Small World, More First Friday, New Friends, Feeding Ravens, etc.

This is a catch up post.  After the museum Friday, we went down to the Canvas, which in addition to its First Friday exhibit of Magil Pratt's Miniatures, a bunch of which had red sold stickers on,  also had a pottery sale and we got a couple of little bowls to give us a little bit more in our minimalist Juneau household.  I also ran into someone I know from Juneau who lived in the house where we're living.  Our basement apartment was already here when she was a child.  

Then down the block to the Silverbow where an exhibit of pictures sponsored by the  Juneau Homeless Coalition.  Here's Gail, Lance, Teri, and Gil.

Scott Ciambor's Zen caught my eye.  This wall had landscapes of the homeless.  Here, under a bridge.












We ended our art crawl with dinner at Silverbow.








Our friend Sharman was down from Anchorage last weekend and in the four days she was here, we ran into her three different times before we met her for dinner with her Juneau friends last Sunday.

Last night we had dinner with the Juneau friends who live three blocks down the hill in a wonderful ol house with high ceilings, wood trim, and lots of green plants, and, last night, lit candles. 

A delicious dinner with good folks and cats.  












Today, I took a lazy run over the bridge to Douglas to get this picture I missed last week when I discovered - at this spot - that my credit card was missing.  Grey and drizzly, but still a great view back toward Juneau.

And then I stopped at the Foodland on the way home and as I came out there was someone feeding the ravens.  Not sure this is a good idea. 

And as I made it to the stairs up the hill I ran into Lisa Demer, the ADN reporter who's in town for three weeks replacing Sean Cockerham.

Tonight we're headed to dinner with people we've never met, but  I met their daughter a while back - a former Peace Corps volunteer whose parents, she told me were volunteers in Thailand 1967-69, the same time I was there.  The teacher Joan volunteers with gave her a note with their phone number and a message they wanted us over for dinner.  Small, small world.  But no, I didn't know them in Thailand, but they did know one of the people in my group who was near them. 

The bread is almost done in the oven, the Saints are up by fourteen with just a few minutes to go, and we need to go pretty soon.

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This sign I saw on Latouche today seemed appropriate for Christmas Eve.  I also got a letter from Wat Alaska Yanna Vararam - a Thai/Lao Buddhist Temple in town.  It looks ahead to the new year

. . .heartedly blessing you and your family be free from all kinds of suffering, physical and mental suffering.  May you all be free from animosity.  May you all be free from the external disturbance and internal disturbance.  May the peace and pure happiness arise in your mind and leading your mind to the right way, the right way of being, right conduct in action, right conduct in thought and right conduct in speech.

So, I get good vibes this Christmas Eve from the bicycle folks (I assume that's from them) and from the Buddhists.  But as I was almost home after dropping someone off at the airport - Mt. Susitna bathed in setting sunlight was also sending blessings - I was jarred by Senator Mitch Mcconnel's belligerence on the radio news just before the vote on health care reform.   Here's a link ("this fight isn't over"):

I guarantee you, the people who vote for this bill are going to get an earful when they finally get home for the first time since Thanksgiving.  They know there is widespread opposition to this monstrosity.  And I want to assure you Mr. President.  This fight isn’t over.  In fact, this fight is long from over.  My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law.  That’s the clear will of the American people and we will continue to fight on their behalf.

Senator, when does American good sportsmanship kick in? You lost this vote 60% to 39%. That's a landslide in most elections. (And that missing vote was from your Kentucky Republican colleague Sen. Bunning.) It's not a perfect bill I agree. But much of that is due to unrelenting refusal to cooperate in any way by Republicans.

Senator, on this Christmas Eve, I guess the best  I can do is pass on the Buddhist blessings to you:

May you all be free from animosity.  May you all be free from the external disturbance and internal disturbance.  May the peace and pure happiness arise in your mind and leading your mind to the right way, the right way of being, right conduct in action, right conduct in thought and right conduct in speech.

[While looking up McConnel's words I did find some interesting trivia.  McConnel was born in 1942.  His first wife, Sherrill Redmon, is now the Director of the Women's History Archives at Smith College which was founded in 1942. His current wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan, and is the former director of the Peace Corps and former Secretary of Labor. He has three daughters from his first marriage.]

