Graduation at the Farming University

(Editor's note: This post was written a while ago, but I only got around to editing it today. I'm hoping to get more material up, especially some analysis on the political events in Bangkok, but that's going to take a while for me to research properly. In the meantime, please enjoy this lighter material.)

So there was graduation at the Farming University the other day (in this case “the other day” refers to a day over a month ago). Instead of working on mushrooms I got to observe the ceremonies. The morning was a pleasant event, where the graduating students (something like 1400+, I think) took group photos based on their major. It’s truly astonishing the amount of photos Asians is capable of taking. I think it stems not from a love of photography but from having photos of themselves taken. Because Thais are really generous and bring a communal spirit to everything they do, it’s social norm to take many photos of other people so that they’ll take pictures of you. As a result, many photos are taken, and it’s this drive to the point where the diminishing marginal returns of getting a photo of you taken are below the effort that you have to exert to take a photo of someone else.

While the group photos were happening, students and their families were taking photos together around displays that had been set up featuring each major. The engineering faculty had large Styrofoam pieces cut into the letters “Engineering” with cardboard wrenches and hammers, farming had pictures of plants, and the English Major’s display had a couple of bicycles leaning against haystacks, symbolizing the longstanding connection between rural cyclists and the English language.

The photo-shoot having concluded, the actual graduation happened.

Sort of.

Because Mahawittyalay Rajamongala Lanna, Nan (University of the Auspicious King Lanna, Nan) is a state-run University, all of the graduating students receive their diploma from a member of the royal family. In this case, it would be princess Sirindhorn. Princess Sirindhorn is the Monarchy’s representative in the North. She has a palace in Nan that she heads to every year (rumors abound about when she’ll come, but word is that she’ll be here in February) and directs a number of charity efforts in the region. She’s probably the most capable of the King’s children, and I honestly think that she’ll succeed him, despite being the youngest and a female. A few years back the King changed the inheritance laws to allows a woman to succeed him, and Sirindhorn has done the most representation of the Monarchy abroad.

But why is the (I would argue) Heir-Apparent in the North? See, the North is the political base of the Red Shirt party, the closest thing Thailand has to an anti-monarchy movement. Don’t get me wrong, the Red Shirts still adore the King, everyone in Thailand does. That said, they’re also big fans of this guy Thaksin Shinawatra, and he and the King have a less than friendly relationship. But that’s a blog post for another day (one I should write soon, the recent protests in Bangkok have really been heating up). By fostering a positive relationship between the next queen and the North, the King is trying to keep Thaksin in check for another generation.

But back at the ranch (technically farming University) the students were preparing to receive their diploma from the Princess. They rounded them up in the gym, all 1400 of them, and they sat and watched a movie on how to bow and take their diploma from the Princess. Then every single student practiced with one of the teachers on stage. All 1400+ of them, in full graduation robes (which, by the way, are much swankier than ours in the US) bowing, taking three steps to the “Princess” grabbing their “diploma” bowing again and taking three backwards steps. All 1400+ of them. I sat on the sidelines and worked on the “Farmer Frank” blog post, and most of the teachers used the rehearsal to get work done or play on their phone.

Afterwards, the students and teachers had dinner together, there was live music, and it was pretty pleasant. A fun time was had by all.

Flickr

Hey everyone, I've got my flickr up and running. Flickr only lets you upload 200 pictures at a time so I have slightly less than half of them up. Please give them a look and I'll try to get the rest up this weekend. You can check out my photostream at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/100169753@N08/

North by Northwest Part III: Burma

Going to Burma was a bit frustrating. I’ve spent three months in Thailand trying my best to understand the culture, learn the language, and feel at home here. I get my passport stamped, take thirty paces, get my passport stamped again, and all that hard work is gone. I’m another tourist here, with nothing to set me apart from every other white guy wandering around. I can’t even say thank you to the security guard. It’s irritating, but I had my host dad with me so that gave me a bit of street cred (I’d like to think). Frustrating, but seeing Burma was absolutely worth it.

