Saturday 26 May 2012

Of Luxuries and Language


SATURDAY FTW.

I stayed up insanely late last night, because I was determined to finish this article for work before the end of the week (and decided that 5 am on Saturday constituted “before the end of the week” :)).  It’s not due until Thursday, but it’s pretty important (we’ve been asked by a pan-Asian newspaper based in Nepal to do a 2,000-word piece on what’s likely to happen to Burma’s rainforests when the country opens up to Western investment), and I wanted to have the rough draft done so that next week I can refine it/run it past people.

So, needless to say, after that, I slept like the dead (well, actually, I woke up at 10.30 in the morning to email the draft article to my colleague, then I slept like the dead!), and decided that, with the article done, I could kick back today.  So I drove down to the Ping River and explored the neighbourhood between the riverside Warrorot Market and the old city.  It was very relaxing.  That area of town feels more urban, in a way, than the old city itself:  the buildings are taller and more likely to be grey, nondescript concrete, but there are also some great hole-in-the-wall shops and cookhouses, and on a nice afternoon, most of the neighbourhood seems to sit out on the street (especially in front of the bike shops – it’s actually kind of cool to stop and watch a bunch of guys spread a disassembled motorcycle engine over half the sidewalk to tinker with it).  It feels very much like an area where people live and work, whereas the old city can sometimes seem like an artificial tourist paradise.

I poked around a small wat (Wat Ou Sai Khan, where the main shrine houses a jade Buddha; I was there too late in the day to see it, but I got some nice pictures of the temple and the murals) and got a bag of hot shrimp dumplings, covered in sweet and sour sauce, from the market.  I also stopped by one of the bars at the edge of the old city for a frozen margarita, and to read through one of my old guidebooks to see what else I want to see around the city (and what I’d like to show my guests in July!), then had dinner at a Mexican place called Loco Elvis, which I’d always wondered about.  (Good quesadillas, although my favourite place remains El Diablo, right across from it.)  I took a stroll through Backpacker’s Alley.  I discovered a Thai manga library, where you can rent a wide range of Japanese manga translated into Thai (and some Thai series, as well, I assume) – it’s a fantastic idea, given that most young Thais probably can’t afford to follow several series at a time (hell, many Western comic readers can only afford to follow a few series).  And at the end of the night, I walked back through Warrorot, which is packed with a young, mostly Thai crowd on Saturday nights, and stopped to buy ALL THE LYCHEE.  EVER.

Actually, that’s not even remotely true.  Yes, I have a giant shopping bag full of lychee, but that’s like a grain of sand next to the beach that was Warrorot Market.  It’s that time of year – they can barely give the stuff away.  And since mango season is ending, I figured I’d move onto a new Exotic Fruit To Make Myself Completely Sick On. :)

In one of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, he tells the woman he’s in love with that he’s not going to kiss her when they jointly make a breakthrough in an investigation, because the first time they kiss shouldn’t be a footnote to something else; it should be unforgettable, “like when you taste lychee for the first time”.  That was me today.  Well, technically – I’ve had lychee-flavoured things, but I’d never actually had it fresh before.  The woman who sold me the lychee peeled me one to eat as she was weighing the rest (which is a common, nice little touch in fruit markets:  they’ll often give you a free taste of whatever’s in season or whatever they happen to be cutting up at the time, regardless of whether it’s what you’re buying or not).  I can see what Peter meant, actually.  Lychee’s not the strongest or most exotic taste (of course, the amount of imported fruit available in 1930s London was probably pretty limited), but it’s bright and sweet and kind of complex, so that you notice different flavours emerging as you eat it.  It’s one of those things, like jackfruit and durian, where I’m not likely to forget the first time I had it.  (Granted, in the case of durian, it was more like, “Dear God, I need to immediately forget ever eating this abomination, WHY DOES MY HOUSE SMELL LIKE IT,”, but you win some, you lose some. :))

