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. :)

Theravada Buddhism and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

HOLY CRAP, I CAN RIDE A MOTORCYCLE.

Keep in mind that this is after my disasterous course in London, after I fell off and wrenched my leg, after my instructor in London despaired of my ever learning.  I had a few hours' training today with a fellow VSO volunteer, the wonderfully snarky Pam (also my "buddy" whose job is helping me get settled in to Chiang Mai - so far, she's shown me where to buy utensils, imported cheese, and chocolate cake, so orientation WIN, as far as I'm concerned :)).  It was a WORLD of difference from the London course, which mainly involved a large man sighing in a pained manner over my incompetence as he rattled off the same list of instructions after every abortive attempt of mine to travel more than a few feet.  Pam is very laid-back about the whole thing, knows exactly what riding a bike in Thailand is like (so, "Keep your right foot on the rest and push off with your left, then immediately lift that one into place," becomes, "Hey, if it's easier to keep your balance with your feet dangling at first, do it that way until you're comfortable," and, "You must be properly attired in summer-weight motorcycle gloves," becomes, "Seriously, you're better off than most Thais if you're wearing a helmet,"), and was really encouraging, pointing out how much progress I was making and that I was able to U-turn really smoothly.  By the end of what was barely a three-hour session, I'd gone from making my wobbly way up and down my own driveway to tearing around the parking lot and back roads at the local reservoir, going over bridges, making hairpin turns, and only seriously freaking out once. :)  "You're not ready to go on the road yet," Pam told me, "but you can control the bike."

WOW.

I don't think it's possible to overstate how terrified I was about the whole motorcycle thing when I came out here, and now... well, there were times when I actually enjoyed that. :)

Still got a ways to go, but am apparently not nearly the hopeless case my London instructor believed!

Life in the Flood Zone

Things not permitted in my hotel:

• Drugs
• Weapons
• Pets
• Jackfruit

“Jackfruit” gets its own sign.  With an illustration.  They are SERIOUS about the jackfruit.

Very, very lazy, jetlagged day yesterday, but I’m feeling better, physically at least.  Mentally, the sheer scale of what I’m doing is starting to trickle in.  Now I’m actually really eager to just get up to Chiang Mai and see what the situation on the ground is going to be like. 

Everyone in downtown Bangkok is leading this bizarre double existence at the moment; on the one hand, they’re all continuing as normal, but on the other, they’re all dealing with this constant fear, as the floodwaters get closer and closer, and the difficulty of predicting where and when the waters might hit isn’t helping.  I had dinner with the staff from the programme office last night, and the first thing everyone asked one another was, “How’s your house?”  One woman has eleven people staying with her right now, including her parents, her in-laws, and her sister and sister’s husband, who are newlyweds; another staff member had to salvage bricks to build a meter-high flood wall around her house (sandbags won’t do the job).  Everyone's still joking and laughing, but there's a palpable tension.

I’m on the third floor of my hotel, so I think that I may end up hosting the entire staff in my hotel room if the programme office floods. :)  It’s okay; the hotel has been stockpiling drinking water, and there are instant noodles in my minibar!

Dinner was actually very nice; I was a bit quiet, but tried very hard to make conversation, and everyone seemed to understand the new-volunteer glassiness.  It’s a very warm, friendly, relaxed group of people, and the programme manager wasn’t at all what I’d pictured (for some reason, just going by his voice, I was expecting an older, bespectacled man with formal Northern European manners; he’s actually a younger guy with a long ponytail, who arrived by motorcycle and has a gently teasing relationship with his staff).

And the food, oh dear Lord.  Pork dumplings with paper-thin, fillo-like pastry; fish fry; calamari; greens with fresh garlic and chillies; vats of sweet-and-sour fish with pineapple – I loved EVERYTHING.  People keep asking me if the food is okay, if it’s too hot, if it’s too strange for me.  Many of them find my completely besotted responses kind of hilarious. :)

Today, I had a training session at the VSO programme office, which is currently behind a wall of sandbags, and then joined a volunteer from New Zealand for lunch.  She's about halfway through a one-year placement, based at a slightly smaller city in the north, and she's loving it.  She was also absolutely terrified getting on a motorcycle for the first time - even emailed the programme office to see if she could get out of riding one - and now she adores it, which gives me a lot of hope. :)  (And she introduced me to spicy papaya salad, for which I am VERY grateful!)  A lot of people here, both staff and volunteers, have this kind of infectious calm about them.  I find myself a lot  more relaxed about things when I'm in their company.

