Leaving Thailand

Leaving Thailand

To understate the obvious, this post is overdue. I made an outline and chose pictures months ago, but never sat down to compose it until now. Resolving to finish “Leaving Thailand” before year’s end, I eliminated  half the pictures and condensed the narrative. If you’re on Facebook, you probably saw some of these pictures last spring.

It’s not easy to leave a country as hospitable as Thailand. There is a plethora of farewell events – lunches, dinners, parties, speeches – which are mostly a lot of fun, though it was sad to leave my school. The teachers and students gave me a going-away party that lasted all morning. The two teachers with whom I co-taught English had organized a program with performances by what seemed to be about half the school’s 250 students. The short video below is an excerpt from a traditional Thai dance performed by three 9^th-grade girls.

I loved this performance because it was about the dance without the traditional Thai costumes (which are very beautiful, hot and uncomfortable). The students are in Scout uniforms, so it must have been a Wednesday.

Some of the other performances came from lessons I had taught – a play based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears (grade 5), a recitation of The Gingerbread Man (grade 9), and the Phonics Song (grade 6).

As you see, the girls had the job of singing, with the boys wearing masks that I think were supposed to match the words of the song (e.g., O is for octopus), but that aspect is more difficult to detect. The students’ Thai accents prevailed throughout. My favorite example is: “We is for wan, w, w, wan” – “W” being one of the letters of the English alphabet that usually needs to be “translated” for Thai students. If I spelled “v – a – n,” most students would write nothing until one or two class stars called out “we, we” – so that the others could recognize the letter as “v.” Thai student solidarity in action. And, so much for phonics.

A brief excerpt from a student performance unrelated my teaching is the following:

“Take me to your heart” is one of the English-language songs that most Thai people seem to know, probably from karaoke.

After all the performances came speeches and gifts. In the photo below, I’m receiving a gift from the school principal, Ms Orn-Anong.

The red blob on my head is a rose stuck by its stem down the back of my shirt. The gift is a heavy glass bottle containing a scene that Ms Orn-Anong created herself. Inside are two people (one female, one male), trees, and flowers on a bed of bright-blue grass or sand (hard to tell). I don’t know if the scene is part of a story. Raised letters at the bottom of the bottle say “Jas Hennessy & Co Cognac France.” Other colleagues and some students had made gifts for me as well. I was very touched by so much time and effort on my behalf.

The next item on the program was my surprise to my colleagues. I presented individualized homemade certificates to each of them, based on a quality or habit of theirs that I had noticed (e.g., most generous, most hospitable, best selfies, etc.). In the photo below, I’m giving the 4^th grade teacher, Kruu Thanyakorn, her certificate for “Best English Student.”

Kruu Thanyakorn always stayed in the classroom during her students’ English lessons (twice a week). At first, I thought it was to protect the students because they might not understand – she translated what I said into Thai and prompted students to answer questions. After a few weeks, I felt comfortable enough to ask her to let them try to answer on their own – and she did. When she started giving answers in English herself, I smiled and said, “No, please don’t tell them the answers.” She smiled back and replied firmly: “I am student!” –  A stealth learner! What more could I want?

Finally, each student and colleague gave me roses! It took quite a while. Here are just two pictures of students filing past to give me a flower.

The students in the picture on the left are first- or second- graders, I think – not students that actually had classes with me. The students in the next picture are 5^th graders – the little girl in the foreground was Goldilocks in the play. I can't remember who had my camera, but he or she took about 30 pictures with the hand holding a rose in the corner.

Finally, after all the students had filed past, there were more farewells to colleagues. Here I am with my host sister Wit (on the left) and Kruu Pailin, who has the job of assistant principal in addition to teaching.

And here’s my co-teacher Bussara holding some of the roses!

The last school-related farewell party was a VIP dinner at a hotel in Kanchanaburi, the capital of the province of the same name. It was organized by Ms Krongthong Pothong, the Supervisor of Kanchanaburi District Education Office 2. In the photo below, you see me with Ms Krongthong (seated, left), my co-teacher Kruu Jidtrakan (aka JK, standing), and Ms Krongthong’s assistant (seated, right).  

