Whoot!

Okay, so it's four in the morning, but ladies and gentlemen, WE HAVE A DRAFT!

It's currently 48 pages long.  It's sloppy, it still has gaps, and it took me a week longer to finish than I'd estimated (then again, it also ended up being longer and more complex than I had in mind, so basically, the fact that I did more work at that stage will hopefully mean that there's less editing and filling-in to be done now).

I now have a week and a half to substantially re-write it and fill in the gaps in the research, but I feel a bit more relaxed about that now.

I can do this.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like... New Year...

The last of my presents are in the post!  And as a thank-you for my copious business, the post office gave me, with great ceremony... a free pack of post-office-branded tissues.  I do not understand my adopted country at all.

Also, my local 7/11 has a cardboard Christmas tree outside - by which I mean that it's actually cut out of a brown cardboard box, and then edged with a green tinsel garland and green ornaments to make it appear more... frondy, I guess.  There are presents underneath that are hilariously wrapped almost exactly the way I wrapped the ones I sent - in Thai newsprint with sparkly ribbons.  Vindicated!  (This is even funnier because 7/11 has actually started stocking wrapping paper this week - sorry, recipients of newsprint-wrapped goodies! - but only single, individually cellophaned sheets for small presents.  I guess it wasn't financially worth it to crack open a bunch of them just to decorate the shop.)

New Year's displays have also started appearing, although they tend to be a lot more, well, rationally-sized than Christmas displays in the West.  Usually, we're talking fireworks, balloons, garlands, a few presents (mainly toys, although the 7/11 display includes boxes of Oreos with a "To:" and "From:" space), and the ubiquitous "monk kits".  (These are buckets full of practical items, like canned food, bottled water, and matches; there's a monk's robe coiled up at the bottom.  People bring them to temples on holidays as a kind of offering.  The idea is that they make the monks' lives easier by reducing the need to go out and get everyday stuff themselves.  The first time I saw them, I thought they were just really boring gift baskets.)

Tomorrow there's an office party for those of us still kicking around, and then the office shuts until January!  Which is kind of nice; I mean, I'll still be working every day from home, but I'm realising more and more that the times when I'm naturally productive =/= office hours.  I think that occurred to me at about 2.30 this morning, as I was wrapping up a section on biodiversity conservation.

Get Your Motor Running

Well, the draft of my report is still very rough, and I keep finding more ground to cover the more I look, but I now have a good chunk of… um… words.  They may not be perfect, but they’re words, and there are lots of them!

I don’t know if I’ve explained exactly what it is I’m writing:  basically, it’s an advocacy guide to all national and international sustainable development rules affecting Burma, plus a look at whether and how those regulations are being applied on the ground.  So, it’s a big book of anything that would allow activists to go, “See, you said you were going to do this, and actually, you’re doing that.”  It’s the “on the ground” stuff that’s often the most difficult to track down – information from inside the country can be hard to get and verify.  But holy crap, I’m learning a lot along the way.  There probably could not be a better crash course to start my placement than researching this thing.

I think I’m moving out of the “ZOMG EVERYTHING IS NEW!” phase, so the character of these posts may change a bit.  Here’s a roundup of a few things from the past week:

• I’m slowly getting to know people in the office.  I still feel a bit awkward making conversation, but I’m trying, and everyone’s been very sweet about it.  (It’s difficult to explain, but there are different cultural rhythms and styles of conversation – for example, there’s a particular way Karen people tease each other.  It reminds me a little bit of trying to fit into a British office for the first time.  It’s a more dramatic change than that, of course, but on the plus side, this time I was prepared for there to be differences.)
  
  I still have lunch with the folks in the office a few times a week; it’s usually a mix of conversation in English for my benefit, and conversation in Karen while I smile and stuff my face. :)  Also, it gives me the chance to try loads of new foods, both home-cooked Karen dishes and Thai food from the local market.  The big discovery this week?  I knew that you can eat fresh jackfruit, and that you can use the flesh in a curry, but damn, no one told me that you can eat the seeds, too!  (You’ve got to boil them first, but still.)  They’re like giant, warm macadamia nuts.  I love that freaking fruit.  It is the most awesome fruit.

• My friend Pam and I were the whole of our team for the UN Irish Pub’s weekly pub quiz this time around (the teams vary in size a lot, depending on who’s free and in the mood) – and we came third out of about twenty teams!  Whoot. :)  It was the first time we’ve won a prize since I started coming along (I refuse to believe that those two events are related, despite the evidence :)), but the prize for third place is a jug of beer… and I’m not a huge beer fan, and Pam doesn’t drink (plus, we both had to drive back home).  So we ended up wandering around, pimping our beer out to the remaining teams in an apologetic sorry-we’re-smarter-than-you-please-have-some-beer kind of way.  (Pam’s theory is that you can get away with saying almost anything, provided that you add, “Have some beer!” at the end.  “You’re astonishingly ugly.  Have some beer!”  “May the hand of God descend and wipe your lineage from the face of the earth.  Have some beer!”)  It was cool, actually – we met some really nice people.  As frequently happens when you wander around giving out free booze.

• I bought some deodorant.  It is “whitening”.  I am scared.