I attempted a little bit of sightseeing in downtown Bangkok, and snapped a few pictures of one of the smaller palaces, before deciding that it was late, I was tired, fuck this noise, I was going to treat myself to a Westernised drink in one of the cafes and read. :)  (Hey, there's no harm in that occasionally.  Oreo shake FTW!) 

I also ended up being not terribly helpful to a frantic Canadian couple trying to find a place to panic-buy bottled water (a lot of the local shops are out), but I was kind of tickled that they thought I lived around here.  (She was in a state of meltdown; he shrugged and declared, "We'll just have to drink Heinekin; thanks.")

Tonight, for the first time here, lounging at an outside table and eating dinner, I felt a real contented glow; granted, that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was sitting in a tourist area, with no real challenges immediately in front of me, by myself, with a good book and a free evening, but for once I could actually enjoy that without worrying about what was going to happen next.

(Although this ban on jackfruit better be limited to the hotel.  As Sapna can attest, I Cannot Be Having with restrictions on my jackfruit.  I may end up leading a jackfruit rebellion.)

In Which I Get My Kicks Above the Waistline, Sunshine

AND THEN TODAY HAPPENED, OH MY GOD.

So, I’m in Bangkok.  On an adventure!  Roughing it in my authentic Thai guesthouse with – um – air conditioning and high-speed wifi, within walking distance of one of the poshest malls I have ever seen.  Ahem.

A few points, since I know you’re all wondering:

1)      I am not underwater.

2)      I am actually not going to be in Bangkok for six weeks; they’ve decided to lump my in-country training together with the training for a clutch of volunteers arriving in February.  And that training may be taking place in Chiang Mai instead.  So I’m off to Chiang Mai on Wednesday (by plane – the flooding did a number on ground transport).

3)      The flight was good (brought to you by Qantas:  We Give You More Stuff In Tiny Bags Than Any Other Airline!).

4)      The food here is GORGEOUS.  Oh, man, you were all so right about that.

5)      I’ll apparently be inheriting a motorcycle from a volunteer who’s off home next week.  To say I am nervous about this is an understatement.  I’m freaking terrified.  I’ve been meaning to post about my run-ins with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (or, in Catherine-World, Thai Buddhism and the Art of Why The &$% Is This Thing Going So Bloody Fast?), but if I haven’t babbled extensively about this to you already, suffice to say that my first time on a motorcycle lasted roughly eight seconds.  I screamed.  The instructor screamed.  I lost all sense of how to operate my own body, let alone the bike, skidded out of control, fell, pulled the bike down on top of me, and did something to my right knee that means I’m still limping almost a week later.  I did get back on, and managed a day and a half of training, all told, but given that the last time I rode a bicycle was as a teenager, I had to re-learn balance and steering to an extent.  I got to the point where I can ride in big, lazy figure-eights and ovals, but only when I’m reasonably relaxed – and the more I think about how badly I’m doing, the less relaxed I get.  I think I’m just going to have to be very clear about the fact that I will put in whatever time it takes to learn this, but that I’m struggling and I’m not going anywhere near a road until I’m confident that I can ride safely.

And now, without further ado, Catherine’s Excellent Adventure to Thailand, or, Dude, Where’s My Continent?

Margaret and Malcolm saw me off last night at Paddington station, and about fourteen hours later, I was emerging from a greenhouse-hot jetway into the space-aged-shininess of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.  One of the programme support managers, Bank (his actual name is Navim, but Thai kids are given nicknames shortly after birth and tend to go by those their entire lives), met me outside Starbucks.  (See how the intrepid explorer forsakes the familiar and embraces her exotic new surroundings!)

Bank is incredibly nice.  Everyone I’ve spoken to at VSO Thailand so far has been incredibly nice.  Either this is going to be a very pleasant two years, or they’re all secretly plotting to kill and possibly eat me.  I’m gambling on the first one.

