2009 A Thai Odyssey

In the Deep End

fimc — Thu, 8 Oct 2009 04:41:00 GMT

I’m writing this from a place in the mountains north of Chiang Rai that is a piece of pure heaven, Phuchaisai Hotel, but I had to get through absolute hell to get here, and I don’t mean the road up the mountain…. The months of August and September have been amongst the most challenging of my life; I was pushed to my limit, physically, mentally and emotionally, and there were times that I felt completely broken. But I had no choice but to see it through, and now that I’m on the other side of it, I finally have some time to write about it.

When I last wrote I was in Vientiane, trying unsuccessfully to sort out a 12-month visa for Thailand. I hinted that while I was there, as well as the time leading up to, and the time immediately following, forces were at work that were making my life less than easy. But who ever said life was meant to be easy? Caty, the long-time co-director at the Chiang Rai IHF Centre had left the week before I had to make a sudden trip out of the country, and Kitt, the new co-director I would be working with when I got back had clocked-on (in theory). While I was in Vientiane, Kitt started making decisions and acting on them without consulting either the co-director who was still at the Centre, Kate, or myself. These mostly involved spending money that hadn’t been budgeted for in the month’s finances, such as paying the local police 1000B a month to install a “red police box” which they supposedly “check” randomly, and apparently sends a message to outsiders to beware, as the police could turn up at any time, and as such acts as a sort of security device. Or bribe, whatever you want to call it. In five years there have never been, to my knowledge, any issues with security, so his point was lost on me. While I was in Laos, Kitt was of no help to Kate whatsoever; he never stayed at the Centre, which was part of the deal so that he would be around to perform all sorts of functions, such as doing his share of making sure the kids do as they’re supposed to, and let’s face it, when you’ve got 25 kids aged between 10 and 14, that’s a lot of making sure… He also decided that when one of the boys (aged 16 who has lived off-site for the last year for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into) got kicked out of school for fighting, that he would make a deal with the school; Kitt would move the boy back into the Centre where Kitt could keep an eye on him, if the school didn’t kick him out. The first problem with this, I have already mentioned, Kitt was never actually at the Centre. The next problem was that this boy (let’s call him Bob) goes to a different school to the other high school kids, because he got kicked out of that one, too. So this meant that our volunteer, Daniel, had to take Bob to school on a motorbike at 6:30 every morning, get back to the Centre at 7:00, then drive the other high school kids to their school in the truck, and do the same thing in reverse every afternoon. Never mind that the volunteers have about a hundred other things to do every day, but as the only driver, Daniel now had to squeeze these in around his daily school runs. The problem after that is that the influence Bob has over the other boys, who are all younger than him (and remember he’s been living on his own for a year), is very strong, and as they are mostly afraid of him, the change in their attitude and behaviour was immediate. For the worse, obviously. But I’m getting away from myself.

I was trying to deal with these things and many more by email while in Vientiane, a difficult task when I would get only sporadic responses to my emails, none from Kitt, so I spent the whole time I was there either in internet cafes doing the online admin work I still had to do every day for IHF, as well as trying to find out what the frick was going on in Chiang Rai, or traipsing around the town on my visa mission. I told myself it would all be sorted out once I got back there & could straighten a few things out. Ha ha! Daniel (as the only driver) picked me up from the airport when I arrived back from my flights from Vientiane to Bangkok, and then Bangkok to Chiang Rai. As soon as he clapped eyes on me he said “I think we have to have a meeting as soon as we get back to the Centre” (it was after 10:00pm), and proceeded to give me his version of events that had taken place earlier that night. This is a really complicated & long story, so I won’t go into it except to say that a man (let’s call him Brett, because that’s his name), who has been involved with the Centre as a sort of local volunteer for some time, except not for any of the time I’ve been there because he & Caty had fallen out, had come back on the scene over the past week, and that night had let loose on a couple of volunteers with a verbal tirade that was not only unjustified, but completely inappropriate and unacceptable. This opened up a can of worms that I will probably refer to as I go on, but for now will wind up by saying that the drama that has ensued because of this incident is still not over. The next night Kitt & I had a meeting with Brett to talk about what had happened, and then Kitt insisted on getting the two (female) volunteers that had copped the abuse to join our meeting (not at the Centre) so Brett could apologise to them. This was where my problems with Kitt really began. Looking back, I know the precise moment it started. Despite my advice that the two girls would probably prefer not to hear anything from Brett, I was instructed to phone them & tell them that they would be joining us. After the insincere & incomplete apology was delivered, we were all then forced to sit around chatting together, to prove that bygones were bygones and everyone was now going to be friends. As it turns out, it was also Kitt’s intention to let me & everyone else know that he was controlling this situation, as would be his intention with every other situation to come. This I can see clearly now.

Over the next week, Kitt created more & more mess, mostly financially, but generally just making everything ten times more difficult than it needed to be. He refused to do anything according to IHF procedure, and wanted to do everything a different way. One of the things we all have to do, is to email every day the number of hours we have worked, or “donated” (as we are volunteers). One of my responsibilities is to also send in a weekly report of all the hours donated by every volunteer at the Centre, so all the volunteers cc me on their daily hours reports. Kitt refused to do this, and it turns out that the reason is because he thought I was trying to control him & check up on him, when in fact it is a requirement of the organisation, and every volunteer at every IHF Centre must comply with this rule.

The Monday signaling the start of my second week in the job, 4 of the younger kids woke up with a fever, sore throat, & a headache. At this point there was just me & 2 volunteers, & Monday is market day, so I left Kim at the Centre with the sick kids, while Daniel & me with Nabee & Kunu (our new “man about the house” – “house father” just doesn’t sound right…) took the high school kids to school after Daniel had already done the return trip to take Bob to school, then went to the market. At 8:00am which I deemed a decent time to phone Kitt, I called him to say that I needed him to go to the Centre, pick up Kim & the kids & take them to the hospital to see the doctor. Let me preface this next part by saying that trips to the hospital are not the straight-forward thing you might expect them to be. Besides not speaking or reading Thai, there are so many steps involved you’d think it was the fox trot. Add into the mix four sick 10 year olds that can’t communicate to you what’s wrong with them apart from using sign language and a few Thai words you’ve picked up, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you need a Thai person to help out. Oh, I know! The Thai co-director of the IHF Centre should do. Indeed Kitt did pick Kim & the kids up & take them to the hospital, and check them in at reception, but then he had to go & attend to something or other with his company, & left Kim to manage the rest on her own. I’ve described my experience with Dr Pharyngitis in a previous story, but let me re-emphasise that the doctors here are so ridiculously prescription-happy, that I can only assume that they must get an awful lot of kick-backs from the drug companies for all the pharmaceuticals they dish out. That said, Kim then had to take notes of the multitude of medications that were prescribed for these kids, one of which was confirmed as having Influenza A. They were on four types of meds each, but not all the same, so some had to be taken 2 times a day, others 3 or 4 times a day, before meals, after meals, before bed etc etc. This meant that we now had 4 kids at home for most of that week, which meant that we also had to have at least one of the 3 of me, Kim or Daniel at the Centre at all times. This isn’t easy as we all have to spend at least 4 hours online every day doing our admin tasks (away from the Centre as there’s no internet connection there), & generally made things very difficult (we usually do this during the day when the kids are at school). To alleviate this problem of having to get to the internet café to do our online work, after a week or so Daniel & I hooked ourselves up to the outside world by connecting to an internet service using a mobile phone as a modem. This gave us both a lot more flexibility, & meant that we could get online at much more convenient times.

Two days later I was woken at 5:00am by Nabee with one of the girls who was very ill. She had a raging fever & wouldn’t stop crying. I put her on a mattress on the floor of my room, gave her a dose of liquid Tamiflu (after all, we had plenty…) & started covering her with wet cloths. Well, then she started vomiting, so at 6:00am I had Daniel drive us to the hospital. They sent her straight to the emergency room, woke the doctor up, & started doing Influenza tests (I mentioned previously that H1N1 had just made it to Chiang Rai, & it seemed by now to be rampant). The doctor advised admitting her, so I did, then spent the entire day in the ward with Anchalee until Nabee could come to relieve me in the late afternoon & spend the night with her. On the way home, after one week of me being in this co-director’s role (all of it being a non-stop battle with Kitt for him to follow IHF procedures, & none of it being with him sharing any of the responsibilities of running the place), Kitt phoned me to tell me he wanted to see me that afternoon, “but not for very long. Just short meeting”. So he comes to the Centre, backs his truck up to the room he never stayed in, packed his stuff into his truck, then came over to where I was sitting. He told me that I “have a lot to learn about Thai men….” That “in Thailand a woman can ask a man to do something, but whether he decides to do it or not is up to him”, and a few other gems. He then pushed a folder that he had, containing all the IHF documents across the table toward me and said “now, you work alone”. And with that he got up & drove away. To be honest I was quite relieved. I had been doing everything anyway, and now I wouldn’t have to wait for him to be available (never) to discuss anything that needed a decision, or have to clean up any more mess of his making. Kitt’s massive yet very delicate ego has caused us to fall out spectacularly, and his attitude to me has become nothing short of hostile. So then it really was just me, Kim & Daniel. And 5 kids at home sick.

The next day I emailed IHF’s CEO to tell her the news about Kitt, and went about the business of a 20-hour day that was to become the norm for me for the next couple of weeks. The day after that (Friday) I had to take the two 14 year old boys with chronic ear problems to their regular doctor’s appointment before school. They both refused to put on their school uniforms, and after about an hour of telling them to get dressed for school, they then decided that they weren’t going to the doctor either and wouldn’t get in the truck. It was imperative that I get them to this appointment, so eventually, exasperated, I said they didn’t have to go to school, but they absolutely had to go to the doctor. Half an hour more of shouting at them, and bribing them with a computer game, they got in the truck & off we went. Once we got home, they wanted to watch DVD’s with all the sick kids that were home (by now it was up to ten) & I told them there was no way. There was nothing wrong with them & they should be at school, so they were definitely not watching movies. One of the boys was enraged, and had already raised his fist to me twice that morning in the battle to try to get them into their school uniforms, and stormed off. As it was Friday, all the kids were getting ready to watch a movie that night, including the two that wouldn’t go to school. Again, I told them there was no way, and again they stormed off. I had tried unsuccessfully to get them to take their medications for their ear infections (oh yes, just a few more meds to keep track of & administer…) so I sent Daniel down to their bedroom to try to give one of them his ear drops. Fail. Next thing we know, this boy comes storming out of his room down to the TV area, & starts throwing all his things (& I mean everything that’s his – drawers, mattress, school bag, everything) on the floor. This takes a few trips, & the last time he came out he charged over to where Daniel & I were sitting. We both stood up & the next thing I know he’s got me by the throat & raises his other hand, which at first I think is to punch me. I accepted that that was what was going to happen, until I noticed that he had a knife in his hand. Luckily Daniel was standing right beside him & grabbed the hand with the knife in it, while I somehow managed to get his hand off my throat, & was able to walk away. Not an ideal way to spend a Friday night…..

And relief was not going to be coming on Monday…. The primary school was to be closed until Thursday because there were students there who had been confirmed with H1N1, so the best thing to do was to keep everyone home! Unreal! When was this going to end?? Thursday I sent some of our had-been-sick kids to school, but then on Friday we had more at home.

Next day, next problem. Bob and one of the girls, Wanpen, told me they both wanted to go away for the weekend; Bob to see his father in Chiang Rai, & Wanpen to her village to get some papers signed for school. The CEO had made it pretty clear in the weeks previous that for now, until she “knew” me better, I wasn’t to make any decisions without consulting her. She lives in California, so all communications with her are by email. So I emailed her & asked her if Bob & Wanpen could go. She said no. Too dangerous for both of them (not safe home environments). So of course I’m the one to deliver this news to them, & so am the evil enforcer. It proceeded to rain torrentially for the whole weekend, so after having kids home from school all week, we now had all the kids inside the house for the whole weekend. It was getting a bit much. Late on the Sunday afternoon, Kitt came to the Centre, because he was picking one of the kids up to take him to his village to speak with the Chief, in preparation for an interview at the Government Office the next morning, so the kid could apply for his Thai ID card. While he was there, an incident occurred that I won’t go into, but the very short version is that Kitt (with no authority whatsoever) undermined me in front of a group of the boys, which sent them a message loud & clear – that they don’t have to listen to anything I say. Any leverage that I had, any authority, was taken away, & I was left with anarchy. The next day (do you see a pattern emerging…? It really was a new problem every day), I had to go with Kitt and this boy to the Government Office, and spend the whole day there while they had meetings with the officers there. I wasn’t actually doing anything, but the power that Kitt had been given by Caty in dealing with things like this, meant that I had to do as he said, or risk jeopardizing this boy getting his ID card. So another day where I would just have to do all the other hundreds of things I had to do that day, after the kids had gone to bed, & rack up another 20 hours…. But that wasn’t all that happened that day. Seeing as Kitt had taken away any authority I had over the boys, Bob decided that he was going to Chiang Mai anyway, so before Daniel drove him to school, Bob made one of the other boys give him his allowance money, then when he got to school he borrowed someone’s motorbike to come back to the house to get something (Daniel busted him), & took off for Chiang Mai. Great. So now I have to tell the CEO that we’ve got a runaway. All week the children were vile, not doing anything they’re supposed to, plenty of things they’re not, & generally being very unpleasant. Thanks Kitt. There were days that the only thing that got me through were endless cups of tea, courtesy of the lovely miss Julie, who had posted a massive supply to me a couple of months ago….

