Grand Palace, Great Museum

Grand Palace, Great Museum

The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles

The Grand Palace in Bangkok is overwhelming. As you may know, it’s not “just” a palace, but a large complex of buildings constructed over time, far too much to take in during one visit. My photography skills, limited as they are, weren’t up to the task of capturing my impressions either, but here are a few images that turned out well enough.

I don’t remember which building this is, but the Demon Guards are formidable and the roof is beautiful. You see similar statues guarding other buildings in the Royal Palace complex and at many historic sites in Thailand.

How this handsome Chinese guard got here is another mystery, but he was too photogenic to be ignored.

In one area, a number of irresistible golden statues are grouped. The figures are either part human and part animal, like the lion-tail girl, or part animal and part demon, like the chicken-tail guy – I think.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which – but the figures are very lovely and mystifying.

The demons holding up the chedi (a Buddhist shrine) got my attention too – I hope the artists who created them enjoyed making them so beautiful and sinister.

 Before long, my camera ran out of battery, sparing me the trouble of trying to find angles for decent photos.  After making our way around the complex and dutifully checking off most places on the map, a friend and I had some expensive but excellent ice cream before deciding to take in the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. It was a good decision. The museum is air conditioned and arranged in an orderly fashion, so it was a great antidote to the sprawling monumental grandeur outside in the hot sun. It wasn’t very crowded; and taking pictures is not allowed, which is too bad in a way, but also good because everyone concentrates on the exhibits, not on taking pictures. Finally, and more to the point, the museum gives you a good introduction to HM the Queen and her patronage of Thai arts and crafts.

As you might expect, one part of the exhibits consists of dresses and suits that HM the Queen wore to important events during the years when she and HM the King were most active, beginning in the 1960s. She wanted her wardrobe to incorporate elements of traditional Thai clothing and styles, such as the shoulder cloth (prae wa), the wrap skirt (phaa sin – a wrapped straight skirt), and the hip wrapper (phaa nung – wrapped and tucked to create pleats at the hips).  You can see examples on the museum web site if you are interested: http://www.qsmtthailand.org/collection_main/

The web site is interactive, so you can click on images to see details.

The exhibits also tell about the international designers with whom HM the Queen and her staff worked to create the fashions she wore (she was named to the Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1965) and about different kinds of Thai silk. The most famous Thai silk is mat mii (also called Ikat), made of tie-dyed silk yarn, a process that requires great skill on the part of the dyer/weaver. The silk strands are wrapped and tied at intervals before being dyed, and unwrapped after being dyed. The pattern then emerges during the weaving, yielding a fabric with a characteristic shimmer from the yellow of the undyed sections of the silk. Here is a link to a YouTube video that shows you how it is done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsv1ITCrD_8

The most eye-opening parts of the exhibit were the videos and documentaries about projects that Their Majesties undertook to help poor people become more self-sufficient. In the videos you see them touring various “upcountry” areas of Thailand – predominantly agricultural areas in the north and northeast.  The videos document HM the Queen’s interest in collecting fabrics created by weavers in remote villages in order to locate and preserve traditional textiles. Some of the traditional weaves were incorporated into the fabrics the Queen chose for her official wardrobe. Typical patterns are from nature (flowers, leaves, seeds) arranged in a repeating diamond shape. Two examples that you see a lot in Thai silk are a four-petal flower and “heads of rice,” sometimes with a pattern of vines, enclosed in the diamond figure. You can see examples of these and other patterns on the museum web site.

HM the Queen encouraged many weavers and other artisans (mostly women) to earn extra income to support their families by making and selling their crafts.  She bought many of their products herself. In 1976 she created a foundation with the acronym SUPPORT, which stands for SUPPlmental Occupations and Related Techniques. Its purpose is to support and promote folk arts and crafts, and preserve them for the future. There is a training component for people who want to learn new techniques and a program to help artisans, such as weavers, obtain better equipment so they can increase their production and better support their families.  It’s moving to hear the women interviewed in the videos tell about how they were helped by HM the Queen’s patronage, and how much respect they have for her.  Seeing the exhibits, I understood why HM the Queen is so loved and revered by many Thais.

