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| ALL NEW WEB SITE LAUNCHED! -- June 23, 2007 | | Date Created: Jun 23, 2007, 10:06 PM |
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CLICK HERE TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE NEW SITE
It's been a year in the making -- well, a couple hours here and there to learn new software -- but my new Web site is up and running.
Here is the new address: http://web.mac.com/rekircher
(It's a little easier to remember than the old one, but best just to bookmark it.)
About a year ago, the makers of the software I used to create the old site stopped providing updates. Then I bought a new computer, and it proved impossible to move the software and site to my new computer. So, over the course of several months, I moved all the text and photos from this site to the new one. All new entries are on the way.
For those who have written or called to ask why, I appreciate and am flattered by the inquiries. I enjoy using updates of my site to keep in touch with old friends, and every time I'd send out an announcement of an update, I'd seem to get an e-mail or call from someone I hadn't heard from in a while. Starting a new job, moving and getting a puppy (all within Bangkok) have kept me busy, but they've also provided lots of new material that I'll be posting to the new site as soon as time permits.
Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Be sure to CLICK HERE for the new site. |
| An Odyssey through Turkey - July 12, 2006 | | Date Created: Jul 12, 2006, 03:54 PM |
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Above photo: Prae stands at the center of the Greek amphitheater in the ruins at Hieropolis.
The first week of July, Prae and I traveled throughout western Turkey, ending our Odyssey in Istanbul in time for the wedding reception of good U.S. friends, Cameron and Nazan Gillie. I had the honor of being Cameron’s best man at his wedding on a beach in Florida in January, and the long-standing plans for the reception in Nazan’s native Istanbul finally came to fruition on July 9. Here’s a report of our travels. |
 Right photo: The Mediterranean beach that separates the town of Olympos from Cirali would appear very much like the shore of Lake Michigan, if it weren't for the mountains.
We arrived in Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey the afternoon of July 2 and picked up our rental car, a silver Hyundai Accent sedan. We drove the 50 miles or so from Antalya on the coast down to the tiny town of Cirali. The drive was on a twisting, turning coastal highway that went through a couple of tunnels and over mountains that are covered in snow until May, when some people go to the region for skiing and beach holidays. Cirali is made up of two dozen or so beach hotels and a pebbly beach that looks more like the shores of Lake Michigan than the Mediterranean. |
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Above photo: Greek ruins separate the town of Olympos from the beach.
Down the beach about a mile from Cirali are the ruins of the town of Olympos, which we explored a little, even on little sleep from flying all night. We then walked back to our hotel via the beach, stopping at a beachfront restaurant for one of the freshest meals I've ever eaten. |
 Left photo: Look! 7:30 p.m. and still light out!
It was then we discovered that Turkey has the best vine-ripened tomatoes on the face of the earth. As impressed as Prae was with the food, she couldn't get over the fact it was 8 p.m. and still light out. Throughout the course of the trip, she had me take pictures of her with her watch held up to show how light it was in this foreign land when it should have been dark. Despite her time spent in Australia, she had never before been so far from the Equator and had never realized the difference in the seasonal swings of daylight. It was wonderful to marvel at this through her eyes. |
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Above photo: Although the flames of Olympos may look like mere campfires, they really are amazing when you consider that they are a freak of nature.
After dinner we drove a couple of miles up Mount Olympos to a path that leads to a sight that had been on my life's to-do list: the Chimaera of Olympos. These are natural flames that shoot out from the side of the mountain and have done so since ancient times. Even now, modern science cannot fully explain them or determine the exact nature of the gas that is emitted. It is about a mile walk in the dark straight up the side of the mountain, and we were very lucky in our timing, as there were maybe only 12 others there -- including two hippies playing the mouth harp and cooking Vienna sausages over one of the flames. (What the hell, might as well put them to use: I lit a cigarette off one of them!) |
 Right photo: I make use of the Chimaera.
If the flames were not natural, they would be something straight out of Disney World. They appear almost like a gas fireplace in about six or eight places, constantly and quietly burning and flickering from the bare rock. It was the silence, I guess that was most impressive. Somehow it seems as if flames are leaping out of the earth for no apparent reason, they should come with some roaring sound effect. I can only imagine how Hollywood would depict them in Dolby Surround Sound. |
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Above photo: Prae looks on, while two men cook Vienna sausages on the flames of Olympos.
It was upon seeing the flames I wished I remembered my Edith Hamilton better, but it was easy to see how the ancients could have come up with about any mythological story surrounding Olympos with such a sight. As far as natural wonders go, this has to be the most unique I’ve seen, and as small as the flames were, I would put them on par with the Northern Lights as far as their ability to inspire awe. You know, you can go to waterfall after waterfall, and each may be more spectacular than the rest, but the water’s not doing anything you wouldn’t expect it to do; it’s falling, after all. You just don’t expect a mountain to spontaneously ignite, however.
On our way down we passed maybe 100 people from tour groups, and we were glad our timing had missed them and we'd experienced the flames in their sacred silence.
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Above photo: We drive through the mountains to Pammukale.
I knew we had packed in a busy itinerary, and so the next day we hit the road for Pamukkale, which is about 200 miles northeast of Cirali. The roads of Turkey are not great, but they are not horrible either -- mainly two lanes, fairly wide, and three lanes when going uphill. The drivers are not as bad or as crazy as I expected, and so I'd say we did not even have any close calls. |
 Left photo: The driving was not as dangerous as I'd steeled myself for.
I had read with trepidation some facts about Turkish driving before going. There is a Turkey specific Web site called www.turkeytravelplanner.com that was very useful, and I discovered a general travel site that is really fantastic called www.virtualtourist.com. This site takes submissions from readers and chops them up by very specific category. So, I’d read all the “dangers of Turkey” categories, and driving was definiitely among them, as was street crime and dangers to women travelers. Living in Thailand gives you a false sense of security sometimes when you can really blunder about daily with no concern of having anything bad happen to you (if you don’t drive and if you be careful crossing the road!). I will say, however, that outside of the area surrounding Istanbul did not seem to have unusually crazy traffic or overly dangerous roads. And as far as guarding against pickpockets and hanging on to camera gear all the time, which I’d do in New York, Turkey overall didn’t seem any less safe than anywhere else in the world. |
 Right photo: Signs were not often confusing, Although we did get stuck in one town driving around in circles for a half hour.
On our way north from Antalya, we found where all the tomatoes are grown -- in covered greenhouses along the road. Prae had to stop to have her photo taken with the tomatoes growing on the plants. This became a recurring theme as we headed through cherry country and strawberry country. Oh yes, and olive and peach country as well. Grape vines too. For lunch, we would steal hard-boiled eggs from our hotel's free breakfast in the morning and then supplement those with fruit from roadside stands and then have a roadside picnic. (Look out for a complete photo album below of Prae with fruits, vegetables and food.) |
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| Above photo: We stop for a roadside lunch and a quick photo. |
 Right photo: Prae drinks tea while we fill up at a gas station.
Fuel prices were horrendous -- almost US$100 to fill up that tiny Hyundai! But a fill-up was full service and did come with a free cup of Turkish tea. |
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| Above photo: On the way to Pammukale, we came into an area of great expansive plains. |
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Above photo: The travertine pools of Pammukale glow aqua blue overloooking a huge valley.
We made it to Pamukkale, which is known for its travertine pools that are terraced down the side of a mountain from which a mineral spring bubbles, covering everything with a calcereous white substance.
On the way up the mountain, we witnessed a new type of sales agent for hotels. We passed through the little town, and men came running out, waving our car down and motioning as if we had a flat tire. Moreover, a couple of men immediately jumped on motorbikes and zoomed in front of us, as if trying to pull us over like traffic police. I had heard such tactics might be used to attempt to get us to stay in local hotels, and so I determined that I would simply run them over if they didn’t quit. Their tactics had the effect of prompting us to stay in a completely different town where they were less agressive, and I certainly recommend that no one traveling to Turkey ever stay in the town of Pammukale to avert the spread of such behavior. It is wrong and puts a bad taste in one’s mouth about the area. |
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| Above photo: The main street of Hieropolis was in use for more than 1,000 years. |
 Left photo: In a spitting rain, which drove away most others, we toured Hieropolis. |
Pammukkale looks almost as if the mountain is covered in snow and not the hot mineral water of the spring around which the Greek town of Hieropolis was built two millennia ago.
Below photo: A mineral spring has coated the entire top of the mountain. While it may look like snow, it feels like the bottom of a swimming pool. |
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 Right photo: An outlet of the hot spring provides a mineral bath at the hotel where we stayed. The mineral deposits are rust colored and then bleach white with age.
An amphitheater overlooks the surreal white pools stepping down the mountainside, and we explored this in spitting rain, admiring a view over a highland valley surrounded by mountains as far as 20 miles away. At the base of the ruins, there is a tour bus parking lot and a public "Antique Pool," in which tourists can bathe in the mineral water. We opted not for this, but we did stay at an awful touristy all-inclusive hotel in a nearby town that I equated to a land-locked cruise ship. Oh, it was terrible, but it was 9 p.m., and we needed both dinner and a place to stay, and it had its own mineral pool in which we took a smelly muddy dip. From our room, we could hear the evening's entertainment, a band that stopped when the local mosque called evening prayers and then resumed again immediately afterward. Prae wondered if we should have gone down to see if the band members were praying. We fell asleep before the subsequent belly dancing show. |
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| Above photo: A mosque sits just off the middle of town near Pammukale, and next to it is a fountain whose source comes from the mineral spring. |
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| Above photo: Prae sits to have tea with some locals in a town between Pammukale and Denzili. |
 Right photo: The Virgin Mary supposedly spent her last years in this house, which is now considered sacred by both Christians and Muslims.
Our next day took us first to the house in which the Virgin Mary supposedly spent her last days. Apparently a stigmatized nun in Germany in the 1800s had a vision about the house being somewhere in Turkey, and some people set out to find it. Lo and behold, they came across exactly what she had described. Now it's holy ground for both Christians and Muslims, who interestingly hold the Virgin Mary in high regard as well for reasons that escape -- and mystify -- me. If nothing else, it's about as serene a spot as one could hope to spend her final days, and the holy water spring that happened to be right there would, I'm sure, have made her washing all the easier. |
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Above photo: Ephesus is an amazing assortment of Greek and Roman ruins. Here, the facade of the library still stands.
We went on to nearby Ephesus, was was a Greek then Roman town, and the ruins and excavations there are really spectacular. The excavated terrace homes are actually more impressive than the ruins at Pompeii, although I could have drawn this conclusion simply from the fact I wasn't there in December, in pouring rain, with a tour group, looking for Mom, who I'd thought had gotten lost. Objectively speaking, however, the residences' wall paintings and mosaics were every bit if not more impressive than at Pompeii. And then, of course, there was all the Greek stuff in addition to it. |
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| Above photo: The ruins of Ephesus are strung out over more than a mile. |
 Right photo: Another view of the library.
Below photo: Not one, but two amphitheaters could be found for entertainment in Ephesus. |
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Above photo: Just a column and a half remain of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
We shrugged at nearby the Temple of Artemis for a good five minutes as we tried to shake off souvenir salesmen without much success. It probably was grand enough at one time to be one of the seven ancient wonders. Now, unfortunately, it's just a wonder that enough people buy from the vendors that their sales tactics work. (I bought a book and two Turkish rug bookmarks, myself.) What would Artemis have thought? |
 Right photo: We spotted dozens of outdoors car washes like this one in Selcuk throughout our travels. The water just constantly spurts out for anyone who wants to drive under. The spots left by the water made the car seem dirtier than before, however.
Below photo: The Hotel Kalehan in Selcuk was everything I'd read it to be. Very peaceful with a rose garden and excellent food. |
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| We stayed that night in the nearby town of Selcuk at a wonderful little inn that was built very simply to look old but was really only 20 years old or so. It had a lovely rose garden and a great restaurant. We woke up the next morning to temperatures in the 60s and the smell of jasmine and roses outside our window. |
 Right photo: Prae peers down from a reproduction of the Trojan Horse.
We had a long haul that day and had to skip ruins at Bergama to make it to Troy before it closed. The Troy of Priam and "Illiad" -- or the movie, "Troy," if you prefer -- we had to remind ourselves, was a 1,500 years older than the Greek ruins we'd seen at Ephesus the previous day. |
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Above photo: The Trojan horse greets visitors before the archaeological site.
It is little more than a jumble of rocks and excavations. But to see its location, and to look down from the hill and see a huge plain stretch before us maybe 3 miles to the Agean, was pretty amazing. It is much farther inland that I would have expected. And we climbed up and snapped photos in the Trojan horse they built out front too. We happened to stop at one of the few souvenir stands near Troy and got to talking with the owner. I bought a guidebook that was written by his brother, and then the brother happened to show up, and we gained a better understanding of the rockpile we had just seen. |
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Above photo: The view from Troy is impressive, and it is much farther inland than I would have expected.
Prae has no familiarity whatsoever with Western history or Greek mythology, and so she was going by simply what she knows of the movie. The Thai education system doesn't get into the Western canon of literature, but then again, what do I know of Thai literature? (I'm learning, incidentally.) She found all this interesting, though -- at least I hope. |
 Right photo: Aboard the ferry, we cross the Dardanelles to Europe.
We pressed on to the city of Canukkale, where we decided to go ahead and make the ferry crossing of the famed Dardanelles, across to the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Dardanelles is a narrow strip of water leading from the Agean to the Sea of Marmara then on to the Bosphorus and then the Black Sea. Militarily is has always been of strategic importance because it provides a year-round route to supply northeastern Europe and southwestern Asia. |
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| Above photo: A boat leaves the harbor of Cannukale on the Asian side of the Dardanelles. |
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| Above photo: Prae stands on the Agean shore after her first night in Europe. |
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Above photo: Our hotel on the Gallipoli Peninsula was on the beach and surrounded by sunflower fields.