At any rate, Bank took me back to the hotel where I’ll be spending the next few nights.  Here's the hotel, as I was too exhausted to take pictures of anything else:

My purple curtains are bordello-tastic!

The minibar:  Instant noodles, nuts, crisps, Oreos, and CONDOMS

After I’d taken a shower cold enough to make me feel human again after fifteen hours of travel (I must be the only Western traveller to Thailand who spends her time figuring out how to turn the hot water off), Bank kindly showed me around a bit of downtown Bangkok.  We’re right in the heart of the tourist district here; the hotel lies almost literally under the shadow of four massive malls and the SkyTrain.  (I was ridiculously proud of myself for getting the gist of a short conversation in Thai between Bank and the cab driver as we wove in and out between groups of Western and Indian tourists; I don’t recognise many Thai words yet, but “farang” I do know. :))  Heading down the sidewalk means threading your way between a row of handicraft stalls on one side (beautiful wooden pots and sculptures) and cookshops on the other; none of the vendors seemed very pushy, possibly because I was with a Thai person, or maybe because their locations guarantee them a decent trade in any case.  There are also many, many beggars sitting in the darker corners, or in one case, lying prone on the sidewalk with a begging bowl in front of him.  They, too, seem very reserved despite their numbers; occasionally, one will speak quietly to passersby, but that’s about it. 

We sat down at a table on the pavement outside one of the small cookshops (under a pretty trellis of vines, probably set up to try and cut the heat a little), and I asked Bank to pick out a few dishes from the mind-bogglingly long menu.  I’m so glad I did:  he went for a really good tom yam soup with seaweed, some fried chicken with cashews, and a lemongrass-and-coconut-milk seafood soup dosed up with chillies.  The first two were basically high-quality versions of what you’ll find in a Thai restaurant in the UK, but the last dish was amazing – the flavours were familiar, but it was like they were suddenly three-dimensional, fresh and subtle in a way that the English approximations can’t quite capture.  Over dinner, I peppered Bank with questions about the city and Thai etiquette, and he asked me about London and about regional accents in English-speaking countries; it was pretty cool, because it meant it wasn’t just me grilling him for an hour (and because I’m a linguistic nerd, so sue me :)).

After dinner, Bank took me to the “cheap” mall (the one Bangkok residents prefer, as opposed to the “luxury” mall, where Chinese tourists tend to shop) to get a universal plug adapter.  It was like all of New Jersey in a single building.  White lino, huge escalators, rows of electronics, and (okay, you won’t find this in New Jersey) a whole hall full of posh imported foods.  (Bank pointed out that the instant-noodle shelf had been stripped bare by people stocking up for the floods.)  It’s possible that I caved and spent 40 baht (a little under a pound) on a pack of Ferraro Rocher, but I figure that a small taste of home to take the edge of the culture shock is okay. :)  (I also don’t want to crack into the mountain of chocolate Margaret bought for me just yet.  I’m saving it.)  In my defence, I also got a takeaway dessert of sticky rice with coconut cream and mango from a street vendor (it was very nice).

On the walk back, we found an open-air venue (I think it’s a market during the day – a big concrete space set under one of the fancier hotels) where a band was holding a rock concert for flood relief.

“Do you know them?  The band playing?” I asked.

“Nah.”  Bank laughed.  “All these boy bands and girl bands, and I never know their names!  All the bands my own age, I know, but I’m getting old now.”

It turns out there are some parts of being in your late twenties that span cultures. :)

So, tomorrow I have off for rest/tourism (I have a sneaking suspicion that more of the former than the latter is going to happen), and then I’m meeting the rest of the VSO staff for dinner.

I am not processing.  At all.  My brain thinks I’m on a jolly little jaunt to Asia, like my trip to India in the spring, and the idea that this is going to be my home for two years is sliding right off the surface of my mind without any hope of sinking in just yet.

But I hope this is a good beginning.

Now I Am the Master

I have the most awesome motorcycle helmet, as of this morning.  It's white with silver arabesque designs, and it makes my breath sound really loud.

Why yes, I did start breathing heavily on purpose and parade around my room intoning, "Luke, I am your father," why do you ask?

