Vientiane!!!!

Since Luang Prabang……I took the most scenic bus ride of my life from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng. I had planned on doing some organic farming in Vang Vieng but when I got there I was greeted by…..a tourist mecca. Vang Vieng is absolutely gorgeous – but it’s also possible to watch friends episodes 24 hours a day in a bar and listen to four others from other bars at the same time. I’m not exaggerating. Most of you know that I LOVE friends….but even I was seriously disturbed by that and the alcohol and western comforts driven vibe of the place. So I left the next morning on a kayaking trip to Vientiane. Vientiane is awesome! Nowhere near as beautiful as the rest of Lao because it is a city…..but it’s a peaceful, relaxed, fun city.

I started yesterday with a trip to the Lao National Museum. It’s in a small, run-down building that clearly doesn’t have much of a budget, but the exhibits had me absolutely rapt. Not so much the displays, but the communist rhetoric that is rampant in every piece of text throughout the museum. Luckily the English translations are quite good, so I learnt a lot. I began to see exactly how much this small, poor nation suffered at the hands of outside powers and how this turned Lao to communism. Of course, there was no hint of the many ways that communism has failed the Lao people. Little known fact – in the Vietnam War (Which is called The American War everywhere in SE Asia) there were 1.5 times the amount of air sorties in Lao as compared to Vietnam. The so-called “Secret War” waged in Lao by the US continued to rage after President Johnson halted all bombing raids in North Vietnam in November 1968b – indeed, that just left more firepower to dump on Lao. As a history junkie….I was duly invigorated by the museum!

Random: Lao salespeople……The tuk-tuk drivers sometimes take the chilled-out Lao stereotype to the next level. Many just sit in their hammocks and make no attempt to get your attention as you wander past. Smart business. My favorite salesperson moment happened just a couple hours ago….I was walking outside of Pha That Luang (the national symbol of Lao) and a vendor sitting casually by his stall said, “ice cream?” but when I turned his direction, looked away. There was no one else around…..I didn’t want ice cream……but still!

I’ve also seen a number of impressive Wats and I’ve noticed some features that separate Lao and Thai Wats. In general, Lao Wats are much newer because most were destroyed during The American War. Also, there is often a woman ringing out her hair on the outside of Lao Wats. This comes from a famous story in which that woman made a mote around the Buddhea while he was meditating by ringing her hair and thus protected him from attack. Also, there are two styles of Buddhas that are very common in Lao and apparently only to Lao…..that probably isn’t interesting to you, sorry. One of those sculptures is the “Calling-for-Rain” pose…..a androgenous looking Buddha standing with hands at sides and a cape……really different from other Buddhas I have seen. There was a huge row of them in a temple in Luang Prabang – a bit eerie walking down the middle between them all! I bought a mini version at the massive Talat Sao market in Vientiane!

Talat Sao is a typical Asian market but it is HUGE and it somehow feels very different wandering alone totally alone. I’ve gotten lonely at times, but I’m getting better at coping with it. Being responsible for every little thing I do is not at all easy. It is so much harder than it sounds to simply know what you want. Most of us truly have NO idea what we want to do with ourselves, but we’ve gotten into situations (school, jobs, raising children, being a spouse, having a hobby) that give us ample things we “have” to do each day. Faced with the entire country of Lao at my disposal can be a tad overwhelming…..but I feel like a legitimate backpacker who can fend herself. Whether that means spurring creepy men, finding a guest house, or deciding where to go – I’m getting better at it every day.

It just occurred to me today that it has been a very, very long time since I’ve formed a significant connection to a country or place with no intent of returning. In the US my “happy places” are my home, my grandparents’ home, Steven’s Pass, and Sun Valley…..clearly I will return to all those places. The majority of my international travel is also like that – which is slightly abnormal. I want to return to Gurabo in the Dominican Republic, Kadapukkam in India, and Mae Hong Son in Thailand. While was living in all those places I had the mindset of “I will return” which significantly altered my experience while there. Now I’m here in Laos and love this country but will probably never return. Traveling alone obviously means there’s no one here who knows me outside of Lao. I have become good friends with far more people than I would have expected while here and shared experiences with them but still – I am a blank slate to everyone I meet here. Because of this I feel jealously protective of my Lao experience – it’s entirely made by me and for me – the good and bad.

Also - the French influence is SO apparent here....croissants and baguettes everywhere, the roads are grided centering on turn-abouts, lots of French is used....My personal favorite: there's a monument in the center of "downtown" called Pataxai. It was made from the concrete that the US donated to build a new air strip. Alright. (it's known as "the veritcal runway" among expats.) It looks like the Arc de Triomphe except it has for arches instead of two...and then on a long, wide road headed away from it you hit the Palace in one direction and at an angle, the symbol of the Nation (Eiffel Tower equivalent) in the other. They never quit finished building Pataxi because of wars and communist uprisings but there is a lovely sign at the base of the monument which reads, "From a distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete". Charming.

I love getting emails from you!
See you soooooon - in mid-June
~Alice

PS - I went to Laos.

So there's a lot to catch up on.......and I have to do it sometime, here we go!

Many of you have probably heard from either Flora or myself that I left Mae Hong Son to travel on my own and she is still there. In the simplest terms possible - the man we were staying with made me feel very uncomfortable. He treated me very differently from Flora and those differences were starting to effect me quite a lot so I decided that I needed to move out of his house. SO many decisions were made within a matter of days - Flora and I spent the night in a monastery not far from Mae Hong Son and our time there was doubtless incredibly helpful in figuring out what to do. I love Mae Hong Son, but for a variety of reasons I decided that travel was the best thing for me after that. My mom is meeting me in Bangkok on May 10, so I didn't have too much time left anyway, I had envisioned more travel in my time in Southeast Asia than had happened, and I wanted to get away from him. Flora stayed behind and has had to deal with more issues surrounding our host........when I told him that I was leaving he became incredibly emotional and unstable (affirming my decision to leave) and asked Flora to move out as well. She's still in Mae Hong Son, living with a friend until she moves into a guest house and working for the other organization we had been involved with.

The week period surrounding the epicenter of these issues was incredibly difficult for both Flora and I.....luckily other NGO workers in the area who we have made friends with supported us in every way imaginable making us feel comfortable and loved. Another upside - it taught me that I need to listen to my instincts. When a man is making me feel uncomfortable, I need to acknowledge that and not try to explain it away. I should never feel that I need to accommodate someone who is being inappropriate because I don't want to situation to be uncomfortable. It was a lesson in sticking to my guns and doing what was best, healthiest, and safest for me. I'm proud of how we both responded to the situation and how we recognized that the the best circumstance for each of us meant that we'd have to split up for a month even if we didn't truly want to be apart. I'd also like to thank my parents for being so supportive from thousands of miles away - I know it's difficult to let your little girl travel on her own and I am so glad that you trust me to do so.

SO! Flora and I parted in the Mae Hong Son nus station - she for a border run to Burma and me for Laos.....both of our visas were expiring. I went to Pai, a backpacker mecca that Flora and I visited about a month ago, to arrange a bus and boat into Laos and within hours I ran into people Flora and I knew from the monastery! I have quickly learned that traveling alone does NOT mean you are alone. Backpackers from Europe in their 20s are generally a VERY warm and welcoming bunch. So I had dinner with two Londoners and a German man and then off I went on a night van to the border. There were monsoon rains and MANY hairpin turns......no sleep, but friends were born of common misery!

After crossing into Laos I took a two-day boat ride up the Mekong river to history Luang Prabang. The boat ride was not only spectacularly gorgeous, but I made loads of friends. The three people I have seen most since being in Laos are a British woman who is on her home after three years in Australia and New Zealand and two Irish guys who are traveling the world after University (college). We played loads of cards and talked about anything and everything (we were on the boat for a long, long time.....) and I know them quite well now, really! I also saw a lot of Quebecoise people, Australians, a Japanese guy, and heaps of people from all over the UK. I am the only American in the bunch and they take great pleasure in talking in accents so thick/slang so random that i have no clue what's going on. The Irish boys especially decided to train me up in sarcastic/dark Irish/UK humor.......they spent a couple months in the US and were absolutely baffled by how gullible our nation is.

Luang Prabang was the capitol of Laos many years ago and is chalk-full of history. On my first day here I went with the Irish and British people to probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen - a series of very safe to swim in pools and waterfalls. The water is quite deep and there was one place you could jump in from high up - Sandra, the British woman, got a sweet video of me and the Irish "lads" jumping in!

I've also spent a lot of time meandering through ancient and historic Wats (temples), up hills to catch gorgeous views of a Luang Prabang (which i really not a city at all but an overgrown village in the jungle), and wandering through markets and town. Yesterday I went on a five hour walk by myself anywhere that my feet would take me. That's really the joy of traveling alone. I've been lucky to have friends....honestly, we humans are social people and need to have someone to share things with every once in a while......but at the end of the day, I'm just beholden to myself. While in one temple, a friendly monk came over to me and we talked for over an hour about religion, living in Laos, our families.....one of my favorite travel experiences yet. He invited me to come back tonight to watch the monks chant in the evening.