After dinner, it was time for karaoke, with Ms Krongthong taking the lead. She sang, among other songs, “Sad movies always make me cry” and “Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini.” Yielding to pressure to sing something too, I tried one of my favorites, the Beatles’ “Ob la di, Ob la da,” but the karaoke machine got stuck, bringing my performance mercifully to an end. Other people sang too. If you want to see any videos, send me an email.

Of course, there was also a farewell event hosted by Peace Corps. It combined the official COS (Close of Service) ceremony for my group, which began our term in January 2013, with the Swearing-In of group 127, which began in January 2015. Each PCV could invite one teacher or community member we had worked with. In the photo below, you see my co-teacher JK receiving a certificate of participation from the Country Director, Kevin Quigley, the deputy director, and the Teaching Program director.

In addition to the officially scheduled program, we volunteers performed a flash mob dance, which one member of our group had choreographed to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Our performance had to be cleared with Peace Corps leadership in advance, which somewhat diminished the flash-mobbish spontaneity aspect, but it was fun. Sorry, I couldn’t take a video because I was dancing. Instead, here is a photo of our group (incomplete) during part of the program, looking glad that we made it this far.

The very last Farewell to Thailand gathering was at the airport. My amazing colleagues, and one student, got up at 3:00am to drive to Bangkok and see me off at the airport for an early flight – actually, they got there before I did, calling me shortly after 5:00am:  “JC, where are you?” (Me: “I’m in a taxi! I’ll be there soon!”)  Once there, we checked me in, sent my luggage on its way, and then hung out for an hour or so, drinking coffee and taking photos until it was time to go through security.  Here is one of the photos. By now you will recognize some of the people from other pictures. Nattarika, the student, is standing to my right.

So there you have it, my story of leavingThailand. Of course, leaving physically took less time than leaving psychically. Peace Corps leaders had cautioned us to expect stress with re-entry into American culture, and indeed, they were right. I felt like a fish out of water for many weeks. But I’m very happy to be here in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana, in my own home. You’re welcome to visit any time!

December 23, 2015

Temple of the Reclining Buddha

Wat Pho, Temple of the Reclining Buddha

Wat Pho is a much-visited temple, located near Bangkok’s Grand Palace (separate post, last year). Most people know it as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, but it’s also renowned as a center for teaching and practicing traditional Thai healing, including Thai massage.  In the pictures below we are just inside the gate. I never can resist taking photos of these Chinese guard statues. The ones here have quite a range of personalities. The two on either side of the gate seem somewhat welcoming of visitors.

The next two are very different – one fierce and threatening, one with a friendly, even avuncular face.

I wonder if the unknown artisans who created these guys had instructions for how to make the faces, or whether they used their imagination?  I choose to believe they were like the workers who made gargoyles for cathedrals in medieval Europe, taking the opportunity to put their own creative stamp on the project.

The individualized faces of the Chinese guards are a contrast to the faces of Buddha figures, which look almost identical all over Thailand. With the Buddha figures, any differences from one to the other tend to be very small, because the meanings ascribed to the Buddha's serene gaze and his posture need to be the same everywhere.

The Reclining Buddha is huge: 15 m high x 43 m long, and covered in gold leaf. The figure is so large, and so protected by pillars in the narrow building, that it’s impossible to view it all at once. It’s also difficult to take good pictures without standing on a ladder or something – but I did what I could. In the two photos below, you see the Buddha’s head and his face.

My comments about how alike Buddha figures are all over Thailand notwithstanding, I find the serene expression on this Buddha's face to be very beautifully executed. Can you tell there is mother-of-pearl inlaid around the eyes? I didn’t notice the little, er, excrescences on his bicep when taking the picture; I think they must be squares of gold foil that you can buy at every temple and put on a statue after lighting a candle and joss stick.

I couldn’t get a photo of the torso, but here are the Buddha’s feet.

