Train wrecks, spinning buses and leeches

The station master rang the brass bell twice and the crisp practiced tone reverberated long through the nearly empty station in the middle of the night. My southbound train was finally pulling in, delayed by an hour. The security guard approaches and signals that he’ll accompany me out to the third track in the middle of the rail yard. At this point I realize that I’m the only passenger boarding and the anticipation builds as the huge engine pulls into the station and creaks to a halt.

I was relieved to see the berth; quite weary after the middle school student’s graduation, sad goodbyes to Gam, Tuy and Pui and the three hour bus ride from Kamphaeng Phet to the Phitsanulok station. In a conversation a couple of weeks ago, Kim and The Director briefed me on the schedule for the end of school. When I heard the last week of March was for the Thai teachers to polish up the grades, I asked if I really needed to be at school. Kim looked at her mother with a questioning look. “Mai ben rai” The Director said, and with that pronouncement I began the process of looking at a map to determine where to go. I was drawn to the Andaman Coast, and from there traced the highway to Khao Sok National Park with a return route via a train station farther south. After a frenzy of reading, copying pages from the guidebook and a series of electronic train ticket bookings, I was ready to go. I fell asleep before the train started moving.


I heard the voices as I emerged from a very deep sleep. One of the train staff poked his head in my curtained berth and said, “Wake up. Time to go.” I got dressed and poked my head into the corridor, where a bewildered woman stared at me and pleaded, “Do you speak French?” It was 5am and everyone was leaving the train, so naturally I followed along. There were several tour groups of foreign tourists all dragging large plastic suitcases to a bank of huge Thai buses lined up outside the station with only feet between them. I searched a few for an empty seat, returning to the Thai woman with the flashlight to ask, “Tee Nai tee Nii (where is this)”. “Phitsanulok” she replied, and with that I giggled in realization that the train had not moved anywhere. She found me a seat next to a huge German man wearing black socks and sandals and I tucked in for the ride. Who knew what was going to happen next?

Newspaper at the Khuraburi 7-11!

As we started to move our way through the city, a Thai man got on the bus and began the announcements in German. Another person translated that there was a train accident farther south and we were detoured to Nakon Sawan via bus, where we would pick up the marooned northbound train and continue to Bangkok. I waited until 7:30 am to call Lauren and tell her I wouldn’t be making our 8am train to Chumpon. I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t arrive until 5 am the next morning, having rebooked another sleeper berth and a bonus 6 hour layover at Hua phong station in Bangkok.

Hua phong station

. Hard to see in this photo but there are wisps of mist dissipating from the arching crossbeams, which Lauren and I assumed helped cool the air from the train's engines.

When my final train had slowed at the Chumpon station and I was poised on the boarding steps, I jumped to the platform and walked in earnest to the waiting posse of motorcycle taxis and the promise of another few hours of sleep, finally starting the real journey in Southern Thailand.

The next morning, seeing Lauren was the best part of the day. Discouraged by the employment prospects in the Boulder Valley School District, Lauren had a short-term contract at a school just north of Bangkok and was returning to Colorado in a couple of weeks. We’d been trying to get together on an adventure since we bonded at orientation. Lauren joined me at the last minute when her other plans fell through and I was happy to have her calm, flexible, articulate and smart company. Finally united, we were finally on our way.


Guidebooks and maps only tell you so much, especially without topographic lines. This occurred to me as Lauren and I were swerving along a mountain road in the bus with substandard air conditioning. We’d been gabbing so much at the bus station in the morning that we’d missed the earlier departure, so I’d had a bite to eat while we were waiting. I regretted that decision as the sweat started to build and I could feel my body swirling in the eminent reality of motion sickness. The bus was headed across the jungles and mountains to the Andaman Coast, slowing frequently at small roadside villages with jerks and stops and making up the time on the up and down curves. I couldn’t look out the windows; most of them were curtained anyway. I uploaded and downloaded everything in my body for most of the four hour journey. The upset finally dissipated in the moment the speedboat escalated out of the harbor on the way to Ko Surin National Park the next morning, filled with Thai families and a few Europeans excited for a day of snorkeling in the park.

Note longtail boat.From wearetraveller.com. 

The water is warm turquoise, like swimming in the sky of a crystal clear day. The acuity of the senses escalates: the sound of my own breathing and of the fish feeding on the corals, the sight of a sea cliff dropping away with a curtain of hundreds of iridescent blue silverfish, the anemone hosting five clownfish, the biggest parrot fish I have ever seen in my life. There are a few patches of live coral, most of it bleached, but the fish life is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. I take a moment to pay homage to the magnificent underwater formations rising from the ocean floor, with the fish hiding in more than a few crevices.

Some one else took this picture, I stole it from flickr.

When we move ashore for lunch, Lauren and I get “checked in” to our beachside tent. When I was first planning my journey, I was conscious of the need to plan activities as a single traveler. I’d booked the adventure ahead with Andaman Discoveries, a community development nonprofit focused on providing an economic development framework as a tool to build capacity after the devastating tsunami of 2004. The Moken people of the region, traditionally living a nomadic subsistence lifestyle on the Indian sea coast, experienced a significant trauma through the Tsunami and decided to utilize international aid dollars to build a permanent village near the park entrance. With bamboo huts clustered in together like rows of HUD housing in any Alaska Native village, the naked children played a “run, jump and boff the syrofoam float” game as Lauren and I meandered on our way to see the school. 

