The blog in which I completely change my mind about being homesick...

Now, with the end in close sight, I am no longer homesick or ready to go home! What is wrong with me? I mean, I am completely ready to see Jeremy and sleep in my own bed and eat tacos... but suddenly the sky seems bluer here, the mountains more...rolling, the beach more tempting, and my $250/month house rent so so appealing to my budget needs.

It is strange really, this turnaround. Sure, I am still lonely. Still often frustrated with my staff and the so slow you are practically moving backward in time way of getting things done here, but then a weekend afternoon comes where my only responsibility in life is getting myself and one small dog to the beach located 6 minutes away and possibly, if I feel like it, taking the half hour that is needed to clean my little house. I suppose you could also count returning emails, watching tv, and going to the local market responsibilities so I'll add those in. Sure, my daily job is work but it ends around 4:30 and then life is my own. Even without a job my daily responsibilities are about ten thousand times more in Washington, DC. And access to the outdoors and beach are pretty limited. I will miss that.

They posted a For Rent sign on my gate this week! Felt like a huge insult! I may want to leave but I certainly don't want someone else living in my house!

I am coming to the realization that I may not ever be back. And while it has not always been an easy place to live it is my place now and this chapter is almost closed. Every shell and sunset and rainstorm suddenly something to be valued and appreciated.

Last weekend I drove to Phuket and took my friend to the hospital where she was diagnosed with "mild hepatitis" although they could not tell her which variety. It was all very comical. I visited the eye clinic of the hospital where they showed me disgusting photos of the insides of my eyelids and told me I could no longer wear contacts and need lasik. Great. The upside was that we went to the VIP cinema at the mall. The Thai VIP cinema has not yet arrived in the US but it should! For the equivalent of $15 we were ushered into a special entrance with a lounge and buffet snacks and drinks. Then entered a theater with only 24 huge reclining plush seats. We reclined. We were given blankets. We were given big ceramic bowls of popcorn and huge glasses (not cardboard cups) of coke with crushed ice. I think we saw Ocean's 13. Didn't really care what movie it was as long as I could recline 180 degrees! Heaven.

This week I have realized that maybe my calling is both children AND animals. I've started bringing Talay with me to visit some of the children we are working with. Now that the project is almost finished we are mostly still working with the kids living at a local institution so we've gotten to know them well. Talay, who I thought might be scared of all the kids, handles it wonderfully. They pull her, squeeze her, fight over her, and generally squish and over handle her but they love it and I think she gives them the affection they really crave. So it is a match made in heaven. And somehow it is so much easier to cross that language barrier with the dog as part of the meeting. The kids are much less suspicious of what my team wants when we come and hand them a puppy. :) Maybe a future career of kids + animals? Well , we'll see.

Night from suddenly fantastic, ha ha ha, Bang Niang.

Take me home, country road, to the place, where I belong…west Virginia, mountain mama, take me home…

This was the song playing in the taxi on the way to Bangkok airport on Saturday morning. Actually there was a whole country meddly of songs. I think my taxi driver was quite proud that he could accommodate my American-ness that way. Normally not a fan of country music. But I was loving this song! It made me feel so teary and nostalgic for good old USA. I almost made him play it again.

My home, my family, my friends. Ugh. I am homesick. And it is just so funny to read all of your emails saying how much all of you wish you were in the "field" doing good work. Yes, it is rewarding to some extent. But I really have realized that without people to talk to about the work it is just lonely. If a woman does good work for kids in Thailand but nobody knows does she really make a sound? Or something like that. Shooting for that tree falling the forest metaphor folks.

Laura left me on Saturday and I flew back down south. Another sad goodbye after just an amazing few weeks with someone I love.

You know, I don’t think I have ever had such highs and lows in life. It is just perfect here when I have someone with me. I loved every minute of the 6 weeks with Jeremy. And the two weeks with Laura flew by in a haze of sunshine (yes, not one day of rain while she was here-it was a miracle!), laughter, talking talking and more talking, and happiness. I keep telling myself that if I weren’t living here I wouldn’t get to have those great weeks with Jeremy and Laura and I would just be living normal life at home. So I guess the price I pay for those amazing highs is the daily slog of Bang Niang. Nothing to do, restaurants almost all closed down now, not a bit of food stocked at the store, no theaters, no shopping, no activities, not many friends. I am pathetic. At least I have Talay who entertains me with her puppy antics.

So Laura spent her first week in Bang Niang where the sun shone hot and shimmery every minute! It was like a different world here. We rented a motorbike for her and on my day off I zipped around to show her all of the beaches. We snuck into Le Meridian for an afternoon of pampering, we spent every evening watching the sunset over the beach, we shell hunted, ate a lot, and the week went so fast! I was so proud of my location for being nice and cooperating with sun. I was also really impressed by Laura’s willingness to just hop on a motorbike and get herself around with not a word of Thai.

We left on Friday the 25th for our week of travel and all I can say is that I have never had a week of international vacation go so smoothly. Every connection made, every hotel we wanted was available and readily gave a discount, every restaurant gave low-season discounts, tours were available last minute, bus tickets and train tickets all worked out. We couldn’t stop laughing at every amazing piece of good luck! In fact, we were just about in hysterical giddiness mode the entire week.

We flew to Chiang Mai which is a very pretty city in the north. I was surprised. It was full of flowers and waterways and mountain views. Big and busy but very pretty. We stayed in this bizarre kitsch guesthouse called Suan Doi House on the outskirts. It was full of gardens, talking birds, kittens, flowers and vines and our room had two little canopy beds. In Chiang Mai we hit the big Sunday night market until it closed! We rode around in tuk tuks and songtheaws and visted temples. We also went to the Elephant Nature Park for a day (see the previous blog.)

Then we went to Chiang Rai. Dum dum dum…
Despite the fact that this was the one glitch in the perfection of our vacation I now can look back and just laugh.

At a friend's advice we reserved a night at Akha Hill house. And please do not take this as a plug for the place. We were picked up at the bus station by three men on cell phones and driven to their other guesthouse (which I HIGHLY GUARD AGAINST) in the city. There they proceeded to get high and possibly do a line of coke (Laura is convinced she saw this happening) while we waited for them to tire of the football match on tv and actually take us up the mountain. We were a little concerned but actually still giddy from the rest of the week so not exactly making good choices. The cloud of smoke around us may not have helped sharpen the senses either.

