Jennifer's Photo Montage

We recently had a guest, Canadian photographer Jennifer Roberts, who stayed with us for two weeks and took a lot of pictures. I thought that I would put a few up here.


This is my house. I live on the right, Sabrina on the left. The little table is where I do all my lesson planning. Nice, huh?

CLC in the morning, before the fog lifts. This is looking down from my house towards the kitchen.

CLC from the road. My house is on the top right with the gray roof. We are the only ones with a metal roof, everyone else has leaf roofs.

I am the one in the red shirt. I am teaching class 2 and we are playing 20 questions.

Teaching class 3. It's the smallest class and I only had about half my students this day. It's an early morning class, which explains my sweatshirt and long pants!

We are playing "human knot" as a warm up. No, it doesn't have any English (other then "go under, go over") but the kids love it!

Safe, safe, safe

Hey there,

Thailand has been a lot in the news recently and some of you have expressed concern. Don't worry, all that stuff is far in the south and has nothing to do with me. It is safe as ever up here in the north!

Wat Doi Kong Mu

Yesterday, I had a Very Nice Day. This is not a particularly rare occurrence here in Thailand-- I still love the place. But yesterday I had one of those days that reminds me why exactly I love the place.

The day didn't start out too nice. I woke up nursing a slight hangover from the previous night when we went to town to have a small three person goodbye party for one of the volunteers, Jennifer. Jennifer was a photographer who stayed for two weeks. Since there wasn't exactly a bar in Nai Soi we settled for buying cokes and whiskey and sitting next to a rice paddy hiding from the students. Anyway, the next morning (a Saturday) one of the students decided that it was a good idea to belt out a few Thai pop songs at the top of his breath while playing the guitar at eight in the morning.

I was unhungover by around one I left around two o'clock to do some shopping in town and meet some friends. My shopping was done in about two hours and I had five hours to kill. I decided to spend the time visiting one of my favorite places-- Wat Doi Kong Mu. This is a temple that sits atop of one of the mountains that surrounds Mae Hong Son, and is a devilish hike but a beautiful place to visit. I try to make a point of climbing up every time that I go to Mae Hong Son.

I was very proud because I only needed to rest four times on my way up. The climb only takes about a half hour to forty-five minutes, but it's a very strenuous climb. You can get about halfway up via a steep staircase that starts the pilgrimage. There is a temple at the base of the hill that is connected to the Was Doi Kong Mu, and the minute you enter the grounds it slopes upwards so by the time you even get to the first step of the stairs you are slightly out of breath. By the time you pass the second set of guardian dragons, unless you are in very good shape, you are generally starting to huff and puff and you wonder why they even bothered putting up guardians. The climb alone should be enough to deter any evil spirit.

The mountain steepens about halfway up and the stairs give way to a switchbacking path that heads up at about a thirty degree angle. There are little resting houses over now and then, and the first time I made use of each and every one of them. Before this path, there is a little shrine where you can take a look around and decide if it's really worth going on. The first time I was there, there was a group of novice monks who kindly showed me that I should hai at the statue and demonstrated. (Hai is when you put your hands together in greeting.) After I mimicked they hopped up again and indicated that I should now offer money to the metal statue, demonstrating this with a twenty-baht bill that they undoubtedly got from the last tourist that came this way. I declined, having a feeling that the money was more likely to go to sweets in town.

The kid monks (novices) at this temple are a trip. There are four in particular that I have gotten used to seeing. Three of them are skinny little Thai kids and the fourth is a fat little buddha who gives a clue to why the other three are so skinny. When I first saw the kids (how I wish I had had my camera) they were playing a game of tug-of-war. The three skinny kids were on one side of the rope, pulling with all their might, and the fat monk was standing on the other side holding the rope with one hand and looking bored.

Anyway, after a rest I headed up to the switchbacking path for the final push. It's a lovely path, and generally deserted. The first time I was huffing and puffing it and thinking how couragous I was to be doing what so few dared to do when the little monks dashed past me, running and laughing and generally killing the mood. After about ten to twenty minutes on this path, you finally get to the stairs that go to the top.

So why do I force myself to do this every week? Well, the reasons are fourfold. The first is the view. You can see all of Mae Hong Son like you are in an airplane, spotting the roads that brought you here and the different temples and shop that you frequent. If you are lucky, you can see an airplane land or take off at Mae Hong Son airport, cruising in many feet below you.