Most of my friends have moved on to Vang Vieng (a real tourist mecca) but I've stayed behind to do a little more wandering. I was thinking about going there myself, but I want to have some time free of friends......I had expected to have two and a half weeks! I don't think I'll spend as much time as "planned" (I'm by myself so plans are inherently flexible) because being here I've realized just how touristy that place is. There is a lot to see in Laos, so I htink I'll head to the far south which is supposed to be hardly touched by tourism and one of the most relaxing places in the world!

I love you all, hope you're well.

~Alice

Random quips 4-16

1. Our Host-dad is trying his hardest to help us feel comfortable and often wants to inform us of the goings on in his house. At least twice a day, he tells us, and I quote, “I go there; I come back.” As you can see this is critical information and really does help us to know the plan. He is trying to tell us he’ll be gone for a few minutes. But there are never any specifics. We don’t know where he is going, or how long he is gone. But, let me tell you, it is still great to hear.

2. There is a colony of ants living in our bathroom. You wouldn’t think this would be such great entertainment, but at least weekly, Alice and I give each other reports on recent activity. The ants have this well-laid-out route along the side of the wall (about two feet off the ground......right at squat toilet level!), and they often carry large dead bugs across the whole of the bathroom. It takes at least fifty ants to hold the larger carcasses and keep them near the wall - the other week, Alice got really excited about a particularly long and slender twig that they maneuvered around the corner! It is quite fun to watch them make their way toward their home - it literally takes hours......this is essentially the kind of entertainment we're into these days!
   

3. Our favorite restaurant in MHS, Salween River, is a favorite amongst all the NGO workers in the area. It serves great food, and they are friendly. But it is family-run. In the US would be great - you would want to support them even more, but in Thailand, this means they can take time off whenever they want. They literally decided last week to take a day off to get drunk by the river, and so the café was closed for the day. “Sorry, will be open Thursday (when we’re done drinking).”

4. We went to a festival in one of the long-necked villages last week, and experienced all sorts of new things. Within twenty minutes of our arrival we were served steaming hot rice wine. It would have been an insult if we hadn’t had any, so we sipped happily (Alice feigned enthusiasm to make up for the lack of intake - hepatitis!). And while we were drinking, we were informed that before these refugees left Burma rice wine was all they drank. No water, no tea, just rice wine. The next day we went around the neighborhood visiting houses, as is the custom, and at each house we were served a new glass of rice wine. Given how hot it is I don’t know how they drink hot drinks, but more importantly how are they not all completely wasted?

5. Alice and I have visited many internet shops in MHS in the past month and a half, and in nearly every one there is an over-abundance of teenagers. That at first doesn’t seem so surprising, but they are not there to be on the internet. They are there to play computer games. Namely a Thai version of Dance Dance Revolution. Most of these places are completely full just from Thai DDR users. Apparently this is the thing to do, maybe we should try it out instead of updating the blog.

6. The oldest child in our family, Sai Meh, is only 8, but she often takes in on herself to care for us. She will often help us to clear and wash our dishes. And sometimes fill our water bottles for us when they are getting low. But my personal favorite is when I go into the bathroom at night, thinking I will be fine with no light, and she runs down the stairs after me to turn it on. What can I say, she wants me to be happy.

7. For our English classes Alice and I have been writing our own worksheets with sentences and other exercises for the students to do. For some reason whenever I am assigned this task, all of the names begin with “J”. I don’t try to do it, but those are always the first names I think of: Jack, John, Joe, Julie, Jody, Jill, and it just goes on. I’ve really try to make a concerted effort to use different names, but still after the editing at least fifty percent of them start with “J.” Our students probably think all English names start with “J.”

8. The other night I was doing a one-on-one teaching session with our host-dad, and it was not going particularly well. Alice was listening from the next room and felt like she HAD to do something to alleviate the clear suffering, so so she played comforting music from my computer to make me feel better. The problem was the rest of the family had loud, awful Thai music blaring from their room, and Maung-Hla shouts in the calmest of situations. I could hardly hear with all three going on. I was completely overwhelmed by noises. She tried!

Love,
~Flora

'Tis The Season!

I missed Christmas in the States....but it seems I came to Thailand just in time for a couple of masssssssive New Years festivals! I'll talkabout one this blog and another the next blog.....but first:

The Migrant hide-out
A week and a half ago I went on a short walk by myself. This wouldn’t be blog-worthy material except for what – more accurately, who – greeted me when I came home. In the twenty minutes or so that I was gone, four illegal migrants had come to our house to hide from the police who were doing a routine search for illegals. The only member of the family who was home apart from Flora was Me Meh, the three year old. Flora said she felt like she should comfort Me Meh but quickly realized that the child was in no distress whatsoever…..police raids are a part of life.
We spent the afternoon talking to one of the women (Maung-Hla’s niece as it turns out) who has fairly good English. We didn’t really know what to do about lunch since Maung-Hla had told us to fry the eggs ourselves and eat the curry he had left for us but we didn’t think there would be enough for everyone. Eventually our hunger got the best of us, so we moved toward the kitchen (which is in a separate building/structure). Immediately, a couple of the people in hiding left their hide-outs to help us prepare lunch! Ah! Hospitality will drive you mad sometimes. We’ve asserted ourselves enough with Maung-Hla’s family to be able to wash our own dishes…..but our new friends were NOT going to have that. She ripped that scrub-brush from my clutches!
When Maung-Hla came home he poked his head in to our room to say hi. I told him he had some “friends over” and pointed to the room adjacent to ours that was in total darkness. Without a pause or any insinuation of surprise he said, “How many friends?” and went over to talk to them. They may have come to Maung-Hla’s house for any of a variety of reasons– it’s at the end of the road, his family is a bit better off than most in the neighborhood, he has been in Thailand for many years and has a clean record….but in the end, it was more proof that he is a community leader.