A traditional Thai long tail boat comes to pick us up in the late afternoon after the final snorkel of the day. After a tidepool hike with ghost crabs galore, a shower and dinner, Lauren and I banter about the large silent creatures flying from the trees to the coast. I am incredulous that the resident bats are the size of chickens feeding in the night. The moon is lined up with a few planets in the starry night sky. There are thin sleeping mats on the floor of the tent and the pillows are little round neckrests, but it doesn’t matter.

On the return boat trip the next afternoon, a storm builds on the coast. The deck is sprayed as the waves build in the storm. The rain pours down in earnest, with the guides huddled on deck under the nylon sleeping bags from our overnight. The mothers bring their children closer; one of the park service rangers puts his wife in the seat behind the captain. We return to the mainland and prepare for the next stop.


Lauren and I decide to make our way to Khao Sok National Park early, but it involves a slight detour to the junction town of Takua Pa. Coincidentally, there’s a waiting bus but nary a seat to be found. With the true power that can only be demonstrated by being middle aged and wearing a button-down shirt and skirt, I am placed in the shotgun seat next to the Muslim driver. The view is terrific: karst mountains, dense jungle of vines, small villages where I note a toddler making his way up a bamboo ladder to the house, a few hills denuded with new rubber tree plantings and some aged rattan tree forests. Once dropped off at the highway, our lodging is secured and we start to make our way through getting oriented to the area, heading off to book an overnight at Tonetuey, a floating lodge on Cheow Lan Lake.

Archo and the butterfly relaxing
at Tonetuey's dining room

Archo lives at Tonetuey. His lilting voice points out collapsed bunkers where allegedly communist students defended themselves (and coincidentally the forest) from the government and logging forces in the 70’s. He may have been a member of one of the families who was flooded out of the river valley when the dam created the lake in the ‘80s. The lake not only provides electricity for the region, it also has opened up the jungle for people to explore more easily. It is a destination unlike any other in the world.

A park service "office" with a
construction similar to the raft houses.

They told us we would need sturdy shoes and a flashlight for the hike through the cave, but not that we would be swimming through cold water or hustling away from a King Cobra in the middle of his hunt. The jungle is a magical place. This is where the earth takes a deep breath and sighs; releasing all the tension of pavement and pollution in other parts of the world. The region comprises one of the largest contiguous nature preserves in Thailand. There is so much action: cicidas screeching, monkeys rustling, ants marching purposefully up and over a rock, lililla vines creeping their way around every available surface, woodpeckers rapping in the distance, an unexpected waver of palm frond that is only a tiny breeze, a dried leaf hanging from a spider thread and oscillating from its own weight. After our last hike up and over a pass, we head back to the pier and a storm builds in the distance. As wind, waves and rain close in, Archo unfurls a piece of rubber from the deck near his seat on the cooler, pulling it around him with one hand as the other holds the rudder of the longtail boat steady.

Archo at the helm on Cheow Lan
lake as the rain approaches.

The next day, I realize how uninformed and naïve I am. I’d booked a 9pm train with the hopes that we could have a full day of hiking at the park’s entrance, so Lauren and I head out on a rough trail with the hopes of doing the loop around and getting cleaned up before a late afternoon bus to Suratthani. Alas, midway through the hike, the bridge across the river is closed with not one but three signs prohibiting entrance. As we look around and converse with the park staff doing some trash collecting, he looks at our feet and says, “leech”.

Where the leeches roam...

At that moment, I realize how silly it was to wear my adventure sandals on the hike. I have about six of them attached under the webbing and between my toes. I try to remain calm but the critters are hellbent and hungry, sometimes seeming to jump from my prying fingers to the back of my hand. I can now see them on the forest floor, poised on the tip of their lower half with their mouths outstretched and searching for a victim. “It’s from the rain yesterday”, the park ranger says kindly, flicking his lighter and making sure he annihilates them, “all the animals in the jungle suffer from the leech.” We hightail it back to the park entrance and swath feet in the alcohol gel before attempting a second trail, this one wider and drier. We’re rewarded with a group of long tailed macques, including a small baby, but are completely depleted when we make it back to our bags and wait for the final bus trip.

The journey is finally at a close as we are waiting for our train back to Bangkok at the Phunpin station on Friday evening. Thai families are in transit; the eight year old and I both notice the rat who lives under the platform. A dog picks his way across the tracks and finds a plastic bag of leftovers, daintily carrying it by the handle to forage in a safer place. There’s a long-haired, middle-aged white man carrying a laptop bag. He’s wearing knee-length Hawaiian surfing shorts and nothing else. I don’t know his circumstance (perhaps everything he owned was stolen?) but the insensitivity demonstrated by being shirtless in a public place irks me on such a deep level. Lauren and I are directed to the front of the train, where we board the third car and into our pre-made berths, sleeping and rocking our way back to the dry north country for a morning arrival in Bangkok.

Sleeping on the train.