We found a great hotel right on the beach and surrounded by sunflower fields. Prae spent her first night ever in Europe and was excited about that, and we got up the next day to see the battlefield memorials of Gallipoli. This is a subject of World War I about which I knew not anything more than the movie "Gallipoli" and the words "the charge of the Light Brigade." It's a site of pilgrimage for New Zealanders and Aussies, much the way Normandy is for Americans. Learning more about the battle was interesting, and there's something I find very moving about standing amidst war cemeteries -- always, it seems, on high, desolate, wind-blown hills -- and considering how different and how similar the views must have once been from those hills. One thing that impressed me -- and an Aussie may tell me I'm wrong in this impression -- is that the Turks seemed to do a fairly equal job expressing the stories of both sides. |
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| Above photo: At Lone Pine, a cemetery marks a World War I battlefield site. |
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| Above photo: Much of the Gallipoli Peninsula is now a national park, leaving the battlefields and unmarked graves to nature. |
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Left photo: The Hotel Nena was a beautiful little hotel, close to everything. I would not, however, ever recommend eating dinner there.
We then high-tailed it to Istanbul in about five hours, dumping the car as quickly as we could at the airport. I did not want to drive in that traffic! We took a taxi into the city to our hotel, which again was a great little place, very much like the hotel Mom and I stayed in in Rome -- they could have been sister hotels. It was less than a mile to all the major sights of Istanbul. |
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Above photo: Prae and I stand on the Asian side of Istanbul with the Bosphorus behind us.
Upon our arrival we ran into Cameron, Clint and his wife Suzanne. Clint is a former Fort Myers News-Press photographer and a friend of Cameron’s who was there to shoot the wedding reception. |
 Left photo: Cameron and Prae wait for the ferry back to the European side of Istanbul after dinner.
We checked in quickly and then hopped on a streetcar down to the ferry across the Bosphorus to find a place on the Asian side for dinner. We all joked that once we got across to Asia, everyone would look like Prae, and we'd probably find nothing but Thai restaurants. We did not, of course, but we did find a restaurant that overlooked the Bosphorus, which I could not look at without thinking of Richard Halliburton swimming across it. |
 Right photo: Prae looks at Turkish teacups in the Grand Bazaar.
The next day we set out for the Grand Bazaar, which is as interesting as it is annoying for its shopkeepers. It is all covered and actually very clean, complete with LCD TVs in the main streets giving constant news updates. The floors are aged marble -- after all, this market is 1,000 years old. It is huge, rambling up and down hills and filled less with booths than with tiny storefronts. |
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Above photo: The Grand Bazaar is chockful of Turkish souvenirs as well as knock-off Rolexes and Gucci bags.
None of the prices are marked, and no matter how good your bargaining technique are, you still pay too much for almost everything there. Nazan's brother is both a tour guide and a Meerschaum carver. Meerschaum apparently comes only from Turkey and Tanzania. Sanan Atilla -- Nazan's brother and Cameron’s brother-in-law -- carves wonderful little boxes and napkin rings and other things from the white mineral. We stopped at a store that sells his pieces, and they really were quite striking. |
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Above photo: Inside, the Grand Bazaar is surprisingly clean, filled almost like a mall with shops instead of the more market-like atmosphere I was expecting.
We met up with Nazan and Sanan for lunch, and they took us to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant which was quite good and cheap. Then I proceeded to get on with the second item on my life's to-do list on this trip: shop for a Turkish rug. For the whole story and photos, see a separate entry below. |
 Left photo: The henna hand-painting ceremony begins with Nazan under a red shawl. The idea behind the ceremony, Nazan said, is for a woman's female friends to send her off to her wedding. Sort of the equivalent of a bachelorette party.
That evening, we went to a party at Nazan's family's apartment. It was actually a sort of traditional Muslim bachelorette party, but seeing as they were already married and that Cameron had put his foot down about converting and having a traditional ceremony, everyone was invited. Yet some of the same rituals were conducted. I wish I understood it better, but it's basically known as a henna-painting ceremony. When I was told this, I was thinking of henna painting in the Indian Hindu sense, but this is different. Nazan was led into a blackened room with a red sequined scarf over her head. All the women sang and danced around her and then dabbed henna paste on her palms, which were then covered by red sequined mitts. This henna paste was also dabbed on the palms of other women present. |
 Right photo: The daubing of the henna paste begins.
During this ceremony, I thought back to my recent experience at the week-long Buddhist funeral of Prae's father, and I sort of thought to myself, "What am I doing? Just going around the world on some sort of anthropological tour?" To be honest, the thought of trying to determine what was actually going on in another bizarre ceremony was almost tiring, and I kind of wanted to see something I consider normal as a novelty. |
 Left photo: Surrounded by women relatives and friends, Nazan is the center of attention at her symbolic bahelorette party. |
 Right photo: Prae and Nazan's aunt (I think, sorry if I am wrong; speaking no Turkish, it was hard to keep everyone straight) watch the dancing that ensued. |
 Left photo: Nazan and her father share a moment on the tight dance floor of the living room.
There was lots of dancing afterward, and we had a delicious home-cooked meal of about every traditional Turkish dish you can imagine: eggplant in about any form you can think of; dolmas, which are rolled grape leave containing in this case currants, rice and nuts; kofte, which is a kind of meatball, in this case with tomato and mashed potato on top; bulgur wheat in yoghurt; julienned carrots in yoghurt; stuffed zucchini; baclava; and who knows what else. |
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| Above photo: Prae decides to go native with the addition of a black shawl that comes from the Black Sea region and has crystals sewn on as trim. |
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Above photo: The Blue Mosque, as seen from the rooftop of our hotel, sits near the Bosphorus.
Saturday I did some sight-seeing with the others while Prae napped. In total, I wound up not seeing as many sights as I'd hoped, but I did get to the Blue Mosque, the sultan's palace and a place called Aya Sofya, which was a Byzantine church turned into a mosque and later turned into a museum. Istanbul has more mosques that Bangkok has wats, and at prayer-calling times, it can be a battle of the imams. There’s one little mosque right next to the huge Blue Mosque that called out prayers at the same times, yet the voice competed with that of the imam at the Blue Mosque, and I wondered how this mosque fared fund-raising-wise when it held a rummage sale or bake sale in competition with its neighbor. |
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| Above photo: The interior of Aya Sofia was redone when the Byzantine church was converted to a mosque. Later it became a museum, and now some of those Islamic touches have been removed to reveal the Christian imagery beneath. It's an interesting mix of the two religions. |
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| Above photo: From Topkape Palace, the Bosphorus appears wide and busy, and I was impressed by Richard Halliburton's stamina and courage to swim across. I'll stick with the ferry. |
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| Above photo: Street cars make it easy to get around Istanbul. |
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| Above photo: Inside the Blue Mosque, its blue decor finally explains its name. |
 Left photo: Prae and Sonja Bjelland, who is a former Naples Daily News reporter and came for Cameron's wedding, cover their heads after just having toured the Blue Mosque. |
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| Above photo: A moon rises over the Blue Mosque. |
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Above photo: We all head together to see a Whirling Dervish show.
Saturday evening, we met up to go see a Whirling Dervish performance, which actually, I learned should be called a ceremony, because Whirling Dervishes are part of some presumably Islamic cult. |
 Left photo: Cameron clocked the whilring at 70 RPM.
They play some really beautiful music and then the whirlers came out, very solemn-like, with sort of that far-off expression and methodical movement of people in a trance. Then they started whirling. Cameron timed them They'd go about seven minutes at a time, spinning at about 70 RPM. That's got to make you dizzy, but not them. |
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| Above photo: The Dervishes would whirl for as long as seven minutes at a time. |
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Above photo: During their whirling, their expressions were trance-like, although I do not know if that comes from some real trance or just being very dizzy.
They would pause for another solemn march around the room and a bow to a red sheepskin on what was called the equatorial line, and then they start whirling again. Pretty strange. We clapped at the end, but I am not sure if that's like a Muslim clapping at the end of a homily, and so we sort of shuffled out quietly, not really knowing how to act. I don’t think they recruited any dervishes in us, however.
We went on to have a fateful meal on the roof of the hotel, which overlooked the Bosphorus and the Blue Mosque. Great view, but the meal was to take three of us out about 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning. It was the second worst food poisoning I'd ever had, and I stayed firmly on my spinning bed until it was time to go to the wedding reception Sunday night. Wonderful Prae stayed with me through every excruciating minute of it, helping me try to get the fever down and get rehydrated before Cameron's big evening. I was the worst hit, but poor Cameron wasn't far behind me. |
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Above photo: Prae has a good laugh at the condition of the groom. I would have laughed too, but I was worse off.
It is tradition for the bride and groom and family to traipse all over Istanbul to have their photos taken at major site in their wedding attire. And recovering Cameron had to do that while I caught three more hours of bed time. When we arrived at the site of the reception -- it was once a sultan's hunting lodge now in a city park -- we found Cameron lying down on a Louis XIV (or XVI?) sofa in this grandiose room with 20-foot ceilings, parquet floors, a Venetian mirror and chandelier. I collapsed in a chair next to him just from the taxi ride over from the hotel. |
 Left photo: Nazan awaits her and Cameron's appearance to the guests as bride and groom.
The reception was identical to a wedding reception as we are familiar with it, except guests staple money to a cloth around the bride and groom's necks -- a tradition I hope is employed in my culture before my own wedding day. We sat across from friends or relatives who couldn't figure out why the fussy Americans wouldn't eat anything but bread and water, and then I sneaked off to that sofa in the opulent room. |
 Right photo: The bride and groom have their first dance. To my knowledge, it was Cameron's first dance ever.
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Monday was our last day to make all our purchases, and I'd pretty much decided on a little marriage rug I'd seen the first day, but we also made a stop at the spice bazaar. Prae came with me to buy the rug, and she is a phenomenal bargainer. Just as some people are good at small-talk, she comes up with the greatest things to say at bargaining talk. I'm one who says "What's your best price?" "You sure?" "Really?" But she goes into theatrics, and the Turks loved this. First she made sure to tell them she was Thai and not Japanese. She didn't want the rich Japanese price; Thais are poor, they can't afford as much. Then she said it would make her cry all the time if we paid as much as they wanted for that rug. Were the dyes really natural? Because she didn't want them running from all the tears she planned to shed on that rug! Well, she got them down so that she'd be crying out of only one eye, and she'd just have to hold that eye off the edge of that tiny rug -- it was so small, after all, she'd have to aim to get her tears to drip on it! And then she pulled what I always love to see. The deal is done, and she springs it on them: "What have you got for me? He's spending all this money on some scrap of old wool that's going to be wet with my tears! You must have just a little gift for me!"
It wasn't another rug, alas, but it was an interesting tribal weaving that she would wear as a belt. She was great! I can't wait to get her into a Toyota dealership!
So that was pretty much the happy note our trip ended on. I won't go into details about how much we hate Turkish Airways, because that’s a different story and one you will have to find out for yourself if you are ever so unfortunate as to have to fly with them. But we did make it back to Bangkok to make this record of our trip, surprisingly enough.
Below photo: A Russian living in the U.S. took a photo of us at the amphitheater at Hieropolis near Pammukale. We're looking forward to having our photo taken together on many more travels to come. |
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| Checking off life's to-do list: Buying a Turkish rug - July 12, 2006 | | Ever since reading a Jeffrey Archer story story about the purchase of a Turkish rug in the Grand Bazaar, I'd wanted to do this, and I'd spent a fair amount of time researching rugs on the Internet over the past couple of months in preparation. Nazan's brother, Sanan, took us to a dealer that apparently is very well known and has dozens of magazine pieces in which they're featured hanging on the walls. I guess this can be a good or a bad thing, because it can mean the prices are higher, but what they sell is quality stuff. Sanan knew the owners and they were certainly reputable compared to all the pushy guys that try to drag you into their shops everywhere else. Cameron had been in this place before, and he'd been shown rugs that even he considered to be dazzling. He warned me that these rugs would not be cheap.
This particular shop is in a building that is actually older than the Grand Bazaar -- I think it dates to about AD 500. Two 15th century rugs hung on the wall, surrounded by other priceless rugs, rolled and folded all around the room. They began by serving everyone apple tea, and they started by telling us about the different kinds of rugs. Since I was the only one of our group actively shopping, we sort of made our way quickly to the wool-on-wool marriage rugs. These are small, usually antique, hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces made by women for their trousseaus. Their quality is a gauge for their future mothers-in-law to determine just how fine a bride the girl will be -- in terms of her level of craftsmanship, skill and eye for design.
A couple of helpers throw out rug after rug with a flourish, the main salesmen talking about the different patterns and dyes and regions from which the rugs are from. It's a wonderfully rich spectacle of color to watch the rugs unfurl atop one another in this mound of craftsmanship.
They certainly were not cheap, but they did have one that caught my eye, and the very upper end of my budget. (You can imagine how this story ends, and yes, you're right, but the story did not reach its conclusion until every single person who was within earshot of me was repulsed by the word "rug" and I had spent more time shopping for rugs than I have cumulatively spent watching the NBA and NFL in the course of my 36 years. But I guess you could have imagined that as well. This was Friday, and by Saturday, Prae was filing for divorce before the subject of proposal had even come up.)
The particular rug in question is a lambswool prayer rug, meaning it has an arch in the design on one end and is used by Muslims to pray on. It is very small -- maybe 3 by 4 feet -- and it has colors that range from jade green to -- I kid you not -- hot pink. In short, it is the second-closest rug I have ever seen that looks as lively as jewels. (The closest honor goes to an $8,000 silk rug I saw the next day when Sanan took me to another dealer that specialized in new hand-made rugs. Over that I spent two hours salivating, wondering what this same family's next rug would look like when it is done in 2-1/2 years.)
I did not buy right away, but I did make a mental note of that particular rug, and it became the benchmark for all others I waved away with a scowl and a sip of apple tea at other rug shops.
| | Date Created: Jul 12, 2006, 03:02 PM |
You can't walk three steps in Istanbul without seeing a rug hanging on a storefront or being asked quite forcefully to step into a rug dealer.
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I made particular friends with the rug dealer opposite our hotel. In the end, I did buy a cheap ($50) rug from him, mainly as a ticket price for the sales performance he gave me over three days. He had started out at $250 for the same item, and I wanted to see how impossibly low he would go. "Impossible price!" he kept assuring me, the lower he would go. A good thing to remember my next trip there for when I see something I really want.
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The dealer where I eventually purchased my rug is just outside the Grand Bazaar in a building older than the bazaar itself.