On the next Saturday afternoon, Bob came back, & the effect on the other boys was once again, immediate. They all started acting tough & being especially hideous for the rest of the weekend. I was looking forward to Monday, when all the sick kids would be back at school, but that was wishful thinking. Inspired by Bob’s bad-ness, 3 of the boys decided that they would wag school that day. One (Chuchart) pretended he was sick, the other 2 went, but then came home. Of course this can’t go unpunished, so no allowance & no TV the next weekend for any of them. That night, the 3 delinquents and Bob tell me that they all want to leave IHF & go back to live in their villages. A long meeting later, with the help of our eldest boy translating, & we’ve managed to convince all of them except Bob that they are better off staying with IHF, and reminded them that this means that they have to follow the rules, including going to school. But Bob’s mind was made up, he was going. So the next day (there it is again…) I took one of the ear boys to the doctor, Daniel took Bob to the bus station, & the rest of the kids went to school. Oh, except for 2 of the older boys (one of which was Chuchart) who went to school (because Daniel drove them there) but then left & got busted by a teacher at the shopping centre. So I get a phone call from Kitt telling me that the school had phoned him, & I had to go meet with the head teacher. So I go to the high school & have a long meeting with the head teacher & the two waggers, during which they agree that they should not be bunking off school & won’t do it again.

The next day, the primary school was closed. Again!! For a teacher conference. Would someone give me a break???? So, 18 kids at home. Again. “Someone” must have been listening, because the day after that, was actually a good day. No phone calls from Kitt, no kids home from school, no disasters or medical emergencies or doctor appointments. Just a day that went like it was supposed to. But that was never going to last. The next day, Friday, Chuchart ditched school again, & I got yet another call from Kitt because the school had called him (even after I gave them my number & told them to call me), & said there would be a meeting that afternoon where the school would discuss Chuchart’s future, or lack thereof, at the school. In a meeting with the head teacher and school director, I managed to appeal to something within them, compassion I guess, and explained that Chuchart has had a difficult background & has had a lot to deal with in his young life. It emerged that he can barely understand written or spoken Thai, so isn’t understanding anything in any of his classes, which explains his lack of interest in going to school. So we came up with a plan – the school will buddy him up with a friend of his who gets good grades, to help him in class. They’ll also enlist the help of his teachers & ask them to give him extra help. I’ve also looked into getting him extra tuition outside of school, and we have asked one of his sponsors if they’re willing to fund this. Chuchart says he’s willing to do the extra work & will commit to it, so we will see.

At the beginning of the next week, 2 new volunteers arrived, & I was feeling very aware of the shitfight they were walking into. Kim took them out to show them around town the night before she left, so at least there was something positive about their introduction to IHF Thailand. The next day Kim left, so then it was down to me & Daniel, & 2 new people who were no doubt wondering what the hell was going on. Might I just add that none of this was being helped at all by the fact that the body wash refill I’d bought thinking, “hmmm, peppermint, that could be invigorating…” actually smells like Old Spice or some such other horrendous ‘70’s throwback men’s eau de pong, which I forget about every day, until I take a shower and am coated in its malodorous perfume….

Eventually it came to be a Friday which was the day before my birthday. Things still weren’t going well. All the boys were now on a slingshot craze, & despite having been told many times in the past that slingshots aren’t allowed, they had all been harbouring secret machetes and knives, busily making slingshots that we were just as busily confiscating. Along with the machetes & knives, of course. Anyway, Friday afternoon meant my English chat session with Kuane & the other kids, so off I went for an hour of nice chatting & no shouting. I forgot that they had asked me on a previous visit the date of my birthday, & when I turned up that day they all had presents for me.

My birthday was much like any other day, although there were a few concessions. I can remember having 2 less-than-great birthdays before. The first was when I woke up on my 19^th with chronic tonsillitis that was so bad I was delirious; and the other was my 29^th, when my ex-husband had left me the week before. My 39th wasn’t quite as bad as either of those, but it definitely wasn’t among the better ones I’ve had. (I don't remember my 9th birthday, but I'm not sure what to expect for my 49th... luckily now that I've seen this pattern emerging, I've got plenty of time to prepare for my 49th). Of course there were all the usual demands & general bad behaviour from a lot of the children, but I managed to sneak 90 minutes out of the afternoon to cycle into town for a massage, which was fabulous. When I got back to the Centre it was dark & the kids were fixing to watch a movie. I had put a ban on all TV for everyone until all boys had returned all slingshots to me, & so far I had received none. There had been no TV for a couple of weeks. As I got out of the tuk tuk, a couple of the boys ran over to me & gave me a box. I thought it was going to have a spider, snake, scorpion or something else horrendous in it, so I refused to take it. They were very insistent, and Maddie & Marisa (the new voli’s) encouraged me to take it. Then I knew what was going to be inside. When I opened the box it had about 10 slingshots individually wrapped, & they had written on each of them “happy birthday Fiona”. So I said they could watch TV & everyone was very happy. A big thank you to the lovely people who remembered my birthday, & sent care packages or messages, which were very much needed in my time of woe. The new girls had bought chocolate cake from McLovin so we ate that, then Maddie & I went off to a new discovery which we were calling “the Lounge” because it has a lounge, but turns out that it’s actually called Sa-bun-nga. We were treated to plenty of karaoke from the other patrons, and an especially long Elvis routine consisting of about 10 songs from the owner.

Once the calendar hit September I began a couple of mental countdowns. The first would be until the 9^th when Daniel would be going, leaving just me with two new volunteers, and the second was until the 24^th, when Caty would be returning to Chiang Rai, and in light of the current situation, would now be coming back to the Centre to co-direct with me. I was dreading Daniel leaving, as he had been there for only a few weeks less than I had, and he had really stepped up during the past weeks of crisis. But I needn’t have worried – the two new volunteers were a pair of very capable women, who understood my ever-decreasing ability to string a sentence together and just got on with things. Those last two weeks before Caty came back went by in a blur of overtiredness and over-everythingness, mostly characterized by the boys’ latest craze, which is catching giant rhinoceros beetles. These they tie up by the horn with a piece of string, attaching them to sticks of sugar cane that have had the “bark” hacked off (more knives…. There are no more machetes – they all live locked up in my contraband drawer in the filing cabinet). The beetles gnaw away at the sugar cane, chomping through vast amounts & reducing the stick to sawdust, & if you stroke their back they make a terrific hissing noise. The real appeal though, lies in their potential money-making ability. Thai men love to gamble on the fights of two male beetles, who will engage in some serious wrestling in order to win the right to the amorous affections of a lady rhinoceros beetle. The things you do when you don’t have TV. So the boys have become entrepreneurs, (a good beetle can fetch about 70 baht) and have an ever-growing collection of beetle-inhabited sugar cane dangling all around the place like some kind of whacky wind chimes… The other major feature of this time was that we were blessed with something akin to a miracle, when out of nowhere a Thai woman named Nisarat (Sara) appeared wanting to become a local volunteer with us. Not only can she freely communicate with the children, she has helped me to translate documents, has been incredibly generous with her time, and more often than not turns up with something for the Centre, whether it be sweets for the children, shovels for the garden, or bags of food for the kitchen. She helps with homework, demands proper behaviour from the children, holds tutoring classes on the weekends, and is generally a wonderful human being.

Something I must mention is the wonderful generosity of my uncle Philip, who was inspired to make a financial contribution to the limited resources of the Centre. Because of his philanthropy I was able to establish the funding of a hygiene program which covers the cost of things like cleaning products and equipment, wall hand-soap dispensers, laundry soaker so the kids don’t have to go to school with stained uniforms, and other basic things that we take for granted to reduce the spread of germs and diseases. Also my mum and dad, who (for my birthday present) have taken on for six months, the medical sponsorship of one of the boys with chronic ear infections.

And so now, to now. Finally Caty arrived, & not a moment too soon, as my fried brain, exhausted body, and frayed nerves limped over the finish line. I promptly got a migraine and after two days of helping myself to a pharmaceutical buffet, I awoke to Sunday 27^th September – and my first day off since I was in Chiang Mai nine longs weeks ago. Marisa’s four weeks volunteering had been prefaced by two nights at a mountainside retreat, and it sounded like just what I needed. No one to talk to, nothing to look at except mountains, no one to say my name 10 000 times a day, not even a TV in my room. Sold! I found a decent rate through an online booking agency, and my four nights at Phuchaisai were booked. http://www.phu-chaisai.com/ This place is amazing. The photos on the website don’t do it justice, so I’ve taken about a hundred myself, but I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the serenity (the dad from The Castle would be in overdrive!). After 3 nights here I can feel my eyes becoming less heavy and squinty, and hope that the black rings that mock my eyes and have been my most striking facial feature for many weeks now, are slowly fading. From the infinity pool to the array of tiny orchids in the gardens, to the silence and beauty of the natural surroundings, this is a very special place. Words, at least my limited vocabulary, cannot describe. The rooms, in fact almost the entire resort, is bedecked in bamboo, the bathrooms and balcony molded in terracotta-stained concrete, every fitting has been painstakingly selected, and the staff are as 5-star as you could hope for in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. The only TV in the place is a 50-inch plasma screen in the Library – yes, Library, located next to the bar, which is fitted out like a cosy log cabin. Except there are no external walls, this being Thailand after all. I’ve spent long periods of time on the day bed on my balcony, just being. I have many favourite times of the day here, and one of them is at dusk when the bells of the monastery in the valley below are rung, their beautiful melody echoing through the mountains. I have to pause here because I’m off on an excursion with the owner, a wonderful man named Amnuay, who I met this morning, & after chatting a while he offered to take me out for lunch.

My lunchtime excursion with Khun Amnuay was great. We drove in his fully-refurbished white 1979 Mercedes down to the local town & chatted over a lunch of steamed chicken and rice, at the best steamed-chicken-and-rice place in town. Khun Amnuay went to university in England, and continued the tradition with his two sons, so his spoken English is unfaultable. Then it was back to Phuchaisai for me to debate whether a swim, some writing from my secluded balcony, or a massage was to be next on the afternoon’s agenda…. Had I been a gardening enthusiast, I was welcome to spend some time with the 600-strong delivery of flowers in pots that had just arrived, however my very generous friend Lisa had been chatting online with me earlier in the morning, and at the same time had deposited some money into my bank account to treat me to a massage in the incredibly beautiful spa….. so a massage it was, followed by some voracious reading of a novel I’d borrowed from the library. In fact the novel was set over a period of 24 hours, and I followed suit by starting and finishing it in the same time frame. Quite the luxury, I thought.

On my last morning I awoke to the sound of rain falling softly on the leaves outside my window, and as I contemplated the surrounding mountains, put my final few hours here into order: breakfast, an hour online (free wifi from my balcony), swim, shower (and oh, what a shower! Possibly the best in memory…. Complete with what could be the fluffiest towels in existence…) not to mention hot water…., check out at 12:00, a quick lunch then the 45 minute drive back to Chiang Rai. I’d say it was just what I needed.

Now my 6 months in Chiang Rai are coming to an end. I’ll be here for another 4 weeks, until my visa expires and then plan to go to Luang Prabang in Laos for about a week. Then I’ll come back to Chiang Rai while I wait for mum and my aunty Rusty to arrive, and then will head off for some R&R on Koh Kood, a Thai island near the border with Cambodia. At the beginning of December I’ll have to take another trip out of the country to apply for another 90 day visa, and then will head to Sangklaburi to start a new chapter at Baan Unrak Children’s Home. It feels almost like being on holiday at the Centre now, with 2 co-directors and 5 new volunteers, and as of Friday a lot of the kids will go back to their villages for a couple of weeks, as they are on their mid-term break until the beginning of November. And now I’m off to plan my trip to Laos!

The Wild Goose Chase, or In Vientiane Without a Guidebook & Without a Clue

fimc — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:52:00 GMT

Sunday 09 August

Posting this story has been somewhat delayed, by a chain of events so crazy, I would never have believed it possible. I’ve stolen a few hours to try to gain back some sanity, but will have to wait for another time to write about what has happened since I returned to Chiang Rai from Laos. For now, here is the rest of my Laos update….

So here I am in Laos, on a journey (wild goose chase) that started a month ago by applying for a Thai work permit. But more on that later; first a bit about Laos, which as it turns out, has a very interesting story….

Because it seems like such a quiet and unassuming country, you could easily be mistaken for thinking that the laid-back pace & lack of development that typifies Vientiane, is a reflection of its history, but you would be wrong. Ravaged by various foreign powers throughout the past 1000 or so years, Vientiane is a master of reinvention and adaptation. The following is a heavily plagiarised account from the Lonely Planet guide to Laos.

In recent history, warring neighbours, Burma and Siam, have fought repeatedly like a pair of naughty school boys over various territories in the region, and Laos did not go unnoticed. In a grueling game of tit for tat, inspiring Siamese leadership resulted in fabulous victories over the Burmese who had previously staked a claim on large chunks of Siam, and the inflated ego of the leading military commander of the time sought new ground to conquer – Laos was an obvious target, and by 1779, the three kingdoms of Laos had fallen to Siam. The new king of Siam imposed a tight and bossy reign which didn’t go down well with the Lao. In 1826 the new Laos king of Viang Chan (It wasn’t to be known as Vientiane until much later), Chao Anou, decided it was time to show those Siam bullies what for. Sending three armies down the Mekong and across the Khorat plateau, the Siamese were taken by surprise, but they recovered quickly, driving the Lao armies back & claiming Viang Chan. The confident Chao Anou fled to regroup, and attempted to recapture the city a year later, but was captured and died a caged prisoner in Bangkok.

For the next 60 years the two small remaining kingdoms of Laos kept some independence, but increasingly became micro-managed by Bangkok, due to the presence of a new bully in the schoolyard – France. The French had declared a protectorate over most of Cambodia in 1863 and Siam felt the need to muscle-up. Four years later a French expedition sent to map the Mekong River arrived in Luang Prabang, and by the 1880’s all hell broke loose with Siamese, French and random Chinese (Haw) at each others’ throats trying to assert dominance. In 1887 Luang Prabang was razed by a mixed force of Upland Tai and Haw. The king escaped with a French explorer, who offered the king the protection of France. In 1893 a French warship forced its way up the Menam River to Bangkok, & trained its guns on the palace. Eventually the Siamese relented and agreed to return all territory east of the Mekong River to France. Heavily indebted, Laos became a French colony.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, France was continuing to claim more land for Laos and Cambodia, intending to strengthen its presence in what was now French Indochina. However, French attention was forced to shift from its colonizing activities in Asia, to Europe in the lead up to WW1.

