Saturday, February 23, 2008

J Should be Taking Off as I Post

Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 11:15am
The advantage of an early Sunday morning flight is that there's no traffic, it's cool (it says 66F/19C), the monks are out with their alms bowls, and you get to see the sun rise. Our cab was waiting for us when we got downstairs 15 minutes early.



Here's J at the airport. Isn't she beautiful? Even squinting into the rising sun.

From getting into the cab to saying goodbye at the passenger lounge entrance, even getting a lot of red lights, and not taking the short cut through the air force compound, to the passenger lounge took 20 minutes total. It's a three hour flight to Singapore on Tiger Airways, an Australian discount airline I found online. Our son has school break next week so they should have a good time.


I was going to walk back in the cool morning air. If you have the right decal on your windshield, you can go through the air force compound to the airport. It's a direct shot, maybe a couple of kilometers at the most. But the cab didn't so we had to go around the long way, compounded by one way streets that take you out of the way around the moat of the old city center. But the cab driver thought pedestrians didn't need a pass. He was wrong. I thought about hitching a ride with someone who had a pass, but decided to walk the other way.


But I got pestered by tuk tuk drivers and song tao drivers and finally said ok. He dropped me off at the entrance to the soi. A soi is a street off a main street. Alley isn't the right translation. The main street here is Suthep (the name of the mountain, means angel in Thai, and was the Thai name I was given long ago because it is close to Steve.) So we live on Tanon (road) Suthep, Soi 4.



I had the song tao driver (I looked, but don't seem to have a picture of a song tao - it means two rows. It's a pickup truck with a covered bed and in the back are two rows of benches for passengers to sit on. In some places they go on regular routes. I'm not sure if that's the case here, most seem to be for hire like taxis here) drop me off where at the soi entrance on Suthep Road.
After getting most of the way up the soi, I saw the sign announcing our place - Baan Nai lek - and thought I should take some pictures in the early morning light. (It's the white sign on the pole on the left that says 300 meters to go.) It's about a seven minute slow walk up from the main road.

And a little further is the sign for Mi Casa. We're told this is an expensive Mediterranean restaurant. Expensive is a relative term - dishes are B200 - B500 (about $12-15) I was told. One day.













Here's the old house it's in and the hours it's open. Maybe we'll try it for lunch one day.







They're still working on this, though there are people inside in the afternoon. (You could see this building and the white fence in the pic with the yellow Mi Casa sign) Not sure what it is. There's what seems to be a recording studio back closer to the road. You can see our building in the background.






A little closer. Just after I took this picture, a huge rotweiler threw itself against the gate next to me. He was inside the fence.












And here at the entrance to my building are three members of the welcoming committee. There are dogs all over. The ones that bark the most are inside a closed gate. Most just move out of the way. A couple of times dogs have chased the bike a little, but those times people called them back.





And since I haven't posted a picture of my bike yet, I thought I'd get our parking lot. My bike is the green one on the other side of the white barrier.

I was going to have this posted before J's plane took off, but my daughter got skype and called and we talked for over an hour. If you don't know about skype and you make long distance calls, especially overseas, you should know. Two people with skype can chat, talk, and video for free. If you have skype you can also call regular phones for very low rates. The sound quality is usually better and I'm told the encryption is very good too. I'm sure the CIA and FBI will be working on skype calls before long if they haven't already though. Skype.com

I've got a seminar to give next week some time, so that's what I'll work on today. More on that later.

Organic and Almost Organic


Today we checked out the twice a week vegetable market that Chiang Mai University's agricultural program hosts. Local farmers with "blotsanpit" (no pesticide, but chemical fertilizer, but, we were reassured by one of the professors from the program, there are no residues in the vegetables sold.) This happens Wednesdays all day and Saturdays until 1.

They even had free lunch. A huge vat of fantastic rice. It was made of rice, taro root, sesame seeds, and peanuts. There were also large pots with different cooked vegetables. We were quickly invited to sit down near the professor who spoke good English. She'd even been to Alaska because she'd written about Alaska's natural resources extraction policy including the Permanent Fund.

















And she told us about yet another healthy vegetable place - in the southeast corner of campus, pretty close to where we live. So we walked over there on the way home.