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The dealer begins by taking an order for Turkish tea or apple tea, and the customers sit on rug-covered benches while the dealer and his helpers unfurl samples of different types and qualities of rugs. It is a spectacular show and a new education with each dealer. The rugs themselves are dazzling.
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At a different dealer the following day, Prae watches a demonstration of how rugs are made -- each knot tied by hand.
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This is a silk rug that the dealer claims takes a family about 2 years to make because of the number of knots. It is a new rug made with old techniques, and the roughly 5 x 7 rug had an $8,000 starting price.
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Compare this photo with the previous rug photo. It is the same $8,000 silk rug, believe it or not. The photo was shot from the opposite angle, giving an idea of the qualities of a fine silk rug. Depending on the angle at which you view it, it can look like an entirely different rug. Now picture what it is like if you walk around it, watching the colors change as the light hits it differently. It is as if the rug is alive with color -- much as a fine portrait's eyes follow you around the room.
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Decisions, decisions. Actually, when the rug you like best is $8,000, and you know that even if you talked the dealer down to half that, which is entirely possible, you still couldn't afford it, then the decision is an easy one, even if it is nice to contemplate the idea.
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At this shop, all the rugs were new. As many rugs are still made with traditional techniques, the age of a rug was not a factor in my thinking, as long as the quality was there.
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Here also are new rugs, rapidly on their way to becoming antique under the sun and weather of the city air.
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Here is a silk rug being woven for demonstration purposes. Note the number of threads in a rug so small as roughly a foot wide.
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I wound up choosing this small lambswool marriage rug that is also a prayer rug, noted by its arch at one end. The colors ftom the natural dyes are jewel-like and change colors with the light. The dealer claims the rug is 40 to 50 years old, a claim of which I am a bit leery. I do know enough about rugs, I think anyway, to determine that everything else they told me about it is likely true.
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- World Travel > Checking off life's to-do list: Buying a Turkish rug - July 12, 2006
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| Prae's passion in travels and life: Food - July 12, 2006 | | Prae has a passion for food, everything about it: where is grows, how it's made, what it looks like after it's made and, of course, how it tastes. But even more than that, she sees food in everyday objects, looks at a chicken walking along the road and says "Yummy!" and is often prone to food related injuries, her enthusiasm for it is so great. Her travel snapshots, I notice, are often more a culinary glossary of a place than representative of the tourist sights she's seen. I therefore share a photo album that shares her life's passion. She's a bit put out that I'm posting this, because it embarrasses her a little, but I appreciate how much her enthusiasm for food has rubbed off on me. Although I think it will be a while before I look at a cow and lick my chops, thinking "Steak au Poivre!" | | Date Created: Jul 12, 2006, 06:30 AM |
Our first morning in Turkey turned up these trees -- broccoli trees, Prae decided, and that sign bade well for the rest of our culinary journey.
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Oranges, right on the tree!
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While only peripherally related to food, Prae surprisingly had never seen the use of the word "market" to describe anything but something open-air with stalls selling things. So she made sure to record this, which, of course, I though as normal as anything. That is one of the great pleasures of traveling with her: seeing the world through a different set of eyes.
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Prae made me stop the car. She jumped out to run and shoot this photo of herself where tomoatoes grow ripe on the vine, producing some of the tastiest tomatoes either of us has ever had.
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We stop for a lunch of boiled eggs and succulent peaches.
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Stop the car! There's a fruit stand! It's cherry country!
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The fruit stand lady hadn't weighed our purchased before Prae had eaten half a kilo.
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An afternoon snack of the most luscious cherries you can imagine.
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Kavlin? Hmm. There's a new melon to investigate.
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So that's how they become so good, ripened right on the vine.
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Olives on the tree. They'll be yummy soon.
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Grapes grow on an arbor well above Prae's head, but she spotted them nonetheless.
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A stop in a town that was so small we never caught the name led to tea and coffee and a discussion about both with a local who was good enough to share his table.
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We forged on into peach country.
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... And then into strawberry territory.
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More about the end product of foods, here Prae is at the ancient public latrine in Ephesus.
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Prae's lamb dinner in Selcuk.
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... And my kebap dinner across the table from her.
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The sunflower seeds growing on the Gallipoli Peninsula will soon be ready to munch on.
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We all enjoyed dinner overlookingthe Bosphorus on the Asian side of Istanbul.
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Prae befriends an ice cream stand guy in Istanbul.
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Not food, but close. In the Grand Bazaar, they sell olive oil soap, which is not only made of an edible product but resembles a delicious cheese. What better kind of soap for someone who loves food?
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At the Spice Market, Prae turns into an honorary salesperson, giving advice to any stranger with a question.
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Prae poses with delight next to Turkish delight.
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Istanbul's Spice Market is overloaded with all sorts of mysterious edible bits and pieces.
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More selection of dried fruits and delicious tidbits from the Spice Market.
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By the time we hit Istanbul, Prae was an expert on choosing only the best cherries. The salesmen were a bit exasperated by her discerning tastes.
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- World Travel > Prae's passion in travels and life: Food - July 12, 2006
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| A family's tribute to their father - June 29, 2006 | | Date Created: Jun 29, 2006, 11:52 PM |
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Above photo: A monk shaves Prae's brother Uee's head on the eve of their father's cremation.
Less than four days after I’d first met her father in the ICU of a hospital in her hometown, Prae called me on a Friday afternoon to tell me that he had finally succumbed to bone cancer. While certainly it was a relief in many respects that his suffering was over, and I think Prae had finally come to the conclusion that the inevitable would be for the best, there is no way to prepare for the event when it happens.
I already had planned to fly out to Ubon Ratchatani, where her family lives, on the 6:30 a.m. Saturday flight, and so Friday night, I packed every white article of clothing I own, for white is the mourning color here, which, I noted later under the sun, is eminently more practical than black in this heat.
By the time my flight arrived, the arrangements were already made and in fact under way. Buddhist funerary rites are very drawn out, in this case almost six days. Interestingly, however, I am told that this is very short as far as funerals go. In most cases it is seven days, and in the case of royalty, all the rites surrounding a funeral before the cremation can last a year.
In Prae’s father’s case, I am told the rituals were fairly simple. His coffin, a dark wooden box covered in gold ormolu ornamentation with classical Thai themes, lay in the downstairs open room of Prae’s family’s house.
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Her house, like many houses in towns in Thailand, is not much like a house as we think of it. It is a four-story building, its ground floor built for the purpose of commercial space. In this main ground-floor room, which has large folding metal doors that slide open on two sides, the coffin sat surrounded by white flowers that resembled mums. To the right of the coffin was an easel with her father’s photo, its frame draped with black chiffon. In front of the coffin was a little table that contained a lit candle and oil lamp and a pot filled with sand in which at least one fat stick of incense burned at all times. The candle and oil lamp were lit immediately after her father’s death to light his way in the afterlife, which Buddhists apparently believe is quite dark for the departed in the days after his spirit has left this set of flesh and bones. In front of the little table was a round decorative pillow that probably has a name and is not meant for sitting.
On my arrival, I was to wai to Prae’s father by lighting an incense stick pressed between my hands as if in prayer, thinking thoughts of respect for him, bowing all the way down to the pillow. Then I placed the lit incense stick into the pot filled with sand to let it burn.
This room was the main place of action 24 hours a day for the next several days. Prae’s brothers slept on the floor here to make sure the candle, lamp and large incense stick remained lit.
Next to the coffin was a dais with a small sort of altar with an image of the Buddha. There was room enough on the dais for four monks, and there were four square rugs for them to sit. Behind the rugs were four “fans” on stands that are used as part of the chants the monks perform.
Each morning around 8 and then again around 11, and each evening about 7, four monks would come to perform a service, to which friends and family would come as their time and level of respect permitted.
I had not planned to spend the entire time there. In fact, I had a return plane ticket back to Bangkok on Sunday afternoon. I had anticipated that I would fly out again on Wednesday for the cremation and final service. However, soon after my arrival, I realized that even in the distant position in which I stood as the farang boyfriend of the youngest daughter, I was obliged to stay for the duration. Moreover, however, I found that Prae’s family wanted me to stay, and I was flattered by that. I was invited, in fact, to sleep there with Prae’s brothers on the mat-covered cement floor, and to be invited to stay under the same roof, even if it meant painful nights and stiff mornings of sleeping on the floor, meant that I was considered part of the family. To leave and then return was really not thinkable at that point.
And thus began a few of the most fascinating days I have ever spent.
As opposed to my brief trip out the weekend before to visit Prae’s dad in the hospital, her young nieces and nephews were not so terrified of the farang this time. On my first day several of the 10 total trapped me, each holding up different objects, saying, “What’s this?” They are beginning to learn English at a young age, and here was a walking dictionary, except when it came to some items, and I don’t think any of them ever did understand that a piece of rusty hardware and a red silk Chinese item with fringe could both be a thingamajig. Nor did they bother to learn the proper pronunciation of thingamajig.
I made fast friends with Prae’s nephew Chian, who thought it was the funniest thing in the world that when he poked me, I would go, “Beep!” What fun farangs can be! They go “Beep!” when you poke them! I soon grew rather tired of saying “Beep!” and being poked, but it was nice to bond with another one of Prae’s family, even if he was small enough to sit on my back while I did push-ups.
While my level of communication with the rest of her family was largely limited to similar monosyllabic conversation, I did get to know them better, and they me.
It became my job to serve the monks drinks when they arrived. This is a somewhat complicated process to do it with the respect monks deserve. They would arrive in the morning, and I would have a tray prepared with four containers of water, four glasses of ice and four Pepsi bottles. One of Prae’s brothers would carry in the tray, and we would both get down on our knees and shuffle toward the lead monk, sitting as monks do on his rug on the 18-inch-high dais. I would wai, hand him each item with both hands, wai again, shuffle on my knees to the next monk and repeat the process.
Prae’s sister helpfully explained to me the different ways to wai, depending on whom I am wai-ing to. For an equal or lesser person, one’s hands come together with fingertips about chin high. This is the equivalent of a brief casual handshake. For an elder person to whom you are supposed to show more respect, your hands come together with your thumb tips about chin or mouth high. And for a monk or royalty, your thumbs are in the top of the mouth or nose range with a much more pronounced bow. I got better at wai-ing during these few days. I’ve never met so many people and at the same time shaken fewer hands. But it is something I still feel very self-conscious about doing. It was interesting to see how Prae’s brothers and sisters-in-law were doing their best to ingrain wais and politeness into the toddler-aged children. Anytime I handed the kids anything, an adult would prompt the kids to wai and say “Khop khun khrup!” (Thank you!). Same as in America, but with the addition of a wai that was much better than my own.
During the morning visit of the monks, they would fill their alms bowls with food to take back to the temple to share with the other monks. And they would also eat their breakfast. Depending on their denomination -- and I know that can’t be the correct term -- monks eat only once or twice a day, and they do not eat again after noon. In the early morning all over Thailand, it is a very common sight to see monks walking on their alms rounds. For someone to donate food to them earns the donor “merit,” and monks’ existence is based entirely on the generosity of others.
They would have their breakfast and do their chants in the ancient language called Pali. I really have no idea what the content of the chants was, but it is rather mesmerizing to listen to. I normally did this listening from the chairs lined up just outside the house, where friends and family would come sit for the services. Inside, there was no furniture, I realized that I would never make a very good Buddhist simply because I am physically incapable of sitting on my knees.
After the monks ate, breakfast would be served on the floor. Meals are eaten truly in the family style with four or five different dishes served on a tray, and people all grabbing usually with just their hands from the different dishes. This being northern Thailand, sticky rice with “jow” -- a type of wildly varying sauce made with fish sauce, chilies, tamarind and any variety of other unidentifiable ingredients -- are the foundation of almost all meals. Jow can be very fishy tasting, if it is made with the fermented fish sauce, or it can be smoky if it is made with dried chilies. In any case, it is usually very spicy. I have found lately that my taste buds have almost fully adjusted to Thai spices, and I can match almost anyone mouthful for mouthful with even the hottest dishes.
The manner of eating is this: You grab a wad of sticky rice, roll it into a ball and dip it into the jow. Or you use the ball of sticky rice almost as a utensil, picking up bits of other dishes and popping it into your mouth with the ball of rice. In this regard, you get full very quickly, but you get all the flavor of the various dishes, which could range from grilled chicken or pork to fish soup to pork skin or bamboo shoot salad.
Apparently, Prae’s mother was constantly concerned that I couldn’t eat their food, and I am hoping I made a good impression by trying everything and enjoying the good majority of it. I have surprised myself in some of the things I have discovered I enjoy -- fish maw for instance. Here’s something that sounds like the most foul things I can imagine, yet Chinese fish maw soup is absolutely wonderful, and you’d never know you were eating fish guts.
After breakfast, activities would vary. I did my best to stay out of the way or be helpful where I could. One of these ways was helping fold hundreds of sheets of gold foil paper, which were rolled into a shape that represented money on Chinese culture. These stacks of paper would subsequently be burned in what is known as the kong tek ceremony that has its roots in the famous terra cotta armies unearthed at the emperor’s tomb in China. The Chinese believed that vast armies would help their emperor in the afterlife. Historians believe that before the idea of terra cotta armies being buried with the dead, real humans were buried. As that ultimately proved impractical, effigies of real-life things were buried. And later, as that became too impractical and expensive, the idea came about to burn things that were representative of the real object. And so Prae’s father set off in his next life a wealthy man.
Each evening Prae’s family would burn some of the folded paper that represented money, but the real conflagration came on the day of the cremation ceremony. Before that, the family gathered all the paper items representing the comforts of this life: a paper house, a paper car, cell phone, watch, credit card, plane ticket, servants. There is actually an industry devoted to making such items. Prae tells me that the paper house, which was about the size of Barbie’s Malibu Dream House, cost about 4,000 baht -- roughly US$100.
They piled all this in the side yard and lit it on fire while walking around the fire, beating the ground with sticks. Prae tells me that this latter action was to scare ghosts away who would try to steal the money and other things while it is being transferred to the rightful owner.
She has told me enough things like this that I now know enough not to burst out laughing. Compared to the set of beliefs in the culture I was raised, they are simply so preposterous, so incredibly different from anything I can imagine, that I initially cannot comprehend anyone could seriously believe it. But then I think about it again, and I realize that to her, when I describe things like a casket showroom, or when she hears the story of a virgin giving birth to the son of God, she must think them equally bizarre.