Nevertheless, the French maintained colonial rule over Laos, keeping the peace, and allowing Chinese shopkeepers and Vietnamese artisans and interpreters, along with French merchants to set up shop, pushing many Lao villagers out. Over the coming years, Laos proved to be a poor earner for France, as well as a drain on its Indochina budget. The French began to demand taxes, which had traditionally been paid in the form of forest or agriculture products, to now be paid in cash, which caused resentment among the Lao, resulting in a series of anti-French rebellions which took years for the French to wrestle under control.

When war again broke out in Europe, Siam took the opportunity to seize Laos territory with Japan’s help while France’s back was turned. Siam renamed itself Thailand while France succumbed to pressure to permit a Japanese presence in Laos. In 1945 Japan began to suspect France of shifting its allegiance to the allies in Europe, and staged a coup de force, capturing all French officials and imposing its rule over Laos. Six short months into Japanese rule, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki called the end to WW2, and when Japan surrendered, a Laos nationalist movement formed an interim government and Laos independence was declared. The king, however felt that Laos still needed French protection, causing tension between royalist Luang Prabang & nationalist Vientiane. The king sacked the Prime Minister, and the National Assembly countered by deposing the King.

Meanwhile, France had designs on getting its foothold back on Indochina, and after China & Britain had moved the Japanese out, Britain handed back over to France, and they were back in business. Striking north to take back control of northern Indochina, the nationalist Laos government fled to Bangkok, the King was put back in charge and a unified Laos declared. Land was re-claimed back from Thailand.

Delicate relations between France & the Viet Minh in Vietnam put France on a mission to shore up friends in the region, so gave Laos greater independence. A promise of amnesty for the former nationalist leaders attracted most back to take part in the political process.

In 1964 the US began its air war over Laos, with strafing and bombing of communist positions on the Plain of Jars. As North Vietnamese infiltration picked up along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, bombing was extended the length of Laos. According to official figures, the US dropped 2,093,100 tons of bombs on 580,944 sorties. The total cost was US$7.2 billion, or US$2 million a day for nine years. No-one knows how many people died, but one-third of the population of 2.1 million became internal refugees.

During the 1960s both the North Vietnamese and the US presence increased exponentially. By 1968 an estimated 40,000 North Vietnamese regular army troops were based in Laos to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open and support some 35,000 Pathet Lao forces. The Royal Lao Army then numbered 60,000 (entirely paid for and equipped by the US), Vang Pao’s forces were half that number (under the direction of the CIA), and Kong Le’s neutralists numbered 10,000. Lao forces on both sides were entirely funded by their foreign backers. For five more years this proxy war dragged on, until the ceasefire of 1973.

The turning point for the war in Vietnam was the 1968 Tet Offensive, which brought home to the American people the realisation that the war was unwinnable by military means, and convinced them of the need for a political solution. The effect in Laos, however, was to intensify both the air war and fighting on the Plain of Jars. When bombing was suspended over North Vietnam, the US Air Force concentrated all its efforts on Laos. The Pathet Lao leadership was forced underground, in the caves of Vieng Xai. Though in much of Laos a ‘tacit agreement’ on spheres of control limited fighting between the two sides, on the Plain of Jars the ground war intensified. Instead of being used in guerrilla operations, units of the ‘secret army’ fought large-scale battles, in which they suffered heavy casualties.

But all the bombing was unable to staunch the flow of North Vietnamese forces down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (or trails). In January 1971 the one attempt by South Vietnamese forces to cut the Trail in southern Laos ended in defeat. The Pathet Lao claimed victory, but North Vietnamese forces did the fighting. Thereafter more of southern Laos fell to the Pathet Lao. By mid-1972, when serious peace moves got underway, some four-fifths of the country was under communist control.

In peace as in war, what happened in Laos depended on what happened in Vietnam. Not until a ceasefire came into effect in Vietnam in January 1973 could the fighting end in Laos. Then the political wrangling began.

Economic improvement was slow in coming, partly because relations with Thailand remained strained. In August 1987 the two countries fought a brief border war over disputed territory. The following year relations were patched up, and with China too. The first elections for a National Assembly were held, and a constitution at last promulgated. Slowly a legal framework was put into place, and by the early 1990s foreign direct investment was picking up and the economy was on the mend.

The economic prosperity of the mid-1990s rested on increased investment and foreign aid, on which Laos remained very dependent. The Lao PDR enjoyed friendly relations with all its neighbours. Relations with Vietnam remained particularly close, but were balanced by much improved relations with China. Relations with Bangkok were bumpy at times, but Thailand was a principal source of foreign direct investment. In 1997 Laos joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

The good times came to end with the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. The collapse of the Thai baht led to inflation of the Lao kip, to which it was largely tied through trading relations. The Lao regime took two lessons from this crisis: one was about the dangers of market capitalism; the other was that its real friends were China and Vietnam, both of which came to its aid with loans and advice.

Like the quiet kid in school who attracts the unwanted attention of bigger & stronger bullies, the Lao people must have been scratching their heads the whole time, wondering what it was all about & what they did to deserve all this….. Why couldn’t everyone just leave them alone & let them quietly get on with their business….?

And now, back to me….

The original Thai visa I got before leaving Australia was only issued for 90 days, but I was assured by the Thai consulate in Sydney that once I was in Thailand I could have it extended to 12 months. I found out a few weeks before my 90 days was up that in fact I could not get this visa extended, & so was advised by Kitt (after he had done much asking around at various government places) that I should apply for a work permit which would be for 12 months, & all would be well. I mentioned this in my last blog entry, but didn’t go into much detail about the ever-increasing amount of documents & many trips to the Labour Office to lodge this application.

At first Kitt told me that all I needed was 2 passport photos (these had to be done a couple of times, because of course there are about 10 different sizes of passport photos here – a different size for every embassy, office & consulate you can think of, & I kept being told to get the wrong size), & my passport. Easy! But, no. This whole work permit thing helped to tip me over the edge, along with the THB3000 cost, which was never part of my plan. But after many trips to the Labour Office (each time being told that we needed a few more documents – so Thai that the Labour Office doesn’t just have a website that lists all the documents you need, that would be too easy), I eventually received my work permit for 12 months. But what about my visa, which was due to expire on 1^st August? Oh, no problem – is easy – just take the work permit & 2 passport photos (!) to the Immigration Office in Mae Sai at the Myanmar border (about 1 and a half hours from Chiang Rai) & they will give me a 12 month visa. WRONG! I went on Thursday 30^th July (as you would if your visa is going to expire on the 1^st of August) & was told (surprise, surprise) that I needed more documents. This is after Kitt has phoned them, as well as the Government Office, and the Labour Office before I went, to make sure I had everything I needed. They assured me that they wouldn’t fine me for overstaying if I go back on Monday 3^rd of August with the extra documents, & can apply for the 12 month visa. Actually, that gave me the weekend to treat all of the girls at the house for head lice, which I discovered when one of the younger girls was lying in my lap on Saturday morning…

So Kitt & I went back there on Monday, had a long interview with the woman in charge of customs, ultimately to be told that we don’t have sufficient documents & that I cannot apply for the visa. So, now I have to pay THB1900 to get a 7 day extension, giving me until Saturday 8^th August before I have to leave the country. Great. This really only gives me 4 days, because by now it’s already Monday afternoon, & all Immigration offices are closed on weekends. I had to leave Thailand to apply for the 12 month visa, & from Chiang Rai, the options are Vientiane in Laos, or Penang in Malaysia. I have to lodge my application before the weekend, so that my brand new 7-day extension on my original visa is still current, so I can submit my work permit along with the application, and all will be roses. So I spend all day Tuesday until 10 o’clock at night trying to find flights (there wasn’t enough time to get a bus anywhere), and at such late notice, it was going to cost a fortune. Finally I found a way to get to Vientiane & back to Chiang Rai that would cost AU$415 & that was going to have to do. But when I went to pay online, the website wouldn’t accept payment. Great.

Wednesday morning, still without a ticket to anywhere, I jump on the bus to Chiang Mai – a 3 hour journey, hoping to make it in time to check in for the flight to Luang Prabang & then the connecting flight to Vientiane. While I’m on the bus, Kitt calls me to say that the phone number I left him for the company with the flights I found doesn’t work, so the only option is to book with the airline directly, which was going to cost an extra AU$100. Great. So he books the flight while I’m en route to Chiang Mai, with the only bus driver in Thailand who likes to drive slowly. Now it’s a race against time – I have to get from the bus station in Chiang Mai to the airport, & I don’t even know how long before the flight they close check-in for international flights…. I tell the songthaw driver to step on it, & arrived at the airport just in time. Of course there’s a drama at check-in because the flight was only just booked & I don’t have a ticket, so I got Kitt on the phone & eventually they sorted it out. An hour later I’m on my way to Laos, with no idea of where I’ll stay or how to get anywhere. I have no kipps (Laos currency) & no idea of what a kipp is even worth. I thought that I’d get online at the airport in Luang Prabang while I was waiting for my flight to Vientiane, but they haven’t even heard of the internet there, let alone got an internet lounge…. So I just tried to wait calmly, & decided that I’d get online at the airport in Vientiane (after all, it is the capital city) to see if any of the hotels I emailed the day before had replied to let me know that they have a room & will pick me up from the airport. WRONG. No internet at Vientiane airport either, & by now it was 8:30 at night. Luckily I had met a very friendly woman from Vientiane on the plane, & while she waited to collect her bags at the luggage carousel, I told her the names of a couple of hotels I’d emailed. She knew one of them & said it was nice, & told a taxi driver where to take me. The currency exchange at the airport was already closed (or maybe it was never open), but praise the Laos – they accept Thai Baht almost everywhere. So I paid with my Baht, with no idea of whether or not I was being ripped off & checked in to the Dragon Lodge. God I needed a drink, so before I even went to my room I sat down at the bar, downed a large Beer Lao & smoked a few cigarettes. There was no one else in the bar, so I tried to strike up a conversation with the 2 guys looking after the place – tricky when they don’t speak English, I don’t speak Laos, & they are quietly getting smashed on Laos whiskey that they’re drinking out of a water bottle…. Next it was a late night trip to the internet café to print the visa support letter from IHF then back to the Dragon Lodge to collapse in my giant bed.

They say things look better in the daylight, but not so with the Dragon Lodge. Maybe it should be called the Dragon Dodge, but not to worry, it’s costing me AU$15/night, so I can’t really complain - accommodation is expensive in Vientiane, & there aren’t that many options to choose from. Anyway, I had to get up early & get to the Thai embassy to wait for it to open at 8:30, along with the hundreds of other people there to do the same thing. My ticket number is 180 – a good score for darts maybe, but not that great if you’re waiting in line to lodge a visa application. They run that machine like clockwork, though, so I got through in only an hour and a half, & spent the time working out kipp vs baht vs AUD, just so I know how much stuff costs here. Guess what? Only to be told that I cannot apply for a 12 month visa (even with my 3000B work permit), that you can only apply for this inside Thailand, & the best they could do was let me apply for another 90 day visa. Great. If I had have known this from the beginning, I never would have gone through all the headache & expense of applying for the work permit, would not have overstayed on my original visa & had to pay for my mini-extension, would not have gone to Chiang Mai, & just would have traveled somewhere cheaply outside of Thailand before my original visa expired & got a new 90 day visa in the first place!!! Of course with all this drama, I’m smoking like it’s my job….at least cigarettes are cheap here…even cheaper than Thailand at 4000k a pack (AU$0.60c). I guess the government hasn’t caught onto the idea of taxing people for the privilege…

Anyway, there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, so I surrendered to the set lunch menu in the gorgeous leafy courtyard of a French restaurant on the big main boulevarde that I found my way onto. Now that I’d worked out how much kipp was worth, I decided that 34 000k (AU$5) was a good price to pay for pan-fried pork fillet in cumin sauce (which was possibly more than all the meat I’ve eaten in the last 3 months put together) and a mango clafoutis. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering towards what I think is the direction of the river, with only a mud map from the Dragon Lodge & my nose to guide me, & trying to get my bearings.

Late in the afternoon I ended up sitting on a deck overlooking the mighty Mekong as the sun went down, enjoying a few well-earned Beer Laos as the sky turned to night & a cool breeze swept away the day’s heat. Beer Lao – the perfect accessory. The GM of the restaurant tried in earnest to pick me up for the entire time I was there. At first I tried to tell myself that his intentions were honorable & a testament to the friendliness of the Laos people, but his undeterred offers to drop me at my hotel, to take me dancing at the nightclub, to take me to the Thai embassy in the morning to collect my passport, to show me the sights of Vientiane, or even organise a tour to Luang Prabang (his home town), lead me to believe otherwise. The decider though, was when he suggested that we could spend the night together as a souvenir for him & for me…

So, a few observations about Vientiane. They like rope lights here – they’re everywhere – at night the whole place is lit up like a low-budget Las Vegas. Very few people here are wearing face masks, in sharp contrast to Chiang Rai where they are de rigeur… I checked out today’s issue of the Vientiane Times & there have been 160 cases of confirmed H1N1 in all of Laos with 1 fatality, so it’s not really a big deal, I guess. They really do try to make the best of what they’ve got in South East Asia…there’s some kind of “landscaping” going on, on the town side of the Mekong, which means that the river bank is one long pile of dirt, flanked by the river on one side & the road on the other. Along this pile of dirt there is an almost never-ending stretch of tables & chairs set up in impromptu “bars & restaurants”, most of which are full from sunset onwards…. I guess people like to be able to see the water, no matter what the rest of the surroundings are like.

The next afternoon (Friday) I went back to the Thai embassy to pick up my passport, with my brand new 90 day visa, then spent some more time wandering around the town. It started to rain, so the best thing for it was to settle into a bar & have some rainy afternoon Beer Laos at the Khop Chai Deu. Of course I want to try as much food here as possible, & I see that they have banana flower salad (my favourite!) on the menu. This turns out to be quite different from the Thai banana flower salad, & is so spicy it nearly pushes me to the edge of my chili tolerance, but I ate it all & sat with my Beer Lao calmly waiting for my head-spinning, eye-watering chili high to subside.