But the best part of today:  I got a massage.  An hour-long head, back, and neck massage.  Oh, God.  It was about twice the price of a Thai (leg and hip) massage (apparently because it requires more advanced training, according to my friend who took a massage class here), but it was so, so worth it.  I went to a tiny place down the same street as the wat, and I’m not going to lie, I did pick it mostly because of the painfully adorable, big-eared grey kitten asleep on a bench outside. :)  The masseuse was an older woman with a sweet face, pretty strapping for a Thai, who basically spent an hour pounding my muscles into submission.  At one point, she bent my spine backwards until it cracked gloriously in about twelve places.  The whole thing felt very luxurious:  there was a facial massage with a hot towel, and the ceremonial cup of tea afterwards.  I gotta say, though, there was also a fair amount of hair-pulling involved.  And at one point, she just up and flicked me in the forehead.  Sometimes, I wonder whether masseuses do things because those things are therapeutic, or just because they can. :)

Seriously, though, I can recommend the hell out of getting a massage in Chiang Mai (or anywhere in Thailand, really).  Which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to post:

Catherine’s Dodgy Fell-Off-The-Back-Of-A-Van Thai Lessons #1:  Thai for Getting a Massage!

(Note:  At the end of all of these phrases, say “kha” if you’re a woman, or “khrap” if you’re a dude.)

Jep mai? – Does it hurt?
Jep. – Yes, it hurts.
Mai jep. – No, it doesn’t hurt.                     
Mai pen rai – no problem/okay
Bao bao noi. – Gently, please.
Chakatee! – That tickles!
Ron – hot (they’ll usually warn you this way before using a hot towel)
Dee – good
Dee maak maak – very good
Kop khun. – Thank you.

Now go forth and have people rub you!  Um… hang on, that came out wrong…

Sunday 20 May 2012

Sooooo many tentacles...


Another reader asked, “Tentacles next?”

You got it!

This story is actually from waaaaay back in January.  It’s appropriate, though, because this is the story of Chiang Mai’s Chinese New Year celebrations, and right now, there happens to be another festival going on – the Inthakin festival, which is in honour of the city’s 200-year-old sacred pillar.  It takes place over seven days at Wat Chedi Luang in the old city, and I was just planning to drive down there tonight to check it out, when two things hit at once:

a)      Rain!, and
b)      The realisation that Sunday night is Walking Street Market night, and the market is on the same road as Wat Chedi Luang, making driving insane and parking pretty much impossible.

So instead, I decided to get dinner locally.  I pulled on my astonishingly crappy 29-baht-in-your-choice-of-embarrassing-pastel-colours poncho from 7-11, parked Arcee, and – after lamenting the fact that most of the stalls on my street close really early on a Sunday – found myself stumbling into a sukiyaki place that I pass every day on my way to work.

I’d never tried Thai sukiyaki before.  It’s kind of like Chinese hotpot (and actually pretty different from Japanese sukiyaki, which has more in common with Thai barbecue, or mookata):  with Thai sukiyaki, you’re given a pot of broth over an open flame, and a whole array of raw meat and vegetables to play with.  I got some seafood, bacon, and (surprisingly good) beef, and by the end of the meal, the last of the soup tasted amazing with all the different juices mixed together.  The woman who ran the restaurant was terribly nice, as well, talking me through the menu in a mix of Thai and English, and bringing things out of the kitchen to show me when we couldn’t arrive at a decent translation together.  Awesome owner + spicy soup + an absolute mandate to play with your food in a leisurely way while watching the rain outside = perfect place for a wet evening. :)

At any rate, weather permitting, I’m going to go check out Inthakin tomorrow night instead, but let me tell you about Chinese New Year.

I’d heard a lot about Chiang Mai’s Chinese New Year celebrations, which take place in the city’s miniscule Chinatown, squeezed into the small maze of streets between the old city and Warrorot day market on the Ping River.  (It’s not really an advertised or defined “Chinatown” in the sense that many Western cities have one.  It’s a majority-Chinese neighbourhood, with a Chinese temple, and many of the actual shops are Chinese-run – but the people running the stalls at Warrorot and the neighbouring Night Bazaar are generally Thais and/or selling Thai crafts, which means it doesn’t feel very different from the rest of the city.  Although there is a big red gate.)

For two days, though, the entire neighbourhood was transformed:  all the shops were decked out in gleaming red lanterns, and a huge red-draped stage dominated Warrorot market, with smaller stages set up down the market’s side streets.  