Then they loaded us into a car and drove all around Chiang Rai picking up snacks for themselves. Offered us NONE! Almost lost my baggage by the side of the road while they were "rearranging" things in the trunk-read this as possibly stashing drugs in our bags for the trip up the hill. By the time we wound up the mountain and actually PASSED the sign for Akha Hillhouse Laura and I were pretty much convinced we were either being trafficed to Burma or would be thrown over the mountainside when the drugs safely arrived at their destination. They kept stopping and looking over the edges-which threw us into a fit of whispering and hopeless attempts to locate landmarks in case they threw us out. This was accompanied by irrational giggling only made worse by crazy Akha man 3 rubbing his thigh against mine in the backseat.

Ok, how much worse can it get you wonder? Well... we arrive at the place.

A village in the mountains where Akha people live and gave us weird stares. No other tourists arrived until that evening. No activities offered, no greeting, no tours. All of this lovingly offered on the website. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Once the village chief won his ecotourism award or whatever it was several years ago he definitely quit trying.

To skip ahead to the horrific part we went to bed at 10:30pm. Pitch black outside. Freaked out from seeing hand sized spiders in the open eating deck and hearing horror stories from a lovely little Swiss girl who had been stranded there for 24 hours. We entered our "VIP" room and spent much time assessing the corners with my booklight to check for hand sized spiders. Only one was located and died a very undignified death accompanied with our screams and my Tevas being launched and missing it several times. Then we pulled back the sheets-at my suggestion-just to check for bugs. But the gift we found was much much much worse. In Laura's bed-dirt dirt and more dirt. Then in my bed...crusty orange, green and yellow body fluid stains. Not the kind that have been washed either. The kind that oozed everywhere from some horrible disease I imagine and then sat for weeks while some evil villager laughed and just pulled the blankets up to hide them. We screamed a lot. We ended up sleeping on the blankets with clothing covering all body parts and sleeping with a light on. Laura still managed to get flea bites from her mattress all over her legs. We caught the first ride out the next morning and checked ourselves into the best resort in town. The Chiang Rai Legend. Complete with fluffy

white beds, 2 decks, a shower room with a fountain and a sparkly

infinity pool.

Ok, you say, I work "in the field" I should be able to handle a little hardship. But poverty is one thing and absolute filth - really malicious filth - is an entirely different matter. I am sure I could have slept cleaner and safer in any village hut other than my own VIP hut. I will include photos, although they do not do the situation justice.

From there things only got better. The Legend was amazing and within 24 hours we had forgotten all about the Akha as well as learned that the "long-necked tribe" that can be visited by trek in that area are actually trafficked women from Burma set up in fake villages and forced to stay while tourists hike there to take photos. We learned this at the hilltribe museum so thank God we did not take one of these treks and please don't if you ever visit Thailand!

Skipping ahead we night trained it to Bangkok which was a new experience for Laura. So much fun really to be rocked to sleep in little bunks and wake up looking out at the scenery passing. Bangkok was fun with Laura - all the usual sights plus some very late nights at the night market and a half day at the spa.

Now I have sort of lost my train of thought on this blog since I am trying to hurry and get it posted from the office. It is the weekend here again and I will go spend the day in Phuket for fun tomorrow.

Night from Bang Niang.

Elephants, elephants, elephants...

Elephants. I just can’t get enough of them!

Last week Laura and I traveled up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. On the top of our list of things we wanted to do was spending time with elephants. We went to the tourism ministry and asked about what we could do with elephants. They described to us many one day treks into the mountains that involved a one hour elephant ride as well as visits to “elephant camps” where tourists can both ride them and watch them perform in shows. We also heard about a conservation center listed in the Lonely Planet guide that offered mahout courses and shows.

But we didn’t book anything. We just had a gut feeling that nothing sounded quite right. Then we found out about the Elephant Nature Park. The park is a sanctuary for 32 elephants and allows them to just be animals. No shows. No rides. But the day at the park includes feeding and bathing the elephants. We signed up for it even though the cost was a lot more than the other options because it just felt right.

It was one of the best days of my life.

We rode to the market in a little van with only 6 other people and helped load what seemed like several tons of bananas, watermelons, cucumbers and sugar cane into trucks. Then we drove about an hour into the mountains and entered…well, Amanda heaven.
Elephant Nature Park is located in this lush green valley surrounded by mountains and tropical fruit trees with a sparking river running through it. There are several tree house type huts located in the park for the mahouts and volunteers to stay in and a main building with showers, an eating deck and porches running around it from which the elephants are fed breakfast.

We spent the entire day with elephants. Watching them roam through the valley, snacking on grasses, playing with their babies, spraying themselves with dirt. We were lead all day by a woman who leads the tourists and who herself came as a volunteer 4 years ago and stayed. Her husband is now a mahout (an elephant caretaker/trainer.) She explained to us about how many tourists take elephant rides and go to elephant shows but don’t know the pain inflicted on the elephants. The elephants have 5 different shapes of spines but the platform that holds the tourists for rides is only one shape and can damage the back of an elephant. To get the elephants to follow directions the mahouts are trained to use this sharp metal spike that they stab into the elephant’s forehead. We saw the marks and scars on the elephants at the park… They claim it doesn’t hurt them but anything that can get a several ton elephant to obey a human must hurt to some extent. The worst part was learning about the way that elephants have their spirits broken in a centuries old tradition/ceremony which begins their training. We watched a video of this that was made public, I think by Nat’l Geographic, in 2002. It shows the trainers stabbing the elephant’s eardrums, burning her, tying her into a cage and depriving her of sleep, food and water, etc. They do this for days until she is so upset and scared she will either go crazy or

become more docile. Many elephants die during this ceremony. The crazy ones have to be put down. The rest become the frightened docile creatures that roll logs

and paint pictures for tourists. It was horrifying. Elephants are not only wild animals that deserve to be treated with respect they are also these amazing social and emotional creatures who will remember someone for their whole lives. They are capable of remembering the hunter who killed their mother as a baby and taking revenge on that person 25 years later. They are capable of burying (!) their dead. There are stories of elephants saving the lives of other species for purely altruistic reasons. They cry real tears. They celebrate birth with wild abandon and the elephant version of a party. They create life bonds with others and live in close family groups. They are intelligent and awe inspiring. In America we would condemn the treatment of such intelligent life if this were happening close to home. And yet we freely travel to Thailand and jump to take these ridiculous and boring one hour rides without a second thought to how in the world these beautiful creatures have been trained into such submission.

