Thailand is not India

India really is unique. Sometimes in India I just wondered if I’d forgotten what it was like in Thailand. But the ride to Korat – about 2 ½ hours, sometimes at 140 km/hour – was on a beautiful road with yellow lines in the middle and well marked lanes – usually two plus a side line. There were no bicycles, ox carts, camel carts, or slow moving vehicles. No pedestrians.

And the people are …what can I say? Thais have always been among the friendliest and most hospitable I’ve ever met. And after India, those qualities are even more pronounced. That isn’t to say that Indians weren’t friendly and nice, they were incredibly so. But the Thai food stand owners just smile and offer you something and if you smile and nod your head no, they give you back a sincerely warm smile.
On the Rote Song Thaew (pick up truck (Rote) with two (song) benches (thaew)) tonight, first one young man got up for a woman, and then when another women got on, the other young man stood up and gave her his seat. There was no hesitation, just automatic. You don’t see that much anywhere in the world these days. And the first Rot Song Thaew wasn’t going to the hotel, but she said that we needed to be ‘waaaay’ over there and said get in and we’ll drop you off. No charge.

This is not a put down of India. Few places compare well to the friendliness of Thais. And here in a provincial capital – the third largest city in Thailand with about 200,000 people – is a totally different world from Bangkok. Korat was the site of the largest US air force base in Thailand during the Vietnam war, so they had a lot of Americans here then. And we see a number of Vietnam era looking white men with Thai women of about the same age. So I’m guessing they’ve come back, are visiting relatives, or have a second home here.

Chinese New Year in Korat

Thanks to an adept student, this video is ready to post. More later. This was at the Chinese New Years Festival in the center of Korat, Thailand last night. I must say it felt wonderfully normal to me - just like many festivals I attended in Kamphaengphet many years ago. Except for the Rock n Roll.

Bangkok Day 1

Day 1 in Thailand (Bangkok)

Breakfast buffet in the Ibis Hotel in Huamark (near Ramkhamhaeng University who I’ll be teaching for) had this great drink that tasted like ginger. And it was NamKing – Ginger juice. It’s the tea colored one in the middle. Not many pictures to show.. We got up, surprised at the blue, blue sky with big, but not threatening clouds and reasonably clear air, and wandered around getting our bearings. We’re not at all in the tourist section, but right in the middle of many Thai malls and the main street – Ramkhamhaeng – is lined with little shops and street stalls. There’s a khlong (canal) down the soi (side street) we are on and you take a boat taxi into downtown Bangkok. But we slowly wondered down to the University, less than a mile away. The humidity wasn’t bad at all, though in the sun it did get pretty hot. I was nicely taken care of, getting my reimbursement for the plane trip, hotel, taxi, and payment for teaching. Met some of the other faculty – mostly retired male faculty, including Frank Gold from Fairbanks. And got access to the internet and made arrangements for getting to Korat on Friday morning. Thawisak, who was the van driver when we were here in 2003 will be the driver. We like him a lot, so that was nice. I’ve been reviewing my Thai for three or four months now, listening to tapes, working on my reading, and it’s paid off. My available vocabulary is much better than it was when we came in 2003, but I do still have trouble catching everything that people are saying to me. My Thai is good enough that they assume I can understand more than I can. And when they use English words and I’m thinking they are speaking Thai, it is really tough. And Sommai’s few Lao lessons really impressed them. In the Northeast of Thailand they speak a dialect that is more similar to Lao. Sommai taught me how to say ‘hello’ ‘delicious’ and ‘don’t worry.’ Someone commented that my Thai was good, but I would need to Isaan (the dialect) in Korat. So I showed off my couple of phrases. We bought a myytyy (hand carry) phone. The lady was great and very patient with all my questions. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer some people would keep talking to me because they thought my accent was so funny. I think that might have been the case here.

We ended up napping when we got back and eating in a fast food looking Thai restaurant in the mall. Food was good. Called Mook (my former student in Kamphaengphet) again, this time with the cell and 1-2 card he’d suggested. But then I got a message saying I needed to recharge the card. I guess will go back by the phone shop and ask what’s going on. I only called him twice and we didn’t speak long, even though they said I’d be charged per call, not per minute. I must add, that phone shops are everywhere. If anyone is interested, the used Nokia was about $34 and the card was about $8. And the lady said I could sell her back the phone when we leave. She even gave us a little pink phone sock for Valentine’s Day.

