Bike Ride to Wat Pa Dara Phirom in Mae Rim

Pet drew a map to Wat Pa Dara Phirom Saturday night so I could ride my bike there for the Monday and Tuesday meeting. Let me just get this much up tonight and some pictures of the temple. I'll try to figure out what happened at the meetings tomorrow. He figured it was about 15 kilometers. That way he wouldn't have to come by and pick me up. Well his map was great and the ride was pretty good too.



This is past the stadium. It was nice to have somewhere other than the road to ride. Up until this sidewalk appeared I had to hug inside that white line. For a good ways, there was a small wall on the left (drive on the left in Thailand) and then the hill to the canal.



Then after the curve to the right, the separate sidewalk disappears and this bike/motorcycle lane shows up.



Pet had told me this is where the "Military - Horses" are. I guess that means the calvary. I joked that it probably smells and indeed, I smelled the horses just before there was a sign for the horses.


See, it's an official bike lane.




And there was the second military base.




And this is the great little road once you turn off the main highway.

[I've added a few more pictures and comments on this trip in Part 2]

Lazy Chinese New Years Sunday Trip to Walking Street

There were firecrackers going off now and then today as the year of the Ox is on us. We spent a lazy Sunday and then took the bikes out to Walking Street for the Sunday night bazaar. If tourism is down in Thailand, Walking Street is no indicator. I've never seen it so jammed. It was almost like the Hong Kong Metro at rush hour. Here are some random shots.

Bikes, Barbets, Card Reader, and Anniversary Dinner

We woke up to an interesting call. I got up and made a sound memo on the camera and downloaded it. Joan found the bird on the top of the tree and once I looked through the binoculars I was pretty sure it was a Lineated Barbet. (There's a nice description and good pictures at the link.) I looked up lineated barbet audio and that nailed it. But when I tried to download the sound memo, I realized I couldn't and hadn't tried for a long time. I googled and found a forum where someone suggested to get a card reader. CARD READER! Of course. That's how I used to download all my pictures and audio until mine stopped working. That was on my list of things to buy once we got here.

Pet and Bon were picking us up today around 11 to look at bikes. The bike choices have been:

1. buy bikes and sell them when we leave (Someone wanted us to do this last year so he could buy my bike at a discount.)
2. rent bikes (what I did last year)
3. the manager of our building offered to buy bikes and rent them to us
4. let Bon and Pet buy bikes and rent from them.

We finally agreed to option 4 since both wanted bikes. I decided this was not a violation of the AJWS ethics rules which say volunteers cannot leave valuable equipment or donate money to their organizations when they leave. I could be wrong, but it seems to make more sense to help them save money on their bikes rather than give the same money to the shop. In any case, we went over the AJWS policy carefully so they knew all the reasons for the rules.



But I insisted we go to Cacti Bikes where we rented our bikes last year. The owner was really a decent guy and I wanted to support him. Maybe he had some used bikes he'd sell. He did and we got two bikes. Bon and Pet went off to their meetings and we rode off on our bikes.











(1000 Baht is about $29)
Not far, because the computer arcade is pretty much across the street and canal from the bike store. I found exactly what I wanted - the card reader and a new stick on Thai keyboard for my MacBook. The paper one I'd bought last year got worn out much to quickly. J did great even in the Chiang Mai traffic. We tried to go more round about routes through less crowded sois. We mixed in some walking.

















The old card reader I had bought in Thailand was great. It was tiny and just needed to plugged into the USB port. This new one has its own USB connection. 150 Baht or about $4.30.



Next we got the stickers. The old ones were paper and after about six months, the most used keys had been worn bare. I'd seen clear plastic ones online, but there were about $6 plus more than that for shipping. I figured I could wait, and it was good I did because I had to get the keyboard replaced. But now I can put on the new ones, and I need them here.





Checking J's map, we saw the YMCA was nearby and J decided we should eat there. I'd only been in the parking lot when we picked up the Japanese researchers last year. With the bikes, getting a little off the beaten path is much easier. We had a decent lunch and I found this map there. I'd been aware that maps were culturally biased by seeing that in Asia China was in the middle of world maps while in the US, the US tends to be in the middle. There's also the Europe in the middle version.

But the description on this map said that the size of countries, of continents even, were distorted so that Northern Hemisphere countries appeared much larger than they actually were and Southern Hemisphere countries smaller. You can see more of the details at the Peters Map Site. But I figure that Alaska-Mexico example is of interest to my Alaskan readers. And no, Texas isn't really bigger than Alaska too.

Then we went on home - J getting used to riding in Chiang Mai - a lot more exciting than in Anchorage where there are separate bike paths most places.




Since it was our anniversary, I'd invited some people from work for dinner and we decided on Khun Churn, a yuppie vegetarian Thai restaurant. I'd also invited the other AJWS volunteers, whom I hadn't met, but we'd gotten email connection. We rode through the Chiang Mai University campus agricultural department area.


