Chiang Mai in Yellow and Orange

Two different kinds of trees are bringing spectacular color to Chiang Mai right now. In unexpected places there is a sudden burst of orange or yellow.






Someone told me the names in Thai but wasn't sure. M said someone told her the yellow ones were 'dry wind' trees, which is the English translation of what I was told was the name of the yellow trees. So I still have to double check on that.
















This tree looks small next to the building, but if you look, you can see it reaches to the fourth floor.





This one was in a yard on my way to work.













This orange tree is at Wat (temple) Ramphoeng.




This yellow tree is right near the last orange one at Wat Ramphoeng.























And, of course, orange flowers are dropping down on everything below too.

Chiang Mai Seder

Tonight was the Passover Seder and we met M and the newly arrived volunteer W at the Centara Duang Tawan Hotel. We sat at the English Speaker's section. Mostly it was Israelis. And it was run by Chabad. As it turned out the English speakers were all put together because we had a Chabad member from New York translating into English for the English speakers - maybe about 20 of us in a room of 200 or more





W, who was in on the original AJWS orientation conference call back in November, finally arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday. He was born in Berlin and his family escaped to Central America and he eventually was able to get to the US and become a US citizen. He now lives in Vienna. He's an international consultant and just finished a job in Ukraine before coming here. Here he is with M.





We were sitting with really interesting people. Next to J was J2 who has relatives in Wasilla and is working on his PhD in Thailand - his subject is elephants. He said that most of the elephants that beg on the streets are owned by rich Thais who lease them out to people to go begging. The sugar cane doesn't help and the people with them are generally doing fine financially. So, their basically using the elephant's ability to connect with people for their own gain, not the elephant's at all.




On my side was F, who was born in Algeria and became a French citizen and worked for 30 years as an Air France pursar, mostly on the Paris - Anchorage - Tokyo run. So he knew and loved Anchorage. It is a small world. He also had very interesting stories about Algeria, France, and many other things. He lives in Thailand now.

We are planning a second seder with M here tomorrow evening. We've rented out the dining area and kitchen downstairs. We got food today. This will be interesting, but after tonight, I have much more confidence in the food we'll eat.

Bug Report

This bug was on the outside of the screen yesterday morning. When I went out on the balcony to shoot it from the other side, it flew off.

We're surprisingly bug free for a tropical country. I don't think it's because they use a lot of pesticides because we have some bugs and downstairs there are lots of frogs that wouldn't survive. I credit it to screens, not leaving food out, and being on the fourth floor.

Mosquitoes are surprisingly absent. Except for early evening if you are sitting with your bare or sandaled feet under a dark table, we really have hardly noticed mosquitoes.

Busy day at work today as time gets short. J leaves next Thursday morning for LA, Seattle, then Anchorage eventually. I'll leave Saturday for Singapore then Anchorage.

Racket Tailed Drongo on a Stick

After hiding for most of two months, the drongos are now starting to model. Or maybe I'm getting smarter about when they are around. Or it's luck. In this video we finally combine a view of the drongo along with the drongo call - the loud, distinctive two beat almost electric tone. There's also a rapid chatter which we think, but aren't positive, is also drongo speak. Watch for the second drongo in the tree. For previous drongo shots link to the drongo label.

Last Songkran Post

Here's a bit of video left over from Songkran. First from going downtown on Monday. Then yesterday afternoon on one of the side streets in our neighborhood, a small parade.

Anchorage is Starting to Sound Really Good

Did Anyone Else Read Chapter 1 of Palin's Bio?

When there was all the buzz about the Palin biography, most of the websites (for instance here, here, and here) that mentioned it, also had a link to the first chapter. I linked, read, and said, "Oh dear."

But do I need to blog about it? I'd like to think I subscribe to the "if it isn't doing anyone any harm, and if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything" school of blogging. I've even been accused of being too compassionate to Vic Kohring. (See first comment.) My response was that I'm not here to judge or to condemn, but to understand, to learn, to figure out how to do better next time. But, does writing a review on the book do any of that?

First, book reviews are an honorable tradition. They steer us to good books and away from bad ones. And this book is newsworthy. The most popular governor in the US, talked about as a potential Republican vice presidential candidate. The first ever biography of her. But I could only find one other review online. It was from a Sarah fan (actually, I, personally, think she's been exactly the governor we needed) who seems to be similarly unimpressed with the book, which he apparently got an advanced copy of.

