Overnight Changes

Literally overnight (and a little of yesterday) there were two changes in my environment.Until yesterday, the parking lot at our building for motorcycles and bikes was pretty much a free for all. Here's a picture from last year. There are a lot more motorcycles and bikes this year.
I did see them working on this when I left for work yesterday and by last night it had been transformed.




And then, near my office, was this newly erected billboard - there was literally nothing there the morning before - urging the people of Chiangmai to stop fires and help reduce global warming. As an Alaskan, where billboards are banned statewide to protect the spectacular view, it was a little jarring to have my view of Doi Suthep at this point so suddenly blocked. But the poles holding the sign up are made of bamboo, so there is a possibility that this is a temporary sign.

Chiang Mai T Shirts

We had dinner tonight with Rachel, one of the other AJWS volunteers who's working with a Burmese related organization. We ate at the vegetarian restaurant across the street from the North Gate of Chiang Mai University. After dinner, we wandered around the little night market there, which like the one near us on the south side of the University, is geared toward students. Rachel has been getting pictures each day of the number of days she's been here. Today she was looking for the number 41. She has them on the photo section of her blog.

While we were looking I discovered a really neat T shirt shop. The guy said he did them all himself. I liked their originality but none of them had my name on it. He said some were sold in Germany.



Then we found another spot selling T shirts. These were also neat, but again, there was something not quite right - in one case the word nigga - in the middle of the T shirt, so I ended up with some pictures of T shirts. The second batch were from Bangkok they told me.

Lineated Barbets Alarm Clock

[Wed. Feb. 18, 9am Thai Time]
This morning we awoke to Barbets calling. Bu Bok, Bu Bok, Bu Bok. Oh to have more than 3X optical zoom. But you can see them. (Double click to enlarge the pictures) They're there, in the middle of the picture, two one a little above the other.

Does this help? With the binoculars, they were crystal clear, green birds with greyish mottled heads.


Yesterday, on the way home from the Consulate, I passed the DK Book Center, along the outside of the moat of the city center on the East side. It's basically a Thai bookstore and there I met a tourguide, Sun, who has worked for an NGO giving micro-loans to hill-tribe villages and was interested in my idea of training villagers to be bird guides. I told him I was looking for a Thai bird book and they had one at the counter. I bought the Thai version - I want a copy for the office and it does have the names in English and an English index. The two on the left are the same book - one in Thai, one in English, which was published first.

I'm hoping Sun can meet with people at the office to talk more about the bird guiding idea. He seems to know the birds and the different books well.

Visit to US Consulate Chiang Mai

Three weeks ago I got onto the US Consulate in Chiang Mai website. I wanted to get some information, maybe some help if possible, about the project to export mangoes our farmers grow here to Anchorage. Well, I couldn't find any email addresses or any phone numbers. The only thing you could do is make an appointment, using their form.

Note: there is a phone number up now, but that is only if you have technical difficulties with the online appointment.


I looked for information on trade or commercial assistance but couldn't find any phone numbers or emails. As you can see from the screenshot, there weren't very many choices.


None fit my needs except 'other.' Would they even have someone there who could talk to my needs? I didn't really want this kind of help, but there was no way to contact them to find out how to get to someone who had the information I needed. (I could have gotten an appointment last week, but with the Bangkok trip, I wasn't sure if I'd be back in time. Also, there still are walk appointments for Americans until the end of March when that will end.)

OK, I decided this was an experiment in US State Department services. My last overseas experience, going to the US Embassy in Beijing had been a nightmare. (Let me modify that a bit. I'd made an appointment from Anchorage through someone who had a contact in the US trade office in Beijing. That was great. It was going to the Embassy that was awful. I did get treated reasonably when I got to the window, but I could see how bad it was for Chinese folks and that was the real nightmare. I was embarrassed that my country was treating them like that.] They did have phone numbers in 2004, but they only got you to recordings and no one ever called back. But the Embassy itself is in no-man's land. they shut off the streets around it, the buildings all around it seemed abandoned, and we had to walk about 100 yards through barricades down this deserted street to the Embassy. It reminded me of walking from West Berlin into East Berlin in the 1960s. Creepy. And we didn't have to stand in the long line like the Chinese and other non-Americans did before getting to walk through this empty corridor.