• Full points and a free jug of UN beer go to my friend Lee, who predicted that I would end up loving my motorcycle.  Until very recently, I didn’t think that would be the case; I was competent to ride it, but it was still (and frequently still is) pretty nervewracking, and knowing I would have to do a tricky drive (like, say, in heavy traffic) the next day would make it tough to sleep the night before.  I still have occasional bad moments, but over the past few days, something’s shifted.  There have been times, driving along the superhighway – on a bright day, with the mountains rearing up just ahead of you, or late at night, when there’s very little traffic – when I’ve found myself wanting to go faster, wanting to open up Arcee’s engine a little more and see what she can do, and (at least briefly) really loving the feeling of flying along the road.  It’s faintly possible I may have started singing under my breath, “Get your motor runnin’, head out on the highway…” :)

• Yesterday, I went out to dinner with another of my fellow VSOs (a Canadian volunteer named Taskin, who’s awesome), and had sushi for the first time in Thailand.  It was lovely – really fresh sashimi, and salmon tempura rolls with crispy flour on the outside, which I haven’t seen elsewhere.  And afterwards, we wandered around the funky, Camden-style local student market, with its racks of funky, often gloriously nonsensical t-shirts, like, "Stupid T-Shirt Company - We Do Only Stupid Thing!"  (Some of them were perfectly legit, like the one with a picture of an AT-AT that said, “Imperial Taxi Service”.  On the other hand, there were a couple where the joke could have been intentional, or possibly the result of an awful translation, like the shirt that demanded to know, “Are you single or fixed?”)  We even found a late-night ice cream parlour that makes a brilliant range of flavours on site – brownie, chocomint, real vanilla bean (which is rare here), two-tone chocolate – and where the proprietor let us taste about half a dozen before deciding.  So I got to have brownie-batter ice cream while Taskin taught me some Thai verbs.  It was a really nice night. :)

• Last night, I saw one of the little lizards that inhabit the stairwells (not Henry; he’s my special shower lizard) dashing madly down a wall when he heard my approach.  Unfortunately, this particular wall has a recess that starts about two feet above the floor, and for some reason, instead of sticking to the wall as it curved inward, the lizard simply ran out of wall and fell to the tiles with a *smack*.
  
  I looked at the lizard.  The lizard looked at me.  If you were going to subtitle that silent exchange of looks, the conversation would probably go something like this:
  
  Me:  Hey, dude, are you okay?Lizard:  I meant to do that.
  Me:  Ohhh-kay, are you sure?  Because that –
  Lizard:  Totally meant to do that!
  Me:  It’s just that that looked like a pretty nasty –
  Lizard:  I SAID I’M FINE!  Now, if you’ll excuse me, some of us have flies to devour.  *tail flick*

This weekend’s experiment:  Baking cookies inna toaster oven!  Stay tuned.

My Life In Pictures

The old city through the gate, and Doi Suthep mountain beyond.

 PHOTO DUMP!

I've posted pictures of special things and events before, but here are some random shots of my everyday life.  (And food.  Lots of food.  By request.  Sapna. :))  Enjoy!


This is Thae Pae Gate, the eastern gate into the old city of Chiang Mai (and the gate nearest to me).  You might just about recognise it from the Loy Krathong photos - this is where the lantern garden was.

My flat.  Sorry about the mess - I took these in the first couple of days I was here.  You can see the former Kettle O' Doom on top of the fridge there.  Once it passed from providing hot water and punishing electric shocks to JUST doing the shocks, I retired it. :)

Picture display on the side of my wardrobe.  Check out the Hampstead Players' Fiddler on the Roof flyer on the lefthand side there.  Awesome design!  By the way, the long sheet is a set of Undead Alert Cards, so that you can keep people informed about your zombie-infection status.  I am currently at Threat Level Blue - In No Way One of the Living Dead.

View from outside my front door.

Shower lizard lives right outside my shower!  (Finger provided for size reference.)

 Foodie section of the post!  Above, the way I get most of my meals these days - in a plastic bag from the local market (or from the noodle stand near my house).  Top, fish with rice and cilantro.  Left, another Thai staple - panang with sticky rice.

Guilty pleasures section:  Above, market-stall fried chicken and fishcakes.  Left, chocolate eclair (15 baht - that's about 30p - from the market, but you can only get them rarely).

If you're thinking of being my baby, it don't matter if you're black and white.

*waves*

Hey, everyone!  Right now I'm happily ensconced on my bed with the contents of the care package Margaret just sent me (chocolates, jaffa cakes, and M&S Christmas tea, which is delicious), and with a three-day weekend ahead of me, because Monday is the king's birthday.  (There are GIANT PHOTOS of the king, complete with gilt and flags, all over Chiang Mai this week.)  I'll still be doing some work over the weekend, but I'm basically ahead of schedule; the outline for my report was supposed to be finalised by Monday, and not only have I handed it in, but I've got a chunk of the first chapter written.  The rest of it's still pretty daunting, but I'll get there!

So, the highlights of last week included getting my driver's licence (whoo-hoo!), and THANKSGIVING.

The driving test in Thailand... well, explains a certain amount about the drivers in Thailand.  It's a doddle - straight line, turn, up a hill, down a hill, easy slalom (although I feel incredibly smug about the fact that the slalom is one of the things my London motorcycle instructor despaired of my ever getting), and drive along a plank.  Not that I should talk; I've had the licence for almost two weeks now, and I'm still very much getting used to the bike, so I'm benefitting from the somewhat lax system, too.  And I'm still rather hypocritically proud of myself for getting this far. :)

Now, this is the design for both licence plates and driver's licences issued in Chiang Mai.  I'm showing you the plates, because the text on the licence covers most of this.  I'm sorry that the picture is still pretty blurry; it was the best I could find online.  I want you to direct your attention to the bottom right-hand corner there.