After 3 months in Chiang Rai, I find myself measuring a destination by whether or not there is a McDonalds or Starbucks, & the amount of western tourists it has. A good indicator of how long you’ve been in Asia is when you start judging its bars, restaurants, cafes & internet cafes on the quality (or existence) of its bathroom… Is it worth paying more per hour for internet access if they have: A) a bathroom at all; B) if they do, is it clean? C) do they provide toilet paper? Soap? D) is it a western-style or squat toilet? E) if it’s a western-style toilet, does it flush or do you pour water into the bowl? And F) maybe the holy grail – can you drop your toilet paper (if you have any) into the bowl, or does it go in a bin along with everyone’s who has “gone” before you? OH! And whether or not you consider it acceptable to put ice in your beer!

Vientiane is full of the usual preponderance of western men with the Asian “girlfriends”. It’s got me to thinking: all these men who are either too unattractive, or socially inept, or intimidated by educated women, to have a relationship with a woman in their own country, come to Asia where by money alone they can secure the affections of a woman (or sometimes 2 – maybe for the price of 1, but they’re not the pretty ones…) – for a week or forever – who most likely has little education & will pander to his every whim (Oh! The ego trip!) – where do western women go for the same? Is there such a place?

Vientiane seems much more affluent than Chiang Rai, because of the tourist coin, I imagine. There are lots of fancy cars & four-wheel drives, some fancy shops & cafes, & it seems like the whole place is one giant construction site. The public transport system (tuk tuks) however, is in a state of disrepair & look as thought the last one rolled off the productions line around the same time that I did. Speaking of driving, they drive on the right here (a result of the colonisation by the French, I guess) & it’s quite disconcerting. In Thailand they drive on the left, so even though the traffic is hectic, it’s easy to adapt to because I automatically look to the right first before I cross the road. I have to consciously tell myself to look the other way first here so I don’t get mowed down by one of the many speeding bikes & cars.

It wouldn’t be Asia if there weren’t stray animals all over the place, & Vientiane is no exception. One morning while I was sitting outside enjoying my fabulous French breakfast (more on the food shortly), a pack of dogs started a fight on the footpath right in front of me, with a lone wolf (not really a wolf), which ended up pissing itself & really wrecked the ambience. Later that same day, in a completely different part of town (well ok, a few blocks away – Vientiane isn’t that big) the same loner tried to start something with a dog hanging out at the bar I was at, & didn’t give up until someone got up & gave it a kick & it skulked away.

There are some beautiful old French colonial buildings here, most crumbling but still appealing in that splendour-of-days-gone-by sort of way. And then there’s the Laos National Cultural Hall. Built as a “gift to the people of Laos” by the Chinese government in the late 1990’s, this ostentatious monstrosity hosts occasional cultural events as varied as French cinema, Laos classical dance, and even beauty pageants. The only other “sights” that I’ve seen are the Presidential Palace, & the Patuxai, Vientiane’s most prominent monument, and reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (although VTE’s boasts 4, rather than 2, archways. Built in the 1960’s with US-purchased cement that was supposed to have been used for the construction of the new airport, apparently it’s sometimes called the “vertical runway”.

But the best part of the legacy of the French colonisation, is the food. It took a few days of struggle, but eventually I reminded myself that I’m only human & succumbed to the gluten…tentatively at first, to see what would happen, but when I seemed to have no side effects, I plunged in with complete abandon…. Pastries, sourdough baguettes, toasted ham & cheese sandwich, spectacular French toast for breakfast, a bacon cheeseburger for crying out loud, and it was all sooooooooooooo good. You’ve got to hand it to those French, they know baking. I did give the Asian Laos stuff a go, & had an amazing crispy Mekong fish with tamarind & fried basil for dinner one night at a place called the Full Moon Café. It’s a very cool place, in fact it would be the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon with a book & a few aperitifs, but alas, the next day the rain cleared up & it was back to looking for a cool spot with shade for the afternoon.

The whole time I’ve been in Vientiane, I’ve kept speaking Thai everyone. Not that that’s a very big problem – the most spoken languages here seem to be Lao/French/Thai in almost equal measures, then English, so I get my point across better in Thai than English sometimes (and my restaurant French comes in handy, too), but the point is, I respond in Thai. I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that after 3 months I can speak Thai, but the responses that have become automatic over these past months has become my reflex, & that is weird.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that after a few days of gorging myself on all the French baked goods, my gluten intolerance kicked in with a vengeance, reminding me of who’s boss in this department….I’ll leave you alone, if you leave me alone, or something like that…. Anyway, I was leaving the next day, so figured it was worth it.

For my last night, I moved out of the Dragon Dodge, & checked into a place touting itself as the New Lao Paris Hotel. It cost twice as much as the DD, but breakfast was included & it had free wifi, so just those things alone balanced it out. In the lobby there is a relatively new French restaurant, owned by a French woman from Toulouse (& I think her husband, the chef), who came to Vientiane to open this restaurant. I had been sitting in the lobby for several hours using my laptop (& the included wifi) when I asked to look at the wine list, just out of interest, of course. That was it – they had a chardonnay from Languedoc for about 43,000k (AU$6) - & I was more ready for a glass of wine than I can remember being before. By then she had me hooked & I couldn’t resist the cheese platter (of all imported French cheeses) & another glass of wine. It was magnifique! And all for less than AU$25. By the time I’d finished with my feast & my laptop, it was after midnight & had been a long day, so I climbed the 64 stairs to my room (seriously), looking forward to a shower & a bit of a catch up on BBC World News before bed. Then I discovered that the antenna cable for the TV had been messed with so much that it wouldn’t stay in the TV by itself, so I spent the next 20 minutes trying to fix it. The cable coming out of the wall was so short that if I pulled the TV away from the wall or even turn it slightly to see where the inlet on the TV was to try to insert the cable, the cable wouldn’t reach, & of course there was no light nearby, so I couldn’t see with the TV in its position pushed up against the wall. So there I am flipping open my mobile phone to try to use the light to see the inlet, and at the same time with one hand trying to wrap a bandaid around the cable to attach it to the TV so it wouldn’t fall out. Eventually I had some success; enough to get a fuzzy picture & ok audio, & ventured into the bathroom to take a shower. This was when I discovered that there was no, I mean zero, water pressure coming out of the shower head. Great. So I got dressed & phoned reception. The night manager came up (I bet he doesn’t like getting calls to the rooms 64 stairs up…) & checked it out. “Oh” he said. “I turned machine off already”. Fantastic. “tomorrow ok?” No, tomorrow would not be ok. “oh. Will take 30 minute for machine to work”. Fine, turn on the machine & I’ll watch my fuzzy BBC World until the shower works. Twenty minutes later the phone rings. It’s the night manager, of course, wanting to know if “shower working yet?” No, shower not working yet. Bless him he says to meet him a few floors down & he’ll give me the key to another room to use the shower there, which seemed like my best option, so off I went. At least by the time I eventually got to lie down on my bed, it had great sheets – for the first time since I left Sydney at the end of March, I had 100% cotton sheets to sleep on. At least 1000 thread count, maybe Egyptian cotton, maybe not, but it was heaven. Of course the shower in my room still wasn’t working in the morning, & after several calls to reception (manager not here yet) & an eventual visit from the lady from Housekeeping, an hour later I decided I’d better go down & have breakfast before it finished, & get the shower sorted afterwards.

So then it was back to the airport for my flight to Bangkok & on to Chiang Rai. Arriving in Bangkok my new 90 day visa was stamped & here I am, back in Thailand until 07 November. And then back to the centre, to face all the dramas that had taken place while I was away, & have not yet written about here…. Stay tuned for In The Deep End.

Survivor, Chiang Rai meets The Amazing Race : on assignment from Vientiane, Laos.

fimc — Sun, 9 Aug 2009 14:43:00 GMT

Sunday 09 August

It’s sure been a while since I’ve sat down to do any writing, & as I find myself with an hour to spare while waiting at Luang Prabang airport for my onward flight to Vientiane, now seems like as good a time as any.

The last six weeks have provided many challenges & have tested me in almost every imaginable way. Jeff Probst & his TV crew should get themselves here to film all the drama that goes on….it would make great reality TV. People seem to lose all sense of perspective (myself included) & like you always hear people say on reality TV shows, every little thing gets blown way out of proportion, people overreact, & the bubble we live in, under intense pressure, feels like the whole world.

There have been plenty of “high school moments” with other volunteers (many of whom are on their summer break from university in North America), forming little cliques, engaging in plenty of two-faced bitching, gossip & backstabbing, & generally doing their best to ensure that their hidden agenda (treating the centre like a cheap hostel to base themselves from while having a bit of an Asian getaway); a crash-course in Thai bureaucracy (not recommended) for me, as Kitt helped me to apply for a work permit with the Labour Office outside of town; Visa problems (stay tuned for my next story – The Wild Goose Chase, or In Vientiane Without a Guidebook & Without a Clue); a small nervous breakdown; & a seemingly never-ending bout of illness that did the rounds of almost all the boys a few times over (the girls seem more resilient).

Just as one round of kids were getting better, more would get sick – resulting in endless trips to the hospital and/or medical clinic, just as H1N1 arrived in Chiang Rai. One day we had five boys home from school & took them all to the hospital, one of which, Darid, had been vomiting since mid-morning & was sent straight to the emergency room (not too sure why it’s called the emergency room – it’s really just a waiting area with beds) then shunted on to another building to await the doctor. I waited there with Darid until the doctor came - the hospital was overflowing with sick people, so I asked the doctor if there was any concern for H1N1 & he said no, only seasonal influenza. Next day I find out that H1N1 had indeed arrived, & of course I’d been with sick kids in various medical facilities (with lots of other sick people) for weeks. Some schools were closed for weeks (none of our kids’), because of H1N1. Then I had a small mental breakdown.

A few weeks before all this sickness, the 2 co-directors & I had a chat, as both of them would be leaving in August, & new directors needed to be found. I agreed to take on one of these positions from mid-August and for the remainder of my time here – an additional 3 months. In a coup worthy of the Thai military, Caty managed to secure our friend, Kitt (who owns a travel/tour company in town & has already selflessly done so much for the centre over the past months) as my partner. The plan is for Kitt to look after all the things to do with the schools, doctors, the people who deliver the water, the gas, & all the other folks that we deal with to keep this operation running. We agreed that he would come on board in the middle of July to begin the handover, as would I start to learn all the many, many administrative tasks that I would be responsible for. Kitt is Thai (well, actually from the Karen hilltribe, but who’s splitting hairs…) & while his spoken English is excellent (& almost as good as his sense of humour) his computer & written English skills are about what you would expect. So. That means that I will be doing the administrative work of both directors, & that is quite a lot. So many reports to file every week, appointments to manage, payments to make, as well as looking after all of the centre’s finances. As well as still doing my 4 hours of online work for IHF every day.

After the high-school dramas that were going on with some of the other volunteers, the sickness, the day-to-day busyness, and now all these new things to learn, I was at McLovin in the late afternoon one day, doing my 4 hours of online work for IHF as well as the administrative tasks of one of the co-directors who was away in Indonesia for 10 days, when Kitt called me to tell me that I had to go & get a medical certificate to take with me the following day to the Labour Office. So Thai – just like that – no plans, no warning, just go get a medical certificate. Never mind that every moment of the rest of my day was already accounted for….That was it. I cracked it…cracked up. I felt like there were so many demands on me, so many people wanting things from me, & it was all too much. I couldn’t answer one more question or give any more time, or any more me to anyone else. I felt myself being pushed to my absolute limit & it wasn’t a very nice experience.

Then the inevitable happened & I got sick (& how about the irony?? I’d been to a medical centre the night before to get the certificate to take to the Labour Office to declare that I was in good health. Even better than that, I didn’t even see a doctor or nurse – the receptionist just filled in a form & stamped it!). I had fought off a sore throat & headache 3 or 4 times already, but this time I was KO’d. In the morning I was fine (for the trip – one of many - to the Labour Office), but by the afternoon I felt like rubbish, & took myself off for a lie down. Within half an hour I felt like I was on fire, I had such a high temperature. I was dizzy, couldn’t think straight, my glands were swollen & my throat felt like I’d swallowed razors. As happenchance would have it, Caty was taking a few of the boys to see the doctor, so she took me along. What followed was the most hilarious, and equally alarming, diagnosis imaginable. I described my symptoms to the doctor whereupon he proceeded to unwrap a tongue depressor & asked me to open my mouth. He stuck the stick onto my tongue for no more than 2 seconds & announced “you have pharyngitis”. “I have laryngitis??” I shrieked. I certainly didn’t feel like I had laryngitis… “no”, he said, “pharyngitis - inflammation of the pharynx….It could also be something else, but as these symptoms only started today, we won’t be able to tell the other thing for 4 or 5 days.” Really – this is what he said. So then it was off to the dispensary to pick up my meds & back to the centre to ponder what had just happened. No taking my temperature, or feeling my glands, or taking a blood test, just “pharyngitis”. The barrage of pills I brought home was almost as hysterical. I had been in no condition to ask at the dispensary what any of them were, & there were some to take 3 times a day, some to take twice a day, some before meals, some after meals…. A couple of packets of electrolytes (which I have a huge box of anyway to take once a day to keep hydrated) - so glad I paid for those; some vitamin c tablets – 56mg per tablet which is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike (The RDA is 60 mg, per day - yet this amount will only prevent you from picking up scurvy and a suggested intake of between 200 - 500 mg per day may be the most beneficial for healthy people); & the rest I had to Google to find out what they were. One lot were a combination of an antihistamine & pseudoephedrine (these were the take before bed ones – really – pseudoephedrine before bed!) & I didn’t even have any symptoms that needed an antihistamine or decongestant; the only other ones I could identify turned out to be ibuprofen, for crying out loud. The vitamin c I threw in the bin, the electrolytes I took because they weren’t going to do any harm & I take them anyway; the ibuprofen I put away with the ibuprofen I already had, & the antihistamine/pseudoephedrine I put away for a rainy day. That left 2 other types of tablets that had nothing printed on them (everything gets dispensed in a tiny zip lock bag, not in a box with a name on it), so I figured I’d better take both of them, because one of them had to be an antibiotic (didn’t it?). Of course there was no guarantee that whatever I had (pharyngitis?) would be cured by either of these drugs (which could very well have just been placebos), but what the hey. One was a red & white capsule, & my bet was on that being Amoxil; the other one was a small, almost round, shiny, bright green tablet, which could have been to whiten my skin for all I know. Anyway, after a couple of days in bed & religiously taking my red/white & green pills, my fever & dizziness subsided, but the sore throat remained. Then came the cough. Once the sore throat & hacking cough subsided & I started to feel better physically, I was able to find the clarity to give myself a good talking to, get centred, & find my way back to a good place, emotionally.