To conclude, I’m posting a picture of my landlady at the loom that stands between our two houses. She is weaving a more utilitarian fabric, not one for royal wardrobes – but I like to think that if she had been weaving 50 years ago, she might have met HM the Queen on one of her tours of the northeast.

 For the record: HM the Queen is not the only patron of Thai silk.  One you may have heard of was an American businessman named Jim Thompson, who brought Thai silk to international attention after WWII.  There is a museum about his work, the Jim Thompson House, in Bangkok that I haven’t visited yet – maybe soon! Stay tuned.

"Under Conditions of Hardship if Necessary"

“Under conditions of hardship if necessary”

When the Peace Corps was created in 1961, JFK famously asked Americans to serve where they were asked to go, “under conditions of hardship if necessary.”  That phrase probably evokes images of physical hardships such as walking long distances to get water or chopping wood before you can cook dinner. Peace Corps Thailand is sometimes half-seriously called “the posh corps” because Thailand is a relatively developed country where even a rural upcountry village like mine has electricity and running water almost all the time. Just in case, though, most everyone in the village has large water storage tanks like the one in the picture below, for the possibility of prolonged drought.

I think most PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in my group would agree that the inconveniences we deal with at our sites don’t rise to the level of hardship – which is not to say that nothing is hard. Much that we take for granted in America – administrative support for teachers, classrooms with doors and windows that close, some level of instructional technology (copy machines, projectors, computers, etc.) – is absent or in short supply at rural Thai schools. For class handouts and tests, most teachers use their own computers and printers. Our classrooms, like our houses, must be swept twice a day to keep dust and dirt under control. Some classrooms have computers and projectors, like the one below:

The picture above was taken on a Wednesday, the day students wear their Scout uniforms. The picture below shows Level 4 students in their assigned room, which is typical of the classrooms for the primary grades (the uniforms tell us this picture was taken on a Tuesday). 

The next picture is the English classroom for Mattayom students (=junior high and high school).  Nobody thinks twice about sitting on the floor.  Students seem to use the computers at the back of the room mostly for Facebook, but there is a projector for teacher use as well. 

Conditions that make teaching a challenge include noise, teaching load, and class cancellations. Our school has quite a bit more noise than I remember from American schools – children yelling outside or reciting at the top of their lungs in the next room, workers using saws, drills, or weed-whackers right outside the classroom, loudspeaker announcements, and more. You get used to most of these after a few weeks or months – up to a point. Occasionally, when the din is simply too great, I tell the students to do their math homework until the noise dies down again.

Teaching loads vary somewhat by school. PCVs don’t have sole responsibility for classes, but co-teach with one or more Thai teachers.  This term, there are about 130 students total in the six classes (4 different levels, 18 hours a week) that I co-teach with two English teachers – which seems like a lot to me, spoiled college teacher that I am, but probably looks familiar to many teachers – and is the envy of fellow PCVs with classes of 30 or 40. PCVs learn to cope with this too – as one philosophically said, “There’s not that much difference between 30 and 40.”

The workload is much higher for the Thai teachers than for us. All the Thai teachers I’ve met have significant responsibilities besides teaching and homeroom. A few examples are record-keeping (not just their own grades, but various official reports that must be submitted up the educational hierarchy); administrative duties such as staffing the school’s savings bank or the school store; helping serve lunch in the cafeteria; preparing the schedule of classes; serving as registrar; coordinating set-up, tear-down, and hospitality for events. Most teachers are advisors to student clubs; they also coach sports and groom students for academic competitions—a time-consuming activity that will get its own post eventually.  As a PCV, I have only one regular non-teaching assignment: to be at the school gate by 7:30am each Monday to greet students in English as they arrive.

Teaching at a rural Thai school makes you rethink your ideas about what is essential for teaching and learning. I can’t speak for others, but for me, the hardest thing has been to accept the fact that lost instructional time is just lost – and no one seems concerned about it. Schedules are unpredictable. We often lose days or parts of days for events announced at the last minute. We face classes with half or more of the students absent for participation in an approved activity (sports, dance, band, academic competitions, festivals, special computer training, etc.). We are expected to let these students make up the missed work, but good luck finding a time to do it.