Huay Pe Keng New Year’s
At some point you have probably seen pictures or read stories about the “Long-neck” people – the people who wear gold rings around their necks and below their knees. They are the Kaya people from Karenni state in Burma but many have fled persecution there and settled in Thailand. When most Burmese enter Thailand, they are sent to refugee camps and held there in a permanent limbo state for years, never knowing their future, not able to go backwards or forwards. The Thai government saw an opportunity to earn big tourism bucks with Kaya people because of their cultural practice of wearing neck rings. The result? Kaya people can choose to remain in the refugee camps where conditions are atrocious but they still have a hope of getting out at some point. (Out when or to where they do not know). Or, alternately, Kaya people can opt to forfeit their refugee status and move into one of many villages set up for them by the Thai government. Conditions in these villages are better than in the camps, but the villagers are not allowed to leave, and have hardly any way to change their impoverished condition. The Thai government keeps all of the money earned by tourism except when tourists buy souvenirs directly from the villagers (their only source of income). Some of these villages are like human zoos – people come and stare at the Kaya women’s necks, snap pictures, and leave, never learning their story.
Flora first visited Huay Pe Keng village about two months ago with a group of people connected with NGOs in the area and sent many of you an email about her experience. We had a similar opportunity to visit the village as guests for the most important holiday in their culture (a New Years celebration). People from the three Kaya villages in the Mae Hong Son area as well as in the camps come together each year (rotating the meeting place between the four). Maung-Maung, our boss from the EMFS, told us on Monday night that we should skip class on Tuesday and instead spend the night with someone who’s connected to the EMFS and lives in Huay Pe Keng. The next afternoon we drove to the village, motorbike caravan style, with one of our students (Hon Bil).
After the pleasant but awkward meet and greet with the woman (Lay Lay Wha) who graciously took us in, we headed to the village field for a massive volleyball tournament. We saw a boys game first and they are GOOD. It’s a pity American men don’t usually play volleyball; it’s such an athletic and exciting sport! The real excitement, though, was watching the young women play some scrappy and fierce volleyball with a good stock of fans cheering them on. Most played with their rings on (they can take the rings off if they want to). They were also barefoot which was particularly impressive given the hard-packed earth and rock mix they were playing on. The crowd was rapt and, best of all, the young women were completely serious about their game; they didn’t for a second try to be “feminine” by not giving it their all. Some of them are gifted players! The Kaya in the villages and the refugees in the camps are all obsessed with volleyball. It’s an excellent outlet for young men who have been stripped of their bread-winning status and feel aimless.
The games continued, but Flora and I decided to take a little tour of the village before dinner time. When most tourists get off the river-crossing boat and arrive in Huay Pe Keng, they don’t venture far. People are selling their wares along one main path (bracelets, post-cards, elephant or neck-ringed women figurines, clothe bags….) and that seems to be enough for the average tourist. If you journey 350 meters past the first village along a carefully marked path, you enter the “New Village”. Apparently most tourists aren’t fit enough for that big trek because the New Village gets a fraction of the tourist traffic of the Old village. The Thai government created the New Village in 2007 and promised that people who moved there from the Old Village or elsewhere would have better facilities, conditions, etc. It is fair to say that they have NOT delivered. People in this village are even more impoverished than their Old Village counterparts – outhouses are poorly located, food is scarce. Flora stayed here when she visited two months ago.
The music and dance festivities were supposed to begin at 8pm, but this isn’t America so the timetable didn’t rule supreme. In the interim hours, we met some hilarious Evergreen State college students who we’ve run into several times in MHS (they’re here on a semester program). We were given food by yet more friendly locals and had to eat; hospitality in both directions trumps all.
The festivities (an elaborate dance competition) got underway at about 10:30 and were pretty fantastic. Pictures do justice better than words here. Dance groups from each village did performances decked out in their colorful cultural dress which includes vibrant head-bands. There was plenty of painfully loud music and crowd support and I felt utterly blessed to be a part of the whole thing.
A word on the rings…One legend goes that the woman began wearing the rings to protect their necks from tigers. Girls begin wearing the rings when they are about five years old and add three as often as they can, depending on how fast they grow. It’s considered desirable to peek at about 25 rings. The rings are undeniably bad for the health of women who wear them; their collar bones are crushed, their backs permanently arched in old age, and their overall life expectancy is decreased by seven years. In recent years, some women have chosen not to wear the rings. Muby, a woman we know through work in Mae Hong Son, is one of the most feminist, forward-thinking women you’ll ever meet. She chose to take off her rings years ago partly because it is easier in the workplace and partly because she doesn’t think she should have to do that to her body because she is a woman. Still, she has total respect for the women who still wear the rings. Not only is it an engrained and ancient part of their culture, but the rings are now the only source of their income in the villages. Western outsiders can inform the women of the medical dangers of wearing the rings, but the practice is not ours to judge.
The next morning was the big ceremony! Naturally it started a couple hours late, so I had time to wander around with a friendly Dutchwoman anthropologist who I had met the night before. The main idea to the ceremony is the raising of a big pole (about 35 feet tall) that represents the first tree. Poles from previous years are all in the same area – in a clearing on the top of a small hill. Before anything got underway, over a hundred young men (women aren’t allowed up there) danced around this configuration of giant poles for a couple of hours, playing music…..gongs, cymbals, drums – solid rhythm, really fun to listen to! Eventually, each village brought out a chicken and asked it questions about their fortune for the coming year. Meanwhile, the shamans blessed the pole and then the men began raising the pole…..it took over a hundred men and A LOT of muscle power/rope leverage! Once the pole was raised and secured – music and dance continuing all the while – someone from each village sacrificed the chicken. They then stuck small sticks in the thighbones of the chickens and the shamans read the fortunes of their villages based on which direction the bones tipped. Three of four fortunes were quite good – the New Village is supposed to get more visitors in the coming year….I sure hope so. One of the villages, however, had quite a bad fortune, so people were pretty upset.
The rest of the day was free-for-all socializing time! Our friend from Mae Hong Son, Muby, took us to half a dozen homes of her friends and family members to meet and be offered more food than we could possibly handle (or should possibly take form these impoverished families). Because it’s the New Year, it’s customary to go around saying hello to everyone in your village. The young men were still dancing, but at this point, winding their way through town, having water thrown on them.
It was an absolutely fantastic 24 hours……I felt very fortunate to be there, and proud to be involved with the EMFS. This was all on the 8th and 9th of April. Since then, the New Years festival for greater Southeast Asia has taken place – more on THAT next time! This is already preposterously long.

Love to you all! (Don’t be shy about leaving comments….it’s fun to know if you’re reading.)
~Alice

Back in the saddle again!

You may not have known it....but I was out of the saddle for a while, so to speak. About two weeks ago I got a horrific headache, breathing problems, fever.....it wasn't great. I felt better the next morning (after one kind friend had me stay at her house while she was away for the weekend and another two friends stayed there with me so Flora could shuttle back and forth to our host-family's house.....). Flora and I spent the next couple of days in denial. Sure, I had no energy, all sorts of weird symptoms that you don't want to know about, and felt crappy, but I was getting better and had some medicine, right? Right? Wrong. In the middle of Monday night I had a breakdown.....As avid blog readers will remember, I had QUITE a breakdown on an Indian train this fall which involved quoting Fifty Cent to passersby, losing all control of my facilities, attempting to launch myself off my bunk-bed......all in all giving Kate and Deepa quite the workout.

WELL. Apparently one of my subconscious goals for my year-off was to have as many of my best friends as possible get the chance to see delirious! Yippee! My breakdown last week wasn't as bad as the one in India, but it was one of my worser moments, so I went to the hospital. I tested negative for malaria, so they told me I had food poisoning. (Code for - we don't know what's up and have to say something.) Flora and I eventually went to Chiang Mai so I could go to a bigger hospital. It turns out I had mild hepatitis. AND, interestingly enough, that bump on my finger that I talked about in a blog about a month ago? The one I got from giving henna to the children at the Children's Home? Well it morphed into quite a nasty little wart so I had that removed as well. Flora returned to Mae Hong Son and I watched movies at Liz's house for almost a week....Pride and Prejudice, Chariots of Fire, Rocky, The Hot Chick, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.....I was certainly no longer suffering.

I've been back in Chiang Mai since Tuesday and I'm so happy to be here! I still have very low energy, but am infinitely better. I went to the Mae Hong Son hospital on Thursday and told them exactly what to test for, and I'm looking normal! Today, Flora and I turned to the tricky business of buying food for our host family (because they will NOT accept money and we will NOT accept a free ride). We had very little clue what to get, but a friend came and shopped with us, and we were pretty proud of the results......chicken, eggplant, mango, oranges, fish, vegetables I don't recognize, herbs I don't recognize, Burmese salad mix - All fresh!

In other big news - we know our address now and would love to get mail from you!

Nay Chi Labour Union
P.O. Box 113
Mae Hong Son, 58000
Thailand

Before I sign out on this one.....here's a little list I've been keeping in my journal:
You know you've been in tropical Asia for a while WHEN....

1) You see the mountains ablaze at night and think, "oh. Crop burning season." instead of, "Run for your life!"
2) Your English student apologizes for missing a class and explains that he was "beating back a fire from his house". He's excused.
3) Toilet paper is a fun luxury item
4) Your friend invites you over to use her shower and embarks an a lively description of its excellent water-pressure, ensuring you it's the best shower in Thailand.
5) The doctor says, "It's probably malaria. Everyone gets malaria at one point or another."
6) You can tell the difference between Northern Thai rice and Southern Indian rice (and wish you couldn't)
7) When you see a cockroach crawl across your backpack you experience immense relief because it's nothing sinister
8) When the doctor tells you that you actually have mild hepatitis you're positively giddy because it's NOT malaria (or dengue or yellow fever or...)
9) You hear more about the Burma situation than the US election
10) You broke almost a year of vegetarianism for pig intestines so as not to be rude....
11) All your friends want to know what YOU will be up to for the mid-summer water festival!



Much love,
~Alice

PS - I'm going to be at the fish caves with Maung-Hla and his family for the water festival, where will YOU be???

Climate, Progress, and Colonization: Flora's Debut!

Alice and I had a long conversation the other night that ranged from Christmas traditions to toilet habits. I won’t say that we discussed everything in between, but there was quite a range. Anyway, it inspired me to write a little about Southeast Asia and what I have learned about the region in the two months that I have now spent here. This blog is different from most, but I think it may be interesting to some. My thoughts actually start in Europe, but the majority of it is written about Thailand (well, at least Southeast Asia), so read on…

This summer, traveling through Croatia and Hungary, I thought about climate in a broader cultural sense than ever before. I thought about all the ways climate can affect people’s day-to-day lives, and even how customs and traditions get built up around an area’s climate patterns. I mostly thought about this is in terms of Mediterranean Europe and their habit of afternoon siestas. It is so hot most afternoons that it is not worth attempting to be productive. As a result, stores close and everything shuts down.

Now, in Southeast Asia, I am once again thinking about climate, but in a totally different light. I am living in Thailand, have visited Cambodia, and am reading about Burma while living with a Burmese family. It has become evident to me, that many similarities between these countries have arisen out of similarities in the climate. All three countries have a new years festival in April (that is the beginning of the lunar year), and the main attraction of this festival is a huge country-wide (or rather; multi-national) water fight. For all three countries, April is the peak of their hot season, and it is nearly unbearable to be outside. Everyone looks forward to this festival for months even though it has a different name in each of those three countries.

This is going to sound funny, but I’m pretty sure climate has also affected the bathing and sanitary habits of these countries. In Southeast Asia, it is customary to use a squat toilet -- not too unusual in all of Asia -- but in Southeast Asia, after using the toilet, you spray yourself down with water in order to clean yourself. Even the wealthiest families do not use toilet paper, because there is no reason to. In hot climates, you will dry quickly, and it may even feel good to be wet for a while. Places with running water and flush toilets, rarely have toilet paper, but they do have a small hose to spray yourself with, as oppose to a simple bucket.