More on Community Development Ideas - Ohio

[Wed. March 4, 2009 11:30am Thai Time]
Sunny, a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Nepal and returned to Anchorage to become a math teacher and now works at UAA, forwarded an article from NPR. It's about two young men who have returned to their rural Ohio hometown to help out after a plant closure put people out of work. This is the kind of local community empowerment and idea creation and implementation that I've tried to get at in the two pieces on Rural Alaska. Here's a snippet, the link has the whole article.

Rembert is 24, with dark hair and a beard. He almost bounces with enthusiasm. He also was accepted to the Peace Corps and was set to go to Ecuador. But then, DHL Express, Wilmington's largest employer, announced it was going to shut down its domestic air-freight operations, leaving thousands without jobs.

"As soon as the announcement came out I knew, wow, this is going to be some sort of case study in how a small community deals with, you know, an incredible economic shock," Rembert recalls. "So I came back, and I immediately started a blog."

That was his way of trying to figure out what to do. Rembert and Stuckert like to talk things over a lot. And they began to think that maybe some of the Peace Corps philosophy, of helping communities help themselves, might be just what Wilmington and surrounding Clinton County needed — that this might be a chance for some real economic change. Something, Stuckert says, that would last.

We've become a nation of employees who are dependent on organizations - government and business - to hire us, pay us, etc. We work so hard that we don't have much time for real community involvement, real oversight over government agencies and over corporations. It seems that one of the responses to the current economic problems is to have more people take control of their own lives with small scale businesses and cooperatives.

Rather than throw away items because it costs more to fix than to buy a new one, let's take advantage of the people who know how to repair small appliances and who need work. Let's take advantage of all the 'resources' we throw away each week and find ways to reuse them. Let's do more support of local farmers this coming growing season and grow more at home as well.

Larger organizations also serve some purposes, but in the last 15 years or so, we have allowed, encouraged takeover after takeover, until we had organizations that were so large, that so many people depended on, that when they went bad, everyone was hurt. And economists think that we have to pour billions of dollars into saving them. In the meantime, we need to be creative, take initiative, and become a community that doesn't wait for politicians and ceo's to tell us what we can and can't do.

็Headed To Bangkok

[Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 3pm Thai time] This evening the bus with about 50 farmers leaves for Bangkok. We'll get there early tomorrow morning. There will be a demonstration - other farmers will come from other regions and all join in Bangkok - and then tomorrow evening we all get on the bus and return.

It's going to cost about 800 baht (@$23) per person roundtrip on the bus. Someone just delivered the signs they will carry. About 1400 Kilometers (870 miles) round trip I don't totally understand. I asked if it was the right message. They want a property tax next year. And something about the land bank. I'm not allowed to protest, of course, but I do have my camera and I can document the protest. But I'm leaving the computer at home for J to use and I'll just have to find internet cafes.

I checked on whether the bus returns through Kamphaengphet where I was a Peace Corps volunteer and they said yes. So, I'm hoping on the way back I can stop for a day or two.

J wants to stay here and go to her Thai classes which are from 9-12 every day. She missed last Friday, but yesterday was a holiday so she should have been ok for that.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Dinner

There are quite a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in Anchorage, but you wouldn't know it unless it somehow came up in conversation. We don't generally wear Peace Corps pins or have a secret handshake. But we do tend to be a little more cross-culturally sensitive than the average American. There's a relatively small group of RPCV's who meet for dinner when they can - either at a restaurant or at someone's home - and on a low key way they sponsor a number of projects - including helping in the recruiting and giving information to new volunteers. Saturday night we had dinner - the food is always great as people get out recipes from the countries where they served - and then elected new officers for this year.

Anyway, the dinners are always interesting - besides the good food, I love to meet with this group and see what they are doing now that they are back in the US. We also had a couple with us who are headed for Albania as volunteers next spring. BTW the dinners are open to anyone - there's usually a blurb in the newspaper, but you have to look carefully.

This post is going to stay minimalist since I just don't have the time or energy to pick up any of the possible threads this could lead into - the role of the Peace Corps internationally, changes in how the PC is run, why Peace Corps volunteers get significantly more and better language and cultural training than do teachers going to rural Alaska, the role of volunteers once they are back in the US, and on and on. This is just the tip. If you want to dip into some of this you can check on WorldView, the magazine of the National Peace Corps Association - a group made up mainly of returned volunteers and not a government organization.

If you want to see what Peace Corps Volunteers are doing around the world, here's a website with links to Peace Corps journals. Well, that's what it's called. I'm not exactly sure how blogs get up there - since mine is linked too in the Thailand section, which is how I know about this resource. But I think most are actual volunteers and not old volunteers who might write about visiting their countries of service or Peace Corps in general.

