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.

Election Night

The floor’s cement, the walls are wooden planks. A gong bangs, a horn’s wails, and there’s a heavy chanting passing around. Dig the guy dragging on what can only be called a bamboo tobacco bong. I’m in a Hmong village about 10 km’s outside of my town, and tonight we’re praying to the Old Gods.

You can see posters of them on the wall. They’re wearing stately Chinese robes and bare human forms, excluding the ones with green or blue skin. Some of the Hmong worshippers sport traditional clothing over T-Shirts and jean, the silver jewelry jangling while they sway and pray.

The village’s name is Ban Nam Gohn, which translates into River Bend Village. Hmong have a long history of working silver, and some enterprising Bangkokians send gold to be shaped in this village. They practice a version of the Dao religion, and have posters with Chinese characters hanging next to the gods. I think this is part of the reason my host dad has brought me here tonight. He practices Buddhism, but feels a strong connection to his Chinese heritage. He’s officially Thai, and would no doubt call himself that, but I still get the feeling he finds a kindred spirit in the ambiguous nationality of the Hmong people.

Tonight is more than just a religious gathering, and arguably it serves more of a social purpose. Men talk their patriarchal business while women titter in the corner and serve food. It’s revealed that I speak Thai, and soon I’m chatting with some of the men. Their first language is Hmong, but most speak Thai or the Passa-Muang (local northern dialect), which I speak a bit of. A few even speak broken English, having spent time in the Sates. One of them asks about how much it would cost him to fly to Sacramento and see his daughter’s family. His face falls when I give him the lowest reasonable estimate I can.

Outside of the makeshift temple, Thailand is raging. You’ve probably heard something about the protests, and I wrote about marching with them over hear. That’s a thick issue to tackle, and the simplest summary is this: both sides are corrupt, both sides are led by some very power-hungry people, and most of their supporters don’t understand the issues at hand. But the government supports democracy and the protestors are interfering with the election, so that tips my support to the government.

That same election is happening tonight. Voting was pretty easy in my town, seeing as most everyone is a Red-Shirt and supports the government. In the south polls are being blocked off, and Bangkok is in a state-of-emergency/state-of-mess right now. But it’s easy to forget that in Ban Nam Gohn. The people live quietly, loosely attached to Nan, much less Bangkok. They carry a religion separate from the rest of Thailand, they have their own (backwards) standards on how to treat women, and they speak their own language.

I won’t say that this detachment from the broader world is always a good thing. But it’s a more than reasonable stance for these people. They don’t care about Bangkok power struggles because they’re unaffected. The world is only moving closer together, and there will come day when they will need to care.

But that day is not here yet. Tonight they laugh, the pray, and they live. Their way.

Flood Fighters

I’ve talked before about the volunteer efforts of the faculty at RMUTL Nan (aka the Farming University), especially with the rural population of northern Thailand. Last week I got to participate in such an effort when I went to build some dams in a village 20 kilometers outside of Nan. The German AFS volunteer I’m with and I went along with about a hundred students from the university, which was pretty fun. Despite the name, many of the students at the Farming University are in nonagricultural majors. There’s a large business department, and most of the students we were with last week were studying accounting. Accounting is considered somewhat of an “effeminate” major, so we were building dams with a bunch of chicks. Score.

It was a sizable initiative, with our hundred students and maybe another hundred volunteers and farmers from the region. Before enrolling in the Farming University I did some work with a sustainable farming/community development office, and there were members of this group there as well. It was a motley crew of concerned citizens, capable farmers, a couple of farangs, and we were ready to build some dams.

Or so we thought. I’ve mentioned before the large importance of taking photos in Thai culture. This is just as prevalent among Thai politics, and possibly more so. And when your bringing students and farmers together to generously help impoverished villagers, well, that’s just too juicy of a photo-op for an ambitious politician to pass up.

And so we found all 200 or so of ourselves sitting around and waiting for the governor of Nan province to come. No expense was spared in creating a photogenic environment, with a stage, banner, and blessed gong brought through the mountain roads to make a display. Comically impressive, really, and most everyone was grumbling for a good 40 minutes until the governor arrived.