The reason this all has really struck me right now is that the house we are staying in has running water. There are pipes going into the bathroom, and it would be easy enough for them to decide to have the water flow end with a shower head, a flush toilet, or both. Instead, they do it “Thai style,” with the two ends of the pipes leading to basins from which you can later draw water for a bucket shower or to wipe yourself. The family clearly has the means to have a western bathroom if they wanted it, but there is no reason to. The Thai way works for them. It is a clear example of how westernization is not the only way to progress and modernization. There is no reason for them to westernize, because the western way is not necessarily any better than their traditional way, especially with the weather they have.

Alice says it is the same in the Dominican Republic. People are used to bucket showers, and there is no reason to do otherwise. In the United States, we tend to think that our way is the best, and that anyone who is able to have a flush toilet and a hot shower will. We assume that is what people want, because it is what we want and what we are used to. In Thailand, only the houses of expatriates and restaurants trying to bring in expatriates and tourists have sitting toilets. They know that to please us they have to have sitting toilets and have toilet paper available, but that is the only reason. As Americans we think our way is best, and the only way that makes sense.

Alice and I also talked about progress, technology, and modernization in terms of how it relates to colonization and independence. One way in which Thailand is unique, is that it has never been colonized. The Thais have always been in control of Thailand. (They claim that, but in truth nearly all of Thailand has been under either Cambodian or Burmese control at some time. That said they were never colonized by a Western country). This is especially relevant because all other countries in the region were colonized by the English, French, or Dutch. Thailand was skipped by pure coincidence. The country happened to be in the right place, situated between a region of all French colonies, and a region of all British colonies. The French and British decided to avoid confrontation and leave Thailand as a neutral, buffer zone.

In high school, I learned all about colonization, and we discussed both the effects foreign powers have on their colonies and the independence movements that were so prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. However, I don’t think I fully understood all that colonization meant to these countries until now, when I am able to see it first hand. Since 1948 when both Burma and Cambodia officially became independent, there has been significant political turmoil in each country. There has been civil war, or the threat of a civil war in each of these countries for nearly the full sixty years since their respective colonial powers left. In addition, each country has had military regimes, that have severely persecuted minority parties, and in Cambodia, Pol Pot went as far as full-on genocide.

Thailand has gone through nothing like that. It’s true that Thailand has had its share of military coups in the past half century. But they have nearly all been bloodless, and there has never been a time when Thais have been forced to flee the country for any reason. Besides, the royal family remained in power for nearly the entire century, and the country has remained united by their reign. While Thailand still does not have a stable government or a working constitution, the country is able to become a truly modern state. There are many successful Thai corporations, and the people have a sense of pride in themselves, their country, and their king.

That is so far from true in both Burma and Cambodia. Human rights and simple freedoms have been ignored in these countries for decades, and their citizens live in fear of their governments. Many have been forced to flee their homes, and even their country, because of persecution. In addition, each country has been through desperate economic times with unbearable inflation rates, and governments that steal from the middle and lower classes.

Cambodia has had a fairly stable government for the past ten years, but there is still an edge of fear in each citizen’s life. They are scared to discuss politics, because if the wrong person heard, they could be killed. And it is only in the past ten years that they have even had this much luxury. For the forty years before that, without even saying anything, but just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they could have died.

In Burma, a small elitist military regime has been in power for over twenty years, terrorizing the entire country. Many minorities have fled the country, and even the ethnic Burmese, if they have opposing political beliefs can be jailed or killed.

Clearly, there were many factors leading to the turmoil that each of these countries has recently experienced, but I have really come to believe that the biggest reason for this turmoil is the history of colonization. The British and French did not leave the countries with the means to support themselves or with a capable and just ruling entity. It would have been nearly impossible for either Cambodia or Burma to overcome the situation they were left with after colonization and successfully recover to form a functional and accepting government.

Under the colonial powers, there were always elitist groups with undeserved power, and there were always outsiders ruling without enough knowledge of the people they were ruling over. The colonial powers, in other words, set a bad example for future leaders of these countries, and also left the wrong people in power.

It was not until recently that I had a great enough understanding of Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia to piece this all together. When learning about colonization and independence movements in high school, it was somehow never as clear to me that the lasting affects of colonization were as disruptive as they are today. I am now able to see how similar their traditions and lives are, and how vastly different their ruling powers are. There are so many reasons for these countries to be alike, and yet Western powers have driven them in other directions.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

Here we have a little "before and after" with three little piggies who went to market in Cambodia....then there are two street scenes from Chaing Mai. After theat - we're at our weekend trip to Pai and after that - Mae Hong Son! The big Buddha is on a hill overlooking the town......the view of the valley is from a different hill overlooking the valley. The lake is in the center of town - right next to where we stayed for the first two weeks we were here. Beautiful temples on the lake - the gold and white temple is one of them.

Happy Birthday!

(FYI - i wrote a long blog yesterday, so it's underneath this and explains what we're up to here.....)

Mom: I thought the best birtday present I could give you was assurance that I am 1) using a mosquito net 2) using bug lotion 3) taking malaria pills and 4) wearing sunscreen! The other picture of me in that shirt outside a builidng is where we are living. I took the picture of the flowers for you specifically! I took a bunch of other flower pictures....I'll show the to you wehn you VISIT ME!!! The one with flora sitting on the ground is inside our room....and, of course, the one where I'm wearing a headset is me talking to YOU on your birthday! Oh, by the wya, Flora had me shave her head.

Much love to you, and happy birthday. It was marvelous to talk with you today - Happy Easter in advance!

Love,

~Alice

first off - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY! Check the blog again later tonight for your "surprise".

Now that I attempted to lay the groundwork in the last blog I can talk about the more interesting things we're doing! We're working with the EMFS and Nay Chi primarily. We're also living with the Burmese family that runs Nay Chi, and yet aren't totally sure what Nay Chi does. Hmmmm....

Weekend trip to Pai:
Pai is a two-four hour bus-ride from Mae Hong Son, depending on who's driving the bus. Most people go to Pai for the rockin' nightlife and excess of foreign food/comforts. Flora and I went on a six-hour hike into surrounding tribal farm lands until we reached a picturesque river and then we were so tired that we conked out at 9. Party on! The next morning we attended yoga classes run by a woman who can only be described as the Thai-hippie version of Madame Gatlin. She makes everyone call her "mama". She's sixty but willing to cat-walk it, baby. She loves to regale us with stories of drunken tourists, her "tiger-cat baby" who lives in her yard, and how to go to the best party.....and at the end of the class she let her insane and morbidly obese dogs do laps around the room, chasing them and waving her arms......most Thai yogi are a bit more into the meditation end of things and less the"You want party?? Come with MAMA!" aspect of life. Our bus ride back was standing room only and that vehicle was struggling to get up those hills. (Have I mentioned the precisely 1,836 hills in Mae Hong Son province?)

Nay Chi:
When we first met Maung-La almost two weeks ago, we were led to believe that we would be teaching him and two other Nay Chi staff English and computer skills four mornings a week for two hours and weekends, we'd corral sixty children for two-hour English classes. He also generously offered his home to us and doesn't want us to pay a thing. (we'll have to get creative on that one). The first class was just Maung-La (and a refugee from the nearby camp who had illegally sneaked off for the day and a cat who jumped in through the window and the sound of explosions in the background to which Maung-La said; "People die".....it later came out that that was a burial ceremony.) Alright, so maybe the other staff didn't get the "memo". We were slightly confused the next day when, instead of other staff, a gaggle of local 15-year-old girls showed up for class. We didn't have a class prepared for a large-ish group, so the "wing-it" skills I picked up in India were employed. A couple days later we found out that the children's classes don't happen in March and April......okay....so we'll teach him private lessons.

Maung-La's wife works during the day, so he takes care of the three (cute) kids.....and presumably does Nay Chi work, but we haven't seen any of that, yet. So what, exactly, does Nay Chi do you might ask? We are doubtless even more curious than you! Maung-Lais the perfect host and student - eager to make everything work, make sure we're comfortable......but I have no freaking clue what Nay Chi does! I don't mind the constant misunderstandings, but Flora and I both really want to help his organization since he's being so gracious. Last night, we started to get to the bottom of it! Astra, he marvelous Dutch lady, who I talked about in last post, had us and a man (Sai) who apparently works with Maung-La and speaks BOTH Burmese and English. Hallelujah! Today, at a graduation ceremony that we were very randomly invited to, we managed to get Maung-La and Sai together and got to the bottom of it. Nay Chi.....is abysmally organized and lacks funding. SO - we can help write proposals and get them organized once he gets together with his board. Hooorah!