I had lunch for dinner

The school year has ended.  I was grading  English tests until late last night, becoming increasingly discouraged by the idiocy (spelling and grammar errors!) of the exams themselves and the obvious difficulty that this school has in meeting the national mandate to teach English with a teaching staff that is obviously uncomfortable with the topic and a student body that has absolutely no context to practice. In a cloze test exercise on the fifth grade exam, students routinely completed every sentence incorrectly.   Fortunately, the Director sprang for the motorcycle food lady who generally shows up at the school gate around 5pm anyway  to bring the goodies over to the conference room and let us have whatever we wanted from her baskets. 

On Monday, Kim talked to me about a new program that they would like to launch for the new school year in May and asked me to write the copy for the brochure.   This would be an “Expert English” program comprised of the three classes--Art, English and Math—taught entirely in English to only 20 tested and pre-qualified first grade students in an air conditioned classroom.   I would be teaching this curriculum with a yet unknown Thai teacher.   Parents will pay 8,000 baht ($260)  for this for the entire semester, all inclusive except for textbooks.  The prospect is enticing for me, especially in light of the potential of extending my stay here for the rest of the academic year and having an opportunity to design and implement a program.  On the other hand, I am weighing the burden of comprising a whole new series of lesson plans in an evolving curriculum.  I am also laughing myself silly about teaching a Math class.

I was always horrible with numbers.  While my sister was acing calculus and playing as an all star field hockey champion in her junior year of high school, I was barely passing algebra in my freshman year of college.  There are also a lot of times when I have no idea what to do in my classroom and find myself trying, failing, adapting and trying again.  Compounded by the unknown factor of my co-teacher, this new responsibility could be very challenging.    If this program actually launches, I will see selected members of the Anuban Saam (Kindergarten three) class that graduated today in a very intensive next semester.  It was bittersweet to bid their cute little red kerchief uniforms goodbye this morning.

Thai people do a great job with events.  The school cafeteria was decorated with bolts of shiny polyester fabric in bright colors, tied with wire to form draped garlands and bows.  The stage was constructed and covered with vinyl flooring, the audio system rigged with nary a peep of feedback, and gold skirted tables were staffed with gold shirted teachers who staffed the tables with flowers, balloons and trinkets for sale as presents the parents could provide their children. As parents filtered in, the Man Who Loves the Microphone kept up a monologue on how great the Anubans were and what a nice, well-deserved occasion this was for all concerned.  The snack shack was stocked with baked goods, colored sweet waters and ice, and small containers of rice and fried chicken wings surrounded with plastic wrap.  Before long,  the first “song and dance review” launched the program.   Watch this little video on youtube!

After a few other demonstrations of student talents, I was lined up for my part of the show to  “say a few words.”  I was  supportive, but also realized when I came to school that I wasn't as perfectly coiffed as I would have liked.  I could feel the sheen breaking out on my forehead.  The past couple sleepless nights had generated a sagging face that no powder could correct.  I stumbled my way through a few platitudes in Thai, repeated what I said in English and was not surprised when Kim joined my side not only to re-state what I’d already said in Thai (so the parents could actually understand it) but also sell the new Expert English program to these prospects. 

Before long, the Anuban lined up for their diplomas.  This step means so much for these five year olds. In just five weeks, they will be joining the morning assembly in the gray and blue unformed rows of the older students.  They will be tested quarterly. Coloring will only be a small portion of their academic worlds.  And, most tragically, they will not have an afternoon nap on the fold-up blanket/pillow bedrolls that they used to bring to school on Monday mornings.
With their diplomas in hand, the students line up in front of the decorated archway in their graduation robes.  They are handed a bouquet of tulle and a stuffed animal and each child is handed a plastic bag that contains at least 1000 baht.  They pass through the row of their teachers, who touch their shoulders in a soft and gentle farewell to this stage of pure innocence.  They proceed under the archway, to a waiting crowd of parents, photo opportunities and the bigger world around them.


In May, I will return to a changed world. My housemate Tuy and my good friend Gam are leaving their jobs here and I will miss them both.  I will have some new opportunities to refine whatever teaching skills I started to hone on the last round.  By the beginning of June and as the midnight sun arches over Alaska, I will decide what I want to do in the next 12 months.  I’ve been mulling over the forces that are supporting and opposing my decision to stay through March 2013:  the sunk costs of my colored uniform shirts I wear on designated days, the majesty of the ancient ruins and elderly trees that surround me here, the loneliness and isolation of being one of a handful of foreigners (and mostly likely the only middle aged single white woman) in the province, and the fear of returning to the states where the costs of health coverage and re-establishing myself present gnarly obstacles.  There is also the winter solstice of 2012, which could be exciting.

On Friday night, I will board a train at midnight in an overnight sleeper car headed south with the exciting of prospect of camping out in wild places for the week ahead.  Then, I return to Kamphaeng Phet for a thrilling “turn and burn” involving laundry, re-packing, cleaning and sorting things out in preparation for some visa business enroute,  a few days in Bangkok and a long overnight flight Tanzania for my 3 week long 50th birthday celebration.  Lots of time for thinking, experiencing, sharing time with my best buddy Carrie Evans and my family who is joinging us for a week-long safari.   I shared a quote, pinned to the wall above my desk in Anchorage, with my Fellow Teacher Friend in Tak recently. It deserves to be here too:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

The Power of Love

I was in love with 14 second graders on Thursday afternoon. The alpha cohort of seven year olds, comprised of 13 girls and 1 quite overweight boy, are consistent high performers in my teaching roster.   In fact, they are generally so eager to engage in conversation practice that I had to innovate a lottery system to ensure fair opportunities for participation.  Not only does this save me from the chorus of pleas, it’s also a  game of chance and luck—something that Thai people love.  