Mornings somehow went quickly, and it seemed it was always time for the monks to return for lunch and another session of chanting. This would go generally as the mornings went, and I had more opportunity to practice my wais and serving techniques to apply them when the crowds came for the evening services. As many as 75 people would show up to pay their respects in the evening. The monks would come again, and after the service, it was my job to serve water and soup to the guests. I was the only Westerner there throughout, and apparently they thought it was awfully funny to see me in that role. But I enjoyed being of help and helping clear the dishes and empty cups.
Things went pretty much along these lines until Tuesday night, the night before the cremation. At that point, a monk came to shave two of Prae’s brother’s and one of her nephew’s heads. It is customary for a son to become ordained as a monk for as little as a day for his father’s funeral. Prae tells me now -- a week or so later -- that one brother will remain a monk for a month. It is during a time of year in which monks choose a temple at which to remain for the duration of the rainy season, and he will stay a monk for this period. Her other brother has chosen to remain in the robes for four months. I do not know why he chose this timeframe in particular, but both will stay apart from their families and live as monks in the temple for as long as they have decided. Doing this after a death earned themselves and the departed one’s spirit merit and will help that spirit be more successful in subsequent lives. Prae’s nephew, I should mention, is back to his old self, sans his hair and eyebrows, however.
The morning of the cremation, the two brothers and Prae’s nephew rose about 3:30 to go to the temple to become ordained. When they returned, I paid them the respected of any monk and served them drinks as I had done with the other visiting monks. Prae’s nephew got a kick out of this, but he did not like it when he ran to his mother with his civilian clothes, and she backed away from him. Monks are to have no contact with women; women may not even directly hand a monk something, or vice versa. Chai was a little put out by this aspect of his saffron robes.
The morning of the cremation started out similarly to the other days. On this day, Prae and her brothers and sister wore natural cotton smocks and sort of bandanas that are the uniform of mourning. Prae and I had shopping to do: We went to the market to buy flowers and a bunch of food: a pig’s head, steamed ducks, a huge round of doughy sweet bread, steamed Chinese buns -- a bunch of things that seemed rather odd to me. Later, I would see that these were for the Chinese part of the ceremony, when a whole feast is laid before the coffin, the different foods required by the tradition of the ritual.
This service took place in the late morning with the assistance of someone from the Chinese temple in town. After that came lunch, and then it was time for the processional to what Prae calls the Jungle Temple. This is a temples about three miles outside of town that is really in a jungle setting. It is a beautiful peaceful place that contains a main building or rustic simplicity. It is a Spartan building of unpainted cement with a corrugated iron roof. It is devoid of ornamentation, except for inside, where in one wall is painted the bodhi tree, under which Siddhartha Gotama attained enlightenment and became a Buddha. And under that painting sits a perhaps 6-foot tall gilded image of the Buddha.
The coffin was carried inside, having been transported in a truck bedecked with all the wreathes of flowers sent by friends and family that led a processional of cars that was completely familiar to my idea of a funeral.
Almost two dozen monks sat on a dais before the image of the Buddha, and close friends and family sat on the floor inside the building. The majority of guests sat in chairs outside in the shade beneath trees.
The service, again in Pali, lasted about an hour, and then the coffin was carried in one last processional to the open-air crematorium. It was at this point, I was beginning to question my presence there. Here was the first real sign of sadness I’d seen in members of Prae’s family as the casket was lifted to the 6-foot-tall concrete block platform flanked by two sets of concrete stairs. At the top of this structure, there was a recessed area into which the coffin was placed. Below this, it seems, was the means of ignition for the fire.
When the coffin was in place, the lid was removed by one so the family could have a last look. At this point, the candle that had been kept burning all week lit the kerosene and wood beneath the coffin. The amount of smoke at first made me think this was going to be an awful, stomach-turning sight accompanied by that distinctive smell. Strangely, however, it was a rather exhilarating end not only to a ceremony but to a life. Here in front of us was the very concept of ashes to ashes. From a Buddhist standpoint, Prae’s father was offering a valuable lesson: that the body of this life was simply flesh and bone, that the spirit would live on and that the body was no longer of use.
I was photographing all of this as it was happening, and I have often found as a reporter that having that camera or even a notepad and pen filter what I am witnessing can help me cope with what I normally might turn away from as a casual observer. I was counting on my camera doing that that day, and I was particularly glad when Prae’s family specifically asked that I photograph all the events surrounding the funeral, mainly because I thought I might need the camera as that filter. But interestingly, what I felt was a sort of peace -- not in myself, but in the minds of those in attendance. There, in that green clearing in the jungle where the smoke hung in the air was the very natural act of a body returning to nature taking place. It is more immediate and more public than burying a coffin in the ground, but it is the same in the end.
Overhead, a butterfly circled the clearing. It was one of those butterflies with black velvety under wings and iridescent blue top wings. Before then I had only seen that type of butterfly pressed between glass and sold at a souvenir stand. Butterflies are the symbol of Hospice in the U.S., and if I remember correctly, this is because some believe the spirit is carried to heaven by butterflies. I like that thought very much, and I liked it a lot more, seeing the dazzling shiny blue of those wings juxtaposed with the black undersides fluttering from tree to tree, somehow as if watching knowingly the scene below. |
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| Above photo: Prae's niece and nephew pay their respects to their grandfather. |
| A family in mourning - June 26, 2006 | | The taking of photos at a funeral and the events surrounding it is a concept with which I, as one who has grown up in a Judeo-Christian culture, am not very comfortable. When photos are taken at a funeral in America, it is typically because the person who died was prominent enough to attract press attention. At Prae's father's funeral, however, and the days leading up to it, her family wanted me to record the ocassion in photographs because it is a life event worth recording. In death, and in the remembrance of it, Prae's father was able to provide his family lessons in Buddhism. In Buddhism, there is no greater good than to help others understand the dharma (teaching), and in this regard, Prae's father was giving his family one last gift. In spending five days with the Ung-Udornpakdees, I was able to understand Prae better, and so I view this as a gift from her father as well. From a photographer's standpoint, It was a rarity to have such welcome access to such an intimate life event, and at any number of moments I wished that my photographer friends Dan or Cameron or Eric were there to record what I was seeing and attempting to capture; I knew they would have envied my position. That said, however, I do not share these photographs for any voyeuristic purpose. I share them out of respect for Prae's family and because I hope they reveal some of the fascination I experienced, and they may help a little give a better understanding of a very different way from which many are accustomed to approaching death. | | Date Created: Jun 26, 2006, 07:11 PM |
Prae's nephew and I fold sheets of gold foil-covered paper that are supposed to resemble money. They will be burned in the days leading up to her father's cremation in a ceremony called kong tek. It is a Chinese ceremony in which things are burned that the dead will need in the afterlife.
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Meals took place on the floor in front of the coffin, where a 24-hour vigil had to keep a candle and incense stick lit.
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Money for the afterlife begins to pile up.
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Three times a day for six days, monks came to chant. The evenings would draw the most friends and family. It became my job to serve the monks drinks upon their arrival, which is a lot harder than it sounds. It involved shuffling on my knees, bowing correctly, serving with two hands, bowing again and then moving to the next monk.
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Check back with me when I've learned more about Buddhism, and I'll tell you why the monks sometimes hold a string when they chant.
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Soup was served to the friends and family who came for the evening service. I do not know the significance of this -- if it is, indeed, anything more than hospitality, and I'm pretty sure it is -- but it was, for the record, some of the best wonton soup I have ever had.
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From left, Prae's niece Mew, brother Hoar, niece Beem and nephew Ming burn symbolic money.
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Prae's brother Dtee and her nephew Ming. Please forgive the spellings. I am still doing my best keeping track of unfamiliar names.
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A photo of Prae's father sits on an easel between the coffin and the chanting monks. Funerary chants involve the use of "fans" that cover the monks' faces during different parts of the chanting.
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The color of mourning is white, and as an element of the Chinese part of the many services, the family dressed in natural cotton cloth clothing made rudimentarily for the ocassion.
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Prae bows as the monks chant. Behind her, her mother performs a water-pouring ceremony in which she essentially prays for her late husband. The water from the bowl is poured on the base of a tree outside, which is intended to carry those prayers to his spirit.
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On the evening before the cremation, two of Prae's brothers and one nephew prepared to become ordained as monks. Some choose to do this for just a day; Prae's brothers chose to stay monks for a month and four months. Lim has his head and eyebrows shaved by a monk in preparation for a 4:30 a.m. ceremony from which he will return in robes and due all the respect of any monk -- the king would have to bow to him.
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On the morning of the cremation, Prae's brother Uee has returned a monk. His brother Dtee, left, has an early morning cigarette.
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When Prae's nephew Chai returned as a monk, he seemed very pleased that I bowed to him as I had been taught to do with any monk. But when he went to return his regular clothes to his mother, and she backed away from him, because women are not to be near monks, he seemed a little put-out.
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Lim and his son do their best to adjust their robes.
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Prae and I on the day of her father's cremation. All the family posed for photos in their mourning white.
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As part of the funerary rites, items representing earthly wealth are burned for use of the departed one in the afterlife.
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There is actually a whole industry supplying flammable products of earthly goods: cars, houses, cell phones, watches, "Other World" credit cards that resemble a gold American Express card.
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Even a first-class ticket on Hell & Paradise Airlines. This Chinese tradition dates back to the beginnings of China. We've all heard of the thousands of clay figures buried with the emperor. Apparently before that emperor -- I think it was Chin, for whom China was named -- they used to bury real people and animals. That proved impractical and it later became clay figures representing armies an livestock and necessities of an emperor on this earth. Later, that too proved impractical and costly, and so was started the practice of burning effigies.
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Prae, her mother, sister and five brothers.
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Before the cremation ceremony, a Chinese ceremony was held in which specific foods are offered to the dead. Each family member offers a different food, and in front of the coffin is a tremendous groaning board by the end of the ceremony.
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Relatives and friends perfom a last tribute before the coffin is taken to the temple.
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Prae carries out a paper trunk that will be burned in the side yard with all the other worldly riches.
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The large yellow ovals represent money.
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Somewhat like an interworld money transfer, the riches go up in smoke as Prae's brother, Lim, watches.
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The coffin is loaded into a truck laden with the wreaths of flowers friends and family have sent. On this procession to the temple, the candle that has been kept burning all week must stay lit. Its flame will light the crematory fire.
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Prae called the temple simply "The Jungle Temple," although I know it has another name that I cannot pronounce or remember. It is about 3 miles outside of town in a forest setting, and it is one of the most peaceful places I have seen or heard in Thailand. The main temple building itself is stark in its simplicity -- bare concrete walls and a corrugated roof. By that description, it sounds horrid, but it is in this simplicity in this natural setting that to me made it so strikingly spiritual. A massive frangipani stood by the opening at one end. At the other end, inside nearly two dozen monks sat to chant the service. in front of the wall behind them was a golden Buddha statue, and on the wall was a beautiful painting depicting the bhodi tree under which Siddartha Gotama attained enlightenment, thus becoming a Buddha.
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Illuminated by only natural light, the temple is as spectacular as many cathedrals.
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After waking before 4 to become ordained, Prae's nephew had run out of steam by the mid-afternoon service.
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A monk leads the service.
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Guests, most of whom have been sitting on chairs outside under trees while the service commences in the temple, pay their respects one last time to Prae's father.
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A final procession leads to the outdoor crematorium.
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Two final effigies, a male and female servant, will be burned with the body.
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The coffin is hoisted into an open-air crematorium. It is made of cement and firebrick, and the combustion comes from kerosene, as best as I could determine from the odor. There is a sort of shallow pit at the top of the stairs into which the coffin is placed.
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Once the coffin is in place, monks remove the top, allowing Prae's family a last look.
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And the fire is lit with the candle that was kept burning night and day since Prae's father's death almost six days before. Here is the point that was the most emotional and possibly horrifying. Personally, I had speculated about the smell, I recalled the days after the tsunami when crematoria were going non-stop in Phuket, and the odor was in the air. Strangely, however, there was not the familiar odor one associates with human flesh. I don't know if the monks add something to the fire, but that part was not stomach-turning at all. In fact, strange as it may seem, none of it was. It kept making me think of "Ashes to ashes ...," and it seemed to me that this very American term "closure" we all seem to be looking for was right here at hand for this family.
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Sun streaked through the initial smoke of the fire, creating in some ways an eerie effect, but in other ways it could be seen as almost comforting, knowing that the flesh and bones of this man were once again going back to the nature from whence they came. As Prae stood with her back to me as I took this photograph, she did not notice the butterfly that circled the beautiful clearing in the jungle. It was one of those butterflies with black velvety underwings and iridescent blue top wings. Before then I had only seen that type of butterfly pressed between glass and sold at a souvenir stand. Butterflies are the symbol of Hospice in the U.S., and if I remember correctly, this is because some believe the spirit is carried to heaven by butterflies. I like that thought very much, and I liked it a lot more, seeing the dazzling shiny blue of those wings juxtaposed with the black undersides fluttering casually about the clearing. At that moment, it was a lovely end to a fascinating ceremony that was not horrifying at all but rather very natural and peaceful.
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| Meeting the parents - June 16, 2006 | | Date Created: Jun 16, 2006, 09:24 PM |
We had gone to fairly great lengths to procure tickets to the Royal Barge Procession, which was the highlight of the 60th anniversary celebrattions of the king's accession to the throne. We'd made plans to go with a friend and co-worker visiting from Sweden, and I had been looking forward to witnessing a bit of history.
Plans change, however.
At the very moment, in fact, that the hundreds of oarsmen were snapping digital photos of each other in traditional costume before they jumped into gilt ancient barges that date to a time before Bangkok existed, I was standing at the foot of a hospital bed in the intensive care unit of Ubon Ratchathani Hospital with a surgical mask on, wai-ing to a naked man who happened to be the most skeptical and imposing person I have met in all of Thailand in spite of his emaciated condition.