WHAT.  ARE THOSE PANDAS.  DOING.

So, yeah, I've got humping pandas on my licence. :)  Hey, it's a good thing!  They're endangered!

Since getting my licence, I've been experimenting with further distances and trickier drives.  The first real excursion on my own was just to the local Western-style bakery (bribing myself with cake was an essential part of the learning process :)).  After that, I've driven to the Night Bazaar, taken the full loop of the Superhighway to go meet friends for dinner, and, last night, driven right into the old city for pub quiz night!  I'm still a bit leery of traffic, and so far I've only gotten up to about 50 kmph before feeling like I'm going to shake apart, but... yeah, I think that, "I'll get there!" is the theme of this post.

The Night Bazaar is well worth a visit.  It's a lively, strange mix of traditional handicrafts and the kind of boho art and "Come to the Dark Side - We Have Cookies" t-shirts you'll find in Camden Lock, with loads of fruit and ice cream stands thrown in.  There are posh antique shops and galleries side-by-side with overflowing textile stalls and carts selling Buddhist trinkets, as well as a warehouse-like hall with rank upon rank of both authentic craft tables and tatty souvenir shops (you know those cat statues with the one bobbing arm?  Would you like FIVE BILLION OF THEM?).  The vendors are friendly without being pushy, although a guy selling Indian-style laquer did tell me he'd seen me walking along the river the day before with my boyfriend.  So either I have a doppleganger who's getting more than I am, or I've been sleep- ...dating.

I'd give the Night Bazaar food court a miss, though, if I were you.  It's got a bizarre atmosphere, like one of those slightly fancier outdoor New Jersey malls (usually called a "plaza" or a "colonnade") that's dotted with trees and windowboxes to give it a classier feel.  There are live performances of Thai dancing, which is cool, but the food isn't great for the price.  I was intending to get some sushi, until I saw the sushi.  I think someone defrosted a bag of mixed veg, wrapped some rice around them, squirted the whole thing with salad cream, and called it a day...

Anyway, I did manage to get a little Christmas shopping done (more is slated for tomorrow, when I hit the hilltribe market and some of the craft shops).  As for the pub quiz this week, we came fourth - quite a feat, considering it was just Pam and me for about three rounds!  After that, we were joined by a very nice Aussie couple backpacking around Europe, who helped us shoot ahead in the ranking because one of them knew the given names of all the Jonas Brothers. :)  Before they left, Pam gave them the full rundown of top places to go in Chiang Mai when you've only got a couple of days - a few of the more beautiful or unusual wats; the Night Bazaar and the nearby day market; and loads of excellent restaurants, including a cocktail van the expats call "Latifah's", because apparently, after you've had a few, the proprietor looks a little like a Thai Queen Latifah. :)  I even got to chip in with a few ideas, which made me feel all cool. ;)

And yes, I did get to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Chiang Mai!  I was invited to a party thrown by a friend of a friend - a MASSIVE feast with about twenty people and all the Thanksgiving/Western comfort food you could ever want:  roast chicken, lasagna, mash, bread with garlic butter, stuffing, sprouts, cheese, brownies, and even wine (which is way out of my budget normally, so I appreciated being spoiled by the non-volunteer expats :)).  It was very relaxed, and it wound up being one of those evenings where a few people are lingering, smoking and drinking on the porch and earnestly dissecting scifi novels, at two in the morning.  There haven't been enough of those in my life lately.

I'm enjoying going out with and getting to know the other VSOs and their friends, but at the same time, it sometimes makes me acutely aware of the fact that my own friends - who would love this person or have so much to contribute to that conversation or get a kick out of this random cultural quirk - are so far away.

A few more things:

• Yesterday was the Thai and Burmese Christian festival of Sweet December (an increasingly big deal in this country), which celebrates the first day of the month of Jesus's birth.  Apparently, there are prayers, and then everyone gets together and eats solidly until midnight.  This is precisely my kind of celebration.

• I discovered earlier this week that I fail at rice. :)  I went to one of the local restaurants (little cookshops that are essentially a few tables in a bare storefront, with a noodle stand outside), and for the first time, ordered a dish with rice instead of a bowl of soup.  I started eating the rice the Western way - you know, with a fork.  Halfway through, the cook saw me, burst out laughing, and eventually - when she was able to control her giggles - very gently took my fork away and handed me a spoon, beaming at having enlightened the clearly mental farang.  RICE - UR DOIN' IT WRONG.

• Contractually obligated geek-post:  There's been a lot of debate, online and off, about the depiction of women in comics lately since DC comics relaunched its entire line (and, in the process, gave us some of the most facepalmingly objectifying art of superheroines ever).  A common counter-argument to protests about the objectification of women is, "But men are objectified in comics, too!  They're drawn as perfect specimens with giant muscles and powerful bodies!"  Well, if you're interested, here is the perfect rebuttal to that argument, in the form of an awesome webcomic.  If this kind of pop-culture debate is your thang and you want to learn more in general, don't miss this blog.