At lunch,  my Thai co-teacher mentioned she wouldn't be coming today as she had to cover another class.  “Mai bpen rai (no problem)” I said, "Nakrian dee mahk. (The students are very good).  As we began,  I gave them the end of the school year quiz and was able to answer their questions in sign language and meager Thai.  Afterwards, we played a game.  The students matched  the words in the basket (pulled by the current round of the lucky winner) with the pictures in their hands.   As they lined up at the door at the end of class to say, “Thank you, teacher”,  I high-fived everyone on their way out.  It was one of those moments when everything flows, life is easy and you feel you are exactly where you should be in the Universe.

Later that afternoon, the Director’s daughter Kim invited me to attend a funeral for a student that evening.  Apparently this 14 year old was hanging out with some friends of friends over the weekend.  Gang members were involved on the periphery of the gathering, there was retribution from a previous disrespect, shots were fired and one missed its intended target to enter the young boy’s abdomen.  After three critical days in the hospital and despite a proud blood donation from Jee Jee the ladyboy teacher, the young man died.  I didn’t know him, but I was interested in witnessing  the ceremony.

the temple was just up the road, through the gate pillars with the dragons on the top and the glass building with an enormous Buddha statue facing the road.  As we slipped off our shoes to enter, I noticed the tables piled high with food.  The Director was welcomed with a wai and muted conversation.  We were escorted to the front and seated on couches in the premier spot; a young woman brought us glasses of water. The mother comes to visit with The Director, who hands her a fat envelope.   The boy’s coffin is enormous, green and gold and reaching nearly five feet off the ground.  The coffin is surrounded by plastic evergreen arrangements, each punctuated with a myriad of twinkling colored lights.  His framed school photo is featured to the left, on a pedestal, the somber and uniformed head surrounded by a blue background. It crosses my mind that this might have been the only photo of him that his family had.

A bell gongs. The boy's mother and her supporters take their praying positions in front of the boy's altar.   A man wearing a white t-shirt with a colt 45 logo scurries about and I’m certain he had no idea of the English meaning.  Four monks file into the temple.  The Director, the Man Who Loves the Microphone and the teacher of the second grade alpha cohort are invited to light candles and incense at the three stations in front of the monks.   The mother moves to the boy’s station in front of his coffin and does the same.

The monks begin their prayers. As I sit with my palms together and close to my heart, I begin to meditate in earnest. What can I conjure up that will foster the healing?  An image of a lotus flower comes to mind.  I ask, “what colors” ? Pink, with a touch of lavender, it answers.  With that, images begin to swirl in my mental space as the chanting continues in a rhythmic litany of tones in Pali, the ancient Buddist language.  Colored vapors surround the people in front of the boy.  A carousel of connected lotus flowers undulates around them in slow moving circles.  The image moves and shifts and the entire group is in the center of the flower, with the petals opening and closing to surround them with light, peace, a salve to heal the grief and pain.  It erupts to the ceiling of the open air temple, drifting down to the other teachers, family and friends. lined up in the plastic chairs around the temple    This meditation comes so easily and so powerfully that I recognize that something significant has occurred.  I notice my own contentment and peace as I leave, observing the supporters of the family counting out the donations received from the mourners.

The following day, my classes are cancelled as I’m requested to fulfill my role as Marketing Assistant with the Anuban (kindergarten) open house.  The Director surprises me midway through the presentation to parents and asks me to say a few words in Thai which I stumble through.   The Man Who Loves the Microphone adds a bit of commentary afterwards.  The kindergartners do a series of song and dance revues, abacus demonstrations and public speaking opps.  Afterwards, I walk around and participate in a few projects, saying simple hellos to parents and smiling a lot.   The school bell rings at the end of the day and I’m doing my usual “meet and greet” with the masses of children running, playing, walking to school bus or lining up at canteen for snacks.

Nid, one of the second graders from my Thursday class, runs up and hands me a fabric flower.  I look at it and experience a sudden rush of recognition, validation and wonder from last night's meditation.  I am awed and a bit giggly, humbled and confident. I give her a shoulder hug to my hips. “Of course”, I say to myself, “it has returned.”   Thank you Nid.  Thank you Universe.

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Tests and other torture in Thailand

On Tuesday afternoon, I watched while five of the third graders got their ankles “slapped”  by their homeroom  teacher’s wooden pointer.   The gang of five boys in this class are challenging, even with a Thai teacher that maintains order by her mere physical presence.  Without her backup on Tuesday, they’d taken the stuffed animal I use to teach “in, on, under” and were pretending to have it jump out of the foam brick box and then tossing it about the classroom.  This actually was quite imaginative and creative, but their delivery was a bit off.   The girls were intent on their own conversations and scornfully mocked the boys as their physical antics intruded on their personal space.  Two shy students made eye contact with me and looked pained; one covered his ears.  

