Merry Christmas

It is evening on boxing day and I am curled up in the famous Israeli internet cafe near the infamous Kao San road in Bangkok where you get some free internet time and you get to hang out with a bunch of people from Israel. I love the sound of voices speaking languages I don't understand and the feel of the airconditioner on my skin.

I spent the day hung over and mostly asleep on the 8 hour bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok, which is probably the best way to spend the bus ride. From the bus station I took the slow regular transit bus into the city which took over an hour but makes me remember why I am here. I get so bogged down in work sometimes I forget the adventure it is just to be living in a foreign country, how special even the feel of the humid air is pressing on my skin and the silouettes of palm trees against the sky. I catch glimspes down tangled side streets and covered night bazaars and I have left my work behind and I am on VACATION!!

From here I am going to catch a bus down south and a boat sometime in the wee hours of the morning, so that tomorrow I will be waking up on the beach. My itinerary (in case there are any natural disasters this year and you need to know where I am) is to spend the next four days scuba diving on the island of Ko Tao, then head over to Ko Phagn Nan for the New Years party and then back up through Bangkok on the 1st, arriving in Mae Sot sometime on the 2nd.

Christmas was a blast because it was spent with some really amazing people I have the pleasure to be thrown together with who have become wonderful friends, and that is the best gift you can get in a year.

To all of you: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and enjoy yourselves, your families and your friends.

Holiday Season

It is the week before holidays hit and there is a lull in the office. There are four of us in the large rambling building that is usually full of laughter and conversation. My office is entirely empty. Yesterday, returning from a few days up in the refugee camp, I put on some music and kicked back and caught up on some reading I have been wanted to do for a while (“Writing Great Speeches” by Alan Perlman; “Teaching the Spoken Language” by Gillian Browne and George Yule; oh the exciting life I lead).

Today the sun is coming through the windows and there is a ragged moth with tattered wings climbing up the wall.

Most of the mad rush is over and in the past few days I have been methodically moving things off my plate with a great sense of relief. The busy sense of hectic hassle and anxious tension has been melting away into weekends of Christmas shopping at the border market and the sounds of carolers walking through the night.

Tuesday night was the annual EIP Christmas party. There is nothing like it to kick off the Christmas season. For starters, no one enjoys copious amounts of food, especially meat, more than EIP students. The smells wafting out of the kitchen all day were enough to make anyone excited. After classes were finished, the students went into party mode, decorating the classroom with balloons and candies, then disappearing to shower and “beautify themselves.”

We gather at the preordained time and wait half an hour for the stragglers but we don’t have too many guests. The party begins with the reading of the Agenda. First item: Welcoming speech by Teacher Jonesy. Agenda number 8: dinner.

Agenda number 6 was a traditional Tavoyian dance by one of the female students involving a large clay water pot balanced perfectly on her head as she swayed and positioned her fingers into classical poses. When it finished, she took the heavy pot from her head, scooped up some water in her hands and transferred it into the hands of the respected members of the circle.

I heard the best Karen speech I have ever heard given by a teacher at the school next door, the Teacher Preparation Course. “I have only one objective tonight,” he said. “To eat! Thank you for inviting me to celebrate with the highest level of education in camp. It is an honor to give a speech to these students. Now we should get on with the agenda so I can achieve my objective… and eat!”

Eat we did! It was a chicken and potato curry scooped up and eaten with greasy pancakes, the salty excess licked from fingertips amidst the moans of delight and the excited clamor of talk.

After dinner, the chairs and tables cleared away and the presents were distributed. Perhaps the one thing that the students love more than the food are the gifts. For me, the essence of Christmas is found here: in the anticipation you see on someone’s face as they unwrap a gift and in the joy and delight they show when it is open. We sit in a circle and there is so much laughter to share and so much delight. The students have bought secret presents for each other, there is a round of pass-the-parcel and a game of musical chairs. I was in stitches for half the night with the wildness and the craziness of the hilarity. The lights went out at 9pm, so we hooked up a light to a car battery and continued our games.

Nights like that remind me why I am here and how much I love it.

Back in Mae Sot, snuggled under a few blankets drifting off to sleep, I hear carolers singing “Merry Christmas to you all…” and think, “Ah, it’s Christmas.”

A few more days of work to get through and then the holidays will truly begin. I will be spending Christmas morning with a few close friends and a pancake breakfast. In the afternoon we will be having a large bbq with lots of people over. Then, the next morning, I am heading off to Bangkok and the islands in the South. I will be scuba diving on Ko Tao for a few days, hanging in my hammock, floating on the waves, dancing in the sands. I’ll be thinking of you all, who are marching through the snow, and wishing you all a happy new year.

See you in 2006.

Thai Massage

It is Brooke’s habit to visit the masseuse every Saturday afternoon. They know her there as Malee, a Thai word for flower, because they can’t pronounce her name. The massage parlor is along the Asia 1 highway, across the street from a Buddhist temple, near my old house. It doesn’t look much like the massage parlors you would be familiar with if you had ever indulged in the West. There are no dim lights or private chambers, no aromatherapy, no soothing music.

The main room is tiled and half open to the parking lot with plenty of windows, light and breeze. There are perhaps ten mattresses on the floor, each with a fan nearby. There are two smaller air conditioned rooms. An air conditioned massage is slightly more expensive than the usual package. Most of the masseuses are women as it is generally inappropriate for men to massage women. There is, however, one male masseuse in the house. Although he is blind, he gives one of the best massages in the house, although, as a woman, it is somewhat a delicate process to request him. Normally when you arrive, whoever happens to be free waves you over to a mat on the floor.

Although I certainly do not indulge every weekend, I have been going to this particular place for about a year now and I know the characters there quite well. There is a small, quiet Burmese woman and a short chubby Thai lady with malicious eyes and a wicked grin. There are a few quiet professional ladies who will do their job with a blank expression on their face and a few gossips who will giggle and laugh the entire time. Generally, I can expect to hear comments about my size at least once, usually in good fun. Once, lying on my stomach on the mattress next to Brooke, I looked up and saw our two masseuses comparing the size of our asses.

The first thing you do when you enter the massage house is take off your shoes, as is the custom when entering almost all Thai houses. Then you change into the light cotton clothes provided. If your feet are dirty, it is expected that you would wash them. Then, you lie down on your back on one of the mattresses and let the ladies do their magic.

Generally, Thai massage is quite relaxing, although it is far more active than traditional Sweedish style for both the masseuse and the massaged. It involves a lot of stretches and strange positions. One of my favorite parts is when I am lying on my stomach and the woman is kneeling on my butt with her hands on my back alternatively putting her weight on either side of my spine. It feels like there is a big cat sitting on me kneading my back.

Of course, sometimes the stretches can be quite uncomfortable, especially for someone like me who is quite inflexible. There have been times when I have wondered whether a trip to a dominatrix might be more pleasurable than a Thai massage. On one occasion, I went for a one hour massage to help my back, which was quite sore. After massaging my back for some time, the woman turned me over and asked me if I needed to use the washroom. Since I didn’t, she immediately began the deep massage of my stomach. At times, this involved her entire weight bearing down on the soft unprotected squishy bits of my belly. Not content to merely apply pressure, she began moving things around.

As it turns out, one of the first phrases I learned in Thai was “that hurts” and I decided the situation warranted its use. The woman smiled and nodded sympathetically. I was relieved ... until she pressed harder. Unable to bear the pain anymore, I could not help but moan out loud. The woman seemed to be expressing a rather serious intention to rearrange my intestines. She only smiled again and said soothingly, “Yes, yes it hurts doesn’t it? Hmmmm….” While the other women in the room laughed. Finally, unable to bear the pain any longer, I begged her, “Stop! Please stop!” But at this she had no reply and the other ladies shouted over, “Baby! What a baby!” (Willing to believe the best about everyone and slightly out of my mind from pain, I at first thought they were suggesting that I was pregnant and had a baby, but if that had been the case, the massage I was receiving would clearly have relieved me of that particular situation. No, these women were calling me names, plain and simple.)

While it continued I imagined how much happier I might have been if I had spent my money on a leather clad vixen. Instead of getting intimately acquainted with the geography of my intestines, I might be getting whipped, for example. I didn’t think a whipping would compare at all to the kind of pain I was feeling in my belly, and besides, I thought, a dominatrix would be likely to stop if she passed her client’s pain threshold. This woman seemed to have no such concept. Indeed, when it was over, and I was left panting painfully on the mat, she proceeded to give me a stern lecture. “Only eat one meal a day,” she said, frowning at me, “this will help your back feel better.” I left the massage house with a sore back and a stomach so sore I had no desire to eat for several days.

It’s easy to see why I would get scared away and go for long stretches of time without visiting the massage house but the truth is, I always find my way back again for another round of fun, pain, laughter and (only sometimes) relaxation. Let’s blame it on life in Mae Sot, shall we? What better way is there to kill two hours on a weekend?