The Home-stay:
I haven't been sleeping well because there's not much "spring" to my springs and there aren't mattresses…..so there's this horizontal bar through my bed and it gets bad. So I almost conked out during our proposal meeting a couple days ago. Since then, I have constructed a mattress of my own out of the contents of my suitcase and, like the Beatles would say, it's getting better all the time! Maung-La has three children ages 8, 6, and 3. We taught Sai-Meh, the odlest girl, how to play Go-Fish this morning! She spends most of her time sitting in a chair in our doorway, staring at us. There's no door, so they have a pretty constant supply of white-people entertainment. The others stare too, but she wins in terms of stare-endurance. They're painfully shy, so it was great to get them laughing and playing Go-Fish with us (Flora's brilliant idea). And she could practice her English numbers, too!

Asian Toilets:
I spent the first couple of weeks in Thailand doing the bathroom thing All Wrong! I was operating off the India model, which seemed reasonable, but it was so difficult that I eventually vented my frustrations to Flora. APPARENTLY Thai toilets are shaped slightly differently, so you face the opposite way from Indian toilets! That's a cheap shot, Asia.

The EMFS (Emigrant Migrant Families Society):
We've been working our butts off writing a proposal for the EMFS to build a nursery school for young Burmese children. WE finished yesterday!!! A whole new experience for both of us made even more interesting by the fact that we knew zilch about the project until a week ago. The leader of the EMFS sat and gave us information.....here's a little break-down of a typical conversation we had for ever single item that the EMFS has to purchase to build and furnish the nursery....

Alice: So, will we need other materials?
Maung-Maung: (pause) Yes.
Flora: Will we need other materials in the bathroom?
Maung-Maung: Yes, materials in the bathroom.
Alice: Do we need to buy toilets?
Maung-Maung: Yes. Toilets. Two.
Flora: How much will the toilets cost?
Maung-Maung: Two toilets.
Alice. Yes, we need two toilets. How much money for one toilet?
Maung-Maung: (pause) Maybe I don't know. 200 baht, I think.
---repeat—

But now we know how to write proposals and we'll start another one on Monday! This time, a will write the bulk of it and I'll do our lesson planning.....we were wearing ourselves out trying to both do everything.

We're ALSO doing evening classes at the EMFS. The first class was pretty awkward because they didn't, you know, SPEAK at all.....but I have to admit, it's getting better, a little better all the time. (Thanks again, Beatles). The next two classes were fantastic! We came equipped with worksheets, got them excited about taboo and dictionary - we had a worksheet about animals (our vocab topic of the day). One of the questions asked which animal (of a group f ten) lays eggs. One group took this query to heart and listed every single creature they could possibly think of with egg-laying powers! Proud moments in teaching. Teaching is draining and we're both glad to have each other there.....two hours with 25 students - not speaking their first language....not easy. It's also fun to see that I really gained a lot from my teaching experience in India - I'm so much more confident and comfortable at the front of the class than I was when I started out teaching the Indian classes!

Once again, happy birthday to my mom - and check the blog again!

LOVE to you all,
~Alice

MAE HONG SON!!!!

I wrote this four days ago and since then........MANY things have changed! At the end of my last post I mentioned Mae Hong Son. Well, that’s where we've been! I wrote a lot, but in summary – Mae Hong Son is gorgeous, and we’ve finally found volunteer work to do – with two Burmese refugee outreach organization. For details, read on!

First – the drive. Three facts – women can’t touch monks because they’re holy, you can’t kill something in front of a monk because it violates their faith, and there are over 1800 curves in the Mae Hong Son province roads. We almost had to sit next to a monk during the drive up to Mae Hong Son. This would have been tragic given you also can’t fully control your body when hairpin turning for six hours. Awkward! For the first half hour of the trip, a mosquito was buzzing around Flora, but seeing as the monk was just a seat away…..she really couldn’t kill it. It was even more awkward than the songtao (Thai taxi) ride flora and I had through Chiang Mai with five – yes FIVE – monks!

Flora came here a month ago and loved it, and we both felt that it would be easier to get involved in a smaller community.....and that's how we ended up a day's bus ride northwest of Chiang Mai - wher ewe thought we'd be living. Because of the town's proximity to the Burmese border, it is full of NGOs serving Burmese refugees. (The Burmese people refer to their country as Burma. Myanmar is the name given to the country by the oppressive regime in power.) The small community shows - we often run into people we know, we’re already regulars at a fruit-smoothie stand, and we know which food-booths we like at the evening market. Liz, who we stayed with in Chiang Mai, is friends with a woman named Abby who lives and works here. Abby housed Flora on her first trip here, and has tried to help us in any way possible.

The refugee camps were formed when the Burmese government began persecuting minorities in 1989. The refugees can’t return to their country, and leaving the camps is very difficult, so they are in perpetual limbo. Of the two closest camps, one has 4,000 residents and the other 20,000! Entrance passes to the camps are closely regulated by the Thai government, so we haven’t been able to visit, but could possibly in the future.

When we first got here, we took long walks through Mae Hong Son, did yoga and read a LOT. There’s a gorgeous temple complex on the top of a hill overlooking the town, a small lake with several temples at its banks, and a nice market. We called several people and set up some meetings, but even in a place as friendly and open as this, it takes time to break into the community. On one walk we found a leopard print clad Buddha; my first for me!

Last Saturday, we went to a birthday party for three women from Holland (Astra), Burma (Yay), and Israel/the US (Inbal). That may have been a first for everyone; not just us! Flora met Inbal here a month ago. Inbal has boundless social energy, so she made sure we had a good time and met people looking for volunteers. Both Flora and I were awkward and fidgety around all the new - albeit friendly – faces. The language barrier doesn’t alleviate social awkwardness. Nevertheless, the next day we went to a friendly woman’s house for yoga – apparently it’s a weekly affair – Abby runs the classes.

Abby asked us to work in our office whenever we have a chance, so we came by on Monday. Especially for Flora, who spent over a month in Chiang Mai looking for opportunities, it was exciting to have work to do! Abby runs the Gender Based Violence (GBV) office of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Mae Hong Son (MHS…..because I’m into acronyms.) The IRC has offices in many countries around the world that serve refugee populations. We spent Monday organizing her library and reference materials. There’s a huge Health section - so we combined both our moms’ professions (Doctor and Librarian)! Abby wants us to come in whenever we can/want, but it still helping us look for other work.

This morning, Astra, the kind Dutch woman, took me and Flora to a memorial ceremony for a Burmese man. A pig was sacrificed. I haven’t been eating non-seafood meat for the last year, but when a group of poor Burmese people offer you the choice pig intestines – you learn to eat meat. The ceremony was at an organization that Flora and I will work for beginning Friday. We’ll also teach conversational English classes to Burmese migrant workers three or four evenings a week. I shouldn’t have trouble coming up with lesson plans after this fall!

All the best. Write to us or leave a comment – we love hearing from friends and family!

Love,
~Alice

PS - in the last few days - after i wrote this - many new things have come up! Exciting, good thigns (don't worry mum). We have another organization to work for and we began writing a full-out grant proposal for the first organization. Something I've never done, is challenging, flexes my mental muscles, and is truly helpful to this organization that has no native Enlgish speakers. I'll write more on it soon! We're moivng in with a Burmese family next week that has three small kids - the parents run one of the organizations we're working for.......Free board and a homestay! Sweetness!

The first four pictures are in Cambodia.....a scene from the floating village, a tree taking over an ancient ruin which also happens to be where angelina raided some tombs a while back, flora and I at Angkor Wat, Flora and I doing a dance at Bayon temple......a Japanaese tourist showed us how to do that dance.....There were other photos but the computer is being difficult! oh well - it's a start!

Photos coming soon...

I have been trying, to no avail, to get some photos on the blog, but I'm throwing in the towel for today. I have better internet access here than i did in India, so hopefully I'll be able to get photos up regularly once I figure thigns out!
Love,
~Alice

My Brush With Angelina

At this point I’ve spent more time in Cambodia than Thailand, but Thailand is about to make a comeback!

Thailand 101:

There are two things I was told to avoid during my first day in Thailand; insulting the King, and doing offensive things with my feet. After two days in Chiang Mai, I was able to join the whole Weeks family in Bangkok for an afternoon and evening. They had been doing a tour of Thailand with Flora during Mitch’s February break. They saw many, many of the big Bangkok sites during the day and took me on a night boat-ride to see some of the famous temples and the Royal Palace lit up at night – Wat Arun (a large temple) was particularly splendid at night!

The King is revered in Thailand and everyone loves him, so it’s not hard to avoid insulting him, but one also must not insult his family…..if you are foolish enough to insult the royal family and get caught you can be thrown out of the country! (this is so very different from India, but falls in with what I’ve heard about other Asian countries like China, Cambodia, and Vietnam…..though Thailand seems to be the most touchy.) Unless I am real stupid I shouldn’t have trouble refraining from insulting a family that has done nothing wrong to me.

