiang Mai. If the protests weren't all over the local and international news, I would never even know that anything was going on.

However, we all know that things can change quickly, and we're preparing just in case. PiA, Mom, and others are sending me updates, and my trusty Google Reader is subscribed to Bangkok Post headlines.

Coups in Thailand are frequent and always bloodless, since the new government's success depends entirely on its approval by the King, who would never condone violence. During the last coup (18 months ago), a couple of tanks rolled down the streets of Chiang Mai, everybody got the day off of work, and that was about it. Regardless, I'll be careful.

The only thing I'm worried about is that Jay, who is visiting right now, won't be able to fly back to Singapore tomorrow because his flight is routed through Bangkok. However, it looks like the police have pretty much secured Suvarnabhumi Airport, so everything should work out fine.

Of course, it would be a real shame if Jay had to extend his visit. Then we'd have to go out again, and I'd have to take more photos like this:

Enchantment/Disenchantment

Last week, I took a few days off of work, and Julia and I took a trip up to Mae Hong Son province in northern Thailand. The goal was for me to get away from work for a few days, and for us to explore a really beautiful part of the world (you can find pictures in Picasa). For me, the trip ended up being much more than that. I've tried to take some time to delve into exactly what I found, so this is a long post, but I hope that I'm not the only one who finds it interesting.

Our first stop was Pai (actually pronounced "Bye"), a hippy-dippy tourist town four hours north of Chiang Mai where the expats outnumber the locals. Pai is famous for being a beautiful place to relax for a few days and listen to really really good live music at their many bars. It also has a large artist community that I'd heard good things about, but from what I could tell they just spent their days making really mediocre T-shirts.

Pai is a bit peculiar because even though it's in the middle of nowhere, the Thai people there speak better English than probably anywhere else in Thailand (it's exponentially better than in Chiang Mai). The owner of our guest house actually had an American accent. Of course, this is because there are SO many native English speakers around, either living there or passing through. As a result, there are fantastic, Italian-style pizza places, gourmet French bakeries, and more (no guide books recommended any Thai restaurants in Pai). Pai is a strange little island of western yuppydom inside of a poor, rural, but breathtakingly beautiful province.

In Pai, we decided to rent a motorbike to continue the trip north to Soppong and Cave lodge. After an early slow-motion encounter with a drainage ditch when the bike lost power going uphill (sorry, Julia), we cruised for about two hours through beautiful, mountainous countryside. I think "Big Sky" sums things up pretty nicely: we had beautiful, soaring views of the forested Himalayan foothills and limestone cliffs for the entire drive.

In Soppong, we stayed at Cave Lodge, which is a bit of a Mecca for outdoorsy people in Thailand. Cave Lodge is owned by John Spies, who is the foremost caving expert in Thailand. Originally from Australia, John has been living in Thailand for thirty years, originally as a beach bum (he went to Koh Samui when there was a single bar and no hotels - he and some other travelers would sleep in the sand), then as a trekking guide, and then finally as a caver and the owner of Cave Lodge.

Under John's guidance, we went on a couple of excellent day trips, kayaked through a massive cave, and watched a few hundred thousand Split-tailed Swifts fly back to their nests in Tham Lod (video here).

John has written a book about his time in Thailand that is actually quite good, and he lets the manuscripts float around the lodge. Julia and I both spent our nights sitting up in the lodge's common space, reading the dirty, water-damaged copies of John's life story (he has published copies for sale, but it's way more fun to read the original manuscript, which is held together with binder clips and has 3x5 photos Scotch-taped inside).

I have an enormous respect for John. He is truly a kind man that has really given and gotten a lot from Thailand, and has engaged this place in a way that most of the other long-term expats simply have not. Twenty years ago, John made a living here leading treks with his first wife to the most remote Hill Tribe villages (mostly Black Lahu), and his experiences there cultivated both a deep respect for their culture and a concern for their way of life.

Hill Tribe people are a bit of an uncomfortable subject for me, because I find their way of life both beautiful and tragic. On the one hand, they lead a self-sufficient life in a beautiful part of the world, and each tribe has its own heritage, language, and culture. They are famous for their incredible costumes and colorful woven scarves. Many of them practice an unusual animism that involves music, fire, artwork, and dancing to both summon and scare away spirits.