My brother, the politician

If you want to check out one sassy up and coming politician on the sexy Saskatoon scene, click here and learn a little bit more about the man who, under all that facial hair, is my brother.

How to Go to Hospital in Style

I’ve heard people complain that the Montreal - Toronto route is too long a haul for a weekend visit. It's not a complaint that I will be making again. Mae Sot, the town where I rent a house and spend most of my week, is an 8 hour bus ride from metropolitan Bangkok. There are no trains and flights were recently cancelled (due to sketchy safety concerns about the airline's planes.) A weekend trip to Bangkok usually involves at least one overnight bus. For 365baht, you can take the "first class" ride, with air conditioning and somewhat comfortable seating. For 565 baht, you can have a VIP bus. Both provide the traveler with cheap snacks, a dark frigid environment, occasional movies or karaoke opportunities (just what you want at 3am) and the requisite midway stop for food. On the VIP bus, you are provided with a food coupon which you must use (the bus attendants insist on waking you up to get it and will drop food on your lap if you insist on sleeping through the noisy, bright, commercial encounter. Typically you leave Mae Sot somewhere between 9 and 10pm and arrive in Bangkok anywhere between 4 and 6am.

There are a large number of busses coming into the station at that early hour. The bus stops and everyone piles off, collecting bags and dispersing in a hurry. Before you can even blink your crusty, sleepy eyes, the bus has pulled away and is gone, leaving you surrounded by touts prodding you and shouting, "Taxi? Tuk-tuk? Taxi? Where you go?"

My parner in crime, coworker and traveling companion, Brooke, and I have perfected the art of Bangkok hotels, checking in at the earliest possible hour and enjoying two full nights of sleep for the usual price of one. At 5am, we were nearing our hotel.

The taxi turned at the last minute off of the busy thouroughfare into a dark, unpromising looking alleyway of high walls and locked gates. Brooke spotted the sign up ahead, "Opera Hotel."

“That must be it,” she said, peering through a gate into the spacious car park, gleaming glass doors to a lobby with a fountain in it.

“Here,” said the cab driver, pulling into the parking lot opposite. Although it was a decent place, it certainly lacked the glass fronted lobby and the cool cascading fountains. We walked into the lobby and I started giggling manically, a likely reaction when I have very little sleep.

In the lobby of the hotel was a body wrapped in a white sheet laid out over three chairs. About five policemen were sitting around talking and looking serious. One seemed to be writing something down and on his way out. Brooke seemed unconcerned and walked up to the front desk to begin checking in. When I could control my laughter, I whispered to her, “Brooke, we’re checking into a hotel with a dead guy!”

Brooke looked up startled from filling in the paperwork. She stared at the porter who was slumped fast asleep propped up in the corner behind the desk. “Really? How can you tell?”

“Not him! Look behind you. There’s a body covered in a white sheet and the place is swarming with cops!”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, “this place is always full of cops. They like to hang out here for some reason.” And she went back to filling in her paperwork.

Sure enough, when I glanced over again soon after, the “corpse” had changed positions and put his leg up. The presence of the police remained a mystery to us all, however, and, sure enough, they hung out in the lobby the entire time that we were there, sleeping, relaxing and chatting.

The purpose of my visit to Bangkok this time around was to visit a diabetes clinic at a private hospital I had found on the internet, have blood tests done and attend an appointment I had made there with an endocrinologist (a doctor specializing in, among other things, diabetes.)

I am a Canadian and when I am in Canada, I usually get excellent health care. I have to make appointments months in advance, of course, but it’s usually all paid for and I usually get quality care. The hospital where I see the doctor may be dingy, and the lab isn’t exactly speedy, but the job gets done. I’m not sure what the exact costs are, particularly of the blood tests. I know that an appointment with the endocrinologist gets billed at $90 and could last anywhere from five minutes to fifty.

Nothing in my health care history had prepared me for the experience of the private hospital.

Entering the lobby is like entering the lobby of a major international hotel. It was full of light flooding down from plate glass windows. There were artificial trees and plants and plenty of comfortable sofas, carefully arranged in cosy groupings. There was a Starbucks tucked away in a corner and an information desk directly in front of the doors, staffed with beautifully uniformed, immaculate woman eager to greet and direct those who entered. The uniform of most of the staff was silvery gray, more suited to a first class flight attendant or hotel manager than a hospital.

I took the escalators to the third floor, passing an extensive food court with a McDonalds, a French bakery, a Japaese sushi restaurant and an Italian restaurant as well as a Thai buffet. At the registration desk, I merely had to present my passport and fill in a simple, one page form. I was directed by to the area of the hospital that housed the diabetes clinic.

At the front counter, I was directed to station 6 where a nurse checked my temperature, height, weight and blood pressure and screened me for flu symptoms. Then I was ushered over to station 7 where I had only five minutes to wait before it was my turn to see the doctor. We discussed briefly my history and the tests I wanted done and I was referred to station 5. At station 5, they took my blood and directed me to the x-ray lab. The shirt I had to wear while getting a chest x-ray was so fashionable and fit me so well that I considered slipping it in my bag. I waited less than five minutes for my x-ray and was told to go back to station 7 in two hours for the full results of all my tests.

Results for my Complete Blood Count, a simple test to look at the composition of your blood, were not complete in two hours in Calgary, even when they were marked “stat” and the balance of my fate was resting on them.

Two hours were wiled quickly away. I started off by treating myself to pastries and a latte at the bakery, curling up in a big comfy sofa and reading my book for awhile. I watched people go by. Everyone I saw was well dressed and had an air of confidence. They must hide the really sick people away, I thought. I took a short walk in the neighborhood to explore and came back fifteen minutes early to take my seat in the waiting room. “Ms. Jones?” Before I had even sat down, the doctor was ready.

I had been able to read most of the doctor’s profiles online when I researched the hospital. The majority of them had received training in the United States. Although clearly competent and very patient and knowledgeable, I was this doctor’s first diabetes patient with an insulin pump, not very surprising considering their cost. I also live a fairly unique lifestyle: I’m not sure what kind of doctor would be qualified to give me advice on adapting my diabetes needs to refugee camp life. But he took the time to answer all of my questions, go over my blood test results in detail and I left feeling fully satisfied.

An important feeling, I might add, when the nurse presents you with a barcode and number and refers you to the billing station. When they called my bill number, I was presented with an invoice for over 8000baht, or about $200.

I left the hospital feeling immensely relieved. I think if you smile at a doctor in America, it will cost you that much and my organization’s health insurance policy was picking up the bill for me (this time).

Brooke was in Bangkok anticipating a similarly painful appointment although hers was with the dentist. She feared a major cavity requiring all kinds of oral surgery fun. I left my appointment to meet her and was surprised to encounter her leaving the dental clinic just as I pulled up outside it, not with a line of drool hanging from her lips, but with a radiant smile.

Healthy and happy, we celebrated with an indulgent two hour long Thai massage in a lovely spa that was dark and cool and delightfully calm. From there we took ourselves to a sushi dinner and a little shopping excursion. Since we both anticipated disaster and escaped unscathed, we were determined to celebrate, feeling fabulously light hearted and glad to be away from Mae Sot and all the reminders of work. I somehow managed to forget my pressing “to do” list all weekend.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel diner, sipping instant coffee in a vinyl booth and eating eggs and bacon. It all seemed deceptively un-Thai. But then we headed to the northern end of town, near the bus station to where there is one of the largest markets in Thailand: Chatuchak weekend market.

We spent the whole morning there amidst the crowded stalls and dark alleyways shopping for Christmas presents, bargaining with shopkeepers and weaving our way through the piles of goods and hordes of people that descend on the place over the weekend. The whole time my mind was occupied with the people I know, their tastes and desires, and the challenge of finding things that fit both their proclivities and light airmail envelopes. All the while, I knew that miles and miles away people I loved were doing exactly the same and where I was sweaty and hot, they were puffing their way through the cold, snowy streets, their minds occupied with the same thoughts.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and soon, our feet were exhausted, my wallet was empty and it was time to grab the bus back to Mae Sot. For reasons I have yet to deciepher, VIPs and First Class people seem not to travel in the day. Or, if they do, they must condescend to travel second class, because those are the only busses available to Mae Sot during the day. The second class bus has no air conditioner, narrow seats and nothing at all to recommend it. It’s usually quite slow and tedious, with the sun pouring in through gaps in the curtains making you sweat and stick to the dull brown seats. But however I might complain, it gets the job done and takes me home.

I unlocked my front door at 10:30pm Sunday night to greet the devastation left to me by Frankie Baby – the kitten that (thanks to Brooke) has a name and (thanks to a stable diet) has energy to burn wreaking havoc in my house. Welcome home.

The Kitten

I was speaking with the two EIP teachers in our office hut in Umphium when the kitten tottered into the room. At first I thought it was the kitten that one of the teachers had adopted and brought to camp. They have the same coloring. Also that cat has a tendancy to sleep in the ashes of the charcoal fires to stay warm and this kitten was filthy.