The Elephant Nature Park is amazing. It provides a refuge for elephants who have been beaten, blinded, backs broken. The elephants are cared for and allowed to roam free except when they are chained in family groups at night so they won’t cross the river into other people’s lands. They bond together and create new families of moms, aunties and babies. The males are more independent. They are huge and fascinating and wild. Even though we got to feed them breakfast from the deck of the main building and bathe with some of them in the river, we still had to be careful to avoid swiping trunks and reckless babies and adolescents. At no time were we encouraged to pet them and treat them like big pets. The guide walked us around the park and explained a lot of the cases and personalities. Also on the land are 36 dogs, 20 cats, some cattle and a veterinarian! It really felt like heaven. I hope my photos reflect that!

If any of you have a chance to do an elephant activity in Asia please consider rejecting the commercialized rides and shows. We don’t accept that kind of treatment of the African elephant-we accept that it is a wild animal to be observed and cherished from afar. So why do so many well meaning people willingly hop onto Asian elephants without asking any questions?

No easy answers...

In development there are no easy answers.

You clear land for a road so people can reach the market but you create flood problems and soil erosion, you build a school but there is no money for teachers, you help one orphan you stigmatize him/her, you build a dam or reservoir for water and some people are helped while others suffer, it goes on and on. And here, in our own little project bubble we have no easy answers either.

We are far enough along now that it is becoming clear which cases can be closed and which need far more attention. And the problem is money. When we thought we had no money we were simply case workers, checking on children, making suggestions to caregivers, sensitizing the community. My team was demoralized because they thought they weren’t helping enough, but I was pretty much relieved. With no money there wasn’t much of a possibility of doing damage.

Now we have an overflow in the budget and a lot of money to spend in a short amount of time. My staff is drawing up glorious proposals for me about how they want to spend money on each case. They are taking a child to the doctor here, buying shoes there, providing books, school clothes, toys and on and on. The smaller things don’t worry me. But, take for example the case of two little boys living with a father who works every weekend. He locks them in their one room shack so they won’t wander the streets. My team wants to pay for childcare for them! And we have been over and over the idea of sustainability-what will happen when our project is gone? What has a family gained from us other than short term dependence? AND STILL, they remain firmly committed to the idea of paying for childcare. I cannot get them to actually meet with the community and come up with “community based” solutions, cannot get them to believe that others may have the same problem and thus the families could join together for a solution. They want the easy way out. And that brings me to…there are no easy answers.

Maybe the ultimate trouble with this project is that no one on the team, other than myself, has any development experience. I have two 22 year old social workers fresh from school and 3 local Burmese liaisons with differing levels of ability and experience in things like education and women’s empowerment. Their answer to everything is throw money at it because that is what they have seen NGOs in Thailand doing for as long as they can remember. This may be an unfair assessment of both my team and of NGOs in Thailand but it is the best I can come up with right now.

What can I do? It is nearly impossible to explain the principles of sustainability and development. You have to experience it-both success and failure. You have to read about it, write about it, let your mind twist and tangle with the options and the consequences before you begin to grasp it. We don’t have time for this. And, sadly to say, I don’t know that my team has either the desire to understand or the mental capacity for it. They have not been in a challenging educational system. Logic and analysis are not well developed at any level of education or in the workplace it seems. Memorizing the answers and looking to superiors-those are their favorite fall backs. I am not at all sure what to do.

Helloooo out there...

It feels, on days like this, that I am living at the very end of the earth. A place where the ocean and the air and the sky all converge in wet steamy fogginess. Today it has stormed 3 times already and it is only noon. And by storm I mean torrential downpour of rain and winds that spread my shoes all over the porch, kill my electricity, rattle the shutters, down the cable, and cause Talay the puppy to cower behind a pillow.

So here is the dilemna. The project is going well and there is a follow up project being planned which will require a Child Protection Specialist. And, amazingly to me, my abilties are being way overestimated and they want me to fill this role. The problem is that I would have to move here for a year. With Jeremy of course. I sort of saw this coming. I know that before June 30th I'll need to have a decision made. However, at this point, drowning in rain and lacking any emails from home today I am feeling like another year might put me over the edge of sanity... If only I could go home for a week to sort things out and get perspective.

Maybe the problem is being 30. That is what I'll blame it on. In my 20s I would have done anything for an opportunity like this. I daydreamed about the title Child Protection Specialist. I even remember applying for jobs in Sudan where I am positive there would be even less entertainment or food available. And suddenly, just this year, I find myself craving more stability and am less interested in jetting off around the world to fight poverty. I actually daydream about travel for vacation's sake -- to, horror of horrors, European countries, where I can be pampered and comfortable. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? How am I supposed to become a specialist and help the world's children if I am living it up in a pension in Italy?
Why are there these two conflicting people living inside of me? It would be so much easier if I just gave up all hope of helping others, became a California real estate agent and lived the high life!

I am afraid that it is dawning on me that you really cannot have it all. Getting the career I want will take it all out of me. But giving it up and sticking around the States seems like an awfully big waste of the last 10 years... Is an opportunity really an opportunity if you don't want to take it?

(Possibly last night of sunshine on the beach-Jer's last night in Bang Niang.)

Drowning now in Bang Niang.

Cambodia

I know this is coming a little late but I wanted to post some photos of Cambodia....





Days 1-3 Phnom Penh
Jer and I flew into Bangkok and then to Phnom Penh on a Sunday. We were so fortunate to have a great hotel. We tried to explore a little by foot on Monday but after a long hot wander through some very dirty roads we rented a tuk tuk driver for $10 to take us around for the day. We didn’t know much about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge so we did a little history tour to the Killing Fields and S-21 (the former school turned torture center in the 70s.) I don’t know if I tuned out in high school world history or what but I swear I don’t remember learning anything about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. It is disgusting what the human race is capable of and yet another testament to the frightening power you can create in children when you give them guns. Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers were just little boys.

The second day we went to the Russian Market where I fell in love with antique opium pipes (a slight issue later when trying to fly back into Thailand-although I did manage to convince the airline that I wasn’t actually carrying opium!) and we spent 2 hours in the tuk tuk trying to find the school of Khmer Classical dance. There is a very funny story in this but the end result was wonderful. We were entertained for over an hour by a troupe of extremely talented little children learning to dance in the traditional Khmer style.

Days 4-7 Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Another amazing hotel. The Boppha Angkor Hotel. $77/night will buy a luxury suite overlooking the pool with a private terrace, huge bed, all traditional décor. It was a really relaxing place to get away from the rest of Siem Reap every evening.
We had a really amazing few days here. We rented a tuk tuk every day and bought a 3 day pass to all of the Angkor Temples. Jeremy was so upset at Chichen Itza in Mexico last year when the stairs to the main temple were roped off and he couldn’t climb up so here is where he got his payback. None of the temples are roped off. You can climb straight up to the top of the temples, explore every inch of the carvings and really have a personal experience with Angkor Wat. We were lucky, there weren’t a ton of tourists and there was no rain. We saw Bayon (the one with the faces) in the Angkor Thom complex first and this was by far our favorite temple although close behind were little pink Banteay Srei and Banteay Samre.