And while I'm on this topic, I've added a link to Bangkok Pundit on the right side. You can also get news of Thailand at the Bangkok Post or the Nation. But this is a blogger who tries to go behind the headlines. I'm sufficiently out of the loop on Thai politics these days that I don't know how accurate Pundit is, but it's at least a way to be aware that things are going on - such as the months of demonstrations in Bangkok in protest to the current government, that occasionally come into confrontations with the police or military.

To give you a sense of the blog - below, from tomorrow's post (they are a day ahead of us) he's quoting a BBC report and making comments (where it says BP:) on it:

The article continues:

"The problem of Thai political crisis is a class struggle", says Attajak Satayanutak, an academic from Thaksin's home town Chiang Mai.

"We have a wide gap between rich and poor. The poor did not receive anything from the state for a long time. Then, for the first time, Thaksin gave this opportunity for them."

The affection for Thaksin Shinawatra has held up remarkably well in the north-east, a poor and arid region known as Isaan.

Local people say his populist policies, like universal healthcare and the village loan scheme, brought big improvements to the quality of their lives.


BP: As a percentage of the government budget, both items are rather small - the village loan scheme was initially are a one-off payment (since expanded) and it is has low debts. Actually, the amount of government money spent and the non-perfomring loans is much smaller than all the forms of corporate welfare which is regularly given out.

ห้ามจอดควาย - No Buffalo Parking

(The picture came from a Thai music website. I'm not sure if it is the cover of a commercial album or a self made album.)

I'd been in Thailand over a month this trip before I saw my first Kwai - or water buffalo. This was a day or so after I saw my first elephant. When I first came to Thailand, you could almost see kwai from the airplane landing at Don Muang airport, which was surrounded by rice paddies then and kwai were everywhere. Now they have been replaced by 'iron kwai' or tractors. The pictures below are from 1967 or 1968, from the pictures I digitized and left in Kaphaengphet for the school museum last weekend.





This farmer walked his Kwai by my house every day. Here, one of the students who lived with the teachers is testing it.








This was one of the most common sights in Thailand then. Kids swimming with and bathing the kwai.









And here's why everyone had a kwai, and why they don't today. They were used to help plow the fields. Now there are tractors. That's progress and people don't have to work as hard and they can produce more. But
you don't have (well most of us wouldn't) have the same kind of relationship with a tractor as you would with your Kwai.




According to Bing, these kwai, which we passed coming back from the land meeting Wednesday, are on their way to the slaughter house, the main use for kwai today.














Elephants weren't as common a sight in the old days. They too played an important work role - getting timber - mainly large teak logs - from the forest to the river where it could be floated to a town, or to a road where it could be trucked out. Now the elephants you see are beggars, with their out of work human companions.

The one we saw was walking down the street in downtown Chiang Mai. We were in a vehicle going the other way and I couldn't get a picture. Yesterday was National Elephant Day.

Back when I was teaching in Kamphaengphet I asked my students to let me know when the elephants - which traveled the country - were in the area clearing teak logs. Here are a couple from the digitized batch I took when my students took me out to the forest to see them at work.




































Yes, that's yours truly, testing his elephant handling skills.


Boy, looking at the old slides compared to the new picture, I'm going to have to pull that old Pentax out again when I get home.

Two Villages

Met Bing at the office at 7:45am. Not sure where we were going, something about villages and a van.

Turned out we went to the village I went to earlier with Doc. Well, not quite. This village has two locations. Old and New. Last time I went to the fair at the old location, today we went to the hill top location - after picking up a Japanese professor from Rikkyo University, a program coordinator, their post doc student, a Japanese student doing her doctoral thesis in Chiang Rai, Thailand, and a Japanese-Thai translator.