The kitten who weakly made its way into the room was much smaller than the official EIP cat (named, like every cat I’ve ever met in a Burmese context: MiMi). I tried to feed it some milk. It drank a little and then fell asleep in my lap. Quite frankly, I was not exactly happy to have it there. The thing was tiny, had a scar on its side, was missing significant patches of hair and seemed to be covered in soot. It looked as if it would vomit worms and die at any moment.

Well there’s nothing sexier than vomiting worms now is there? So of course, I had to take it home. I stuck it in a cardboard box and loaded it into the truck and headed down to Mae Sot to find a vet. If I hadn’t been going back to Mae Sot that very moment, I’m not sure what would have become of that cat. It obviously didn’t have a mother or a family and it looked like it was on the edge of death as it was.

The vet looked dismissively at the little mewling pile of dirt on his table and said, “wash it and feed it,” then sold me some milk, kitten food and shampoo.

So there you have it. How I came to have a tiny pathetic creature as my roommate. The little thing was not happy about being washed. It was the most miserable, tiny pile of bones I have ever seen. I have seen rats in Bangkok bigger than this animal. It protested the water weakly and then just stood on the concrete floor of my bathroom shivering while I washed scoops and scoops of dirty water off of it.
Mostly if I am at home, it curls up in my lap or rides around on my shoulder.

And now I am soliciting ideas for names. For now, I have absolutely no inclination to name it and left to my own devices it will probably remain nameless. But if it continues to live, I suppose that in a few weeks I should name it something. Any ideas or suggestions?

Happy Birthday to Me (part 2)

If I hadn’t had the left over pizza to entice me out of bed, I’m not sure I would have made it to work. I had a chest cough and felt exhausted and I considered calling in sick. I had planned to give a morning workshop to my students in Umphium first thing on Monday, but I had given many of the responsibilities to the In-Camp Coordinator, so I briefly entertained the idea that she would be able to handle everything.

As it was, I somehow managed to get up and dressed, munching on my left over pizza as I walked to work. I slept the whole two hour drive up to camp and stayed awake just long enough to give the workshop. The workshop was a little bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants operation as I hadn’t really planned it out well and the In-Camp Coordinator was herself home sick for the day. When it was over, I took myself back to the girl’s dorm and fell asleep on the bamboo floor. I woke up in the afternoon and tried to get up, but my body wouldn’t let me, so I drifted off to sleep again, this time to the sound of the girl’s laughing as they came back after classes. When I woke again in the evening, my body still insisted that I keep sleeping, but I managed to rouse myself and get off the floor.

The students in the kitchen were cooking up a ridiculous load of food. When I asked them why we had so many different vegetables (and eggs! the extravagance!) they answered evasively, “vegetables were cheap today.” Uh huh. I was too tired to get on the case, so I curled up on a bamboo bench and read a magazine until dinner was ready.

When I went back in the classroom I had woken up enough not to be terribly grumpy. The whiteboard had been covered with elaborate drawings and a big sign that said “Happy Birthday Jonesy!” There was a feast spread out on the tables, in honor of my birthday.

After dinner, they kicked me out of the classroom and I waited in the dark outside, watching the stars until they allowed me back in. The classroom was ablaze with lights. Candles on the table formed the word “Jonsy.” There were two cakes there as well, cooked ingeniously over a charcoal fire, which proved to be both moist and delicious. The students were all sitting around in a circle.

My first surprise party ever had a Master of Ceremonies, also known as the Chairman, who started off the proceedings by announcing the agenda. My birthday party had an agenda! The agenda included a speech by none other than myself. I have to say that it was the first time I have been required to give a speech at my birthday and I almost couldn’t do it, my heart was so full. There was an opening and closing speech and songs by the boys and girls and speeches by students and the other teacher. I sat there watching the candles melt and feeling overwhelmed by all the attention and good will and love all focused on me.

The Chairman asked me, “what do you want for yourself for the next year?” I answered, “to feel as loved and as blessed for the rest of the year as I feel right now.”

After the closing prayer, they sung my happy birthday while the candles on my cake burned. I made to blow them out after the first verse, forgetting that here, there are three: Happy Birthday to You, Happy Long Life to You, & May God Bless you Always. The little candles had almost become part of the cake by the time I got to blow them out. There were 24 candles and 8 stayed lit after my first attempt. A good omen for my romantic life this year, I can hope. :)

After the festivities we hooked the television up to the car battery and watched a movie in honor of Halloween. My birthday celebrations therefore ended with a viewing of the most strange random movie I have ever seen: Hellboy. For those of you who haven’t had the dubious pleasure, it involves Nazis opening portals to realms where gods sleep, Americans trying to stop them, a guy in a mask who is really made of sand, a blond German named Ilse (or course), and, of all people, Rasputin. Oh, and Hellboy himself, of course, a red muscular creature with horns, a liking for cigars and a stone arm. Since there must be a love plot to every Hollywood film, there is the tragic longing of Hellboy for the unexplained beauty who occasionally spontaneously combusts and the unnatural affections of the lovely Ilse for the immortal Rasputin. Happy birthday to me!

Getting back to the Sot

The bus station in Bangkok looked like an airport during a blizzard. People were sitting on every available piece of floor. The busses for the next four hours were booked up. Rather than spend all day waiting for a bus, then on one, only to arrive at the nearest town 2 hours away from Mae Sot and get stranded there because there are no connections at night, I opted for a ticket on the luxurious night bus and found myself in the north of Bangkok with 11 hours to kill before my bus.

After checking my bag, I took a taxi to Chatuchak Market. Although not nearly as big as the warren of stalls I experienced in West Africa, it is still one of the biggest and most exciting markets I have experienced. Usually the taxi drops me at Gate 1, the main entrance, but this time, I was left at the other end of the market, and entered into it in the Pet Section.

At first, I encounter only fish. There are fish of all colors and sizes, mostly floating in plastic bags. For only 350bhat, you too, can take home a hand-sized ray. Ahead of me, I hear a strange singing and soon pass a stall full of buckets and tanks crawling with meal worms and crickets.

Further in the market, the fish give way to reptiles. The snakes and lizards seem at home in the stifling heat of the market. There is a miniature crocodile (or was it an alligator) and various sizes and colors of snakes. Next come the birds. First a collection of fighting cocks in their bamboo cages on the ground with their proud necks and beautifully colored feathers. I passed a stall with a cockatoo perched out near the passing people and another with a cage full of baby parrots. Everything that is not a fish or reptile looks as if it struggling just to breathe and the parrots are laying in a heap, panting, looking gray and deathly.

I stand for several minutes in front of a cage with an animal inside I can't identify. It is small and sleek with dark, beautiful fur. It looks a little like a ferret in that it is long and elegant but it's body is wide and fat with small feet and a long tail. The head is rodent-like but with floppy ears. It is hanging over a water bowl, sipping water and panting in between sips.

The market is endlessly fascinating. I lose myself amidst the rows of cheap clothes, of house decorations and paper products. You could spend all day there, but my feet are quickly getting tired and the day is hot, so I cram onto a skytrain and jet into the city.

I have been in Thailand now for exactly one year, so I feel no guilt in saying that I spent part of my afternoon in the Pizza Hut, gorging myself on a meat lovers pizza. I then took myself to see a movie. I didn't have much of a choice of titles, so I ended up watching something called "Proof" in which Gwynneth Paltrow stars as a depressed mathematician. Can't say it was terribly thrilling but just the idea of spending an afternoon eating pizza and watching a movie was fairly novel for me. I even spent the rest of the time I had to kill sipping a soda and reading a fashion magazine (did you know that most Marie Claire readers use 3-5 products in their skin care regime at least twice a day? I think I use one, if you could soap as constituting a regime.)

The bus pulled out of Bangkok at 10:30pm and I fell asleep immediately, pulling the blanket up over the intruding chill of the airconditioner. I slept through most of the ride, yet somehow managed to arrive home at 6am Monday morning feeling exhausted. It was dark and the sun hadn't yet come up, so I grabbed another hour of sleep in my bed before having to get up and go to work. At least, however, I was home. And even when home is an empty wooden house on stilts in a strange little border town without much popular appeal, coming home still feels good.

Happy Birthday to Me (Part 1)

Well folks, this is my first post as a 24 year old. Adult-hood has been stealthily sneaking up on me for a while now. But I only recently realized that it has over come me. Despite fleeing to the other side of the world, credit cards, student debt, taxes and financial investments have all found me. Although I got rejected from my organization’s health care plan, I now have a “prosperity” fund where the organization contributes a small amount monthly towards the time when I will no longer be their employee. That’s right, folks, I am now saving for my retirement. I spent the day writing reports to the Thai Ministry of Education, reviewing our budget, filing the performance appraisals I did with my staff recently and making yet another schedule for the upcoming month. It seems that I have flown across several continents only to become a desk girl.

“Hardly,” I can see some of you scoffing now.
Hardly, indeed.