On the evening I went, the crowd in Warrorot itself was so dense that it was almost impossible to move, but once I was able to break away, it was a lot of fun to wander through the smaller streets behind the market.

I don't know why I like this photo so much; I think it just captures the feeling of this neighbourhood really well.  That, and the Thai students entering warp speed in the foreground. :)

The usually sedate Chinese temple was lit up and full of worshippers, in a way that, for some reason, reminded me of a church during the Christmas Vigil:



(This kid playing with his new present probably cemented that impression.)

There was traditional Chinese music on the main stage, as well as piped in over speakers between performances, while the small stages hosted a variety of other performances.  I ended up catching part of a beauty pageant, with contestants in traditional dress (ranging from little girls up through young teenagers) doing classical dance numbers or parading around with fans, while gorgeous twentysomethings in slightly skimpier versions of traditional costumes interviewed them.  It was… somewhere between charming and indefinably skeezy, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.  Something about the way the contestants were presented as perfect, demure-yet-romanticised miniature women rather than girls, although I suppose that’s true of any child pageant.








For the occasion, the usual stalls in Warrorot market were replaced by stalls with red awnings and gold decorations, selling all kinds of food…

… all kinds of Thai food, that is.

Yeah, that came as kind of a surprise to me, too.  I know there’s a lot of mutual influence among different Asian cuisines, but there’s, “Oh, there are some Chinese dishes that are similar to Thai dishes,” and then there’s, “Dude, this is a plate of raad naa.  Not only that, it’s a plate of the same raad naa that you serve here every day, only this time you’re charging, like, 60 baht for it instead of 30 because you stuck some red streamers on your stall.”  There was even a stall dedicated to the many wonderful variations on the classic Northern Thai sausage.

None of this, obviously, stopped me from eating my own weight in dumplings.  Hey, it’s still a street fair, and certain things are expected. :)

My favourite food stall, though, was this one:


Grilled squid is a bit rarer than most kinds of street food (in Chiang Mai, at least – that’s one of the things I loved about being down in Bang Saen for my in-country training).  It’s also a little more expensive, but totally worth it.  I paid 120 baht for a whole squid, and proudly told the stallholder (a sceptical-looking young guy) that I wanted the hottest sauce he had.

What I hadn’t really bargained on is that 120 baht gets you a LOT of squid.  A huge bag of these giant, glorious chunks of squid, swimming in scorching green chilli sauce, that you somehow have to spear and eat with a big toothpick.  I spent the next half hour leaning casually against a building and smiling at passersby while I tried to discreetly choke down these enormous tentacles. :)


What I remember most vividly about that night, though, is feeling the first pang of real, uncomplicated homesickness for London as I crossed the bridge over the Ping on my way back home.  The lights reflecting in the water made me think of the view from Hungerford Bridge, and I suddenly missed the city that’s been my home for longer than any other.

Friday 18 May 2012

Jiggy-Jiggy?

Okay, so one of my readers messaged me:  "I'm not going to be puerile and ask for jiggy jiggy, so 5 on the menu please."

I should stick a disclaimer in here - despite the title, this is actually one of the most serious, thinky posts on the list.  Although it does include the words "jiggy-jiggy" in it, so there's that. :)

A few days ago, as I was walking home from work, something happened that threw me for a loop.

As I was making my way along the highway, I saw a guy get of a truck.  He looked Thai, not farang, but he definitely wasn’t built or dressed like your average Thai bloke.  He must have been at least six foot, with muscles that wouldn’t look out of place on a U.S. Marine (yes, I’ve met Thai soldiers, and no, they don’t look like THAT).  Just to add to the effect, he was in a wifebeater and camouflage trousers – again, pretty unusual (most Thai men I’ve seen either wear short sleeves or, if they’re working, go shirtless).  The most striking thing, though, was that he didn’t move like a Thai.  He had a full-on, aggressive strut, and (disconcertingly, once you’ve lived here for a few months) not a hint of a smile.