Second, I also think that writing a good book is really hard. So another potential value of reviewing the book is to figure out why this doesn't work for me and perhaps offer something for other authors to consider. This fits the "how to do better next time" criterion.

(As I think about this, the process of writing itself is a way to think through something and understand it better. For me it's like solving a puzzle - why do I think this book is boring? Another problem is that I know Kaylene Johnson, the author. While we hadn't seen each other in years, we did have an enjoyable conversation not too long ago. The book didn't come up.)

So why did I find it boring? The sentences are all complete and the grammar works.

It's taken awhile to figure this out. There are several problems for me:

1. An impersonal, omniscient narrator who isn't (omniscient)
   
2. Facts that don't really add up to anything significant
3. A general sense of inauthenticity

It is hard to write a biography. You have to get in all the relevant facts that will help the reader understand who the person is and why she does what she does. You have to deal with chronology - do you do it in order, or skip around and confuse the reader? You have to document what you write. You have to give the context. This is just the mechanical stuff. Then you have to breathe life into the prose.

1. An impersonal, omniscient narrator who isn't. Some anonymous, all-knowing voice is telling us what happened and summing up the important things we should know.

These mountains would become, like other wild places in Alaska, a place of sustenance and renewal for her boisterous and busy family.

In 1969, the Heaths moved to southcentral Alaska, living for a short time with friends in Anchorage, then for two years in Eagle River before finally settling in Wasilla.

They had a white cat named Fifi and a German shepherd named Rufus, a canine sidekick to the kids who shows up in many family photos. The children often hiked the “Bunny Trail” to the home of a distant neighbor who had kids the same age.

Once a year, the family accompanied Chuck Sr. on a week- long class field trip to Denali National Park, where camping in view of majestic Mount McKinley left indelible memories with the Heath children.

This omniscient narrator doesn't know everything. She doesn't know that much at all. She is dependent on scraps of facts she got from the Heath family.

“Dad never stopped lining up new adventures for us,” Chuck Jr. said. The kids caught Dolly Varden off a nearby dock. Chuck Jr. loved to catch the Irish Lord, an ugly, creepy-looking fish, for the pleasure of holding it up to his little sisters’ faces and making them scream.

When the family wasn’t running or hiking, it was hunting or fishing. “We could literally go hunting out our back door,” Chuck Jr. said.

The Heath kids and their friends spent many hours playing ball.

There's lot that we don't know. The kids like each other and no one is telling us what really happened. Just the things that will make their sister look good.

If this were fiction, the narrator could be omniscient. But it isn't. (Well, maybe that's debatable too.) So Johnson needed to talk to us readers now and then. To explain her project, the obstacles, what she tried to do and how. "Hey, I have to write this biography of the governor. I talked to all the family members, but they didn't give me much to work with. And this is an authorized biography, that means I agreed to . . . " We don't know what she agreed to and Johnson doesn't tell us the rules. Did Sarah or someone in her family get the right to cut out stuff they didn't like? Did she have a deadline and so had to make it presentable in two months? She doesn't tell us. At least in chapter 1, where we might expect this author's voice to talk to us, it doesn't.

2. Facts that don't really add up to anything significant. As you can see from above, Johnson got random snapshots. But when she puts them in an album, there are lots of blank spaces. OK, so there's a dog and a yellow porch. So what? Yes, little details are important, but they also need to add up to something. It appears Johnson had so little, she had to put whatever she had into the book, even if it just fills some of the blank spaces in Sarah's life, but leads nowhere in our quest to understand the governor. There just aren't enough dots to connect.

There are some exceptions - dots that might actually give us some insight into Governor Palin. She's quoted talking about the Miss Wasilla contest she entered for the scholarship money (we know that is the reason because her brother says so):

“They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts,” she said in a 2008 interview with Vogue magazine. “I couldn’t believe it!”

If Johnson had gotten more quotes like that the pages would turn. Not because the governor says 'butts' but because it sounds candid and authentic. But Johnson didn't get this quote from the Sarah, she got it from Vogue magazine. They were able to get real stuff from Sarah, why couldn't Johnson?

But here's something from sister Molly that potentially offers insight:

From the time she was in elementary school, she consumed newspapers with a passion. “She read the paper from the very top left hand corner to the bottom right corner to the very last page,” said Molly. “She didn’t want to miss a word. She didn’t just read it—she knew every word she had read and analyzed it.”