Burma is on rough times. It’s dirtier than Thailand, and the main tourist attraction of Taichilek is the copy market, where you can pick up designer clothes, dvds, and wristwatches straight from the sweatshops of Thailand. All “authentic” of course, as the vendors will inform you. It’s a predatorily capitalist place. Within minutes of stepping though the border I had people trying to sell me playing cards, alcohol, cigarettes, and one woman even offered me Viagra (don’t really like what you’re implying there, lady). While depressing, I realize that every great country has been where Burma is today. 150 years ago China was just a funnel for tea and opium, in 20 years I’ll be lucky if I can get a job doing laundry in Beijing. That said, how do you retain a sense of cultural pride when the selling point of your country is “Hey, stuff’s cheaper here!”

The copy market is the main attraction of Taichilek, but my host father and I wanted to explore at least some of the town, so we rented a motorcycle wagon (the modern man’s carriage) for about 6 dollars. I saw a couple of other farangs (whiteys) doing the same, and I think the desire to buy a tour comes a bit out of guilt. We’re they’re mostly for the copy market, to find cheaper versions of what we can buy at home, but we like to tell ourselves that we went to Burma in pursuit of such things as “culture” and “experience”.

I won’t say the motorcycle ride was a waste. Far from it. We saw a gorgeous Burmese Buddhist temple, which was built in the Chinese architecture style, surrounded by impressive mountains. I’ve referred to “Chinese Architecture” a few times without defining it, simply because I’m not knowledgeable enough to do so. So when I say “Chinese Architecture”, just think of the Forbidden City, and that’s the general style of the buildings I saw.

While we were there, my host dad and I watched some child monks singing. It was beautiful, and really pleasant just to sit in back and listen. About a dozen farangs joined us (“groan”), and I heard them speaking Spanish. Frank Meyer, master of languages and schmoozing extraordinaire introduced himself. Or at he least tried to.

“Hola, Pohm Choo Frank-” Wait, that’s Thai. Try again.

“Hola, yo mah-jauck Pratede-” Dammnit, Thai again.

“Sawatdee-” Admit defeat and use English.

So I’m starting to forget my Spanish. There’s pretty much nobody for me to practice with, and absolutely no practical application for it, so that’s to be expected. It’s a good skill to have in the States, so I might try to set up some way to practice, but for now, I’m fine to let it slide.

Cultural quotient for the day satisfied, my host father and I went to the copy market. It was pretty surreal. Seeing designer clothes and expensive watches in these little stalls was a far cry from the Manhattan department stores I usually picture them sitting in. Though both places are just a market, really. Just a difference in glitz.

There’s a traditional market that the Burmese go to, where you can buy groceries and clothes. It’s a lower rung of knock-offs than the copy-market, and it’s here that you can actually buy actually Burmese goods. Tradition has been relegated to the lower class market. Burmese don’t shop in the copy-market. I scored some great deals on dvds at the copy market (I won’t go into details, but they would have cost me a couple hundred dollars in the Sates, and I spent about 60$). The language options vary between English audio with Thai subtitles, English and Thai audio with Thai subtitles, and some of them even have Chinese and French. But no Burmese. The vendors can’t understand the movies they’re selling.

There’s a statue about a block away from the Copy-Market. It’s a monument to King Bayinnaung, who united the Burmese kingdom to cover much of Southeast Asia. He wasn’t of noble blood, but his abilities as a soldier and administrator allowed him to marry into the Royal family, and succeeding as a king. At the time it was completely unprecedented in Burmese history, but so great was the character of this man that he could overcome centuries of inheritance law. The park around this statue is empty; there are bits of trash lying about, and my host dad and I were the only people who came to take a look.

North by Northwest Part 2: Mei Sai Revisited

We left the Tea Soldiers of Mae Salong and headed to Mei Sai, arriving at my host grandparent’s hardware shop/home at about 9 at night. Even though Mei Sai is not that much larger than Nan, it has a decidedly more urban feel to it. While there are very few standalone homes, almost every single building is a business of some sort, which the owners live above. Visiting Mei Sai last time with Note (incorrectly called Virat in the Trip within a Trip post), we stayed in a hotel, but this time I was in a room on the third floor of my grandparent’s hardware shop.