Which was lucky, because a week later all hell broke loose again. Big dramas erupted for a couple of reasons - one of these was the length of time I have committed to be the co-director (too short), & the other was the number of days another volunteer had advised that she would be taking off. As volunteers, we are allowed one day off per week, & we have all been told in our induction at the centre that these can either be taken weekly, or saved up & a few days taken at a time. So this volunteer & I had decided to go to Chiang Mai for the weekend, before the 2 current directors left, before 2 other volunteers were to leave, & just after the arrival of a new volunteer. I needed to take a break, she wanted to see Chiang Mai, & the timing couldn’t have been better. But alas, what ensued was a trail of not less than 20 emails back & forth & involving up to half a dozen people, on how volunteers aren’t allowed to take so much time off without them having earned it etc etc… What everyone failed to notice was the amount of time & energy wasted on this crazy discussion about what a volunteer has or hasn’t earned. Again with the perspective...

Anyway, I enjoyed Chiang Mai much more than when I was there last year. Perhaps because I already knew my way around & so was able to spend more time discovering things or something. Anyway, Chiang Mai is fabulous but so big & busy compared to Chiang Rai. Not to mention the tourists! There are so many westerners in Chiang Mai & it’s such a shock to see so many after so few in Chiang Rai. I have to admit that I didn’t really like that. Anyway, a couple of days eating, splashing around in the hotel pool, & shopping (well, wandering around markets) were just what the doctor (not the one who diagnosed pharyngitis) ordered. At the end of the road our hotel was on, is the most fabulous pair of shops full of beautiful jewelry & art. I almost started hyperventilating after looking at the jewelry (like a moth to a flame) for more than an hour….there was so much that I wanted to buy! So the best thing to do was to take myself out of the danger zone & back to the pool. Later on I dragged my fellow volunteer over there to help me with my dilemma (after all, I can neither afford, nor need all these things, and I just went through this whole process of getting rid of almost everything I own before I left Australia, so I am very focused on not acquiring lots of stuff), but she wasn’t much help at all. She just wanted to buy loads of things, too. This must have been the cheapest weekend away ever – AU$12 for the return bus fare, $10 per night for accommodation… food is more expensive than Chiang Rai – more like about $3 or $4 than the $1 we pay at our local caff, but still…..! Three days in this hedonistic shopping & eating place was definitely enough though, as I started to feel the built-in consumer gene getting stronger & stronger. It’s so much easier to not want any things when you live in an orphanage in Chiang Rai!

Amidst all this drama, a wonderful thing happened last month. Some of my very beautiful family & friends coordinated an effort to contribute some money so that I could afford to buy a bicycle to make my daily getting about much easier. With Kitt as my negotiator (he knows everyone in Chiang Rai) I managed to get a brand new bike, with a sticker on it for THB7,400, for the knock-down price of THB5000. This was the price for the factory-standard version, so I had to pay an extra THB200 for a basket (necessary to transport things like laundry, food etc) and THB250 for a kick-stand, but all-in-all a fabulous bargain at AU$220! I can now zip around so much more quickly – to McLovin in 10 mins , into town in 15 mins…. It’s great!

Of course there is an update on the ducks. Once the rain started, we realized that the floor of the little house for the ducks inside the big pen was getting wet, so decided to set it up on some old tires that were lying around. This turned out to be a bigger job than we first thought, because once again, we had to shovel out a ton of mud from underneath where the house had been sitting, and then when we went to lift it, discovered a family of rodents had also decided to call it home….. The ones we saw were tiny, so we didn’t know whether these were baby rats, or if they were small field mice, but they were definitely not welcome. When we really started to have some serious rain a few days later, we quickly found out that the duck pen floods…. & there’s nowhere for the water to drain to….so the entire thing became a muddy, crappy pool, & when the rain stops & the water starts to evaporate with the heat after a few days, the smell was ridiculous. Then one of them got an infected foot which swelled up & it couldn't waddle properly, or stand, or clean itself, or lean over to drink....This had me in a tizz for a week – not only was it inhumane for the ducks (and especially the lame one), it was also a health risk for us, but no one really wanted to know about it…. Eventually Kitt said he would take them away to live in his garden, so away they went & he says they are now happy at their new home & laying plenty of eggs.

As for me – who would have thought that you could put on weight living at an orphanage… in Thailand?? But all the white rice combined with the lack of fruit & veg is taking its toll, & now the kids call me “buffalo” along with continually patting my stomach & saying “baby” & playing with my tuck shop arms. I’m not being too offended – most of the female volunteers get treated to the same….. And now I’m in Laos, once colonized by the French, which means that the place is full of French bread, pastries, cheese…. Mon dieu!

A final word on all the melodrama – what I’ve written about here is really only about half of it… Because this blog could potentially be read by anyone, I don’t want to jeopardise my time here by writing too much detail about certain things which could easily lead to my being kicked out. Volunteers are under constant threat of being told to leave, & the organisation seems (perhaps unintentionally) to cultivate a culture of fear that this could happen at any time for doing the wrong thing. This clashes with my personal philosophy on how to get the best from people, & I don’t respond well to that kind of environment. Especially when volunteers are giving up their time, money & energy to do their best for the children that the Foundation was set up to help in the first place. It does good work; the children it helps are real, & it’s not an easy operation to run, but the environment often feels hostile. I remind myself that the children have no real choice & I’m here for them, so I will keep on from day to day, doing what I can to help.

Free Rides

fimc — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:31:00 GMT

Sunday 28 June

A great and marvelous thing about Chiang Rai is that there is no McDonalds here. It’s one of the only places I’ve ever been to that hasn’t been invaded by the all-pervading golden arches – I think it’s one of the things that helps the place keep its own identity & not be completely sucked into the vortex of Americanism like so much else of the world. There is, of course, a proliferation of 7-11’s, but that’s just convenient for everyone!

The twice-weekly trips to the market keep turning up new discoveries for me – most are delicious, some, not so much…. It’s hard to go past the fruit, which is SO cheap… Mangoes & Papaya 15baht/kg (AU$0. 60); pineapple 10baht for a small one, peeled & sliced, & sold in a plastic bag with a skewer so you don’t get your fingers sticky. I’ve become addicted to giant lychees; about the size of a golf ball, maybe a bit bigger, and are about the biggest and juiciest fruit I’ve ever had – 30baht/kg. But all things end, including fruit seasons, and sadly the mangoes & lychees are on the way out, going by the quality & prices at the market. On the flip side, it looks like dragonfruit are on the way in. And not the kind I’ve had before which are white inside & are kind of boring. Those ones look very appealing but don’t really have any flavour, & I’ve always found them thoroughly disappointing. No, these ones while also pink & dragon-y on the outside, and with zillions of little black edible seeds inside, instead of white flesh are a brilliant pink & have an incredibly delicate smell, nay – perfume – which also translates into its flavour. It’s almost rose-like. Amazing. And did I mention, 10baht/kg? I’ve also become a big fan of durian – the devil fruit despised & feared by many! The ones I’ve tried have almost no aroma, which is what earns durian so many enemies, but the flesh apparently tastes the same as the stinky one. It’s creamy & rich, like a custard or mousse, & best eaten cold – I don’t think it would be all that crash-hot at room temperature (especially when room temperature here is about a million degrees).

Part of the agreement of volunteering at an IHF centre is that we are assigned to a team, depending on our skills and interests, and perform the tasks which keep IHF running. There are loads of teams, such as Media (contacting all types of media to try to get editorial articles/pieces about IHF published/produced), Sponsor Drive (trying to secure sponsors for the kids), Advertising (trying to secure free advertising space to promote IHF) etc. As the organisation is entirely run by volunteers who are located all around the world, most of whom never meet & simply work together online via email, people donate only as much time as they can each week to their task – this might be zero or twenty hours, depending on what you’ve got going on in your own life at the time. At-centre volunteers are required to spend a minimum of 4 hours every day on their task during their time there, as well as complete 8 pre-trip hours before arriving. These requirements are partly why it’s so affordable to volunteer through IHF, as opposed to many other volunteer organisations which charge very high fees which go towards administration costs etc. There were 2 more volunteers supposed to join us at the end of the first week of June, but they hadn’t completed their pre-trip hours and didn’t respond to a bunch of emails requesting various bits of information from them. So anyway, there was all sorts of speculation about whether they were going to just turn up or what, which they basically did, & were turned away because they hadn’t followed the few basic requirements before they got here. So volunteers come, volunteers go…. Although the centre could have done with the money they were to pay, the bonus is that there are 2 less people to find a bed for… Another 2 volunteers have arrived in the meantime & we’re pretty full up right now. We’re approaching our peak turnover time & it’s going to be a bit like a sushi train of volunteers for the next couple of months.

I’m over the ducks. They make pigs look clean. Their pen reeks & needs a lot of maintenance, which it didn’t get for a little while, so they staged a protest & stopped laying eggs & I’m convinced made their pen worse than necessary on purpose. Lucky us, got to spend 2 days shoveling all the stinking mud/crap/soaking straw out of the pen & transferring it down to the vegetable garden. I guess the good news is that they’re gradually starting to lay eggs again, so they must be kind of happy.

There are some funny sights that you see here, most of them involving dogs; dogs that look like 5 different kinds of dog in one; dogs in the basket on the front of scooters; dogs standing on their hind legs in the step-through part of a scooter with their front paws on the handlebars; one day a woman was crossing the road with her poodle in a basket, kind of like a plastic supermarket basket…. I wondered if I’d seen the Thai (much older) Paris Hilton… Poodle in a basket – sounds sort of like chicken in a biscuit….

Quite a few of the children are very creative and are very good at drawing. One of the boys in particular, Darid is an especially talented artist, and his Sponsor pays for him to take art classes from a local artist (who has 16 dogs!!) some Saturdays. Recently a bunch of other boys around his age – about 9 to 13, decided that they wanted to have a go too, so we took a group of them to see if they liked it. It was really nice to watch them try something new, & especially for some of the rowdier ones, to see them be still & focus on practicing what they were being taught. They were mainly just learning a brush technique so there weren’t any masterpieces produced that day, but they did learn how to do bamboo, and a couple of them gave me their work. I’m interested in asking Darid to produce a piece that we can get printed onto t’shirts to sell.

I took my second day off when I’d been here for 6 weeks, & spent most of the day checking out some of the temples around the place. We live very close to one (Wat Doi Phra Baht), so I started there. It’s on a bit of a hill & is in a little bit of disrepair, but I liked it. The grounds are pretty nice & would be a good place to take a book for a quiet read under a shady tree. Next I walked into town (about half an hour) & to Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), the city’s most adored temple, which is stunning. The famous Emerald Buddha statue which is now housed in the Grand Palace in Bangkok was originally revealed here when in 1434 lightening struck the temple stupa which broke apart, exposing the statue inside. Actually carved from jade, it was sent to Bangkok in 1678, and in 1990 Chiang Rai had a replica sculpted from Canadian jade. There is also a beautiful Lanna museum - Chiang Rai was founded in 1262 as the administrative centre of the Lanna Kingdom, a powerful empire for 600 years until it was eventually annexed by Siam. Then it was on to Wat Phra Singha, which was a bit of a let-down after Wat Phra Kaew, but it does have a very impressive set of drums. To be fair, it started raining just as I arrived, so I sat under cover for an hour, passing the time by trying to photograph the circles made by raindrops in the ever-growing puddles that surrounded me, until the subliminal messages I was picking up by sitting inside the walls of something called “Singha” got too much & I decided to head to Coconuts bar for a beer.

It’s funny the places that you sometimes find yourself when you least expect it…. One of our co-directors had their birthday on a Tuesday at the beginning of June, so when the people who take very good care of us at Coconuts were having trouble keeping their eyes open at 1:00am, we headed off to somewhere else, which turned out to be a nightclub called Where Else Disko, and was absolutely cranking when we arrived, until we left not long before 4:00…. We were quite the feature – half a dozen farangs (Thai for foreigner) shaking it on the stage next to the DJ booth. The music was not Western & overall quite bad, but it was lots of fun.

Actually we get quite a lot of attention wherever we go. There aren’t many Western people in Chiang Rai, so we definitely get noticed, and I very much notice the occasional other Westerner that I might see around the place. Mostly the locals are very friendly & make a big deal out of saying hello when you pass them on the street or whatever. This is how amazing this place is : one night at around 8:00pm I was walking back to the centre by myself, and a woman with 2 kids on her scooter pulled over & started talking to me in Thai. I told her that I don’t speak Thai, but she said something to me again, also in Thai, so I repeated that I didn’t understand. She then started motioning for me to get on the bike (so 1 small kid in front of her, one about 12 years old behind her, then me behind that kid, & off we went. She didn’t ask where I was going & I didn’t tell her, but she took me to the bottom of our driveway, & when I got off, she turned around & drove away…. I don’t remember ever seeing her before. The next day, I was once again walking back to the centre & was trying to beat the rain home. Before it rains here there is almost always a big gust of wind, & then down it comes…. I was still 15 minutes away when the gust blew & I quickly started pulling my raincoat out of my bag as sprinkles of rain encouraged me to hurry up… The next thing I knew, another woman (this time on her own) who I recognised but couldn’t figure out where from, pulled over & told me to get on. This one asked me where I was going, & once again I was delivered to the bottom of our driveway, just as the rain started to come down…. Amazing.