If it's true (how many of you read the paper diagonally?), it tells us that Palin does her homework. I think Molly believes this and it may even be true. But how would an adoring younger sister know for sure if her sister "knew every word" and "analyzed it?" Did she give her quizzes, or did it just seem like that?

I can't help thinking, if she read everything and analyzed it, how come she was surprised by the sexist nature of the beauty contest?

Johnson didn't have enough paint to cover the whole wall of Sarah's childhood. Instead, she should have just painted one good Sarah story that she could do well with the little paint she had. Something in-depth that would give us a sense of the future governor without trying to cover the whole family history.

3. A general sense of inauthenticity

The beauty pageant 'butt' quote is the only truly authentic fizz I got. All the rest sounded flat. If this were a movie, it would have been filmed in Hollywood, not Alaska, and those "snow covered mountains" with "the soft alpenglow" would have been painted on a set. That's how it reads. Even the part about camping a week with views of Mt. McKinley. Johnson is an Alaskan so I would expect her to say Denali. And Alaskans know the only campground where you can see Denali from is Wonder Lake. Were they always there? But even there, it's a rare day, let alone week, where the mountain is visible. But on that Hollywood set, we can paint over those details.

The contrast between the omniscient pose and the narrator's lack of in-depth stories sounds fake, like painted mountains.

The family stories are second hand and sound like Chuck Jr. and the rest were editing as they spoke. It's not from the heart. It's painting the scenery to reflect well on their politician sister. I don't blame them. They certainly aren't going to make her look bad. But where are Lyda Green's impressions of Sarah? Or one of the losing Ms. Wasilla contestant's?

This book reads like an inspirational book aimed at 14 year old girls. "Sarah Palin - Hero Governor of Alaska and how growing up in the wilderness made her the woman she is today." This is a political biography written in Sound of Music prose.

Johnson didn't have an easy task - write an approved biography of the most popular governor in the US who's still on some people's lists for McCain's running mate, so getting it out by May - when the Governor is going to become probably the first sitting governor in US history to have a baby - was a high priority.

I think that given the buzz on Palin nationwide, a fair number of copies will be sold. (Just one hundred per state would be a reasonable press run.) Those people who really want to find out who Palin is, will buy it for the scraps they can glean. But if the whole book reads like Chapter 1, I'm guessing a small percentage of people who buy the book, will actually read the whole thing.

Songkran - Chiang Mai 2551 Part 3 Wat Padaeng

Yesterday Phra Kamphong told us, when we asked what would be appropriate to bring to the temple today for tham boon, that fruit or flowers would be good. Our regular fruit stand man gave us a discount on the bananas and oranges when he found out they were for tham boon. Bop, the manager of our building, got us a tray to bring the offering on. We went into the Viharn, but people very politely told us this was for bringing flowers and the fruit should go in the back.

Most Thais are Buddhists, and the daily offering of food to monks, called tham boon tak bàat, is one of the most important Buddhist acts. Every day throughout the country, in urban and rural communities, Thai Buddhist monks receive their daily food during a practice known as bintábàat. Walking through the streets and paths in the early morning, the monks are met by people offering food. Food is also offered at numerous religious shrines and is an important part of most Thai Buddhist ceremonies. from answers.com

We got pointed to the little pavilion where we were to make the offering. It turned out that Phra Kamphong was the monk there. He asked if we wanted to make our offering - and get our blessings - from the abbott, we declined and said we wanted to make our offering with him. He asked for the people who died we wanted to remember and we wrote down my father and J's parents names. Then we gave him the fruit. He gave me two glasses, one with water, one empty and told me to pour the water from the one to the other while he chanted. These are the people who followed us there.

Making Merit ‑ Tham boon. You will hear Thai people referring to 'boon' or merit. Why is it important to them? It has got to be top priority if they want to move towards enlightenment and improve their lot. Here is how: lead a good life, observe the 5 precepts, be kind, give to the poor, offer food to monks on their early morning round, and donate to the temple. Highest merit points go to those who become a monk or a nun. You can transfer merit to someone else if that is your wish. Thai Buddhists also make merit by visiting the temple on special holidays, see Festivals, their birthday, or any important anniversary. There is no special day for attendance (such as Sunday for Christians). From Pattaya Vacation

...there is also a ritual performed by monks to the relics of the dead in order to pass on merits to them. This ritual is known as Bangsukun Atthi. It will be performed once during the Songkran festival on any of the three days. From ThaiIndian.com

April 15 marks the Thai New Year. This is the most important day of the Songkran New Year celebrations. It is a day traditionally spent making merit and performing charitable acts such as presenting offerings to the monks and listening to sermons, sprinkling holy water on Buddha images and monks, propping up the sacred Bo tree in the temple grounds, and calling on elders to receive their blessings. A bathing ritual is observed in which lustral water is poured over respected elders in a gesture of respect and reverence. The seeking of their blessing or forgiveness for past wrong-doing is also implied. From tat.com.