FEET. Feet are the lowest part of the body in Thai/Buddhist culture, and so shouldn’t be pointed at the Buddha, at any person, or waved around in the air. I don’t often wave my feet in the air. But, naturally, I waved them around a bit the first time Liz took me out in public. I was trying to help out with her English class (vocab word: sandals). Instead I offended her students to the core. Thumbs down! Mitchell Weeks apparently had his own brush with bi-ped-debauchery….he really felt like stretching while in a giant and culturally significant Temple in Bangkok. Flora tried to convince him to keep his feet under him, but he insisted that Thais like yoga, so it’s okay! He was wrong. But that’s okay, Mitch is wonderful and you’ve got to love him.

The complexity of the Thai language is depressing….especially after attempting Tamil for a few months. I’ll obviously try to learn some Thai, but first I’ll have to get past the fact that “caw” is a polite affirmation whereas in Tamil it’s a playful “up-yours!” Oh No! Last night, the four of us (Me, Tom, Flora, and Liz) played 9 holes of night-golf (a cultural experience I probably would have never experienced but for the Weeks influence). In Thailand, you are required to hire a caddy from the club when you play. (We kept our on the move by playing a rotating-two-person-scramble…) My first two big Thai language accomplishments were Hello (sao dee caw) and Thank You (cup coon caw). I thanked my caddy when she handed me clubs and cheerfully screamed hello when she replaced my divot…..whoops. But it worked out….at the end of the round she told me I was “gang mak!” or “very proficient!” She’s mistaken; I am not very proficient at either golf or Thai, but I appreciated the vote of confidence.

Cambodian Sojourn

I’m jumping ahead…..before I experience Asian golf, I experienced Cambodia. The morning after I met the Weeks family in Bangkok, Tom, Flora, and I flew off to Cambodia while Mitch and Deb had to fly home…..Mitch still has school, imagine that! The obvious attraction in Siem Reap, Cambodia is Angkor Wat – the largest temple complex in the world and one of the Ancient Wonders……we, however, took our own sweet time before we actually saw Angkor. Sure, there’s plenty else to do in the area….but I imagine few other tour groups go three days without actually going inside the Wat.

On our first day we took a boat ride to the mouth of Cambodia’s largest lake – and the center of its fishing economy. There are 160 floating villages on this vast lake, and we toured one of them. It was like Lake Union except the water’s incredibly dirty, the houses are falling apart, children jumped onto our boat every once in a while to sell bananas, the village is segregated between the poor Vietnamese immigrants and the slightly less poor local Cambodians, the houses are anchored by reeds and rope, there is a two-tiered elementary school/gymnasium, and lots of tourists have a look around every day. I’ve never seen a thing like it – pretty incredible!

In the next couple of days we saw a bunch of ancient temples in the greater Siem Reap area, went to a Kymer Rouge war museum, took a balloon ride to view Angkor from on high, got a Cambodian massage, and ate a lot. Highlights: (Mae Rice, this first one is for you!) Angelina Jolie not only adopted a child from Cambodia, but she also made a movie in one of the temples that we visited! We looked for her, and Tom tried to get our guide to arrange a date with Angie-babe, as we called her, but it fell threw. Giant trees were growing out of the walls make the Angie-Temple look pretty exotic and wild. The complex includes one temple that washes away your bad luck if you create a sonorous echo by pounding your chest. Tom caught me washing away my bad luck on film….he caught a lot of things on film including about 35 photos of the balloon we rode from various artistic positions. I’m really not exaggerating, ask Flora! We had to sit him down on several occasions to delete 25 or so blatant repeats. The Great Mystery of the whole experience was that of the identity of the fearless Cambodian guide, Janny. For the first few days we joked around, heard all about Cambodian culture and history, and got to be friends of sorts. You should know: Janny spoke with a clear but Australian accent (?!?), exclaimed, “Oh, Tom!” every third sentence, partied every night, had moments of raunchy humor, said things like, “Let’s Rock and Roll!”, never got lost or missed a beat on what we wanted to do, complained of illness on our second to last day, and has an identical twin. None of this was true on our last day, except, presumable, that our guide was Janny’s identical twin! I ran a casual exit poll as our plain left Cambodia. Three out of four respondents were convinced that we had met Janny’s “double trouble” (as Janny referred to him).

Flora and I have a lot to think about in these next few days. She spent five weeks in Chiang Mai living with Liz and trying to get some traction in the city….it was a trying five weeks. She was looking for jobs and volunteer work while getting to know the city and getting used to a new culture, and the work was extremely difficult to come by. Several weeks ago, she visited Mae Hong Son, a gorgeous 8,000 person town north of Chiang Mai that houses many NGOs. She was with the head of one NGO which works against domestic abuse in tribal communities, and fell in love with the area and the work being done there. We both feel that living in a smaller community would give us the chance to feel more connected and involved after just a few months, so if we can find meaningful work in the area, we’re thinking of renting an apartment there instead of in Chiang Mai. We’ll be working on that in the next couple of days!

I’m very, very happy to be here; I love traveling and I missed Flora this fall, so it’s been marvelous to spend time with her. I do miss India rather a lot……and go through the pictures of the kids, Deepa, and Kate that I brought whenever I have downtime. Thailand reminds me of India in some ways but is so completely different in most ways that it makes me miss all the things that make India intoxicatingly distinct. Right now I’m reading In Spite of the Gods: the Strange Rise of Modern India and loving it. I tried to read it before my trip to India and it made no sense, but now it’s relevant, and I’m rapt. Being in Thailand has made me realize how bizarre India really is. It’s so loud, contradictory, and chaotic (the obvious example being traffic, the less obvious being things like the bureaucracy). I took it for granted that I would always be stared at, and that anyone selling me something would be incredibly aggressive. I even began to take the poverty for granted – meaning – I didn’t realize that it really is more extreme than most places in the world. I also loved seeing the many faces of Hinduism wherever I turned. I am more and more certain that I will have to return to India soon; India has me in her grip and I’m glad of it. Of course I’ve also thought about Kate and Deepa quite a lot – they were a family to me this fall and it’s strange to be traveling without them. (Don’t worry mom, I love my home, too.)

Keep your emails headed my way – I love getting random little notes or big notes about whatever it is that’s going on in your lives.

Love,
~Alice

I'm back in Asia!

I was home for three weeks but never really had it in my to "summarize my experience" so it's only now, once I've just flown into Chiang Mai, that I'm going to blog again. I want to talk about my last week or so in India, and ruminate a bit on the trip as a whole before I move on.

We spent our last week of travel in Sikkim; a tiny state sandwiched between Nepal, China, and Bhutan in Northeast India. (We flew from Chennai to Kolkata - formerly known as Calcutta - and then took a train and a bus to Gangtok, the capitol of Sikkim.) It's a predominantly Nepalese Buddhist state - essentially it was a whole other India to see just before we left. I was particularly excited to have the chance to see Buddhism in India because Thailand is a Buddhist nation and it will be neat to compare the two. Sikkim is also chalk full of jaw-dropping views; both of vibrant Gompas (Buddhist monasteries) and natural grandeur. After spending time in Gangtok's largest Gompa, several tea shops, side-streets, and a handicrafts bizarre, we took a Jeep ride through slightly mountainous terrain to a tiny Village called Tashiding. The next day we took an hour-long trek to a nearby peak where the Tashiding Monastery is situated. The views......can't be described - 360 degree hilly/mountainous beauty from the vantage point of a peaceful, prayer-flag full Monastery. We stayed for several hours to journal, draw in my case, and take in the Monastery. The next day we trekked about 20 kilometers to Yuksom.....of course it was beautiful and the trekking company couldn't be beat - especially since two friendly dogs followed us all 20 kilometers without so much as a bread-crumb of encouragement (for the first 12 km....until we knew they were really loyal.) We christened them Ravi and Puri (the name of an Indian bread). Other Sikkim highlights include; a grueling trek to Kechapuri Lake - a Holy lake surrounded in prayer flags and silence, listening to monks chant and play music (horns, gongs, percussion) in a Gompa in Pelling, and seeing Kanchenjunga - the third highest peak in the world. Sikkim was a travel highlight for all three of us - we recommend it!

After a few (not so short) flights.....we were home. It was, indeed disorienting to be in a place that was once so ordinary and have it seem extreme in many some ways; extremely uncrowded/unchaotic/uncolorful...and extremely orderly. I'm glad I got to see my family and I know my mother couldn't have stomached another three and half months of me traveling without some maternal respite. Of course I was asked a slew of questions about my time in India when I was home....and I probably didn't answer any of them properly. I love talking about India though I'm always wary of getting caught up in my own recollections about the kids and becoming unintelligible. Actual concrete examples of "how I changed" or "how this affected what I'll do with my life" are fairly difficult to produce. (The more concrete change in myself I can offer up is a 2 milimeter thick callous on the inner joint of my right middle finger that is a byproduct of giving the children a whole lot of mehendi cone (henna).)