However, the best ride back to the centre that I’ve had was with the ice cream guy. Kate & I had just left McLovin & were headed home (a 35 minute walk), when our ice cream man drove past. Of course he gave us a wave, but he also slowed down & questioned with a gesture if we were on our way to where we live. We nodded, yes, & he stopped & told us to get on! So, me on the back of his scooter & Kate sitting on the ice cream freezer, we put all the bogans who cruise up & down Bondi Rd on Saturday nights to shame, as we drove the route that we walk every day, past all the local shops, internet cafes, food market – our entire community. All the locals thought it was a great laugh, & everyone was waving at us all along the way, as though we were part of some whacky cavalcade. It was quite the entrance when we arrived at the centre – everyone was in hysterics & no one could really believe that we got a ride with the ice cream man.

We’ve got a ridiculous number of boys in the wars at the moment. Two of them have recurring ear infections and are almost always on medication. One is waiting to get surgery to have his ear drum rebuilt or something like that, but can’t until he’s got no infection. The other one had surgery this month to remove his adenoids; we’ve got the one with the pin in his hand from punching his friend in the head & is still in bandages; there’s been a spate of throat infections & head colds, but that seems to have stayed fairly contained; and the latest is one of the boys put a hoe through his foot when he was doing a bit of spontaneous landscaping next door – barefooted of course, so that needed a few stitches…. I went along to the hospital where eardrum boy is spending 4 days to be on a drip every 6 hours, and don’t plan to spend anytime there myself. It was the first time I’ve been inside a Thai hospital & it’s no Chelsea & Westminster….

Another very left-field thing happened to me walking to McLovin in the last week of June… A guy pulled his truck over, jumped out & asked me if I speak Thai. I said no, so he started talking to me in English, saying that he has been looking for someone to help his 12 year old daughter with her English. I told him I’m not a teacher, & he said he’s not looking for a teacher, she learns English at school, but he wants someone to speak with her so she can practice her conversational skills. He asked me how long I’ll be in Chiang Rai & if I’d be interested, & what I’d charge. I was a bit in shock, so I asked him to phone me the following day so I could think about it. His name is Toom and he teaches art & music to private students at his home studio. Anyway, long story short, I went to meet him a couple of days later & now I have a job – a paying one. It’s not going to make me rich at 250 baht ($10) for one hour each week, but it’ll let me have a night out once a week, so that suits me. Toom charges 200 baht an hour for his lessons, & the sponsor of one of our girls pays 300 baht/hr for her to have piano lessons, so in between seemed fair enough. His daughter’s name is Quan (have to check spelling) & it was her birthday the day after Toom & I had our meeting, & I was invited to her party, which I went to for a little while. She’s very sweet & I’m looking forward to this little side venture.

Time continues to go by very quickly here. I guess it’s because I’m always so busy, but the weekends fly by, then before I know it we’re off to the market on Monday morning… next thing it’s Friday & market day again, & the kids are home for the weekend…. I can’t imagine spending only 1 month here – it would be over before you really knew you were here… I’m enjoying getting to know Chiang Rai & some of the wonderful people who live here, even if it is ridiculously hot.

Riding by the firefly light

fimc — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:14:00 GMT

Friday 12 June

So I’ve resorted to trimming my own fringe with a pair of nail scissors. The results are questionable, but considering the overall state of my hair in this humidity, my fringe is the least of my appearance concerns.

Our 3 new volunteers arrived last week & it’s good to have some extra hands around the place. Including the 2 co-directors, we’ve now got 3 Australians, 2 Canadians, 2 Americans, & 1 from the Philippines. Two more arriving tomorrow – not sure where they’re from. Some of the kids’ sponsors sometimes come to visit, & a woman from the U.S. who sponsors about 5 or 6 of them also arrived last week. She comes about every 3 months & spends a few weeks, bringing lots of clothes, toys & games, and contributing more money to the needs of the kids she supports, on top of the sponsorship payments she already makes. She’s very cool & all the kids love her.

All the kids did not love me for a few days… A few people kept asking me to do some cooking, so I made dinner 3 or 4 times, which didn’t go down well with the kids, who’ve got some sort of issue with white people being in the kitchen & became quite hostile towards me each time I cooked, and carried it on for days afterwards. It wasn’t very pleasant, & it isn’t the first time this has happened with a volunteer. The easy solution to that is to stay out of the kitchen, so that was the end of that.

Last week I took a day off – my first in 4 weeks! We get 1 day off a week, & can either take them or save them up. I hadn’t really wanted or needed a day off until then, but had the urge to get out & about in Chiang Rai to see & do some stuff. First stop was the White Temple, which is only a 15 minute drive from town & was AWESOME. Construction started in 1998 & is the design of a controversial local artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, who has also painted incredible murals on the internal walls of the temple which are still being completed. There is a monk inside the temple, sitting on a little platform at one end, meditating, & other than noticing that he was there & looked quite peaceful, I didn’t really take much notice of him, mostly because it seems rude to gawk… But now I’m wishing that I paid more attention, because rumour has it that he’s a wax dummy & they have them in temples all over the place. Outrageous! There was much debate at Barry’s on Saturday night over whether this is true or not, but I’m yet to get to the bottom of it.

After the White Temple I had a few things to find in the day market, then I signed myself up for a massage to reverse some of the cycling/gardening/driveway relocation work of the past 4 weeks. It was a good one, which would have best been followed up with a dip in the ocean & a few drinks in the shade and a cool sea breeze, but alas this was not to be & instead it was back out into the baking Chiang Rai afternoon for me.

The biggest challenge for me to deal with since I arrived is dealing with the difference between Western hygiene standards & those practiced here at the centre. On a personal level it’s pretty good – all the kids are made to shower & brush their teeth every day (sometimes difficult to enforce with only a couple of kids in the house I grew up in!), but in terms of the house, especially the kitchen, it’s really not that great. From what I can work out, this is down to a few things; with the housemothers being hilltribe (and actually we still only have one housemother, & it’s far too much for one person to do), they have come from the villages where they do things differently to how we do them in our nice shiny cities. They don’t have refrigerators, or plumbing, or any of the conveniences or education about hygiene that we have, so it’s a constant battle to try to put any basic systems into practice. And sometimes it happens for a few days or a week, and then it falls by the wayside…. The other main factor, as always, is money. There just isn’t any money to have a fund that flows constantly to replace cleaning equipment or products; to fix things that break; to install hot water for the kitchen; or most alarmingly, an outfall for the open drain that runs through the kitchen & straight off the back walkway & lands on the ground right next to the house. This runoff contains everything that would normally go down a sink, and much, much more. Chicken & pork bones; fish heads, tails, guts; mango seeds; cooked rice; vegetable scraps….. And then it sits, festering in the roasting sun & humidity, stinking up a storm. Not to mention the rats & cockroaches that must love it…. From the moment I arrived here I wanted to do something about it, & when Kit (a local guy who runs a tour company & does loads for us) was here having a look at the leaking roof, I asked him to take a look at it with me. I explained my idea to install a pipe, 4 or 5 meters long, off the drain & out into the field, & asked how much. At 1500 baht including labour, I couldn’t resist, so told him to go ahead & by the next day I had funded my first project. It’s made such a difference, & even though it’s all still getting dumped in the field, at least it’s a few meters away & the smell, nay, stench, is that much further away. I've uploaded some "before" photos & will take an "after" photo soon.

But for every yin there’s a little bit of yang, & the sad news is that the 2 girls who left the centre & still haven’t returned, won’t be coming back. There was a phone conversation that revealed that one of them (who’s role model is her older prostitute sister) has been un-enrolled from school, and Donna the sponsor went to visit the other girl in her village to see if she could convince her to come back, but was told that she, too has been un-enrolled and that she just wants to stay in the village and get married – she’s 14. So, you just do what you can, & remember that that’s all you can do.

One of our most accident-prone boys broke a bone in his hand, punching his friend in the head at school in a play fight…. He had to spend 2 nights in hospital & have an operation to set the bone in place, because it was snapped in two, with one bit pushed up underneath the other bit. This meant that Nabee the house mother spent one night there with him, which meant that there would be no one to cook breakfast the next morning. I said I would do it, & some of the boys volunteered to help, which was entirely necessary because none of us even know how much rice or water to put in the cooker…. Thankfully that went off without a hitch & everyone seemed happy enough.

I still can’t get over the difference in the kids who went back to their villages, but came back to the centre. Especially the girls, who are starting to get really affectionate with me & just seem like completely different children to the ones who were punching, kicking & biting us on that terrible day…. One of them even gave me a comedy massage one night. She’s a tiny little girl but is really strong, & apparently is really good at Thai massage. A few of them are, but I’m yet to get a proper one from them. So anyway, this massage I got was hilarious – it was like she was on fast forward, flipping me over, bending my legs all over the place, flapping my arms… it was fun & a good bonding experience, I think.

There are loads of fireflies around where we live & they are super cool! I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before so I’m a bit fascinated by them. The first time I saw one was in my bedroom one night when I was going to sleep – I turned the light off then when I got into bed I noticed a really bright, tiny light on the ceiling….then it started moving around the room & for a moment I wondered if there had been some funny mushrooms in my dinner…but then I realised that it must have been a firefly. After that I started noticing them around the place at night, especially when I’m walking or cycling down our road, which doesn’t have many streetlights, & the fireflies are everywhere. I even made a complete arse of myself one night when a few of us were walking to Barry’s & I looked across the road & saw a bunch of tiny lights drifting across the sky & said something like “hey look! There’s a pack of fireflies!”….and then I heard the noise….it was a plane…..

A very exciting event this week – we got some ducks. 25 of them. Volunteers have tried in the past to keep chickens to have a constant supply of eggs for the house (we go through about 240 each week), but those efforts have failed – the first time because a dog got into the pen & killed them; and the second time because the chickens broke their necks doing something or other. Anyway, now there are quite strict rules in place with regard to keeping chickens - something to do with bird flu, I think, & you have to have some sort of licence or permit or something. But the rules aren’t so tight for ducks, so there you go. They started laying eggs right away, & I think we’re getting around 10-15 per day. They’re really funny to watch – whenever anyone goes anywhere near the pen, they all waddle over to the corner furthest from the gate, quacking away & get into a close huddle, then are really quiet – like they think they’re hiding & we can’t see them. It keeps me amused, anyway. Funny what keeps you entertained when you have no TV.

By the way, the baby bird didn’t make it….

Time flies when you're having fun

fimc — Mon, 1 Jun 2009 07:14:00 GMT

Monday 01 June

I can’t believe I’ve been here 4 weeks already! The weather went back to being really hot & didn’t rain for over a week…The average daily temperature ranges from a low of 25 to a maximum around 35 degrees Celsius. The humidity feels like about a thousand percent, although I realise that’s not actually possible…. I am soaked from the moment I get dressed in the morning, until I have a cold shower before I go to bed. And ankles? What ankles? There are cankles where my ankles used to be, & the only shoes that fit me are my Havianas & Crocs. Even my toes are swollen.

In the midst of all this heat, we’ve been busy bees; painting the inside & outside of our new volunteer house, now that Pern has moved onto the campus of her university; reconstructing the gravel driveway which literally washed away down onto the road during the big storms recently. This we managed with 2 garden hoes (there is no shovel, let alone a backhoe, which would have been the best tool for the job), 2 plastic baskets (through which the dirt sifted in steady streams down our sweaty legs as we hauled them up the driveway), and a bucket. This is no place for anyone worried about a broken fingernail or two. And of course there’s the daily trek to use the internet to complete the work we have been assigned to do for IHF. It’s about a twenty minute walk to the closest internet café, which is cheap (10THB/hour) but is packed full of gamers for most of the day, whose video cards use up all the bandwidth so it takes forever to open an email, and half the keyboards have keys that don’t work because they are constantly getting hammered as a “fire” key or some such gaming thing…. So instead I prefer to go to the McLovin Room, another 5 minutes walk, but has free wifi & good coffee (& great air conditioning). Whenever I can I’ve been trying to borrow a bicycle that belongs to someone else here at the centre, which makes the trip much quicker, especially as I have my laptop in tow. It didn’t take me long to remember that it’s about 2 years since I last took a spin class; my legs were complaining on the second day in a row that I cycled to McLovin - & it’s mostly flat road with one very small hill…. fitness is clearly not my strong point at the moment. I’d really like to buy a bike to give me a bit more independence & am trying to work out if I can afford one. Anyway, walk or cycle, I’m completely drenched in sweat with hair frizz to rival Carla from Cheers by the time I get there & slip into the fabulously cool (in both senses) café. And this is after more likely than not being chased by at best one, at worst - various packs of dogs who live along the way. Even the IHF house has a dog, Diniel, who is a very good guard dog, and Caty has adopted a very cute white puppy that she rescued from being trapped in traffic a week or so ago. There’s also plenty of hoeing to do (in the agricultural sense) in the vegetable garden, as the recent downpours have given rise to a riot of weeds.

The great news of the past week is firstly that 3 more of the kids that left were brought back to the house by people from their villages. There was a big meeting with those kids, their tribal elders & the house directors, to try to make them understand what opportunities they are being given by living here, & that they have to go to school & follow the house rules. Any more ditching school means no more chances for them, but hopefully it won’t come to that. The second great news is that Caty’s uncle came to visit from the U.S. & immediately turned into an amazing benefactor. Not only is he going to pay the shortfall in the school fees for this year, he has also bought a brand new family-sized refrigerator for the house. This was needed so badly – there are 2 small ancient fridges in the kitchen, neither of which work properly or fit very much in them, so the whole refrigeration thing hasn’t really been happening…. God only knows how everyone doesn’t constantly have food poisoning.

I’ve been finding some brilliant food in the markets – lots of coconut custard & jelly-type things; fresh (well, I don’t know how fresh they are, but the non-fried type) spring rolls, & all manner of snack-ie type things. Not that I really know what most of them are, but I’ll give most things a go. They seem to be big on frying things in Chiang Rai, so a lot of the street food is pretty same same, so I think it’s a matter of discovering certain things at certain places & remembering where they are. I did see a mobile popsicle cart the other day when we were driving through town, & I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for another one of them – the popsicles were unwrapped & looked like frozen cubes of ice cream on a stick, in many different flavours – I’m all about cold things at the moment…like the frozen coconut shake I had the other day – heaven! I can’t really stress enough how freakin’ hot it is here….