Photo post soon!  I'm sure you're all dying to see what my apartment looks like, right? :P

Week 3: Zombie Minge Vs. Octocock

This week I:
 

• Went out for the birthday of one of my Burmese colleagues.  It was a nice evening, but kind of daunting – I’m not at my best trying to make conversation in large parties of new people, never mind when there are language issues, and some of my colleagues were a bit awkward and apologetic about how quiet I was, which made me feel worse.  But I think it was a step towards getting to know people a little bit better.  (Also, I ate a live shrimp.  Well, to be more precise, I ate a shrimp from a dish of live shrimp, but I think my particular selection had already shuffled off this mortal coil.  I’m still claiming macho points, though.)

• Went to a pub quiz with Pam and her friends at an Irish bar in central Chiang Mai.  (They also do Western food – mmmm, chicken parm…)  We came in sixth out of 21 teams, which isn’t too bad, and our team name (Zombie Minge vs. Octocock) was undoubtedly both the best name and the most disturbing idea for a porno of the whole night.  Weirdly enough, the quiz was run by an American who was the absolute spit and image of Bill Levine, the American who runs a pub quiz at his pizza parlour in the Lazimpat district of Kathmandu.  I’m beginning to think there’s some kind of secret society at work.

• Met with the cool leader of the women’s group I mentioned earlier, who gave me a better sense of how to pitch the project I’m working on and some ways to communicate past cultural/class differences, and, in the process, slightly freaked me out about the magnitude of the task.  (I’m not afraid of not finishing, btw – I’m afraid of producing something that the people I intend it for won’t find useful, and I’m afraid that everyone will be too polite to tell me where I’m going wrong, so this report, which is supposed to be a practical guide for advocacy, will end up quietly gathering dust somewhere.  But I’m doing everything I can to try and make sure that doesn’t happen.) 

 

• Took and passed the written driving exam (despite a few very questionable graphics – “Which turn is correct?  Well, it’s obviously not that one, since that car is clearly on fire, and dropping out of the sky directly onto a gaggle of malformed schoolchildren.”).  This meant hanging around the DMV for ages, but that gave me a chance to really get into Alex Irvine’s novel Transformers:  Exodus, and also get chatting to a dude from Boston, who lives here with his girlfriend, and who believes that aliens built the pyramids, thanks to a lack of torch-smudges above the paintings inside.  (Look, I dunno, it’s been that kind of week.)  I’ll go back for the practical this coming week.

 

• Got introduced by Pam to a brilliant café called Love at First Bite (yes, it shares a name with a cheesy vampire comedy :)), which has AMAZING cakes, including one that’s essentially a bowl of half-cooked brownie batter with whipped cream on it.  The owners also have an adorable dog named Sashimi, who, owing to the state of her health, can’t just go running around, so she gets fifteen minutes on the treadmill every day.  In her pink sweater and ribbons.  The sight of her earnest, fuzzy little face as she labours away in her own tiny gym is hilarious.  Then we (Pam and I, not the dog) went to dinner at another Western-style restaurant, the Duke’s, which does really good variations on New Jersey-style diner food.  Real mozzarella sticks, man.  Properly stuffed calzones.  Mash.  Oh, it’s good to know there’s a place for when the really shameful cravings hit. :) 

 

• Drove my motorcycle the 25 km out to the annual rice harvest festival at a local organic farming/teaching organisation (okay, I was following a colleague, but still!).  This included a couple of U-turns on the highway, which I still find nervewracking, but for the most part, it was actually okay!  We missed the “harvest” bit, and turned up for the “festival” part, which included an amazing lunch (beef, pork, peanut, and pumpkin curries, all over mountains of rice), and I got to see some of the Burmese students again, and meet a few more volunteers, and completely fail to convince the dogs to play with me.  (Maybe I smell like farang?) 

 
And today I slept.  A slightly disturbing amount.  It’s not like I got up particularly early, but I still crashed for a full two and a half hours this afternoon.  It’s quite possible that I’m just processing – emotionally and physically – but I don’t know what to do if I continue this exhausted.

*preen*

I had the most awesome moment today.

I'd had a pretty productive morning (not work, unfortunately, just admin stuff - went to the consulate to get some paperwork for my driving exam, then to a Thai language school on the other side of the city to register for classes, so that I can transfer to a student visa), and after lunch (I broke and splurged on a pizza, since I was at the touristy end of town - and by "splurged" I mean £5 for the meal), I got into a song tao heading back towards the office.  I negotiated a price with the driver, then climbed in the back, where two teenaged girls were sitting.

Keep in mind that I'd said all of four things to the driver:  "Hello", ("Sawadee kha,"), where I was going, "How much?" ("Tao rai kha?"), and a counter-offer to the fare he named, and that my accent is still horrific.

As soon as I got in, the girls started whispering to each other.  Finally, one asked me, "Where are you from?"
"I'm from the US."
"Oh, the US."

*whisperwhisper*

"Why can you speak Thai?"

Ka-CHING.

I broke out in a big, stupid grin, and tried not to look too smug as I told them that, really, I can only speak a little Thai.  Then I gloated all the way home. :)

Introducing the Lady in Red!

By popular demand, I present:

MY MOTORCYCLE.

She's a Honda Wave with a 110 cc engine.  Pretty, no?