Part of the sole of the bottom foot, and half that amount of the upper sole

The feet strike me as pretty clunky by comparison with the beauty of the face and head; however, the artists made good use of the soles of the feet: They are engraved with mother-of-pearl and inscribed with 108 symbols – animals and flowers as well as abstract symbols. The images represent the 108 auspicious characteristics of the True Buddha.

Finally, here is a picture of the back of the Buddha’s head, reclining on two pillows.

The head has the characteristic tight curls of Thai Buddha figures. The pillows look uncomfortable (well, duh, they’re made of plaster covered with gold leaf), but rectangular pillows of that shape, that keep your head at an angle, up off the bed or floor, are common in Thai households. (Not made of plaster.)  (You knew that.)

Of course, like all Thai temples, this one needs money. When you enter, you can buy a sack of coins that you then drop into the 108 bowls lined up against the outer wall behind the Buddha figure.

Filling little pots with money

Emptying litlte pots of money

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After the coins have been collected, they are sold again to the next visitors – the coins are not the donation, they are the 108 offerings you make for good luck.

And when you’ve finished touring the temple and grounds, you can get a massage if you like – the cost is reasonable, about 250 baht for a one-hour session, only slightly higher than at walk-in Thai massage shops everywhere in Bangkok.

Herding Ducks

Herding Ducks in Kanchanaburi

On one of my daily bike rides, along my usual route, I saw hundreds of ducks being herded through a recently harvested rice field. Below is a video I took of them. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen the videos already, but read on, there’s more to the story than the pictures can tell on their own.

It was surprising to see all those ducks being driven through the field, but I didn’t give it too much thought. Two days later, I saw the ducks swimming in the canal that goes along the road.

Again, I took a few pictures, then rode on to finish my bike loop. Passing the same spot again about ten minutes later, I saw no ducks at all in the canal. Hmm, where had they gone? And a couple of days after that, I saw the ducks in the canal again. Their herders were with them, one wading behind the ducks, one walking along the side of the canal that they didn’t want the ducks to climb out of, and one to head them off at the point where they needed to cross the road, as you see below. The video shows at most only about a fourth of the ducks in the herd.

The man you see at the end of the video asked me in Thai where I was from. “America,” I said, and he said something like “You don’t have ducks there?” as if he couldn't think why anyone would want to take pictures of ducks. I started to say, um, yes, my parents had ducks on our farm . . . , but the man was already gone – with hundreds if not thousands of ducks to keep track of, he had other things to do besides chat up random foreigners.

By now I was quite curious about the ducks. I sent the above video to my friends Judy and Fizz in Germany, who said they look like Laufenten (Runner Ducks). These ducks get their name from the way they run more or less upright, rather than waddling like other ducks. Judy wrote that Runner Ducks are popular with gardeners because they eat the slugs that destroy all your plants and are so hard to get rid of.  Click! The part about slugs reminded me that when I was in Sukothai province some months ago, our tour guide told us about efforts to control slugs and snails in rice paddies by importing storks to eat them. It was time to do some research.

Internet searches for “Runner Ducks in Thailand” and “Duck Farming in Thailand” turned up quite a few YouTube videos similar to mine, showing large numbers of ducks crossing roads or grazing in rice paddies. I also found a rather scary report on the role of ducks in spreading the bird flu virus (yik), information about the history of duck farming in Southeast Asia, and an interesting article titled “Nomadic Duck Farming.” Here is the gist of of what I learned about ducks and rice fields.

Increased rice production in Thailand (three harvests a year rather than two, more land opened up to rice farming) had unintended consequences, including habitat loss for natural predators of slugs and other pests, which in turn led to greater numbers of pests.  So, some farmers revived an ancient tradition, "rice duck farming." Having ducks eat the pests is less expensive than, and ecologically preferable to using pesticides. An article on the Greenpeace website describes the 7,000-year-old practice of "rice duck farming" in China, where ducks were raised on rice paddies -- raising ducks and growing rice were integrated. See: http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/news/blog/how-ancient-chinese-farmers-had-it-right-all-/blog/38534/

"Nomadic Duck Farming" as described in the article so titled seems to be a modern adaptation of rice duck farming, in which duck herders literally move with their ducks from farm to farm, staying only about ten days in each location. These "nomad farmers" are actually contract laborers employed by thao kae, wealthy men who finance the project and keep most of the profits. The "nomad farmers" get ducklings and a few weeks’ worth of feed from a supplier, who also provides them with a small living allowance and trucks for transporting the ducks. I didn't find information on how fees for the ducks' services are collected from the rice farmers.