These are three different islands of phones for sale in this small section of this mall. We bought the phone at another mall.

LA-Bangkok

Fifteen hours on a plane is a looooong time. I watched “The Departed” one and a half times. (It took a while, on the tiny screen, to figure out who was who and at the end I wasn’t sure, so I watched the beginning again to help sort it out.) I watched Cinderella so I could see the Bibidibobidiboo song, and found the movie to have held up surprisingly well. One can see how so much animation has never really progressed much from the early conventions set by Disney. I studied Thai. The rules of the Thai alphabet finally made sense to me after all these years (and reading signs and menus is working out pretty well now.) I got up and walked around the very crowded Cathay Pacific 747. I had a three year old exchange with the guy in front of me who insisted on having his seat all the way back, pointing my movie screen floorward, and making writing, eating, and reaching things under the seat extremely difficult. I did a lot more banging and pushing against the seat than was necessary (I had asked him to move it up when I was eating and he did a little, but then moved way back again.) When he leaned forward for a second, my knees were up to keep him from pushing back. Of course I couldn’t use the table then anyway. Eventually I asked him to move it up – he didn’t speak English, so he pointed in frustration at the seat in front of him. But about fifteen minutes later, the seat moved forward and stayed there for the rest of the flight. The picture shows another confrontation that wasn’t resolved as easily.

We were too far away to hear what the ruckus was about, but she wasn’t happy. The flight attendants tried to politely get the lady to sit down. I thought maybe my camera up in the air would embarrass the lady to sit down. She didn’t notice. (Sometimes I probably should use a flash) But the flight attendant did and later came by, and with a smile said, “I hope you won’t publish this.” Actually the flight attendants did nothing to be embarrassed about, and you can’t really see her face anyway. But the ethics of public photos and blogging and Youtube arise over and over again. There was an article in the LA Times on students publishing videos of their teachers on Youtube. But blog ethics and travel photography ethics are another post. In any case, I was able to blur her face for the blog.

We eventually made it to Hong Kong where we walked around the airport and had noodles for three hours before sitting down to wait for our flight. And a mercifully short two and a half hours to Bangkok. So we essentially lost February 13, having left LA at 11:30am on Feb 12, flown back over Alaska, crossing the international dateline, and arriving in Bangkok at 11:50pm on February 13. But we were through customs, got our baggage, and taxied to the hotel (not too far from the airport) by 1am.

The Disney Concert Hall

I've seen and photographed Frank Gehry"s incredible
building before. But this time, after the opera, we walked around the building in the dark. It was like walking through the narrow canyons of Utak. Things curve and wind, you climb up, there are deadends and surprising vistas. But you can walk all around - if you don't need a wheel chair. Here are a couple shots from wandering around about 10:30pm. Note: I prefer a little blur to using a flash.

Mahagonny

We went to the LA Opera last night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion last night with Ginny to see a Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weil opera - The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. (Pronounced Maha - Go - Knee, emphasis on the Go) In some imaginary language that means spider web. This was an 1930 opera about three scoundrels who start a town somewhere in the US. They're stranded in the desert somewhere, which made me think it was in the West, but then there is a hurricane (sometimes referred to as a typhoon) and they are near Pensacola.... It was an interesting evening. We heard a talk with the conductor James Conlon before hand. That was helpful. The set was very simple and effective sand colored. The intent of the town is to offer food, sex, drink, and fights to men who come back from hunting for gold. "It's easier to get gold from the men, than from the river." But the first four men were actually coming back from cutting lumber for "seven years in Alaska, seven freezing years" a line that was repeated over and over. And a key character was named Alaska Wolf Joe. Think about it. We're watching a play in LA written by German Jews between the WWs - and somehow there we are back to Alaska.

It was written, if I understood the preshow lecture right, as a Marxist critique of the social and political conditions as the Nazi's were coming into power. And it was Conlon felt it had relevance today as well. There was discussion about why it was being offered in English (so it is accessible to American audiences as it was to German audiences) and about staging and styling that would have the feel for contemporary audiences that it had for 1930 Germans. I wonder what Brecht and Weil would have thought about the lavish concert hall and ticket prices (from $35 to $250.)

I'm not an opera regular. I love the set and staging, but it seemed rather heavy handed to me. I had a good time, the whole experiance was interestig (I haven't been in the Dorothy Chandler for 30 years.)

