Rabbit Hole
This post has its title from my new site, Ban Rang Krathai
in Kanchanaburi Province. The place name means nest (rang) of the rabbit (krathai),
or rabbit hole. Ban Rang Krathai School
is next to a temple (wat),
which has the sign pictured below in front:
The words on the sign are the name of the temple, Wat Rang
Krathai Rang Saan, which means, loosely, temple at the home of the rabbit. The
name and the figures of rabbits suggest a sense of humor on the part of the
monks.
I arrived in Ban Rang Krathai the evening of April 25 – two
days after returning to my former village in northeastern Thailand (Isaan)
from a vacation in California with my daughter. Since then I’ve already been
away from my site twice. The first trip was for a Peace Corps “consolidation,”
that is, a rehearsal of getting us all together at a designated meeting point
in preparation for being evacuated – like a fire drill, but more complicated.
The fact that Peace Corps volunteers were recently evacuated from Ukraine
helped us take the exercise in the proper spirit.
My second time away from my new site was a very different
Peace Corps event – a three-day weekend in Hua Hin, a seaside town south of
Bangkok, to get to know the new group of PC volunteers who came in January
(yes, we who arrived in 2013 are now the “old” volunteers). Our event overlapped
with a public holiday on May 5, Coronation Day, commemorating HM the King’s 1950
coronation – 64 years ago. Thais are proud that their King is the
longest-reigning monarch. The King and Queen moved from Bangkok to Hua Hin
about a year ago, to have a quieter environment than in Bangkok. Hua Hin is a
small town, popular with tourists because of its beaches. Here is a picture of part
of the downtown, and just for giggles, the Starbucks cat, who was very friendly.
In the picture of the family, you see Crown Prince Maha
Vajiralongkorn in his white uniform, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn to his
right, the Prince’s wife and two other sisters, and another woman I don’t
recognize. Her Royal Highness Princess Sirindhorn can be seen on TV almost
every evening, making official visits, presiding over events, performing
ceremonies, and so on. I watched the Coronation Day parade and ceremonies on TV
in the air-conditioned lobby of my hostel, which was great except I couldn’t
take pictures. Here’s a picture of the hostel though.
The name Tid Tarat
means “At the Market” – the hostel is directly across from the Hua Hin night
market, popular with tourists. To do my part for Thai tourism, I bought a pair
of zebra-striped pants.
But I digress. Back to Ban Rang Krathai and Kanchanaburi
Province. Kanchanaburi is on the western side of Thailand, along the Myanmar
border. It’s the third largest province in Thailand, adjacent to Suphanburi
Province, where my PC group had our pre-service training last year. Ban Rang
Krathai is in the southeast corner of Kanchanaburi, only a few hours from
Bangkok, i.e., centrally located. The landscape here is flat, but you can see
mountains in the not-too-distant-distance, to the west.
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| Field with mountains in the distance |
In comparison with Isaan, central Thailand is also heavily
agricultural, but more industrialized. Rice and sugar cane are the major crops
(I haven’t seen rubber farms here, which are common in the northeast). You also
see the occasional cornfield and of course a range of other crops (vegetables,
fruit trees, etc.). There is a large sugar processing plant nearby, as well as
a sugar farm machinery business, both pictured below.
Note the three languages,
Thai, Chinese, and English on the sugar factory sign, no doubt in recognition
of the most important investors. The more widespread use of English on signs in
central Thailand probably also reflects the fact that it is much more of a
tourist destination than Isaan.
The two pictures here were taken just 10 minutes by bike
from my host family’s home. Not far away, rice processing plants and other
businesses dot the landscape.
Driving west, toward the border, you soon enter the mountains.
A member of my new host family and her friends took me to Erawan National Park
my first weekend here. The photo below shows us at a sign near the entrance.
The waterfalls at this park are not spectacular, but beautiful .as
waterfalls always are. It surprised me to see people swimming in virtually
every part of the river, which isn't very deep, and playing under every
waterfall.
On the way back from Erawan National Park, we stopped to
admire Srinakarin Dam, but my pictures didn’t turn out too well; here are a
couple of the better ones.
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| Me with bridge in background |
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| Me with host "sister," Kwanta |
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| View from of temple across the river, seen from the bridge |
I hope to make a second visit to the bridge site to see the museum, which houses displays and artifacts related to the building of the Death
Railway.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the new school semester, which
starts on May 14. I’ve met my two co-teachers, the school principal, and several
other teachers. All of them seem very nice. The school is smaller than my first
one – it goes only through mattayom 3 (=grade 9), and has some 200 students.
For those of you who are wondering, there were a number of factors that
contributed to the decision to move from my previous site, but I won’t go into
them. It’s all water over the dam or under the bridge – or down the rabbit
hole.
P.S. May 9 was another public holiday, The Royal Ploughing
Ceremony, a traditional event held at the start of the rice growing season.
Here is a link to a story with pictures of the royal oxen who plow a furrow and
are then offered various foods; the ones they choose are said to predict the
year’s harvest.
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