This is the meeting space at the first village. It was nice to see familiar faces, including a couple of guys who had gotten pretty drunk at the fair. I have a lot to write about these two visits and the stories of the villages. Here, the "occupied" the land 6 years ago to the day today. I'm posting this late March 11 Thailand time - it's actually slipped into March 12 while I've been working on this. The leader of this group - the man whose house I slept at when I went to the village last time - explained the issues and the translator translated. I asked Bing a lot of questions. It's sort of how I expect being very hard of hearing is. You catch some of what is being said, but the stuff you fill in may or may not (more likely) be correct. So in mixed Thai and English, Bing would fill in. Basically, some 'rich' man owned the land and had subdivided it and was going to sell it for housing development. The farmers in the neighboring land needing nearby land as their children grew up and their land was already barely enough for a family, took over the land and started planting. Eventually, the government bought the land and sold it to the farmers with a 50 year mortgage. I know I'm missing a lot here and the justification for taking over someone else's privately owned land seems sketchy. There are issues of the impact of globalization, the commodification of land and the resultant loss of farm land for the farmers. And questions about the economic structure that enables some families to get wealthy and others not. Corruption plays a role as well. It's a long story which I don't have completely straight. Or even partially straight. But I'm going to try to get it written down in English. And, apparently the legal issues are not yet over, though if I understood right, in four years they will have been on the land long enough for it to be their own.

Here we are inside as the leader talks - he's in the white t-shirt to the right of the map. Since this is the 6th anniversary of getting the land, they were preparing for a big feast. I'm not sure how many pig heads were in this pot.




















During the meeting Bing showed me his cell phone "hot news" screen. This was how I learned that oil had hit $108/ barrel. After 108, dollars and barrel are written phonetically in Thai.







We had lunch at a restaurant not far away. I couldn't help, as a loyal Alaskan, snapping this picture advertising dried salmon skin for 15 Baht per little bag. (about 50 cents.)







And in case one had trouble reading the Thai, and interpreting the little man, the bathroom had a more graphic sign.






After lunch we drove south to Lampoon to the second village. Here people are again being introduced and then discussion of this village's land problems. They were given this government land - divided up among the various villagers. After they had it for ten years, according to what I learned today, some rich Thais - both individuals and companies from Bangkok and Chiang Mai - produced a deed to the land and charged them all with trespassing. The explanation was 'corruption.' The poor, relatively uneducated farmers never got documentation when they got the land and these others then got the officials who were in charge later on to forge new documentation and they planned to build a resort here.


You can see the mangos growing - a major crop for them - and these should be ripe in about three months.




When this man showed up a little late, it was obvious that he was 'the man.' There was something about him, just like the leader at the last village, that commanded attention. I just knew, this was the man who knew things. (My boss confirmed this later when we got back) He also has served about 8 years in prison over a longer period of time for trespassing. The case is still on appeal. I did get to ask him if any of the original government officials were still around who could vouch for them. He said they had all died off. Again, it is not clear what the basis for appeal is, though he did say that when asked who they bought the land from, the first people they claimed to have bought it from denied it. The others all turned out to be dead. There is a receipt that they paid for anything only for one small parcel. Or so I understood from the discussion.

This guy also asked the visiting Japanese sustainability experts, why a Thai mango that a friend had bought in Tokyo cost 25Baht there, when they sold for 9Baht a kilo in Thailand. Surprisingly, while I understood the question immediately, the Japanese interpreter, whose Thai is much better than mine, had trouble understanding this one.

We didn't get back to the office until 7:30pm. The lights were still on so I went in and talked to my boss a bit. I'm going to give some more seminars - people from the other organizations in the compound will be invited to some, and for those we will get an interpreter so that when I get to the more complicated abstract concepts, I can get help with the Thai.

Lots of thoughts are swirling through my head, but I'm going back to the second village tomorrow with Bing - 9am this time - because they are having someone come to survey the land. Bing and I had lots of time to talk in the van and at the villages today and that was good.

He said, "When we have English speaking volunteers, their Thai always gets better, but our English stays the same." So we used a lot more English today. He also asked how I was doing. I told him I'm fine and I'm having a great time, but I'm concerned that I'm not giving the organization enough value. He quickly said not to worry, that he was learning a lot just through our conversations. I asked for an example, because I was a bit surprised. He mentioned a discussion we'd had last week about his work with some women in a village who sew clothes for sale. A rich man gives them cloth and needles and thread and buys what they sew and sells it for 300% more than he pays (less markup than the mangos.) Bing thought they should sell the clothes themselves and make more money. In part of that discussion I told him about the proverb "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Only I added, in this case, you aren't even leading them to water, you are only telling them about water. The horse story was the example he gave.

