The Game Plan

I would say the way to accomplish my planned catch-up of this blog is to produce content as quickly as I can. That said, a great deal has happened, and I’d like to present this information as coherently as I can. To satisfy the basic questions of just what and how I’m doing here, I’ve written the piece below. It touches on many points that will be given more context and fleshed out in the coming week or so. Until then I hope you enjoy reading about my living circumstances and that you are having at least half as a good a time in your life as I am in mine.

                                                                                                                     

My Living Circumstances

So I live in a cement factory. It’s a sizeable operation, employing something like 50 people. The name, Supsangdao, translates into something like the “Starlight Asset” Cement Company. A pretty enough name, but my host father tells me it’s an homage to the village his factory started in, called “Sangdao”. The factory is placed on land that was originally an asset of the factory when it was in the village Sangdao. And so it is, some 15 years later, that the asset has become the base, and the old factory is an asset of the new business. It’s pretty bustling, but also located in country, so the occasional wandering cow needs to be chased off the grounds. There were six dogs living on the factory but that number has gone up to nine with the birth of some delightful puppies. Supsangdao is located about a dozen kilometers out of Nan, the town where I do all my work/teaching/hanging out/etc.

My host father’s a pretty successful businessman, and while the cement factory is certainly his main income, he also owns a small motel and a few hectares of rubber farms. He’s pretty knowledgeable about economics, and we’ll frequently discuss the trade within Thailand and between Southeast Asia. He’s been asked to lecture at conferences as Thailand prepares to join ASEAN. ASEAN (the Alliance of South-East Asian Nations) is aiming to be something like the European Union within the region, and Thailand will become a member in two years. This his has led to a number of interesting developments, which will be later addressed when I describe my time as a teacher.

My host mother manages much of the financial side of my father’s various businesses, and works as hard as (if not perhaps harder than) him. She still makes time to be a compassionate, determined, and totally All-Star Mom.

Seriously, she’s just great.

My average day has been something like what follows:

1.     Wake up at 6 or 7, depending on whether I’m studying at the farming university or teaching at Satrisinan, a local high school.

2.     Eat the breakfast with my host parents that my mom has cooked. Because they usually consist of a couple of dishes with meat and vegetables, Thai breakfasts are pretty hardy, and being Thai food, are also delicious.

3.     Get a lift to the Farming University or high school with a driver for the factory. I almost always go with Lung Virat “Uncle Virat” (not the Virat from the previous post, which was a typo by me that will be corrected soon. I traveled to Mei Sai and Chiang Rai with Note, Virat’s son. They’re a father-son team working at the factory, and that is as delightful as it sounds). Lung Virat doesn’t speak a word of English and has an incredibly thick Thai accent. We always try to make conversation and neither has any idea what the other is saying. But he’s quite friendly and an outstanding driver and could easily be a member of the Vin Diesel’s crew in any of the Fast and Furious movies. 

4.     Arrive at the Farming University at 8:30 or my host aunt’s shop at 7:30. My father’s sister owns a hardware story about a block and half from the high school, which my host brothers use as a place to store clothes, motorbikes, and really anything else they might need for school. When I get dropped off there I usually walk to Satrisinan from there.

5.     If I’m at Satrisinan, the high school, I’ll generally sit back and watch the general assembly, which begins at 8:00. It’s fascinating and will be discussed when I talk about teaching. If I’m at Ratchamongala, the Farming University, this is when my work begins. The past couple weeks I’ve been working on growing mushroom. It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds and can sometimes be pretty fun. I’ll discuss the art of mushrooming in more depth when I write about the Farming University.

6.     I’m sure this layered timeline is a little difficult to follow, but it now gets much simpler. Back at Satrisinan, the high school, classes have officially begun. The schedule of the teacher I work with and occasionally fill in for is different everyday, so I might have as many two or three classes between 9 and 12, but some days there might be none at all.
At Ratchamongala, I mushroom until whatever work I’m done is assigned, almost always by 11 am. When the work is done, I head back to the English department office, where I check email, read, practice my Thai, and help correct tests and papers for the teachers.

7.     Lunch Time! Regardless of location, I eat at 12. If I’m at Satrisinan, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, which has a pretty wide selection of Thai food. As Thai food it’s satisfactory, and as school food goes, it’s top-notch. Tons of options, from noodle soup to chicken skewers with rice as well as a sizeable selection of desserts.
Lunch at Ratchamongala is rarely at Ratchamongala, since my advisor in the English department takes me out, often with at least some of the other teachers. I generally let the teachers pick a restaurant and have yet to be disappointed.

