The 9 Best Aspects of this Exchange

Well, the End is just about here. While not always easy, this exchange was an incredible experience. I learned a great deal, enjoyed a great many things, and I think I’ll be discovering the changes within me for a long time once I get home.

That said, any of you reading this blog wouldn’t really know exactly what I’m talking about, since I’ve done a pretty poor job maintaining writing about it. To try and rectify that, I’ve tried to put together a list of the best aspects of this exchange. I don’t really mean specific experiences, but rather, what the circumstances were that gave me these experiences. Had I been a more frequent writer, I think just about all of the below items could have easily been given a post or two. As it is, I’ll try to give you the rundown (in no specific order) of why this exchange was so wonderful for me.

1. Chinese Host Family: As I mentioned in the post on Hmong New Year, my host father is of Chinese descent. His parents came here to escape famine in their home of Yunan, during the Japanese invasion that would escalate into a part of WWII.  It’s in some ways a delicate issue to discuss, but from what I can tell, his parents didn’t come to Nan, Thailand with much. My host father (the fourth of eight kids), was the first child that could afford to complete high school. Despite these humble routes, each of his siblings has gone on to great success. His older siblings run shops and business. His younger siblings are doctors or business people. Within a generation, this family has climbed to become some of the most respected members of the Nan community.

They have managed to maintain their Chinese heritage through the close-knit Chinese-Thai community of Nan. Hosting parties for Chinese holidays, upholding social traditions, and studying the history and culture of their parents’ homeland, they’ve been able to hold on to their Chinese identity. This gave me, in some ways, an exchange within an exchange. While I was constantly in Thailand, there was the occasional night where I was able to participate and experience Chinese culture. A specific night comes to mind where I went to a family reunion. The event was so large that I originally thought it was some kind of business convention my family was invited to, there were easily over a hundred people there. Tracing their heritage back to a village in southern China, most family was able to identify themselves as the 24^th generation to come from this village. It conveyed an immense and rich history, and one that continues to grow.

 2: Thai Industrial Insight: As I’ve mentioned, I lived in a cement factory. I’d wake up every morning to see trucks bustling in and out of the driveway, and could watch the workers assemble cement columns. Thailand, while developing strongly, is still a developing country, and the construction industry is one of the best places to observe it. You could be tempted to call it a “casual” industry, as they have relaxed safety and seemingly primitive practices (bamboo scaffolding is frequently thrown together during construction projects). But that wouldn’t do justice to the rate at which this country is growing. Even in a relatively poor province like Nan, there’s construction happening all over town.

The business themselves seem smaller, though I think the overall output is still high. People will own smaller factories or businesses that, while they seem to be simply drops in the bucket of industrialization, add up. Rather than concentrate the wealth into the hands of a few businesses, Thai companies are smaller, and handle less projects at a time.  It’s a mindset that comes from pre-industrial businesses. Many people run small shops, restaurants, market stalls, or what have you out of their own home. Thai industry has followed this practice, and it makes for an interesting experience.

3. Living in Nan: Nan is one of the poorest provinces in Thailand. While a place of great natural beauty, it lacks the tourist attractions of city life or beach parties that other regions in Thailand have profited on. I would never say that this lack of wealth was ever uncomfortable, nor was I ever pushed into “unlivable” circumstances, but living in a less developed place was eye-opening. Whether it’s smaller and more primitive houses or shoddy plumbing in the walls of public buildings, these scratches and dents give you a better sense of how our lives are structured. As we develop, we can hide the foundation we’ve built our communities on. We can devote ourselves to taking basic functions and making them aesthetically attractive. Nan hasn’t reached that stage, and so the form lies in the function.

4: Bicycle: This is, frankly, an experience that most seven year olds have well under their belt, and never need to go to Thailand to get. I am simply not one of those kids. At home, I never rode a bike. I made little effort at learning and preferred to walk around town. As I couldn’t drive to get around Thailand, my host family I gave me a bicycle. I tried my best to downplay my incompetence (“oh, a bicycle, you say? Thing with the wheels, right? Oh, yeah, host family, I’ve been trucking on those things for ages…”) when they gave me one. I still remember the intense fear of diving into Asian traffic (the stereotypes are not entirely inaccurate) and risking life and limb. While an extremely tense first couple of weeks, I finally got the hang of biking, and it became one of my favorite activities here, and something I know I’ll do back home. I don’t know if any of the Rotary powers that be read my humble blog, but if they do, I would suggest seriously looking at making access to a bicycle a guarantee for all YE’s. It’s a great way to travel through your town, and allows you to travel with local friends without violating “Driving” taboo of the infamous five D’s. While not a Thailand specific experience, learning to ride a bike is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It’s a real shame it took me this long to learn.

5: Living Under A Monarchy: This is a tricky one to write about, as Thailand has lese-majestee laws, and I’d love to come back here someday without having to fear arrest. I’ll keep this short, sweet, and as accurate as I am legally allowed to. America is a land without Kings. I won’t say our country is equal, or that aren’t dynasties of some sort here, but the idea of potentially huge power being passed from one heir to next is extremely counter to our values. I think while I call tolerate most values counter to my own, it feels like such a violation to the freedom of people that my gut reaction was to oppose it. It wasn’t always easy to hold my tongue, but I certainly learned a few things from doing it. Thailand has a king who is both powerful and adored. And not without good reason. In the decades of his reign he has overseen the modernization of Thailand, and has managed to stay in power while almost every other monarchy in South-East Asia was destroyed or relegated to a minor position. While not a system that can be maintained forever, and one that has possibly overstayed it’s welcome already, it was certainly an interesting experience to live under the rule of a King.