I was mentally prepared to see some credit-hogging fat cat, cruel and dismissive of everyone who was going to actually build the damn dams emerge from the entourage of vehicles he came in. But I’d be lying if I said the man wasn’t charming.

He had a self-effacing manner, and didn’t seem to take himself too seriously. He wished luck to the students and discussed the harvest with the farmers. Upon seeing the two farangs there, he made conversation in capable English, asking me where I was from and bantered about the Bundesliga with my German cohort.

He may have come late, he may have done almost nothing when he actually came, but the man had a certain charisma about him, no denying it.

Photos taken and credit distributed, the construction could begin. It was a classic example of Thai ingenuity. We built about 90 small damns, no longer than 6ft or so, along a 100 meter-ish ditch the water would flood during rainy season.

The farmers hacked up the nearest available bamboo stalk with a machete, which we proceeded to hammer into the ground with a wooden club. Once a basic fence was made, we dug dirt and rocks from the ditch and filled the dams in. Easy-peezy lemon squeezy.

The dams finished, we relaxed in the forest. An intrepid (and possibly suicidal) capitalist had driven his motorcycle ice cream cart up the mountain roads to the village and made a killing among the students. We ate Thai ice cream sandwiches, a delicious, if all too literally named treat. It’s a white piece of bread folded around a scoop of coconut ice cream and peanuts. It’s also mighty tasty, and a worthy end to a damn fine adventure.

I don’t have any photos of the dam construction, but I’ve been taking a fair amount of photos while I’m here. Most of them are going on my flickr. You can take a look at 

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

Some of the recent additions include cooking class at the University, Hmong New Year, and Kid’s Day at the University.

Bangkok Burning

About three weeks ago, I went on the Rotary District 3360 trip in Central Thailand. It was a truly incredible week; the exchange students I was with are all marvelous people who have enriched my life by knowing them. It was also far too large of an experience to try and capture fully on this blog. I think it’s something I may reference and if I have opportunities to bring it up in other blog posts, I will. In short though, it was just damn solid trip with some excellent folks.

One of our destinations was Bangkok. Bangkok has been caught up in the heat of anti-government protests, which I’ve been alluding to without properly explaining.

I could make this post about the issues, but I would rather focus on the experience of the rallies. The only background you need is this: The current government is pretty corrupt, led by a wealthy political aristocrat. The protestors are also quite corrupt, and also led by a wealthy political aristocrat. If I had to pick a side, it would be with the government, since it supports democracy (albeit, an extremely sleazy one), while the protestors are advocating for an “unelected people’s council” (standard Orwellian doublethink).

The protestors are based in Bangkok and have a tight lock on the city. Traffic is at a standstill, and many of the government offices have been “occupied”. The streets are filled with people, and there was no way our bus could get through. Just to get to our hotel, we would need to walk past the protests.

The 3360 Rotary exchange coordinator and leader of the trip supports the protests, and decided that we should as well. Avoiding the protests would be impossible; I understand that, there isn’t a street that doesn’t have at least someone there. Buying us all flags and whistles and having us march with the protestors? That might have been avoided. Prudent or not, we were in the protests.

The first thing you notice about the protests is that there are tons of people selling random junk. Some of it applies to the situation (whistles with a Thai-flag pattern lanyard are the fashion item of the protestors), but plenty of it is just random. Clothes, toys, and nonpolitical accessories are available about from someone every twenty feet or so.

The protests are also oppressively loud. Remember the whistles I mentioned earlier? Imagine a few hundred people blowing on them. And we were far from the thick of the protests, where thousands are gathered. That said, aside from whistling, most people simply walk quietly. Slogans aren’t yelled and people aren’t discussing the issues. They just whistle.

I’ve been to one other protest in my life, Occupy MN in Minneapolis. That protest suffered from lack of unity. It was less of a protest than a place where people met to discuss politics, like some kind of radicals’ coffee shop set up in front of city hall.

The Thai anti-government protests are pretty much the opposite of that. It’s a mob. A well behaved, mostly non-violent mob, but a mob nonetheless.

The whistle makes the perfect symbol for the protestors. A whistle makes a single pitch. There is no room for subtlety, for compromise, or for discussion. There is only the shriek, then the moment of thoughtless silence encompassing it.

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.