Once inside, there were a couple of small room with few chairs. Americans got to sit in a special area and got called to the window when it was their turn. Others stood waiting in the depressing little room. It was very demeaning in every way and I had Chinese colleagues who would rather pass up US grants or activities than be treated the way they got treated there. It thought of the retired college professors I had visited in Beijing who had to go through this to get to visit their daughter studying in the US. And you had to go in person, even if you lived several hundred miles away. And there was no guarantee you'd get a visa even though you had paid for one.

So, would this be different? My boss knew I was going and yesterday gave me the name and phone number of a Thai friend who worked at the Consulate. "Today is a holdiay. Call him tomorrow. What holiday?" I had to think - oh yes, Presidents Day.

This morning I wasn't sure how long it would take - it's on the opposite side of town. Not all that far - maybe 4 or 5 kilometers of traffic. So I left an hour before on the bike just to be sure. It was a breeze. The morning was still cool and cars and motorcycles are very patient with bikes. I got there in about 20 minutes.

I didn't take any pictures. It does look a bit like a prison, with a huge wall all along the street. I realized I hadn't taken my passport or even my appointment number. I'd made the appointment before I'd worked out the wireless connection to the printer. But, no problem. My driver's license was fine. Empty your pockets for security. They went through my shoulder bag and put my camera, phone, extra sound card for the camera, and a usb drive into a plastic bag. "But wait, I need to make a call." No problem, they gave me my phone and sent me out the front door. I called Pet's friend and he said he'd come join me when he finished his meeting. Gave them back the phone.

Back in, and into another room that was open to the outside with green even hanging in, lots of seats, even a flat screen tv playing Battlestar Gallactica, but no sound. A sign said that people with appointments should go in the door on the right and report at Window 1.

The young Thai at the window, wearing a leather jacket (it's air conditioned) was extremely nice. I spoke in Thai. He had me listed for an appointment, what did I want to discuss? Exporting mangoes.

He said he'd give me a phone number to call. At that point I mentioned Pet's friend and he said, OK, then just go wait in the previous room. Pet's friend came in a few minutes later and looked around trying to figure out which farang was Steve. He sat with me and we talked, again in Thai mostly, but I had figured if he worked at the Consulate his English was much better than my Thai. I told him I wasn't sure there'd be someone who could help and he assured me there was and I should wait for my appointment.

I hadn't been given a ticket and maybe the first man thought that my appointment was with Pet's friend. So he left and I went back to the window to check. The man said that someone would come out into the waiting room to talk to me. Pet's friend had let him know.

Eventually she came out and sat down there with me. I had a list of questions, but she made it clear that the US government was interested in helping people who wanted to import American goods to Thailand, but much less interested in exporting Thai goods to the US. But she could give me information. We did this all in English. She went out and got several pages of contacts with trade related organizations that she thought would be helpful. In the conversation it came out that I had been a Peace Corps volunteer and we switched to Thai and she suddenly became much more helpful. She went out again and brought back two huge books - one was the Thai Association of Small and Medium Enterprises - which she told me to take and bring back when I got what I needed and gave me her email address.

I left thinking - if I hadn't had Pet's friend as a contact, would I have gotten to talk to anyone at all? It would be so much easier from a user's perspective to be able to email "Here's what I need, can you help me or give me some better places to get help?" than to have to go down to the Consulate.

My sense is that 9/11 made everyone paranoid and all the US diplomatic outposts became fortresses and entry has become much more difficult. They used to be open and friendly US PR offices where people living in other countries could get a glimpse of the American democracy. Now they are hostile and demeaning (not at all unlike airport security - if you are not white expect extra scrutiny) for Americans and non-Americans alike.

The second problem, I suspect, is that the State Department budget has been cut badly over the years and so they've switched from human contact to all electronic contact. The Thai security guard appeared to be a contract security person, not a Consulate employee. That may make it easier for the State Department, but it defeats a great deal of the purpose of being there. People just don't go there to get help anymore. It's too much of a hassle. My boss laughed when I told him where I was going. He said security wouldn't let him in when he tried to go. Unless they HAVE to go - to get a visa etc. - many people just skip it. It really adds to the negative image of the US abroad.

