Kuala Lumpur 2 - Pictures from Yesterday

This is our pretty empty Air Asia flight from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur. I hope they start getting people on the plane or they'll consider cutting this flight.

The Malaysian coast line.

The bus into town from the airport.

Palm plantations along the road from the airport.

We got in at the LCC (Low Cost Carrier) airport.
(As I'm posting this I can hear the fireworks from where we were earlier
tonight at the Chinese Festival. Will post a bit on that in the next day or two.)

The bus got us into Sentral (Malaysia spelling is a lot easier to figure out than Thai) Station and then we took the monorail to the hotel. It began raining while we were on the monorail. We waited with the motorcycle drivers for about ten minutes until it was over.

This is the view from our room, pasted together with six photos, not using photoshop. The red roofed low buildings in front are the Malaysian visitors and information center, right across the street from the hotel, where I'm sitting now using their wifi. And where they had great music last night. If I find time I'll post some video.

These are the Petronas Twin towers. At one time it was the highest building in the world. Now I guess they claim it as the highest twin towers. At night it really was spectacular. The white lighting against the dark sky was pretty impressive. My pictures just don't do it justice. This is two pictures badly put together.

Kuala Lumpur

Everything went well today. The plane left a bit late but we made it to KL with no problem. There was a decent bus into town from the airport (about $2 (9 ringit) for 60 minute direct ride)- not the spectacular airport, but the LLC (low cost carrier) airport 20 kilometers further out. We walked down steps out of the plane into the tropical, humid heat. We haven't had that sort of weather in Chiang Mai yet, so it was a bit of a surprise. But nice to be embraced by the atmosphere.

On the bus I sat next to a Dutch student who was finishing up his 6 months management internship here in KL. From the bus we took the monorail to the hotel. An expat was giving us advice on the train and then an Indian told us about the Hindu festival taking place this weekend. We waited a few minutes for the downpour to end, then crossed the street to our giant Renaissance Hotel. Not quite our normal style, but there was a good deal on the internet and it has a big pool. And if you stay at little hotels you get free wifi, but at the big hotels (this one is a Marriot) you have to pay for internet.

It turns out that right across the street is a big tourist info and Malaysian cultural center. And they have free internet and wifi. So, all is well.

I got to read from my book The Man Without Qualities by Richard Musil. I'm warning you now that I'm going to be telling you about this book over the next few months as I read it.

More later.

Tamarind (Macaam) and Rose Apple (Chompoo)

I've had some of the tamarind มะขาม pictures since the Petchabun trip where we bought them at the orchard. After the meeting in Petchabun, we drove to Ping's family's house which is also in Petchabun, about 40 minutes away. Ping took several us down the road to a tamarind orchard - above - where we bought three kilo bags of fresh, ripe tamarind seeds for 100 Baht (about $3) (below.) The link says what Thais have told me - the best tamarind comes from Petchabun.

Tootsie roll chewy

Tamarind dark, tangy taste
Hiding big brown seeds























These seeds look big, but remember, five or six are inside each 'fruit'. I'd say they were adult molar size. Imagine if we had dark brown teeth. Then everyone would think white teeth would look strange.

These are serious seeds, beautiful in their own right, begging to be used again. Necklace? Monopoly pieces? You could display a grain of rice on one. Or miniature toy blocks. Too beautiful to throw away. You could even plant them and grow trees. [Update: Click to see the seedlings we got from a few of these seeds.]











The Chompoo. A drink you can eat. So full of liquid fruit. Wet like a watermellon with the texture of a solid bell pepper. Cold Chompoo on a hot day. You couldn't ask for more.


The Chompoo , called Rose Apple by some in English. Chompoo (ชมพู่) sounds a lot like the word for 'pink' in Thai, but the tone for 'poo' is different.

Mr. Delak Shows Me How To Make a Hat with a Pakima

Mr. Delak (I'm messing up the spelling, but I'm trying to be consistent) is a farmer our program works with. Last year I met him when I went with Doc to his village and we spent the night at his place. Since then I've met him a number of times.