I told my boss, when I got back tonight - he was still working at 7:30pm and didn't seem ready to leave when I left at 7:50pm - that I was learning a lot and really should come back in November, after the US elections. He said, that sounded good, but I could save the airfare by just staying. So, I think we're getting along well, though the more I know, I discover there is even much more that I don't know. But then that was the case when I first came to Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer. Today my Thai wasn't quite as frustrating as it was last week. Many of the words I've been studying were used in the discussions. Enough. I doubt too many people will get this far anyway. Congrats if you did.

Back in Chiang Mai

[still having trouble loading photos - there's a brief video of the hilltop temple below.]

Bus to Kamphaengphet from Chiang Mai. Comfortable and easy. Got to the bus station early so got on the earlier bus. Roads are really first class, four lane divided highway. But as we descended from the higher altitude of Chiang Mai into the lowlands, we got pushed to the left and the right as we zoomed downhill around the curves, I was reminded of taking this route when I first arrived in Thailand in 1967. The Peace Corps volunteers in the North were all sent up to Chiang Mai by train after a week of orientation in Bangkok. We left Chiang Mai in the evening. Then the road was not paved, two lanes, and I recall careening around the curves in the dark, lit up regularly by bright flashes of lightening which let me see the pouring rain outside. I remember that vividly still today as I just accepted that I would survive or not and that would be my fate.

In Kamphaengphet, Mook took us to the P Resort. The river across from the town is now lined with ‘Resorts” - we’d call them, motels, though each seems to be its own unique style. They had specially reserved an oval room for us that was over the river with windows about 200 degrees around the circle. It was pretty spectacular. We rested a bit enjoyed the view until he picked us up to go for dinner.

We went to an upstairs room at a Chinese restaurant owned by the children of a good friend of Mook’s father - they had come to Kamhaengphet about the same time.

Who’s Mook? I didn’t have Mook as a student in class - he was in grades above the ones I taught. But he did live with me for a while so he could practice his spoken English before taking the American Field Service (AFS) examination in 1968. There had never been an AFS student from KPP province, but he passed the exam. I got to know him and his family well during that time. He went to Iowa in 1969-70, a small rural town where he fit in very well. His daughter has also been an AFS student and now is living in Los Angeles. He’s been back to the US several times over the years, got an MPA in Bangkok and works at the HINO truck dealership. His family banana farm from the old days is now a huge sugar cane concern and Mook is head of the Sugar Cane growers association of KPP.

At the restaurant were Manoo and Sittiporn, two former students of mine. Manoo was an English teacher until he bacame an administrator at his primary school. Sittiporn is also a teacher. Both were good students when they were in my 7th grade English class.
There were also a few other people. One of the current English teachers at the school who is very enthusiastic and whom I promised last year I’d digitize some slides from 1967-68 of the school and of Kamhaengphet. They were very happy with the dvd - I played a slide show at dinner on my MacBook - and with the old student newspaper which had stories by Manoo and Sittiporn as well as Mook.

After dinner Mook had contaced Somprasong - one of the Thai teachers of the year - who was on a bus bringing students back from visiting the sea. His students live in the mountains and I imagine few if any had seen the sea. They were on their way back to Umphang and Mook arranged for us to meet them at a gas station as they were passing through Kamphaengphet. It was great to see him and his wife and son again. There were two big tour busses with 92 kids! Somprasong had gotten some businessman to donate the busses for the trip. But the big busses would not be able to go the small road to Umphang, so when they got to Maesot by 1am or so, they would have to switch to the small pickup trucks with benches in the back for the last three hours.

Right now I’m on the bus back to Chiang Mai. We had a lazy Sunday. We switched to the Techno Riverside Resort because the big room we were in wasn’t available for Saturday night. This motel was closer to town and also nicely situated on the river, but we didn’t have the great view we did the previous night. But they did have internet connection in the lobby so I could check email and make a post yesterday. Breakfast came with the room in a nice indoor-outdoor setting. Mook and his wife Aow came by with their 8 months old grandson. He was well fed and well slept, so he was in a good mood and we had fun. A real cutie.

Then off to Mook’s son’s (and wife’s) tutoring business. They have over 300 students who get tutored in English, math, and other subjects. Weekends are their busiest time. There we met Carlo, one of their English teachers. He’s a 48 year old Italian who was born and raised in Germany and is married to a Thai woman and lives 25 kilometers out of town.

Then to Mook’s house to drop off his wife and the baby. Then we stopped by a nearby wedding that Mook had been invited to. He dropped off an envelope with money and apologized to the bride’s (or was it the groom’s?) mother for not staying. Then we stopped at a spot on the river where his father first had a house when they got to KPP and where Mook and his brothers and sisters learned to swim. There were some people fishing and we also got to see the pens where they raise farmed fish.