Prae and I received word late on Saturday night that her father had been admitted to ICU. This was no great surprise: He'd had prostate cancer nearly 10 years and had been bed-ridden for the most part since January with -- from what I could gather from Prae -- cancer that had metastasized to his bones. Prae has been back and forth between her hometown of Ubon Ratchathani, about 500 miles from Bangkok, at least half a dozen times in the past six months. Typically, she goes by overnight train, which she claims to like because of the sleeper berth that can be had for less than 10 US dollars, but I suspect it is her inherent thriftiness, which I am only beginning to adopt out of necessity. This time we flew on an early-morning flight, booked just eight hours before it was to leave. In the U.S., this sort of booking would be greeted with a thousand-dollar price tag and a snotty request for a death certificate from the airline, because, of course, sick people do not warrant any sort of last-minute discount, while dead bodies do slightly, if you provide the right paperwork. In Thailand, the price for two one-way tickets and a return for me alone is just under $200, no matter what the reason or the timing, with no questions asked.
In less than 12 hours from now I am flying back to Ubon on a mission that is sadder, yet filled with what I see as relief, for a price even lower, and yet I still had to provide no official evidence of death.
Prae's father passed away today shortly before 3 p.m. I am afraid I have what some may see as a rather callous view of death. I believe that when a person is diagnosed with an illness that is fatal and untreatable, the best thing that can happen for him and for his family is that he goes as quickly as possible. I have wrestled with this view since Dad's death, and I have found myself at times desperately trying to take back the things I said to him when he lay unconscious in the hospital bed when I held his hand for the first time since I was a little boy and I told him that it was OK to let go for his sake and ours. I have felt a guilt, in retrospect, for shooing him out the door, and I felt callous, because, after all, in the great scheme of things, we are all fatal, as a good friend named Don Pricer told me before he died. I spent more than a year doing a story on Don, a retired Air Force colonel who had flown in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II and who was a subject of my story simply because he was dying of bone cancer. Why rush things? Don wound up living a year and a half after being diagnosed with just a month or two more -- so long, in fact, that my story on his fatal illness ran before he died. He got a kick out of that, the hard-headed military guy who refused to go.
Prae's father has been very much the same. In January it was inconceivable that he would get better or last much longer, and he has been in intense pain since then, being shot full of morphine that has seemingly had no effect. But he had something in his mind that he needed to stick around for. Prae's youngest brother and his wife have had some troubles -- exactly what I'm not sure of. But his financial situation is not steady, their marriage is not the greatest, and their son was a particular favorite and a particular worry of her father. Who would be this boy's protector if he were to die? I sometimes wonder too if he wondered what would become of his two daughters. One is a single PhD candidate at Thailand's most prestigious national university, and the other -- will heresy and the insolence of youth never cease? -- is living with a farang in Bangkok!
That Prae and I are in this relationship is a situation I have rarely questioned -- and if so for different reasons -- but from her family's standpoint, it is something that borders on the unacceptable and moreover the embarrassing. The fact I am not a millionaire does not figure into it, and that is something for which I have the utmost respect for them. But the fact I am a farang -- a Westerner -- is the sole point here. This conservative Chinese -- second generation Thai -- family does not go off marrying its daughters to farangs. They may not be wealthy by farang standards -- even if they are well-off by Thai standards -- but their little girl, no matter how inconsequential she is because she is a little girl, does not go off living in sin with a Westerner and his uncouth ways of shaking hands and speaking frankly.
When Prae got the call on Saturday about her father's condition, we debated whether I should go with her. In her culture, if I am to meet the parents, it is tantamount to asking for her hand in marriage. I had been hoping to learn more Thai and at least have a conversation with them the first time I met them. In her father's state, I never wanted to go to be the unwanted guest while the family kept up its six-month 24-hour-a-day vigil. But then she started to explain to me why she had never been close to her father, that in Chinese families, to be a daughter was the equivalent of being a toilet: Daughters are worthless and are brought up to belive they are such. She has always been in the shadow of her five brothers, and this and her tears as she explained this, made me finally understand a little more why it was that she said she loved this man because he was her father but for few other reasons.
I think it was that admission on her part -- one of her few, each of which I take careful note of and cherish, as she is one who keeps her secrets in many ways -- that made me realize it did not matter what her family thought of me being there; I needed to go last week to be there for her and show that I was there for her, regardless of what her family might think of me. I was going in, at least, with having met her sister and two of her brothers.
So we flew out there on the 6:30 a.m. flight last Sunday, and her brother, Hoar -- whom I had met on two occasions before yet mistook for his older brother, Lim, because he'd been awake all night and looked several years older than his 36 -- picked us up at the airport. We drove straight to the hospital, where everyone spent most of the next 36 hours.
In the waiting room of the ICU, I met two more brothers, whose names I still have trouble remembering, because they aren't Kevin or Bob. And I met her mother. I realized during my elevator ride to the third floor that I had not practiced my wai nearly enough and that shaking hands upon meeting is still too ingrained into me. But I stepped out of the elevator and gave the best wai I could do, my hands together at about chin level, a short bow, and a "Sawadee khrap" to her mother. I realized then that Prae had not done a very good job instructing me what to call her mother or telling me the names of her remaining brothers and sisters-in-law. Later, it was discussed that I could call her mother "Mrs. Ung-Udornpakdee," which she thought uproariously funny, or the Thai word for "Mom," which even though it was Thai, I did not feel entirely comfortable with. We settled on "Khun Maai," which means roughly "Mrs. Mom." "Khun" is a standard title of respect, which is the equivalent to "Mr." or "Ms." or "Mrs.," yet it is used even more often. Almost all Thais at work call me "Khun Ralf," for instance.
The doors to the ICU were closed, and to go in required changing into hospital slippers that looked far dirtier that the sandals I wore. It also required a mask to prevent the spread of germs.
Upon our arrival, there was great discussion between Prae and her mother, and even though I could not speak Thai, I had a pretty good idea of what was being discussed. "It's all right," I said. "I understand. You go in, and I'll wait outside." I waited very uncomfortably outside, with one brother whom I had not met asleep on the couch and Khun Maai sitting staring at me, both of us wondering what to say. Prae has told me that the only two words of English she knows are "coffee" and "pizza," and my Thai has gotten only so far as to say "Please mind the gap between train and platform," which at any other time is quite the icebreaker. It is said over the loudspeaker at every subway stop, and typically when I say it to Thais, they laugh and laugh and don't mind me for only knowing how else to say "Where's the bathroom?"
This was different. (However I was able to use the latter phrase with her mother on a later occasion.) So I pulled out my book, which I was hoping would earn some points, because it is an English translation of a Thai historical novel and has the title in Thai on the cover -- I thought at least they'd think I was interested in Thai culture. Then again, they are Chinese-Thai, or Thai-Chinese, and I have no idea exactly what that means.
One thing I found that it means is a the very sense of hospitality that I was futilely hoping my presence would not provoke. As content as I would have been to sit patiently and read my book all weekend long, being there in case Prae need my moral support, her family would not let me be, despite the communication difficulties. I went off on numerous errand-cum-sight-seeing missions. In doing so, I got a feel for Ubon Ratchathani and came to the conclusion it is the Dayton, Ohio, of Thailand.
Geographically and climate-wise there is nothing to recommend about the small city. It is not near the coast, and it is not in the mountains. The city itself is nondescript by Thai standards. It has your typical three-story buildings that have a business on the ground floor and residences above. Prae's family's own house is that way, in fact. I never did go inside during my 36 hours there, however. Previously, Prae has told me that one reason her mother has been hesitant to have me visit is her housekeeping habits. Apparently even in the best of times, she was too busy with the family construction business to care much about housekeeping, and since her husband has been bed-ridden, any proclivity she did have for keeping house has fallen by the wayside in order to focus her attentions on taking care of her ailing husband. Hard for me to say, not having been closer to the inside than briefly meeting the rotweiller named Jumbo on the chain near the backdoor. (I stayed a foot past the end of the chain, just in case. Prae was astounded to hear that we in America train our dogs to be friendly to everyone -- "What's the point of having a dog?" she wondered, she herself a dog lover. In my own mind, I wondered what she would think of Sophie taking up two-thirds of the bed.)
So I saw the exterior of Prae's family home, and I saw the exterior of her brother, Hoar's house, which looks very nice and resembles much more that which I as an American would call a house. It was gated and had a yard I did not see -- we were there only to pick up a car, and although I was told I'd be staying there, later, for reasons only a fluent Thai speaker could know, it was decided I would stay in a "mansion," which is another name for a cheap hotel. I might have felt put off by this, but I think there was a valid reason for this that had something to do with the air conditioning not working in the guest room, and it would have been a loss of face if I were not comfortable. Additionally, his house was across the city from the hospital, and the mansion I stayed in was maybe 50 meters from the hospital -- and, incidentally, it was brand new and extraordinarily comfortable -- made more so, I might add, as a Kircher, in that it provided me a bit of escape from all that family togetherness.
On my second day in town, I went to visit two of the apartment buildings that one of Prae's brothers whose name I forget built. I am going to get into trouble with this forgetting of names, but I simply do not know what to do about it. It took almost a year of my dating Prae to remember whether her hometown was Ubon or Udon, and I still mix them up sometimes, and she now gets mad at me when I do. I take that to mean there is a certain rivalry between those from Ubon and those from Udon, but I do not know more about it than my suspicions allow me to speculate.
I later went to the equivalent of a Home Depot with her brother Hoar, who is probably my best friend of the bunch. This place, whose name I do not know, because unlike in Bangkok and in Phuket, Ubon does not have a reason to put signs in both Thai and English, is much more like Home Depot than the HomePro or HomeWorks I am accustomed to in Bangkok. It very nearly comes close to being Home Depot, although the materials it carries are very strangely different from those with which I am familiar. All of the buildings in Thailand start with reinforced concrete. There is very little wood in them compared to our houses. And so the warehouse carries all sorts of concrete products, and the store carries all sorts of products that involve concrete construction rather than woodworkers' tools. I have often marveled at how very different the sounds are on a Thai construction site compared to a U.S. construction site. You tend to hear hammer drills and grinders quite often, but nary a circular saw or nail gun.
Hoar took me to a construction site after the Thai Home Depot. He, like his brothers and father, is a structural engineer, and he runs a general contracting company. On this day, he had a meeting with a client for whom he was building a "resort" -- a four or five-bungalow hotel along a highway leading into Udon. Strangely enough, I had met the architect who designed the place while in Bangkok, and I saw him there on the site. My biggest impression of the worksite was the crew mixing concrete, and I have to admit that as nice as it may be to get to build what you want where you want to in Thailand, seeing those guys mix the concrete, it made me glad that there are uniform standards to which contractors must be held in the U.S. They threw in some sand and some rocks and a bag of cement and some water, and when it looked something like concrete, they poured it into a two-wheeled cart, wheeled it over to a two-story mold, and bucket by bucket began the pour into what ultimately will be a column on a pergola. I would not want to be around it in the event of an earthquake.
While I was going all over town on these errands that were designed to show me a good time, I found out I was having one. It was the first time I had been in a car that Prae was driving, and I was impressed at her driving and talking on a mobile phone, which is de rigeur for a Thai. She could do it with an automatic or manual transmission with equal facility, I noted with approval. If you have ever seen the movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner called "Romancing the Stone," you may remember a chase scene where a drug dealer casually gave them a tour of his hometown in Colombia as they were being shot at. He pointed out his relatives houses and friend's businesses and where various people were born as they frantically bounced along. This is how I felt during my drives with Prae through Ubon. It is obvious her family is well-connected in Ubon, merely from the number of people's houses and businesses she was able to pointy out having some connection to.
I found myself liking her hometown very much -- much more so than I should, perhaps, because, as I say, there is very little to recommend it. But that sense of home and place that my brief tours conveyed was somehow very alluring and comforting.
What is even more likable about the town, however, is its food. Whether it is a result of her family's hospitality or that the town really is this culinary Mecca, I was full until Wednesday from the amount I ate on Sunday and Monday. It has for some reason fantastic Chinese food, and I must have had a dozen steamed Chinese buns, filled with everything from bamboo shoots to roast pork. The town is also known fort its Vietnamese food, which is more than can be said for anywhere I have been in Vietnam. I have likened that situation to food in Cuba: To get the best Cuban food, one must go to Miami. In any event, Prae and I were able to have one meal on our own, at a friend's Vietnamese restaurant, which was fantastic. Her friends who met her there were too. One friend was of Chinese heritage and beautiful -- not just because she said I was much more handsome and fit than in pictures. And her other friend was so attractive that out of reflex I asked Prae if she were married. That question earned me a sharp kick.
On Sunday night, Prae took me to a night market, which had all sorts of stalls and carts of delicious-looking foods, but Prae has an eye for these things, and she told me that no one there had anything good, so we headed off for another place. As we were leaving, I happened to run into a woman I work with at AIT, which was a strange coincidence, being nearly 500 miles from Bangkok. I have to admit -- and this is terrible -- but whenever I do see someone I recognize, I sort of pat myself on the back and think to myself, "See? I'm not your typical American. They don't all look alike to me!" I do still joke with Prae though, when she asks if I remember someone, and I invariably say, "Oh sure, dark hair and brown eyes, right?"
We left that night market and had unbelievably good noodle soup with Vietnamese sausage (which is surprisingly like bratwurst) on the street elsewhere in town.
Most of our time and meals took place in the waiting room at the ICU though. These meals came four or five times a day, and what family knew English kept asking if I were hungry. I learned that an unacceptable answer to this question is "No." I know from Prae that Thais do not eat when they are hungry; they eat often enough in fact that they never could possibly be hungry. Rather, boredom, a social event, or a simple hankering causes them to eat. And so, I am trying to learn to say in Thai, "Well, I could eat something," even if I am not hungry in the slightest.
Her whole family was camped out in the waiting room with a complete supply of meals throughout the day. I arrived Monday morning and was made to eat a fruit that looked like a banana to me but I was told was not (nor was it a plantain), a chunk of Vietnamese sausage, which comes wrapped in about 12 layers of banana leaf, and a Chinese steamed bun that contained a pickled egg and roasted pork.