Our tuk tuk driver was very irritating being a wannabe tour guide. He stopped at every temple and felt that he had to give us a long, complicated and only semi-coherent English description that did not match up with any information from our guide book. Sometimes he would take a breath and we were convinced he was done (you know the feeling, where you breathe a sigh of relief and start to put a foot out the door), only to have him start right back in again with a change of subject. He would actually get off his tuk tuk motorbike, turn around backwards in his seat, adjust his hat backwards, take a deep breath and launch into it. We couldn’t be rude and stop him mid sentence when he was regaling us with examples of his political interests, problems paying for the guide license, low salary or his father’s background but it was excruciating sitting in the heat within steps of a temple we were dying to explore while trying to make interested faces and nods! Ugh. Jeremy does a very nice impression of him if you are ever interested.

So our days in Siem Reap were great even though the town itself is a little dusty and disappointing. It is filled with tourists and the small children who follow them offering every conceivable souvenir for “$1! $1!”

Sunrise at Angkor Wat. Wake up call at 4:00am. Tuk Tuk at 4:30am. Arrive at 5:00am all so our guide has a good solid hour to talk our ears off. I swear I almost saw the sunrise on his face instead of over the temple. We had to beg him to let us get out of the tuk tuk in time. Falling asleep on our feet by 8am...

Jeremy's dramatic ascent! Ok, the photo is a little posed but it was VERY hard. We found an easier way down though.

A whole blog about walking down my street

Large multi-winged fast flying insects swarmed my house last night. And I am not talking about a few innocent bugs, I am talking about hundreds of lunatic flyers racing around my driveway, zooming around the lights, dive bombing my porch and glass doors and even sneaking into the living room. Once in the living room they crawl very slowly across the floor like they think they can hide from me just because they sort of blend into the tiles. I haven’t been able to predict their arrival in the past but right after they left it started to pour rain and so now I think they may be rain heralds. So I guess I’ll be seeing more of them. I take my amusement where I can find it here and spraying them with large cans of bug spray is sort of satisfying.

Have I mentioned that I have a puppy again? Talay (my team named her – it means sea or sometimes it means seafood!) I will spare you the long story but in summary she is tiny and fluffy and full of passion for chasing bugs. Normally she spends a good hour or two each night patrolling the driveway and eating them but even she was overwhelmed last night and begged to come in and escape from them!

So my unnatural interest in the bugs last night got me thinking about just how different my days are here than back at home. Not exactly good different in terms of social life (I have none), definitely good different in terms of work, but overall just strange. Here is a typical day.

In the morning I walk my trash down the street to the communal garbage can (yes, just one normal sized can for each street of houses to share) because that is when it is empty and not swarming with stray dogs picking through people’s toilet paper and strange leftovers. On the way I am joined by Floppy Dog (his real name is Milo but picture lots of hair tied back in bows and an annoying penchant for trying to mount anything that moves), my own puppy, and Luc Luc, the neighbor’s puppy. This is 7am. I pass my neighbor as he is walking in a sarong and nothing else looking for water at some of the empty houses (we have a chronic water shut off problem)-he waves and I hope the sarong doesn’t drop. I pass the Burmese young men heading down my block to work in the rubber plantation which starts 2 houses away from me. They stare at me like I am the first woman they’ve ever seen and laugh and they like to shout “good morning” really no matter what time of day it is. Then I pass the car washing woman. She scrubs her shiny black car every morning and every evening. Usually wearing only a towel. And how does she have water to waste I do not know! She doesn’t make eye contact. I think she may be the maid and her employer has some weird passion about her and his car. Sometimes he watches her from his porch. Weird.

Then I get to Luc Luc’s house where toothless grandma emerges and laughs and laughs at me. I have no idea why. She finds my morning walk to the garbage the highlight of her day apparently. She talks and talks to me in Thai and follows me around and feeds my puppy and Luc Luc all sorts of terrible things that make them both sick. Last week it was some sort of rancid milk that left Talay’s lips green for the entire day. I don’t know how Luc Luc is still alive really. Sometimes the owner of that house comes out and shouts “goodbye miss” like she is annoyed with me. Not a greeting-definitely a very strong “get away from here”. No idea why. Maybe she doesn’t want grandma so worked up?

This is all before I get to the end of the block!

Today I found a spider in my underwear before I put it on. It was just clinging to it looking for a new home-on my skin! I was not pleased and realized that I haven’t been examining my air drying clothes well enough before using them. Yesterday I found a HUGE spider in my kitchen and honestly it was just too big to kill. I had to usher it out the door. I have given up.

The rest of my morning, until I leave for work, is usually spent fighting the leak on my water tank while I try to take a fast shower (at least this is better than a bucket) and then dealing with the myriad of people who like to show up before 8:30. Ok, not a myriad, but Nong (the caretaker of my house) and her fix it people. They come, they ask if my cable is on, I tell them it is still off and has been for 7 days now. Same as every day that they ask. They apologize. They ask if the water tank is fixed. I explain that it still has a leak. Like it has for 10 days. I don’t know why they think these things have fixed themselves?! Then I explain, again, that I get no water from the street. AND, once again this morning, Nong miraculously turns it on. She thinks I am crazy but I swear I turn those knobs at the curb pipe that controls my house water every morning and nothing comes on. Today I think she was explaining some complicated system of turning it until I hear a click and then turning it back the other direction. If only Jeremy were here. I absolutely hate trying to figure this out. Pluming, electricity, bugs, the tv, they all hate me!

Ahhh…is it weird that I find all of this so entertaining? I think I am severely socially deprived.

I did have my team and some of their significant others over for dinner 2 nights ago and we had a lot of fun. We went to the market and bought Thai junk food (fish on sticks, fried shrimp, unidentifiable soup, sticky dessert things and sticky rices) and brought it all back to my living room floor. I like the Thai style of eating at a party. No one ever sits on chairs or tables. We just sit in a circle and dip our hands into everything. It is a lot more fun. We played everyone’s favorite game of make Amanda read long and complicated sentences from my Thai/English phrasebook and try to guess what she is saying. HOWEVER, my Thai pronunciation is too good now and they actually understood me. I am quite proud.