The main attraction of Mei Sai is the exit. Specifically, the border to Burma. Mei Sai’s main street runs directly to the checkpoint and during the day it’s a near constant flow between the two countries. Thais will buy their groceries in Burma because it’s cheaper, tourists will spend the day shopping in Burma and sleep in Thailand because it’s more comfortable, and Burmese people will work in Thailand before returning home. I made it into Burma for a day, but in this post I’d like to talk about Mei Sai.

Seeing Mei Sai again was a real treat for me. The first time I was there I’d been in Thailand for less than a week. Everything I saw in my head was just sort of mangled into this singular image of “Thailand”, and I didn’t really get any taste of the local Mei Sai flavor. The population here is decidedly more diverse than Nan. While there are mostly Buddhist Thais, there are still a large amount of Burmese, Chinese Muslims, and the various native populations that are collectively called “Hill Tribes”.

I was most surprised at seeing the Muslims. Going through the morning market I saw a number of women with headscarves and even a couple of full-on Burkas. I was astounded that I hadn’t noticed this before. Thailand, for all of its graces, can be a bit racist towards Muslims. There’s been some violence between Buddhist and Muslims in the south, and before coming to Mei Sai I hadn’t seen a single Muslim person in Thailand. Here they are pretty prevalent, and cut a distinct image from the other Thais. I mentioned the women’s attire, and the men sport lush beards. Having had to shave so as to fit in here, I can’t help but envy those guys. Sigh…

Mei Sai has a booming market that almost everyone in the town goes to. It’s where you buy groceries, clothes, or household items. While the soil around the area is fertile, it’s largely used for cash crops like tea and tobacco, so the food is all concentrated into this market. Nan has a couple of different markets around town throughout the day, but the one in Mei Sai is huge, easily taking up an entire city block.

My host father spent the morning and then visited a jade factory owned by a Rotarian. It was a really impressive operation, combining the highly industrialized rock carving with the more finite work of the artists. The factory produces statues of the Buddha, in his trademark kneeling position. The Theravada Buddha (which is the skinny one, the fat one comes from China, I believe) is an image attached to Thailand. You see statues and paintings in every temple, school, restaurant, and home. It’s everywhere.

It’s always struck me as a pretty stoic figure. A delicate, but composed, deity casting his all-seeing, all-knowing presence over you. While Buddhism is technically an atheistic religion, in its practice the Buddha is a god. Thais pray to him, go to temple with offerings to secure good luck, and every month send messages to the deceased in a procedure at the temple.

At the same time, the Buddha has a very human story of enlightenment, self-sacrifice, and teaching that is inherent to the religion. I’ve always struggled with this part. Simply put, I can’t really see the Buddha as a person. He’s an icon, an ideal, but not really a person.

The jade factory was an insightful experience. Seeing the origins of this image, built by many of the uneducated lower class that the Buddha sought to help in his time, humanized him for me. Before the statues are given details, they contain the rough shape of his face, crude and imperfect. It is through the work of others that the perfectly impassive deity is formed. The statue is born of rock, of the earth, not the heavens.  Whatever powers have been given to him today, the Buddha is a man. An incredibly wise man, whose teachings have probably gone farther than he could have imagined, but man none the less.

Leaving the half-finished Buddha statues that would be finding their way around the country soon, my host father and I hit up an awesome Muslim restaurant. For the past couple months I’ve been pretty much eating exclusively Thai food, with the occasional American meal in there, since ethnic food isn’t really available. This isn’t a problem, since it involves eating a lot of Thai food. But eating Muslim style beef-fried rice (no pork at a Muslim restaurant) was a triumph for my palette.

Mei Sai thoroughly explored and enjoyed, my host father and I went to Burma.

North by Northwest Part 1: The Tea Soldiers

So I went to Me Sai again. As you’ll remember from a previous post, Mei Sai is in the Northwest of Thailand, located on the border of Burma. My grandparents on my host mom’s side live there, so I was excited to see them again.