We had a fun dinner, lots of laughing. M, one of the volunteers came too. I learned that there'd been an orientation for the Thai and Cambodian volunteers that week that we'd arrived. I'd never gotten any information on it at all. This was about the same time that I learned from Pet that A, one of the AJWS staffers, had told him today that I wasn't really a volunteer, I wasn't on the list. Since AJWS paid for my plane trip, I'm guessing I really am an AJWS volunteer. Anyway, a trick I learned at the first Anchorage International Film Festival was that when the picture is too dark, or otherwise funny, you can always play with filters to make it interesting. So this picture of us at dinner is with Photoshop's graphic pen filter. Much nicer than the original photo.

[Update Jan. 25, 2009 Sunday evening Thai Time:  I forgot to mention that folks got there late because some roads were closed off and there was an anti-Government demonstration.  J and I didn't see it at all.  But this is pro-Thaksin territory.]

Cut Through Wat Umong on Way to Work

Yesterday I used an extra bike at our building to go to work. But it was obvious when I got back that they really needed it and I shouldn't have accepted the offer. The seat was really hard and the brakes were ok as long as you didn't have to stop in less than 15 feet.

So today I walked again and decided to cut through Wat Umong. Most of the time last year I rode my bike and going through the temple grounds on the bike didn't seem the best thing to do. But walking it was great. And it seems to be something of a short cut as well. I've been trying to grab something from Google Earth, but I can't quite make sense of what I see in our neighborhood.

The first three pictures were going to work in the morning.








The last three pictures were on the way home.





This is definitely not your everyday temple, nestled as it is in a heavily wooded area.

Petchabun Trip 3 - Meetings

January 22, 2008 - 11:30pm Thai Time

The meeting was billed as a Land Reform meeting. Here one of the Southern Thai staff members is writing up the agenda for Day 1.


16 January
9:30 Breakfast
10:30 - 12:00 Conversation Circle (this is apparently NGO jargon) on the capitalist system of agriculture/land use (lecture/presenter)
12:00 - 13 Lunch
13:00 - 16 Discussion - capitalist system of agriculture/land use
17:30 Dinner
19:00 Discussion on the situation, price, market for corn

I know that people are going to read this and react - what are these people communists? Somehow if someone is discussion capitalism, and they appear to not be enamored by capitalism, they must be communists. But it does make sense for Thai farmers to learn how capitalism is supposed to work and how what people in New York do causes the price of their crops to plunge.




It was still cold when we got up, but now the sun was out so it seemed like a good idea to start outside. Everyone introduced themselves. But sitting in the sun was getting too hot.







So we moved back inside. This is a floor side view of the meeting.






Another floorside view. The discussion ranged widely. The farmers in Isaan (Northeast Thailand) and the north had been growing corn for biofuel, as I understood it, but with the collapse of oil prices, the corn prices collapsed too. There was also a collapse in the price of rubber, which affected the farmers from the south who weren't affected by the cost of corn.




Here's the Bangkok attorney who gave several lectures the first two days. The discussion also touched on problems with education and the price of oil and shrimp. At one point he said something like "they are making Thailand into a factory for the West."

It was difficult to follow. I'd say I could get about 40% of the words, but what they actually mean when the other 60% is added in, well that I had to check on during breaks, and I really only got bits and pieces of what was going on.

Basically, as I understand it, he was trying to give context to the issues the farmers were facing.





In addition to the direct, on the agenda, learning, Bon got to see a computer program for tracking information - a problem that our organization was having last year. So this was a good opportunity, if she can get the program and make it work.


Different folks led the discussion at different times. Here's Pet facilitating.










Sukaew, one of the farmers we work with - from the village with the mangoes - was one of the people who is going to help draft the plans based on the information gathered here. So he was always taking notes in a beautiful, but tiny, script.



The folks representing the slum dwellers and homeless from Bangkok were selling these T Shirts with the face of Mr. Suwit Watnu. I was told he was a leader of the people living in the slums and had died of cancer. Google told me this much: that he was from the Human Settlement Foundation and an adviser to the Campaign for Popular Democracy. But I couldn't find anything about his death.



Here Pet is leading the wrap up discussion on Monday afternoon. Here are some notes based on talking to various people. I'm satisfied with just knowing what the topics were at this point, and don't need to know exactly what they said about them.

Clearly there was both a discussion of the immediate micro issues that the farmers face and the macro issues that help explain what the farmers are being impacted.



impact of global economic problems on Thai farmers
drop in price of corn and rubber
Laws affecting land ownership and distribution
Developing new plans based on the information gathered at these meetings
Money and banking
Issues around the difficulties of working together.


More items were added to the charts as a result of the discussions. In the end the group was planning a date for demonstrations in Bangkok to go along with negotiations with the Prime Minister. It seems like they settled on February 27, but that is clearly subject to change.

I'm starting to nod off. Time to get to bed.

Rat Na Kai and Why Thailand has an H in it

I still plan to post several more times on Petchabun, but it's easier to just give you a couple of quick pictures of going to lunch today. We are still working on my workplan. Basically I was to be focused on management, but before coming to Chiang Mai I did some checking on the possibility of importing mangoes from Thailand. I think there are lots of obstacles, but maybe it's doable. This would be really helpful to some of the farmers we work with who have wonderful mangoes. And maybe we'll discover there are other products that would be easier to export from Thailand, like wild honey. Of course, you know what happens when you come up with an idea. You get assigned to follow up on it. So that's a new one of my assignments.