Then we got out of town and onto the old main highway - the one that was the highway when I was teaching here. It was so much more quiet, the narrow two lane road going through fields along the river. Even though it is the dry season, there were bright green fields of new rice, irrigated by river water. And we stopped at a small temple - cemetary at the top of a litle hill. This was litterally a little hill as though someone had made it with a giant bucket of dirt. It gave us a a great view of the area, and there was another wedding loudly going on in the village just below. Mook said today was an auspicious day for a wedding and we must have passed three or four.

We got to Tak about two and had another great lunch. It is a little embarrassing because I’m not allowed to pay for anything in Kamphaengphet. Manoo slipped in and paid for our hotel room the night before - after Mook had told me it was already taken care of. Sutin and his wife paid for our hotel room last night I later learned. And this last lunch Mook would not let us pay. We had orginally planned to see the big dam in Tak today, but it was getting late and Mook has a meeting in Bangkok tomorrow morning, so I said we should skip the dam and just go to the bus station.

It was a little after three pm and we just missed the Chiang Mai bus and we could catch the four o’clock bus, but it might be 4:30. Mook said to just wait and see which bus came first (one from Bangkok or one from the Northeast) but I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough seats. I should have taken Mook’s advice. The Bangkok bus came first, was a nice new bus with lots of empty seats. It left about 4:30. The Khonkhean bus from the Northeast came later and didn’t leave til 5pm. And it was pretty full. Our seats turned out to be broken and after a bit, someone got off and we got other seats. But we are making a lot of little stops - not like the direct bus we were on going to KPP. It’s almost dark (6:35pm right now), but I was able to get my battery charged fully before the busride. So I’ll end this post and work on another one that will be less travelogue and more things we’ve found out in the last couple of days.

Kamphaengphet Tomorrow, Burma Run Saturday

Americans don't need a visa to visit Thailand - they get 30 days. My thirty days is up this weekend so we are making a border run in Maesod on the Burmese border. You can go into Burma, but not very far. I'll probably go in, get my passport stamped, and come back. But we'll take advantage of having to do that and get the bus tomorrow to Kamphaengphet where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 60s. When we were there last year I mentioned that they didn't have very many photos in the school museum. They said there weren't very many. So I promised to digitize some of the many slides I have and I did just before we left. So we'll deliver the dvd and I also found some copies of the English newspaper that my students put out and I have those too. The winner of the name the newspaper contest was Sakchai and the winning name was "To You With News." I know all this because there's an article about who won and how much he won (10 Baht)in the September 1968 issue. To Sir With Love was a very popular song at the time, which I'm sure played a role in Sackchai's winning entry.



I snapped these pictures when we went to eat tonight down the street. First is Ozone Net, one of the many internet shops on the street just outside the Chiang Mai University campus. I'm outside on the street. Double click on the picture to enlarge it.



And here's a woman, at one of the many shops along the University outer wall, cutting the mango to put with my sticky rice, that I'm just now finishing while I post.

Oh yes, I met a Belgian on Saturday who lives in our building. He was going out 'shooting' and was wearing camouflage pants. I saw him again tonight as we were walking out and asked him how his shooting had gone. He immediately pulled up his short shirt sleeve to show me the marks of the BB's that hit him. I'd heard of paint ball, but I didn't realize people went out shooting each other with BB guns. I asked if he had eye protection and he assured me he did. He goes to some large warehouse nearby where they have various vehicles and other things to hide behind. And there's a Thai military base where you can do this outside. He said people come from all over Thailand, including Thai police and soldiers. I jokingly said, "They like shooting at foreigners" but he didn't seem to notice I was joking and said sincerely that he thought so.

J asked if any women participated. He said no, they don't like getting all marked up with BB wounds. He said he spent three hours the other day and five hours yesterday doing this. I live such a sheltered life.

Work - Day 1

Awake early again. 4am. Yesterday Grib and I got to the offices at 10. It really isn’t very far out - 3 or 4 kilometers at most in a pocket of less urbanity just south of Chiengmai University. The office is among a cluster of NGO offices all related to sustainable development, rights of local people, etc. I don’t recall ever being with Thai activists who were self identified that way.

Everyone was great. Patient with my slow Thai, ready to answer any and all questions and to get me settled in as easily and quickly as possible.