The rain eventually came back & has cooled things down a bit again. The weather here is so intense. When it doesn’t rain for days at a time, we wish that it would, and then when it comes it rains so much that we wish for it to stop….and repeat…. The upshot of the rain we’ve had over the past 24 hours is that the driveway has again washed away onto the road, even worse than before, so I guess it’s back to the hoeing…

The kids that left have now been back for a week, & the change in their demeanor is incredible. Where before they were angry & hostile, they’re now friendly & happy, & have actually stayed in school all week. It’s so good to see the change in them, & now we just hope that the other 2 will come back as well.

This week the influx of new volunteers starts, with 2 arriving tomorrow & another 1 on Tuesday. In a few weeks there’s going to be about 10 of us for about a week and a half – that should be interesting…. Male volunteers are in short supply – we’ve got one at the moment and another one arriving in about 3 weeks, and there is much anticipation about how “handy” he’ll be. There are a lot of man jobs that need doing, but no tools or know-how amongst the women folk…. I’ve suggested that IHF starts a volunteer recruitment drive with tradie organisations & publications – it would be so helpful to have the occasional sparkie, plumber, or builder on the scene.

Thanks to everyone who’s left a comment on these ramblings – there always seems to be something going on, or curious thing to document, & I’m glad others are finding it interesting to read. I’ve got to start taking photos, which isn’t something I’m ever very good at remembering to do, but I’ll make it a priority to try!

Is that a gecko in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

fimc — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:04:00 GMT

Sunday 24 May

The kids love playing the games on our mobile phones. They don’t have any Gameboys or anything like that, but are pretty happy playing a few rounds of Golf Tour on my little flip phone. It’s amazing how quickly they work out how to find the games on a volunteer’s phone, or how to use our cameras, even though they can’t read English… I can’t even work out how to use my little happy snap camera properly, & the youngest kids here get hold of an SLR camera that they’ve never seen before & are clicking away like David Bailey before you can say “cheese!”

Last Saturday one of our youngest girls fell out of a mango tree & split her head open, which necessitated a trip to hospital for stitches. Hospital or doctor visits are quite a regular occurrence here, as you would expect with 29 children in the house. Two of 12/13 year old boys have recurring ear infections that need operations, & someone is always getting some kind of injury or malady.

We don’t get TV reception at the house, & even if we did we couldn’t afford satellite TV, and the TV is right outside the kids’ rooms, so we can’t use it after they’ve gone to bed, and they’re not allowed to turn it on on school nights at all, so our viewing entertainment comes in the form of DVD’s watched on a laptop while squished onto beds in our rooms. Being quite behind with such things, I hadn’t ever seen Gossip Girl before coming here, but one of our co-directors has season 1 & 2 on DVD so we’ve been watching that and now, sadly, I’m a Gossip Girl devotee. The alternative to watching on a laptop is the polar extreme of going to a place called Barry’s, run by an American guy called Barry, who I’m told makes the best burgers around, and has a giant screen TV. Barry lets us come down at night & bring DVD’s (currently Gossip Girl), eat & drink not very much, & even drives us back to the house sometimes. Barry is a legend, loved by all volunteers who come here, & has a 3 month old son called Barry Jnr.

Last Sunday we had the mother of all storms. There’s been a storm most afternoons around 5:00 o’clock, with plenty of thunder & sheet lightening, and I thought the storm we had last Saturday night was wild, but it was nothing compared to what hit us the next night. Thunder that rolled for minutes non-stop, punctuated with the occasional huge crack, but this was hours after it had passed right over the top of us. At the peak of the storm, the roof over the common room was leaking so I was walking over to the laundry area to get some mats to put on the floor, when there was a massive crack of thunder right overhead with a simultaneous flash of lightening. The ear-splitting volume of the thunder made me jump, but because there aren’t any walls on the common parts of the house, & therefore open to the weather, the lightening seemed like it was inside, & Kate, who was watching me walk across the room, thought that I had been struck. Our hearts were all beating at slightly accelerated levels for a while after that. The rain doesn’t seem to affect the ants or geckos – they just carry on, business as usual.

Anyway, this was all following a very intense experience I had at dinner that night. Because the food budget is quite small, and because Nabee’s cooking for so many people every day, the meals aren’t really what you would describe as culinary masterpieces. She does what she can, but the food isn’t that exciting – boiled cauliflower with a few bits of pork on rice is a fairly standard meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner. To spice things up a bit, there is usually a course paste made each day from small green chilies & a few other bits & pieces. I’m a big fan of chili, & have been adding it liberally to most of my meals. On this particular night there was the side of green chili paste, a stringy/viney green vegetable of some sort, also with loads of ground green chilies, and a bland pad Thai onto which I sprinkled some ground dried red chili. Dinner is early – usually around 5:00 o’clock, & it either hadn’t rained yet that day, or not for a few hours when it was time to eat, so it was really hot. I sat down to eat my extravagantly-spiced dinner & by the time I was half way through it, even my elbows & tops of my feet were sweating; partly because of the air temperature & partly because of the ridiculous amount of chili I was consuming. By the time I was nearly finished I started having head spins & an almost out-of-body experience that I can only describe as a chili high. I don’t know if this is a real thing that exists, but there was definitely something very unusual happening; not altogether unpleasant….. Then the boys found another scorpion to kill & chase us around with. Because of all the rain, our back field & the bushland in our neighbourhood has become like a Glastonbury for frogs. I have never heard such a racket. Walking back from the internet café one day, this one particularly low-lying spot must have been absolutely teeming with frogs (sorry, Ricki) – the noise was unbelievable. The night of the mother of all storms didn’t end with the scorpion…. The noise from the back field which must have been full of frogs was deafening. It was a pretty eventful Sunday night….

A few of the primary school children have been wagging school. They only went back from their summer holidays just over a week ago, but they were sneaking home after only a couple of days. They leave around 7:00am but classes don’t start until 8:30, so as long as they leave before their teacher knows they’re there, no one knows the difference. Except that they come back to the house & try to sneak into their rooms without any of us seeing them. The second time this happened in less than a week, they were in big trouble with Caty & had private discussions with her so she could make sure they understood the seriousness of what they were doing, but this didn’t deter them from doing the same thing the very next day. This turned into a terrible day for everyone. On this day (last Tuesday) there were 6 of them, & their plan is that they come home & get to hang out, just like it’s still the holidays. Instead we set up a room for them with some beds but no toys, books or anything fun & locked them in. Disaster. They went wild, kicking the door open & breaking the lock, continually trying to escape while we tried to keep them from running off away from the house. They screamed & shouted at us, tried to punch & kick us, charged at us, en masse to try to knock us out of the way….it was horrible. Eventually they got away from us & ran off, not coming back until much later that night. So then it was explained to them again why they have to go to school & that part of the opportunity to live here is the chance to get an education, as well as live in a safe & loving environment where as many as possible of their needs are met. Then they were asked if they want to live here & they all said no. They’re so young to be making such a big decision – 10-12, but the fact is that they each have sponsors who pay for them to go to school, so not going just isn’t acceptable, nor fair to the other kids who follow the rules. So the next morning they packed up & were taken back to their villages. It was heartbreaking, especially for Caty who has been part of their lives for a year & a half, but it’s clear that they physically can’t be made to stay here; they’re not prisoners, so we had to let them go.

After that terrible day we really needed a drink, so a few of us ventured into town in the pouring rain to an IHF volunteer favourite – Coconuts Bar – a very cool little place owned by an English bloke called Kevin, & frequented by all sorts of eccentric folk. Kevin had just started a Coconuts membership program that day – free to join & immediate benefits of 10% discount your bill, so of course we all signed up, so I am now a card-carrying Coconuts member.

The next day (Wednesday), I had my first opportunity to go into town to have a wander about, check things out properly & get my bearings. Chiang Rai is a great town, although the air pollution is quite bad. One of the reasons I had to go into town was to hunt down a particular bank’s ATM to withdraw some cash. The Thai banks have just started charging a 150 baht fee (AU$6) for every “inter-region” transaction, so as well as paying my bank in Australia $3.50 for every withdrawal, the Thais are going to take a slice as well. I’d done some online research about this last week to see if all the banks were on the bandwagon, & I found a few expat/traveler forums that named a few that weren’t charging at the moment. Two of the three on my list had joined this band of highway robbers, so I had one more to check out & after trawling a few blocks I found the yellow ATM I was looking for (all the banks are a different colour) & success! Fingers crossed that the yellow one remains fee-free.

On Thursday, the day after taking the truants back to their villages, one of the girls came back with her mother. Not all of the children here are orphans; like this one who has a mother, brothers & sisters, but her mother literally cannot afford to feed or clothe her. I don’t know what would happen to her if she didn’t have the opportunity to live her, but suffice to say that one of the main reasons this centre was set up was to help to alleviate the massive problem of children who come from terrible poverty, being sold into sex slavery. The house feels a bit empty with 5 kids gone, but it’s a great start to have one of our wayward wards back.

www.ihfonline.org

Week 2

fimc — Sat, 16 May 2009 05:20:00 GMT

Wednesday 13 May

The boys have a baby bird. I'm not sure where it came from, but I saw a couple of them feeding it in its nest a few days ago, which was by then on the ground. I think the nest has now been abandonded all together, & it now lives in their room. I don't know how long it'll be before its poor little heart just can't take anymore... I was reminded just before coming to Thailand of the story of a baby magpie that we adopted when we were kids. Its mother had pushed it out of its nest so we took it home & fed & looked after it for maybe a couple of weeks, until my brothers were fighting over who was going to feed it one day, both of them had a hold on the poor little thing, tugging backwards & forwards. That was the end of that pet... So anyway, this bird here, not much bigger than a golf ball & I'm guessing not really ready to fly, gets thrown high up into the air & left to give flapping its little wings its best shot before it either thuds to the ground, or if its lucky manages to get its feet around a branch or something on the way down. They feed it with soft rice, or yesterday with little bits of banana on a skewer.

Yesterday I discovered that we have a kaffir lime tree growing in the yard. Tres excitement! I tore a few leaves up & threw them into the cauliflower in the wok that seems to be a favourite of Nabee's to cook (not a favourite of mine to eat) & it helped a lot. We also had some uni students come after the kids got home from school, to help them with their homework, & they are going to get really involved in helping the kids to study, learn English & Thai (they all speak their native hilltribe language, & pretty good Thai, but it's not great). Four of them came yesterday & they're really enthusiastic about getting involved. There's no money to pay them but they are happy just to help. What a lot of people don't realise, is that unlike most developed countries, school here is not free. Actually, when Caty met with the school yesterday morning to enrol a couple of kids, she was given the new fees for this semester. It's not good news - last semester cost around 20 000Baht, but for some reason this semester will cost 55 000Baht for all the primary school kids, & IHF doesn't have it. I'm not sure what will happen. The kids' sponsor money is US$10/month, but doesn't cover all the costs. For example, the primary school changes its uniform requirements every year; as of this new school year, there is, in addition to the everyday uniform, & the girl & boy scouts uniform that they have to wear on Wednesdays, there is now a new Friday uniform.... It's impossible to keep up & to cover the costs.

I also found out yesterday that the hilltribe people, as indigineous people are not "recognised" as Thai citizens. That means they can't get proper ID, won't ever be able to get a passport, or just enjoy what you take for granted as being a citizen of the country you were at least born in. There is a lot of class-ism here, & the hilltribe people are about at the bottom of the ladder, which is why these kids need so much help, just to get the same opportunities that everyone else has.

Anyway, the clouds have arrived, & although I'm not sure if they're here to stay, it's sure a relief to have the temperature drop a bit, even if it's just temporary...

Thursday 14 May

Yesterday a couple of volunteers who’ve been away on a stint in Laos returned, so the family is growing again. One of them brought back season 2 of Gossip Girl, so I watched a couple of episodes with them & ate some brilliant peanut brittle from the shop down the road. This morning a new volunteer arrived & while she got the grand tour, I had a handover on the vegetable garden from one of the returned-from-Laos people, so now I’ve got the lowdown on that. There’s corn, which is doing quite well, beans, which are faltering, but a couple looking promising, cauliflower; not looking so good, carrots which are so-so, & pumpkin which is growing of its own accord due to the amount of pumpkin seeds that get thrown in with the kitchen scraps. There are some papaya trees which have got a few good looking fruit on them, but the trick is to keep the kids away from them long enough for them to get ripe so they can be eaten that way. The kids are forever bringing home green mangoes to eat that they’ve picked from around the place, & apparently they prefer their papaya that way too. I’m all for a bit of green papaya salad (Som Tam – they do a great one at the small market down the road for 25B), & have discovered that green mango is really good also, but a bit of ripe fruit now & then never hurt anyone….

Kat, the new volunteer & I were invited to play cards with a few of the kids this afternoon. It was a bit challenging (because they don’t speak English) trying to figure out what the rules & object of the game were, but we got there in the end & it was fun. While Kat & I were having our butts kicked at cards, one of our daredevil boys found a scorpion to kill. Nice.

Anyway, I think the rainy season is here. It’s pretty much always cloudy now, which is good because it’s not so hot, but still ridiculously humid, which has a less-than-amusing effect on my hair, & is prone to dumping phenomenal amounts of rain over periods lasting from 15 minutes to a few hours. Everything is damp, laundry won’t dry even hanging inside with a fan on it for 2 days, & my sheets feel less than crisp when I get into bed at night.

Some bugs, perhaps heralding the arrival of the monsoon, have appeared in biblical plague proportions. They are like giant flying ants (of course, more ants!) & are everywhere as soon as it gets dark, but apparently only come out about 4 nights per year. Love wildlife….

Friday 15 May

It turns out that we do two trips to the market each week; Monday & Friday, so off we went at 7:00am to drop some kids at school (it was raining & they didn’t want to walk) then to get the food. I found a new snack – it’s like a firm jelly, I think made from tapioca & coconut milk, cut into little squares. You get about 10 or 12 pieces for 10B, sprinkled with freshly grated coconut & wrapped up in a banana leaf – totally awesome!