The second reason is that it is my opinion that the only feeling rivaling that of an orgasm is the feeling of Not Climbing after one has been climbing strenuously for the last half hour. I dragged myself over the final step and landed with a thump at a local bench, fanning myself with my wide Thai-style woven hat. The first time that I came up I was embarrassed to see a gaggle of tourists wandering around without an ounce of sweat snapping pictures and wondering why they weren't as tired as I was. I did a quick walk and discovered that they hadn't walked up-- there is a road leading up the back of the mountain, and everyone other then me had driven. Which leads to the third reason-- I get to sit around smugly sneering at the pristine tourists and think to myself no one (other then the monks) has more of a right to be here then me.

Finally, this is my favorite temple because in addition to the view I think that it is the nicest temple that I have found. Unlike the birdshitty temples in Mae Sot, this one is kept up and the shrines and Buddha images are lovely. There's a nice market around the back and an ice cream vendor who is starting to know me by sight. Also, this temple seems to draw more then it's share of actual worshipers rather then tourists. At any time there are people circumnavigating the two chedis (towers) and meditating in the main temple building containing the principle Buddha image. I think that they easily outnumber the tourists. Very much worth the climb.

A Very Nice Day Indeed.

An Important Milestone

Well, after almost six weeks it's finally happened-- the girls are letting me help in the kitchen. For anyone that has lived with a family in a foreign country you know that this is a big deal. When I first got here, I couldn't enter the kitchen without the students tripping over themselves to discover what I so deperatly required that would actually bring me from my palace at the top of the hill to their dusty domain. Now when I enter, they barely look at me. I go to take over a chore and they hand over the spoon or the knife without comment and, more importantly, with out objection.

It's not easy helping in the kitchen-- you have to develop a sort of sixth sense and a great memory. You have to remember that after the pot is removed from the stove they need a big bowl for that dish and a small plate for this dish... that for some of the food, they need two dishes-- one to go on the table and another to be stashed on the shelves behind you. I am sure it would be a lot easier if I could understand their Thai mumblings but I have finally gotten to the point where I can join their dance without totally fucking things up.

Working in the kitchen really brings out the fact that this community of about 20 kids between the ages of 17-21 basically rule themselves. There is one adult (Rosy's aunt) who lives on the campus (I guess I should count myself in that count, since I am a ripe 31) who, as far as I can tell, has very little need to govern the community. Students take turns waking up at 6AM to make breakfast, sweep the campus, and take care of the various spirits that reside here. This is before they attend classes (for the most part I have a perfect record), do their homework, and contact with their families back in refugee camps and villages. Most of the absences that occur are because people had to go back home, not because they decided they needed a day out in Mae Hong Son. In addition, as far as I know there had never been a major fight between two students-- and if there are any ongoing conflicts then they are well hidden.

At Scattergood we had a disciplinary committee, a group that was trained to deal in conflict management, weekly meetings, advisers, and countless other things that were needed for the school to run smoothly and prevent conflict. Here those things aren't needed... they just happen because they need to happen for everyone to be happy. It's really incredible.

The Week in Review

Other then the visa run, I haven't been very good at updates. Let me fill you in on what has been going on in my life over the past week.

29-30 January

My patience and serenity obtained from the temple that I spent the weekend at finally wore out after the fourth straight hour of being unable to teach a group of 9 students how to form a wh-question with do (ie: What do you eat?)

31 January

I officially told Kyaw (the founder of the school) that I wanted to stay for one year. I can't remember if I told the blog about that. Aside from my visa not coming through (a definite possibility) I am stuck her for the next eleven months, and I am very happy about that.

1 February

The town of Ban Nai Soi was very excited about an upcoming festival that they spent the week preparing for. This was the first day of the two-day celebrations. The festival was held at the local Wat (temple) and was some sort of annual Buddhist thing that we were never able to figure out. At first we thought that it was the new year, but later learned out that the people who said “yes” when questioned on whether it was the new year or not just didn't know what we were saying.

However, the highlight of the event was that five girls from CLC were performing in the Karaoke Contest. E-e was singing and Morn, Nehneh and two other girls that didn't attend CLC were dancing. They were quite good and we were very proud when they made it to the finals and won fourth prize. I was also proud of myself for sitting through thirteen identical performances before they went up which made me very glad that I didn't have kids (for whom I would have to sit through 14 years of similar garbage). All has the same format-- there were four girls in each corner and a singer in the middle. The person would sing their Thai pop song and the girls would wiggle and gyrate to moves that they were generally too young to know. The first prize was well deserved (sorry E-e and Co) when it went to a group of girls who paraded out wearing haltertops and hot skirts and threw their bellybuttons around for the entire Temple to see. I felt very sorry for the poor monks who were peeking out from the monetary dorms. No it was not the haltertops and hotskirts that earned them the prize, it was the fact that they did something different then gyrating but actually making their arms the most active part of the act and not looking like they were dragged out of bed at three in the morning to perform.

