Alien Status

Last Friday, I was moving slow, getting ready to drive down to Phang nga for some hiking and climbing with James, and I heard this loud wailing sound from the direction of the school. At first I thought it could be a siren for something awful like a fire, but then a recorded voice came on the loud speakers. First came a message in Thai, then English, German next, and finally Japanese. The message was something like “Attention! Attention! There is a tsunami. There is a tsunami. Leave the beach for higher ground immediately. Leave the beach for higher ground immediately.” It was a beautiful day and I had not felt an earthquake that might trigger a tsunami, but then I remembered that there had been no obvious indicators for the 2004 wave. I didn’t panic, but there was definitely a moment of fear that comes from uncertainty. Of course, I had just gotten out of the shower, so I scrambled around to get some clothes and find out what was going on. It turned out that it was, thankfully, a practice, but we had not been told anything about it. The wailing and message continued to repeat about every 10 minutes for the next half hour and then it changed to an “the situation is safe. Please continue to rescue the victims” message. It was a little unsettling, but I guess good to know that a warning system is in place.

After that I drove about an hour and a half to Phang nga. It was a much shorter ride than that to Phuket, and lovely to see the scenery change from the beach and rolling jungle hills of my area to the terraced fields of bigger mountains and finally the limestone karsts of Phang nga.James and I went to a park with a hiking trail that runs along seven cascading waterfalls. There had been a mud slide since James had been there last, but the trail was still good, and it was really nice to be out of the city after spending last weekend in Chiang Mai. At the last waterfall, which was rather anti-climactic, James felt something squishy in his shoe. He took off his shoe and his toes were covered in blood! He hadn’t stepped on anything and was trying to figure out what had happened when I saw large inch-worm looking thing on his foot. “You have a leach!” Leaches are nasty little buggers; they hang on tight and are quite determined to feed. When James finally pulled his first leach off, it went for his finger, so he flung it through the air and his bloody leach landed on me! We stayed remarkably calm despite a situation that could have descended into chaos as we found more leaches on James’s feet, a couple on mine, and noticed that they were actually on the trail, not in the water where we though they were, and inching towards us with shocking precision.


We made it safely out of leach territory and decided to cool off by taking a swim and a couple of jumps into one of the waterfall pools. We drove back to town soon after that and changed to go out to dinner with Laura, another PiA teacher who arrived recently and took the post Grace was filling temporarily. Unfortunately, my ear, which had felt uncomfortable since jumping into the pool, became increasingly more painful. This was my first experience with swimmer’s ear and I can now sympathize with everyone else who has endured it.


The next morning I felt much better though, so James and I went to a park in town that has some climbing. There’s some pretty good variety, but the routes aren’t really kept up, so there was lots of crud to scrape off, and we didn’t have a rope to do the routes that were bolted. So we bouldered a little bit on some projects that James has been working on. On the last route I tried, two big holds broke free and I ended up falling a few meters. It was a fairly injury free fall though and it was fun to get out and climb for a bit. There were also monkeys around, who I’m convinced were limberly swinging and climbing around just to taunt us.


I watched the land around me change back from karsts to beach on my way home and spent the rest of the weekend starting to pack up my things. A couple of weeks ago I found a perfect little house to rent from a delightful old lady. It is located in the Moken community called Tabptuwan, which is not too far from R35 and next door to Mark, another PiA teacher at the school, though his post will end in about 5 weeks. I also saw one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve seen yet in Thailand. Check it out!

On Monday, I officially became an alien in Thailand. All of Ian’s and my paperwork was processed successfully, so we received our work permits and work extensions for our visas until the end of next March. I spent quite a bit of time developing worksheets and games for my younger students’ unit on school places and subjects. I’ve also been trying to come up with some activities that are more student-centered and will help the older students with their grammar.

I also got oriented with Grassroots, a local NGO that serves the migrant Burmese community in southern Thailand this week. I officially begin volunteering for the organization next week, when I start to teach a life science class to the older students in the community at one of the youth outreaches centers. I will also be writing a grant proposal to renovate the women’s center and start a variety of community activities and vocational trainings, so I attended a planning meeting with the volunteer coordinator and deputy director about the goals of the project. I’m really excited about this work, and will include more details on it soon.

Today, I finished packing all my stuff. Somehow, I seem to have accumulated much more than I arrived in this country with… So, I am saying good bye to my little one-room bungalow and all it’s quirks, like the frog who decided that my plant was a better perch than the windowsill. I will post pictures of my new abode next week once I’m settled.