In really good news, Laura (my college roommate and kindred spirit) is arriving in 2 weeks from Sunday!

Nothing more to report from Bang Niang.

In which Amanda's AMAZING Thai life blog returns from the dead!

You know, I want to blog, I really do. I think about my blog, sitting here, lonely and silent, reaching out to all of the people who have given up hope of ever reading a new post. And I even create little blogs in my mind. But actually getting past work, past personal emails and onto this site, actually getting the blog to upload, resizing the photos, and posting the whole thing is way more work that I am interested in. I blame it on the rain. The never ceasing rain. And the server that keeps crashing at work. And the stupid internet cafes that are closed now in the evenings and on weekends because the tourists have all fled from the ridiculous amount of water pouring from the sky. Again, it comes around to the rain.

Ooops. Laura, ha ha, just kidding. No rain, all sun. Please don't cancel your plane tickets. I am sure that by mid-May we'll be back to pure sunshine and happiness!

So, do you think it is better to take bucket showers but know that there is a possibility that at any moment you will have hot water from the tap or to just give up and rent a house with cold water showers but constant water flow? You would think, with all of the rain God has provided, that my water tank would be overflowing. But it isn't. And the water from the street appears to not be flowing to my house at all. Today someone came to look at the situation and with a few turns of some knobs near the sidewalk had the water flowing once again. I SWEAR I have turned those knobs the same way every day, even while praying for water, and nothing has happened. It was definitely a conspiracy. They turned on the water at some neighborhood water factory right before coming to see me and then "oh so miraculously" turned it on at my house while mocking me. I am not amused. And then, as soon as they left, the water flow from the street went out again. Who can possibly navigate this strange, there is so much water in the streets that we could actually swim along the ditches but no water could possibly be routed to your house, system of water allottment?

Now I am actually running late to a meeting while trying to blog. And I haven't covered my trip to Cambodia (amazing), the arrival of an absolutely giant box of Easter candy from a friend in the States (yum-am trying not to eat it all since it is destined for small needy Burmese children but I can't help myself around bunny shaped marshmallows!), Jeremy's departure (torturous-I hate goodbyes), my puppy's early death at the hands of an evil driver (the week of mourning following accounts for my silence on the blog site after returning from Cambodia), my recent UNICEF workshop which has revealed to me just the level of inexperience I am dealing with on my team-but also the exciting new plans we have for the project, my addiction to Gray's Anatomy as seen on my laptop computer since someone forgot to pay my cable bill this month, or my possible job options.

Hmmm. I can't do much more than this right now. So I promise to try a bit harder to get on here in the coming days. And I have resized the Cambodia photos so prepare yourself for Amanda + Jeremy + temples temples temples. :)

Love from Bang Niang.

Puppies

To all of my dog loving friends - here are the long awaited puppy photos. If you or anyone you know want one I would be happy to arrange a delivery to the United States. It is possible, it is done regularly by many foreigners living/working here, and there is a good and safe system. Costs money but not outrageously expensive. All three are spayed and have all shots. They are lovely little dogs full of life and happiness and a lot of loyalty for what they have here. I think they will make amazing pets.

Sook (alternative spelling Suk) is the little tan one on the left.

Her name means happy.

She is about 4 months, very loving, soft fur, short hair but fluffier tail. She likes to follow people around and she can sit on command. She has sort of sad eyes because she is more passive and gets a little picked on. The other dogs around here steal her food which is why she is skinny. She is very happy on the beach, wags her tail a lot, and loves to run and play with everyone. She is an outdoor dog right now but could easily adapt to cushions and the good life inside! :) She has small paws and while her legs are getting longer I don't think she'll be a big dog. She would be a really easy dog with other pets or children. Seems low maintenence. Not a barker and have never heard her growl or whine. She is very quiet and calm.

Nok is the black one on right and at the top of the blog.

Her name means bird.

Nok is also about 4 months. She is clever and funny-sort of clowny. She showed up with a big bite/hole in her side and lots of skin parasites. Everything is fixed up now and she is turning shiny and soft. She was originally really scared of everything but now she is happy and friendly. She loves riding in the car and she loves people, she does not love water so far. She is very loyal and sits at attention in front of the office waiting for her favorite folks to arrive. She hasn't mastered sit yet but she is pretty good with stay. She also gets a little picked on about the food which is why she's thin but she is starting to assert herself. She is going to be small I think. Short hair. I think she'll be a great and fun companion. Would probably be fine with other pets-she gets along with the dogs around here, but she is a scaredy cat so it could take awhile to adjust. Definitely wants to be an indoor dog-you can see her craving the attention.

Finally, Saam. Her name means number 3. She sort of showed up a few days later and we are not sure if she is from the same litter. She's always looked fairly healthy and confident. At first she didn't want people to touch her and she would scream and cry. Was scared of men and feet. She got over that SO FAST and now she loves attention and being pet and loved. She adores Jeremy. She is very happy and active and would be so easy to teach. She listens well-knows sit, stay, etc. Good in the car. She could probably live indoors or outdoors. She likes other dogs and plays well. She does not like to share food though and growls at the other puppies if they eat near her. She wants their food. She is fine with the older and bigger dogs and never growls at them. So she would be fine with other pets-just not small weak puppies. ha ha ha. She has short hair, long legs, and a tail that curls over her back!

Real life in Thailand...

I say real life because honestly it is amazing what is going on in the lives of people living right next door to the tourist resorts here. It is not that I blame the tourists at all. If it weren't for them the whole area would be in crisis still. But I want people to know that behind every fancy swimming pool and expensive restaurant real life is playing out and it is not pretty.

Almost a week and a half ago now my team located 2 of our cases in Kuraburi. A 7 year old girl and her 2 year old sister. They found the 22 (!) year old mother and her newborn baby with tuberculosis. The baby couldn't breath, couldn't open her eyes, without coughing and coughing. The family couldn't get much help at their local hospital because they are Burmese and don't speak any Thai. This is a huge problem here and prevents many Burmese people from getting medical attention. They also fall into the category of illegal migrants and so are generally scared of formal institutions like hospitals for fear of deportation. (It is not supposed to happen but sometimes hospitals will call the police and have people deported when they can't pay a medical bill.)

Anyway, being the good Samaritans that they are, my team found transportation for the woman and her children to a hospital closer to our office where MSF (Doctors without borders) has Burmese translators working. They could not drive the family in our team car because there are checkpoints in Thailand and if you are found to be driving someone without legal documentation you can be arrested for human trafficking. Good to know, good to know. I would have surely popped them all in my car and driven off so thankfully I was not with the team that day!