Here are my immediate co-workers.



And an overview of what the organization is doing. The five things the project is focused on:

Land, water, Forest land, debt, and prices of products.







Had lunch with Bing who eventually revealed that he has an extensive English vocabuluary. Then we drove around the area looking for places for rent. The only place we actually went into would have been perfect except that it would qualify as an extreme ‘fixer upper.” We went back to the office and looked on the internet. A friend of someone they knew had two places for us to look at. One is in a brandnew (no electricity yet, the pool is “½ month away from completion” - my interpretation was it won’t have water till we are back in Anchorage) hotel these people own. The rooms are ready and beautiful, but it’s kind of far away and the neighborhood isn’t very exciting. They also showed us a house they own. Again, it was very nice its way, but Joan would be pretty isolated and I’d have a long trek to work.


Some of the new vocabulary I’m working on:


Coordinate
Federation
Natural Resources
Organic (the Thai word is the same as the Thai word for eagle อินทรี , with an extra letter อินทรีย์ . The pronunciation is easy to remember - “In Sea”)
Land Reform
Action
Support
Empowerment

The Noodle Shop is now Yak and Yeti

[UPDATE June 2012:  Yak and Yeti now has a satellite fast food like place in the REI/Title Wave Mall. The Spenard store is still open too.]

The Spenard building that housed the old Korean Noodle Shop, a wonderful place to go, that closed a year or two ago now hosts Yak and Yeti, a new Himalayan restaurant that the ADN has already reviewed. Last night some of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in Anchorage met there for dinner. It's been nicely redecorated, the service was cordial, and the food good. We were warned to get there early (5pm). Good advice because by 6pm there were ten or 15 people waiting to be seated. Since we were taking up that much room ourselves, we left a little earlier than we would have.

Fun Time at Central Middle School

KS, an Indian Ed teacher in the Anchorage School District invited me to meet with some of his students to talk about the Peace Corps. What do you say to 7th and 8th graders in 30 minutes? Well, I grabbed some pakimas, a farmer shirt, some Karen hill tribe shirts, a yellow King's polo shirt, and a pink polo shirt from my school in Kamphaengphet along with some books and pictures.

We had a good time learning how to put on a pakima (the blue and the red checked men's sarong like cloths) trying out the different shirts and looking at pictures of my 7th and 8th graders 40 years ago. Time went by fast and the kids were great.

Peace Corps Thailand 45th Anniversary Part 2

Here are a few pictures of the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand.




This picture was taken Saturday night at the Peace Corps office. This is the same building that has been the office since the 80s near Krung Thai Bridge. But where you used to be able to freely wander in and out, now the entrance is blocked by a small security building you need to go through. There is also a recently completed new building that houses, among other things, a library, computers and internet access, and showers for visiting volunteers.





The ceremonial parts were held at the Erawan Hotel which is now a very fancy Hyatt Grand. Back in the day, as I recall, it was an elegant old dowager of a two story hotel with a wonderful restaurant at the swimming pool that was reasonable enough that even Peace Corps volunteers could occasionally eat lunch there.


Joe Hye, as you can tell from his yellow jacket, is one of the new Group 119 inductees. He's from St. Louis and headed for Trang Province.






Jim Lehman was the only other Group 19 member (my group). Of course, for anyone who knows Jim, it is redundant to say "here is Jim talking.' I don't remember all the posts Jim has had since Peace Corps, but he worked for Peace Corps or AID most of his career, including being Director of Nepal and Sri Lanka. He was the volunteer in Maesod and has agreed to help Somprasong get a Peace Corps volunteer for his school in Umphang, which is down the road from Maesod.








Pam was a teacher volunteer in the 60s and went on to teach at Cal State Sacramento for 30 years.




John Robertson is the new volunteer from Anchorage.




We've been experimenting with Joan's new digital audio recorder and so I didn't write everyone's name down. But I discovered that I pushed the record/pause button instead of the record button for a few of these. So I don't have all the names. This guy is from Group 117 and is getting ready to head home.

Learning to Bow and Curtsy for the Princess

Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, from what I am told, takes after her father the highly revered King of Thailand, and longest reigning monarch in the world now. She tirelessly does good works for the poor and represents the monarchy and Thailand. She attended the Peace Corps Anniversary directly after landing in Bangkok from a ceremonial trip to Egypt. While many Americans may see the details of all the protocol as rather archaic, the King and Queen have really been a critical element of Thai national identity. They have worked very hard over his 60 years as King to improve the lot of Thailand, including those people most often overlooked. Nearly all Thais have a very strong respect for the King and would take any slights of the royal family as a great offense.