So, anyone who's actually surprised I've named my motorcycle after a Transformers character, raise your hand. Yeah, didn't think so.  :)  I mean, short of actually buying a car (not very likely while I'm in either Thailand or London), when else am I going to get that chance?

I'm calling her Arcee.




Arcee in Transformers Prime is Optimus Prime's second-in-command.  She's a snarky, rebellious loner with a traumatic past, who is also a ninja.  And, it goes without saying, a motorcycle. :)



I'm still doing practice sessions with Pam, as well as on my own now (my neighbours think I'm nuts), and I may end up having a crack at the driving test this coming week.  Wish me luck!

Do Your Thing Down By The Ping

LOY KRATHONG, BABY!

Thursday was Loy Krathong, the festival of the water goddess that finishes off the wet season in Thailand.  (Well, I say Thursday, but the fireworks started in my neighbourhood about a week ago, and are still going strong tonight; I think there’s some national law that people can’t stop until the country’s entire supply of fireworks is used up.  Seriously, I’ve seen whole families lining up firecrackers with manic efficiency, like they’ve got an explosions quota.)  Like many elements of Thai Buddhism, this one was imported from India (in this case, about seven hundred years back).  The basic idea is that people gather to honour and appease Phra Mae Khong Kha, the goddess of water, and to symbolically set adrift bad luck or sins from the past year.

There are celebrations all over the country, but the ones in Chiang Mai are particularly famous, for a reason I’ll get to in a second.

First, pictures!

 The view from my front door - check out the candles along the balcony, and also at the edge of the driveway. 

 Trail of candles along the pavement just outside the old city.

I went out for Loy Krathong with one of the VSOs from my office and a handful of her friends, who work at other organisations around Chiang Mai.  We wandered around the banks of the Ping river, which were packed with people floating krathongs (little rafts with burning candles and incense on them).  Most are made of sections of bamboo decorated with flowers and woven banana leaves; others are made of bread, fruit, or even ice-cream cones (which the fish love).  The idea is to make a wish or hold an intention when you let it go; if the candle burns steadily and the raft floats well, then it's a good sign for the future.  Couples often release them together to bless their relationship, and you can also include a lock of hair (to carry away past sins) or a few coins (to get rid of bad luck).

 Krathongs in the moat around the old city.

 Everyone in Thailand floats krathongs for the festival, but in Chiang Mai, they do something extra.  See this?

 It's fire and it flies.  This is the coolest thing ever.

 Chiang Mai is especially known for its floating Loy Krathong lanterns.  They're paper lanterns powered by burning rings of fire (sorry, Johnny Cash) - old-time lanterns used clay pots of burning oil, but eventually that struck someone as oh yeah really freaking dangerous, so now it's a circle of beeswax.  Now we only need to worry about the strings of firecrackers people tie to them. :)

Lantern by the riverbank

... and down by the moat

A lot of the celebrations were going on down in Warorot Market, which is already a pretty awesome place (a huge food/clothing/electronics market about ten minutes down the nearest song tao route from me):

... and there was also a lantern garden just outside Tha Pae Gate, the eastern gate into the old city of Chiang Mai:

I don't even know what he is, apart from ADORABLE.

Oh, good.  I was worried there might be some kind of punishment involved, but apparently not!

There was also a stage set up, with traditional music and dance numbers:

Yeah, this was as close as I could get.

How creepy would it be to look up and see yourself on a screen that size?

Personally, I was digging the more informal musical acts along the moat:

Parade floats!

 So, we ended up buying a whole bunch of lanterns, and a few of us got krathongs as well (mine had orchids, which are one of my favourite flowers, and chrysanthemums, a favourite of my mother's), and we trekked out to one of the local temples, where you could actually climb onto a moored boat and release your krathong over the side.  Buddhist monks with giant candles were also making the rounds, helping revellers light their lanterns and firecrackers.  My camera had died at that point, but a lot of the other women got photos, so I'll see if I can link to them.

Meanwhile, random Loy Krathong prettiness around Chiang Mai:

But this, for me, was the coolest part.  See all the stars in the sky?

No you don't.  It was a completely starless night.  ALL of those are floating lanterns.

Wow.

My Week Let Me Show You It

Whew!  Busy few days.  Time to deploy that most devastating of literary flourishes:  List Format!

Monday:

-          Spend the morning at the launch of a documentary about war rape, created by a women's group.  Enjoy meeting some awesome women in the audience, including a fellow volunteer, a couple of journalists, and the funny, fiery head of the women's group.  (Also, eat some Thai chocolate cake with the kind of ravenous enthusiasm usually seen among nomads reaching an oasis.)

-          Hitch a ride with Pam to one of the major hospitals to get a medical certificate for my driver’s licence.  Enjoy startlingly good, free hot chocolate (today’s theme:  Scamming Free Chocolaty Treats!), then get examined by a nurse wearing the same kind of white cap with a black stripe that my mother is wearing in her graduation photo from nursing school.  I admit, I like the lax Thai approach to medicine so far.  “Your blood pressure’s a little high.  Hang on, we’ll take it again.”

-          Go to the village/settlement where Pam works to practice motorcycling.  Abruptly forget everything I ever learned about being on a motorcycle and almost kill a chicken.  Feel immensely grateful for Pam’s patience as she takes me to a flat stretch of road to practice, y’know, turning and balancing and stuff, before I manage to get my groove back and go tearing along the backstreets, dodging market carts and song taos.  Race my motorcycle along a narrow strip of road between a gorgeous Buddhist temple and stretches of paddy field at sunset.