I was there the day that they checked into the hospital here in Takuapa and let me say that it was a sad sight. If I could have transferred my Thai Gold Standard insurance coverage over to them and taken them to the Phuket hospital I would have. Instead we shuffled around the Takuapa public hospital for no less than 8 hours before they were finally given a room. The mother with TB, coughing and coughing into a rag. The baby (turns out has pneumonia also) choking and choking barely able to breath being carried by the mother. No offer of a wheelchair at all. Mother so weak she can hardly stand trying to also watch her other girls. It was a pathetic standard of care. The hospital staff just kept demanding to know who would pay the bill. And that is ridiculous since Thai law mandates that TB patients receive free treatment since it is a public health risk. Of course, absolutely no one seemed to be in charge at the hospital to discuss this with. After hours and hours of the same-moving from the lab, to the x-rays, to the chairs, to the exam room, to the interpreters, and back again you just get in the zone and go with it. It is so difficult to fight any system here and get anything done quickly or efficiently. I had to demand that the hospital test the 2 older children for TB-they weren't going to do it! And it turns out they have it!

Finally we left the little family in the most disgusting room imagineable. Tiny-2 wooden beds with thin plastic mattresses. Broken fan. Dirty walls. The nurses dropped the baby on the bed and she was laying in a pool of her own urine until I had to point it out to them. It is as if being Burmese makes them animals in some people's eyes.

The story does not end there. The family is HIV positive. The hospital called later in the week to tell us they wanted them all out because they didn't want the TB to spread to other patients. It was a long week of looking for options, rounding up some money, and trying to convince the hospital to at least keep the baby until she is well. They agreed but only if we could find a woman to come and take care of her-they refuse to feed or change her. Can you BELIEVE that?!
Father has shown up and they are all living in a temporary shelter for Burmese migrants run by a local NGO now. It is grim but not as bad as the hospital.

In a side story to demonstrate the severity of the problems between the Thai and Burmese here, we literally ran into a woman sitting outside the baby rooms on a bench as we were dealing with this other case. She was hand expressing milk into a cup for her baby and crying and crying. My Burmese translator stopped to talk to her and her story is heartbreaking. She and her husband brought their sick newborn to the hospital all the way from Kuraburi (2 hours north) because they knew there were Burmese translators here. The father got stopped at a checkpoint near the hospital and was deported back to Burma for being illegal! The mother has no money, the hospital staff wouldn't tell her how her baby was doing or when she could leave, they were demanding money or they would deport her. Meanwhile the other children in the family were living with a neighbor back in Kuraburi. If both parents were deported the children would all be abandoned and never know what happened. It was such a sad story and the woman obviously felt so hopeless. End of story is that we are helping to sort things out-despite the fact that the case is not in our records. Just considering it preventive care...

I had to ask Save the Children for an emergency response fund to help with situations like these. You cannot just turn your back and what happens when we don't have money is that my staff start paying out of their pockets. They cannot afford this and it isn't ideal case management. We needs funding to actually DO things. It is so frustrating at times.

In a final note, yesterday we met some friends from California here and spent the day at their hotel which is the nicest in the whole area. I couldn't help myself and on the way into town for dinner I took them by the Burmese temporary shelter to drop off some things for the family there. They stayed in the car so they certainly didn't see much but I know that what they did see was a shock. I don't think they imagined that just a few kilometers down the road from their hotel the same sunset passes over rows of concrete shacks filled with HIV and TB patients and others in desperate need of a safe place. I feel a little guilty because I could have run that errand at a different time but I wanted them to see. They were really quiet afterwards.

Restrictions on the Burmese tighten daily. Now in Phuket province they are not allowed to congregate in groups of 5 or more, they cannot use cell phones or drive cars, and they must be indoors after 8pm. It is becoming a human rights violation. These people escaped the military regime of Burma, many of them are heroes (like my staff members) who put their lives at risk to stand up against the government. But they find themselves being forced to run and hide like animals here.

From Bang Niang.

Too tired to think of a title...

I sat down tonight to write and realized that it has been awhile and I am not sure where to pick up my story….

Jeremy has been here for a couple of weeks and it feels like he was never not here. I try not to think about 4 weeks from now when he has to leave. I will give his update for him. He is enjoying the boatyard. They sent him home today with two gorgeous miniature longtail wooden boats. No idea how we will get them home along with all of the other gifts and dogs and decorations I am accumulating! At this point it is starting to look easier to ship our DC life over here and give up on ever leaving. Ok, just kidding mom and dad! Anyway, Jer is fine and much tanner than me already. He buzzes around on the motorbike, gobbles down all of the food with no stomach problems, is currently hanging a light for me in the house, and has mastered some basic Thai.

Last week we went to Bangkok for my monthly meeting with Save the Children and UNICEF. It is supposed to be a 2 day trip each month but with travel time it really takes up 3 days and thus feels like a waste of an entire work week.

We left on Tuesday morning, drove down to Phuket airport, flew up to Bangkok, took the taxi ride to the hotel (each leg of this well over an hour) and finally I got to the office. It was strange being back in Bangkok since I feel like I have fully left the big city life. Two places could not feel farther apart than Bang Niang and Bangkok. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t describe it. Just noise, cars, smog and buildings. It is very pretty right along the river, and I remember that there are beautiful sights around the outskirts, but the heart of Bangkok which stretches on and on seems so lacking of anything lovely or peaceful to balance the other stuff. It just doesn’t seem quite Thai to me.

I had my meetings which went really well. So far I absolutely love SCUK. They are receptive, caring, generous, and helpful. They treat me like a professional and we all just work well together. I couldn’t have asked for a better organization to work for. It was a great two days to review what my team has done so far and get feedback. Talking about our work here makes me realize that we actually have accomplished quite a bit in such a short amount of time! It doesn’t feel like it each day but it accumulates. Save the Children want me to propose an extension of the project for up to one year which they are hoping to ask UNICEF to fund. I haven’t decided yet what that would look like and if it would necessarily involve me staying here but it is exciting because there isn’t any way we can make real changes here by the end of June. It takes time to build up local capacity before leaving…

For a bit of fun Jeremy explored the city, well he managed to get to a museum, and the next day we managed to meet up at the grand palace and reclining Buddha for some tourism. We also hit the night market where amazing shopping energy overcame my need for sleep (the night market is open until 1am and is enormous) and Jeremy was dragged for many mind numbing hours around while I accumulated a pile of presents for everyone back home.