In the Chiang Mai case, I have to say the US is lucky that all the staff I dealt with were Thai and they were all extremely polite, hospitable, and helpful, even doing the security check. It isn't like that in Beijing.

Perhaps our new Secretary of State along with our new President can make some changes here, to make our embassies and consulates sources of information and glimpses of democracy once again instead of the grim, intimidating places they've become.

U-Mong Creek Nature Walk, Chiang Mai

[Saturday Feb. 14, 2009, 9pm Thai time]
Behind Wat Umong (on the south side) is a Wildlife Reserve. There are some birds and deer in cages/enclosures, some picnic areas, and cabins. You can also take the nature trail that is maybe 3 or 4 kilometers round trip.

You can get there two ways.

First (blue trail thru Wat Umong on the map), if you walk through the Wat grounds to the fish feeding lake, turn right and follow the trail around the lake to the other side and then the road out of the Wat grounds. Turn right and go up the hill just a bit into the reserve.

Second, (White route on the map) if you stand at the main entrance to Wat Umong looking out to the street, turn right and right again at the three way corner. Then go until the houses on the right turn into an open country (well, it is fenced in) and the first road on the right has a sign that even says wildlife reserve in English as well as Thai. Go up this road (the one you'd get following first option above.) This road is no more than five minutes by bike from the entrance of Wat Umong.


Once into the reserve grounds, keep walking up the road. You can get to the trail head a couple of ways. We went up the road and then to the right past a place they put out food for the deer.

There were a couple of deer there feeding as we came up the unpaved road.

The trailhead is pretty clearly marked. There's another little sign - you can probably see it better if you double click on the picture - between the two trees on the right. (Tne one on the far right has two trunks veed).

Here's a view a little ways up the trail. There were lots of birds though not really close enough for my little Canon powershot. We did see a pair of black crested bulbuls - striking with their black heads and bright yellow bodies. We saw a large bird of prey circling high above, what I think are malkohas, with their long, long tails, a racket tailed drongo, and some others we couldn't identify. It's the dry season now and leaves were falling from the trees the whole way, which makes it a little easier to find birds in the trees.


The trail isn't too well defined, especially now when the ground is just covered with leaves.

This is thorny tree was about 8 inches in diameter.

And this little butterfly patiently held its wings open as I worked to get it in focus.

This is a nature trail and there are a few signs identifying trees like the one on the right of the picture. That was one way we were certain we were still on the trail. But this was the last sign we saw. The trail got iffier. Eventually we weren't sure if we were on the trail or not and I decided we needed to veer to the right and get down to the creek.

Somehow, as we went right, we found what was clearly the trail again.
It was luck. But it does appear that there is a fence around the reserve (there was one where the trail crosses the creek at the top) so possibly if we'd gone further up, we'd have hit a fence and there was a path along the fence at the creek. But no guarantees. Can you see that there is a trail there to the left of the tree on the picture above? This is near #3 on the map.

Here's J catching some zzz's where the trail crosses the creek.
There's a rock slope that is probably a nice waterfall in a wetter
season than now. Today it was a pretty shallow and mild creek.
This picture and the next several are at #4 on the map above.

The water in the creek was crystal clear. Can you see the shadow of the water spider? It's below and to the right of the center of the picture. It's a cluster of five little dots.

These are the same damsel fly, the one on the left is the true color,
the one on the right you can see more details. It's about 3 or 4 inches long.

For the most part, the many beautiful butterflies were impossible to capture with my camera. But this one was very cooperative and I was fast.

Each of these flowers is about 2.5 inches long.

And here's J showing how big teak leaves get.

And here we're back at the bottom and off the nature trail. This is at #5 on the map.

This sign says, basically, that wild animals of all kinds love life just like you.

And a few blooming flowers at the end of the hike.

This last flower wasn't really on the hike. I saw it on someone's garden wall on the way home. But if I don't stick it in here, where would I put it?

Of Buses and Song Thaews in Thailand

When I have a ton of photos to download, some video, and lots and lots to write about, I find myself going for the simple posts as a way of avoiding the longer ones. So here are some short comments about Thailand's private bus lines and Song Thaews (the red pickups with two benches in the back that operate as jitneys in Chiang Mai and other places in Thailand).