The herders take the ducks to forage for slugs, insects, and rice that may still be on the ground at the farms where they stop. Runner Ducks are very popular for this purpose, not only because they prefer slugs to most other foods, but also because they are prolific egg-layers. The herders sell the duck eggs and, eventually, the ducks themselves to earn money to pay back the thao kae at the end of a cycle. It's not hard to see how the herders could get trapped in a cycle of always owing the thao kae.

My best guess is that the men herding ducks in the videos I took are traveling with their ducks, like the man interviewed in the article “Nomad Duck Farming,” who travels with 8,000 ducks, and several family members to help him. Here is the link to the full article.

http://www.worldpoultry.net/PageFiles/32317/001_boerderij-download-WP6225D01.pdf

My searches didn't turn up any information on how widespread the practice of "nomad duck farming" may be in Thailand or other Southeast Asian countries. The man quoted in the article said there were 20 such farmers "in Sena alone" (Sena is a district in Ayuthaya province). If the same is true in other provinces, there could be thousands of them.

The practice of nomadic duck farming may eliminate or reduce rice farmers' dependence on pesticides, but has some obvious drawbacks. It's clearly a difficult life for the duck herders as well as for their ducks, who must be terrified to be packed into and out of trucks every couple of weeks, not to mention the stress of having to navigate new terrain each time they are moved. Not least, transporting the ducks over longer distances fosters the spread of disease. Sadly, concern for ethical and humane treatment of animals too often takes a back seat in developing countries.

I was surprised to learn, from German websites forwarded to me by Judy, that the idea of short-term use of Runner Ducks to rid people's gardens of slugs had won a Henry Ford environmental prize in Austria in 1999. The project, called "Rent-an-Ent" (rent-a-duck) quickly came under fire for a number of reasons, notably mistreatment of the ducks. As far as I know, "Rent-an-Ent" was not done with huge numbers of ducks as described in "Nomad Duck Farming;" rather, a few ducks (usually two) would be rented to a gardener for a few weeks or months at a time.

In closing, let me add that I haven’t seen the ducks for a few days, so I’m guessing they have been moved on to the next farm. Now, when I see a truck loaded with the type of crates used to transport poultry, I wonder if those are "my" ducks.

27 January 2015

Update 31 January 2015. I spoke too soon. Late this afternoon I saw the ducks again, in one of the fields where I first photographed them a couple of weeks ago.  Here they are, or rather, some of them.

As you can see, the herders are standing at the edge of the field to keep the ducks from going into the next field, which appears to have been more recently planted than this one. It still has standing water and the rice plants are more delicate-looking than in the field the ducks are in. Everyone seems happy and the ducks are busy eating, which is their job, after all. -- Anyway, I shouldn't have been so quick to conclude that these are nomad ducks. Or maybe they are, but their period of work in the fields I've seen them in lasts longer than two weeks. I'll see what else I can learn about ducks and rice fields in Thailand before I leave in two months.  Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: The content of this blog is mine personally. It does not represent the opinions of the Peace Corps, the US government or its employees, or anyone but me.

Da Lat: Scenic Highlands

Da Lat: Scenic Highlands

From Mui Ne we went to Da Lat, another popular tourist destination but inland, in the southern part of the Central Highlands. Because of the higher elevation, it has a cooler climate. French influence is evident in the architecture.

On the way to Da Lat, I took some pictures of the landscape we were passing. The plants you see in the picture below look like cartoon plants that you hide under as a disguise, the better to sneak up on someone. But in fact they are dragon fruit bushes. The dark shadow is, of course, our bus -- not a sleeper bus this time.

Before long we started to see mountains that reminded me of the northern part of Thailand.