One Night, Pre-Bangkok

So, a couple of weeks back, my best friend Margaret invited me round for a quiet Friday dinner with her and her husband Malcolm.  I’d had a tough week at work, getting ready to hand over to my successor, and they’d both, for a host of reasons, had BRUTAL weeks, so I made sure to finish up at work early (read:  only an hour after closing time, Jesus) and sloped off to M&M’s for a night of boardgames and, hopefully, drinking.

My first clue that something was up was when Margaret opened the door just a crack and peered out at me suspiciously.

“Um… hi?”

“It’s Catherine!” she announced, flinging the door open.

It’s a sign of how gruelling my week had been that the thoughts that went through my head, in order, were:

Oh, hey, Liz is here, too!  I was hoping that she’d be able to join us for dinner tonight, but Margaret said she couldn’t make it…

… Margaret’s wearing an awfully pretty dress for boardgame night…

… why are there balloons?...

To my credit, those thoughts all went through my head pretty quickly, in the moment it took a roomful of people to shout, “Surprise!”

BEST.  LEAVING.  PARTY.  EVER.

As I mentioned, my friend Liz trekked in from Milton Keynes to join us, and the last member of our Five Man Band, Moray, showed up about five minutes after I did.  (And came very close to ordering me to leave and come in again, so that he could have the fun of shouting, “Surprise!” like everyone else. :))  Two of my closest friends from the Hampstead Players theatre group came along, as well, as did Malcolm’s ridiculously cool brother and sister-in-law.  It was an absolutely brilliant gang, and I was so glad to get the chance to see them all before I left!

The party itself was pretty spectacular, as well.  There were mountains of Thai food, because I’m going to Thailand, and a truly insane amount of chocolate, because, well, Margaret Party. :)  There were champagne-bottle-shaped party poppers that spewed out streamers, because my friends know me all too well, and they understand that the most appropriate way to honour me is with things that explode.  (Also chocolate.)  And there was booze.  LOTS of booze.  I blame that for the fact that everyone was getting a little teary by the end of the evening, and by “everyone” I mean me.

There were also party games.  There was Pin the Gnome on Catherine (long story, but Christ on a pogo stick, those things are terrifying), and Pin Catherine on Thailand (played with a map of Thailand and a little avatar of me – a woman with wild hair, a crazed expression, and a motorcycle, so pretty lifelike, then :)).  Apparently, being pinned anywhere other than Thailand would have obliged me to go there in real life, so I’m pretty luck that I managed to hit the right country on my first try.  I don’t think that, say, the Cambodian authorities accept a printed-out map studded with tiny motorcycle-people in lieu of a visa.  And later, there were discussions of ancient Roman werewolves and disturbing onomatopoeia, and before the night was over, one of our number confessed to a romantic obsession with Lois from Family Guy.  It would be beneath me to hint at the identity of the man so tormented by this forbidden passion, so I’ll just come right out and say that it was Moray. :)

I woke up on a futon upstairs, to a supremely indifferent cat crawling disdainfully all over me and to the sounds of Margaret and Liz making waffles.  My first thought on waking up, I have to say, was, “Am I crazy?  What was I doing, signing up to leave these people for two years?”

I know that I want this.  It’s just that, after six years, I really feel like I have a home here.  I’m living in London, I have a job in my field (or had), and I have friends like these.  Those are the things I used to dream about when I was an undergraduate.  And leaving them is tough – tougher that I realised.

I suppose that’s the real sign of a great leaving party:  it makes you kick yourself for leaving.

Although the mix of chocolate and confetti smeared on the cats was a pretty good sign, too.

Talkin' 'Bout My Vaccination...

Okay, never let it be said that I'm not grateful to be living in the era of easy vaccination, but damn, the side effects are weird.  I fell asleep at 10.30 in my clothes.  It's now 3 am, and I'm wide awake.  My core temperature is too high, but my skin is too cold, like that old urban myth about how microwaves supposedly cooked food from the inside out.  My blood itches.

Hey, at least I got some sympathy at work for being covered in band-aids. :)

(Survey says I'm going to be deeply ashamed of this post title when I wake up in a less loopy frame of mind.)

You want me to be what now?

VSO sent me a very nice email today from the fundraising team, thanking me for the fundraising work I've done so far.  However, I have to admit that this line caught my attention:

"I hope... you are relaxed and ready to head off on your placement."

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Ha.