The rest of the pictures you can breeze through without my commenting.















On our way home, at the bottom of the stairs, just a couple of minutes from home. One last comment on Songkran.

The throwing of water during Songkran is not a mere amusement, but has some connection with the belief of having abundant rain for the coming season of cultivation. According to the popular belief, it rains because the Nagas or mythical serpents sport themselves by spouting water from the ocean. The more they spout the more abundantly the rain will come. The young people continue to sing dance and play games after the last day of Songkran comes to an end, if the rain has not yet begun. from thaiembassy.jp

Songkran - Chiang Mai 2551 Part 2

The water throwing party I posted Saturday stems from the traditional washing of the Buddha for the New Year. This small Buddha and fragrant water has been at the front door of our building for the last three days.

This [Day Three of Songkran] is the first official day of the New Year and on this day people cleanse the Buddha images in their homes as well as in the temples with scented water. from Chiang Mai.com

Yesterday we walked over Wat Padaeng, the small temple a five minute walk from our building. We met Phra(monk) Kamphong (not sure I'm getting this quite right) whom we met when we first came. He showed us around the temple grounds and explained what was going to happen today. The sand pagoda he's standing next to will be filled with flags that people plant.

On the second day of the New Year festival, Thai people traditionaly carry sand into temples compounds in order to build a small pagoda ("PHRA CHEDI SAI" - พระเจดีย์ทราย). These sand piles represent personal pagodas built as part of the merit-making ritual. People leaving a temple during the previous year have taken with them temple dust. Taking sand into the temple during Songkran festival atones for what they have taken out. from Thaiworldview

Here's a sneak preview of today. The same sand pagoda, already filled with flags when we arrived at 7am.

We walked up to the upper pavillion. You can see a sort of fence an wall along the top of the ridge. I asked him what was up there. It's an open zoo. Hmmm, so maybe this is why there are gaur so close into town. The area above would be contiguous with the area behind Wat Umong where we saw the gaur. Pieces of the puzzle show up when least expected.

Here's one of the two almost life sized wooden elephants in the pavilion. The Buddha you can see, he told us, was one who was able to explain Buddhist philosophy in short, concise stories.

These trees were planted here in January. They are sala trees, the tree under which Buddha was born.

Having carried the Boddhisattva in her womb for precisely ten lunar months, Maya gave a birth to him. On the full moon in May, passing by the Lumbini grove on her way to her home town, she was captivated by the beauty of the flowering sala trees and stepped down from her palanquin to walk amongst the trees in the grove. As she reached for a branch of a sala tree, which bent itself down to meet her hand, the pangs of birth came upon her. Thus, while other women are depicted as giving birth sitting or lying down, the Bodhisattva's mother is shown delivering her child while standing and holding on to the branch of a sala tree in the garden of Lumbini. From ORIAS.

Here's a view of Chiang Mai from the Wat Padaeng.

In the evening we had dinner with J. She's the girlfriend of a relative of Joan's by marriage and a film editor. She's here for two months editing a documentary film made by a musician of hill tribe music and ceremonies. The filmmaker wanted to preserve some of this while it is still here. I understand the sentiment well. She'll be back in Chicago soon for a fund raiser so she can continue working on this film.

After two and a half years of filming in the jungles and mountains of Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and China, "The Music of the Golden Triangle and the Cycles of Life" has moved into post production. The documentary film and CD will be released in 2008.

The Golden Triangle, a Chicago gallery of rare furnishings from Southeast Asia, China and Central Europe, will be hosting a reception to support the ongoing work of "The Music of the Golden Triangle and the Cycles of Life". 22 May 2008

The Golden Triangle
330 N. Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois, 60610.

info@goldentriangle.biz Tel: 1 (312) 755 1266
from Music and the Cycles of Life

Chiang Mai as a Disney Ride

I saw Josh Kurlantzick's New York Times article online and two other people sent me links.