First, the bus. I'd been told the bus to Chiang Mai left Kamphaengphet at 3pm. When we got to the bus station about 2:50pm a lady came right up to me to ask where I was going. "Chiang Mai." She grabbed me and pulled me to her counter.

"Ok, the bus leaves at 4pm."
"What about the 3pm bus"
"Already gone"
"It's not 3pm yet."

But I've played this game before and I'm thinking. Wait. This is a private bus company. She wants to sell tickets to her bus. Surely there's another company leaving before 4pm. And as I was thinking this, a woman who overheard us said that there's a 3pm bus right there that hasn't left yet. I don't even think she was with the company, just a customer. And sure enough, there was a bus waiting to go. I got my ticket, and much faster than I expected - 4 hours later - the bus was pulling into the the Chiang Mai bus station.


Then, I wasn't off the bus more than 30 seconds when a Song Thaew driver wanted to know where I was going.
"Near Maw Chaw (Mahawithayalai (University of) Chiang Mai)."
"150 Baht."

I just laughed and walked away.

The next hawker was a girl anywhere between 8 and 15 years old. A smooth talker, she started out at 50 Baht. I said 40, which is still a bit high, but for a farang (foreigner) it's sometimes not worth the effort to get it down further. We had fun arguing our positions, but neither of us would budge and I walked away again.

Now a decent looking young man asked where I was going and his first price was 40 Baht. I accepted, but he said he needed to pick up some more fares first. He did have on lady headed to Chiang Mai Gate already. I talked to his wife a bit, who was holding the 8 month old baby and then got some rice and stir fried vegetables to bring home for dinner. I already had some great bammi (yellow noodles) from Kamphaengphet for J. When I came back he had three girls who were looking for a place on Suthep Road (where I was going - it's the southern border of the university) to drink milk they'd heard about. I took this to mean milkshakes.

Anyway, shortly after they got off, I knocked the window and went up front to pay.
"You don't want to enter the campus?"
"No, this is good right here."
"Oh, then I owe you ten baht, it should only be 30 Baht to here."

While this is not unheard of, it isn't too common. I bargain for a good price, but only because I want to be treated fairly and it's a form of entertainment between driver and rider. The 10 baht difference between 50 and 40 means a lot less to me than to the people working hard to make a living driving Song Thaews. So if on a longer ride like this one, they give me a fair price from the beginning, I'm likely to add ten baht at the end. And with him giving me back ten baht, of course, I'm certainly going to reward that sort of behavior.

"Here, keep the ten baht for the baby."

One more good Thai story. In Bangkok, I was standing across the street from the farmers' demonstration to take a picture. I was right in front of the entrance to the zoo when I feel the gentlest of taps of my shoulder. It turned out to be the guard getting me to move a bit so a car could get by. It was such a gentle tap. Just barely enough to feel it. That's how most Thais are. I think about the same situation in the US. It would not have been as respectful and non-threatening.

Mr. Delak Shows Me How To Make a Hat with a Pakima

Mr. Delak (I'm messing up the spelling, but I'm trying to be consistent) is a farmer our program works with. Last year I met him when I went with Doc to his village and we spent the night at his place. Since then I've met him a number of times.

But yesterday was the first time I saw him on this trip. We chatted about a number of things. He has a tiny shop open now in Chiang Mai, if I understood correctly, where he sells his organic vegetables. He had his pakima on his head in a unique (to me anyway) style, so I asked how he did that. He showed me:

Headed for Malaysia

So, if you are a US citizen (when people ask where I'm from here, I say "Obama Land" and always get a good response) you get 30 days on your passport when you fly in. As I said in an earlier post, that used to be true if you come in overland too. But that changed to only 15 days. So we decided to take a mini-vacation and fly out of the country. Vietnam, our first choice, was out because we need visas and there wasn't time to do that. So we figured we'd go to Luang Prabang in Laos. There's a non-stop flight from Chiang Mai. It's not far. But that turned out to be THB18,000 for the two of us or about $515. And since we've been there once I decided to look for other flights from Chiang Mai out of the country. Air Asia had a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for THB12,560 or $360 for the two of us. It ended up almost $400 because my credit card wouldn't work on line and I had to go to the airport and their price was higher.