Still, I'm continuing to notice little changes in myself and my tastes that are pointing me along towards conclusions. It is clear to me that my time at the Children's Home was by far the most impacting experience I had. I could have predicted that before ever leaving Everett, but it has manifested itself differently than I would have expected. Because we traveled for the month after leaving the Children's Home, I forced myself to move on and live in the moment, not wanting to miss out on our travel experiences. Once I was home and beginning to share stories and photos with family and friends I found myself thinking and wanting to talk about the children more and more every day. My thoughts aren't necessarily that complicated; I'm usually thinking something along the lines of, "Pavithra is mischievous and wonderful - I love her!". I've always loved listening to people and learning how they see the world. That held true with the children; I was fascinated by how they related to each other, wanted to know who felt left out and who was a leader, tried to look out for the kids who seemed lonely - I was essentially obsessed with what Kate termed "Kid politics". I'm fascinated by essentially the same general trends in adults as well. The difference with kids is their freshness; they aren't yet complete slaves to their own habits which makes them both mystifying and rewarding to work with. Mystifying because they're always surprising you with a ridiculous and hilarious comment or erratic behavior problem. Rewarding because they are impressionable; that gives me the privilege and responsibility of actually affecting them; both emotionally and academically. All this leads me to believe that I should spend my life around children in some capacity; I love being around kids and they seemed to benefit from me as well.

On a completely separate note, I have the travel bug! By the end of our travels in India I was loving the daily barrage of colors, smells, and tastes so much that I couldn't wait to go back. When I do return to India, I will doubtless spend time at the Children's Home, but I also hope to travel more in Northern India and see Varanasi, Amritsar, Dharamsala, and Ladakh. I adore Kate and Deepa and will miss them dearly; they made my time in India exactly what it was. They are such strong personalities, and I learned about myself by defining the boundaries of my friendships with two such unique, intelligent, and strong-willed people. Thank you Deepa and Kate- I love you both very much.

So now it's on to Thailand! I've been here only an afternoon and already I can't stop thinking about the differences between India and Thailand...I'm sure that will continue for a while while I try to get my footing. I haven't actually seen Flora yet! I will be meeting her and her visiting family in Bangkok in just two days. From there, she, her dad, and Liz (a friend of the Weeks family who I am living with right now) are going to Angkkor Wat in Cambodia! That's a lot of action for a first week living in Thailand, but I'm excited!

Thanks for reading!
~Alice

Short entry, so don't get your hopes up!

Kate, Phil, and I are in Ooty, Tamil Nadu right now! It's the former main hill station for the British in this area. It's gorgeous!! Our hotel has a communal fire place area where I have sat around late at night (we don't act like teenagers anymore so "late at night" is 8:30......yep) and everyone has an interesting story! People are really open because we all have at least something in common - we came to India for some reason, and everyone wants to know why everyone else is there. Most people are at some sort of cross-roads in their lives - usually late 20s, early 30s......quit a job because they were unsatisfied is a normal story - and now they're here to figure things out or see some of the world like they've always wanted before they launch into the next chapter of their lives. During the day we've been exploring the beautiful and hilly surrounding area....yesterday we hiked to the tallest point in South India - where the Eastern and Western Ghats meet! Look us up on the map....it was quite an adventure. Good to have some fresh air after Mumbai, too.....though we could see the horizon and the "pollution horizon" quite clearly in the distance.
Well, we're headed to Kerala soon....to Palakkad to meet up with Deepa and her family, and then it's Sikkim. I'm wishing we had more time to travel now! So I will just have to return.

Love,
~Alice

HELLO!

I haven't written in a while because UCH became increasingly difficult to explain the longer I lived there, the more I loved it......but I've got to get back in the saddle again! So I'll tell a little story about what I did yesterday. I should be able to handle that.

We're in Mumbai right now......first thing I noticed here was that there are no rick shaws!!! As faithful blog readers know, I was just privy to the musical stylings of a certain Mr. Rick Shaw.....so to have his namesake(s) so abruptly pulled from my life was a bit shocking. I think I'm sounding like Kate these days......oh dear. Instead of the rick shaws there are very small (by US standards) black cars with yellow roofs.....fancy! Deepa is styaing with the mother of a friend just outside of Mumbai while us four are in a hotel in the city, so I haven't seen here in two days!!!! That's the longest separation we've had in four months.......but we're meeting her for lunch in an hour, so I should be fine.

Kate and I chose to rise and shine at 6:30 yesterday morning though there were no singing children or cups of Chai awaiting us.......what inspired us to stir at this ungodly hour you might ask? Laughter. No, no....I'm serious - an elusive passage in Lonely Planet mentioned that there are many "Laughing Clubs" throughout Mumbai and you know Kate and I - we simply HAD to get to the bottom of it. We strolled around India Gate and thought we'd been had by the people who write Lonely Planet sidebars, but no! Off in the distance, a small crowd of enthusiastic aged people were clapping in a circle. They happily welcomed us into the fold and we joined in for half an hour of guided laugh exercises including "cell-phone laugh!", "computer laugh!", "Bow and arrow laugh!", and then a whole slew of racist laughs which included everybody from the Chinese to the Danes, to the Americans (we slap our knees and say 'Yay!', in case you were uncertain). It was specitacular. Afterwards, a group of us went across the way for toast and tea in the lobby of a hotel that the son of one of laughin club' regulars owns. He was a kind and toothless gentleman and spoke at length about something - either Sudan or Sweden, I wasn't certain. We'll be back at the club tomorrow morning, and we're bringing Zach and Phil......apparently there are fifty of these clubs around the city - some of these people have been laughing together for 12 years!!!

Mumbai is incredibly cosmopolitan (and unique if number of institutions centered on laughter is how you judge uniqueness) Of course the byways and side streets here are as crowded as ever - we took in our fair share of that yesterday while looking for souvenirs and just strolling around. (I'm terrible at bargaining.....) Phil went to his first temple and I bought some Mahandhi Cone (Henna)!!! We ended up walking a very, very long way - the day before when we were scoping out Lonely Planet, we read about a cool area of town but decided it would be too expensive to get a rick shaw there, but then we sort of just ended up there - Chowpatty beach! A sidenote - Zach has a freakishly good sense of cities.....he's from New York so it's not shocking that he's better at getting around than me, but after three months at UCH, Kate and I reeeeeally aren't exhibiting "urban cool" so his skills are especially obvious. He wanted to find Fabindia (a store) and just sort of....FOUND it and then decided we were going to The Bombay Store.....and we did! That sort of thing is nothing short of miraculous to me. ANYWAY - At Chowpatty Beach, we made a bold attempted ar meaningful repartee but many, many vendors had another thing in mind. They wanted us all to buy peanuts, cotton candy, chai, twirly-thingies, massages, etc....they were particularly assertive with Phil - maybe they sensed that he hadn't been here as long but several men tried to handfeed him peanuts, and another began to massage Phil's head whilst Phil batted at him and stared stoicly in the opposit direction.

Well, it's almost time to meet Deepa so I've got to wrap it up......have a lovely day! Sometime soon I'll sit down and try to gathre my thoughts on UCH, but it's too early just yet. Have a lovely day! Email me or Kate or Deepa - we want to hear abotu your lives and we love you all.

Love,
~Alice

Kate's Corner: The Moment You Have All Been Waiting For

Kate’s Corner

Hey all (ie friends, family, man in the Chinese restaurant, approximately 90000 relatives of Ms. Deepa Sivarajan, and of course, My Favorite Young Alaskan):

It’s been a good long while since I’ve made an appearance on Alice’s blog, but the much anticipated moment has (finally) arrived. We have now moved on from UCH, and are out in the greater world, so this edition of Kate’s Corner has been conveniently divided into two aptly named subcategories: “At UCH” and “Not at UCH”.

What a thrill.

I: At UCH
Things tend to be fairly low key at the children’s home/less anecdotal, but every once and a while, things take a turn towards the (aforementioned) wild side. Mostly when we attempt to organize activities with a bit of structure. Read on.

Moisture
An early and thrilling activity we attempt with the children involves salt, flour, and a dramatic downturn in our slowly built-up credibility. We make up a clay-like mixture, bring it over to an empty room in a bucket, and have the kids make small and lovely sculptures out of it. Only about 50% of the sculptures survive, Vishali eats another child’s masterpiece, and the activity does not appear to reinforce the trailing masculinity of the three boys at UCH (they all choose to sculpt purses!), but overall, the project appears successful. We bring the sculptures to our room on a large sheet of paper, and promise the kids they can paint them next week after they dry in the sun. Then the rains come. And with them, humidity. Day by day, the sculptures become more swelled and bloated, until they are floating in large pools of their own liquid. Alice gets a new roommate and must struggle to explain the importance of filling half the floorspace with 37 foul and formless salty things. After several weeks, we realize they are more liquid than solid, and utterly terrifying. We bring them to the dustbin, and with a touch of sorrow, let them go.