8.     Upon finishing lunch, I try very hard to get in a nap. Occasionally my schedule at Ratchamongala or Satrisinan prevents this, a wretched ordeal for all involved.

9.     If there are classes to teach, I teach them. If there are mushrooms to grow, I grow them. Often I still end up with a couple of hours of free time until 4 PM, when both schools finish.

10. As I’ve mentioned above, my house is a bit of a hike through heavy and Asian traffic (yes, the drivers satisfy every stereotype you have about them). Therefor I generally try to kill time in Nan, which is not too difficult. I visit parks, read at coffee shops, or exercise at the sports stadium. The Nan Stadium is a wonderful place. It’s relatively quiet, filled with trees, and is truly a community asset. Every time I’ve gone there to bike or run it’s pretty busy with people using the track, swimming in the pool, playing football (sorry, soccer) on the field, or participating in fitness classes at the gymnasium. It’s really a quality place and I manage to get there almost every day.

Nan is a really swell place to be, and certainly deserving of its own blog post. People are incredibly friendly, though sometimes a bit shy around farangs (white foreigners) regardless of how well they speak English. While I don’t have quite enough Thai to get past basic introductions, I’ve found that if I approach someone in Thai and they speak at least a bit of English, it’s usually enough to open them up. I’m curious if this is the case for any of the other YE’s in places with limited English.

11. I mentioned that my host father owns a motel. It’s quite close to the stadium and I have a room permanently under my name where I can shower and change after going for a run. The Dao-Lu-Aung (Yellow Flower) motel is not the Four Seasons by any means, but it’s nice to have a place I can be alone and decompress without having to bike home.

12. At this point it’s maybe 6:30 or 7 PM. I meet my host family at the motel, and we go out for dinner. Because my host mom and dad are running the factory they don’t have time to cook so I have eaten out almost every single night in Thailand. This isn’t much of a problem because prices in Thailand easily accommodate such a lifestyle, I get a bit of freedom in what I can eat, and I also get some control over how much I eat. The other exchange students I’ve met here have stories of host families shoving piles of food at them every meal. I’m entirely comfortable with the fact that I’m going to get fat (for Pete’s sake, I’m eating Thai food for a year. It would be a sin not to get fat), but it’s nice that I can at least stave off the inevitable.

13. We head home around eight, later if my host family runs errands. I’ll diddle on the computer, avoid updating my blog, do some reading and go to bed.

There you have it, a day in the life of Frank Meyer. It’s occasionally a bit boring, usually filled with fresh experiences, and every second of it is wonderful in different ways. 

Blog? What Blog?

I'm Sorry.

Really, truly, I'm sorry.

I have not forgotten this blog exists. It might look that way, but I haven't forgotten.

 I think I owe it to anyone who is still checking this blog to write at least something about how I'm doing.

Spoiler Alert: I'm doing outstanding. This past month and a half has been maybe the best stretch of time in my life so far. I'll tell you as much as I can, but just about everyday has been an adventure and I;m bound to forget all sorts of exciting bits.

And so, an update is coming. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow. But soon.

Until then,

Sawatdee Khrap!

A Trip within a Trip (part 3)

The return to Chiang Khon was relatively uneventful, with the exception of incredibly beautiful countryside we drove through. Veerat and I arrived in Chiang Khong before the ferry carrying my dad and Lung Sombat (2^nd host dad) returned from China so we killed time at a Tesoro Lotus. Tesoro Lotus is the most evil entity I’ve encountered. I should explain myself. Tesoro Lotus is a chain of department stores and supermarkets around Thailand. They bring the western values of crowded parking lots, undercutting local merchants, and consumerism to Thailand. It was alarming to see Thailand, a country that I think is incredibly beautiful, being influenced by the shittiest parts of America. This is possessive and imperialist in it’s own way, but I would love to see Thailand encapsulated in its current form. Obviously I want modern medicine and quality education and other such advances come to Thailand, but I also love the rough edges of this country. Watching it get corrupted by Tesoro Lotus is like seeing someone spray a bunch of ketchup onto a plate of Pad Thai. After escaping the commercialist hellhole of Tesoro Lotus, Veerat and I rejoined with my dad and Lung Sombat. They had a couple of women with them (who ran some business in Laos, I think), and with little explanation Lung Sombat and I hopped into the bed of the pickup truck to make room for them in the car. Did I mention Lung Sombat is like 75? Seriously, the guy has boundless energy. Where else would the solution to overcrowding in a car be for the septuagenarian climb into the back of a pickup truck? A truly remarkable man. We took the women to a hotel down the street where the conference between Thai and Laos business people was continuing (see previous blog posts for explanation). They were having a lunch, which we decided to crash. I think my dad made enough friends between his time in China and the day we spent in Chiang Khon to earn his place there, but Lung Sombat and I didn’t really have any connection to the event at all. We snagged a couple of seats and I made polite conversation with some businesspeople that all seemed pretty confused as to whom I was and why I was there. The food was delicious and my compliments go to the chef. I also thank the governments of Thailand and Laos for the free meal and wish you both the best of luck in creating trade between your glorious nations. The conference concluded and we drove back to Nan. It truly was a wonderful weekend. 