On Wednesday I went on my first official business trip. I eschewed the 8 hour bus ride from Mae Sot to Bangkok a short, smooth ride on Thailand’s boutique airline: Bangkok Airways. I took a cab directly from the airport to the Amari Atrium Hotel. If it were up to my organization, I wouldn’t be staying there. Even with the special rates we get as a non-profit organization, it is too expensive for us. My accommodation and meals were being covered by the international organization that was hosting the workshop I was attending. I arrived the evening before the workshop started and after a long, hot shower, went down to the hotel spa where I indulged in a professional haircut.

For those of you who haven’t seen me, I haven’t cut my hair for over a year, since leaving for Thailand. Among the people with whom I work, long hair is considered the source of a woman’s power. Some Karen women have incredible long hair, down to their knees. A Long-Hair Contest is actually part of one traditional celebration in the refugee camp where I work. Unfortunately, long hair is not for me. I tried to grow it out, I really did. But it was such a pleasure to have short hair again, nothing damp and sticking to the back of my neck.

The workshop was long and intense. Every day we worked from 8:30am until at least 6pm. In the workshop’s favor, the lunch break included the most luxurious buffet imaginable for a girl who eats mostly rice and boiled vegetables. Whole plates of cheeses, grainy breads, and platters of sushi. Breakfast was equally delectable: a poolside buffet on a rooftop terrace looking down at the city with an omelet chef and whole wheat croissants and fresh fruit and even vegemite. Coffee breaks had espressos and tea along with cheesecakes and hot mini quiches. For this very reason, my coworkers were all a bit jealous about my attending this workshop.

The luxury and the food were a necessity however. There was not a moment that I, and the other workshop members, were not engaged in thinking, discussing, answering questions, acting out role plays, reading, making decisions, trying to apply knowledge. There was an incredible amount of knowledge packed into two days, and despite the heavy pace, much of the agenda had to be scrapped. Meanwhile, we waded, as best we could, through the dense material involving legal background, management practice, creating policy and case studies.

The topic of the workshop: managing investigations into sexual abuse and exploitation of beneficiaries by aid workers and preventing such abuses by creating a culture of safety. I can’t tell you any of the stories that I heard during that workshop, because I respect the confidentiality of the speakers, but it struck me that as the white middle-class optimist that I am, I am so shielded from the great amount of sh*t that goes on in this world. Honestly, sometimes it is so hard to believe the unthinkably awful things people do to each other, and worse, how they are able to rationalize their behavior as normal.

Enough about that. I mention it only to tell you how I spent my birthday: in a fabulous hotel, talking about terrible things. It was not all bleak, however. To begin with, the workshop was very action focused and there is a lot I can do with the information and skills that I gained. As a matter of fact, now that I am back at my desk in Mae Sot, I have already started and that feels good. It feels good to be doing something. Secondly, during one of those ice-breakers that we all know so well, it came out that it was my birthday. The facilitators of the workshop ordered a chocolate cake from the hotel which arrived in the late afternoon, much to my surprise. It had candles and everything and I stood there in a circle of strangers as they sung me Happy Birthday. The cake had unidentified nuts, so I couldn’t eat it, but the thought was filling and sweet enough.

We finished up Friday night around 6pm and I felt drained. Nevertheless, I jetted off in a cab to a new hotel, threw my things on the bed, jumped in the shower and got dressed and was on a boat heading down to the Shangri-La hotel for an evening of fun.

From October 27th-30th, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) hosted their tenth annual international conference in Bangkok. I only heard about it a week previously and looked at registering only to find that the costs ranged from $200 - $400 USD. Considering that I would miss half of it and that I don’t get paid in USD, there was very little chance of my being an official guest. But when a workshop boasts over 2000 participants, there is a fairly large chance that I would be able to slip in unnoticed.

So I got on a boat and sped down the black river to one of THE most posh hotels in the city. There is no better way to travel through the great monster that is Bangkok. The river is wide and open, so you travel with the breeze in your face and a feeling of space that you find almost nowhere else in the city. At night, the shore is ablaze with lights, during the day, temple rooftops glitter in the sun.

It was no surprise that I was able to slip into the Gala Evening at the Shangri-La. It was a surprise that I ran into the one person I knew would be there almost immediately: a Scottish Professor I had met a few summers previously. I sipped red wine with her and her partner for awhile while the band played and then while the DJ started heating things up, but very soon the two of them pleaded exhaustion and retired. They had introduced me to a few people but I hadn’t really latched onto any one or any groups, so I drifted around the dance floor a bit, generally enjoying myself. It is a beautiful thing to see such a large group of diverse women, in all their different styles of dress, after such a long day of talking about all the problems they face in the world, out there together on the dance floor, shaking whatever it is they have to shake. I tell you, it is a sight guaranteed to make you smile and it certainly lifted my spirits after a long day. The high moment came when the DJ played a song that sounded so familiar, I didn’t even notice it at first. Immediately, a lot of African women started screaming and hit the dance floor. It was the number one hit while I was in Benin. They used to play it so often that we all would groan when it came on. But when a friend of mine made me a CD with that song back in Canada, I found how much I love it. Every time I hear that song, all of Africa comes flooding back to me. So I found myself shaking my booty like it hasn’t been shaken since 2000, amidst a large crowd of women who can shake their booty with far more style than I, but we were all smiles and laughter and red wine.

The Shangri-La is an enormous hotel with many layers, floors, wings, stairwells and secret (or so it seems sometimes) passages. It has had so many additions put onto it that the floor plan no longer makes much sense. The AWID conference was spread out throughout the hotel including uncountable meeting and conference rooms along with a space providing free massage and an internet corner. Every two hour block presents itself with at least ten workshop choices. Impossible to pick. I was in workshops from 9am to 7pm on Saturday, so naturally I availed myself of the free coffee and snacks and of the buffet lunch. I listened to women from all over the world running, researching and participating in amazing programs. I chatted with women from countries you rarely hear about in the course of your average North-American life and filled almost every moment with new learning.

The busses and boats taking people to the Celebration Dinner left at 7pm, just after I finished my last workshop, so naturally, I came along.

We cruised up the river to the Royal Thai Naval Academy, where tables covered in white linen had been set up on the lawn and sailors in full uniform served us unlimited quantities of wine. After all the official speeches, a Thai drag show performed. It was quite strange to see the flamboyant performance amidst the formal setting, and fabulous to see the feminists get up and dance, and crowd around the stage at the few moments of near nudity.

I sat at a table with the Scottish Professor and a woman I had been trying to meet in Montreal for a long time but who had always eluded me. Also at the table were women who are key activists in the Vagina Monologues campaigns in the Middle East (introduced to me as “The Vagina Queen” and “The Vagina Princess.”) I cannot tell you how much I admire the work that these women do. And there I was joking around with them as the night got raunchier and raunchier and saucier and saucier. Most of the women at the table as the night wore on worked on issues related to Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, and this, and other things, made me feel so out of my depths but also so stimulated.

Finally, the sailors cut off our wine and herded us back to the boats. Everyone was heading back to their hotel, so I decided to join them. Even though the bar and pool were closed, we collapsed by the pool and ordered gin and tonics. Actually, I went to the bathroom and somehow the gin and tonics continued to materialize. Who ordered and who paid for them, I am still uncertain.

And the evening went on from there, in a wash of delicious Middle-Eastern accents and fabulous conversation. It was inevitable that we should all strip and invade the pool. Some time after, sitting in our wet underwear, the women started singing me Happy Birthday. It was quite fabulous. When everyone decided to call it a night, one of the women who wasn’t sharing a room invited me up to hers and so I got to indulge in yet another night of luxury, this time at the Menam Hotel, not quite as fabulous as the Shangri-La but definitely better than the guesthouse where I was staying for the weekend.

So of course, I availed myself of the fabulous buffet breakfast in the morning and the lovely coffee which was so necessary before hitting the last morning session at the Shangri-La. I hopped in a cab with a presenter for the panel I was going to: another women I had been wanting to meet, an activist from Pakistan.

I had left my office in Mae Sot on Wednesday, joking about how I was going to crash the AWID conference, but I had no idea then, just how well and truly I would succeed in crashing almost every aspect of it. I really am quite proud of myself.

(the story of my birthday is not quite over yet, look for my next posting, coming soon to a blog near you.)

Onwards

After moving on Saturday, I spent Sunday in the office helping to get exams and review sheets written for the school. In the afternoon, my old neighbor had the culmination of his art project in Mae Sot with a migrant children’s art exhibition. I dropped in for some food and art, then headed back to the office to plan a workshop to help the students at the school work towards greater maturity and sense of responsibility.

Monday morning, bright and early, I was on a truck heading up to camp for a high energy day of workshop activities. I taught Tuesday morning, then jumped in a truck and headed back to Mae Sot. I had a brief time to shower, pack and check in with everyone at the office before I was off in another truck heading to Bangkok.