The judgment of the contest was partially from a few judges and partially from the number of paper necklaces that the dancers each won. How to “win” a paper necklace? Well, you could buy a mess of the things and throw them on the necks of the dancers in a custom that might have been imported directly from Samoa. This meant, of course, that it was the richest performers (or rather, the performers with the richest friends) who would win the “popularity prize”. All the CLC people scraped together what we could, but the collection that we were able to hurl onto stage pathetic in comparison with the other kids. I felt justified when the winner of the popularity prize didn't make it to the finals.

2-3 February

Visa run (see next entry)

4 February

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

5 February

Today the girls gave their presentations that I asked them to write, and I was very proud of them. I took a $100 donation that I received from the lucrative “Let's scam MALI on the price of the plane ticket to Thailand by editing the email in Word and inflating the price” fund and told them that they each had to write a proposal of how to spend the $100. Whoever had the best and most useful proposal would get the money. They worked in groups of three and I listened, pen ready, about to write down the million things that each proposal was missing. I was very impressed when I found that there were few holes in their proposals (aside from the fact that I knew that their price predictions were probably bogus). I was so proud of them when they presented a history of the problem, why the problem was a problem, what their solution was, and why the solution was needed.

Aside from the quality of the reports, the highlight was that Thai speakers have a difficult time pronouncing “v” and so I spent the whole hour feeling like I was watching Pilate from “Live of Brain. First I had to suppress my giggles as Rosy stood up and told us why we needed a “wegtable garden” that would supplement our vegetables requirements. After this I got to find out why a “wollyball court” would help with the happiness and the health of the students. Hearing the proposal about the need for an additional bathroom wasn't quite so amusing, but probably the most needed.

6 February

Who knows? This place is full of surprises! Stay tuned!!

Make a Run for the Border!

Because Thailand doesn't have an embassy or a councilate in Yemen, I was forced to get a regular 30-day visa when I entered the country. Thailand's visa extension rule is simple: you have to cross a border before your visa runs out, and when you do you get an additional 30-day stamp. You used to be able to do this as many times as you wanted, but they recently put a new 90-day restriction in place (more on this later). Even with the new restriction, “border-runs” are part of the Thai Expat way of life, and I got to experience it for the first time this weekend.

(Note: As most of the time during this adventure was spent in a car, the pictures on this site are from Mae Sai, a Thai-Burmese bordertown that I had to get to to get the stamp, and have no relation to the story. Also, if you are reading this because you need to get a Thai visa extension from Pai or Mae Hong Son, then I encourage you to read this.)

My two options were Mae Sai, a border town about 9 hours away from Mae Hong Son, or Mae Sot, another border town (the place where I first arrived-- you remember, good food and bird-shitty temples) that is about 16 hours away. At first glance the choice seems obvious, but my experience was so lousy getting to Mae Sai that I am going to take the extra hours on the bus next time I have to go through this BS.

First, we had to get to Pai. I never wrote about Pai, but I will say that I spent one night there and it is competing with Mukulla, Yemen, as my least favorite town in the world. It's the Hard Rock Cafe of Thailand-- carefully set up to give tourists the impression of what they think that Thailand should be without providing the inconvenience of actual Thailand. The striking thing about the town is that the only Thai people are selling things on the street-- selling things that no self-respecting Thai person would actually wear (aside from the people who are selling them) or own. There are a few Thai's who head to Pai thinking that since all the Westerns go there it must be “trendy”. And when you are there, you get about as much of a feel for Thai culture as you would watching Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock-opera remake of “The King and I”. The only thing more annoying then the town are the smelly dreadlocked hippies with hot shorts and halter tops wandering around and saying things like “Thailand, man, it's like such a trip... I can like totally feel my inner consciousness and aura bleeding out. Hey, let's hit that theme coffee house back there.”

So you can imagine my horror when getting off the bus (three hours from Mae Hong Son, my hometown) of being told among the hippies at the travel agency who wanted to “experience Laos” (doesn't anyone just GO anywhere anymore?) that there were no seats on the Mae Sai-Pai bus.

Well, actually there was one. But I couldn't ditch my housemate Sabrina, could I?