Besides the lack of a plan for making up lost class time, there are no substitute teachers when someone is absent for illness, to take care of family business, or to attend a conference. The teacher is expected to leave an assignment for students to complete in her/his absence. The Thai teachers are used to all this and just seem to roll with it. I get frustrated because, unlike adapting to “old” technology or larger classes or dusty classrooms or even excessive noise, lost class periods make it much harder to teach effectively. Sometimes, after not seeing students for a week, the previous lesson is a hazy memory at best and the only option is to reteach.

What do these practices say about school priorities? I think that school directors and the education ministry want students to have a rich co-curricular experience – certainly a worthy goal – and expect flexibility in the academic curriculum in order to accomplish it.  And actually, I think it’s great that the arts – dance and music – are treated the same as sports, for example, and that students are encouraged to take more advanced computer classes than our school can offer. Still, the situation reminds me of a pizza that began with a few ingredients – let’s say tomato sauce, cheese, sausage, and mushrooms – and then other ingredients were added – pepperoni, onions, ham, pineapple, green peppers, artichokes, chicken, anchovies, and more – until the crust could no longer support the toppings. I think the crust of the pizza – our school’s academic curriculum – is being stretched too thin. Trying to hold my part of it together under these conditions is, to me, the hardship of teaching in rural Thailand.

To Market, To Market

To Market, to Market,

And Round About the Village

Open-air markets are everywhere in Thailand, but not all are open all the time.  In my village, the market is only on Mondays, in the late afternoon and early evening.  In a previous post (“Say Wat?”), you saw pictures of our village’s two temples.  The weekly market is set up in a field just opposite the grounds of Wat Sirinamaram.  The market offers an impressive range of items, given the small size of the village – besides meat, produce, and freshly cooked or baked items (curries, soups, salads, desserts), you can buy clothing, shoes, junk food, toys, kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene items, bug spray, CDs, DVDs, and much more.  Here are a few photos to give you a glimpse of what it looks like:

I don’t know who decides which food vendors sit on the ground while others get a stall or table, but presumably there is a fee for each category. Some vendors from the area make the rounds of different markets throughout the week, as I discovered by visiting weekly markets in nearby villages. Besides the wide variety of fried or grilled meat, chicken, and fish items (photo on right) and other prepared foods, a self-respecting market in northeastern Thailand must offer a selection of fried or roasted bugs, as in the photo below.

Sorry, but I can’t tell you what kind of bugs or worms these are or how they taste – being a vegetarian, I haven’t partaken of these, um, menu items.  The play area for children (below left) is available most every week, and there are barkers who keep up a running banter over loudspeakers, giving the market a festive feeling, a little bit like at a county fair.  The snake show has only been there once that I know of (photo below right).

You can see the cobra curled up on a corner of the mat while its owner works the crowd, trying to collect as much money as possible before the performance. I didn’t stay to watch, having seen the snake show last summer at King Cobra Village near Khon Kaen, which mainly made me feel sorry for the snakes. After removing them from their boxes (like the one here), the handlers goaded the cobras to strike, picked them up, slung them around their necks, put their heads (the snakes’ heads) briefly into their mouths (the handlers’ mouths), and performed other maneuvers that are not for the squeamish (not saying that anyone reading this is squeamish, but the writer might be). The snakes were quick to dive back into their boxes when their shift was over.  Here is a link to the web site for more about King Cobra Village if you are interested, or you can google to find YouTube videos of parts of the show:

http://www.tourismthailand.org/See-and-Do/Sights-and-Attractions-Detail/Ban-Khok-Sanga-king-cobras-village--3478

Back to my village: during the week, you can buy some groceries and other necessities at one of the numerous little stores, such as those in the photos below.