During these times at the hospital, her brothers and their wives and children would come as well. Her nieces and nephews were terrified of the farang, which I thought was very strange. They looked and stared at me as if I were an alien. I kept telling Prae that none of my nieces and nephews would think it strange to see an Asian, so what gives? She did not have an answer, but I find I have a lot of ground to cover before I win the hearts of this toughest audience to date. One niece in particular, who is about 4 and who has a reputation of being very outgoing -- in a superstore if someone gets in her way, she'll just belt him in the back of the knee or thigh. With me, however, we rode in a car together, and when I was not looking at her, she could not take her wide eyes off me, this grotesque, white, hairy man with round eyes, I guess. She kept saysing to her parents, "Gluay farang!" ("Scared of farang!"). She never did come about.
Who did come about, I think, anyway, was Prae's mother, as much as she could. I think at least she now has a face and a personality on which to cast judgment. And Prae's father too, we were able to meet just before I left for the airport. I don't know how the permission came about, but Prae told me to put on a mask and go into the ICU to pay my respects to her dad. I went in, and his bed was surrounded by two brothers, her sister and her mother. Her father was awake. Seeing him there on the bed reminded me of Dad's body fighting for life at the end. The body continues to function out of stubborn habit.
I had on a surgical mask, and I wai-ed first to the monk who had come from Bangkok at the request of the family. And then I wai-ed to her father. He looked me in the eye, and held up his right hand to wai back. He struggled with his left hand, which was on the bed, and Prae's mother told him it was perfectly all right to wai with one hand. I have absolutely no idea what he thought of me, but I am glad I was able to meet him even under the circumstances, and I hope he was too. |
| Songkran trip - April 17, 2006 | | Date Created: Apr 22, 2006, 11:44 AM |
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Above photo: Prae and I enjoy the sunset on the deck of our bungalow on Koh Kood.
April 13-16 was the Songkran, or Thai new year, holiday. After our experience last year going to the center of Songkran festivities in Chiang Mai, where we ended up barricading ourselves in our hotel to escape the water and talcum powder-throwing that goes along with the holiday, Prae and I decided to go the budget route and to try to escape the party by traveling to the most remote place we could find.
We chose Koh Kood, the easternmost island in Thailand, very near the Cambodian border. It is a place that is accessible only by boat, has just a few roads, and it is visited almost exclusively by vacationing Thais. I was in fact the only Westerner of the 60 or so staying at Koh Kood Resort, and as is the case whenever a farang does anything seen as unusual by Thais, I seemed to get laughed at a lot. Thais love the novelty of a farang doing as they do, and their laughter was certainly not derisive; rather it was the same laughter that I hear when I try out the few words of Thai that I know.
Our plans to escape Songkran revelers were only moderately successful. We left Bangkok by bus (about $6 for each ticket, which included a snack served by a uniformed ride attendent and the movie "Garfield" dubbed into Thai) for the five-hour ride to Trat on April 13.
When we arrived in Trat, which is a mean little city of about 25,000, we found that we could not entirely escape Songkran. The main street our hotel was on was blocked by people riding in the back of pickup trucks, throwing water on each other. Such is the nature of Thai new year celebrations. What started as a welcome of the rainy season with a symbolic washing of the hands with scented water has, over the years, turned into an all-out splash fest. They particularly like to float a huge block of ice in the barrels from which they draw pails of water to throw on you. It is simply impossible not to get soaking wet with this water they draw from local canals and open reservoirs by gasoline-powered pump. The water is often just filthy, and it makes you wonder how many eye and ear infections are an aftermath of Songkran reveling. On top of all this -- and I do not understand this part of it at all -- they come up to you and spread talcum powder on your face.
What is particularly remarkable about this water-throwing is that if you are older (and obviously I am not old enough yet), you are entirely immune from it, if you choose to remain dry. So, on a crowded street with people throwing buckets of water on each other, soaking each other to the bone, you will see older men and women walking along, neatly dressed and completely dry. Often, soaking wet people will come up to them and gently pour water over their hands, carrying out the traditional celebration and showing their respect.
I garner very little respect, however, and our pickup truck taxi had to drop us about two blocks from Meung Trat Hotel, where we arrived sopping wet about five minutes later.
For Prae, Songkran festivities are a love-hate relationship. While she too feels as I do about being soaked, it is so much a part of her culture and tradition that she can't help but enjoy it in theory if not in practice.
In Chiang Mai, where we visited last year for the holiday, the partying is at its peak, and it goes on for as long as 10 days. We were discouraged at arriving in Trat on the first day of the official four-day festival, thinking it would be similar to Chiang Mai, where after one day, we wanted to escape the water-throwing.
We checked into the Mueng Trat Hotel, discovered exactly what $10 a night gets you in a hotel room and decided against ordering room service if any were offered. Our room had a/c and its own bath, but the bath contained a squat-style toilet with a scoop of water from a tank to flush it. Our view was of the wall of windows of the other wing of the hotel about 12 feet away. Two bare flourescent lights hung overhead. It was not a place you wanted to spend a lot of time -- not at all a good haven from the water-throwing going on outside.
Because of the holiday, we found that most of the restaurants were closed. I joked to Prae that the only places you can find open in the States on Christmas Day are Thai and Chinese restaurants, so we ought to look for an American restaurant. Trat, however, is a small city, visited by few Westerners, and the chances of that did not seem great. Interestingly, however, on our second night there, we were walking along a narrow street, wide enough only for motorbikes, and came across a stylish garden-style, very Western-looking reataurant that was open. It turns out the place is owned by a Thai man who said on the menu that he had worked in one of Washington, D.C.'s finest restaurants. Prae was the first to note that he did not say what he actually did in the restaurant and very well was the one who cleaned the toilet, and I got a good laugh out of it, because those were very nearly my own unvoiced thoughts. The food, however -- including a $2 steak dinner -- was surprisingly good. I have to admit that it was not I who ordered the $2 steak, because I figured how good can a $2 steak be? I ordered the firey-hot jungle curry, and once again Prae proved her uncanny ability to know exactly what to order just by (literally) gut feeling. The steak was no Gallagher's, but it gave The Outback a run for its money. The best thing about the restaurant, though, was that it actually felt like we were sitting in a chic little garden restaurant in Adams Morgan.
Our second day took us to Koh Chang, which is an island reachable by ferry from the Trat province. We had left Trat very encouraged on the second day of Songkran festivities, because the people of Trat had stopped almost entirely their water-throwing. But when we made it to Koh Chang, which is the second-largest island in Thailand next to Phuket, and which draws a fair number of Western tourists, the water-throwing was on in force. Koh Chang is a beautiful place, looking much as Phuket must have looked 30 or 40 years ago, but we both decided that even though it was not as populated as Phuket, Phuket has more to offer and more charm. Perhaps our impression was too influenced by our dripping clothing, however.
Prae had been particularly excited to go to Koh Chang restaurants, which serve a particular type of prawn. I think we call them rock shrimp. They are as large as small Florida lobsters but do not have the antennae. She kept saying, "I want to find a place where we can eat that animal!" I explained to her that typically in English, we use a vocabulary for food that distinguishes between the animal itself and its edible flesh: A pig's a pig, but we eat pork, for instance. She understood, but she still can look at a chicken pecking around someone's yard and say "Looks yummy!"
Almost daily, it's great fun to hear some of Prae's English idiosyncracies. I'm constantly impressed by the extent of her English knowledge and fluency, even if she remains self-conscious about it, but there are often some nuances that she hasn't fully learned that keep me smiling. Sometimes I find that I like the idiosyncracies too much to correct her. For several months last year, for instance, she would say to me, "You are very stink!" if I needed a shower. I enjoyed that so much it was months before I could bring myself to explain the difference between stink and stinky, and, of course, when I did, it was a bit of innocence lost, and I now am "stinky" when I require a shower, which I do not think is nearly as fun.
That reminds me too of her sometimes limited gamut of synonyms, particularly with regard to parts of the anatomy. Last year, she returned from a visit home, where her nephew had just undergone some sort of operation on a certain very personal part of his anatomy. We were walking along the street in Phuket, surrounded by all sorts of English-speaking families of tourists, and she's telling me very matter-of-factly about what exactly the doctors did to her 5-year-old nephew's cock. In horror, I stopped, and we immediately had a vocabulary lesson that included more clinical terms for both male and female parts of the anatomy. Coming from someone who still knows no more complicated Thai sentence than "The boy is under the table," I can hardly fault the minor gaps in her knowledge.
Alas, we were not able to find a restaurant where we could "eat that animal," and we were left with a low impression of Koh Chang.
We headed to the speck of a town called Khlong Yai to meet our boat to Koh Kood the next day. This area of Thailand is a very narrow strip between the Gulf of Thailand and the Cambodian border. We rode in the back of a pickup truck that was bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to the resort, and we leaned on bags of pineapples, which are not very comfortable.
On the way we stopped at a memorial where in 1979 had been massive refugee camps of Cambodians fleeing Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. While the memorial itself was not that impressive, our drive down this narrow strip of Thailand was rather haunting. On one side were tall mountains of jungle that came right up to the road. Over those mountains just a couple of miles is Cambodia, and for some reason it was very easy to imagine thousands of terrified Cambodians tramping through the mountain trails under the jungle canopy and just popping out to safety on this road. It was very easy to picture a family of refugees emerging from the roadside jungle, and it was very moving to think that this road we were travelling down was such a symbol of freedom and safety to those people -- even if that safety came in the form of overcrowded Red Cross refugee camps on the beach, run personally by the queen of Thailand.
To this day, the area is heavily populated by Cambodians, and when we were awaiting our boat to Koh Kood, Prae went to buy a couple of bottles of water. I have to admit that I rely on Prae and her Thai speaking far too much. It is simply too easy to rely on her, and probably far too often she's the one doing all the communicating for us. In restaurants, I always have her order, but that is actually based on her uncanny ability to know to order the best thing that any restaurant has to offer.
At any rate, she came back from the water-buying errands a minute or two later without any, saying to me, "No one speaks Thai here!" So I volunteered to do the translating, and sure enough the restaurant I went in had all its signs in Cambodian -- which I still say looks exactly like Thai -- and the woman working there not only did not know the Thai word for water, she did not know the English or Spanish (I figured, what the hell, might as well try) words. Having once successfully acted out the term "down-filled bed pillow" to a Thai salesperson, a couple of bottles of water was no strain on my thespian talents. I returned to Prae triumphant, for once bearing the responsibility myself of communicating the basic necessities of life. That was the last time that was to happen on that trip, however, where from then on, everyone spoke nothing but Thai, and there were precious few boys under the table for me to point out.
We joined about 60 others -- all of them Thai -- going to Koh Kood Resort and settled into the two-hour boat ride, and thus began a luxurious two days of numerous naps, lots of reading, eating more seafood than we could stomach and basking in the sun.
Koh Kood Resort (a three-day, two night stay for two is roughly $250, including meals and the boatride from Khlong Yai) consists of about 20 bungalows built on stilts over a tidal pool of crystal clear water. They are actually pretty luxurious, each with running water and a bathroom. The toilet is grandly perched up two steps on a dais, much like a throne -- presumably to accomodate the plumbing. Windows face the water on three sides, and a deck has a ladder straight down into the water. At night the breeze actually picks up, and it makes for a wonderfully relaxing place to spend a couple of days.
The first night we went out squid fishing with a group from the resort but had no success. The next day, we spent the whole afternoon visiting snorkeling spots, which were corwded and not as fun as we -- both scuba divers -- would have liked. On the other hand, we could spend much of the day lolling about in lounge chairs, reading, listening to our iPods and drifting in and out of sleep. Our last morning there involved a boat ride to a small town on Koh Kood and then a pickup truck ride to a waterfall, notable for its carved graffitti made by a former king of Thailand and a former king of Cambodia. The waterfall itself was not much to see, as it is the end of the dry season here, and the flow was reduced to a trickle.
We left Koh Kood about 1 p.m. and had a long journey before us: a two-hour boat ride, an hourlong pickup truck taxi ride to Trat, a six-hour bus ride back to Bangkok and an hourlong taxi ride home -- about 12 hours of travel time, all things considered. |
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| Above photo: At Koh Kood, we were greeted with a heavy tropical shower upon arrival. |
| Songkran photo album - April 17, 2006 | | A few photos from our recent budget trip to Trat and Koh Kood for the Songkran, or Thai new year, holiday. | | Date Created: Apr 22, 2006, 10:45 AM |
Our trip started out a little grimly, with a two-night stay in the provincial capital of Trat. Here is the grand entrance to the Meung Trat Hotel, which Prae and I thought looked rather like the police station. The rooms were of a similar caliber, but with a/c and a bathroom (complete with squatting style toilet that you flush with a pan of water) at less than $10 a night, it fit into our budget. And it happened to be the most luxurious accommodation in town.
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Trat is a small city of about 25,000 residents.
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Prae buys a bunch of rak gam fruit, which is covered by a spiny husk and tastes like a Sweet Tart.
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We find refuge from the Songkran revelers, who throw water and talcum powder on each other on the street during the Thai new year celebration, in a great bar, where you can recline while having a beer.
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Prae and I rode with a truckload of uncomfortable pineapples bound for Koh Kood Resort.
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Our travels took us from Trat to Khlong Yai, a tiny fishing port in the narrow strip of Thailand between the Gulf of Thailand and Cambodia. At the port where we were to meet our boat to the island of Koh Kood, fishermen readied their boats for another trip to sea.
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Aboard the boat to Koh Kood, Prae gets in a bit of reading and eats dried squid in one of its myriad forms.
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I have my own form of seafood snack as well: goldfish crackers.
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Our resort on Koh Kood is on a remote part of the island, accessible only by boat.
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About 20 bungalows are built on stilts over the water.
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An afternoon shower greeted us on our arrival. Just before the rain began, we had been swimming and saw a waterspout in the distance.
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Prae on the ladder to our bungalow.
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At low tide, our bungalow was left high and dry, buy at nighttime, the water would come in and the wind would come up, and we'd be lulled to sleep by the sound of waves.
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In a town on Koh Kood, a seaside villa has all the amentities -- including satellite TV.
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The boardwalk needs a little work.
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Here was a new dish for both of us: Frangipani tempura. Tastes like chicken.