I am amazed while I type this but we ALSO actually fit in an evening trip across the city to Bangkapi area where I volunteered 10 years ago. We had dinner with Steve Cable who was my “boss” back then at Santisuk Center and ran into an old friend that was one of my English students!

Despite the fun outings, never have we been happier to get on a plane and leave a city. Sadly our trip home was marred by an “Office Depot incident”. This is when I arrive at Office Depot at the Phuket mall (a 30 minute drive in the opposite direction from home) and I am overcome by the sheer stupidity and lack of brain power presented by the Office Depot employees as they struggle to fill my binder order. This has happened a few times in the past and generally the incident is characterized by my entrance, their confusion about my order (where it is, why the delay, whether they ordered 33 binders or 140-yes, this came as a question during the incident in question), followed by my own feeling of nausea that quickly turns into general malaise and weakness followed by a desperate need to drink water and nap. So. During my FOURTH trip to Office Depot this time (seriously I have been there 4 times now trying to sort out the 140 binders needed for the project) I had a terrible moment of extreme dehydration or exhaustion or something yet again. This culminated in what I view as an extreme act of desperation…an emergency nap on a chair in the mall! Ok, it was a cushy chair next to Au Bon Pain (yes they have them here too) but it was still very embarrassing. I just couldn’t take another step. It was starting to look like an Ecuador sickness relapse and while I do like the looks of the Phuket hospital I thought maybe a preventive rest would cure all. It did. I made it home. They actually came up with the correct binders after first offering me 33 and then forcing me to count every one of the 140 even though I was about to die. Amazingly I am still here to write about it. :)

In other news, over the weekend we moved into my new little house behind the Bang Niang market. It is in a weird sort of development where all the cute little houses look the same. Not what I look for in a neighborhood back home. But it was my best option here and is a sweet furnished little place with a great front porch. The photos are posted here.

There is one down side and that is a terrible mystery smell emanating from the bathroom. It is looking like a plumbing/sewage draining problem and since my rent has been paid up front and the owners are off to another province I am hoping that this can be resolved without the sewer fumes creating a fireball in the kitchen as soon as I light my burner…Concerning, yes. But it is Thailand and you just take it one day at a time. One stinky bathroom at a time.

Love from Bang Niang.

Jeremy is here!

I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep on Monday night. Since he had sort of a convoluted route to get to Bangkok and then a complicated midnight trip through the city to find a friend’s apartment I wasn’t totally convinced he would make it! I spent part of Tuesday afternoon at the mall in Phuket returning some office supplies (those mismatched folders I griped about in a previous post) and discovered the most wonderful grocery store on earth! It was amazing to wander through the aisles and find fresh bread and cookies, tortilla chips, cheddar cheese, everything you might want to make Mexican food-which I am craving! I was in heaven. So I entertained myself grocery shopping until it was time to go to the airport.

Jeremy arrived safe and sound and has been easing into the Thai life ever since. He still has the jet lag (good morning 2am) but the heat doesn’t bother him like it does me. I was really excited to show him around but maybe I should have stretched that out longer as he has now seen everything there is to see in Bang Niang. Sunset at the beach, favorite packs of puppies, coconut groves, 7-11, the outdoor market, the one gas station. Done.

With the local tour out of the way and me back at work Jeremy is working at the Pakarang Boatyard which is the site of the post-tsunami reconstruction of Thai long-tail fishing boats. However, the fishing boat project, like most tsunami projects, is just about done and so he is actually helping to build a huge sail boat that is being sailed around the world for an anti-child trafficking charity. The guys in the boatyard are lots of fun, the beach there is the best white sand clear water beach around, and the whole area is just quiet, filled with coconuts and palm trees, and full of power tools and wood. Perfect for Jer.

In other news, we have almost settled on a rental house and hopefully will actually negotiate a good deal this weekend and move in next week. Actually in the course of finding this house Jeremy got to have the true experience of house hunting in small town Thailand. This particular house only involved 2 phone calls, randomly knocking on their door, sitting through scalding hot coffee in the middle of the afternoon with the owner, and the involvement of 2 english speaking neighbors.

However, one other house was particularly troublesome. It involved driving to a restaurant in Khao Lak where I had been told that a waitress knew someone who had a friend renting a house. This took two separate trips. Once this connection was finally established the waitress made some long phone calls in Thai and set up a meeting the next day for 9am to see the house but we would have to drive back to Khao Lak and meet her at the restaurant to meet the owner because he didn’t want to try and speak English. Despite the fact that the house is next door to Tony Lodge and we could have walked there. So we went to the restaurant at 9am. The waitress doesn’t show until 9:30am. The owner is called. He is still an hour away doing something else. He shows an hour later very annoyed that he stayed out late and had to come and show this house in the morning, even though we had an appointment. He is wearing army fatigues from head to toe and driving a huge truck. He takes us to the house, which turns out to be his prostitute love nest. (!) At first we are assured that we will be very safe, no one mess with us, because he is “brother of Thai police chief.” THEN, he decides to brag to us that really he is the head of the Thai mafia family in a nearby town, Takuapa, and we would be VERY WISE to rent from him. During all of this he is glaring and evil and frightening. I have never had someone try to intimidate me into renting something-quite a sales tactic. With much apologizing we got out of there and now, according to the waitress, he is mad that every person he takes to see the house turns it down. Did I mention that it is bright pink inside, has the largest bed I have ever seen and the doorways are decorated with hanging crystal heart-shaped beads? What is a girl to do? Where are the NORMAL houses with normal landlords? Ha ha ha. It really is all very funny. After the fact.

Next week I have to be in Bangkok for meetings for a couple of days so Jeremy will join me and we’ll do a bit of sightseeing on the side. As much as Bangkok is a tiring place to be I’m really looking forward to a bit of big city again.

Love from Bang Niang.

Maybe one at a time puts you on the path...

I really am just a sucker for kids and puppies. And both are abundant here. Abundant numbers and abundant needs. I think it is easy for people to just look away because you feel really helpless. If you help one, what happens to the rest?

Last Thursday I went "to the field." In development speak this is when we get off our butts, drive endless hours to a remote location, and get the face to face research done. This is a much idealized moment when you are sitting behind a desk in the US. In reality it is never ever easy or comfortable. I have done field work in several countries now and it is sort of a love hate relationship. Inevitably you will have to eat strange and possibly unidentifiable food that is offered. Inevitably the bathroom options will be worse than just using the great outdoors. Inevitably the drive will be windy and never ending. And inevitably you will only get a quarter of what you set out to accomplish accomplished. (The love part comes later when you feel so proud that you are actually DOING something instead of writing or reading about it!)