But yesterday was the first time I saw him on this trip. We chatted about a number of things. He has a tiny shop open now in Chiang Mai, if I understood correctly, where he sells his organic vegetables. He had his pakima on his head in a unique (to me anyway) style, so I asked how he did that. He showed me:

Headed for Malaysia

So, if you are a US citizen (when people ask where I'm from here, I say "Obama Land" and always get a good response) you get 30 days on your passport when you fly in. As I said in an earlier post, that used to be true if you come in overland too. But that changed to only 15 days. So we decided to take a mini-vacation and fly out of the country. Vietnam, our first choice, was out because we need visas and there wasn't time to do that. So we figured we'd go to Luang Prabang in Laos. There's a non-stop flight from Chiang Mai. It's not far. But that turned out to be THB18,000 for the two of us or about $515. And since we've been there once I decided to look for other flights from Chiang Mai out of the country. Air Asia had a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for THB12,560 or $360 for the two of us. It ended up almost $400 because my credit card wouldn't work on line and I had to go to the airport and their price was higher.

I eventually, thanks to Thaivisa.com, figured out how to call the US collect from my Thai cell phone (Dial 00199911111) to check on my credit card. They said they block overseas air and hotel reservations to prevent fraud if you don't warn them in advance now. Fortunately there was an ATM nearby. My credit card is working again.

So that's where we're headed tomorrow (Friday in Thailand) and we'll come back Monday. Then Tuesday night I'll go to Bangkok with my office as the leaders prep for a meeting with the Prime Minister and the farmers prepare to demonstrate if they aren't satisfied with the meeting. AJWS doesn't allow volunteers to take part in political action like that, but I can be around and take pictures. Monday is a holiday in Thailand, so J only misses one day of her Thai class. Which has about 18 men and much smaller number of women. According to her, most, if not all, of the men in class have Thai girlfriends. And some of the women have Thai boyfriends.

And when I got home with the tickets J told me her classmates said you can extend your passport for 30 days near the airport for about THB1000 each. Maybe in March we'll do that.

Learning To Type in Thai on a Mac - aTypeTrainer4Mac

[Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2009, 10pm Thai Time] Last year I got Thai letters to stick on my keyboard, but typing was slow and painful. They pretty much wore off during the year and then disappeared completely when I got my keyboard replaced. I got new, clear sticky letters when we got here this year. But today I found a simple typing tutor for the Mac.

aTypeTrainer4Mac 2.1

About aTypeTrainer4Mac
A multilingual typing tutor for Mac OS X. It is an advanced version of TypeTrainer4Mac. All of the system keyboard layouts (but not input methods!) as well as a wide variety of non-system keyboard layouts (i.e. Dvorak, Colemak or custom layouts being built using Ukelele) are completely or partially supported.

It has a bunch of languages and it's free. At first I was confused because it seemed to only have English. But as soon as I switched my keyboard to Thai, the program also switched.It's on the official Apple.com website and it's working already.



The languages listed are:

Level 06 has me typing all the lower case letters on the middle row, plus a couple on the next row up. Since Thai has 44 consonants and about 20 more vowels, the upper case isn't for capital letters (there aren't any), it's the rest of them. I don't understand why they have the Thai numbers one number off from the English numbers. That would have made things a lot easier if they were the same. But that's not this program's problem.




I even had a couple Thais who hunt and peck start playing with it.

[Update, March 13, 2009 Thai time: There was a bit of a problem once I got up to higher levels. You can see the problem in the picture above. Thai has letters and tone marks ่ and ้ that go above other letters. And some parts of letters like ำ are over the previous letter. That caused problems in the typing tutor because parts of the tone marks got cut off and it was hard to see them, and the ˚ from ำ showed up with the previous letter. If it was the first letter in a series, you just saw the า which, by itself, is a different letter.

So I sent Valentin, the creator of this program, an email explaining this. He wrote back that it was an issue of the Thai alphabet. But the other day I got another email from him with a link to download a beta version that solves the problems I had raised. It's nice when people are competent and motivated. I'm not sure he's made the switch yet to the new version, but if you get this program and you have the problem I described, ask him for the new version. Thanks Valentin.]

Border Runs and Printing

Next Wednesday we'll have been in Thailand 30 days. That means we have to make a border run to get another 30 days. But they've changed the law, effective last December, and now if you come into Thailand overland, you only get 15 days. You have to fly in to get 30 days. You can also get a 60 day visa if you are outside Thailand. So we're looking at trips out of Thailand. Our ideal is Vietnam which is close by and we've never been there. But next week the office is headed for Bangkok. Several leaders of organizations such as ours have a meeting with the new Prime Minister to talk about how the new land reform policy will be written. The meetings in Petchabun and at Wat Pa Dara Phirom focused on those issues. (I haven't written about the content of those meetings because I'm still a little iffy about what all was decided.) In any case, they expect not to get all they want and so a demonstration is planned for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus J has begun her Thai classes - three hours a day for three weeks, so we don't want her to miss a lot of class. I'm looking to see if we can go this weekend (since Monday is a holiday) and then she won't miss class.