Also, at Petchabun I talked to one of the farmers about birds and I mentioned the possibility of training some farmers to be bird guides. Pet liked the idea, so now I get to check out all the birdwatching websites in Thailand as part of my work.

Anyway, Ping and I went to a small shop nearby for lunch. Above you can see it from the outside. It's just a set of posts with a corrugated metal roof. With lots of green stuff acting as most of the walls.



Here's looking into what was the black hole in the middle of the top picture.





And here's Ping (Last year I started spelling this "Bing," but he spells it - in English letters - with a P. That's ok for people who have studied some Thai and know the difference between an aspirated P (Ph) and an unaspirated P (P). So, you pronounce that first letter like you were going to say the English P, but don't let air come out of your mouth. (Hold your hand in front of you mouth when you say the English P and you feel a puff of air (that's the aspirated part). Now say the P without the air. That's how to pronounce his name - Ping. It's not the same as a B, but B is the closest English sound) adding some spice to his lunch. This is essentially wide noodles, some brocoli like vegetable, some chicken (kai - that's an unaspirated k, same routine, K without the puff of air, close to an English G, but not quite), and a liquid that's the consistency of gravy. I used to have this a lot when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, my third year working in Thonburi.

Since I got into all that aspirated stuff, I might as well take if full circle and explain, that's why Thailand has an 'H' in it. This is an aspirated T, pretty much the same as an English T. But they also have an unaspirated T - say T but with no puff of air - and so the phonetic Thai alphabet I originally learned reserves the letter T for the unaspirated T sound and TH for the aspirated T sound. So that's why Thailand has an H in it, but is NOT pronounced Thighland.

One more note: I spell my boss' name Pet, because it also has an unaspirated P. So it sounds more like Bet, but to get it right you have to form your mouth and tongue like you are going to say a P, but don't let that puff of air out.

I went looking for a picture of the mouth and tongue, but found these pictures of the B (left) and P (right) sounds. You can go to Slice of Thai to see the original pictures and explanations along with hearing the sounds.

















These pictures don't help me understand this at all, but they are pretty.

Here's part of Slice of Thai's explanation of the charts:

Sounds that are lower in pitch are near the bottom of the chart, and sounds that are higher in pitch are near the top of the chart.

Notice the blue fuzz at the bottom: that is the very low-pitched, wind-like blowing sound you can also hear along with the whistling.
The color of the spectrogram at a given point indicates how much sound with that pitch you were making at that time. The color scale works like this:



So the red parts of the spectrogram represent the most noticeable pitches.

Glimpse at Today's Thai News

J brought home the Bangkok Post today.

The King of Thailand sent a message President Obama, this account from Xinhua:

The message stated that, "I believe that, under your strong and energetic leadership, the United States will overcome the many daunting challenges ahead and bring about positive changes to the world community at large. Thailand as a long time ally stands ready to continue working closely with the United States."

"As our two countries enter the 176th year of relations, I look forward to working with you and your new administration to further enhance and advance our close and strong alliance for the prosperity of Asia and the Pacific region. As the Chair of ASEAN, Thailand also welcomes deeper engagement of the United States to that end. We certainly look forward to welcoming you and members of your administration to Thailand in the near future," read the message.

Police Academy First

FEMALE CADETS: The Royal Police Cadet Academy has opened its doors to women for the first time in its 107 years.
Apart from academic subjects, the 70 female cadets will receive mental and phsical training as will their male counterparts throughout the four-year course.
After graduation, they will be given the rank of police sub-lieutenant and assigned to investigate work or child welfare in major tourist provinces.

iPhone arrives in Thailand
The long-awaited Apple iPhone has finally arrived Thailand on Friday.
The TrueMove iPhone 3G launch, handled by True Move, was held at the Royal Paragon Hall at Siam Paragon from Friday to Sunday. The rest here.

Petchabun Trip 2 - Keeping Warm with Bio Fuels

As I said in the previous post, it was cold by Thai standards. Mornings and evenings there were always several fires going with people sitting or standing around. To a certain extent, Thais are enjoying the cold as a chance to wear their winter fashions, even among this low income group. There were lots of ski caps and jauntily worn scarves and other cloth shawls. I notice watching the inauguration last night that the men wore their scarves, mostly, discreetly under their overcoats, just barely showing Not here. As in India, men as well as women wear the hats and scarves with flair. Watch the pictures in the coming posts.





While there was some firewood involved, used up corn cobs were the major source of fuel for the fires. They had big plastic bags of the cobs. In the meetings one of the topics was how the price of corn had fallen sharply when oil tanked and this really hurt the farmers who had switched to corn because of the previous high costs.




The corn kernels had been scraped off the cobs and sold or eaten[I was told today this kind of corn is not eaten by people] - this is also an animal food - and so they had lots of cobs to burn.