Now, I want to make clear that this guy didn’t say or do anything, or even seem to notice me.  What threw me off was my own reaction.  Something about him made me feel the way I’ve almost never felt while living here, but used to feel in London a lot (and all the time while I was living in Leyton, where street harassment is a weekly occurrence):  I felt exposed, incredibly self-conscious about the way I was moving.  And my body reacted automatically.  Head down, eyes straight ahead, don’t step too close to him, don’t make him feel as though you’re challenging him.  Move smoothly, move quickly, and stay off his radar.

First time I’ve done that in a while.  Visiting London for my birthday reminded me that I really do love that city, but sometimes, I also realise just how much easier it is here.  It’s also a lot easier than travelling around some other places in Asia.  Thais might stare, but generally, you won’t get harassed – unlike my experiences in, say, Tamil Nadu state in India, where guys would follow me down the street yelling at me.  (“Hey, you like go out?  Drink beer?  Jiggy-jiggy?  Fucking?  Kama Sutra?  Come on!”)*  It seems to be a question of rules for public behaviour, separate from the issue of gender roles and women’s rights:  both Thai and Burmese society can often feel very restrictive in that regard, and the status boost I get from being a Westerner is tempered by the fact that I’m still “just” a chick.  But when I walk down the street, I don’t tend to feel more vulnerable because of my gender, and that’s new for me.

Here, Have Some Democracy! (If Only It Were That Easy for Burma.)

So, in looking over my (growing) list of future blog posts, there are some longer ones (like telling you all about the workshop I did, or about my trip back to the UK), but there are also a bunch of shorter stories and reflections.  That means it’s AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TIME!


Pick one of the anecdotes below, and I’ll post that one next.  (No, I’m not giving you any advance information beyond the title :)):


  1. Mullet adventures!
  2. Good and bad dog days
  3. The questions Thais ask… and the one they won’t
  4. Soooo many tentacles (not what you think)
  5. Jiggy-jiggy?
  6. BUG PLAGUE


There is also at least one more post that’s going to have to wait until I figure out HOW THE HELL to transfer photos from my Thai phone to my computer.  I think there was a cord?  Somewhere along the way?


At any rate, today I spent the morning in Thai class – I’m finding it really tough, especially given that a) I missed several weeks, between work and travel and in-country training, and b) our class is pretty dominated by two of the students – one a retired language teacher and the other a resident of Thailand for ten years, married to a Thai woman – who can have extended conversations with the teacher that leave the rest of us in the dust.  But we’re starting to learn to write now, and even though I’m struggling, I had that one moment that makes it all worth it the other night.  I was waiting for my dinner at one of the half-dozen noodle stalls along my street, and I idly glanced at the menu – and realised, “Hey, I know that letter!  And that letter!  Fuck, I actually know that whole word:  ‘pad’!  I can read this menu!”  Which I totally, totally couldn’t, by the way; I could read the first word of each item listed, which, by a remarkable coincidence, was always pad.  (Pad means stir-fried.)  But still, it can feel isolating to live in a country where you can’t read signs, or menus, or newspaper headlines.  The first crack in that barrier is ridiculously exciting.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Wat You Say?

So, the UN Irish Pub, home of Chiang Mai's thoroughly awesome weekly pub quiz (where Pam and I go every Thursday), is closed until further notice.  Because they currently can't use their kitchen.  Because one of the storms earlier this week sent a TREE crashing through it.

In fairness, this is a pretty good excuse.



I drove down tonight, not realising the place was shut, and actually got to chat to another quiz regular I'd never properly met before, as we both stood morosely outside the pub on the phone to our respective friends. :)  And at any rate, the evening was far from a loss:  I decided to grab some dinner inside the moat (in the old city) before heading back home, and ran into ex-VSO volunteer S., who's now working for an NGO here.  So I ended up eating with him and some Canadian and Burmese friends of his at a really good, very spicy hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant (with amazing chai, which the Burmese folks tend to love, as well, thanks to the Indian influence on their cuisine).  Unexpected dinner party is unexpected!  But I like that about Chiang Mai:  it's of a size where you can occasionally run into people you know, but you can also disappear off by yourself if you need to.