But an influx of Thai artists and Western expatriates has turned this quiet city into a vibrant destination in its own right. Design studios have sprung up in town, fusing traditional Thai with modern twists. Age-old curries are now paired with Australian red wines and croissants. The area around Nimanhaemin Road now looks like South Beach, packed with BMWs and Art Deco homes, alongside contemporary art galleries run by young Thais with purple hair and nose rings. But traditional Chiang Mai is still there. Walk away from Nimanhaemin into the old city and you’ll see shaved monks meditating and backpackers chowing down on banana pancakes.

I have to say I was appalled by how Chiang Mai was treated. Like a Disney ride, a form of entertainment that is packaged to appeal to the New Yorker looking for something to do over the weekend.

I shouldn't be surprised. My own travel style is totally different from most people's and stems from my year as a student in Göttingen, Germany. We had to have two years of college German before going and then a six week (or was it eight?) intensive German language class before classes started in Germany. All classes were in German. I learned that being somewhere a while, learning the language, reveals a country and people one doesn't see right away. There's times for one's stereotypes to dissolve and for one to see what's happening more clearly and to reflect on things one always took for granted. If you really stay a while, you start to see your own culture through the eyes of the new one.

That year set the pattern for my preferred overseas travel style - find a reason and way to be there that puts you into the culture itself for an extended period. This means you are doing something that is, ideally, useful (besides spending money) to the local people and gets you out of the tourist/ex-pat community and into the real culture of the country. It also means a level of discomfort as you try to figure out how to do things that you do without thinking at home. And when you get past that discomfort a real feeling of satisfaction of now seeing the strange as normal. Of growing.

Using the local language is a big discomfort. Suddenly you're less articulate than a three year old. But we did learn enough Cantonese the year we were in Hong Kong to buy groceries and ask basic directions and to begin to appreciate the richness of that language. And for people to smile in appreciation that we made the effort to speak their language and not force them to speak ours in their country. It's not impossible as many told us. If we could get key phrases of that multi-toned toned Chinese dialect, every other language is well within reach. And learning some of the language is the key. (I think of all those English-only folks in the US who would freak if other countries weren't full of English signs and speakers. But maybe they don't travel abroad.)

I was overwhelmed by mastering German well enough to function in it. I was discovering that other languages were not merely translations of English. Instead, they had their own vocabulary and way of putting words together that led to concepts and ways of seeing the world that were different from how English speakers see things. So I wanted to learn yet another language - one completely different from English - and live in a totally foreign culture. That got me to Thailand through the Peace Corps when I graduated from the University.

So what's wrong with the article?

But an influx of Thai artists and Western expatriates has turned this quiet city into a vibrant destination in its own right.

Right away, the point of view is not that of someone who knows and loves Thailand (though Josh's bio says he lived in Bangkok and he does know about khao soi, but what taxi drivers could/would pay 150 baht for noodles?), but it's the voice of an outsider. Chiang Mai is a destination. A place to come to and then leave in 36 hours. It's a way to keep one's life exciting. What about the people in Chiang Mai whose streets have gotten so incredibly jammed with cars? Whose small houses and gardens are being ripped apart to build high rises for foreigners to live in? The farmers whose land is being bought from them by speculators and then sold to developers who build Western style gated communities?

Design studios have sprung up in town, fusing traditional Thai with modern twists. Age-old curries are now paired with Australian red wines and croissants. The area around Nimanhaemin Road now looks like South Beach, packed with BMWs and Art Deco homes, alongside contemporary art galleries run by young Thais with purple hair and nose rings.

What was wrong with the laid back Northern capital of Thailand with the dazzling temples, gracious people, wonderful food, and cooler climate than Bangkok and other parts of Thailand? Why does it have to be transformed into a South Beach? Why is purple hair a good thing for Thai youth? Oh, yeah, it's to make NY tourists feel at home. Sorry, I forgot. Why should Thais be importing BMW's and other luxury cars while most of the population is on motorcycles, sometimes three and four to a bike? Who are these rich Thais and how did they get rich? There's lots for you to write about Josh. But your superficial fluff makes Chiang Mai into a backdrop for rich tourists to play, not a living city full of interesting people. A variation of home with a twist that makes it a little different, yet enough like home it won't take any getting used to. It's easier to slip into, but is it good for Thais? (For you US readers, Nimanhaemin Road looks absolutely nothing like South Beach. Chiang Mai isn't anywhere near a beach even. In two months I haven't seen anyone with purple hair.)