On a bus, the trip usually takes between 8-10 hours, depending on how many stops it has to make. With my boss driving, it took less than 6. (Speed limits being another one of those things that aren’t terribly regulated around here.) We checked into the most luxurious hotel I have ever stayed in. The CenterPoint Executive suites are not, by far, the most luxurious hotel there is, only the most fabulous I have ever had the privilege to experience. I had the corner room on the 22nd floor, looking out over the madness of Bangkok in an air-conditioned, cotton wrapped cocoon of luxury. In the afternoons, I floated on my back in a magnificent blue pool, looking past the fronds of palm tree up into the gray sky, never seeing the tangle of traffic or the heat and the sweat of the streets.



My first day in Bangkok was spent at the British Club where there is a monthly meeting of all registered NGO’s working with refugees in Thailand to share information and coordinate. It’s a fabulous place to meet and link up with people who are usually out in the field, or far away in Bangkok, or working in other areas of Thailand. There was a really informative presentation about land mind use in Burma, as well as good discussion about the chances of increased military action in the area as we move out of the wet season. The morning is a general open session and in the afternoon various subcommittees meet, including the education subcommittee, which I attended.

It seemed strange to me to wash the mud off my feet and put on something nice, sit in the air-conditioned, high-ceilinged colonial splendor of the British Club, and drink coffee served by people in white suits. Outside, there seemed to be an oasis of calm in the monstrous city, complete with manicured lawns, a tennis court and a pool where people swam lazy laps.

Our hotel was opposite Pantip Plaza, also known as IT Center, also known as the computer lovers land of dreams. There are floors upon floors upon floors of hard ware, software, pirated DVD’s, computer parts, gadgets, flashing neon lights, loudspeakers and general chaos. It was an opportunity to stock up on DVD’s that could not be resisted, especially as I passed a booth with Mr. and Mrs. Smith featured prominently. And for $2.50 a pop, how can you say no? So our first night was spent ordering pizza (Pizza!!!) and wallowing in our executive suites watching movies.

Thursday was the beginning of the launch of our new project, known as SHIELD. SHIELD is an acronym I haven’t yet entirely mastered, but it has to do with providing support to health, institution building, and education to migrant and refugee communities in six provinces of Thailand. The two-day launch workshop was held at the Amari Atrium hotel, an even more luxurious location than our digs. So while we were completely happy with our breakfasts of espresso coffee and omelets delivered by omelets chefs on toasted whole-wheat bread, our lunches were an endless buffet of delights including a full sushi bar and a selection of cheeses and breads. At first, amidst all the suits and administrative managers attending the workshop, I could not help but feel like a country girl crashing the party, especially when it came to my obvious delight about the food. But then I saw one of the recently arrived senior managers sitting down at his table with two plates simply heaped with mountains of food and I felt a little better.

The launch was fascinating for me. I worked in groups with the country director of a large international aid organization, with people with years of education and experience and with people who sit behind desks all day, with lawyers versed in international law, US contract regulations and refugee advocacy. I spoke with people who had just arrived into the country with no experience at all with the situation and I spoke with people who had been in the country for years but rarely in the field. It was an interesting coming together of so many different kinds of people and experience and it takes all of us working together to make the project happen. It was such a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak to new people, learn new things and get out of the usual context of my muddy life.

Strange for me to have gone from my books and theory in University, to the muddy reality of the refugee camp, and find myself once again, spending all day talking. And after two days of doing nothing but talk, I felt ready to get back to Mae Sot and start doing the doing.

I celebrated the end of three luxurious days away from Mae Sot by doing a little shopping. Bangkok is perhaps the only place where I will be able to find shoes that are my size in this country, so I took advantage. Everyone else was too tired from the endless meetings and stayed in. I went out into the madness.

I ended up in a small club near Lumphini Park called Brown Sugar. It was packed but I found a spot at the bar and ordered a margarita. Can I even remember the last time I drank a margarita?? I sat back with my cool drink and let the fabulous sounds of live jazz roll over me, eyes closed with a huge smile on my face.

From Cave to Treehouse

One of the nicest things about Thailand is a general lack of rules and regulations regarding those things which, in North America, we have governed to death. You cannot, for example, drive in this country if you are unwilling to make a U-turn. The road system depends on it that you will. You will also encounter a large number of people going the wrong way down one way streets (although traffic police occasionally intervene in that case although more, I suspect, for financial motivations than for a concern about safety.) Housing likewise seems pretty unregulated. I do not have a lease and I start paying rent on the day that I move in. Sometimes I forget and that’s ok too.

I recently decided to move houses. I had been living across the street from a monastery in the middle flat of a triplex. It was hard to keep clean because it was so big and I am not around very often. There was a large tiled area downstairs and two bedrooms made of wood upstairs. There was a total of two windows in the entire place, which got my place known as The Cave. On a bright, sunny day, I had to have lights on. All the plants I bought soon died. My house opened directly onto a somewhat busy street where Burmese factory workers would stroll by, peering curiously into my house. I had finally had enough.


Unfortunately, my move came at a rather bad time. I gave the landlady notice (not because I had to but because I thought it was a nice thing to do) and arranged a truck to help me move. But then a million things came up, all at the same time, as they do. For one, I was supposed to attend the launch of my organization’s new project: a large five-year grant from the United States Agency for International Development. We are partnering with the International Rescue Committee and a small organization called PATH to implement the project and so we had our first big meeting to plan and get to know each other in Bangkok at the end of the week. Before I left for that, I needed to get everything organized and ready to roll back at the homestead. In addition, some issues came up at the school which needed to be dealt with, so that had me running around consulting people, getting advice and making plans. The usual school business took more time than usual as we are coming into exam time soon, so we need to review and prepare exams. And at the last minute, it seemed everyone’s plans changed and nobody seemed to know what was going on.

I came back from the refugee camp on Friday night and still had nothing in my house packed. I packed all morning until the mover came. The two of us struggled with my massive mattress (Thai mattresses are made of stone) and my table and all the various other detritus I seemed to have picked up in my year here. Then we drove them to the new place and wrestled them up the stairs.

My new house is on the other side of town. Thankfully, there is no monastery nearby to wake me up in the morning with the loud chanting of monks on loudspeakers. It is a traditional Thai-style wooden house on very high stilts. I am high above everyone with a view of everything. My front balcony looks out over an empty field to a cemetery. Just beyond the cemetery is the main highway and the infamous Country Pub (but that’s another story). Behind my house is a little canal system where Burmese people, I am told, wander and meet for romantic trysts at night. The Northern Market is just down the street where you can buy fresh vegetables, meat, fruit, flowers and freshly baked goods.

I have seven windows in my house, so it is always full of light and breeze. And bugs. The bugs aren’t such a big deal as I sleep under a mosquito net at night anyways. When the windows are closed, however, as they must be while I am traveling, the house becomes a sauna of heat and steam. Not very pleasant to come home to. And although I have lost my monks, I have a neighbor now who, although he lives in a wooden shack with lots of cracks and holes, has a wicked stereo system that rivals the monks and their loudspeaker any day.

My fridge is being delivered on Monday and with that, my move into the Treehouse is complete. When I don’t wake up to Thai music from next door, I wake up to the sun in my face and the call of birds and insects from outside (and only sometimes inside). From my bed, I can see the green leaves swaying outside in the breeze and hear my wind chimes chiming for the first time since I bought them. It’s a nice way to wake up in the morning.

Bull Fighting

We arrived at the bull fights covered in sweat, dust and a major sunburn. It was I who lead us astray. I took a wrong turn and half an hour later, we were in another village, having missed the cattle sale and bull fighting ring entirely. The fights went all day, so we didn's miss much by being late.

Actually, the cattle yard was only about a ten minute bike ride from my house. It was a pleasant ride in the bright sunshine through the rice feilds and beside the lotus ponds with their pink flowers reaching up against the blue sky. It's rainy season so most days are gray and the sunshine seems all the more brilliant and beautiful when the clouds lift.

I was wearing Burmese slippers, the flimiest kind of flip flop ever made and not the most appropriate footwear for picking one's way through the mud and cow paddies.


The spectators arena is divided into two sections: the big wigs and the rabble. There is no discernable difference between them. They both have equal sections of seats and shade. The big wigs pay 250baht for their ticket, however, and the rabble only pay 150. We didn't pay anything, because, being completely oblivious to everything but avoiding cow paddies on the ground, we wandered into the big wig section without even realizing that one needed to pay money to see big animals get bloody.


Having grown up in a culture so saturated with animal rights and trying so hard to remove itself from any sense of real savagry, the fights hold a kind of fascination for me. I watched the big beasts circling each other, wondering what drives them? What goes on in their thoughts and bodies to make them sniff the mud instead of charge, or lock horns until their eyes are almost gouged out? Why do they sometimes turn and run and why do they sometimes fight for hours in the sun?