-          Hang out with Pam, talk about favourite crap TV, cheer on the crawlingly slow download of Downton Abbey onto her computer.

-          Go to a Burmese restaurant for my welcome dinner!  Actually, I’d already met everyone there, but it was cool to hang out with them all again.  It’s a nice group of volunteers.  And the food was amazing – curries, crunchy tea leaf salad, fried bundles of morning glory leaves…

Tuesday

-          Meet with colleagues about my project.  Ask loads of questions.  Feel slightly overwhelmed – less by the work, more by the sheer holy-hell-I-have-no-idea-if-I’m-doing-this-right-ness of the new job.

-          Lunch at a different Burmese restaurant with some of my colleagues.  Feel slightly awkward making conversation, but earn points with the Karen guys for actually liking fish sauce. :)

-          More motorcycle practice with Pam, this time on the campus of a local university.  Manage to work up to wind-whipping-my-hair speeds.  Come back; Pam drives my bike from the office to my flat for me.  Yup, I have my own motorcycle.  (I mean, it’s on loan from VSO, but still.)  It is red.  I am in love.  I’m going to name it.

-          Walk to the market after work to get some dinner (stir-fried fish and greens with boiled rice, plus a little fried chicken – I MUST WEAN MYSELF OFF THE THAI FRIED CHICKEN, but oh, I’ve only just found the best market stall for it – and mangoes, and chocolate cake for later).  The market is buzzing, and has about half again as many active stalls as usual – granted, I’m usually there later in the evenings – with many of the additional stalls selling all kinds of sweets and candles for Loy Krathong.  (Loy Krathong, the festival of the water goddess, is tomorrow night.  Shit is going to get manic.)

Wednesday

-          Hitch a ride with another colleague, Andrew (who’s been shepherding me through getting settled here) to a lecture on development in Burma.  Drink tea with milk for the first time since arriving in Thailand, then join a couple of other volunteers for lunch at a vegetarian Thai restaurant.  It’s very nice – I get stir-fried tofu and a soy-and-pumpkin curry over brown rice – but one of the foods we share is… odd.  It’s like a ground-mushroom knockoff of a ground pork dish, but it has this kind of, well, frosting on it.  The frosting is creamy and white and a little salty, but otherwise has no particular taste.  (If you’re thinking of making a disgusting joke right about now, don’t bother, because I have made all of them in my head already.)  It’s not coconut cream, it doesn’t seem to be cream cream, and I don’t think soy cream looks like that.  The hell did I just eat, man?

-          Get a group dinner invitation from a colleague whose husband is unexpectedly in town.  Start to refuse, simply because it’s a reflex and I’m not good at mentally switching gears from “home and no more socialising today!” to “spend time with people like a normal person!”, but remind myself that I’m trying to accept more invitations, and go.  Have a wonderful time chatting with my colleague and her European husband, and occasionally with my other colleagues, over a traditional mookata dinner.  Basically, this is the way mookata works (and yes, I wish I’d thought to take a picture of this at the time):  You load a plate with strips of raw meat (or tofu, or fish, or any one of a dozen other things they’ve got), grab a cube or two of pork fat, and sit at your table around one of these:

which is placed over a bucket of coals.  You pour soup broth around the outer ring and toss some greens and mushrooms into it, then put a cube of pork fat at the apex and let it melt down over the grill.  Then you lay out the strips of meat and grill them, while you snack on the side dishes (chips, egg fried rice, deep-fried dough balls, hot clams in the shell, &c.).  It’s a very leisurely way to eat; you just keep turning and, eventually, eating and replacing the meat as it cooks, and by the end of the night, the soup is astoundingly good, because all the juices have been dripping down into it.  (It’s also all-you-can-eat for about 150 baht each - £3.)  I’ve had some great meals here, but this is the first place where I’ve thought, “Oh, I am SO taking people here when they visit me.”

It’s raining now.  It shouldn’t be raining, not this hard – the wet and dry seasons are all messed up – and it’s making me kind of melancholy.  I’ve been having an awesome week so far, but it’s also been a bit overwhelming.

And I miss you all.

Museum Day!

Today was Red Song Tao Adventure Day!  By the time I leave Chiang Mai, I will have ridden song taos of ALL COLOURS!

Actually, that’s a stupid goal.  Forget I said that.

Anyway, I’ve been having a relatively lazy weekend overall, after my first full week of work.  Yesterday was Domesticity, Thailand Style:  did my laundry and hung it out on the tiny private balcony to dry; went to the market to buy pork and boiled eggs in broth and a pouch of red rice for dinner; walked down the road to refill all my empty water bottles at the drinking water kiosk; pried open a bottle of crappy lemon margarita with the aid of a kitchen knife and a key (I’d forgotten to buy a bottle opener), after the instructions on how to open it with a coin that I got from some old Aussie dude on YouTube proved useless – y’know, stuff.

Today, though, I got a red song tao (piloted, weirdly enough, by an elderly Thai man and a young Australian guy and no, I have no idea, either) to the Chiang Mai National Museum.