I eventually, thanks to Thaivisa.com, figured out how to call the US collect from my Thai cell phone (Dial 00199911111) to check on my credit card. They said they block overseas air and hotel reservations to prevent fraud if you don't warn them in advance now. Fortunately there was an ATM nearby. My credit card is working again.

So that's where we're headed tomorrow (Friday in Thailand) and we'll come back Monday. Then Tuesday night I'll go to Bangkok with my office as the leaders prep for a meeting with the Prime Minister and the farmers prepare to demonstrate if they aren't satisfied with the meeting. AJWS doesn't allow volunteers to take part in political action like that, but I can be around and take pictures. Monday is a holiday in Thailand, so J only misses one day of her Thai class. Which has about 18 men and much smaller number of women. According to her, most, if not all, of the men in class have Thai girlfriends. And some of the women have Thai boyfriends.

And when I got home with the tickets J told me her classmates said you can extend your passport for 30 days near the airport for about THB1000 each. Maybe in March we'll do that.

Learning To Type in Thai on a Mac - aTypeTrainer4Mac

[Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2009, 10pm Thai Time] Last year I got Thai letters to stick on my keyboard, but typing was slow and painful. They pretty much wore off during the year and then disappeared completely when I got my keyboard replaced. I got new, clear sticky letters when we got here this year. But today I found a simple typing tutor for the Mac.

aTypeTrainer4Mac 2.1

About aTypeTrainer4Mac
A multilingual typing tutor for Mac OS X. It is an advanced version of TypeTrainer4Mac. All of the system keyboard layouts (but not input methods!) as well as a wide variety of non-system keyboard layouts (i.e. Dvorak, Colemak or custom layouts being built using Ukelele) are completely or partially supported.

It has a bunch of languages and it's free. At first I was confused because it seemed to only have English. But as soon as I switched my keyboard to Thai, the program also switched.It's on the official Apple.com website and it's working already.



The languages listed are:

Level 06 has me typing all the lower case letters on the middle row, plus a couple on the next row up. Since Thai has 44 consonants and about 20 more vowels, the upper case isn't for capital letters (there aren't any), it's the rest of them. I don't understand why they have the Thai numbers one number off from the English numbers. That would have made things a lot easier if they were the same. But that's not this program's problem.




I even had a couple Thais who hunt and peck start playing with it.

[Update, March 13, 2009 Thai time: There was a bit of a problem once I got up to higher levels. You can see the problem in the picture above. Thai has letters and tone marks ่ and ้ that go above other letters. And some parts of letters like ำ are over the previous letter. That caused problems in the typing tutor because parts of the tone marks got cut off and it was hard to see them, and the ˚ from ำ showed up with the previous letter. If it was the first letter in a series, you just saw the า which, by itself, is a different letter.

So I sent Valentin, the creator of this program, an email explaining this. He wrote back that it was an issue of the Thai alphabet. But the other day I got another email from him with a link to download a beta version that solves the problems I had raised. It's nice when people are competent and motivated. I'm not sure he's made the switch yet to the new version, but if you get this program and you have the problem I described, ask him for the new version. Thanks Valentin.]

Border Runs and Printing

Next Wednesday we'll have been in Thailand 30 days. That means we have to make a border run to get another 30 days. But they've changed the law, effective last December, and now if you come into Thailand overland, you only get 15 days. You have to fly in to get 30 days. You can also get a 60 day visa if you are outside Thailand. So we're looking at trips out of Thailand. Our ideal is Vietnam which is close by and we've never been there. But next week the office is headed for Bangkok. Several leaders of organizations such as ours have a meeting with the new Prime Minister to talk about how the new land reform policy will be written. The meetings in Petchabun and at Wat Pa Dara Phirom focused on those issues. (I haven't written about the content of those meetings because I'm still a little iffy about what all was decided.) In any case, they expect not to get all they want and so a demonstration is planned for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus J has begun her Thai classes - three hours a day for three weeks, so we don't want her to miss a lot of class. I'm looking to see if we can go this weekend (since Monday is a holiday) and then she won't miss class.

To add to all this, JB, who worked in the MPA program at UAA for years and still works in the College of Business and Public Affairs, is coming to Thailand for her son's wedding on Feb. 14 in Ubon. We'd love to join them, but it's a 15 hour bus ride each way. On top of the trip to Bangkok and getting 30 more days, I just don't think we or I are going to make it.