We're doing practice dialog around
shopping in the "store",
but my Thai co-teacher put the pigtail
 on the male student whose hair she thought was too long

As soon as Dian entered the classroom, silence fell and nearly all students froze in place.  Dian is my age and has never married.  Tuaw, my good friend who is the one teacher that speaks passable English , told me that her finance died long ago and she never found another.  Dian had come to check on me, thankfully, knowing that the usual teacher was administering  exams for the upper level students.   She assesses the situation, utters admonishments in Thai and demands that the miscreants fess up.  The girls point fingers.  The boys make sure that everyone who’s had a hand in the shenanigans are included in the line up.  In a line at the front of the room, the boys raise their feet for punishment and the switch is delivered in several short raps to their ankles.

Thai people  consider the feet as a dirty part of the body.  With an uninformed detachment that I bring with much of the cultural elements witnessed here in Thailand, I watch this incident unfold.  I had little sympathy for the gang of five.  After Dian left, I resumed again with different tactics in hand and was relieved when the bell rang.

The school year is drawing to an end: the third level kindergartners had photos taken in their mini graduation robes, and both National and school exams are being administered. Thailand’s educational system is notoriously poor among the ASEAN countries.  To address the concerns using home grown tactics, Thailand instituted a new government entity to write and administer the O-Net exam about five years ago.  The test provides a benchmark for Thai language, social studies, math, English and sciences (including sexual education) and upper level students take the test for University admission.  This year was rife with the recurrent annual controversy over the exam, with parents, teachers and students shaking their heads over the structure and content.


Here’s one cited as the most egregious example of ludicrous and ineffective testing:
 "Locals have found a bizarre item. It is round and soft. If it is not fed water, it shrinks and becomes a hard object. This hard object, when given water, will return to its soft, bigger condition. What is it?" The alternatives were: a) The egg of the Naga (ed. A Buddhist deity); The egg of a giant salamander; c) Quartz; d) Flour balls in milk tea; or e) Hydrogel.

With the preparations for closure in progress, my elective English classes are not ranking high on the teachers’ lists.   Over the past week, I had five classes not show up. Of the remaining eight, six were conducted without the steadying presence of my Thai colleagues.  That’s been challenging on a personal level, causing me to question the wisdom of living here in this small town where my main support system is virtual.   In the midst of the increased fervor of the beginning of the end, the male students are fighting among themselves and the girls are tittering.  Even Diyo, the Man Who Loves the Microphone, seems to be losing his patience with increasing frequency.  In the morning assembly on the volleyball court, he  paces amidst the rows of students looking for violators.

In two consecutive mornings this week and once during the morning prayer to the Buddha, Diyo latched onto second and third grade boys as an example.   It starts with his exclamation of wrong doing.   The students fall silent.  I look to Tuaw with a question on my face, she slowly shakes her head as the rest of the teachers continue their morning gossip on the sidelines.  Diyo cuffs the boy on the head, raising his voice in what I can only assume is a tirade assumed for effect.  The boy hangs his head in shame, I can see his body shaking with sobs as he maintains his place in the line of his classmates. Diyo grabs him by the elbow, drags him to the front of the assembly and makes him face his fellow students, all alone.    Diyo assumes the microphone  from the usual upper level student MC and continues his proclamations on the misdeeds of the seven year old.  By now, the boy’s shirtfront is soaked with tears.

I take another in a series of deep breaths, mustering the only power I can exhibit at this moment with a Tonglen meditation.  "May you be safe, may you be happy, may you be strong, may you be at ease" circles around my brain with an image of a superhero cape draped over the boy’s trembling shoulders.   I ache for him.   The morning breeze lifts the branches of the trees around campus.  I search the sky for signs of birds and look across to the school’s garden.  The teachers line up in front of the student body for the ritual student statements of honor to us and to each other. We do the morning love meditation with the hand movements and the singing.  The boy remains behind us, standing off to the side of the student MCs.  Alone, exhausted, overwhelmed, humiliated.

Over the past couple weeks, a persistent haze has settled over the northern region of Thailand.  It was thick enough last week to delay a flight into Lampang, about  three hours north of here.   It’s the thick of the dry season.  Forest fires in National Parks (likely intentionally set), the usual trash fires and the annual “slash and burn” clearing of the sugar cane and rice fields have created this mess.  Letters to the editor in the Bangkok post lament over this annual problem.  The government issues a press release stating the King's displeasure and that the initiative to seed clouds and create rain is currently underway.   Yet, the trash fires continue, protective masks are recommended in many Northern provinces and the officials look the other way.    The sunset and sunrise is a spectacular red glowing orb in the sky.

Despite the change in the air with my students, there is a sense of timeless stagnancy with the issues that surround their future.  I wonder what will create change in this country, so fiercely proud of their “never-colonized” status yet also falling far behind countries like Laos and Cambodia in English education.  Thailand is also ranked behind many other countries in the overall educational performance yet spends a staggering amount of money in bureaucratic “oversight” that creates ineffective systems.   And in this small rural school, the practice of using humiliation, coercion and force to maintain order amidst the monkeys in the classroom is likely repeated in many others around the country.   The outliers reach deep into the depths of abusive power.  The school janitor takes the trash to the burn burn each day around five.  On Friday's bike ride in the Ancient Forest Temple Across the Street, I look to the sky at sunset to see 1-3 inch cinders drifting town like a brief macabre snow.  I finally realize that this is likely the product of the sugar cane plant located about 20 miles out of town.