Like Thai boxing or watching the cock fights, by far the most entertaining element of the day are the spectators. To begin with, all the dust and heat and cows make it feel like the Calgary Stampede or a local small town Alberta rodeo. Men wandered around in jeans, checkered shirts and big cowboy hats. Women were a minority in attendance, making up for perhaps 5% of the spectators and crowded together in a corner of the stands. They were, however, one of the loudest contingents when the fighting got tough.

The screaming, rafter-shaking passion was riviting to watch, but more interesting was the large amount of money changing hands after each fight. When one of the bulls admitted defeat, the bull handlers in the ring would turn cartwheels and dance in joy in the mud, then parade the winning bull towards the judges stand to be wreathed with bright flowers and baggies full of thousand baht notes. Those bulls made more moeny in ten minutes than I do in ten months. And they aren't the only ones. In the crowd, people are cartweeling and crying as they whip out their wallets and peel off the notes, laughing and cursing and screaming in frustration. In the fight in the picture, I put my money on the brown bull who I dubbed "Mean Boy" and my neighbour put his on the black and white bull, "Pretty Boy." After the fight, I was down one beer, I'm afraid. I'll stick to making my money in a refugee camp and leave the bull betting to the pros.

Something Frivolous for a Change

For most of the week I am the grubbiest girl you have ever seen. It's currently too cold to shower in Umphium, the refugee camp where I work, so washing is, for now, down to a minimum. The "showers" are bucket showers, performed by scooping incredibly cold water over your body. Actually, once you've gotten started, it's quite refreshing, but being brave enough to start is the hard part. Since it is rainy season, there are certain body parts which it is impossible to clean or keep clean, even directly after showering, most notably, the feet. Footwear generally consists of flip flop sandals or rubber boots, both of which do not lead to clean feet and since we live on a clay mountain side, we spend our days sloshing through and trying not to slip and fall into, the mud.

I am a teacher, so I dress respectably, however I cannot say that refugee camp style is the height of fashion. I wear clothes that are practical and that are usually at least partially covered in mud. My hairstyle is far from chic, either in pigtails or pushed back behind a bandanna. In short, none of this should surprise you, this is the laid back, back-country camping girl that you all know and mostly love.

But this weekend was a little different. This week, after emptying my guts in a variety of toilets around camp, I felt the need for a little tender loving care. So in the company of my good friend and fellow aid worker, Brooke, we declared this to be Mae Sot Spa Weekend.

On Saturday we began our indulgences with iced coffee from the air conditioned haven on Heaven Coffee shop. Then, we spent two hours getting our usual weekend Thai massage. Before you get too jealous you should know that Thai massage does not involve whale music, relaxing and soothing sounds or dimmed mood lighting and scented oils. It is more likely to involve two Thai women arguing loudly above you about whose butt is fatter, yours or the woman next to you. Sometimes the massage is soothing and relaxing, and sometimes it is acutely painful. And it's hard to tell which it is going to be before you begin.

Sunday morning, we began with an early breakfast of Chicken and Rice. All right, it's not luxurious, but there is no fancy breakfast to be had around here and anyone who tries for a Western Style feast is likely to be disappointed. So we stuck with the tried-and-true traditional breakfast and then set off for our facial.

I have never had a facial. Why would I? I don't have $100 to spend on my face when my face seems perfectly fine. But this weekend, we decided to splurge and spend the whole $5 it costs in Mae Sot for an hour worth of luxury.

Surprisingly, here the women were quiet and they turned off the loud Thai pop on the radio for some boy-band-pop from the 80's. I had various cremes, lotions and scrubs put on my face as well as a few machines and masks. In addition, I my face steamed and my nostrils cleaned (although I can't say I was too comfortable with the last). Best of all, my "facial" included a hand and foot massage as well as a brief back and shoulder massage.

Today I am clean, well dressed and I feel like a whole new woman - ready to face another week of cold water and mud!

The Wedding

One day before my elder brother is supposed to get married, he comes up to me and says, "Hey Jen! Want to jump off a bridge?"

"Huh?" I answer, as many people would, I'm sure.

"Come on," he says, "grab a life jacket, we're leaving."

He is being serious, it seems.

The days that led up to Mike's wedding seemed full of moments like that: canoes that went missing on our overnight camping trip, choking on river water as I got sucked into a whirlpool after finally (finally!) jumping off the bridge into the flooded rapids below. Part of it was the ordinary madness that accompanies any wedding. Part of it was the madness that accompanies a wedding involving 100 people in a remote northern fishing location. And part of it is the madness that accompanies my brother and his fiancee - the pair that built a canoe and paddled across the entire country living off dried food they dehydrated themselves and battling with giardia, rapids and the Great White North.

On the day of the wedding, however, the madness seemed to have ended. It was a beautiful day. After my cousins had finished with making me into an almost unrecognizable girl, we headed off to Stanley Mission where the wedding was going to be held.

I got there early as my job involved paddling guests across the water to the old church on an island in big Voyageur canoes. It was a glorious day and my job was a good one. Besides chatting with all the guests, I was out on the water, which was sparkling in the sunlight, looking up towards the white church, and the brilliant blue sky, and the dark green pines along the shore. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was beautiful.

I spent most of the wedding being thankful that I was in the front row, off to the side where no one could see that I was crying. I don't think I have every seen my brother look quite so happy and so radiant. He had eyes for only one person in the church and she couldn't keep her eyes off of his.

My brother is a big guy with a big beard and a big voice, but that day, he sounded like he was about ten years old. I cried the whole time he said his vows and most of the time that she sung hers, in pure joy and celebration of the moment.

The church was just the right size for a hundred people. It is one of the oldest churches in Western Canada, made mostly of wood. As the happy couple exited the church, the brides and grooms (all akilted) raised their canoe paddles into an arch to let them pass. They left the church and went down to the dock where they played a best-of-three rock, paper, sissors to see who got the stern of the canoe (probably the most talked about wedding moment of the summer.) Then they paddled off into the distance.

There was, of course, the inevitable hour or so of photographs, which was passed in the grassy graveyard behind the church. While the bride used her veil to ward off the mosquitos, the boys in kilts were not so lucky. Actually, with the spectacular scenery and the wonderful wedding, even mosquitos could not keep the smiles from our faces.

I got a ride back to land in a motorboat, being relieved of my rowing duties for awhile. As we touched shore, the rain began, just in time for us to get into the car and hit the road.

Dinner was a fabulous affair involving bison, pickrel, wild rice and sweet potatoes. As much as possible, everything had come from local providers. The wine was Canadian and lovely. Every now and again, someone would ring a bell and the couple would kiss.

Someone put me behind the bar, but obviously I didn't stay there long, just long enough to have too much to drink. There was music on and so I had to dance. Almost everyone was on the dancefloor, including the father of the bride and my own parents. My aunt was getting her groove on and there were boys in kilts to dance with and cigars to smoke and people to talk with and entice onto the dancefloor. You can see why I didn't stay behind the bar for very long.

Everything was perfect, as far as I'm concerned, and not having organized it, I am blissfully oblivious to anything that might have gone wrong. The smile on my brother's face and on Ambers, his now wife, was worth every moment of hassle, from the travel agent to the typhoon, just to have been there and seen it and shared the moment with them. The speeches were heart felt, the food divine, the weather gorgeous. I went on a canoe trip, caught a fish, jumped off a bridge and survived to see the wedding, dance the night away, and drive the 13 hours back to Calgary and the 48 hours it took to get back to Bangkok. Never have I been so glad to be with my family and share all the joys and happiness that they bring.

Thanks guys.

Part Eight: When Will it End?

Queen's Birthday:

My bike gets stolen.

45minute walk home in the rain.

What next?

Part Seven: Back in Mae Sot.

I arrived back home at 10pm. My house was full of cobwebs and mould. I took one look at my closet and saw that every single item of clothing I had was infested. The only clothes I could wear, therefor, were the ones I had packed in my carry-on. I had been through most of those already.

I arrived at work the next day, therefor, in a strange combination of clothes, only to find that we would be doing a presentation to our funders, important people from USAID (United States Aid for International Development) were arriving. The presentation went well and I jumped on a truck to get up to the refugee camp to teach that afternoon. I taught and jumped back on the truck to get back to go to dinner and a USAID smooze-fest.

The good news is that it is now official: we have secured funding for the next five years. That means I have a job and a salary and I can hire someone to come here and teach for me so very soon I will only have to do one job instead of two.

And the next morning, I was on a truck again for the hour and a half ride through the mountains to camp. It's rainy season and luckily it seems all the flooding happened when I was away, but our refugee camp in on a hill made of clay, so the whole place is one huge mud pit of fun. This will continue until October.

The moment I stepped foot in my classroom though, I knew, just as I knew the moment I got home to my family, that this whole saga of woe was worth it. My students were so happy to see me and filled me with such great energy that I left camp on Thursday night feeling optimistic and ready to keep on trucking. There are a million things to catch up on, I feel like I've been gone for a month, and so many exciting new developments and things to keep me on my toes and I am loving every second of it. That's good, because I am really not loving the mould or the cobwebs in my house or the place where the cat from next door was sick on my floor god knows how long ago.