We did some jobs around the house for a few hours when we got back, then Kat & I walked down to a café about 25mins away which has free wifi, air-conditioning, great coffee, tea & homemade cakes & desserts. It’s very cool & is called the Lovin Room, which in the spirit of the movie Superbad, I’m calling the McLovin Room, of course.

It was Caty’s (co-director) birthday so we went to a Japanese place in town for dinner, which was pretty good (& 300B each, & we had sake, beer, tonnes of food…), then for a quick look at the night markets which weren’t very busy because it keeps raining on & off. On the way home, all along the roads, people were out with torches catching the flying ants. We knew that this was what they were doing, because before we headed back to the house we spoke to one of the kids on the phone & they told us that they were catching & frying the very same bugs…. to eat. So we came home to a late night snack of fried bugs, some cooked with soy sauce, some just fried plain with salt. I have to admit that they were pretty good – just a crunchy, salty snack, a bit like popcorn (but instead of the little kernally bits that gets stuck in your teeth, it’s wings….) It turns out that the reason so many people were out catching them, apart from eating them themselves, is that they sell for 1000B/kg (possibly because they only come out 4 times a year). They’re pretty small & don’t weigh much, so I can’t even begin to imagine how many you’d need for a kilo, but it would be a lot.

In the beginning...

fimc — Fri, 8 May 2009 04:41:00 GMT

Tuesday 05 May 2009

The first day of my new life in Thailand seemed best spent doing what is done best here - kick the day off with a fruit shake (mango today, just because it's the most obvious), a wander, late breakfast, more wandering, a fantastic massage for 180THB (about AU$7), then lunch with the Bangkok Post & a couple of large Singhas in a shady spot watching Bangkok go by... It's struck me that I live here now, at least for a while, & that is a fabulous & exciting idea. Despite the hippies, wannabe's & the wide-eyed travel virgins, it's a place where people can "just be", & that is a wonderous thing.

My trusty Nancy Chandler's map of Bangkok earned it's weight in gold when I took her advice & tried out the Lotash Seed restaurant on Rambutri (in Banglamphu where I stay - near Khao San Rd but it's amazing what a difference one street away can make...) - I had the most incredible banana flower salad - worth a trip to Bangkok in itself - & chatted to a couple from Hong Kong who were on their way south to attend a ceremony they'd been invited to by a monk they know. Then a visit to a little bar I know where they sell Grey Goose vodka for 120THB (about AU$5) & availed myself of a couple to celebrate. I made friends with an old Thai hippie called Jieb, who says he's from Samui (he has the letters tattooed onto the knuckles of his left hand) but is in Bangkok looking after his sick mama. He reckons he owns a bar on Samui, but when I tried to find out where, he kept telling me different directions, so I think that might be a little fantasy, or some sort of acid flashback from the '70's.... His English is terrible, so I didn't understand half of what he was saying, but worked out that now he makes & sells jewellry for a living while he's in Bangkok, & insisted on showing me his bead belly chain....yikes! He gave me a gift of a toe ring which had definitely seen better days. He rolled a cigarette for me (no filter & wrapped in dried coconut leaf (?) No adhesive, very fibrous & not anything I think I'll try again any time soon.

Wednesday 06 May 2009

After the fastest journey ever to Bangkok airport, the driver with a Michael Schumacher complex fanging down the highway at 140kph until I asked him to ease off the gas a little, I actually made it in one piece, checked in & waited for the rest of the day to happen.

As the plane begins its descent into Chiang Rai, the lush green of the plain as it extends to the mountains in the nearby north isn’t the only thing I notice… my palms are sweaty & I’m trying to envisage the next couple of hours – meeting my greeter at the airport, and arriving at the orphanage – what will it be like? I’m expecting Juan, but it’s Caty who meets me, & I find out on the short drive that after arriving as a volunteer for a month, she’s now been at the IHF home here for a year and a half, now as co-director.

We turn into the gravel driveway at the end of the road & I still don’t know what to expect… The children are still on their summer holidays, so all 28 of them are there when we arrive. Caty tells them my name & there’s a big shout of “hello, Fiona!” before they’re far more interested in the fans & other supplies Caty has picked up on her trip to town, & rush off to install them in their rooms. After three years at this home, the kids are pretty used to volunteers coming & going, & a bit over the transience of it all.

It’s stinking hot, & while Caty was out, Juan has told the kids he’ll take them swimming when we get back. So after a super quick look around it’s all in to the truck (a covered long-wheel base ute) & down the road to the local pool. Not all of the kids have a swimming costume, so Caty hires some at the pool & while the boys are quick to jump into the water, the girls are overcome by modesty & take a while to creep out of the change rooms in their very cute swimming dresses. Because they’re hilltribe, the kids have all spent their first years on rivers, so are all good swimmers.

Afterwards it’s back to the house for the nightly (non-school day) routine – dinner, showers, dvd, bed. Juan & I go to the Big C shopping centre so I can pick up a few things, and by the time I take a shower it’s still baking hot when I drop into my rock-hard bed at around 10 o’clock.

Thursday 07 May

Caty had told the kids yesterday that she would take them fishing this morning, so when I got up at 6:30, some of them were already waiting in the back of the truck, ready to go…. It takes a while to get 28 kids organised though, so it’s about 9:00 by the time we head off & make a stop on the way to pick up a couple more fishing rods for some of the boys. The place we went to isn’t far – about 20 minutes drive, but it was pretty cool. There’s a large lagoon with lots of little bamboo huts dotted around the edge, a restaurant (we brought our own fried rice with us) & a covered swimming pool with a very fast water slide. There’s no entrance fee, but you have to pay about 35 baht (AU$1 = 25B) per kilo for any fish you catch & take away, depending on what sort of fish they are; some are a bit more expensive. The boys are into it straight away, & after a bit of a slow start begin reeling them in as quick as you like. They were unstoppable. The girls weren’t really into fishing, so spent most of their time either in the pool or just hanging. I’m really conscious of not trying to push myself onto the kids, & am just letting them get used to me, so I decided to start learning about 4 names a day, & so got my first few down while we were there. One of the little girls (small in size, but has a big personality) wanted to spend the whole time in the water & tried to convince me to get in too, but there were so many other kids (not ours) in the water, in it looked an uninviting darkish green, so I settled with cooling my ankles in a shallow bit around the edge & watching Nok enjoy herself. We wrapped it up at 2 o’clock & took the net full of fish to be weighed….there were about 30 in all weighing about 17 kilos. Not bad.

Back at the house I had a chance to have a bit more of a look around. There’s one building which has 2 bedrooms for the younger girls – about 4 girls in each one, the kitchen at the back & a Thai bathroom on the outside. There’re 2 other buildings which are attached to the first one by a roof, but are open at the sides. These have another bedroom, a western bathroom & a “classroom” (where they do homework & after school lessons) in one, & the storeroom & all other bedrooms are in the other. For the time being I’m sleeping in a shack with a tin roof at the far end of the boys’ bedrooms, and there’s another Thai bathroom but with a hand-held shower out near my room, which is much cooler to shower in than the inside Western bathroom. At the opposite end to where I am, there is a separate small house, which I will move into in a week or so when our oldest girl, Pern starts university & will live on campus. Pern's sponsor is paying for her first year's tuition fees, & she is the first of the IHF kids to go to uni. Outside this house is a pool which was built not that long ago, but has had a couple of false starts. It was originally going to be a swimming pool for the kids, but once it was finished they realised that they don’t have (& can’t afford) a pump and all the other bits & pieces you need to maintain a pool, so then it was going to become a pond to keep carp in so the kids could sell them (not sure where or who to) to make some pocket money. This too, seems to have been abandoned, & as far as I can tell it’s currently just a breeding ground for mosquitoes. There’s a chicken coop, but after feeding the chickens for some time with no egg reward they decided to eat them, so now it’s just empty. There’s a mushroom garden, but I’m not sure how that works, & out the back there’s another garden with a scarecrow & I’m not sure what else. The house backs onto a large open field where some cows live, & we keep a goat there, but I’m not sure what goes on with the goat yet either.

The after-dinner movie tonight wasn’t very popular, so they turned it off & put on some karaoke discs, which was hilarious. They love that stuff.

Friday 08 May

There is an army of ants in my room. There are ants everywhere, but none more than what is marching across the outside wall, in through a corner supporting post of my room, across the floor in a thick black line & up & into the supporting post at the other end. My shack is under a big tree which grows some type of inedible fruit about the size of a lime. These drop off at random intervals onto my tin roof & sound like someone has lobbed a grenade through the door. I’m looking forward to moving house.

This morning Juan showed me where the local internet cafes are so I could get around to doing some of the IHF work I’m supposed to be doing for 4 hours a day. Checked out the caff across the road for some pad thai for lunch, which was fantastic (and at 25B - AU$1, you can’t really complain). When we got back to the house in the early afternoon we took the kids to Chiang Rai beach – which is actually a popular spot to hang out in the Mae Kok river. The rainy season hasn’t started yet, and once it does there’ll be no more swimming in the river because the current will be way too strong. The set-up there is pretty cool. Along the river bank on one side are loads of bamboo huts, where you can sit & order food (or just pay them to let you sit there, if you’ve got 20 or so kids with you), then when you’re ready for a dip (or to take your life into your own hands) you wander up the river a bit, then start walking across. The pull of the current even at knee height is surprisingly strong, & by the time you get to the middle & can’t quite touch the bottom anymore, it’s time to start swimming like crazy to get to the deceptively not-safe haven of some big rocks almost on the other side. They are mossy under water level & the current eddies around them pulling you off whatever tenuous hold you may have managed to get as you were swept into them in the first place. The water is brown & quite warm, so I’m guessing it’s an acquired enjoyment. Caty, Juan & most of the kids carried on a bit further down to the far bank, & I needed to get back upstream a bit, which meant doubling back over to the original side & doing it all again. Once I was brown & warm enough, I headed back to the bamboo hut where a couple of girls who weren’t swimming had been hanging out & waited for everyone else to come back.

All the kids are great, but carry a deep sense of abandonment, & as such don't like getting too close with volunteers who will ultimately leave them... Some of them, especially the younger ones, have an almost tangible anger bubbling just beneath the surface, but I'm yet to see it erupt from any of them. The girls are particularly stand-offish (the younger teenagers), but that's just teenage girls for you....

Saturday 09 May

Juan & I have been talking about an event that we are holding in late Feb or early March next year. Caty is a travel photographer & this April just past they held an exhibition on Koh Samui to raise money for IHF. Being that this sort of thing is right up my street, I’ve been commandeered to assist with next year’s. This year’s was a bit disorganised & not promoted very well, so they didn’t make anywhere near enough money, in fact just less than break-even. Yikes. So Juan & I are getting stuck into the planning & hopefully the 2010 exhibition will be a resounding success.

The little sister of one of our older girls arrived today, so now we have 29 kids here. It turns out that there is also a 16 year old boy who IHF cares for, but he was getting a bit too friendly with one of our girls, so he’s now living in a boarding house not too far away.

When the kids aren't in school, an ice cream guy comes by the house so anyone who's got some money can buy a treat. I shouted all the kids this afternoon & it was hilarious to watch Pratya (the oldest boy who is 18) make them all line up to get their ice cream one at a time (not their usual method for doing anything...) $12 for 29 ice creams is a pretty good deal.

Sunday 10 May

There was a big storm last night, & the big, fat & heavy raindrops sounded like hail on my tin roof. Not to mention the little balls of gunshot that were hammering away when the wind came to get in on the act. I commented to some of the girls at breakfast about the big storm, & one of them looked around at the dry ground around us (we were outside) & shook her head, no…. I’m told that when the monsoon comes, it will rain all day & night, every day. Good thing I got those Crocs!

Anyway, I think a striped brown frog is stalking me. Every night when I have a shower it sticks its head out of the drain & checks me out until I throw a bucket of water on it to chase it back into the drain. Last night I got up in the night to go to the loo, & it (or one that looked exactly like it) was sitting inside my shack, on a bit of timber at the bottom of the door….

None of the kids, except for Pern & Pratya, speak any English. They have lessons at school, but apparently they’re not really interested, so there’s not much communicating going on between me & them at the moment. Caty’s Thai is pretty good after being here for a year & a half, so she’s really the only westerner they talk to. I’m slowly getting there with their names – I think I’ve got about 15 or so.

Monday 11 May 2009

I think the rain might be on its way….clouds are starting to gather in the distance & even the kids are saying how hot it is….

I went with Nabee, the house mother to the market this morning to do the food shopping for the week. She does all the cooking, cleaning & laundry (one washing machine, but quite a big one), none of which ever stops. I don’t think she gets much thanks, & as a result hasn’t been too interested in keeping the meals that interesting. I think she’s adopted me, seeing as I’ve been taking an interest in what she’s making & telling her when something’s good, so at the market whenever I was looking closely at something she would ask me if I like it, & if I said yes, she would buy some. We had a budget of 3000 Baht for the week’s shopping (about AU$75) to feed 33 people. It goes quite a long way when pineapples & oranges cost 25B/kg, bananas 10B for a large hand & eggs about $1.50/doz. But, with so many people to feed you can really only get enough for 1 piece of each kind of fruit for each person...for the week! Thai food markets don’t have shopping trolleys, so we leave our huge piles of stuff bought from each vendor at the stall, then move on to the next one until we’re finished, then collect it all in one spot near the door, then lug it all into the truck.

While we were at the market, Juan was on hair cutting duty for the boys. School starts tomorrow, & the boys have to have hair no longer than about a number 2 blade, the youngest girls have to have an ear-length bob, & older girls can have longer hair. A few of the 12-14 year old boys were wanting to express their individuality early into the holidays, & gave each other tattoos using battery acid & ink. When Caty found out she told them that if they wanted to change something about the way they look, hair would be a better place to start…. So she dyed their hair blonde, & now that they’ve had their heads shaved it’s almost back to square one for me remembering who’s who.