You can enlarge the picture and you should be able to read the words. I'm still ruminating on the ethics of taking and posting pictures of public performances. I'll do a piece on that one day.

Anchorage ---- LA

We left Anchorage about 1am after being deiced - it was around 30 degrees Fahrenheit and we'd had snow and freezing rain.


Then off to Santa Monica beac with Ginny.

Archive dates

My archives were all messed up - 2007 was 2006, February was January, etc. So I checked in Blogger help and others had the same problem. Astroguy wrote:

I found it was a date setting problem. We went into daylight saving
and I didn't change the timezone setting in the dashboard. When I
changed it from +8GMT to +9GMT everything started working properly. I
think it was a conflict between my PCs time settings and bloggers.

So I went into my settings and moved from Alaska time to Pacific Coast Time.

Bingo, the archives are working right. But now I want to see what time it says this post is. I'll check, and then edit in the answer about whether I'm still on Alaska time.

Back from checking. My post time is now an hour off. What if I change it back? Will the archives still work? Let's see. Be right back.

Back once more. When I changed it back to Alaska time, the archive dates were screwed up again. So now I'm in Pacific Coast time. All my post times are an hour ahead. I guess that is less important than the archives being screwed up.

Galloping Toward Equinox

As you can see, we're gaining Five and a half minutes of daylight each day. But what is misleading is the 8 hours of daylight. That is really the time between sunrise and sunset. But twilight gets longer and longer as you go north. The picture was taken at 6:36pm on February 7, looking West. Sunset that day was officially at 5:24, so there was still some light in the western sky over an hour later. I remember being in Hawaii with the kids. We were watching the sunset, and I had to point out, that it would be dark in 10 or 15 minutes because that's what happens when you are further south.

DATE Sunrise Sunset Daylight Daylight gained
Feb 5, 2007 9:10 AM 5:18 PM 8h 08m 08s + 5m 26s
Feb 6, 2007 9:07 AM 5:21 PM 8h 13m 36s + 5m 28s
Feb 7, 2007 9:05 AM 5:24 PM 8h 19m 06s + 5m 29s
Feb 8, 2007 9:02 AM 5:26 PM 8h 24m 38s + 5m 31s
Feb 9, 2007 8:59 AM 5:29 PM 8h 30m 11s + 5m 33s
Feb 10, 2007 8:56 AM 5:32 PM 8h 35m 45s + 5m 33s

Of course, if it is cloudy, that long twilight is severely curtailed. Today it won't last nearly so long. Here are a couple of pictures of downtown Anchorage I took dropping something off for a friend who works on the 12th floor.




That's the new Convention Center going up. Boy, this is about as grim a picture of Anchorage as you can get. Not even a trace of the Chugach Mountains in the background.






And on the left you can see northwest out over the Inlet. That's where one the infamous bridges wants to be. Not exaxtly a bridge to nowhere.

Nicholas and the Last King of Scotland

I was disappointed.

This is the evil version of The King and I. Foreigner in King's service tells his story. Except in this movie, Nicholas sees the good in his evil king, while Anna saw the flaws in her nobe king. And Nicholas and the King don't sing to each other. s.

What we saw of the King was a man switching back and forth from charming to evil. We have no clue why. We don't know much more about the reasons for Amin's rise to power, the relationships between Africa and the Colonial West.

I'm not sure that all the praise for Forrest Whitaker is warranted. It seemed to me to be great mimickry more than great acting. While we saw the charm and the horror of Amin, we don't really know who he is. Perhaps this is something a psychiatrist would have to tell us, something beyond an actor.

Why do we need the foreigner to tell the story? At least in Hotel Rwanda we saw the horror from the eyes of other, more noble African. But in other Africa films I've mentioned - Blood Diamonds, Constant Gardner and Babel whites were the entre into Africa. Perhaps this was less problematic because these whites were an integral part of the story and because the movies showed us the bigger picture of how the West was involved in Africa's problems. Or maybe I was lulled. In this case, the white foreigner is totally unnecessary to the main show - Idi Amin. He seems to be there because someone thinks that Western audiences can't relate to Africa without a white guide. (I realize that this is how Giles Foden, the author of the novel this is based on, wrote it. And as someone who spent years in Africa with his parents, that is how he would see things.) But we should see more movies about Africa where whites play a less prominent role.