But here I am and I still don’t have my bags and my passport and I've just been told the work visa I got in Calgary is invalid anyways, but it's the Queen's Birthday today, so I have a little bit of time to sleep in and rest and that makes the world all that much better. And biking through the vivid green, through the puddles of brown mud, past the buffalo and the rice paddies on my way to work this morning, I know that this is exactly where I want to be right now, evil travel agents and typhoons in Shanghai and all.

Part Six: Deplaning Your Aircraft.

I waited by the baggage carousel with very little hope. I went to the baggage counter almost immediately and had them scan my baggage ticket. "Hmmm…" said the man behind the counter. "I don't have any idea where your bags are."

At least, I thought, he is refreshingly honest.

When we had checked in at Shanghai for the Thai Airways flight, we had been told our bags would likely not make the plane with us, but would be on a following flight and they gave us the number. I told this to the people at the bag counter and they said that the flight would get in at three. It was almost midnight. They would deliver the bags to our hotel, they told us.

I didn't have a hotel. I was supposed to be in Mae Sot already, but I had missed the last bus of the night sorting out my bag situation. Someone suggested I go wait in the waiting lounge of the airport – a hot room with plastic chairs. I almost cried. Another night on a marble floor in an uncomfortable chair.

Instead, I marched up to the China Eastern Airlines office and demanded a hotel room. The woman listened and said, "Sit over there." Twenty minutes later, she had left the office, not having appeared to have done anything for my case. I returned to the counter.

You must understand, strong girl though I may be, lack of sleep is my kryptonite. I had grabbed naps here and there, but I had been in airports for more than fourty-eight hours, in high stress situations, in immigration, and I was fed up. I couldn't bring myself to yell, so I cried.

Actually, I kind of lost it, but the end result was that someone came to pick me up from a nearby airport hotel. They took me downstairs and said they would be back in a second with the airport shuttle. Half an hour later, they hadn't come back.

I went back upstairs, thoroughly exhausted and this time I really lost it. I bawled. The airline man was called and came upstairs again. "I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot you."

I checked into the hotel and the man took my ticket and passport and I was too tired to even think about it. I went upstairs to my bed and slept.

In the morning, my bags had still not arrived, so I availed myself of the hotel buffet and headed out to the bus station to get to Mae Sot. I was half way to Mae Sot when I realized that I had left my passport at the hotel.

Part Five: Your In-Flight Service - Hours Thirty to Fourty-Eight

As I waited, I noticed a few other foreigners waiting with me and the longer we waited, the more passports were added to the pile behind the immigration desk. After half an hour of waiting, I returned to the counter and started asking questions.

It turned out that they were holding our passports and tickets until such time as we had a confirmed booking on an outgoing flight from China. In order to pass immigration, either this or a visa is required. The problem was that no one had contacted our airline to arrange this, so it appeared that we were waiting indefinitely. The sea of people waiting to pass immigration certainly hadn't diminished so it didn't looks as if the immigration officers would be helping us any time soon.

I took matters into my own hands, hoped that my passport and ticket were safe where they were and went looking for China Eastern Airline representatives. I found them near the baggage claim looking harassed and overworked, as I'm sure they were. No one from immigration had notified them. I took a representative back upstairs with me and she collected a stack of about fifty passports and took them into an immigration office. We camped outside the office on the marble floor for the next five hours. There was nowhere else for us to go without our passports.

A group of people transferring to India got taken care of. The people leaving for Hong Kong got their boarding passes. Some guy from IBM came in and yelled a lot. At times it was like watching some twisted reality TV show, watching people come in and out, hearing their flight dilemmas, filling in the blanks where people were speaking Mandarin with our own imaginary subtitles.

Finally, the woman rushed out of the room. "Get your bags, you're leaving now." Our bags? I thought. I have no idea where my bags are. No time to think, we were rushed downstairs and someone put yellow stickers on us. I frantically tried to put my contacts, so I could see and find my bags. One went in, the other went on the floor. Hands dropped as people helped me find it. With one eye, I found my monster bags and a trolley and raced after the other people heading for Bangkok. We had to clear customs, then grab random boarding passes for a Thai Airways flight, then we were racing through security and immigration again and onwards to our boarding lounge.

The flight was called and I boarded and sank into total relaxation in my first class Thai Airways seat upstairs. It had a huge seat, enough leg room, a big pillow and warm blankets. I got a BioTherm bag full of cosmetics and a brush. I had champagne before lift-off and a delightful Cabernet Sauvignon with dinner. The appetizer was a spicy salmon tartar, and I selected a delicious dinner of roast duck with potatoes Lyonnaise and steamed asparagus tips. After dinner there was cappuccino with dessert. I almost wish I could have stayed away to enjoy it more, but I sank into a delicious and much deserved sleep.

It sounds like a happy ending, and I only wish it was.

Part Four: Your In-Flight Service

Typhoon in Shanghai. It made me laugh. I pulled Harry Potter out of my monstrous bags and accepted the food coupon from the check-in desk and then went off to sit in a restaurant with a feeling of relief. At least I had made the flight. My bags were off my hands and I had a real ticket this time and seemed to be going somewhere.

At the bar of the restaurant I chatted with a South African guy who seemed at first pleasant and then annoyingly racist and sexist. At least I had Harry Potter for company.

To my surprise, the flight boarded only a few hours late. Sure, the flight would take eleven hours, but surely the typhoon and resulting weather disturbances wouldn't have cleared away completely by then, I thought.

I thought correctly. After ten hours, the captain announced that we would be landing in Tokyo. Surely, I thought, the typhoon won't clear up in a few hours.

I thought correctly. We sat on the tarmac for a few hours until the airport closed. Then we were told because the airport was closed, there was no ground crew to unload us so we could neither take-off nor get off the plane. We stayed there for a further nine hours.

Finally, we were on our way to Shanghai. "I don't even want to go to Shanghai!" I kept thinking. I had missed my flight to Bangkok and didn't relish the madness I imagined would be going on in Shanghai with all the flights rescheduled and people stuck and bags most likely lost. But onwards to Shanghai we went and there we arrived in due course, after being on the same airplane for more than THIRTY hours.

But, I thought, I am nearing the end of my saga. And, as I had had that thought many a time in the previous two weeks, this time also, I was wrong. There was more to come.

We tottered off the plane, a smelly, zombie-like crew, ecstatic for clean air and a place to stretch our legs. We were herded towards Chinese immigration. In the long, long line before I reached the counter, I struck up conversations with some people from India and a guy from China.

"Why is this taking so long?" I asked, noticing that each immigration official seemed to be taking a very long time with each passport.

"They are like that here," my Chinese-Canadian friend said. "They don't care. They are looking for anti-Communist infiltrators. Mostly it is people with Taiwanese passports. They take them away for interrogation."

"Oh," I said.

I had been away from work for two weeks. In Canada, I had put all thoughts of Burma and Mae Sot from my mind, fully enjoying my vacation and my time with my family. I had forgotten all the politics of immigration and deportation and interrogation. I had forgotten how often I lie to immigration and government officials about my work. I had forgotten that I once worked in Taiwan and am currently engaged in work which is considered subversive to the government of Myanmar, who is a good friend with the government of China, which is the country in which I currently found myself. All those stamps in my passport were going to get me in trouble again, I thought.

I stepped up to the counter when my turn came with the cheeriest, ditziest, most non-subversive smile I could think of. But the official never looked at me. He looked at my passport and he looked at my ticket and then he said, "Wait over there."

He kept my ticket and passport behind the counter. What choice did I have?

Part Three: Boarding Time.

Coming home to Canada was definitely worth every penny, every tear and every bit of sleepless stressed out flight minutes home. But the story of the wedding and how beautiful it was is a story for another day. For now we will continue with the endless saga of woe.

In Calgary, I notified the embassy of the theiving travel agent who had in fact abandoned shop and hit the highway. His shop in Bangkok is now a backpacking store. I applied for a Thai work visa, I met friends, and I received a very generous donation of two boxes of books for my school in Umphium, which made my bags coming back to Bangkok even more monstrous than they had ever been before. Both of them weighed over eighty pounds. In Calgary, I also bought another one-way ticket back to Bangkok. This time I was with China Eastern Airlines, going through Shanghai. Last minute, non-refundable, no changes permissible. "You better catch that flight," I thought to myself.

Before flying out of Vancouver to return to work, I visited a friend on Vancouver Island, a one and a half hour ferry ride from Vancouver. I left my bags in the airport and I spent the afternoon with her out at a lake, swimming and basking in the sun and losing my glasses in the bottom of the lake.

Luckily, I had contacts with me and an extra pair of glasses somewhere in my monstrous bags.

"I should be on the eight o'clock ferry," I thought. "Or probably the nine o'clock." But we made our travel plans late at night when both me and my friend who would be driving me were feeling tired, so we settled on the ten o'clock ferry.

We arrived at the ferry terminal at nine fifty-five. "One ticket, please," I said, panting a little from the run in from the car.