 The stores in the pictures are only a half a block from my house, and I usually shop at both each week.  The one above left is similar to a convenience store. It sells drinking water (tap water in Thailand is not safe to drink) and other drinks, household supplies, toiletries, school supplies for children, random toys, and a large array of snacks and junk food, but no meat or produce. Also, you can take your cell phone and internet access cards there to be “topped up” – the usual way to pay these bills here.  So I buy my drinking water at this store, pay to have my sim card topped up, and buy my favorite Extra Barbecue Potato Chips when I’m craving salt after a sweaty bike ride. 

The store in the picture above right is a grocery store, where you can buy whatever vegetables and fruits are in season, fresh eggs, and meat (pork, chicken, and fish most days). I buy tomatoes, little eggplants, squash, and other vegetables here, and maybe a watermelon once in a while. (Jeanette’s Rule for Buying Fruit: Don’t buy bananas, especially when they are abundant and already ripe, because as soon as you do, at least three people will give you large bunches from the banana trees in their yards.) 

Every village I’ve been to in Thailand has a goodly number of little “mom and pop” stores like the ones pictured above, often three or four in the same block, or right across the street from each other. Presumably each has regular customers and the people who run the stores don’t depend solely on income from sales to support their families. In towns and cities, the role of the convenience store has largely been taken over by 7-Elevens (called simply “Sewen” by Thais), but I haven’t seen them in villages yet.

Two more stores to round out this mini-tour of my village: the little station where motorcycles buy fuel, and the bike repair shop:

Some of our 5^th-grade students happened to see me taking the picture of the motorcycle fueling stop and called out “gas station!” (one of the words they learned in our unit about the village), a moment to warm any teacher’s heart.  In the photo of the bike repair shop, the proprietor is working on a motorcycle (called “motocy” in Thai), but you can tell from the pile of tires that he also repairs bicycles.  He replaced my inner tube and patched the old one for 20 Baht (30 Baht = about $1 US) – I would gladly have paid more, because even though I had a spare inner tube and bike tools provided by the Peace Corps, it would have taken me an hour or more to do it myself, while he did it in less than ten minutes. 

There’s more to tell about where I live, but today I wanted to show you that many of the things we need can be bought right here, round about the village, within minutes of our homes.

It's Look Like Rain

It’s look like rain.

More on Teaching English in Thailand

A 6^th grade student stopped by my desk one morning with a Thai/English phrase book and pointed to a sentence she wanted me to see:  “It’s look like rain.”  It did look like rain that day – it was the rainy season.  I complimented the student for learning English and told her how to say the sentence correctly:  It looks like rain.  She gave me a blank look and pointed to it again.  I said, yes, it looks like rain, fon dok, rain means fon dok.  This seemed to satisfy her and she went on her way.

The sentence illustrates a common mistake in Thai English. The fact that it appeared in a published phrase book suggests that Thai speakers don’t easily notice or correct this error on their own.  Maybe it reminds you of Americans trying to sort out its and it’s – but that’s a different kettle of fish. Those two words are pronounced alike, so you can’t really get them wrong in speaking, only in writing – or when blindfolded, as in the cartoon below, (from Mrs Milarch’s Class Website, http://mrsmilarch.weebly.com/funny-grammar-d.html).

 Back to the topic:  As so often happens, once “It’s look like rain” had crossed my radar screen, I started to hear similar errors rather often; here are a few examples:

a) It’s mean “really,” jing jing. 

b) What’s was the last country to join ASEAN?

c) Yes, the capital city, but what’s country?

I heard sentence (a) from a Thai speaker with a good command of English who was explaining vocabulary to me.  Sentences (b) and (c) were from Thai English teachers quizzing students about ASEAN (= Association of South East Asian Nations). The sentences are jarring to an American ear (at least, to mine) because the word “is” shouldn’t be there, not even in a contraction. Thai students of English learn these contractions early in their language instruction, in sentences such as:

d) What’s your name?

e) What’s this?

f) It’s hot today.                                

g) It’s raining.                                                           

                                   

Teachers reading this will probably agree that it makes sense to teach the contractions “it’s” and “what’s” because the sentences sound more natural than “What is your name?” or “It is raining.” In the process, some learners may not realize that the contractions actually stand for two words. Even if the grammar of “it’s” and “what’s” is explained to them, learners may easily forget it again, just as Americans (such as Yours Truly here) constantly forget the tones in Thai that signal important differences in meaning. It’s hard for us to remember the tones because English doesn’t have them. It’s hard for Thais to learn to use “is” because many common expressions in Thai have no equivalent for English “is.” Thai versions of the above sentences, if translated word-for-word into English, look like this:

d) What’s your name?                                 Your name what?

e) What’s this?                                              This what?

f) It’s hot today.                                             Today hot.

g) It’s raining.                                                 Rain.