Wats Galore

On Friday, I took my first domestic flight in Thailand. As soon as my class finished I got out on the highway (riding public transportation in Thailand sometimes feels hitch-hiking) and caught a bus headed for Phuket. I took a plane from Phuket to Bangkok, then another from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Jordan, my friend and fellow PiA-er from Puget Sound, teaches first grade in Chiang Mai, and my professor and religious studies advisor Greta Austin was in Chiang Mai visiting for the week with her family, so I flew up for the weekend to spend some time with them all. On Saturday, Greta treated us to a glorious western breakfast with granola, yogurt, and cappuccinos that could have been from any Seattle café. We got an early start on Saturday, which was good because we had many things to do and places to see on our agenda.


We started out at Wat Doi Suthep, a stunning temple one of the holiest chedi in Thailand. It is located at the end of a winding road up Mt. Doi Suthep and at the top of a 306 step staircase. Since we got there before all the tourists arrived, we were treated with a peaceful atmosphere at a delightful chat with a monk who used to be a lawyer in Phuket.

Next, we stopped at Wat Jet Yot. It had some amazing original stucco depicting bodhisattva (Buddhist saints), which is curiously usually associated with Mahayana Buddhism not Theravada Buddhism which is officially practiced in Thailand. It was much more of a quiet local Wat in comparison to Doi Suthep.

The Elephant Conservation Center outside of Chiang Mai was our next on our agenda. It was a really lovely center and we took a short elephant ride around the surrounding jungle before visiting the elephant hospital and the nursery. The conservation center is sent elephants from all parts of Thailand that are either because they are ailing and require the hospital facilities or because they are rescued from the city streets where they are mistreated. Elephants in Thailand were traditionally work animals used in the logging industry. Since indiscriminate logging has been outlawed in Thailand, many elephants are out of work and therefore end up in the cities as tourists attractions. I heard that the Thai government has established a program where it will buy elephants from families that can no longer care for it and send it to a conservation center to prevent the number of elephants that are mistreated in the cities from growing. This conservation center also has a successful breeding program and had an elephant baby that was only 2 months old! It sort of lurked under its mother, where it fit perfectly, and nursed occasionally. The other two youngsters were a bit older and therefore more rambunctious, but just at hairy and cute.



While we were outside of Chiang Mai, we went to Wat Lampang Leung, which has one of the oldest wooden structures in Thailand. It was truly a special place. I have yet to determine the particular significance of the wood poles that had been given as offerings around the Bodhi tree at the enterance to the Wat.



Saturday evening, Jordan and I went out with some of the other PiA teachers who were in Chiang Mai. Most of the teachers in Chiang Mai teach at the university level. Only Jordan teaches young students. The group of PiA teachers who live about 3 hours from Chiang Mai in Nan, where they teach younger students, were also in the city for the weekend, so it was an especially enjoyable night.

Sunday, was a much slower start, but we still saw more Wats than I can remember.









At one Wat we chatted with a monk who used to be a Thai boxer and had even traveled to the US for tournaments. Once he reached champion status 9 years ago, he decided to become a monk. He along with some of the other monks there clearly still work-out!


At another Wat, we visited the various alcoves honoring particularly enlightened monks, which had slightly unsettlingly life-size wax replicas of the monks. The most amazing part about these alcoves were that they had relics on display! I had previously learned that religious relics are rarely openly displayed, and the relics of the Buddha are always enclosed in giant Chedi, but the relics (hair, nail clippings, and bones left after the funeral burning) for these monks were on display in a large class case. They were also individually documented in photographs that were hung around the alcove.

Then, at the last Wat, we were coming around the corner of a building and right there was Donald Duck eating some noodles! Seeing how popular Theravada Buddhist practice incorporates attributes of Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, distinctly Thai influences, and Disney cartoons is probably the most fascinating thing about visiting Wats, particularly in Chiang Mai. It was also delightful to see Greta’s daughters so eager to participate and learn how to give Buddhist offerings at the Wats. No surprise though for children of a religion professor.

We spent the evening exploring the Sunday Walking Street, which is a festive atmosphere with what seemed as many Thais and toursists eating and shopping. Chiang Mai has a vibrant style of arts and crafts that was intoxicating since I live in a relatively rural area without much of an art community.

I returned home on Monday and jumped right into class. In my matayom 4 (~10^th grade) class we were finally able to have our restaurant skits that had been postponed due to the festivities of last week. I found a bunch of old dresses, skirts, and jackets in the office and added a few of my own personal favorite dress-up items that I brought with me…some of you might recognize the wig and glasses! My students had a fun dressing-up in ridiculous outfits and I think that donning a new persona helped some of them open-up when they presented.

And one more very exciting piece of news... I found a little house in a neighborhood not far from school that I will begin renting next month! More on that later though.