And now, on a totally different (although still rainy-season-related) note, I'm going to (hopefully) share some photos that I've been trying to post for the better part of a week.  These are pictures of a sane wat, which should be a nice break after the wat full of crazy I encountered in southern Thailand. :)


Now that it’s not really hot season anymore, I’m trying to do a little more tourism around Chiang Mai – there’s so much I still haven’t seen.  And to be honest, the folks from my in-country training are showing me up just a bit.  Bpogey posts photos of himself in front of about three national landmarks every weekend. :)


Last Monday, since the office was closed for Coronation Day, I drove out to Wat Ched Yod, a fifteenth-century temple by the side of the superhighway.  (It’s actually next to the National Museum, which I explored back in November, but I never went to have a proper look around the wat itself.)

Driving during rainy season is nerve-wracking and annoying (you need to carry a poncho for yourself and a garbage bag to wrap up anything important in your bag, like books or electronics), but it's also stunningly beautiful - and unnerving - at times.  Beautiful because, for the first time since I've been here, the air (between storms) is really, really clear
- clear enough to make out individual trees on the mountains that surround Chiang Mai, which used to be big lumps of blue haze on the horizon.  These days, the tops of the mountains are covered in this thick froth of rainclouds pretty much all the time, but below that, you can see every detail, including the spires of the famous golden temple on Doi Suthep (Suthep Mountain).  Unnerving because, whenever I'm travelling towards Doi Suthep, I always think that I must have missed my turnoff, because it feels like I'm waaaaay closer to the mountain than I'm supposed to be. :)


 
Wat Ched Yod is set back from the highway, in the midst of a lush, slightly wild garden.
Fifteenth-century temple building on the left, newer one on the right, small shrine in the background.


Detailed shots of the old temple.  Inside, there's a large golden Buddha, as well as a row of what look like old arcade machines, each containing a small Buddha in an orange robe.  Each is in a distinctive pose representing a day of the week.  Drop a coin in the machine corresponding to the day you were born, and a scratchy, antique-sounding recording of a sacred chant plays - a prayer on your behalf.  It's pretty eerie.  More so because the recording is so old; it’s strange to think about the monk (I’m assuming) who recorded it in the first place.  Is he even still alive?  How bizarre would it be to have the voice of a dead man praying for you?

If you'd rather take a more active role in your own prayers, there are bells and cymbals for petitioners to strike as part of their circuit of the temple:


Extremely shiny new building:

LOTS of smaller shrines:

Shrine of the headless Buddhas!  Not on purpose, I think - the statues have just been out there a while.
Shrine of the tiny inexplicable tiger statues!

Shrine of the didn't-get-to-it-because-it-started-raining!

Shrine of the being surrounded by water!
Shrine of the looks-like-a-ship's-wheel-but-probably-isn't!
Shrine of the tiny Ganesh!  (It's the gold statue between his ankles.)
Shrine of the... um... well, if you have any luck figuring this one out, let me know.


Not for the first time, I wish I knew more about Buddhist iconography.  These white branches are covered in Thai writing - and on the other side of the tree, one of them was placed in a stand with some markers next to it, so that visitors could add their own... names?  Prayers?  I have some more research to do...






"Bob?  Bob, we're trying to take a serious picture here.  Get that thing off your head.  I swear, every time he does this."

Also there were chickens.

At this point, the rain was starting in earnest, so I making my way back to the parking lot (sidling from shelter to shelter in between mad dashes through the rain :)), where I stood under the awning of a closed food shop for about fifteen minutes before admitting that the rain wasn't going to ease up.  (When I got back to my bike, I found that some kindly Thai shopowner had placed an open umbrella over it - awwww!)  And that was how I ended up riding my motorcycle in a proper rainstorm for the first time.

There are tricks to driving in the rain - tricks about speed and wind, and what gear to use, and getting the visor of your helmet tilted at juuuust the right angle (too open, and the rain lashes painfully right into your eyes; too far closed, and your breath fogs up your glasses).  I'm very grateful that I've had six months to get used to Arcee before even trying it.  But I made it home, soaking wet but triumphant. :)

Sunday 6 May 2012

Burning to Tell


So, I haven’t been very good about keeping up this blog lately.

The problem is that I have this backlog of things to tell you – big things that will require extensive posts, and little anecdotes that would seem strange to just post on their own – and every time I go to talk about what happened last week, I end up feeling like I can’t do that until I tell you about what happened three months ago first.