Sentence (g) illustrates another Thai/English difference: Thai verbs don’t add endings in the he/she/it form.  Not surprisingly, Thai people usually omit this “s” when speaking or writing English (as in the sentence “It’s look like rain”).  Moreover, there is no difference in Thai between “it’s raining” and “it rains”:

g) It’s raining.                                                            Rain.

h) It rains every day.                                                Rain every day.

So, are the teaching of contractions and the different rules for when to use “is” the whole reason why Thai speakers use “it’s” and “what’s” in English sentences where the word “is” doesn’t belong?  Maybe.  However, looking at the sounds [t] and [s] made me think that other aspects of English and Thai may come into play as well. 

First, the two sound systems don’t match up well. The sounds “t” and “s” are not identical in Thai and English; that is, what Americans hear as “t” in English, for example, may not sound like a “t” to Thai learners, who have a different kind of “t” stored in their mental warehouse of speech sounds. I can cite many examples from teaching to illustrate this, e.g., the students say “foosball” and find it very difficult to imitate my correction to “football,” or they say “saut” for “sauce” and again find it hard to produce a more correct pronunciation.  I think the difficulties are due at least in part to the imperfect match between the Thai and English sounds.

Another possible factor is Thai spelling:  the Thai letters that correspond (more or less) to English “s” are often pronounced “t” in syllable-final position. For example, consider the following words, first spelled letter-for-letter from Thai to the English alphabet, then written as pronounced.

English                        Thai in English spelling          Pronunciation

Hello.                           swasdii                                   sa-wat-dee   (ee as in see)

Country                      pratees                                   pra-teet (ee as in entrée)

Religion                      sasna                                      sat-sa-na

I think this aspect of Thai spelling could be another source of confusion to learners struggling with a new language and a new alphabet. Anecdotal evidence that might support this theory comes from students trying to write their names or nicknames in English spelling. For example, a student who told me her nickname is “Net” signed her homework paper “Nes.”  Another student, whose name is pronounced “Suparat,” signed her homework “Supalas” (for r/l substitution, see the post “Sound Barriers” from several weeks ago).  Besides the difficulties that Thai people have pronouncing words that end in the sounds –s and –t (often interchanging the two), I’ve heard some speakers add “s” to words that didn’t need it, so it wouldn’t have been necessary to make the effort (e.g., “I thinks it will be in the afternoon.” “The students go with their grandfather to works in the field.”).

Baffled by all this, I started telling my fellow teachers what I was hearing and asked if they had any insights to offer.  Two Thai colleagues, independently of each other, gave an answer that surprised me. The gist of it was that Thai people think, if you add a lot of “s” you are speaking English.  –  Hmm, I thought, that’s not a very kind thing to say.  But then I thought about how much “s” there really is in English:

·      -s to make third-person singular verbs (he/she/it lives, runs, gets, etc.)

·      -s to make nouns plural

·      -s for possessives (my parents’ house)

None of the above patterns are at all similar in the Thai language. As mentioned above, Thai verbs don’t add endings for the he/she/it form. Thai nouns don’t add endings to form the plural. The possessive isn’t formed by adding an ending, but with a preposition (similar to “the house of my parents’). All these uses of “s” in English must be a never-ending thorn in the flesh of Thais learning English, making it really hard to remember when you should and shouldn’t use it.

So, given all the above sources of confusion, maybe the comment that you should use “a lot of ‘s’” when speaking English isn’t unkind or totally far-fetched. Who could blame Thai speakers struggling to learn English if they followed an unofficial rule along the lines of “when in doubt, add –s.” 

Why not?  It’s could be right!