It’s late on Sunday night.  Tomorrow is a new day and the beginning of the three weekend countdown to the end of the school year.  I found out on Friday that I can take the last week of March off, which I hope will bring me to the northeastern part of the country pending smog/haze/smoke considerations.  Or maybe splurge on a train across the backbone of the country, south to the beach. Over the weekend,  I found a set of smiley hair scrunchies that match my school uniform colors for each day of the week.  They are worthy of a 7 year old's attention, like something the next kid who is standing at the front of the assembly next week might appreciate.   

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Restless

The Friday afternoon class of 2nd graders didn’t show up. This has been the pattern over the past six weeks, but over the past two they’ve arrived on time.   I busied myself with projects I’d been procrastinating:  cleaning out old crap left behind from previous teachers (my classroom was previously used as storage for a variety of random pre-school props), looking for my flashcard drawing marker that went MIA two days ago, and submitting an application for a program coordinator with an international organization that provides services to Burmese refugees here in Thailand. 

Friday afternoons are always chaotic at the end of the school day.  Diyo, the PE teacher who acts like an assistant principal and loves the microphone, announces the winning team in the weekly trash collecting contest.  Blue team wins again, continuing their month-long streak.  I know my suggestion to implement new criteria (team red has never even made it to third place) will be lost in both translation and the school’s power dynamics.   Tuy gave me a lift home and while she enlisted my help in getting her new cellphone activated, her sister’s new puppy City  played around the floor and peed on the newspaper I’d suggested she use for training.

City at 2 months old with his other toy. He actually tried to bite my ankles yesterday, not a good sign.

Previously, Tuy had been mopping up the frequent messes with “napkins” (think facial tissue), which worked for this pint-size toddler that Nan purchased at the market for 1300 baht (about $40).   Tuy was off to spend the night at her friend Aon’s house.  I was going to ride my bike up to the Friday market and get dinner.  As I left, City was gnawing on the braided toy I made from string that secured the cell phone package that Tuy got from her dad this afternoon. 

 This is a roadsite market in Viet Nam
but similar to an image I saw yesterday.Lifted from Dailylife.com.

I hadn't been to the Friday market for a couple of months.  There are regularly scheduled weekday markets that seem to pop up around town.  Tuesday evenings there’s a used clothes market, this Friday night market for the local hood from the surrounding countryside and another big Sunday clothes market that brings in people from all over Kamphaeng Phet.   There are also the markets that appear like flash mobs, do their retail dance for some length of days and then disappear leaving behind the  opportunity to seize that special something that was noticed in the rounds and trashy detritus.    The amount of labor that it takes to set up and take down the displays is staggering. The more sophisticated vendors have shelves in the back of their box trucks, but the vendors on the neighborhood Friday market are pretty rough.

I appreciate the types of merchants I see there:  dark and earthy, these are the folks that have been farming for the rest of the week.  As I sauntered along the row of tables right next to the highway, I’m struck by the variety that were displayed in the waning sun.   Raw meats and fish (alas, the eels in the bucket were not moving either physically or as merchandise), a variety of produce including fruits, leafy greens, root vegetables, dried chilies and mushrooms, smoked fish fillets, half of a fried chicken that the vendor will gladly use a cleaver and chop (bones and all)  into edible bites for your home dining pleasure, and a variety of prepared entrees in the ubiquitous plastic bags with rubber bands on top.

I haven’t gotten the guts to try the grilled squid  on a stick so I stuck with the chicken.  As I was looking for vegetables, Nay (pronounced like nigh) appeared, in all of her 13 year old awkward glory.  Nay and her younger brother Riu are usually in my classroom after school has dismissed.   I usually give Riu a coloring sheet left over from my other classes and recently have been utilizing Nay’s copying abilities to help me with making flashcards for the kindergartners.   Nay never seems very comfortable with me.  I suspect much of it has to do with my stature, some with the language, and the last bit with adolescence.

Valentine from Nay. Note her school picture on the left.

She follows me, looking a bit dumbstruck, as I say hello to her mother and father standing in front of a large tray of tempura vegetables and entire grilled fishes. I decide I’m going to score some for the home team and purchase, but Nay appears so nervous that she’s forgotten how to say 15 baht.  “Sib hah”, I confirm with her mother, and my package gets bundled up with a nice little packet of green chili as a side dish.  Nay’s father jokes “Twenty  five!” and Nay leaves to walk with me through the market. 

I ask her about the perfect squares of a crushed leafy green vegetable dish that I’d tried to last time I was here.  In a pattern that seems to recur with me, I realize that this item is not what I’d hoped it would be.  Apparently topped with some kind of animal fat as a congealing agent, these salty nuggets of seeming health were packing calories.  Nay lugs the small watermelon that made it into the weekend dining portfolio and stands with me while I consider the merits of the fresh little sesame seed dusted donut holes.