If we fly to Vietnam, we have to go to Bangkok first. The only place out of Thailand that I've been able to find that we can fly to from here is Luang Prabang, Laos. We've been there and like it, but wanted some place we haven't been. So, we'll see.

And today I finally figured out how to print from my computer thru the wifi. Much easier than using a flashdrive to print. Thank you to the University of Baltimore Law Library which got us most of the way with their instructions on how to hook up in their library from Leopard.

Hiking to Doi Suthep via Wat Phalad

Guidelines, a free tourist monthly in Chiang Mai, had an article in the December issue on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep, the temple on the mountain above Chiang Mai. I can't find the article by Oliver Hargreaves itself on line, but it was the encouragement and support we needed to find the trail and make it to the top yesterday.

The trail begins not far from our place so we walked Suthep Road to the end of the University wall and turned right, then soon, up the hill.
The trail itself starts near the TV station. You can just barely see the tower in the lower right where the arrow points.




We passed the back entrance to the zoo. Although it says entrance to the zoo, he said you couldn't come in this way without a ticket and the tickets were at the other entrance. But we continued up the road to the left.
On the right is the entrance to the tv station. You can just see the brown sign on the left in the greenery.



The trail goes up. The map in the Hargreaves article suggests a climb of about 600 meters and I'm guessing about 3-5 kilometers distance.
While it was cool in the shade, it was warm walking up in the sunny parts.


Ah, the power of concentration. J chose the safe way across. I had no problem where the log was on the ground, but when it went over air, I paused. It was silly, just concentration. I got across fine. We both walked it without any problem on the way back.

















Then I struggled through a sign in Thai that talked about a 100 year old bridge on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep. The log didn't seem that old. But then I looked up and there, right in front of me was the bridge. And we were now on the grounds of Wat Phalad. Clearly this temple has been recently renovated. A delightful spot along the creek in the woods. Almost no people - we did see a monk - and a few cats.

It's hard to figure out which leg is the cat, which is the shadow in the picture on the right.





















It wasn't clear which way to go past the Wat. I think there was a small road to the main road, but we tried the trail on past the Wat. Fortunately we met two guys coming down the steep incline who told us after we cross the road, there was a sign in Thai. The trail was on the right of the sign, not the left where the waterfall was. OK, that seems easy.




























After being in the woods, we were suddenly back in the world of cars briefly. I looked for a sign that said which way the trail went.








We found the waterfall, but the trail didn't seem to go anywhere. We went to the right, but I didn't see a trail sign. Then I realized that they meant the big sign warning about forest fires. Just a misinterpretation. I assumed that because they said the sign was in Thai, that they didn't know which way to go. But this had a big picture and was clearly not a trail sign and so I hadn't considered it to be 'the sign' they meant.











Here you can see the sign. The waterfall is to the left and the trail is on the far right where the little black arrow is pointing at J's feet.













The trail went up steeply at first, but there were steps, sort of, carved into the sandy soil. I would go on up ahead and then stop and listen to the birds and watch the butterflies and flowers until J caught up and passed me.











This second part of the trail (after crossing the road) followed a powerline. For a while, one of the lines dangled close to and then on the road. We passed another couple at this point. I think we saw a total of four other people on the trail over several hours up and down.


























We got into a thick forest.














This guy was hard to catch on camera. He did hold still a while but it was in the shade and holding the camera still wasn't easy and the first couple of shots were blurry and this one isn't perfect. There was another damselfly that had a yellow head and tail, but that picture is too bad to post.







I figured it would take three or four people to circle the girth of this tree.



































And then, after another short but steep climb, we were back into the world of traffic, just down the road from the entrance to Wat Doi Suthep.



















We were hungry and thirsty and enjoyed Khao Soy while watching people climb up the steps to the Temple. We decided we enjoyed the peace of Wat Phalat better.






There were no shops at Wat Phalat.


Going back was much faster. The black cat was still at Wat Phalad when we got back there.


And as we got near the trailhead, we could see Chiang Mai, bathed in the late afternoon sun that we had lost long ago climbing down the east side of the mountain.