Packed with crumbling old stupas, jewel-encrusted temples and wooden houses, Chiang Mai’s central old city hasn’t lost its old charm.

What does Josh know about Chiang Mai's old charm? According to NNDB he was born in 1976. That makes him 31, maybe 32. When was he first in Chiang Mai? I hate to break this to you, but Chiang Mai has lost 82.29% (I can make things up too) of its charm since I first was here. You have absolutely no idea how charming Chiang Mai was. But 'charm' is a somewhat condescending outsider term. More important, Chiang Mai was a comfortable place for Thais to live and visit. An important cultural center of Thailand - Thai culture, not South Beach.

This is not to say that Thailand should stay the same forever. It is part of the world and connecting with that world is important and healthy. But it should be in ways that improve the lives of Thais, not simply to make rich tourists comfortable. (I keep saying rich because Josh seems to think the backpackers are part of the tourist scenery: "Walk away from Nimanhaemin into the old city and you’ll see shaved monks meditating and backpackers chowing down on banana pancakes.")

The bumpy roads can take their toll on your legs. Rejuvenate them at the Ban Sabai Town (17/7 Charoenprathet Road; 66-53-285-204). The spa offers aromatherapy and other treatments, but the specialty is, of course, Thai massage — a method that emphasizes stretching. The masseuse pulls and prods your limbs in every direction, like a chiropractor.

I'm sorry. I have come to expect this sort of prose in the glossy tourist magazines every first class hotel leaves in the rooms, but the author of this advertising copy is purported by his publisher (Yale University) to be:

special correspondent for the New Republic and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has covered Southeast Asia and China as a correspondent for U.S. News and World Report and The Economist, and his writings on Asia have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications.

Josh is supposed to be an expert on Southeast Asia and he's writing travel pieces that make Chiang Mai a product, not a living, breathing city full of people who sell vegetables and fruit all day every day, who struggle to put their kids through school driving song thaews, who teach at the university, and who, yes, manage hotels. Chiang Mai is home to people with incredible stories, not an amusement park ride.

Perhaps this is an aberration. I don't know what the NY Times pays someone to write travel fluff. Maybe Josh needed some quick cash or he got a free trip to Chiang Mai. Why is the NY Times even publishing this kind of kitsch? Maybe that's what they told him to write.

I've been working now here in Chiang Mai for two months with a group that is trying to help poor Thai farmers in the Chiang Mai area whose land has been taken or jeopardized by land speculation that is brought on by globalization and expats buying up lifestyles they couldn't afford at home. Two months is not a long time. But it's preceded by a three year stay teaching forty years ago and half a dozen trips since of a month or more. And I feel I barely know a thing.

Why is the author of a supposedly serious analysis of "How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World" writing a piece like this? It suggests to me that maybe he hasn't a clue of how China's soft power is working, nor how the West's soft power has helped turn Thailand's cities into polluted nightmares where breathing and getting around from place to place are exceedingly difficult. That's an article worthy of the NY Times. Not this guide to Chiang Mai as a Disney ride for the rich and bored.

And why am I being so crabby about this? I'm not saying people shouldn't have a good time when they travel. But you can have a good time at home. If you're going to use up all the fossil fuel it takes to get to Thailand and back, then you should really experience Thailand. You should get uncomfortable because that's when you challenge yourself and might learn something new. There are lots of places in Chiang Mai you can do this - at monk chats in various temples, just wandering the streets without a plan and talking to people along the way, at a Thai homestay, spending time in a Thai market exploring the many kinds of fruits and trying out the many incredible things to eat.

And I think partly I'm disturbed that a so called expert on Asia is giving people such travel industry hype on how to experience Asia. Josh has written about China's 'soft' power. Does he not see how all he writes about is part of the soft power of the West? And it's had some devastating impacts on many Thais.

But as I said in the beginning, my travel style was shaped early on. It takes time and work. And it's not how most people seem to travel. But I'm not alone either. I can't help but contrast Josh's piece with a blog post about a Taiwanese taxi ride I read this weekend too. This is someone who really knows about a place. The real places - inside people's hearts. This is the kind of person the NY Times should commission to write travel pieces. Travel pieces befitting a serious newspaper with moral principles.