* * * * * * * * * *

Disclaimer: As always, please remember that my descriptions of learner errors are only descriptions, not criticisms. Also, while I’ve tried to be accurate in choosing my examples, this is hardly a scientific study, so feel free to poke holes in my analysis but try not to take the conclusion too seriously.  – Or, as some of my Thai colleagues say:  Don’t serious.  

All Sport All The Time

All Sport All The Time

Sport Week at a Rural Thai School

During Peace Corps pre-service training, we had frequent guest presentations by second-year volunteers, who tried to give us a heads-up on what to expect at our sites. They told us about events that would disrupt our teaching schedules, such as Sport Week, during which any semblance of academic learning goes out the window. It’s one of the many aspects of Thai school culture that you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve been there.

Our school’s fall/winter term began on October 28, a week before the start of Sport Week. However, very few classes met that first week because students were either practicing their sport to be ready for competitions or helping teachers in charge of setups, schedules, and logistics. Our school hosted the event, which involved 12 schools in our area and made a lot of extra work, especially for teachers who coach a sport or had other official roles.  They were grateful for any help students could give them. During Sport Week, teachers were expected to clock in and out every day, the same as when classes are in session, except that Sport Week also included Saturday and Sunday.

Each morning, food vendors began setting up before 7am, knowing that students are ready to eat chicken on a stick, sausages, fried bananas, and any number of other snacks at all times.  The vendor pictured below is one of several with permission to sell on the school grounds. There were four or five others just outside the school gates as well.

Students from other schools would begin arriving shortly before 9am, usually in overfilled pickup 

 trucks or buses like these:

There were Sport Week competitions in seven sports:  football, futsal, petanque (sometimes called boules), sepak ta kraw (sometimes called kick volleyball), table tennis, volleyball, and, to my surprise, beach volleyball – although there’s no beach anywhere near this village. Sand was provided to simulate beach conditions. The schedule was dominated by football – I follow local and European usage in calling it football instead of soccer, since American football isn’t well known here.  Some of the “smaller” sports – table tennis and petanque – had competitions for only three or four days, but football was scheduled over all seven days.

Before coming to Thailand, I wasn’t familiar with sepak ta kraw or petanque.  It was fascinating to learn that petanque was introduced to Thailand in the 1970s by the mother of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), Queen Mother Srinagarindra (1900-1995). She had learned the game in Switzerland, where she lived from 1933 (after her husband’s death) until 1964, when she returned to Thailand to pursue social and environmental projects to improve the lives of people in the poorest parts of the country.  In case petanque is new to you too:  it is played with wooden or metal balls that are thrown to land as near as possible to a small target ball.  Points are awarded based on how close the ball is to the target ball. As you can see in the video, our students throw overhand in this game. Unfortunately, my video doesn’t show you where the ball landed, sorry!

Ta kraw is my new favorite sport to watch. It is a game of Southeast Asia, played in most if not all countries in this part of the world. Thailand and Malaysia are said to be the  “powerhouse countries” for this sport. In case it is new to you too: ta kraw is played with a lightweight rattan ball and a net similar to a volleyball net. There are three players per side. The only time you can touch the ball with your hands is when serving; otherwise you can hit it with your head, shoulder, knee, or foot. The object, of course, is to get it over the net in such a manner as to be difficult or impossible for the other team to return. The best players are able to stop the ball with their head and aim it either to another player or in a direction they can run to and kick it over the net and down (like spiking the ball in volleyball). I hope this brief video gives a clearer idea than my tortured description:

During Sport Week, I took a zillion pictures and videos, most of which were quickly trashed for poor quality or ho-hum content. For a few teachers, like me, whose major role was that of spectator, Sport Week got a bit tedious after several days, but the unwavering enthusiasm and support from coaches, referees, announcers and parents were spectacular. Even students whose teams didn’t win must have felt affirmed by so much positive energy. 

When classes resumed on November 12, what did we talk about?  -- Sport Week, of course, a great topic for English classes and a good conversation starter in any language.  My co-teacher and I used some of my pictures and videos to focus students’ attention on specific games. The 4^th and 5^th graders loved the videos, calling out names of players from our school or naming other schools whose uniforms they recognized. Their engagement with the topic reaffirmed our decision last term to throw out our textbooks, which are full of material about places our students have no concept of (such as shopping malls). Instead, we now develop our own materials based on what is all around us at school and in the village.