A Trip within a Trip (part 2)

The Golden Triangle is the border between Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand. A location of incredible beauty, it is also has a long history as one the premiere heroin growing and smuggling regions in the world. The Thai government has taken a number of measures to combat drug crimes including heavy punishment and ethically questionable ferocity towards anyone connected to the drug trade. But perhaps one of the most successful efforts in cleaning up the Golden Triangle has been by, for lack of a better term, gentrifying the area. They’ve constructed the Opium Hall, a museum that documents the history of opium. It’s got animatronics, hokey voice-overs, and a great deal of propaganda against heroin. As museums go, it’s… so-so. As a way to drawn in foreigners and encourage the private sector to make the triple frontier safe, the Opium Hall is brilliant. The actual site of the Golden Triangle has also become infested with Farangs (foreigners, usually Caucasian). You can buy tee-shirts, souvenirs, and there’s a fake Buddhist temple you can take photos and pose with (behavior that would be entirely unacceptable in a legitimate temple).

Even the infestation of whities cannot detract from the immense natural beauty of the region. Veerat (who works for my host father and was my sole companion while my host father and Lung Sombat where in China) and I stopped at the Golden Triangle for lunch. We were on our way to Mei Sai, which is where my grandparents on my host mother’s side live. There are also a number of mountains around Mei Sai, I really can’t do them justice in this blog. I would recommend taking a look at my flickr where I hope to have photos from this past weekend up within the next couple od days. One of the places we stopped was a Bhuddist temple located on the mountain. It was finishing up construction, but it was still a testament to human achievement that we have the capacity to climb the mountains and build on them, but can create a space that encourages further appreciation of nature. That last sentence might have been a bit abstract, but it sums up my feelings at the time.

Our last stop before meeting my grandparents was the Mei Sai market. It was the stereotypically seedy image of Asia, where you can buy exotic fruits and imitation designer handbags, and the whole place stinks of gasoline from the motorcycles that run up and down the alleyways. Seeing this intensely urban image so close to the mountains of Burma was jarring, but is a perfect example of the depth that I’ve seen in Thailand so far.

My grandparents run a garden store not far from the market, which is where Veerat and I met them. We had a gaping language barrier, as they spoke no English, and Veerat knows only a little more. Despite this, they were extremely kind to me and the dinner we had later that night was quite fun, even though I understood perhaps 4% of the conversation. Rotary talks about adapting to social customs, and how exchange students begin their year by unconsciously violating all kinds of social norms. Some of these violations I’ve been able to notice (Thai’s don’t shake hands, if you try to, they will hesitate before offering you their arm, which is doing its best imitation of a dead fish), but I think the dinner was filled with plenty of violations I didn’t notice. Veerat, despite his limited English, was really skilled at letting me know what to do, when I had enough situational awareness to notice his gestures. Example; if an elderly person opened a door to greet you, as was the case next morning when Veerat and I headed to my grandparents shop in the morning you would rise to greet them if you were in America. In Thailand, because age is so respected and height is a status symbol I don’t fully understand, you would stay sitting so that the older person would be taller than you. Despite what I’m sure was dozens of such missteps; my grandparents were extremely kind with me. The next morning Veerat and I were given a tour of his cement factory. They make these pods that look kind of like traffic cones, but are given a metal lining on each side and become kettles that villagers use.