To add to all this, JB, who worked in the MPA program at UAA for years and still works in the College of Business and Public Affairs, is coming to Thailand for her son's wedding on Feb. 14 in Ubon. We'd love to join them, but it's a 15 hour bus ride each way. On top of the trip to Bangkok and getting 30 more days, I just don't think we or I are going to make it.


If we fly to Vietnam, we have to go to Bangkok first. The only place out of Thailand that I've been able to find that we can fly to from here is Luang Prabang, Laos. We've been there and like it, but wanted some place we haven't been. So, we'll see.

And today I finally figured out how to print from my computer thru the wifi. Much easier than using a flashdrive to print. Thank you to the University of Baltimore Law Library which got us most of the way with their instructions on how to hook up in their library from Leopard.

Charter for the Development of the Alaska North Slope

When I wrote a post about the Conoco-Philips ads in the ADN some time ago, the "Charter Agreement" came up and I wrote:

I also know that CP makes other contributions to the community such as $100,000 to the Museum in 2007. And there was a $3.68 million gift to the University of Alaska also in 2007. But we need to put an * on that. The University of Alaska press release on the gift also says,

The annual gifts stem from a charter agreement between the oil companies and the state regarding the BP merger with ARCO in the late 1990s. Part of the charter agreement identifies public higher education as a top priority for charitable donations . . .

So a minimum amount of contribution is required by this Charter Agreement that was a condition for the BP-ARCO merger. I called Scott Goldsmith, the author of the ISER report, to find out how to get access to the Charter Agreement.He wasn't sure if he ever actually saw a copy, but said he'd check for it tomorrow. [Update: I also called UAA Advancement and later the UA Foundation called and said they would find the Agreement and email it to me .] On the internet, nearly all references I find about BP or ConocoPhillips contributions to the University have that standard clause in them.

Well, a few days later, I got an email from the University of Alaska Foundation with a copy of the charter. But we were in high gear preparing to go to Thailand and what with the traveling and getting into things here, I didn't get around to posting that agreement. (It's down below) I haven't had a chance to study the whole charter, but I expect there is plenty to chew on.

For the time being, let's just look at the part that discusses community charitable contributions:

D. Community Charitable Commitment. Within three months after the merger is completed, BP and ARCO [what BP wasn't allowed to buy of ARCO because it would have given BP monopolistic power in Alaska eventually became Conoco-Philips if I got this right] will establish a charitable entity dedicated to funding organizations and causes within Alaska. The entity will provide 30% of its giving to the University of Alaska Foundation and the remainder to general community needs. Funding decisions by the entity will be made by BP and ARCO, with the advice of a board of community advisors. BP and ARCO will provide ongoing funding to this entity in an amount that is equal to 2% of BP's and ARCO's combined aggregate net Alaska liquids production after royalty times the price for WTI. Specific entity funding levels will be calculated annually on the same date each year, referencing the liquids production and the average NYMEX WTI prompt month settlement price for the 12 months immediately proceeding the calculation.

So here are some questions I have:

1. Who monitors these contributions to be sure that they are making the contributions required?
2. How do members of the public find this out?
3. Are they contributing what they are required to contribute?
4. Are they contributing more than they are required to contribute? (If not, can either company seriously claim to make charitable contributions? This was simply a business deal, a required cost of doing business in Alaska and not really charitable donations.)
5. Who is on these boards and are the meetings announced and public?

A quick Google search got me to the BP website. Searching there for charter agreement I got a copy of the 2007 annual report on the Charter Agreement for 2006. It is four lines over four pages - for the whole charter agreement. Plus a cover letter to Governor Sarah Palin. The part on charitable giving says this:

COMMUNITY CHARITABLE GIVING

The BP Board of Community Advisors met in February, 2006, at which time they
reviewed 2005 community spend [sic] and plans for 2006.

BP spent more than $10.2 million in support of community programs in 2006,
consistent with the formula detailed in the Charter.

Approximately $3 million was contributed to the University of Alaska Foundation
(1/3 of community investment).

ConocoPhilips's website gave me this message:

Connection to server www.search.conoco.com failed (The server is not responding.)