This one is open every day, inside a little building, with air conditioning, and lots of beautiful fruits and vegetables and other products like honey, soap, shampoo, and fruit juices. We loaded up and went home.

Walk With Care


Motorcycles and scooters rule Chiang Mai. One person told me that there are busses, but the wait is too long and then you have to walk. Everyone seems to have a motorized two wheeler. There are a few others on actual bicycles. And walking isn't easy at all. And I'm not talking about the weather which has been pleasantly cool and dry. Cool means between high 80s in the day, but down into the mid 60s at night.

Here's what pedestrians face.




Sidewalks are the parking lots of the ruling class.




Does the placement of this phone booth suggest that anyone thought pedestrians were important?



And then there is the issue of crossing the streets. Here there is a continuous flow of cars. There are no crosswalks at most corners and even when it seems like there is a green light, the traffic patterns have cars turning right, then left across where pedestrians have to cross. I have seen a couple places where there were actually lights in the middle of a block that would stop traffic and let pedestrians pass, maybe three of those so far.


And even where there are reasonable sidewalks, like on the Chiang Mai University campus, when you get to the gates going off campus, suddenly the sidewalks stop and you have to walk in the traffic lane to get out.

So, as I was contemplating maybe we should give in and get a motorcycle while we're here, Melissa told me that yesterday a French-Canadian volunteer was killed yesterday in a motor accident where, apparently, a motorcycle was involved.

I have my bicycle and the short ride to work is fairly easy and I could get about town fine. And J is good with her feet. And there are the red little jitney trucks if you have to go further or carry something. And for tomorrow morning's trip to the airport to send J off to visit our son in Singapore - he has school break next week - we ordered a taxi.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Wat Suandok - Chiang Mai



Yesterday we walked into the old town of Chiang Mai. On the way we stopped at one of Chiang Mai's many temples. This one has done will by catering to tourists with a yen for a little more serious encounter with Buddhism. They have daily Monk Chats in English and meditation retreats. And they have foot and body massages for










Erick, this pictures for you. I got you the dark green one on the right. It's the Buddha in the picture above, if I understood right.



And when we were back on our way, we ran into this monk from Cambodia who's going to University at the Wat. He spoke really good English and we chatted for 15 or 20 minutes. It reminds me of what I've known, but it's so easy to forget. Monks are just young (and older) men who had their heads shaved and traded jeans for orange robes. Of course, they also have some reason for wanting to become a monk. It was really bright out and so I couldn't see my camera screen too well so I didn't realize his eyes were facing left.

Thais use the same word for work and party

Friday, February 22, 5:13pm
I've known the word
งาน since I first studied Thai. It means work. But it also shows up in words like งานวัด which is a wat festival. But it wasn't until today when I was preparing a Keynote (Mac's version of Powerpoint) presentation for next week in both Thai and English and had to look up the word 'network' which can be translated as ข่ายงาน. (The second syllable is งาน) Thai2English.com (which is making my life MUCH easier) then takes the two parts of that word and translates each.

งาน pronounced ngaan means:
  1. work ; job ; task
  2. party ; celebration
I'd never made that connection. No wonder Thais enjoy life so much.

And while I'm speaking of Thai, I mistranslated the word on the sign I saw the other day. I'll make a correction in the post itself too. I said it meant 'safe from poison" and it may mean that , but it isn't exactly the same as organic. It means that no pesticides were used, but they probably used chemical fertilizers. Chiengmai University's agricultural department will have a market Saturday selling pesticide free food.

And making the Thai words larger seems to have messed up the size of the English words, but I don't have time to make it perfect, sorry.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Macha Bucha, Wat Pa Daeng, Chiang Mai

The monk we met the other day at Wat Pa Daeng invited us to come for vientien on Macha Bucha, so we did come back. It is the closest wat (temple) to our place.



[Saturday morning: I can't see the video at all on Firefox, but I can on Safari]

After we went out to the main street, got food from various stands, and ate at home.