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| A trip to the market - March 25, 2006 | | About a mile from AIT is Dalat Thai, which literally means "Thai Market," but this is not just any Thai market: It is the wholesale vegetable, fruit and flower market for all the restaurants and groceries in the greater Bangkok area. Much of it is wholesale, and you'll go into one whole warehouse building that is devoted to nothing but oranges. In other buildings, there will be a place the size of a Wal-Mart store that has nothing but garlic or chilies or pumpkins. There is a a whole community built around the market to house the people who work there, and interestingly the main places of business that surround the market are banks -- as deals are done in cash. As in any Thai center of population, there are massage parlors, although only one seems to offer only massages. There are retail areas of the market, as well as food stalls to feed the workers. So it's possible to buy the freshest vegetables and fruits at very low prices. Unfortunately, however, Bangkok's supply of parsley does not go through Dalat Thai, and the main goal for our trip there could not be attained: We postponed for a day our meal of chicken scalloppini. I get the feeling from the smells of the cooking I've had in the rest of the building that we're the only ones who were planning such a dish, and it makes me wonder what my neighbors will think when they smell steak au poivre this weekend. The aroma of Pine Club onions rings we made last week, incidentally, drew a few curious neighbors. Alas, my repertoire of meals I can cook with nothing but a single-burner stove is reaching its limit. Baked Alaska is going to prove a particular challenge. At any rate, to make the mile journey to Dalat Thai is rather an experience in itself. I have walked there once, but only at great risk of bodily injury, as the route is along the main divided highway that goes in front of AIT. Prae, being Thai and not much of a believer in bipedal transport of any sort, has insisted she will never walk there. So, we rode our bikes to the bus stop in front of AIT, waited for the open-air bus (which costs only 8 baht, or 20 cents, per person), caught the No. 39 and rode it about a mile north on the highway, past the market, to the U-turn, and then back to the market. Here are the pics of our jaunt. | | Date Created: Mar 25, 2006, 06:44 PM |
Prae rides her new Gary Fisher mountain bike down 4th Avenue N.W. near our building, which is called ST-9 and whose architectural appeal is commensurate with its name.
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The krapow rod-may, or literally "bus's purse," a woman who collects your bus fare, collects tolls from passengers. They have an uncanny ability to remember faces, even during the peak of rush hour, although since I'm typically one of the only Westerners -- or farlangs -- it's typically easy to remember me, and my 8-baht fare never is forgotten.
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Prae with a pear -- actually it's a pear-shaped pomelo, in the pomelo section of the market.
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Men cart dollys loaded with jackfruit.
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In the chilies section of the market, there is so much spice in the air, your eyes begin to water. Workers sort them into smaller bags by hand, and all I could think of is the pain that must result if they wipe their eyes absent-mindedly.
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Prae admires pumpkins that to me look like they'd make lousy jack-o-lanterns.
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I call these torpedo fruit, and Prae calls them delicious. I'm not sure what they are, but they're big, and they have a lot of them.
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Who's up for heads-on chicken tonight?
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... or heads-off pork? I thought I recognized this pig, but then, silly me, I realized it only resembled a pig I knew from the Nebraska State Fair.
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The fish area of themarket is for die-hard seafood lovers only. The smells are fairly intense in the 90-degree heat.
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At one of the food stalls, we had Isaan food. Prae is from the northern Isaan area of Thailand, where the food is very much like food from Laos. Here we had fried beef with Thai basil, a papaya and noodle salad with fermented fish sauce (just that term makes the hypochondriac in me think I have botulism), barbecued chicken and beef and sticky rice with chili sauce. Our whole meal cost less than $2 and was -- as Prae calls a good meal -- "gorgeous."
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I give the noodles with fermented fish sauce a try, and I was not smiling so broadly affter my first taste. Did I mention that none of the trousers I had made for me in December fit anymore and I have to take them into the tailor's to be taken in in the waist? I wonder how much money there is to be made in marketing the fermented fish sauce diet in the U.S.
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| Singapore sojourn - March 6, 2006 | | A conference for work brought me to Singapore in March, so Prae flew down and we spent a couple of days there on a mini-vacation. Tickets from Bangkok to Singapore, which is about a two-hour flight, cost as little as $75 round-trip. | | Date Created: Mar 22, 2006, 12:52 PM |
Prae in front of our hotel, The Gallery, which is a bizarre post-modern building that resembles a painting by Mondrian.
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Dim sum in Chinatown. Delicious!
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One walking bridge over the Singapore River is particularly colorful.
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In Chinatown, a woman paints my niece Hope's name and birthdate inside a decorative glass ball. (I'm sending her birthday present soon!)
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We stop for a Tiger beer at a cafe in Chinatown.
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Prae's at her happiest when she's shopping for food. Don't even go to the grocery with her -- she'll keep you there for hours!
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| Inroductions - Feb. 11, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 11, 2006, 12:26 PM |
Prae arrived back here on Thursday afternoon, which was very nice, as she's had time to be here only two days since I've started work. Her father's condition improved substantially, but since his cancer has metastasized to his bones, it's a foregone conclusion, and it seems to be simply a matter of when at this point.
I had spent Thursday afternoon at the offices of two Thai newspapers, and during the drive there, Natnipha taught me how to say, "Nice to meet you," or the equivalent in Thai. I sat in the back seat, repeating it over and over again, also practicing my wai. When we arrived at the first paper, "Mattichon," there was a person in a shark costume visiting the newsroom. On the way in the building, we had passed a line of pretty Thai girls dressed in traditional dance costumes who seemed to be there also to attract publicity. Apparently the PR machines over here tend toward stunts in order to get editors' attentions. If you've never seen a shark wai-ing in a newsroom when you are dressed only in a business suit, then you have never fully experienced deflation. I made a not that AIT needs a mascot, and next time to bring it along.
We then went to the next newspaper, whose name I still do not know, because it was in Thai. Even the restrooms there were labeled in Thai, without even a silhouette to guide me. I stood there pondering it a moment, and fortunately a man brushed by me and into one door, so I followed him and crossed my fingers. At this newspaper we passed three people delivering gift baskets with their press releases, and I felt as if the few brochures and AIT pen dropped into a canvas bag embroidered with the AIT seal was no competition. The editor seemed quite happy to meet me, however, and I think my attempt at a wai and introductions in Thai proved to be as entertaining as if I'd appeared in a shark costume.
The embroidered bag by which we are giving press materials to editors has a somewhat interesting background. Natnipha and I were in the bookstore a week or two ago, taking a look at AIT items that we might give as tokens to editors we were going to meet. They had these fairly nice canvas bags embroidered with the AIT seal on one side and a thing that looked like it was sewn on to display a business card on the reverse. It was far too small to insert a business card, however, and to me it seemed rather pointless. I said sort of off-handedly to Natnipha that it was too bad they didn't make it large enough to hold a business card. Well, one of the three salesgirls in the bookstore spoke much better English than the store's stock of English dictionaries would indicate (they have none), and she must have overheard me. When we went in to purchase half a dozen bags the next week, all of them were remade, complete with a clear pocket big enough to slip a business card!
So, back to Thursday night. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my late days because I have Thai class from 5 to 6:30. I also had a cold and had had 7:30 a.m. meetings the past two days. So I was very tired when I came back to the room and see Prae. She'd come down with the same cold that was going around, so we decided to go for an early dinner to the Thai place across campus. We were walking there when her cell phone rang, and it was her brother, who had also come to Bangkok that day. He needed Prae's key to their sister's apartment and wanted to meet us at the nearby mall, Future Park. This was the last thing I wanted. After all, I haven't met any of her family, except her sister, who speaks fluent English, and I'm told is very skeptical of me. To meet one of her five brothers, who she tells me do not speak English and who are also very skeptical of me, just sounded awful -- this wasn't supposed to happen until I could say much more in Thai than "The boy is under the table." But we changed course and got a taxi to take us to Future Park, and on the way, Prae told me that her brother would be with his mother-in-law, and oh, she almost forgot, his mother-in-law happens to be the mother of her ex-boyfriend.
Oh, man, this was sounding better and better! I put on a pretty good show about being enthused to meet more of her family, while at the same time stiffening, preparing for the worst. Well, we made it to Future Park, and I met her brother, butchering his three-letter name as much as it is possible to butcher three letters -- and the amount is rather great, considering the variations in tone and pitch and length of vowel sounds. I met the mother-in-law, who spoke English of such a quality that she seemed fit for central casting in a movie about 'Nam. Curiously, she started asking me whether I liked duck and telling me it was "Number 1!" She did not, however, call me Joe. And I agreed that duck prepared properly could, indeed, be Number 1.
No sooner had we met them did another brother of Prae's appear. This was the successful brother who's a structural engineer and runs a construction company; he's always trying to get Prae to return to her hometown to run one of his apartment buildings. This was getting better all the time. We went to a restaurant called MK, which is a chain that is sort of the equivalent of a Thai fondue place. Each table has its own burner, and they put this pot of boiling broth on it, and you order stuff to throw into the pot to cook a soup of your choosing. Like sister, like brothers, we ordered almost everything on the menu and threw it into the pot. There was squid of at least three varieties, pork, tofu, and a bunch of other stuff that I just couldn't identify. And we ordered roast duck breast for an appetizer. (The duck, incidentally, was Number 1!)
So there I sat in this booth next to Prae, with two of her brothers and a mother of a former boyfriend all staring at me. Prae had told me that her brother could be quite enthusiastic drinkers, given the proper occasion, and they ordered Singha beers, which is a common Thai brand that has the effect on me of ensuring I have a massive hangover if I have only one sip the night before -- it's probably the only beer in the world I simply cannot drink, and, of course, they ordered three glasses. I think they were a bit put-out at first when I mentioned my cold as an excuse not to drink. But I think it was when I looked at the menu and ordered something that seemed like it would be healthy -- a watermelon shake -- and it came, girly pink, in this curvy glass with a straw and spoon, that they really formed a first impression of me. I had a big hole to dig myself out of.
It all actually turned out not to be nearly as bad as I'd braced myself for. Between the two of them, her brothers were close to a conversational level of English, as long as I let them control the subject matter and did not come up with any ideas of my own. By the end of dinner, her brothers and I were outside smoking a cigarette together, talking guns, and as I had just finished my Thai class that happened to deal with numbers, I could even say the calibers in Thai. We have plans to go shooting if I ever get to her hometown, and the older, sterner brother told me that he liked me by the end of the whole ordeal. I am going to practice my Thai more nonetheless, so that the second impression stands a chance of being better than the first. At least no umbrella came with my pink drink.
Regarding my Thai, I do not feel it is coming along very well, but I was very surprised last night when Prae told me, unprompted, that she thinks I am getting very good at it and that my pronunciation is getting much better. That is really the first genuine encouragement she has ever given me, and I don't think she realized it had the flattering effect on me that it did. She did say one thing a few weeks ago that I thought was funny: She wondered if I might not someday return to the U.S. speaking English with a Thai accent. I told her the chances of that were velly srim. |
| Morning - Feb. 8, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 08, 2006, 12:12 PM |
I came to work early this morning, a few minutes before 7, in hopes I'd be able to catch the president before his crazy schedule began. I am supposed to write a profile of him for the Sunday Bangkok Post, and so far I have not yet been able to pin him down to speak with him about this.
Sunrise comes at very nearly the same time every morning here -- just about 7 a.m. -- and it is even more peaceful on campus than at other hours. The least peaceful hours come between 4 and 8 p.m., when classes and work have ended, and the children of staff, faculty and students are out playing, as are adults in all the sporting venues. My recent mornings have not been altogether peaceful due to a mangey black kitten whose home seems to be in a little alcove outside my kitchen window where the propane tank is stored. This cat seems to have adopted me, despite the fact I have not shown it any affection and will not feed it. Nevertheless is sits under the open jalousie window, meowing constantly and loudly.
Because of the early hour and because I seem to have come down with a head cold and am not feeling the greatest, I decided not to wear a tie today and may have started down a slippery slope to more casual attire. I have been wearing a coat and tie to work every day despite the fact that in general the dress is more casual specifically because Asian culture is so deferential to appearance and uniform. While I know I could get away with hanging a coat and tie in my office for wear when I have a meeting with someone from the outside world, I think it's important to maintain this air of importance when I'm meeting new people each day. People are very meek about taking responsibility here, and they are very subservient to those with titles and in positions in authority. I suppose there is a bit of that in the U.S., but here I just find it a convenient -- if slightly hotter and less comfortable -- way to establish my place in the pecking order without actually having to do anything.
On my way to the office, the grounds crews were out doing their daily sweeping of the hundreds of thousands of poinciana leaves that fall each day. They use handmade brooms to sweep that have spiky bristles so that they appear almost like a fine rake. That is opposed to the soft handmade brooms used for a hard surface or indoors. I noted how much more pleasant it is to hear the sweep of a broom than the awful whine of a gas-powered blower, a sound almost impossible not to wake up to in Florida. The amount of manual labor that goes into things like groundskeeping here is incredible. I watched a guy yesterday watering the dozen or so planters in a courtyard next to the administration building. He was using a hose -- and hoses here are that clear tubing and come without metal attachments on the end. You buy a length of hose and then with a hoseclamp attach a fitting on the spigot end. Typically the other end has no fitting, and they simply use their thumb as a sprayer and a kink in the hose as an on-off valve. So, this guy was out there water each plant. He was there before I went to lunch, squatting beside a bed, there went I returned from lunch, squatting beside another, there after an afternoon meeting, squatting beside yet another bed. Apparently this was his project for the afternoon.
There are sprinkler systems here, and I get a good laugh out of them anytime I see them turned on. Some of the sprinkler heads are the type they used to use on golf courses, where someone goes around with the heads and plugs them into the ground, and it turns on the sprinkler. Of the automatic sprinklers, I haven't yet seen two of the heads alike or fully functional. The weather here is similar to Florida in that this time of year is very dry. I have not yet seen a drop of rain since I've been here. So things do need water, and with these half-functioning, dribbling sprinkler heads, there will be a sort of crescent of green where the water hits. That crescent intensifies in color the closer to the head, as they inevitably leak -- as do the water towers, incidentally.
A week or two ago, a memo had gone out about maintenance to the water system, and they said they were going to fill both water towers to ensure people had water all weekend long while the work took place. As I walked home past one water tower, it sounded like I was walking past a waterfall; it was leaking like a seive.