So Thursday I drove with my Burmese liaison and another Burmese researcher up north of here to an area called Kuraburi. It was a very long drive since I didn't know where I was going. I never realized this before but when you are the driver and you know the destination it is not a problem. But having to rely on my passengers for directions I just constantly felt like asking "are we there yet?" We arrived at noon at a learning center, which is an informal school for Burmese children set up by a local NGO. We compared the list of kids we were looking for with the list of kids in their classes. We identified a few of our kids but were told that many had moved away when certain local fisheries closed and their caregivers needed to find work. We ate fish and rice with the teachers. We were given a tour of the nursery with dozens of adorable little kids snoozing on the floor for nap time. And all in all located and spoke to 3 out of the 11 we were hoping to find.

I try not to be discouraged but it was eye opening and made me realize several things. First, just how hard it is going to be to find the children on our list in a migrant community that moves a lot, is here illegally, and is scared to be found. Second, how tough it is going to be to do case management with the ones we do find when their families are SO poor and there are very few community resources for them. I mean, I am not a miracle worker just because I am from the United States. Sometimes I think my being there gives really false hope. And third, HOW MANY children are in need. Our list is just the beginning. For some reason we were given a list of all children without parental care in the province and this came down to 140. How is that possible? There are so many more!! The teachers at that learning center alone gave us a list of 12 more we need to look into and when we got back to the office I found out about 23 supposedly orphaned Burmese children to add to the list.

Thursday night I wanted to just sort of lay down and give up. How can you sort it all out? How to help everyone? How to even help ANY one?

When I got back to the office that evening there were 3 puppies laying in front, hiding in the flowerpots. They were bags of skin and bones, covered in sores and ticks, missing hair, two missing chunks of skin and one with a big hole in her side. I was so low. I previously promised myself that while I am here I will not get involved with any pets. So I left them. I actually hoped they would just walk into the street and get run over because I felt like I couldn't help every sad puppy here in southern Thailand. I had nightmares all night.

Friday dawned and I came and they were still here and I realized that it is just not in my nature to ignore something that I CAN do something about. So I took a trip to the vet (45 minutes away) and got the ball rolling to fix them up. And that ball is still rolling. With my encouragement our office is sort of adopting them and people have stopped hoping they will disappear so they don't have to deal with how sad they look.

I know that puppies are not children. But I do think that many people react the same way when they see something sad. Better to look away from one if you can't help them all. But I think that just being able to help something in a tangible way has given me hope and the reminder I needed that if our team can help even one child, improve even one life, it will be worth it. You just cannot focus on the tremendous number of need or you'll lose all hope. But one at a time puts you on the path.

With hope from Bang Niang.

You should probably skip this blog if you aren't interested in the happenings of my hair...

Last night it cooled down and I went for a long walk on the beach at sunset.
It was so refreshing and relaxing. At low tide the ocean leaves a huge expanse of beach to wander full of skittery little crabs, rocks and shells and strange sand shapes. I was alone but not lonely. It seems like a lot of time, during “normal life”, I feel lonely when I do things by myself. But when I travel I feel more accepting of being in my own skin. I think that outside of DC I just simply feel more capable, more accomplished. There is something about Washington DC that really inhibits me. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have loved to have someone walking with me, but I also didn’t feel like I had to be talking or focusing on anything but the view and my thoughts. Great way to end a long weekend (Monday was one of millions of wonderful Thai holidays.)




This email is not going to interest anyone reading for the sake of learning about my work so you may want to log off after this paragraph. In a nutshell we managed to make an entire afternoon of getting an office phone installed and project business cards drafted. As much as I like my team I just can’t seem to split everyone up and trust that things will get done right yet and so we waste a lot of time functioning as a pack. But here is an example of why that is… Last week I asked one of them to bring back from Phuket’s Office Depot 140 ½ inch thick, two-hole, A4 sized binders for creating our case records. Very bizarrely she returned from the store with just 40, multi-colored and multi-sized, binders that cost quite a lot and can’t be returned unless we want to drive back to Phuket in the next 7 days. I am not sure what to do about this as it seemed obvious to me that they should all be the same size and color but she seems very pleased with the idea of using all sorts of binders for our one project. Cultural difference? Personal difference? I’m not sure but somehow we still need 100 more binders and have been informed by Office Depot over the phone that they couldn’t possibly order us just one color in one size. And, if we want to make any kind of order we have to pay up front. Not by credit or debit card, which we have, but through a bank transfer, which will of course involve an entire afternoon at the bank again. VERY strange. Even Office Depot isn’t itself over here. Ha ha ha.




(Left photo is my team at lunch.)

We may end this project with a rainbow of case records. So, that being said, I’m still sorting out who is good at what and who I need to manage more closely. I can’t always trust that my instructions will be followed – or maybe they are being misunderstood? It is interesting since this is really my first large supervisory experience…Definitely trial by fire. Anyway, we FINALLY finished my case management training for the team, and really it seemed so basic that I was embarrassed to give it. They are all so diligent about writing every word I say though, as if each thought will make or break the project and I can’t figure out what they are thinking. I expend so much energy being enthusiastic and miming things, trying to give examples, smiling and encouraging and speaking in my new “Thailish-which is VERY slow and basic English” that I want to drop and sleep every day at 4:30. But they are so serious, even when I’m joking. I must look such a fool sometimes. Wish I could see myself from their perspective. It is a little worrisome but I can’t do much about it.

Now on to more exciting news. Like hair!


(No hair photos but photos of my new room at Tony Lodge are posted to the right. )


For many reasons I am not posting photos of me on this blog. One of those reasons has been my very serious hair trauma. You know, normally my hair lies straight and shiny and listens to the directions of my hair dryer and brush. Worst case scenario is static cling. I take much pride in getting it right even if nothing else is working. Well….here we have a different story. I cut the hair short before coming and it was definitely the right decision on the other side of the world. Within 24 hours of arriving here though it staged a rebellion against the climate and has not sorted itself out. For the first week and a half my hair spent most of its days wet (within minutes after being blowdried), sticky, tucked behind my ears and doing this sort of strange frizz at the top. It has not been pretty folks.

BUT, here is my big finale…over the weekend my hair had second thoughts and has created its own new and perfectly acceptable hairstyle! It is too soon to post photos as I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched. But I think I have some waves around the face, some nice sun streaks, and the frizzy/sweaty combo has sort of turned into fluffy and full volume. Lesson learned: you cannot fight nature and humidity.


Goodnight from Bang Niang.