 Da Lat. The city of Da Lat has some beautiful views and neighborhoods.

There is a large, bustling night market. Most pictures I took at night didn't turn out.

Roses. We booked a tour just for the four of us, with a driver and a guide who spoke excellent English. We visited several family businesses, the first of which was a rose farm. Our guide explained that all the work is done by family members – planting and caring for the rose bushes, cutting the flowers and transporting them, binding them into bundles for sale, and selling. Thus, their roses are much fresher than flowers that are flown in, and cost less.

 Coffee farms. It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. On our way to the next crop, coffee, we stopped for a photo-op.

Me, Tricia, Angela, Katherine

 Our guide described the stages of coffee cultivation.

Coffee beans on tree

 It surprised me to see coffee beans spread out to dry right beside the road, in people’s yards or wherever there was space.

Weasel coffee. The alleged superiority of weasel coffee, made from coffee beans that have been eaten by weasels, is, er, hard to swallow. The coffee beans pass through the weasels' digestive systems and are excreted, then extracted from the dried weasel doo-doo, cured and roasted. Here you see one of the weasels, and a photo of weasel droppings spread out to dry in the sun.

Of curse, after all this extra work, the weasel coffee is more expensive than other coffee. I politely declined a taste of weasel coffee when it was offered and did a little research later. Some sources said that weasel coffee is not worth the extra money unless the droppings are collected from free-ranging weasels, who eat only the best-quality coffee beans. The caged weasels must eat whatever beans they are given. If this sounds like a scam to you, I admit that the same thought crossed my mind as well. However, if you have had a positive experience of weasel coffee, please let the rest of us know.

The people who make the weasel coffee also make rice wine and snake wine.

Cooking the mash for rice wine

Wine stored in plastic jugs

Big snake in big jar of wine

The wine I tasted was very strong, more like schnapps. I didn't sample the snake wine. It’s not clear whether the snake is a vital ingredient of the wine or just window-dressing, like the mythical tequila worm. You can buy little souvenir bottles of snake wine, with small snakes in the bottles, at many markets.

Silk farm. Next we went to a silk farm where, again, every step of the process is done there, at the site.

Silkworms

We watched women making the silk thread and working at the looms, as seen in the two videos.

We then spent about an hour in their store, buying silk scarves and shawls. To my chagrin, I have no pictures of us doing that.

Waterfall. After the silk farm we took a detour to Elephant Waterfall and clambered around it for a while. Here are a few photos.

Temple. Finally, we visited a Buddhist temple. It is very different from Buddhist temples we see in Thailand, as you can tell by comparing the Buddha figures in the picture below with Buddha figures in Thailand seen in previous posts. To cite just the most obvious differences, their clothes are very colorful, their faces are less stylized, and their hair looks smooth, unlike the tight curls seen on so many Buddha figures in Thailand.

The three Buddha figures above are seated front and center in the temple, at the space we would think of as the altar.  The figures below are on either side of them.

From what I understand, this bodhisattva “with a thousand arms” (actually, it’s usually 18 arms) is the most compassionate of the bodhisattvas. Having many arms enables him to reach out and help more people. Sometimes "he" may also be represented as female.

The nagas guarding the stairs outside the temple look different from the ones in Thailand too – their heads are larger and they seem more active, ready to charge. The Thai nagas do look very fearsome but don't give the impression that they are coiled to strike.  Just my opinion.

 Outside we also saw a couple having their pre-wedding pictures taken and chatted briefly with the groom's mother who was waiting for them..

Notice that they are walking across coffee that has been spread out to dry!  Makes you glad that there’s a roasting process before the coffee comes to us, doesn’t it.         

The temple visit was the end of our tour. The rest of our time in Vietnam was spent exploring the city, sampling street food, and of course shopping. There is one street, near the center of town, where virtually every other shop has a sign saying that it was endorsed by the popular travel guide Lonely Planet -- sort of like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but for tourists.

After one more five-hour sleeper bus ride back to Ho Chi Minh, we flew back to Bangkok on December 16. A good end to a memorable trip!