Birds and Bats



We're like in our own little treehouse with wall to wall windows looking out into the fourth floor level of trees. There are lots of birds - we hear a lot more than we see, and see lot more than we can catch with the camera - and last night we noticed all these birds flying into the tree, but they weren't birds. You can see this bird's long tail, but not the head. I think it's in the magpie/treepie family. Dianne? Catherine? Is there enough here to identify? The tail is so distinctive. It was probably 2 feet long from tip of the head to end of the tail. Maybe longer.




Then yesterday night there were maybe 20 or 30 bats swooping back and forth just beyond our balcony and in the trees. You could hear the wings hitting the leaves. Otherwise they were silent. So I put it on flash and the child/animal setting and started taking pictures. I got a bunch like this one of the trees but with no obvious bats. You can see the fruit in the tree (like usual, you can double click to enlarge the pictures) if you look carefully and the way the were sometimes hovering I assume they were going after the fruit. I couldn't tell for sure what kind of fruit it is.



Then, I finally got one. There's a way to get rid of red eye on people, but there's no way to get rid of white eye I know of, on animals. This seems to happen with dogs (the fox I got at Elmendorf last August had this in the flash picture) and bats. How are their eyes different from human eyes that the flash reflection is different? But that's pretty much all you can see of this bat.




Finally, bingo, I got the whole bat. First you see the eyes, but then you can see the whole animal in flight. I'd say there were 18 - 24 inches in wingspan. Very cool watching them fly around. If you are ever in Portland, Oregon, the zoo there has a bat exhibit with special lighting so you can see the bats clearly flying around, hanging around, and various states in between.

[2/21/08 My son emailed me this:

In mammals, the rods and cones actually face backwards, towards the retina. Dogs and cats have a retroreflective layer in their retina which reflects light back into the rods and cones, improving their night vision.

(retroreflective means reflects back in the same direction it came from. you can get the same effect from the inside of the corner of a cube with shiny sides)]


J made it safe and sound


We've spent the last two days walking around the neighborhood and around Chiang Mai. (Note: everyone is out of the office on various trips and meetings and today is a holiday) Here are the steps down from Wat Pa Daeng, the temple just up the street. We went in and began talking to one of the monks. I pulled out my vocabulary list and we had an impromptu joint English and Thai lesson. Then he posed in front of the Buddha in the sanctuary. Today is Macha Bucha day. I couldn't find a whole lot on line explaining the holiday, but here's a little from Saranair.com

Macha Bucha Day is the important Buddhist holy day (on a fullmoon of third lunar month) celebrates the occasion when:

  • 1,250 of the Lord Buddha's disciples spontaneously gathered to hear him preach without any schedule

  • all of them were ‘Arhantas', the Enlightened One, and were ordained by the Buddha Himself

  • and the Buddha gave those Arhantas the principles of the Buddhism, called "The Ovadhapatimokha".


So on the day like this, Buddhist all over the world would go to the temple to offer food to the monks, Vien Tien (candles light procession), listen to Dharma talk, enjoy the good deeds at the temples.


We'll go tonight at 7pm to vientien - walk around the temple and the chedi three times with the candles and leave an offering for the monks. There were a lot of places selling prepackaged stuff today, but the bucket they mostly come in was too much to carry around all day. I'm hoping we can get stuff at the wat, though this is a reltively small wat. But it is just up the street. And now we know one of the monks.




We also got to see our building from a different angle. We're on the top floor looking out into the trees on the left. In the next post I'll put up a couple of views into those trees.

I'm down in the lobby now using the wifi which doesn't get all the way up to the fourth floor and the dsl connection isn't working right. It says we're connected to the internet, but every website times out and we get nothing. So today/s pictures will have to wait.

We also walked around the Chiang Mai university campus which is very close by. A woman who asked if we needed help turned out to be a graduate of the political science and public administration program so she ended up taking us to see the Dean of the Social Sciences who teaches public administration.

We also checked on the swimming pool at the university. It is Olympic sized, costs B300 a year membership (just under $10) and B30 each swim. So Joan will sign up there. The fancy boutique hotel across the street from us where two nights (about $300) in the cheapest room costs more than one month in our room only lets hotel guests use the pool. We can't even buy our way in, but we can eat at the restaurant. Thanks.