Friday morning, we loaded up the car and were off. Car rides have become a really enjoyable activity for me here. It’s a pretty low-pressure situation, since there isn’t a huge need to try and communicate, which can be pretty tough with my limited Thai. Even though I’m not using my Thai that much, it still feels culturally immersive because Thailand has an underdeveloped highway system, so I’m always passing through villages and towns along the way. There are just countless snapshots of Thai people going about their business as you pass.

Road trips with Thai people are also great because they go like this:

1. Load up the car with snacks, water, and fruit

2. Stop along the way to buy fresh fruit from the side of the road

3. Munch on the fruit while taking in all of the mountains around you

Just a great way of going about it.

One of the places we stopped along the way was Mae Salong. Mae Salong was founded in the late 1950’s by the “Lost 93^rd Division”, soldiers from the Republic of China who refused to surrender to the Communist party. While Gen-Kai Shek and the other armies from the Republic of China had fled to Taiwan, the 93^rd division stayed fighting until the fall of the capital of Kunming in the Yunan province. Fighting their way out of the Yunan province in southern China, the soldiers passed through Burma until arriving in Mae Salong. Hoping to settle down in the fertile mountain land, the soldiers requested the right to stay there from the Thai government. Political asylum was offered, but at a price. The soldiers, who had spent years fighting the Communists and had narrowly escaped by trekking through jungles and mountains, were called on to face the Red Menace one last time. While central and southern Thailand remained loyal to the West, the rural communities in the north, particularly among the economically depressed people of the hill tribes had begun a campaign of violence, inspired by Mao’s success in China.

Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, a series of battles were fought between the 93^rd division and Thai communists. The museum didn’t give a number for the entire conflict, but based on what they said about the individual battles, I guess that over these years some 200 hundred Chinese soldiers perished and about three times as many Communists.

The local communists annihilated, Mae Salong settled into a peaceful community known for its quality tea. Tea remains the backbone of Mae Salong’s economy, as well as a growing agro-tourism movement. Largely ethnically Chinese, the population is quite religiously diverse for Thailand, dived between Buddhists, Dao, and a large Muslim population as well. Walking around it almost feels more like being in China than Thailand, with the trademark paper lanterns lining the streets of teashops and noodle counters. You see Taiwanese flags displayed, and many signs are written in both Chinese and Thai. There are scholarships for the students to study in Taiwan, and the two historical monuments in town (the tomb of General Tuan Shi-wen, leader of the “Lost Divison”, and a history museum of Mae Salong) are of Chinese architecture.

While there I visited both of these monuments, had a good Chinese dinner, and drank a great deal of tea. I can’t call myself an expert in any way, but the stuff tasted outstanding. Mae Salong is close to the Golden Triangle, which has a pretty notorious history for growing opium. As the drug trade has been closed by measures both aggressive and indirect (see previous entry on the Golden Triangle), tea has become the new cash crop. The ideal conditions for growing tea and heroin are remarkably similar, and much of what were previously drug farms have switched to making the drink. Maybe not as profitable of an investment, but surely a safer one.

A fun anecdote that happened in Mae Salong; while walking through the streets after dark, my host parents and I stopped to watch a couple of cram classes. They were set up in these rooms (more like sheds, really) with a whiteboard, maybe thirty desks, and the entire back of the classroom was open air. In one of the classrooms the students were being taught about words that rhymed in English (Rock, Clock, Lock, and so on). The teacher had written had miswritten a “c”, and was teaching the students to pronounce “soak” like “sock”. Normally I would let such blunders continue for fear of intruding, but as I have been made an unofficial middle/high school teacher here in Thailand, I felt I had no choice but to intervene. Apologizing for the interruption in my best Thai, I corrected the board and helped the students with their pronunciation. I stuck around to banter with the teacher and kids in English and Thai for a couple minutes before leaving. I think the kids thought the incident was mostly hilarious, but if their English improved even just a little bit, than I’ve done my duty.