Part of the instructions before the Princess arrived at the 45th Anniversary celebration of Peace Corps Thailand on March 23, 2007 in Bangkok's Erawan Hotel.


[UPDATE October 13, 2016 - A little late, but here's a link to Part 2 of this Anniversary.]

45th Anniversary Peace Corps Thailand

We're back in Bangkok at the Royal River Hotel, with a 9th floor view of the River. Spent this afternoon at the Erawan Hotel where HRM Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presided over the opening of the anniversary and the induction of Thai Group 119. Since I was in group 19, this had a special meaning for me too. I got to talk with a number of the new volunteers, with some who are just finishing, and a number of Returned Peace Corps volunteers, including Jim Lehman, the only other person from my group. Jim lives in Bangkok now.

There were formalities - we all had to learn when and how to bow when the Princess came in. But it was, overall, a happy occasion. The Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke about how his life was changed by Peace Corps volunteers in his town. The representative of the new group, Scott, stood up and did his whole speech is exquisite Thai. Doris, who was sitting one person over from me, and was in Thai 2 or 3 and a legend when I arrived because of her excellent Thai, sputtered when he was done, "No one can speak that well in three months." His vowels, his consonants, his tones, were right on and crystal clear. I learned from another volunteer later that he was a linguist and had written his master thesis on how to learn languages. I'm not sure I have it all accurate, but he did an incredible job. And he did it in front of 40 or so former Thai Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as the Ambassador.

Later there was a reception at the Ambassador's Residence.

Joan didn't feel well when it was time to go - headachy and nauseous. I told her she didn't have to go. She didn't. I had her new recorder with me and recorded the event and maybe we'll start our first podcast when we get back. Also some interviews with former PCVs, new ones, current ones, and old PC director and a Thai official who hired PCVs.

Luang Prabang

Our 10:10am flight left at noon - the smoke in Luang Prabang was too bad to fly in. But eventually we got there. Then several of the people we got to know waiting at the airport - Enrica, a Japanese couple, and Christina - got a taxi together to a guest house in town. At the guest house Enrica and Christina discovered they were both Italians working in China.

Luang Prabang - what to say? I've wanted to come here since back in Peace Corps days, but it was tricky back then and I only made it to Vientiane. This has been designated a world heritage site - the whole town. It is full of temples. It is a beautiful little town, former royal capital of Laos, sitting on the Mekong. I'm not sure what it is - narrow streets, not much traffic (mostly motorcycles). I think it's the details - the buildings and the streets are nicely finished, clean, and plants and trees are everywhere and blooming. And of course the people are delightfully friendly. But this place has been discovered and is crawling with tourists. And it has obviously changed to accommodate all the tourists. It seems that every fifth house is a guest house and there are outdoor restaurants everywhere aimed at tourists.

Last night after watching the sun set over the Mekong and Luang Prabang from the temple on the little hill in the center of town, we met all the folks from the taxi ride and while looking for a place to eat, stumbled on the vegetarian buffet. Fill your plate for 5000 Kip (about .$50). The amazing part was the long tables filled with people from everywhere. There was a Canadian next to me who had worked summers in Cordova. Two others from Vancouver who are taking a semester abroad from UBC law school in Hong Kong. One of them started speaking great Japanese with our Japanese friends. Joan was talking to a customs official from Holland.

And then we walked down through the night market that was filled with displays of various local crafts. On and on and on.

Today we biked to see the grave of Henri Mouhot, the man who found Angkor Wat buried in the jungle. He died up the road from here of malaria at 35. It was really just a destination for us that seemed like a reasonable bike ride. We couldn't find the sign. We finally stopped at a little shop - a shack really - and asked. It turned out we could walk to it in 15 minutes from there. A young man led us to it. When I got back we met the headmaster of the school and visited a few classrooms and one of the men took me into the village to see his house. I have lots of pictures to print and send them.

And I have lots of pictures, but again, I can't figure out how to reduce the image size to post them in a reasonable time. I'll try a couple. Anyway, Luang Prabang is truly an incredible place. Don't know how long it can last with the influx of tourists, I know it must have been much more interesting 5 years ago. It is really an unexpected jewel of a town way out in the jungles of Northern Laos.