After goodbyes had been said to my grandparents, Veerat and I began the trek back to Chaing Khong, where dark forces sought to bring our trip to an early end...

A Trip within a Trip

Would you believe me if I said was having too extraordinary of a time to keep up this blog? My first week in Thailand has been nothing short of incredible. My families are all wonderful, and the country never ceases to amaze, amuse, and astound me.
I am going to ignore the initial few days of my adventure because too much exciting things have happened in between now and then, and I would frankly prefer to write about my more recent adventures. There is interesting material in the first couple days though, and I promise that I will draw from it when I am writing other posts later on.

Today I would like to tell you about a trip I took this weekend. My host father is a concrete maker and supplier. Our entire backyard (really it’s more like a back-sprawl) is a cement factory, employing maybe thirty people. It’s a bit hard to get a good guess because I don’t know what the shifts and a lot of people drive up to the factory, but aren’t necessarily employees. Clients, I assume. His business is thriving, I think, his concrete has been used in a number of buildings through Nan, and he also supplies parts of Laos and southern China.

He was headed to China this time, and asked if I wanted to come along over breakfast on Friday. We would leave before lunchtime and return on Sunday. In the spirit of adventure, I accepted and in a few hours we were off. My companions were my dad, Lung Sombat (“uncle Sombat”, my 2^nd host dad and best friend to my current dad), and Veerat, who does office work for my dad. We traveled to Chaing Khong, which is a town alongside the Mae Khong River. The place actually has quite a bit of Farang (foreigner, usually Caucasian) flavor to it. Because it is surrounded by natural beauty and is right next to Laos, tourists will stay there and foray into Laos. We were there in the off-season, so luckily I didn’t have to put up with too many whities. I would highly recommend traveling there if you get the opportunity. The forested mountains that surround the region are truly breathtaking. We spent a night there, where we walked along the river and watched the ferry’s load semi’s to bring down the river. There was also a conference at our hotel between Thai and Laos businesspeople. Laos being a communist nation, I assume that to be a businessperson, one has to work for the government, but I could be mistaken. I mention this conference because it plays a role in the story later on, and also because the Karaoke wafting from their party at the hotel bar was traumatic and interfered with my slumber.

The next morning we went to the bridge across the Mae Khon River, a donation from the Chinese government. My host father informs me that Chinese builds the bridge because it is easier for China to distribute goods by car than using the Thai and Lao barges and ferries of the Mae Khong. No such thing as a free lunch, as Mr. Stevens would say.

My host father and Lung Sombat headed to China, via the Mae Khong. Lung Sombat’s role in my father’s dealings is unclear to me. Near as I can tell, he’s a retired schoolteacher who tags along with my dad. This is not a problem at all, since he makes an excellent travel companion and has the most energy I’ve ever seen in a septuagenarian. While they were floating up the Mae Khon, Veerat and I headed to the Golden Triangle, unaware of the dangers awaiting us there. 
To be continued….

An Introduction

Hi, I'm Frank. I'll be heading to Thailand soon and have decided to keep a blog of my adventures. I'm 18 years old, graduated high school this year, and will be spending a year in Thailand with the Rotary Youth Exchange program.
Some quick facts on Thailand: 
Thailand is officially called the Kingdom of Thailand, but it's friends usually just call it Thailand. The official language is Thai. While it does have an alphabet, like English, it remains plenty difficult to learn, I assure you. Thailand is known for its rich culture, Buddhist heritage (a religion practiced by roughly 90% of the population), and delicious food. Thailand is currently ruled by a Unitary Parliament and Constitutional Monarchy. The King, Bhumibol Adulyadej, is known as King Rama IX. Having ruled since 1946, he is currently the longest-serving head of state currently in power. He is known for his prowess on the clarinet and saxophone and is the only Thai head of state to hold a patent for something called the "Super-sandwich". It is tragically, a water pump system and not a food item. The town I will be living in is called Nan, located in the province called...Nan. Nan, Nan, Thailand. If the Wikipedia page can be believed, Nan is a town of roughly 25,000 people. Northfield, where I'm from, has a population of 20,000, so I'm hugely curious to see how a town of this size in America compares to one in Thailand. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure of my living situation and will write more about when I'm actually there.

Until then, I've got the next couple hours left at home. The next time I write will be from Thailand. Good luck to everyone, whether your year is abroad or not, I hope I have exciting things for you to look at on this blog.

Thanks (Khap Khun)