6: The political Crisis: Angry mobs in the streets, a government other thrown, and finally a rousing military coup to top it all of. It sounds like a real adventure, and it was… in a way. While not the Tom Clancy thriller I was expecting, watching the Crisis develop was extremely interesting. Starting just a couple months after I arrived, the Crisis began when the democratically elected government introduced a bill that would grant amnesty to members of from both sides of a previous political crisis that left people dead in the streets and a great deal of bad blood between the parties. The opposition used this unpopular bill as a way to begin criticizing the Thai government. After the amnesty bill was scratched, the opposition began to use their momentum to try and abolish the current administration altogether. Months of protests, an election, and a great deal of fanfare later, the administration still remained in power.

That is, until the Judicial Branch accused them of semi-accurate corruption charges. The Prime Minsiter and her party was thrown out of power, and it looked the power vacuum would create even more turmoil for Thailand. Until the military came and plugged that hole with the barrel of a gun.

From my rural location, I was able to watch the whole ordeal safe from any violence. I respect this was probably for the best, since being involved would have been dangerous to my person and could have seriously interfered with my exchange. While I was never involved directly with the circumstances, seeing this spectrum of emotions and actions was eye-opening, and one I suspect (and hope) I will never see back in the USA.

7:Teaching: For my first month in Thailand, I acted as a sort of Teacher’s Assistant at a local high school/middle school. Being a farang (foreigner) usually can ensure you some kind of work teaching English here. I had some experience working with kids back home, which translated pretty well for the on average less mature Thai kids. While it didn’t end up being the right fit for me (I did come as an exchange student, after all) I was still glad for the experience.

After I’d ended my stint as Teacher Frank, I still had opportunities to teach. The University would do English teaching events called English Camps. Bluntly observed, it isn’t the most effective system to have a group of energetic English speakers to come to a rural school, get the kids to sing songs, play games, and give inspirational speeches about the need to know English. But it was still fun and always an interesting experience.

English, I think, is an extremely difficult language to learn and I have a tremendous respect for anyone who has done so. I got a better sense of this during some tutoring stints. Here I could get more direct questions about “why do you say it this way sometimes and why do you say it this other way sometimes”. A lot of the time, I simply couldn’t answer. Be patient with people who don’t know English. I think the effort needed to learn even a little bit still reflects a strong desire to learn about other cultures.

8:Farming: Studying at the Farming University was an experience that took the longest time for me to appreciate. At first, I saw it as a way for me to stay busy, since I didn’t have to know huge amounts of Thai do the work. It wasn’t only until I started with the Engineering Department that I realized how much of an education I received.

The University did an excellent job of keeping a consistent Thai/developing world agricultural curriculum. I was brought on trips to see local villagers growing different products, I was taught how to grow crops and raise animals using local methods, and got an invaluable look at Thai culture throughout it all.

Even when I was with the Engineering department, I studied how to process biomass into fuel and/or fertilizer, using a startling primitive method (Bio-char, look it up kids, it’ll be big in the future).

The Professors were also incredibly committed to me understanding the significance of what I was doing. If my Thai wasn’t clear enough to understand, they would teach it to me in English themselves, or find materials that could. These teachers rank among some of the best I’ve ever had.

9: Learning a language by living it: I’d be hard pressed to say that any one experience from here was the best, but if I had to, it would probably be this. Despite the excellent and absolutely crucial two months of lessons I had in America, I never really had Thai classes in Thailand. There was a smattering of attempts here and there, but almost never in any organized fashion, or sort of exchange with Thai people (English-for-Thai-lessons).

For the most part, it was done by just using it. Someone would tell me a new phrase, I’d experiment with it, probe for what kind of context it works in (the funniest example was mistaking a pretty vulgar phrase for something like “oh, you goofball”) and get a roughly confident idea of what it all meant. Eventually you reach a point where the language becomes just building blocks for you to learn more Thai.  An Example: Me- “I think Thai people have very… open… hearts.” Thai person- “Open hearts? Oh we say Gobbledygook for that”.

As someone who loves History and Adventures, I’ve always wondered how the great explorers did it. How the Marco Polos, the Dr Livingstons, and the countless others learned a new tongue without a teacher. I won’t put myself in the same category as those great men, but I’d say I’ve got a rough idea. Life becomes your teacher; necessity creates the drive to see you through to the other side. 

And once you’ve got a decent lock on the local language. Well, there’s nothing like knocking some tourist putz dead in his tracks by ordering a meal in fluent Thai.

Like I said above, just about all of these deserve at least one blog post, but I don’t really plan on trying to backlog on these experiences once I’m home. I though this post might give you a taste of what my life was over here in Thailand, and what kind of impacts it will have on me back home.

As for the parting words of this blog: Thank you all for reading about my adventures, I hope you enjoyed reading them at least a fraction as much I enjoyed living them. The only advice I can give for anyone traveling, doing an exchange, or staying at home is this: Get out there. Say yes to new experiences, no matter how difficult or unpleasant they sound. The universe coagulated in such a way that I was able to go to Thailand. It’s been absolutely incredible, but there’s no reason that one needs to go halfway around the world to do amazing things.

There’s a hell of a lot to do, no matter where you are. Get out there and experience it.