Well, phase one of the village experience is completed. I arrived back in Chiang Mai yesterday after a five hour windy truck ride that made me want to throw up. We also got doused with buckets of water 27 times on our way from the village to the city. This may seem like a strange occurrence to some, but it is completely normal for Thailand at this time of year. This weekend is the Songkran festival, which is a time to celebrate the rivers and bodies of water. Naturally, they celebrate the water by throwing it at people. I can honestly say that there is no American equivalent to this festival. I can’t think of any situation or holiday in America where it is acceptable to throw things at complete strangers, at least to this extent. Sure, the occasional confetti toss at New Years happens, but there are not hundreds of people standing on the sidewalks and roads with trash cans full of confetti ready to toss a bucket-full at the next passerby. Numerous precautionary measures have to be taken if one wishes to go outside, including putting all of your valuables in plastic bags, wearing running shoes, and carrying around a small water gun to retaliate. I can tell that this is going to be an exciting weekend…
Nevertheless, I want to update you on this past month’s happenings. We said goodbye to our host families and left Chiang Mai on March 13th to begin our weeklong tour of Thailand. We went to Sukothai, Ayudhaya, Lopburi, and some other places I can’t remember. We traveled by tour bus, which meant that we became those obnoxious tourists that everyone hates. You know what I’m talking about –those tourists on the large-windowed tour buses who seem to be under the impression that their bus is equipped with one-sided windows because they are unashamedly staring at the people outside. No one likes those people. But nevertheless, we became them. We visited many of the ancient empires of Thailand and saw some really old temples and stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool, but the intense heat was sort of a downer. The highlight of most peoples’ day was when we got to jump in the pool at the next hotel. We did do some really neat things as a group: one day we got to rent bicycles and pedal around a park, during which I decided to go off-roading with two of the boys from the group. Unfortunately, our pink bicycles weren’t meant for off-roading terrain, and the day got even more interesting when we found ourselves on one side of an electric fence (electric, to our surprise). There were some other remarkable happenings during our travel week: one day in Lopburi we visited a temple area housing hundreds of temperamental monkeys. They looked cute at first, but they attacked at the first sign that you may possess food or anything shiny. Toward the end of the week we went on a dinner cruise on a boat possessing a karaoke machine, and much to the chagrin of anyone in earshot, we made good use of it. Our group really did have a great time together, and I think that the most memorable experiences were outside of the tourist sites. The boys in our group decided to have a beard-growing contest that lasted from February until mid-march. During our field trip they got to shave for the first time, but not until we (the girls) gave out the beard superlatives. Some of the most notable awards included “best multi-colored beard,” “best Russian crust-ache,” “best creeper beard,” and “please go shave NOW.” The boys subsequently decided to make the shaving process a bit more interesting by also shaving their heads in horrendous patterns and styles and giving the bag of shaved off hair to the girls as a present. The proof of all these incidents lay in my facebook pictures.
After spending a day in Bangkok and visiting the Royal Palace, we were free to go off on our spring breaks. My group took an overnight bus to the Krabi province in southern Thailand. We spent the first two nights on Hat Ton Sai beach. This beach was unlike any beach I had ever been to. Aside from the gorgeous scenery, jungles, and cliffs, the beach was entirely inhabited by hippies and others still mourning the death of Bob Marley. The first day we decided to rent kayaks and paddle out to the next beach, Railay. Within ten minutes of being on the other beach we saw nine other people from our program, and just as we were finished discussing how crazy it was that we all found eachother, our program directors pulled up to shore in a boat. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. That night, back on Hat Ton Sai, we had our own set of interesting happening. While three of us were in so much pain from our sunburns that we couldn’t sleep, two others were woken up in the middle of the night by a monkey in their bungalow. Aside from the intrusive monkeys, we really did enjoy that beach, but I decided to travel to the other side of the peninsula to meet up with another group of friends staying on Kho Phanghan. I traveled by myself for the day, which proved to be more exhausting than I thought. My first bus was delayed by three hours, and when we finally arrived at the dock, I found out that the boat was also three hours late. So I spent three hours at a very sketchy dock with lots of non-English speakers, counting the minutes until I saw people I knew. I finally arrived, around 10 pm, and could do nothing but hug my two friends who came to pick me up at the dock. We stayed at a really nice resort on the beach, loving every minute of the air conditioning and ocean view. We even made friends with two Thai women who work at a massage booth on the beach and took them out to dinner. Most of our time during spring break was spent taking in the everyday conveniences we knew we would soon be lacking, such as running water, air conditioning, beds, etc. When we finally got back to Chiang Mai after our 36 hour trip back, I barely had time to recover before we left for the village the next morning.
The five hour long ride to the village was nothing short of nauseating. And I wanted nothing else than to go to sleep when we finally arrived at the village, after I had thoughtlessly taken a few too many motion sickness pills. It wasn’t until the next morning that I was able to have any coherent first impressions of the village. We are living in a compound that usually houses students from surrounding villages who live there to go to school. They are on their summer break now, so we are living in their “dorms.” My house is a six person house, made out of wood and bamboo, and has a porch which is in constant use. We frequently comment on how we feel like old women, sitting on their porch and talking about the latest gossip. Another idea frequently thrown around is the possibility that we might be the victims of some candid camera “Survivor” show. We eat every single meal together, are all living within 50 yards of each other, go to the lake every other day to shower, and every Friday we vote off someone from the village. That last part was a joke, but the rest of it is pure reality. Certain phenomena occur when you live in such close proximity to the same people for an extended period of time, and one of them is speech imitation. All of us are starting to speak with the same tones and inflections, picking up quirks from certain people. I fear what will happen on May 3rd when we are indefinitely separated from each other: we may suffer short-term muteness or something equally awful.
Another very present reality that we have had to adjust to is the existence of strange animals and bugs. Frequently during class we are interrupted by the sound of water buffalo calls and cow bells. We do a “bug check” before entering the outhouse, and on really unfortunate days we are visited by a certain enormous moth (it is literally larger than my head) that maintains residence on the outhouse wall for at least 12 hours. The village is also full of dogs, and apparently a dog disease is going around because the dogs are dying at a frightening rate. Over ten dogs died within the first week that we were there, and six died in one day. One of the puppies got ran over by a kid on a bicycle, and I came to its rescue. I made a make-shift splint for its broken leg from bamboo and string, and within a few days he was fine! I named him Maverick…he’s resilient just like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun.” But despite the fact that Maverick remains alive, most of them aren’t anymore.
And on that note, I will end this disgracefully long blog and leave you sitting on the edge of your seat, I’m sure, for my return and my subsequent blog post concerning the rest of the dogs and more village gossip.
Until then, Sawatdiikha!