Toothpaste mistake.

At last, we load everything in the bike basket and Nay heads off to help her folks at their food stand.  I decide to do a little more shopping at the sundry table to buy a trail size of a thai toothpaste to check out the brand.  I’m a bit gun shy after buying the “herbal” variety  and having it both taste and look like something that came out of City’s rear end. 

When I return to the bike Riu is calling, “teacher Ellen!” and Nay has returned with her mother’s cell phone.  Photos are taken with me and the children, including one I don’t know.  I get on the bike, wave goodbye and head home along the path that parallels the highway.

The house is empty when I return and I settle into eating dinner, reading the Huffington post app and shaking my head over the republican candidates. At 7:30, I decide its TV time.  One of my contacts in The World of People Under 25 Years Old has revealed to me the secret of The Pirate Bay, and for this I will have eternal mixed feelings.   I’ve caught up on a couple of my favorite shows, but now fear that I am hooked into this free media connection and losing my readerly/writerly edge and self-imposed monastic approach to life.  On the other hand, access to American TV shows has increased the self-entertainment factor that books couldn’t meet. Tonight,  I settled into a couple of episodes of Mad Men season 2.   Then took a shower, did the sinus rinse, set the timer on  the A/C for 3 hours and, in a lapse of very poor judgment, took the computer to bed for a third episode that took me way past my usual 10pm bedtime.

Overly sated on media as midnight approaches, I shut the computer and do the usual reading before bed. By now, my nose is running and I’m starting to cough. Horrors abound in the thought that I might be sick again.  Egads!  I’d fallen asleep without using the net pot the night before!  Could this have opened up the grain elevator of infection????   I turn the light back on.  30 minutes have transpired.  I read some more, until the eyes close but the bed light stays on. 

Then awake an hour later. Get up for a drink of water.  Look in the refrigerator. Pace the living room.   Read again and actually finish the book.  Then turn out light.  Thoughts race about the dentist appointment I need to make in Bangkok, the math on the number of blood glucose strips I have in stock until I can resupply, what this next, final month of the school year will entail, the teacher’s meeting I wasn’t invited to today (likely an oversight and they will be doing the entire thing in Thai anyway), what kind of shoes will I need in Tanzania, the fact that I was feeling a bit isolated and  bored at work today.

My back hurts and the shoulders are cement. These Thai beds are so hard. I have a fond memory of the man with a memory foam bed. Move my position so that my feet are on my pillow. Flip. Toss.  Turn.  If I ever have a relationship I must have my own sleep space for times like this.  Try to muster the brain do a nice little meditation but it won’t stay on the task.  Try to stretch, feebly. I long for the stupor of physical exhaustion.  Damn those donut holes.

The rooster starts as the morning light comes filtering in through the curtains.  My eyes feel like sandpaper.  I’m awake, but a bit listless about starting a day when I have only a few goals on the agenda, and no social opportunities on the horizon.   So I lie there and think for a while.   There is laundry, a hankering to explore the new way to the Big C for some shopping, research for Tanzania travel, a bike ride to the corner market for dinner and perhaps a movie. And, in the eternal optimism that characterizes my time here in Thailand, another opportunity to get a great night's sleep.

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Waiting it out

The black and white dog with a nicked ear and a filthy coat shows up at the gate outside the house most evenings. I wonder how she stays alive; her body is emaciated but her eyes always radiate a hopeful expectancy as she trots over after seeing me pull up after work. She gets a handful of cheap kibble from the Big C placed on the ground outside the gate that surrounds the house and growls at the younger dogs that try and encroach. This is the life of the lost and neglected dogs of Thailand.

Homeless dogs are everywhere in this country, hanging at the outskirts of markets, playing in parks, sleeping on the medians of intersections, and maintaining a steadfast presence on side streets.  Generally benign, the canines are more concerned with neglected, discarded or dropped food scraps than anything else. They are resourceful and productive survivors.  They dogs are always “intact”, possessing the full function of their reproductive organs and using them as often as possible to create litters of puppies that play in the same public areas.  Last night, I saw a dog surreptitiously uncovering someone’s food offering to the spirit house, nosing the bowl to access the rice inside. 

I’ve struggled to reconcile my conflicting feelings about these canines. I appreciate the way that the Thai people tolerate their presence.  Just last night, I saw a large truck signaling a turn into a parking lot for a noodle stand near Sirijit park. As I passed on the motorbike, four dogs were illuminated in the truck’s headlights as they slept in the middle of the parking area. I suspect the driver would have given a few warning honks and perhaps sent out a human emissary to shoo them away.   However, some dogs are so obviously feral that they appear dangerous and are unpredictable. The pack that hangs around the north entrance to  the Ancient Forest Temple across the Street occasionally singles me out as a target, barking, snarling and running  alongside the bike which results in me lapsing into English curses and pedaling faster.