And we had dinner at a Vietnamese place nearby. The food is great. But I was really impressed with the windows. Someone obviously didn't like the dark wall. So I'm guessing they had the wall smashed open put in the windows. But left the wall so you could see how the liberated the room from the dark. It takes a lot of guts to actually do something like this and leave it like this. I think it works and makes a strong statement.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Devi Mandir Chiang Mai

Default-tiny SND_2556 uploaded by AKRaven









We met at Devi Mandir, Chiangmai's Hindu temple. First I met M. who works in my compound but for a different NGO (non-governmental organization, the international word for non-profit) that is working on sustainability. She's been working at home mostly which probably explains why I haven't met her yet. Me and S. and Grib were also there. Mike, who met in Chiang Mai last year when he had just arrived to work for the AJWS was also there, coincidentally, with his brother. The services reminded a lot of Anchorage, though here the room was filled with Thais. The person who led the prayers, a powerful yogi according to Mike, told us afterward he doesn't speak Thai and so he did the talk in Hindi since most of the Thais here do not understand English either (nor Hindi). But they did know the chants. And, as you can see in the pictures, this is a much more ornate temple than the one in Anchorage.

It turns out that Mike lives just down the street from us, less than a quarter of a mile away.

There was a heavy downpour while we were in the Temple, the first rain since I've been here. I was also able to pick up a good (save looking) electric teapot and what I thought was a hot plate at the Central Department Store at the mall. But I'm not sure how to make it work and the box says induction cooker. I have to look it up on line.

Catching Up


Well, catching up never happens, but rather than worry about getting things up from Friday, I'll just put up some stuff on today and let the other stuff get up when I can do it.

My bike ride to the office is a delight. I pass a couple of wats (Buddhist temples) and more or less rural areas even though we are in town. A few noodle shops, mostly homes of various sizes and styles. I'll try a video one day soon. You've seen some of that in the house hunting post. The weather has been cool - down into the sixties at night - and the humidity low so it's been comfortable. I stopped here for breakfast this morning.

The office is getting empty. There's a meeting in Lampang, neighboring province, and others are going to Bangkok. I've been getting into the office close to 9am the last two days and today I was the first one there, so my 10am arrivals weren't all that bad. So hardly anyone is around this week which is good since J comes tomorrow morning. Everyone is gone so I was wondering how I would pick her up. But Grib came by today and offered to pick me up to get Joan. Since no one was there - at least in my organization, there are other people from the other organizations - I left early and went back to the market I'd been in last night. Most of the shops that had household stuff were closed last night. Today I did fine and got some of the things I wanted before Joan got here - hangers, a pair of plates, bowls, mugs, and fork/spoon/knife sets, a pot, and flowers. Actually they look like much less than when I bought them. But there are two bunches of mums, a bunch of orchids, a bunch of roses, and a clump of fragrant gardenias, and a jasmine bud necklace. I cleaned things up this morning and when I got the hangers home hung up Joan's clothes that I brought along.

Poor J is somewhere between Tokyo and Bangkok. And won't be here til tomorrow morning.

Tonight the AJWS volunteers in Chiang Mai are meeting tonight at the Hindu temple. There's something going on and then vegetarian Indian buffet afterward. I'm going to see if I can get an electric burner on my way, so we can do a little cooking in here.

Here's a view from the bedroom. The living room view is similar. I've seen already a lesser (I think) coucal and a red whiskered bulbul (the link has a great photo) and another bulbul like bird that had an red/orange chest and white neck. I couldn't find anything like it in the book.

I can sit at my desk here and be bird watching. At night we have interesting bird sounds. I recorded some, but realize I lost it. But that one has been back each night. We also get roosters crowing out there from about 4am on and sometimes the neighboring dogs get yappy. But it hasn't been disturbing for some reason. I saw a bunch of roosters around the closest wat this morning when I rode to work.

And I've learned there's another word for organic. This one basically means 'safe from poison".

Enough, I quick nap and then off before it's dark. I brought a rear bike light from home. I called Sak at the bike shop about buying a new one tonight on the way to the temple, but he's playing tennis, but he said to call on the way back, maybe he can open the shop for me. That's Thailand.