Southeast Asia? Yes please, but hold the peanuts

Thursday, February 18, 2010

HI!
Last night we went to the night bazaar and looked around, same old same old. Jacquie then knocked on my door with an Australian guy she met at Muay Thai (boxing type sport), and asked if I would go out with them. So a bunch of us ended up hanging out with these three Australian boys: Cyril (cereal), Chris, and Tom. They were nice.

Today we had Thai class in the morning (we learned words for emotions) and then I went to the mall and bought some presents for people. It is SO hot. I was super hot walking back and looked up the weather; it's in the 90s this week. So I'm not as excited for my monk chat because we sit outside and it gets very warm.
But, tomorrow morning we leave for SUKOTHAI. I'm really excited because we have this crazy jam-packed schedule. Sukothai is the old capitol of Thailand and it's supposed to have a lot of history and be beautiful. We get to stay in hotels with pools and go on a bike trip Saturday morning :)
We'll get back Sunday afternoon and have Thai class all next week, and then we all leave for the weekend. Most people are going on village stays with families for the weekend, but I'm going with Drexler, Barbara, and Lauri Maund up north to a novice monk retreat camp thing. I don't really know what to expect, but I'm sure it'll be very enlightening :)
Our Thai Language final is coming up at the end of the beginning of March. Then, the March 5th we leave for 3 weeks in Vietnam.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

MONK CHAT

"and Arex, what did you do today?" -Pichit, a monk we made friends with yesterday at the monkchat!
So yesterday and today Emily Cameron and I have had time to go to the monk chats at Wat Chedi Luang. I'm going because of my independent study and she just finds it fun, so we have been working well together talking with the monks. Last week, we talked to two monks from Laos and came up with a system. We walk in, and get beckoned over by a monk or two, then there is polite chatter about where we're from etc. I then explain that I'm researching Buddhism and how monks relate and work with HIV positive people, and begin the questions :) I write furiously as we ask the questions, and Emily is getting used to what kind of questions I ask, and is super helpful. Towards the end, we try and ask a weird question to lighten the mood :) Examples:
1. So hypothetically speaking, pretend you were meditating and were approached by a poisonous snake, would you kill it before it hurt you? Or would you let it bite you? If you let it bite you, would you go to the hospital?
the monk from Laos who answered this one said that if the monk was meditating on loving kindness he wouldn't be bitten by the snake anyway, because he would be radiating loving kindness. So we said, well what if he wasn't meditating that way? He said that if the snake bit him anyway, he wouldn't kill it but he would go to the hospital because he needs to take care of his body.
2. What if there is a rabid dog roaming the monastery (there are many dogs EVERYWHERE here) and you see it bite another dog and know they are rabid, would you kill the dogs to save other dogs and humans? Or would you kill them to put them out of their misery?
Unfortunately, Songkran and Pichit didn't understand this question yesterday, so we're going to keep trying for an answer. "rabid" was lost in translation

Anyway, so we are having fun talking to the monks, and yesterday, we met two monks: Songkran and Pichit. They were really nice, but their English made it hard to ask my independent study questions, so we ended up just chatting with them for awhile about other stuff. Today we med Chaa-mpa (sp?) and his English was phenomenal, and he said that he is from Laos too. We asked about Songkran and he said that in Laos, monks can touch girls and break the rules for the three days (of Songkran). So he's going home for the festival and he told us he could wear normal clothes and play with his siblings and everything, but in Chiang Mai, the monks cannot break the rules. BUT, Chaa-mpa also uses whitening cream and carries an umbrella to keep his skin from getting too dark. It was really interesting because he seemed to be able to explain the Buddhist teachings and talked about how bad materialism was, but he secretly wears perfume!
While we were talking to Chaa-mpa, Pichit and Songkran came over and said hi, and talked to us for awhile. I think Emily and I are becoming quite the regulars at the Wat Chedi Luang monk chat :) Hopefully, tomorrow I can get a picture with our new monk friends :)

Monday, February 15, 2010

here's a couple more pictures

walking across the top of the waterfall in Luang Prabang, Laos

swinging from a rope into the waterfall, AWESOME

at cooking class, making my green curry :)

HEY, back from Laos

The view from the top of the mountain-waterfall

not even the entire waterfall :)

the royal dance troupe after dancing their story about the birdman....it was cool

oh hey! this is me at the 2nd level of the waterfall, and yes, I totally jumped into the water from the top of the waterfall and the tree branch that had a rope :)