You can visit the tomb of General Tuan Shi-wen just outside of Mae Salong. It’s a peaceful resting place for the founder of the community. The room with the tomb is open, simple, and clean. From it the General has a full view of the town he built. If you see it now, you would not know the great cost this pleasant and humble place demanded. The Tea Soldiers were driven from their home, forced into a fight they thought they had escaped, and struggled to hold onto their culture in new surroundings, all in the hopes of a better future. Mae Salong is a testament to hope, the strength of humans, and what it means to have a home.

Farmer Frank

Having finished early at Maha-Wittyalay Ratchamongala (Agricultural University of the Auspicious King; aka Farming University) for today I decided to write this post on what it is I do at the farming University. Today I harvested a plentiful bounty of Het Fang (Straw Mushroom), and am now sitting in the office of the foreign language department.

While the name “Farming University” might suggest that I’m out in the fields every day, most of the work is a blend of a biology class and some agricultural exercises. I’ve mentioned the mushrooms before, which is illustrates this dual-learning experience. Having grown a couple batches of mushrooms now, and I thought that bulleted list format worked well for the last post, I’ll explain the process of mushrooming.

I preemptively apologize for any scientifically inaccurate terminology. The reasoning behind what I do is explained in Thinglish, and I’m an idiot at science to begin with.

1.     I always start by heading down to one of the plant science professors office at roughly 9 AM. There I’m given my instructions for the day, which are one of the following options.

2.     Prepare a mushroom culture. I begin by removing a piece of a mushroom and placing it in an empty Whiskey bottle with auger (Thai ingenuity). I’ve gotten pretty good at sterilization, though there has been the occasional burn from getting rubbing alcohol on my finger and placing said finger too close to the flame.

3.     When the mushrooms have successfully grown for a number of days and there’s no sign of contamination, a piece of the new mushroom is placed inside a new whiskey bottle with auger and left to grow for a few days.

4.      When ready, the new sample is placed inside a jar of “spores”. I think they are some kind of grain or seed, but I couldn’t be sure.

5.     Meanwhile, I’ve prepared roughly 120-150 bags of dirt mixed with different ingredients including lye, organic fertilizer, and sometimes straw. Said bags have been cooked in steam for something like 3 hours and left to sit for another 30 or so.

6.     The spores, which by now have started to grow small mushrooms are poured through the bags. The bags are sealed and placed in a room I like to call the “Mush-Room”. Haha, get it? Because all of the Thais sure as hell don’t. :(

7.     This is, of course, only one way to grow mushrooms. Another method is the straw method, which is by far the most dangerous. Beds of straw, dirt, and mushrooms spores are prepared and covered with a tarp. After a week or so, you should have massive and delicious straw mushrooms growing.

8.     First though, you have to cut up the straw with a machete. It was during this first step a couple weeks ago that I managed to flay a small corner of my left index finger. The wound healed admirably and I got a free tour of the Nan Hospital emergency room. Free, is perhaps not the right word, but stitches, a week of daily dressings and finally removal of said stitches only cost about 600 Baht ($18), so a very good price for the services rendered.

I’ve done work like this with orchids as well, but haven’t gotten as in depth of knowledge as with the mushroom production.

What I really respect about the Farming University is that it applies its knowledge in practical and humanitarian ways. I’ve traveled with professors to villages in the area where they educate the locals on how to improve food production while staying organic, or ways to grow cash crops without destroying too much of the soil. I think this really should be the purpose of education. While the US relies indirectly on students to graduate and take the initiative and use their knowledge to benefit others, it’s simply a job requirement of university professors here.

This post has taken me a couple days to write, and I’m finishing it up during the day of graduation for students at the farming University. It’s been a fun and interesting day for the most part, but I tragically forgot my camera. Even though I won’t be able to provide pictures  (but really, that’s nothing new), I’ll try to get a post up on it. Nothing to profound to be observed, but I think it’ll be a good topic to write on and make a decent read for all of you.

I hope you all are having as nice a day as me.