But you know what?  Screw it.  I’m just going to tell the stories I’ve got – in order, out of order, any way they come.

So let me tell you about what happened last week. :)

On Wednesday, I had a meeting that was a Very Big Deal:  I presented the paper I’ve been working on for almost six months to the other members of the network, many of whom I’d never met before. 

The meeting was held first thing in the morning at a farm that’s a good hour’s drive outside the centre of the city, rather than at my usual office (which is more central and has an air-conditioned meeting room), because… reasons?  I dunno.  However, I have to admit that it ended up being a good decision:  I think that the participants probably felt more relaxed out there than they would in a more formal environment.  Also, we got to have lunch on the farm (spicy fish stew, steamed eggplant, lots of locally grown everything – mmm), and I got to check out their model ecohouse.  “Ecohouse” is one of those words that, to Americans and Europeans, suggests something sleek and high-tech out of the German passivhaus movement – geothermic heating and intelligent photovoltaic paint.  (Yes, it exists; no, none of us can afford it.)  This place, on the other hand, is a straight-up traditional mud house with a few modifications.  The walls are made of compressed straw bales and mud, sealed with a thin sheen of concrete to defend against flooding, and the roof is thatched.  It is ABSURDLY cool under the Thai sun.  There’s also a biogas digester, which is an elaborate way of saying “plastic tube of buffalo shit and water”.  As low-tech as it is, though, the digester does two immensely cool things:  It gradually breaks down and purifies manure, removing harmful chemicals to create an excellent fertilizer (the plants around the end of the digester looked like something out of Little Shop of Horrors), and it extracts methane gas to power an outdoor stove.  (That also means that the methane doesn’t go into the atmosphere, since it’s a potent greenhouse gas.)  So, ultimately, meeting on the farm was cool, even if the temptation to just curl up on the veranda and go to sleep after lunch was enormous…

As for the meeting itself, I think it went well.  There was a lot of good discussion afterwards concerning the information in the paper, ways to follow up and make sure the information reaches people inside Burma, and what the next stages of research should be.  (It looks like I might be teaching a couple of workshops on sustainable development eventually – whoot!)  It was also a good chance for me to meet everyone ahead of the network-wide meeting in May, when, hopefully, I can negotiate a way to split my time between the office where I’m currently based and one of the other organisations.

There were some moments, though, when I felt very awkward about just how new to this area and these issues I am, and deeply uncomfortable with the way some of the people I’m working with tend to default to white foreigner = expert.  The worst was when a senior official at one organisation asked me, “In your experience, what is the best way to ensure land rights in conflict areas?”

What I said was:  “Well, in X case, it seemed that Burmese activists found Y useful, but the ways you can use that are limited because blah blah blah.  Z can also be helpful, but some communities in Burma have found that etc. etc.…”

What I wanted to say was:  “In my experience?  In my experience?  Dude, I’m a white chick from New Jersey.  Six months ago I was printing brochures and organising working lunches for members of the UK House of Lords.  I’ve never even been inside Burma.  I’ve never farmed, and I’ve never had to fight to defend my family’s land from government troops.  You, on the other hand, have been working in this field for ten years, and have been dealing with these issues your entire life.  I’m humbled that you want my opinion, but I’m terrified that you seem ready to defer to it.”

I understand that there is expertise I can offer in these areas.  I’m just acutely aware of the limits of it.

Speaking of farming, politics, and really good food, though, on Thursday, I went with some of my colleagues to see the water filtration system at Pun Pun farm.

Pun Pun is an organic model farm, created by Thai farmers who were feeling caught in the cycle of more and more expensive pesticides and fertilizers to use on increasingly degraded land.  There’s kind of a revolving door of Asian and Western experts who come to live on the farm and trade practical knowledge and skills.


Photos are from my first visit in October, which is why they look so overcast and cool.  Sigh.


Pun Pun is stunning – it’s right at the base of the mountains, and at this time of year, all the flowering trees are out, so there are these patches of blazing red-orange everywhere you look.  We walked up the long way, across the rice fields, which was hot, but a nice way to get the full tour.