This morning, I was in Luang Prabang, Laos getting ready to come back to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Before we left our guesthouse in Luang Prabang, a lady who was over 100 years old tied string around our wrists and blessed us (safe travels, good health, etc.) with a Buddhist prayer, it was an experience.
So how about I get this blog caught up over the past two weeks?
For about 12 of those days, there was a British invasion. Alex (my roommate) fell in love with a British boy she met at this really fun reggae club. Needless to say, he had friends. So for awhile I got used to having British boys in and out of our guesthouse, and hanging around in general. Our group and the British boys (a group of 3, 19-20 year olds who were backpacking around SE Asia together) ended up going out and about alot together, and had a blast. We all went to watch the English theatre productions that the Chiang Mai University students put on of The Crucible, and The Virgin Suicides. Their English was amazing, and I was surprised by how well they spoke English and analyzed the plays for their projects.
We also had our Thai Midterm, which consisted of us going to a market and identifying fruit and veggies and bartering for fruit and drinks. Which leads me to my Thai friend I made!
There is a Thai guy that works the night shift at our guesthouse and I asked him to help me practice my Thai. It was really cool, and he told me he was Catholic, which was surprising.
Oh! I also went to a Thai Church that was Christian. It was all in Thai but I had a headset that broadcast an English translation, so that was really neat.
During the week we had a lot of Thai lessons, and it is getting kind of overwhelming. Emily and I went to monk chats and found 2 Lao monks that speak English fairly well, and I interviewed them for my project. The second one we talked to was from Luang Prabang and told us all about the waterfall we needed to go see. The next day we had a cooking class and I made green curry. It was really cool because we used mortars and pestles and I could make mine without everything that I'm allergic to. I also made Thai vegetarian soup and chicken with basil, it was one of the best meals I've had in Thailand.
Friday afternoon we left for Laos, and were instantly charmed by the small town of Luang Prabang. It has one main strip down the middle that has lots of french shops and baguettes everywhere! It should be assumed that we chowed down on all the bread since our carbs were mostly from rice for the past month. Drexler essentially let us loose in Laos and the adults did their own thing (we gained Drexler's wife and John Beckelman and his wife earlier in the week {a Coe teacher and his wife}), so on Saturday we had an adventure.
We woke up and found a french restaurant and had one of the best breakfasts so far, and then commissioned a tuk tuk to drive us the hour long trip to the Khoung Si waterfall and back (900 baht total for all of us round trip). Our tuk tuk broke down once on the trip...but we got there and back safely. I can't describe the waterfalls enough to do them justice, and the entire day felt so surreal. At one point 3 of us went off of the path and climbed part of the waterfall barefoot, and I had to hang my camera from a tree so it wouldn't get wet. It was surreal.
We got back to Chiang Mai today and I turned on my laptop and my sister got ENGAGED over the weekend, crazy weekend.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Elephants play soccer

and paint! We went to the elephant camp saturday and saw the elephant show, where they did tricks, played soccer, and painted pictures. It was really cool. I got to feed elephants too (sugar cane and bananas).

it was really pretty at the camp, which was built onto the side of a mountain. So here is a picture of me with nature.

The elephant handlers rolled the ball, and the elephants kicked it into the goal :)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

ever hear of Burma? me neither

This is going to be completely out of order, so keep up :)
So we had two classes today of...essentially Thai culture. A super old guy (80 years old?) talked to us about Buddhism. He is apparently like a guru of Buddhism. That was interesting, but not very enlightening :)
I have my first monk chat today, which I think will just be a test chat to see how well their English is, and what kind of information I can get from them. The guy in charge of the HIV hospices comes to talk to us either this week or the next. Then, I'll hopefully be able to start setting more meetings up to gather info for my independent study.
We had our first class with Drexler on the patio last night from 7-9pm. We set our class time to be 7-9 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which made yesterday a really long day. We chanted nung sung saaam ci...(our numbers), in the morning, and learned about the rice goddess in the afternoon. Then we had a couple hours break before we dived into discussing old Northern Thai culture, or Isan culture. I have definitely missed class discussions with Drexler since he poses the most interesting questions. Afterward, Alex, Hailey and I went to Tesco Lotus in search of Ben and Jerry's (we would have even settled for Haagen Daz), but we had to settle for weird Nestle ice creamm or in Thai, i team(Thai desserts aren't as sweet...or chocolaty as in the U.S.)
Then, this afternoon Ajaan (Thai word for prof.) Pippa talked to us about her Burmese Relief Centre, and the situation in Burma. I was thinking back and my entire life has consisted of Burma being that iffy country. If it was mentioned, I knew that bad things were going on...but it wasn't that bad, cuz it wasn't in the newspaper and news that much.
Guess what? It's super sad. So Ajaan Pippa told us all about the crappy military regime that has been in control since the 60s, and all the protests and demonstrations that keep get squashed. Apparently Thailand has like 140,000 people on the border who are in refugee or illegal camps for the people who are fleeing.
The thing that really blew my mind was that Thailand has FOUR MILLION Burmese migrant workers, alot of them with work permits or illegally here. That's a lot of people from Burma (sorry, Myrammar).
Anyway, so there are all these pipelines in Burma that are owned by various countries. For example, China just started building an pipeline a few months ago. The U.S. company Chevron owns one, and Thailand owns a part of one, or all of one. Anyway, so all of these countries have investments in this crappy country.
Apparently, now there are rumors that North Korea is possibly helping them (Burmese military dudes) develop nuclear weapons.
The conclusion that I came to was that I hope they try, then countries will stop being greedy and help fix things. Which, obviously won't happen quickly, but Burma's been trying to get it together for a super long time now. I've grown up thinking it was in turmoil and not caring. So maybe if the military tries to get nuclear, things will get done.