Sport Week concluded with speeches, ceremonies, announcements of awards, marching bands, and a parade – but I’ll spare you my video of the parade, at least for now. Maybe on a slow news day . . . .

Say Wat?

Say Wat?

Thai Village Temples

The word wat, often translated as “temple,”  actually refers to the whole property – the grounds on which the temple, monks’ residence, and any buildings for meetings or classes are located.

During my first night with my host family in Central Thailand months ago, I wasn’t surprised to be awakened by roosters crowing before dawn – it’s a rural village after all – but I was quite surprised to hear announcements over a loudspeaker from the wat across the street, starting at about 5:30am every day. When I asked my host family what the announcements were about, they said “news.”  -- Hmmm, I thought, why would that be necessary? Everyone here seems to have TV.  This example shows how you can misinterpret even the most everyday word – such as “news” – if you don’t know the cultural context.  Eventually I understood that these early-morning announcements are news about events in the village, mostly at the wat – local news that isn’t reported on TV.   

The same thing happens where I live now, in Northeastern Thailand, except that this village has two temples. 

Wat Sirinamaram

Wat Buraparom

Wat Sirinamaram is the larger of the two, with several buildings and spacious, tree-shaded grounds for festivals and other events. Both have resident monks who make their rounds of the village collecting alms early each morning. As you can see, the temples are quite modest, especially when compared to the many historic temples, often lavishly ornate, for which Thailand is famous. 

However, these smaller temples probably serve a majority of the population – more than half of Thailand’s 66.79 million people live in rural areas.  The country is about 95% Buddhist.  Many people go to temple twice a week, and oftener when there is a Buddhist holiday or festival.

The first event that I attended at a wat was a monk ordination. Becoming a monk is an important way for a man to make merit for his parents. And, before you ask, no, women don’t (yet) have equal opportunity in this realm:

Under the current Thai constitution the ordination of women is permitted. But the Thai Sangha Council, a government-linked religious advisory group, maintains that only men can enter the monkhood, citing the 1928 Sangha Act that forbids Thai monks from ordaining women.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/thai-women-don-monks-robes/

Making merit, as I understand it, is somewhat akin to doing good deeds – for example, to freely give something (food, money, time as a volunteer), light candles and offer prayers, or help in other ways. To ensure a peaceful life in the hereafter, such acts must be done “from the heart,” not with selfish motives. Thus, merit-making also requires one to follow the precepts of Buddhism and develop the mind through prayer and meditation.

Usually, the occasion of becoming a monk calls for a big party the evening before the ordination. I attended such a party in January with my host family and several members of my Peace Corps group. It reminded me of a wedding dinner – the young man, dressed all in white, stood with his parents to greet the guests as they arrived. Later the three of them walked around to each of the more than 100 tables to thank all the guests for coming. There was music and dancing after the meal. At one point, the young man mounted the stage with his father and many people came up to put garlands around his neck.

Giving a garland to the monk

Dancing with the monk's mother

The next morning, a large crowd of villagers came to the wat to accompany the young man as he was carried around the temple by his friends. In the photo below, he is throwing foil-wrapped one-baht coins to the crowd. Notice the huge smile on his father’s face – it is clearly a joyful occasion for the family.

Bearing gifts

After being carried around the temple three times, the new monk was taken into the temple, along with the gifts that we had all brought, and most of the guests went home. I had assumed that the ordination represented a momentous decision by the young man to dedicate his life to the monkhood but learned that many if not most Thai men become monks for a short time  – as little as a week, two weeks or a month. It is a way to demonstrate their commitment to Buddhist values, make merit for their families, and prepare to be a good husband – some families won’t allow their daughters to marry a man who hasn’t been a monk.