There are a few dogs that patrol the schoolyard and keep the chicken bones, ketchup smeared plastic bags and other discarded leftovers under control. The cook’s dog just had a litter and she patrols the campus with swollen teats.   The Director’s family has a pair that just sired another litter that was given away to people in the community.  Wazi, a teacher who helps me in a couple of my classes,  brings her ancient canine, Goptop,  in to dotter around the campus.  Goptop and The Director’s male dog both happened to be patrolling the school cafeteria during the lunch hour and got into a showy snarly altercation that resulted in screaming children, adults yelling at the dogs and a rapid intervention by the Phys Ed teacher and a plastic chair that finally broke it up.  Goptop was dragged away by his collar and forced to walk on only hind legs.   The other teachers say, “they never had children, so he is their baby.”   I can relate.

Goptop in the lunch line after the kids
have been served. He is looking at
 his owner who is serving herself.

Most of the dogs are so dirty, infected, aloof or skittish that I have no desire to get close to them.  One dog in the Ancient Forest Temple Across the Street has lost nearly all his hair on his back from an unknown condition.  Perhaps there could some potential for one of these dogs to be nurtured into a housepet if they were adopted as a puppy.  Chilidog - my longtime canine companion who died of old age in December 2011—had a habit of placing his head on the pillow next to mine as we slept.  There was more than one night he was spooned up against my back.   Could any of these dogs achieve this same level of princedom?   I was shopping last night and found a plastic dog bowl for only ten baht (30 cents) and struggled mightily with the thought of purchasing it for my canine acquaintance so she wouldn’t have to eat off the ground.  In the end, I didn’t.  It’s better not to get too attached.

Thai Buddhists believe that people who “misbehaved” in a previous life are reincarnated as homeless dogs.  With that perspective, there’s a sense of tolerance and compassion toward these prevalent canines.  In many of Thailand’s temples, dogs are welcomed and fed from the community’s offerings made to the monks.   Alongside of the river vendors set up tables of fish food, where for twenty baht people can make a food offering as a tool to build their own chances at a better life.   In the Ancient Forest Temple Across the Street, there is a old woman on a red motorbike outfitted with storage baskets on both front and back.   Her tiny pet dog balances on the back seat as she makes the rounds, laden  with a couple of 10 kilo bags of kibble.  Every day around sunset the resident dogs make their way to the perimeter road for the hand out.  As the night falls and I make my way back home on the main road, she passes me on the motorbike and waves.

The dogs are just trying to tough it out in the current life.  Perhaps it’s our obligation to ensure that they are treated with kindness and compassion during their relatively short lives.  There is a small but potent power in a gentle word, a tossed scrap, a fleeting thought of well-wishes to bolster them on their long journey up the karma ladder.   Just don’t make eye contact with the leader of the pack when you’re riding by before dinnertime.

From: http://isaanstyle.blogspot.com

Sunday afternoon cookout

I was in the middle of a recently typical stay at home Sunday afternoon “nap and sweat” when I heard a distinct sound of snap, crackle and pop outside my window. Rousing myself from an URI medication-induced stupor, I joined Tuy and Aon on the front porch to watch this:

Thai people burn a lot of stuff.   The rice fields are set on fire after the harvest to clear out the debris and make way for the next planting.  Trash and piles of leaves are often incinerated in random piles.  It is not uncommon to be walking in town and see inch long pieces of burned up material floating gently down to earth.   On bus rides and road trips, I’ve seen more than one formerly grassy median aflame, likely from a flicked cigarette butt.   It’s the dry season and the ecosystem here in Thailand seems to be a tinderbox.

My neighbors in the shanty town across the dirt road have a trash pile nearby that’s burned pretty frequently, but apparently this one got out of control.   Tuy and Aon nonchalantly went to the market as I hung out watching the flames rip through the undergrowth.  Shortly after, the school secretary and janitor stopped by to check in.  I started filling up the 5 gallon buckets that were hanging around the front yard; a hose was nowhere to be found.  After they saw flashing lights of the fire truck in the distance, spraying the other end of the fire which was closer to a few other houses, they left. 

The Director pulled up on the secretary's  motorbike a few minutes later.   “I called them.” She said.  “I can’t believe no one else called the them.  How can you not worry?”   The fire truck arrived in front of the house a few moments later and the “hose guy” started getting ready.  He was wearing a red t-shirt.   The driver gets out of the water truck and he’s wearing flip flops.  The two of them heave the empty hose toward the biggest part of the fire closest to my house.   The water gets turned on and turned up with the driver revving the water truck’s engines.  Water is moving out of vehicle in more ways than the hose: the undercarriage is creating large puddles as well.  The slight young man in a t-shirt is working hard to move the water laden hose around.   The Director is telling him to be sure to spray the large trees that line the fence at the back of our house.


The firefighters then move onto the large open space behind the house along the road to school.  The hose guy fires up the master blaster from the roof of the truck and I see water pouring out of the cannon housing. The driver fires things up and the hose starts spraying silt-laden water over the fire.  It then becomes apparent that the water truck is running low.  The fire is patched out into smaller blazes at this point, but the hose guy borrows The Director’s cell phone and calls for another truck, which arrives shortly after.


As the sun sets, the fire seems to be mostly  extinquished. The stretch of grassland is laid bare, covered in ash and black  instead of greenery.  As I walk to school the next morning, I look back to the little blue roofed place I call home and feel a ping of grief for what was. However, despite the hotter temperatures ahead, the rains will follow shortly after and create a fertile climate for growth.   I can't wait to see what happens next.