The National Museum is a pretty white-and-red building with elaborately carved eaves and sharply sloping roofs, set in a garden with a meditation pool out front.  It’s not huge, but it takes a good couple of hours to see it properly, and it provides a very interesting political and economic history of the city.  The lower floor starts with prehistory (and we’re talking extremely pre-; there are diagrams showing during which age, exactly, the surrounding area began to emerge from the ocean), including loads of Neolithic relics and even a couple of grave sites.  (One of the handaxes was amazing – I don’t know whether it was the stone they used or what, but it looked like it was machine-cut.)  There’s a cool showcase on the culture of one of the local tribes, the Lua, because apparently their culture is very close to that of the civilisation that founded Chiang Mai, the Lanna. 

And then there’s an in-depth history of Chiang Mai itself, starting with the city that predated it, Hariphunchai.  Apparently, Hariphunchai was founded by a holy man who then looked around and went, “Aww, crap, I don’t have anybody to run this place.”  So he invited the daughter of a local king to come rule, and she turned up with, basically, a create-your-own-civilisation starter pack:  monks, scribes, metalworkers, artisans, merchants, and “labour gang leaders”, plus a grow-your-own-royal-heir (given that she was pregnant at the time).  Awesome.  Hariphunchai was heavily influenced by Indian Buddhism, and when, five hundred years later, one of the Lanna kings from a neighbouring city conquered Hariphunchai and remade it as Chiang Mai proper, he and his family kept up the strong connections between the royal family and the Buddhist tradition (the king was even the one who got to call conferences to revise the holy texts).  As a result, Chiang Mai is still packed with temples (even though they flooded several ancient ones in the 1960s to build a dam), and the museum itself has loads of fantastic sacred art (including everything they could grab before the dam went up – some gorgeous crystal Buddhas and amazing gold miniatures of religious objects).

The section on the later kings of Chiang Mai (the city had its own royal family up through the early 20^th century, though they hadn’t really been a power in their own right since the 1500s, when Chiang Mai was conquered by Burma, before being freed and coming under the rule of the kings of Thailand in the late eighteenth century) was interesting for two reasons.  One was the portraits of the last ten or so kings:  you can see their outfits change from ornate local dress, to very simple local dress, to a Western-style military jacket with northern Thai-style trousers, to a full-on copy of a British military uniform.  The second reason was the cool, working Victorian 3-D viewer, like a steampunk version of those red plastic viewers with slide wheels that we all had back in the 80s.  (What the hell were those called?  Can anyone remember?)  The sign informed me that it was a “peed box”.  I just… what.

The second floor of the museum deals with the economic and artistic history of the city, and is well worth checking out.  For the most part, it’s a pretty straightforward look at types of trade, the roles of different communities (for example, the river trade was dominated for centuries by Chinese immigrants, who dealt directly with the Chinese community in Bankok), and the ways in which the creation of railroads drastically changed the local culture and economic structure.  The sections on banking, education, and healthcare are… surprisingly uncritical of Western influence (really, guys, you had no form of medicine whatsoever until missionaries built a hospital?), but very interesting.  (The latter also contains the line, “The doctor then began the construction of American inventor Cyrus McCormick.”  I didn’t know McCormick was an android. :))  There’s also a great display on forest industries, including a replica house with plows, a loom, and other tools, and a look at the sordid history of logging in this part of the world (a part of the museum where the Western powers don’t exactly come off so well).

I’m a sucker for the ornate and spangled, so my favourite bits were the more elaborate pieces of sacred art (there was a gorgeous dragon with blue, jewelled scales, which used to serve as a support for a temple gong).  However, the “peed box” made my day.

I realise, also, that I’d love to read a good history of museums around the world.  The British Museum’s Enlightenment Gallery and Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum both provide fascinating looks at the evolution of Western museums, but I’d like to get a more complete sense of how we, as humans, started to collect and examine things from our past in different cultures and times.

Anyway, made it back, crashed out for a bit, and now I should really get down to the market before things start closing up (there’s never very much going on on Sundays here).  The only things in the fridge right now, apart from mah chocolate stash, are the remnants of the few Thai foods I wasn’t crazy about:  coffee-flavoured biscuits that I thought were going to be chocolate, five-spiced dried tamarind, and pickled mango.  Hey, at least I tried. :)

Praise the Lord and Trim the Hedges

One thing I don't get (yet) about Thailand is the number of classifieds in Chiang Mai either requesting, or advertising, specifically Christian staff.  If we're talking about a babysitter, or even a housekeeper, perhaps, I can understand wanting someone who's that close to your household to share your faith.  But what's up with the number of Christian gardeners offering their services?  I am 99% sure the weeds don't particularly care.

Bleating - er, Blogging for Great Justice

Today is my third day in my office (which is not actually MY office, given that I work for a climate-change network of NGOs, and this is just one of the members of that network, which has kindly given us some work space - not unlike the setup with the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group and The CarbonNeutral Company).  The office is a gorgeous, shady old building with about fifteen hundred motorbikes out front. :)  My desk is in the coolest corner, in a room I share with a couple of other people (including a guy who sings little snatches of tunes to himself while he works, which... well, at least he has a nice voice, but occasionally I feel like yelling NO, FINISH THAT SONG BEFORE YOU MOVE ON TO A DIFFERENT ONE.  I'm a little compulsive like that :)).