SLAAAAATS
Several weeks back, we set about creating photo albums with some of the kids. In a more beautiful world, small groups of children would enter a room, spend about twelve seconds placing their six photos (already chosen by us!) into a book, and exit feeling calm, content, and in possession of all of their original body parts. But, as things go, the Photo Room becomes a zone of war. After accomplishing a mass and violent exodus, Alice and I lock the door, find a heavy chair to use as a barricade, and try to hold back the tide of small people flinging themselves against the entrance. All is well, until Alice, seated in the chair, begins to find herself a victim of inappropriate touch. The children have opened the slats in the door, and are vigorously poking Alice’s butt with both their own bodies (fingers! hands!) and tools (badminton rackets, pointy-beaked stuffed animals, wands). While we are distracted by Ms. Minor’s violation, the children discover small windows and conduct a thriving blackmarket trade of our carefully organized photos through these openings. Defeated, and highly concerned with the state of Alice’s buttocks, we open the door, and in they came…
(Sidenote: Inspired by these slats, we had a party the following evening with Megan in entitled Slatfest 07: The Party in Which People Outside of the Room Drop Things Into the Room Through Slats. It was a blast. This probably beats the party when we celebrated the half way point in our travels (in which broke cookies in half!) or maybe even Halloween (in which, lacking a costume, I dressed up by removing my pants).

Rejection
Towards the end of our stay at Uluru, my friend Zach Duffy from The Mountain School, who just finished a program in North India, joined us at The Children’s Home. On Christmas Eve, we go with Zach to Pondicherry, with the intention of him staying a few days while we wrap up business at UCH. We get into the holiday spirit early in the day when Zach is hit by a motorcycle. The Christmas cheer continues as we call about 30 hotels and guesthouses, none of which have a room for Zach. Even the freaky ones with names like “The House of Fun” are entirely full. The clincher comes when we go to our eagerly anticipated dinner spot, convince them we have a reservation (we don’t), sit down, and then learn that the special holiday meal will not be served for another three hours. It is not until we are back on the bus to Uluru (bursting with holiday spirit!) that we realize Zach, a (Jewish) wanderer rejected from every inn, is reenacting the story of Christmas Eve. Is Zach Jesus? We scan the highway for barns/troughs of hay/maybe a manger, but even those do not present themselves. The next morning, more desperate, we bust out our Lonely Planet and try hotels in Jew Town (no Christmas rush there!) and distant Nagaland. But nothing, nothing, nothing.

A Very Beautiful Man
In our final days of UCH, a newcomer arrives. In order to preserve his privacy on this blog, we will call him by another name of a similarly Hispanic nature: Juan Rodrigo de la Noche (English translation: John Roderick of the Night).
Here are some pertinent facts about Rodrigo (who was rooming with Zach):
1. He is six foot six (at least) and has hair like Jesus.
2. Rodrigo is a wearer of alarmingly short shorts. Some of them, alarmingly short pink (neon!) shorts.
3. During dinner one evening, he discovers “ants in his pants”, and proceeds to stand up in the direct center of the dining area, and fish these ants out of his pants (in reality, alarmingly short shorts) with his hands.
4. When not wearing these shorts, Rodrigo travels in style with very very skinny jeans and a fedora (how perfect for the heat!).
5. His “Where’s Waldo?” style stripy underwear becomes a permanent hanging fixture in the volunteer area. When Alice is sent by the kitchen staff to look for a red and white dishcloth, she comes shockingly close to bringing these beauties.
6. As he is an engineer, we assume he has come to UCH to install new computers in the computer center. Instead, he has come to organize an intercommunity cricket match.
7. Never one to support corporations, Rodrigo spends a day fashioning a homemade cricket trophy out of a slab of rock and a smart looking red ribbon. After painstaking hours, he proceeds to drop the trophy and render it unusable.
8. He finds the act of riding a motorcycle very, very sensual.

II: Not at UCH

On the 27th of December, we left UCH for Goa, a beachy area with quite the good reputation for New Year’s where we planned to meet up with Phil (another Mountain School friend of mine). Goa (we’re here now) has been wonderfully relaxing—we have found time to buff up the muscles in our pinky toes (go zach!), perfect the art of leckfast (breakfast that stretches long enough to order lunch as well), and in the case of Alice and Deepa, name every member of the Fall 05 TMS semester.

As things often go with us, the fun gets started on the train:

Fiesta Time
The Vasco Express, running straight from Chennai to Goa, turned out to be quite the party car. We had our suspicions early on, when we noticed our Indian neighbors were presiding over a large stash of bongo drums, but didn’t think much of it until we reached the hills near Goa—ie: The Land of Tunnels. The instant our train entered a tunnel, everyone in our car immediately switched off the lights, started beating their bongos, screaming, and in the case of many, participating in a frisky dance party. Then, the second the train emerged from the tunnel, the noise died instantly, the lights came on, and everyone sat around looking normal, pretending nothing had happened. This went down not once, but at least fifteen times, no matter how long or short (8 second fiesta!) the tunnels were. During one tunnel where we failed to make enough noise, we heard cheering coming from an adjacent car, and realized our wild tradition had spread. Let me also note that most everyone in our car was over the age of 30.
Also interesting in our train experience were a number of (what appeared to be) planned stops. They were:

1) Scenic View Stop. Pretty self-explanatory. Everyone gets out of the train, takes some pictures of mountains, we move on.
2) Monkey Feeding Stop. Shortly after the SVS, our train came to a halt (in the middle of nowhere) next to a large group of monkeys. Immediately, every Indian tourist on the train rushed to the windows and began throwing food out to the primates. While some of it was train food, much of it was taken from little prepacked ziplocked bags, as if the passengers had anticipated this feeding session, and boarded the train prepared!
3) Let the Men Throw Rocks Stop. In LMTRS, the train halted for about 35 minutes in the middle of nowhere, so every man on the train could exit and throw a large number of stones off the side of the mountain. It began as quickly as it ended, and we all moved on.

Despite at least an hour and a half of halt time, our train arrived punctually in Goa, implying these stops were all planned into the timetable as part of a grander scheme.

From Hilton to Homeless
Enter Phil. Unlike Zach, Alice, Deepa, and I, Phil has no really clear reason to be in India. He just came. This is what you should know about Phil:
Phil spent his first night in India in the Mumbai Hilton (swanky!!).
Phil spent his second night in India on a beach chair (homeless!!)
Phil managed to procure the absolutely last ticket to Goa from Mumbai. It was a small miracle.
Hooray.

New Years
We had ourselves a lovely little New Years on the beach, featuring a very elongated dinner and the musical stylings of a certain Rick Shaw (note the name, my friends). We hoped it might be some sort of singing motorcar, but no, Rick is in fact, a man, albeit a musically incompetent and rather bitter one. As he got up to play his tunes (ie play his backing tape), the five of us decided to break out our crazy teenage moves on the dance floor. We suspect Rick Shaw has been trying to reach out to the youth for quite some time now (coarsening up his image, perhaps?), and this was—most likely—the greatest moment of his life. He later stormed off the stage in a huff, vitriolically cursing the inferior sound system. Beside us on the dance floor, was the breathtakingly sensual and very middle-aged Scarf Lady. At first we thought she was twisting her hips and shaking her scarf in a special monogamous treat only for the eyes of Rick Shaw, but we soon discovered that she was, in fact, non-discriminatory. What a scandal! Another key player in the dancing was Old White Man, who gradually (under the wing of some young friends) transformed his classic old man swivel step to crazed Indian-male style flinging of the hands.
The New Year was ushered in with a rather spectacular display of fireworks (I think they are just tighter if they are coming out of a box approximately eight feet away from you), a swim in the ocean, and a very nice group hug. As we finally drifted off to bed, a sleeping Deepa was heard to make some deeply earnest comment about “science of the butt” (a future major, perhaps?). We are still puzzling over this.

Xavier’s
Kate’s Corner has now moved up to pretty much the present, with this event occurring last evening. We’ve had some issues with speed of dining service (thus the leckfasts), but Xavier’s took it to a stunningly new height. We have our own special waiter who doesn’t appear to a) be serving anyone else or b) exist. After much speculation on his whereabouts (is he sleeping? injured? organizing a riot?), he finally comes to take our orders. A short decade passes before we see him once more, at last with Zach’s soup and rice in hand. But then he vanishes. When he appears again (without food) after a huge hiatus, we ask him to bring the rest of our meals. He responds by bringing us an extra table (almost what we wanted!), and by sweeping in to take away Zach’s rice and run away with it before we can protest. In all my dining experience, this rice removal was unprecedented. Eventually things shook themselves out, and actually came, but only the drinks he thought Zach ordered (he seemed to be only willing to serve Mr. Duffy). What a struggle it was.

Well, that is that.
We’re off to Mumbai tomorrow, then Ooty area (for Alice/Kate/Phil) or Bangalore (for Deepa), then Kerala, then Sikkim, then the loveliest of them all, Seattle, Washington, USA (on the 26th, I think).

Happy New Year!
Comment on the blog; don’t be a closeted reader! We want to know who you are.

Love,
Kate