Up to now, I’ve visited relatively few temples in Thailand and have only a limited understanding of the symbols, architecture, and statuary at different places and from different historical periods.  I hope to write about some of the more intriguing symbols and traditions as I learn more. To close with a glimpse of one of the famous temples alluded to at the beginning of this post, here is a picture of me with the Naga (mythical serpent) at the foot of the stairs (300+ steps!) of Wat Phra Tat Doi Suthep near Chiang Mai.

House Critters

House Critters

It’s time to introduce the critters that show up in my house in Thailand.  I’ll start with the regulars – the geckos – then move on to some less frequent visitors, with a short excursion into the culinary realm.  Read on!

These little lizards, called jing-jok in Thai, are in everyone’s house here, as far as I can tell.  They are small – some only a little more than an inch long from nose to tip of tail, others up to about three inches. The name gecko supposedly comes from their chirping call (chek chek chek), which sounds almost bird-like. Also known as house lizards, they are tolerated indoors because they eat so many mosquitos and other insects.  When I saw them at my first host family’s home, they looked so cute skittering up and down the walls after bugs, in and out of the kitchen, that I couldn’t help laughing. My host would just shake his head and say “dirty.”  And they are – you learn to watch out for their droppings. I don’t laugh all that often during my daily round of sweeping up gecko poop.  As far as I know, they can’t be trained to use a litter box!  Snails also get into the house every so often and leave poop to clean up, but I rarely see them. Geckos are there every day.

The bigger house lizards, which may grow to a length of nearly two feet, are called tokay; these are the ones whose call most resembles the name “gecko.” To me, it sounds like “eckk – ohh” repeated several times, a mournful sound, supposedly to attract a mate.  I haven’t haven’t seen one since moving into my rental house, but they’re here. I often hear them above me at night, so they must be on or in the roof somewhere.  I’m glad for high ceilings in this house!  If you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you. For a picture of the tokay, follow this link: http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/tokay-gecko-photo-1753.html

 

I found this guy, or gal, who knows, unfortunately already deceased, during my morning rounds with the broom recently. At first I thought it was a leaf, but quickly realized it was a big insect, and that it was doubtless the cause of the noise on the roof the night before. My first guess had been that the noise was related to the raucous party next door, but when I looked out, the revelers were all indoors, so that theory had to be scrapped.  The roof is tin, so the thrashing about of an insect this large could create the scrabbling, scraping noises I heard. It must have jumped or fallen from a tree to the roof and then got stuck.  After I posted the photo on Facebook, a friend sent me the scientific name, Pseudophyllus Titan, a nocturnal insect. Here is the link to more information in English and Thai, if you are interested. http://www.malaeng.com/blog/?paged=37

The insect brings to mind the frequently asked question: Do people in Northeastern Thailand eat insects?  -- Yes, they do, as well as other, um, alternative sources of protein that I’ve avoided by being a vegetarian.  Every so often a bowlful of bugs shows up on the lunch table in the teachers’ room at school. Some colleagues use a fork and spoon to eat them. Others take a small handful of sticky rice (another specialty of the region, always eaten with the fingers) and use a pinch of rice to pick up a morsel from the plate of bugs.  Insects are only a small part of people’s diet in this region. Look for more about food in a future post. Meanwhile, here’s a link to a post about different kinds of edible insects: http://voices.yahoo.com/which-fried-insects-eat-where-bangkok-thailand-6844082.html?cat=16

Toads and frogs also get into the house every so often. If you’re on Facebook, you probably saw a post in August about a toad in my bed. It was early on a Sunday morning, I was drinking coffee and reading news online, and while waiting for a web site to load (slow internet), decided to shake out my bedding.  When I picked up my blanket, there was the toad, a good-sized one, about as big as my fist, right next to the pillow. It had apparently come in under a door that doesn’t fit closely to the floor. The landlord fixed the problem by stuffing cardboard in the crack.  -- I didn’t think to take a picture of my unwanted visitor, just grabbed rubber gloves, picked up the toad, and took it outside. This photo from Wikimedia Commons is a good enough likeness.

Snakes:  I’m happy to say I’ve seen no snakes in the house yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time.  Every so often the morning news has videos of plumbers or pest control services having been called to extract a snake from the plumbing in someone’s house.  Stay tuned!