On the other hand, the Hill Tribes have been exploited by one group or another for the past half-century. For decades, they were virtually enslaved by drug lords and addiction as they grew, used, and sold opium. Now that the Thai authorities have virtually eliminated the drug from this country, the Hill Tribe people have become dependent instead on tourists. Innumerable "Hill Tribe Treks" leave daily from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Chiang Dao, Soppong, Pai, and pretty much anywhere in northern Thailand. The treks promise exposure to beautiful ceremonies, old-fashioned ways of life, and hand-made crafts.

In truth, visiting a Hill Tribe village is a bit like visiting an American Indian reservation. The people are destitute, and whatever "culture" is on display is just that: on display. Upon walking into town, you are literally surrounded by women in traditional dress wanting to sell you woven scarves and handmade teak knickknacks.

Don't get me wrong - this isn't a polemic against Westernization (or "development") or a tirade against tourists and backpackers. Before coming to Thailand, I was given Tiziano Terzani's book, A Fortune Teller Told Me, which I find absolutely appalling. Terzani, an affluent German journalist, spends 400 pages bemoaning the proliferation of capitalism at the expense of spirituality and culture in Asia without once considering that the people who are actually living the life that he finds fascinating to observe have chosen to embrace capitalism. Terzani, as he moves about noting "money mongerers" and "spiritualess Mongolians" and celebrating cultures of centuries past, somehow neglects to note that the people's real quality of life (i.e. their infant mortality, starvation, and drug addiction rates) has simultaneously and very substantially improved.

In his book, John Spies writes about his friend, an elder in a Black Lahu villiage, who nightly laid fetal by the fire as he smoked 16 or 17 bowls of opium in order to lose his shakes, as his wife laid in another room, trying to sleep as her pregnant stomach turned hard before she gave birth to her opium-addicted baby three months prematurely. I am not ignorant enough to believe that nothing has been lost in the "development" of northern Thailand, but Terzani's paternalistic, normative condescension towards a people whose previous suffering he cannot possibly comprehend is disgusting.

I wish that this could just be me waxing philosophic, but my memories observing and wrestling with Thailand's changing cultural dynamics are my most salient from that trip north. Reading John's memoirs only compounded the problem: he engaged, connected with, and befriended Shan and Lahu people (John speaks fluent Shan) in a way that seems impossible now, when the tribes' commoditization of their own culture throws up barriers that makes genuine contact with people difficult at best. Julia and I passed through two villages in order to hire guides to take us to nearby caves, and both times I was really uncomfortable. I hate to be crude, but it's a bit like being in a zoo where the animals have chosen to be there, and somehow you've been made their unwitting jailor. It's not that I disapprove of the choices that they have made in order to support themselves without opium - it's just that when I was there, I couldn't help but feel complicit in creating a market for this cultural prostitution, and I just wished that there was some other way for these wonderful, kind people to earn their living.

[Note: As it so happens, there is. The King of Thailand has started a large-scale organic farming project that he hopes will bring sustainable agrigultural practices to the Hill Tribes that will allow them to thrive as farmers in their old way of life without growing opium. "Organic Hill Tribe Coffee" and other such products are all the rage among the expats in Chiang Mai. From what I've heard, it's been a huge success, and made a big difference in the past few years.]

Of course (of course!) this is all really a corollary of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal: it is impossible to observe an event without affecting it. The irony of all of this is that most people (and I certainly include both myself and Terzani in this category) wish that things could be the way they used to be simply so that we could see it! Because it must have been truly spectacular to see people live in a way that is so foreign, and inspiring to see them believe so deeply in something so unusual. Because isn't that why we all came to Asia in the first place? To witness something and have an experience that is truly Amasian? (Big shout-out on that one). But what can you do when your very being there prevents anything of note from happening?


John recommended washing dishes. The Hill Tribe people are known for their incredible generosity and hospitality, and will welcome you onto their porches or into their homes. John suggested that when this happens, we walk back into their kitchens and start washing dishes.

At the time, I thought he was crazy, and during those two days, I did not wash any dishes. But now I think I see the simple brilliance of that suggestion. Because how better to let someone know that you are interested in who they really are (rather than who they think you want them to be) than by helping them with the most mundane and ordinary chore of their day?

John's son is a student in Chiang Mai, and a sort of part-time, unpaid intern at Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures. We ran into John's family a couple of days ago outside of the movies, as Julia and I were coming out of Wall-E, and they were going in. I promised John that I'd be headed back to Cave Lodge in the coming months, and I promised myself that I'd leave time for washing dishes.