Turns out I could. After I told her three times to take the ticket, I ran back and bought it for myself using the thin justification that my visa was about to run out the next day and she had about three more days (a choice which saved me 500 baht, as it turns out.) I just couldn't stand the idea of a night in Pai. The last time we stayed in Pai we had to share an overpriced freezing cabin. Once the blankets got warm it was okay until the hippies came back and started blasting Coldplay and Dave Matthews while playing along on the guitar. (Where did they even GET the stupid guitars? I was shoving books down my pants to get around the weight limit.)

Anyway, my car left at 10PM. I did the math in my head. Six hours there, six back, and one hour in Pai. For those of you with a college degree that is thirteen hours. If I was leaving at 10, then I should get back at 11, twelve at the latest-- right? I checked with the women and she told me that the bus got back at four or five.

Say what?

She pulled out a map and showed me that the trip to Chiang Khong (a border town on Laos) was about eight hours away. That's great, I told her, but I wasn't going to Laos, I was going to Mae Sai, which was SIX hours away. She agreed with me, it was six hours, but FIRST the bus was going to Chiang Khong, and then swung back to Mae Sai to get there at around 7 in the morning. And of course at this point there was nothing to be done.

I wasn't upset about the time, I was actually more worried about the 4 o'clock arrival time. The last bus out of this layer of Hell called Pai was at 4. Would I miss the bus? A quick conference with the driver and the woman turned back with a smile and told be that sometimes the bus was late. The Mae Hong Son bus, I asked? That didn't make me feel better. No, she said, the Mae Sai bus. Maybe it would be back at four, and I could get my other bus, and then smiled as if everything was okay. I hate Pai. And now it looked like I might have to spend another night there after all.

With this new deadline in place, I personally did a hippie round-up and herded everyone onto the van and we left two minutes early. Not much can be said about the bus except that it was freezing. The brousure for the visa-run “express” advertised an “air-conditioned van” but unfortunatly this was not a plus in Thailand during the cold season. And the bus was naturally air-conditioned-- there was no heat. Mae Sot was looking better and better every minute.

My body was numb by the time we got to Chiang Khong. Although I wasn't technically a customer of the establishment that we stopped at to drop the Laos “experiencers” off, I decided that no one needed to know that and took advantage of their offer of free coffee and breakfast. Free coffee, anyway, but the water heater was empty. I poured the rest of my water into the thing and started to warm it up. As soon as I did this, the hippie scum started to spoon instant coffee into cups and stood around the maker. I chased them away with my empty water bottle and told them to go find their own damn hot water. I made no friends on that trip.

We finally got to the border, and I had a private talk with each of the riders begging them to return on time. I made it sound like there was 30 starving refugees waiting with tears in their eyes for my return, and even a slight delay would get them hauled off to participate in unspeakable forced labour. (In truth, they would have been tickled to find that I was stuck in Pai and they had no class.) They agreed (I am sure that I had an unpleasant nickname at this point) and we all went off to get a new stamp.

I decided that since I was there, I may as well go into Burma. If you are reading this and still planning on making the trip, (just don't use aYa!) then I recommend that you give Burma a miss and instead head up the hill to check out the impressive temples. There was one that I didn't have time to go to which was on top of a hill and gives a great view (so the guidebook tells me) of Burma and Mae Sai. Burma, on the other hand, isn't really that impressive although it does feel different. The people were more... buzzy. It was like they all had spent the morning drinking coffee. I don't know if that was because I had just been in a car for the last ten hours and was experiencing a bit of culture shock. Burma pointedly drives on the right (a jab to Britain, who used to colonize them) and also sets their clock 30 minutes ahead of Thailand, for reasons that I don't know. To get to Burma I had to surrender my passport and they printed out a temporary passport with the scariest picture of myself that I have ever seen. I really hope that they don't keep that stuff on record.

Everyone was on time, thank God, and by 8:30 we were off. The trip back was uneventful, except that I got sick on the trip and everyone hated me so much by that time that I had to beg three times for a tissue. I swear that the driver was trying to make me throw up-- he seemed to be pumping the accelerator in time with the music. I had taken a ton of seasickness pills but they were practically placebos. I hate third world medicine.

I got back to Pai at 2:30 and ran into Sabrina a few minutes later, and I gave her a few tips (wear all your clothes, grab the front seat as soon as the Laos people leave, bring your own water for coffee, etc) and we sat to wait for the 4:00 bus, which was thirty minutes late. By 9 o'clock I was back in my room at Ban Nai Soi, cuddled up with a cat and a book and another 30 days before I have to go through this BS again.