I guess my biggest complaint about living here -- except a general lack of napkins when dining -- would be that most things are very chintzy. From staplers, to notepads to table lamps and furniture, everything has a nice look to it when new, but upon closer inspection you realize it is about to fall apart. I first learned of this last year when a water supply hose to a toilet in Sea Dream broke. It looked like one of those braided stainless steel hoses you buy at Home Depot for about $5. This thing, though, broke not in the hose or where the hose met the fittings on the end -- the actual nut cracked in half. Although it appeared to be identical to one of our water supply hoses in the U.S., which have chrome-plated brass nuts, this thing was chrome-plated pot metal, and it just crubled in my hand. Of course, it did cost only 50 cents or so. Almost everything is like that, though. And there's no quality control.
I bought a bedside lamp a couple of weeks ago, and Prae asked if I'd get another, so I went back to the same place I where I bought the first one, and they had the same lamp, but the shades were all a slightly different color. So I went to another place where I'd seen the same lamp but for about $3 more. They had what looked to be the same color shade, and so I bought that one. I got in back, and of course it's slightly different. It's amazing to me that something mass-produced that way could have so much variation in it.
Well, that was a long aside.
I arrived at the office about 7, and the cleaning lady was here to greet me with a smiling "Sawadee khaa." I get the feeling she likes me, because I say hello to her. I'm told that this is a distinctly American tendency, to say hello to the cleaning ladies and groundskeepers -- when I say hello to campus security riding around on their bikes or directing traffic, they always give me a smart salute. The common practice is to treat them as if they do not exist, but we Americans do not make the distinction between colors of collar, and I have noticed the cleaning lady's smile is particularly broad when she has the ocassion now to say hello first. I also cannot imagine where she lives or what her work hours are, because I don't think I have ever been in the building when she didn't pop out of somewhere to say hello.
I meandered over to the president's office, where, sure enough, his secretary did not receive my e-mail confirming my appointment, and he would not be able to meet with me. This conversation took place with a lot of smiles, and although it was not incompetence on her part and a simple snafu that created the situation, it reminded me of a scene in a novel I just read called Bangkok 8. A thai police detective was working with an FBI agent on a case, and they were dealing with an incompetent bureaucrat. The detective was smiling all the time, as was the bureaucrat. The FBI agent asked how he could stay smiling, and the detective said that you basically have two choices: You can have a friendly, smiling conversation with someone you know to be incompetent and who is not going to help you out, or you can get nasty. Either way, you're not going to get what you want, so why make an enemy?
I think that's a pretty good philosophy to have with regard to any service industry worker in the state of Florida. |
| Prae arrives ... and has to leave - Feb. 2, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 02, 2006, 12:06 PM |
I'm wrestling with bringing the concept of a written and graphic design style to all of AIT's publications. With people who learned English in 50 different countries, most of our published documents have a flair of spelling and capitalization that read like journals in pre-Johnsonian England. And there is absolutely no continuity to the graphic design of anything published here. It's a great mess. And the biggest problem is going to be getting people to understand the importance of style. Fortunately, there are a number of people in high positions who understand the concept and are willing to sit on a committee that I'm told I will chair. I've told them I don't want to be the style czar (or tsar, if you prefer), and that I want some others to help share the blame when I start laying down the law. It's an immense undertaking.
Tonight I'm pretty glum. Prae had to leave for her hometown suddenly. Her father, who has been in treatment for prostate cancer -- and recently I find for bone cancer -- has taken a turn for the worse. Her parents were supposed to come to Bangkok this weekend for a doctor's appointment on Monday. When I went to work this morning, it sounded as if that trip was iffy, but it sounded as if it would just be postponed by a day or so. When I got back from work tonight, Prae was packed and waiting for a taxi to take her to the bus station. She unfortunately could not get a flight, as there are only a couple each day to Ubon. But she will meet her sister at the bus station to make the nightlong trip home. It looks as if she will be gone 10 days or more.
I feel pretty terrible because I can't do anything for her. I still don't know enough about Buddhism to understand fully their thoughts on death, and they really are quite different from our views. I've even read that you're not supposed to say you are sorry when someone has died, because that would actually be almost an insult -- as I understand it, to leave this life is a privilege, and as someone close to someone who has died, you are supposed to be happy for that person's spirit. I think it makes a lot of sense personally. However, Prae grew up going to Catholic schools and I think she has a more Western view. On the other hand, she says she has never been terribly close to her father. He seems to be the stereotype of a Chinese-Thai man who ran the business and didn't pay much attention to the kids -- particularly the girls. It's a little tough to say, though, because anything I know of Prae and her family life I've had to drag out of her -- not because she doesn't want to tell me but, highlighting our cultural differences, she seems just to expect me to know how it was.
In any case, she was not acting like a proper Buddhist before she left, and I felt terrible that I couldn't do much more than to hug her and wipe away her tears. I offered to go there this weekend, even though I knew what she would say and that it would not only be uncomfortable for everyone involved but inappropriate as well. It occurred to me as well that even if I could find out exactly what one is supposed to do in such situations -- i.e. send flowers or make a donation to the temple -- I don't even know her father's name or address or temple.
So, I'm left here to just wait for her calls if she needs me. I guess too I have this nagging fear that there's some page I missed in the manual for an American dating a Thai girl that says when the father dies, the youngest daughter is supposed to throw herself on the funeral pyre (actually, they use crematoria now) -- or that she's supposed to remain home and take care of her mother until she too passes away.
In other news, the job is proving in many ways monumentally frustrating at times because of the bureaucracy and meetings. It's funny, though, because people seem to keep looking to me to shake things up a bit. The people in charge know it's needed. Most of the others do too, but everyone seems reluctant to do much about it. I have a feeling this job will work out one of three ways: I will be fantastically successful; I will be an even more fantastic failure; or I will be so frustrated that I simply give up. I'm hoping it's the first, of course, but in some respects I'm taking steps that could lead to the second while in pursuit of the first.
Tomorrow I have my first meeting of the committee appointed by the president for the Web site. It's a committee I chair, and I spent the afternoon in meetings with the technical people, so I know I can go in with their support and with an understanding of the technical side of the challenges that lay ahead in the rebuilding of what is essentially a lousy Web site. I have already warned my bosses that I think the first effects of my taking over will be a nose-dive in the quality. With the staffing situation as it is and with the resources I've been given to improve this monster, it seems to me it's only going to get a lot worse before it eventually gets markedly better. This is all because we'll be doing a redesign and switching to new software, and during the learning curve that comes with the new software, things are going to get messy. The tech guy assures me this will be only a temporary phenomenon, and after discussing it with him, I believe it will lead to the best long-term solution. But that's demanding a lot of faith of those who hired me. I'm confident it will all work out, and I'm pretty confident that the top people will go for it, but then it depends on getting those in the trenches to go along with me. |
| Preparing for Prae's arrival, Tet and work diplomacy - Jan. 31, 2006 | | Date Created: Jan 31, 2006, 11:54 AM |
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Above photo: The Vietnamese community celebrated the Tet New Year on Saturday.
I was talking to Prae last night, after her last day of work at Sea Dream and she was getting packed. And I realized that this is a pretty big deal for her as well -- although I had farther to travel, she's dropping the life she had in Phuket, quitting her job and moving here to this tiny apartment to a life that will be rather foreign to her, even if it is in her own country. Relatively speaking, it's as if she left her life and job in Florida to move to Long Island to be with me -- not in terms or climate, certainly, but I guess it did hit me that in her mind -- as someone whose perspective of distance is relative to Thailand and not the U.S., where distances like the 500 miles between Phuket and Bangkok seem just as great as a cross-America journey to us.
What I realized, I guess, when I had been thinking all along of what I was giving up to come here and be with Prae, it had never occurred to me that from her perspective, she's giving up as much. She's certainly not thinking that way from how she talks; I'm the one who thinks too much. But I think the thought has crossed her mind, and I know she's a bit nervous about this herself. For one, every person here except the maids and grounds crew, has an advanced degree, and that's not something that escapes my thinking and leaves me feeling sometimes intimidated -- not so much for my own education or intelligence but that I will somehow bee looked down upon for not having the pieces of paper that say I earned higher degrees. Already I know that Prae is intimidated by that, and she probably has more reason to be, as there are a lot of Thai grad students here, and here she is with no other purpose to be here than to be with her farang (a term for westerner) boyfriend. Although she has her bachelor's degree, she has admitted to me that the university she attended was not one of the top, most respected ones, so she doesn't have that to fall back upon as I do Dartmouth. Interestingly, even with only my bachelor's degree, the Dartmouth reputation helps me keep my standing among those who were educated in the States. As far as I can tell, I am the only one here with an Ivy League education, and that definitely means something to those familiar with the Ivy League.
Anyhow, we both may be a little nervous, but I think we're excited to see how this next, more realistic phase of our relationship works out. I think we're both pretty optimistic as well. I think I've mentioned that Prae has the idea to start a massage business on campus, which would be great, and so far the few people I've mentioned it to are very excited by the prospect. I think it would be great for her as well. My next-door neighbor, Krishna, who works for the business school has offered to pose the idea to a group of business school students to use as their business plan this semester, so Prae could wind up getting a comprehensive business plan and market study done for her.
Krishna has proved to be a great guy, and through him I've met a few people, as he attended business school here and knows quite a few people. One of them, a student named Gorky from Bangladesh, has been particularly interesting to talk to, as he is Muslim and not necessarily anti-American but skeptical of Americans. We've had some really fascinating conversations about religion and politics, and it makes me once again enjoy being on a college campus where you can have those fascinating conversations over a beer at night -- although I don't think Gorky drinks; he does smoke, however, and he hasn't interrupted our conversation to stop and pray toward Mecca, so he's not altogether devout. (I'll have to remember to point that out to him next time he criticizes the hypocrisy of Americans.)
The job seems to be going quite well. I'm not getting much done because I keep having so many meetings, but that seems to be how things are done here. It definitely is a different pace from that which I'm accustomed to. All the headaches and bureaucracy that everyone complain about here, they're awful and all, but I keep thinking to myself, Thank God I don't have to put out a newspaper on top of all this! The mind-set is definitely different because of being here in Asia. Lunch, for instance, is seen as very important. Same with not putting in too many work hours. So the stresses are not many, and in that regard I somehow think that will wind up letting me get more done and be more productive. I do have to say though that I am so accustomed to bringing work home in my mind it worries how it will affect my relationship with Prae. It seems that unlike a newspaper, people don't actually expect you to bring work home in your mind or in reality. |
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Above photo: Many of the Vietnamese students wore traditional ao dais to the Tet festivities.
On Saturday night I went to a party put on by Vietnamese students for the New Year -- or Tet -- also the Chinese New Year. I realized that this was sort of campus news happening, so I went back to my room to grab my camera, shot the festivities and got my photos up on the Web site on Monday morning. People were astounded that I was working at midnight on a Saturday. I didn't tell them that in the other lens compartment of my camera bag was an open Heineken. For me that was just plain fun, not work. Actually a result of that may wind up being one of the houses or townhouses on campus. I'm getting a little more optimistic that I might be able to use my influence -- and apparently I have more than I think -- to get one of the houses on campus that would allow me to have Sophie. That would be ideal, because this is a great place to have a dog -- lots of open spaces, places to walk and very little traffic except on bikes. We'll see about that. I'm crossing my fingers. |
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Above photo: Karaoke -- this time popular and traditional Vietnamese songs -- seems to be a part of every celebration here.
Related to my rising influence, my boss brought me in today to discuss his management style. I was a little dumbstruck. It turns out this new president has brought a much more Western philosophy to the management style here, and it has all the old-timers here scratching their heads, trying to make sense of it. So I shared my views and encouraged him, and he seemed to appreciate it.
What happened was this: There are two vice presidents for external relations, one of whom I have met and who interviewed me, and we get along pretty well, I think. Both of these VPs are my boss's boss. The second VP is a Burmese professor who is based in Paris and also works for UNESCO. She is in charge of fund raising and visits Bangkok only a few times a year. Her name is Professor Ni Ni -- pronounce it as you like.
Her idea, as I mentioned in a previous post, was to create a video to present to Oprah Winfrey on her birthday. Somehow this would solve all the financial troubles of AIT. To say that my boss and two Burmese coworkers were skeptical of such an idea is being judicious. But since this woman is the highest ranking Burmese national at AIT and the Burmese stick together, they were in no position to disagree with her. My boss is Indian, so he didn't care about that, but she's his direct superior, so he was put in a sort of tight position. I figured because I'm new here and I'd never met her that I had little to lose by being the fall guy, and I volunteered to take the lead position in dissuading her. I figured my best tactic was to be firm but polite, and I've learned that you must do everything with a smile on your face in Southeast Asian culture. I also had the backing of my boss that no matter what happened in the meeting.
So anyway during the meeting, I repeatedly interrupted her with valid questions about her idea. I knew that in Asian culture, one is not supposed to interrupt his superior, but I kept excusing myself, saying my very nature as a journalist provoked me to ask such questions, and, I explained, if I were to understand the task she was laying before us, I needed to know her exact ideas. While I was not able to get her to back down, I did not expect this: If she were to reverse a decision on what she initially considered a great idea in front of two of her countrymen and in front of me and my boss -- all of whom were her inferiors, she would lose face -- and face is definitely not just a Japanese thing. So I knew it would be extraordinary for her to reverse her position.
But the meeting did end up with her saying to me that she hoped we would get to know each other well enough that we could raise our voices at each other. She said she hoped that I, as a professional in a field outside her realm of expertise, would feel comfortable to tell her "No," if she were to present an idea that did not make sense. It was pretty amazing, actually, and the two other Burmese were sitting there slack-jawed after she left. She had just admitted she could have been mistaken about the Oprah video without, of course, admitting it, and we technically are still assigned to produce it -- for Jan. 29, 2007 -- a date that will likely pass without another mention of the video.
And today, when I was at lunch, Prof. Ni Ni invited me to dine with her.
It was quite a triumph, and the two Burmese in the meeting were still talking about it today.
Of course the entire process took most of the morning. In the afternoon, I met with several editors of the Bangkok Post, which again was rather fun, and I came away from there with assurances of several upcoming stories that will include AIT. Additionally, they asked me to write a profile of our president for their Sunday profile section. One of the nice things about meetings in Bangkok is I get a car and driver. There are some things that are just great about this country. So things are looking pretty good work-wise. |
- Life in Bangkok > Preparing for Prae's arrival, Tet and work diplomacy - Jan. 31, 2006
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