But I won't, because he, like everyone in the office, is INSANELY nice and very welcoming, and I appreciate that.  So.  Much.

(In fact, my officemate just came skipping into the room, grinned at me, and said, "Shall we go to Paradise?"  I kind of blinked at him, and after a second, said, "Okay, do you... know the way?"  He said, "No, you see, now we are in hell - it's so hot.  So..." and he pointed at the air conditioner, "Paradise!"  I cracked up. :))

Also, one of my colleagues compared me to a goat today. :)  It was cute.  We all eat lunch together (mainly Karen dishes different colleagues bring from home, which are pretty much uniformly amazing - today, it was seafood-rice porridge, pumpkin curry, and some kind of sour veggie with dried fish), and apparently, the fact that I will happily taste anything, without ascertaining what the hell it is first, is causing great amusement. :)

You'll notice that I'm not talking about the actual work I'm doing, and I'm afraid that's deliberate; there's a limit to what I can say here, as there are potential security concerns.  So names and precise details are out, but I hope to blog in more general terms about some of the issues I encounter.  (Otherwise, let's face it, this blog is going to turn into Things Catherine Has Eaten very quickly.)  At the moment, I've been sicced on a massive climate change handbook (about 50 - 100 pages).  I've got two months to come up with a rough draft.

I say BRING IT!

Last thing:  I'm going to need an alias for my employer (the network), if I'm going to be able to talk about it without giving too much away or sounding like a dork.  Ideas?

Yellow Song Tao TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!

Happy Halloween, everyone!  In celebration, I have cracked into the stash of peanut M&Ms Margaret gave me for the trip to Thailand. :)

So, as I mentioned, I'm settling into my new neighbourhood, which is in the outskirts of Chiang Mai, near the office where I'll be spending a fair amount of time, but outside the old city where a lot of the restaurants, night spots, &c. are.  I am, nevertheless, rather liking it so far.  I'm right off the highway, so my street is pretty quiet, but the main road where I do all my shopping and so on feels a bit like I'm strolling alongside the New Jersey Turnpike (but a LOT cleaner).  The advantages, besides being within a ten-minute walk of the office, are the many, MANY delicious noodle soup carts nearby, the big shopping centre across the highway (for household essentials), the market that's just past the office (for many, many kinds of delicious street food, fruit, and desserts), and the general sense of safety, especially at night.  You can actually return a stranger's greeting on the street in Chiang Mai - yes, even at night - and that will be that.  At most, they might ask if you want to come into their restaurant, or want a taxi.  Compare that to my neighbourhood in London, where three people might hiss obscene things in your ear from shadowed doorways on your walk home, and you didn't dare so much as look around, because it would be taken as "encouragement" *shudder*.

I'm in a one-room flat in a new development.  Now, my image of VSO living conditions was very much shaped by my friend Malcolm's stories of his experience in Malawi - pump your own water, no hot showers, trek into town every couple of weeks to check your email.  Obviously, Thailand is an emerging economy, so I knew it wasn't going to be like that, so I was expecting something along the lines of:

• Pretty much constant electricity
• Internet cafe down the road
• Shower attachment on the toilet wall, with cold water
• No fridge
• Gas ring for cooking
• Need for mosquito net at night
• Possibility of buying a fan for really hot nights
• Bucket to do laundry

What I've got:

• 24/7 electricity
• FREE HIGH-SPEED WIFI IN MY HOUSE
• Shower attachment on the toilet wall, with HOT water
• Mini-fridge
• No cooking apparatus whatsoever (a lot of Thais buy all their meals hot on the street, or eat pots of ramen)
• Air conditioning
• Brand-new washing machines at one end of the block of flats

So... yeah. :)  I mean, I'm living in the same conditions as my Thai neighbours, which is the point.  It's just that those conditions are nicer than expected.

There are also three beautiful gold-and-white spirit houses, with their own little moat, set near the gate.  And I have very nice neighbours who only laughed at me a little when I was driving wobbly circles around the parking lot out front during my first motorbike lesson. :)

Tonight I had what one of my fellow volunteers calls a Yellow Song Tao Adventure!  Song Taos are big, open-backed trucks; the yellow ones run the route from my house to Warorot Market, just outside the old city, so I grabbed one and rode down to explore.  Given my shaky grasp of both Thai and geography, it kind of was an adventure.  Especially since it was full, so I was hanging onto the back. :)  (Not as dangerous as it sounds; there's a little platform.)  I took a wander around the eastern part of the old city, snapping pictures of the various wats, locating two brilliant English-language bookshops, eavesdropping on a tourist cooking class that was taking a tour of one of the markets (which was a lot more expensive than my local market, </smug>), embarrassing the local dogs by cooing over them, and resisting the temptation to eat EVERYTHING (seriously, this living on street food would be brilliant if my self-control were better :)).  Then I met up with a couple of other VSO volunteers for dinner at a gorgeous little vegetarian restaurant and bookshop, where I fell in love with the Burmese-influenced dish khao soi (egg noodles and spring onions with meat or tofu in a delicious coconut curry sauce, served - at least in this case - with crunchy noodles on top).  I totally failed to find the right song tao route on the way back, so eventually I flagged down an empty one headed in my direction, and we negotiated that he'd take me as far as the superhighway (where he was going anyway) for the normal fare.  Little things like that leave me ridiculously pleased with myself when I'm in a foreign country. :)