Why do I think that is the extent of the oversight? Even BP didn't think it was important enough to proof read it carefully. Am I being too cynical? Did the Governor's office demand back up information so they could see how the 2% times the price of WTI? I don't know. What about all the other issues in the Charter? What sort of scrutiny do they get? Just this brief annual report?

Since I'm pretty busy right now in Thailand, I'm going to have to hold off on pursuing these questions. Though I might send them to my representatives in the State Legislature.

Meanwhile, here is the rest of the Charter. I hope other bloggers and non-bloggers start reading it carefully to see whether the oil companies are living up to the agreement. I guess first we ought to figure out which state agencies are responsible for keeping track.

Charter for Development of the Alaskan North Slope

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Government Business & Legal conocphilips BP

Hiking to Doi Suthep via Wat Phalad

Guidelines, a free tourist monthly in Chiang Mai, had an article in the December issue on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep, the temple on the mountain above Chiang Mai. I can't find the article by Oliver Hargreaves itself on line, but it was the encouragement and support we needed to find the trail and make it to the top yesterday.

The trail begins not far from our place so we walked Suthep Road to the end of the University wall and turned right, then soon, up the hill.
The trail itself starts near the TV station. You can just barely see the tower in the lower right where the arrow points.




We passed the back entrance to the zoo. Although it says entrance to the zoo, he said you couldn't come in this way without a ticket and the tickets were at the other entrance. But we continued up the road to the left.
On the right is the entrance to the tv station. You can just see the brown sign on the left in the greenery.



The trail goes up. The map in the Hargreaves article suggests a climb of about 600 meters and I'm guessing about 3-5 kilometers distance.
While it was cool in the shade, it was warm walking up in the sunny parts.


Ah, the power of concentration. J chose the safe way across. I had no problem where the log was on the ground, but when it went over air, I paused. It was silly, just concentration. I got across fine. We both walked it without any problem on the way back.

















Then I struggled through a sign in Thai that talked about a 100 year old bridge on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep. The log didn't seem that old. But then I looked up and there, right in front of me was the bridge. And we were now on the grounds of Wat Phalad. Clearly this temple has been recently renovated. A delightful spot along the creek in the woods. Almost no people - we did see a monk - and a few cats.

It's hard to figure out which leg is the cat, which is the shadow in the picture on the right.





















It wasn't clear which way to go past the Wat. I think there was a small road to the main road, but we tried the trail on past the Wat. Fortunately we met two guys coming down the steep incline who told us after we cross the road, there was a sign in Thai. The trail was on the right of the sign, not the left where the waterfall was. OK, that seems easy.




























After being in the woods, we were suddenly back in the world of cars briefly. I looked for a sign that said which way the trail went.








We found the waterfall, but the trail didn't seem to go anywhere. We went to the right, but I didn't see a trail sign. Then I realized that they meant the big sign warning about forest fires. Just a misinterpretation. I assumed that because they said the sign was in Thai, that they didn't know which way to go. But this had a big picture and was clearly not a trail sign and so I hadn't considered it to be 'the sign' they meant.











Here you can see the sign. The waterfall is to the left and the trail is on the far right where the little black arrow is pointing at J's feet.













The trail went up steeply at first, but there were steps, sort of, carved into the sandy soil. I would go on up ahead and then stop and listen to the birds and watch the butterflies and flowers until J caught up and passed me.











This second part of the trail (after crossing the road) followed a powerline. For a while, one of the lines dangled close to and then on the road. We passed another couple at this point. I think we saw a total of four other people on the trail over several hours up and down.


























We got into a thick forest.














This guy was hard to catch on camera. He did hold still a while but it was in the shade and holding the camera still wasn't easy and the first couple of shots were blurry and this one isn't perfect. There was another damselfly that had a yellow head and tail, but that picture is too bad to post.







I figured it would take three or four people to circle the girth of this tree.



































And then, after another short but steep climb, we were back into the world of traffic, just down the road from the entrance to Wat Doi Suthep.



















We were hungry and thirsty and enjoyed Khao Soy while watching people climb up the steps to the Temple. We decided we enjoyed the peace of Wat Phalat better.






There were no shops at Wat Phalat.


Going back was much faster. The black cat was still at Wat Phalad when we got back there.


And as we got near the trailhead, we could see Chiang Mai, bathed in the late afternoon sun that we had lost long ago climbing down the east side of the mountain.

The Pomegranate Phone

From Jost a Mon is this link to the Pomegranate Phone. And you thought iPhones were hip and Nova Scotia wasn't. Just click on the phone to see what it can do.