A sweet young American guy showed us how the filtration works – basically, it’s a system of tanks and pipes, allowing the water to run through gravel, sand, and charcoal in turns.  The charcoal strips out pesticides and chemicals, while a thin layer of microorganisms that grow on the top of the wet sand eat harmful parasites and bacteria.  It’s a great system, because there’s very little you have to do to it once it’s set up (the one at Pun Pun is running well after four years of “benign neglect”).  I think my favourite part, though, is that when you’re initially constructing a system like this, the charcoal takes weeks to absorb enough water to make it sink to the bottom of the tank.  At first, it floats, forming a layer so thick that it allows you to walk on top of the water.  That is, until you get your first hint that the charcoal is finally starting to sink… which usually comes when you put your foot down on the layer of charcoal, and you fall right through.  Clearly, you’ve got to have nerves of steel to be a hydraulic engineer.

I was way more interested, though, in the process they use for making charcoal.  The guy who showed us around, Josh, explained that you need a very pure, high-quality kind of charcoal to filter water.  Traditionally, this would be made by putting a stack of wood chips next to a very hot kiln; the wood chips basically burn through without actually burning up, kind of like steaming food.  The problems with that approach are that it uses up two sets of wood (one for the charcoal, one for the fire) to make one batch of charcoal, and that it belches out smoke (a serious health issue).  So what Josh and his friends have done is to, basically, take the whole setup and turn it on its side.  You take a metal drum, punch holes in the bottom (one of my colleagues asked, “Did you drill those?”; Josh, deadpan:  “No, I shot them with my .38,”), and pack it tightly with wood chips.  On top of that goes a chimney, which has large gaps in the sides and space at the top for the fire.  Essentially, with this system, you use the wood that will become the charcoal to also fuel the fire, cutting the amount of wood you need in half.  You light a fire at the top of the drum, and the holes at the top and bottom, combined with the packed, airless environment in between, keeps all the wood from bursting into flame.  Once the wood has burned through and turned into charcoal – this is the coolest bit – the flame goes from orange to blue-purple, at which point you haul the chimney off, slap a lid on the drum, and seal all the gaps with mud to starve the fire, so that it doesn’t then reduce the charcoal to ash.  There’s even a special device called a Jolly Roger chimney that lets you “pirate” heat to make a second, small batch of cooking charcoal at the same time.

Lighting stuff on fire with SCIENCE, man!

My colleagues weren’t quite as impressed, mainly because they were disappointed to find that you need at least two metal drums to make the kiln – drums that are relatively cheap in Thailand, but pretty much impossible to find or buy in the ethnic areas of Burma.  Still, it was pointed out that if you can set up even one of these at a central location, it’s pretty easy to lug the charcoal itself from village to village.  Me, I was still transfixed by the whole “this is when the flame suddenly turns blue” part. :)

You can read about this process (the charcoal-making, not me going all googly-eyed) here - by the way, check out the stunning picture on the cover of the manual – or see a video of Josh and the founder of Pun Pun taking you through the process step-by-step here.

We had lunch at the farm (fantastic fried rice, veggies, and a searingly hot coconut and spinach curry that they warned us about in advance, and I then ate a double helping when no one else could finish theirs, just to be obnoxious :)).  Then we started the long drive back to Chiang Mai…

… except that it was now mid-afternoon, the hottest time of day.

All of us who’d been in the air-conditioned cab of the truck offered to swap with the guys sitting in the back, but they told us they were fine; they were macho, they’d tough it out.  About halfway back to the office, there was a little tap on the back window.

“It’s really hot out here,” they pointed out.

“We know!  That’s why we offered to switch with you!”

“Yeah, but… it’s really hot.”

So we pulled over and swapped places, and wow.  I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced heat like that.  It wasn’t humid, the air didn’t feel thick or stuffy – it was just that the sun was merciless, and it felt like you were two inches away from it.  I tried fanning myself, and it only made it worse, like I’d turned on a radiator and aimed it at my face.  The only thing that helped was pulling my headband down over my forehead, which made me feel a little like I was about to head into the final battle of a martial arts movie, but remarkably, shading that one part of myself made all the difference.

And then one of my colleagues who was in the air-conditioned part of the car made us pull over so that he could get a slushie.

We were all too lethargic to smack him. :)