"Sorry," the woman at the counter said. "We don't start selling tickets for another ten minutes." I looked blank. "We don't start selling tickets for the eleven o'clock ferry until after ten o'clock."

I panicked but there was nothing to be done. The gangway between shore and boat was already going up. We had missed the ferry. I sat with my friend in the terminal. If I missed this flight, that was it. No changes, no rescheduling, no refund. Just ANOTHER ticket I would have to swallow and buy again. We called the airline, only to get a chirpy recording telling me that there were no changes and the flight was on time. We made calculations. I could still make it, if the ferry was on time (they often aren't) and if there was no traffic and if security wasn't taking a long time…

It was a long hour to wait for the ferry. I ate chocolate like a madwoman. It was a long hour and a half on the ferry. It was a long half hour ride to the airport.

I tore out of the bus and raced through the airport down to the baggage check where I had left the monster bags. I loaded them precariously onto a trolley and then barreled my way through two terminals to get to my check in counter, resisting the urge to swear at old ladies and slow movers and almost toppling a family of five.

Covered in sweat, I pulled up ahead of the China Eastern counter and found my ticket. I looked up to see a big sign:

Typhoon in Shanghai. Flights Delayed.

Part Two: Your Pre-Flight Boarding Call

In the morning most of my swelling had gone down and my trip out to the bus station to pick up my bags went smoothly. I wasn't as early at the airport as I would have liked to have been, but I got there with plenty of time to spare.

At the Cathay Pacific counter I hauled my bag up on the scale and brought out my passport. "My name is Jennifer Jones," I said. "I'm on the ten fifty flight to Hong Kong and Vancouver."

"Hmmmm," said the airline agent. "I don't seem to have you on my system."

"Well," I said helpfully, "here is my confirmation number. Does that help?"

The agent looked thoughtful and then called her manager. "Aha!" I thought. "They have made a mistake. Perhaps they overbooked the plane. Perhaps they are upgrading me to first class."

When she got off the phone, I discovered that quite the contrary to being upgraded, I didn't have a ticket at all. My travel agent, she explained, had never given the airline payment for the booking, so the airline had "washed" the booking from their system. Not only did I not have a flight, but the flight was booked and completely full. "Call your travel agent," she said. "They probably just forgot to pay."

It's Sunday, I thought. What kind of travel agent works on Sunday? So with an hour and a half before flight time, I rushed to the phones and started making phone calls. The shop had two numbers and I had the personal cell phone of the travel agent. His name is Waiphot and he was recommended to me by my good friend Mel who had been using him for two years. In fact, she had even left her stuff at his place for a few months in storage while she had gone travelling awhile ago.

The cell phone rang busy. The shop never answered. I called Mel. "That's strange," she said. "The shop is open on Sunday and there is always someone there."

I returned to the check-in counter. "Get me on this flight."

There were three other people flying stand-by ahead of me. I had to wait another fifteen minutes. A seat became available. I had to go to another counter to pay for it. The flight was boarding and they hadn't even checked my bags in yet. They showed me the bill. It was twice what I had paid for the round-trip ticket and would only get me one-way home to Canada. I closed my tearing eyes and said, "Do it."

Ticket in hand, I ran for security only to get stopped. Damned airport tax. There was a line up. "Please," I begged. "My flight leaves in fifteen minutes, could I…"

"Mine too," barked the man in front. "Hey, baby, give me my wallet will you?"

The man behind him let me in. I paid and hit security. Luckily security in Thailand is nothing like most countries. It took less than five minutes. I ran towards my gate, boarded the plane and sat down. I had made it.

Part One: Leaving on a Jet Plane

My send off from Mae Sot in no way hinted the arduous saga my journey home was to become. I packed my bag full of presents for my brother's wedding, and slung it onto my back and walked down the street to the hot-pot restaurant. All my friends came to see me off despite the rain. We sat around laughing and drinking wine and gin (real treats for us in Mae Sot) and eating large quantities of ice cream from the buffet bar. A friend gave me a ride on a motorcycle to the bus and then I was settled in comfortably under my blanket, speeding through the wet night on my way to Bangkok.

As comfortably as one may be settled in, it is almost impossible to get a good night's sleep on an overnight bus. I arrived in the Northern Bus Terminal just after five in the morning on Saturday feeling excited and ready for adventure. I hauled my bags off the bus and trucked them over to the Departures terminal where there is a place to check in your bags overnight for a small fee. The airport not being far from the bus terminal, my plan was to pick them up there the next day on the way to the airport.

I spent five minutes rooting around in my handbag before I realized that I didn't have my wallet.

I tore through all my bags looking for it, but it was gone.

Where was my wallet? Had someone lifted it from my purse on my way to the Departures terminal or had I left it on the bus?

I desperately tried miming my situation to the woman checking bags. My Thai is enough for me to get a good meal and a hotel room, but certainly can't deal with, "I've left my wallet on the bus, I'll be right back and can pay you in a minute." The woman just gave me a look of disgust and moved my bags out of her way. "But you can't do this!" I thought. "You have to help me! You have to be nice!"

There wasn't much to be done. I couldn't go tearing around the large bus complex on a wallet finding mission with my monster of a bag. I moved it as close to the other bags as I could and set off.

The bus, of course, had already gone. At information they kept asking me, "Where do you want to go?" The security guards kept asking, "Where is your ticket?"

My ticket, of course, was in my wallet. My wallet was (I hoped) on the bus. The bus belonged to a bus company and I didn't know which one, nor could I consult my ticket to find out. All I knew was that it started with a "C" and was a fairly long Thai name that I couldn't hope to pronounce, let alone remember.

Someone said one name and it sounded right so I went with it. I had to come back in at seven when their office opened. I went back and slept with my bags, enduring more dirty looks from the baggage ladies. At seven I went to the offices. No one was there. Another Thai woman in purple came over to "help" me. She kept asking me questions in Thai, which I tried to field in Mime and she kept cutting me off to yell at me.
I started to cry.

Just a little and not because of my wallet so much as because I hadn't slept enough and I was stressed out and this lady was screaming something incomprehensible in my face. Finally a lady behind a ticket window beckoned me over and got on a phone. Actually, at one point she had two phones going, plus her cell phone, plus she was issuing tickets to customers. Quite frankly I had never seen anyone in Thailand quite so busy. She was a superhero of efficiency. Finally, she handed me a piece of paper and told me to give it to a cab driver.

There I was at the Northern Bus Terminal with not even enough baht to my name to use the washroom, and no plastic and this stranger writes something in Thai and tells me to get into a cab. If she's wrong, or misunderstood or if someone has already found and emptied my wallet, I can't even pay the driver, but what else can I do? I hail the cab and jump in.

The cab takes me to the company's bus depot where a smiling man greets me and waves me enthusiastically over to the bus. There, under my seat, is my wallet, untouched and full of cash.

The great thing about misfortunes, I think, thankful that my stupidity has not been badly punished this time around, is that misfortune illuminates the glory of the every day. Suddenly, I feel blessed and my whole day sparkles with my extraordinary luck. I'm still tired and emotionally drained, but I am full of well being and can't stop smiling.

I return to the terminal and check in my bags. I hop on a city bus over to the weekend market and sit in the first booth I can find to order an iced coffee. From my stool, the whole day looks beautiful. I watch the booths open, people set up, a slow trickle of shoppers come in.

The Chatuchak Weekend Market is one of the inexhaustible wonders of Bangkok. Everything is for sale there from pure bred puppies to kitchen ware. If you went every weekend, I still doubt that you would exhaust the place. Designer clothing, decorations, magic amulets, antiques, furniture, pottery, incense, jewelry, food, beer, snakes, slippers… you name it, it's probably there. By far the greatest challenge, however, will be finding it amidst the warren of stalls and booths and small shops and crowded lanes full of shoppers.

I spent my morning there and my afternoon catching up on my sleep in a small hotel room in the city. In the evening I wandered through another night market, had dinner on the street and then went to sample some of the nightlife. I ended up dancing the night away in a tightly packed club with fabulous music.

Bangkok clubs close at two. About fifteen minutes before close, something curious started to happen. My fingers felt fat and funny, my head started to itch. By the time I got outside, I had to take my ring off because I was afraid it would cut the circulation off in my hand. Welts were forming on my arms and neck.
I had hives.

For those of you without allergies, I wouldn't wish this on any of you. Hives are probably one of the lesser allergic reactions (I'd definitely pick it over anaphylactic shock any day) but that doesn't make them any less miserable. Your whole body breaks out into large swollen welts, like oversized mosquito bites. Everything swells. I couldn't make a fist with my hands they were so fat. The temptation to scratch is enormous and even when I succeed in resisting, my body twitches involuntarily with the itch. In addition, a queasiness takes over, the faint feeling that you will vomit. In short, it feels as if your body has been taken over by a swarm of infected itchy bees.

This is not the first time I've had hives in Bangkok. I'd love to know what causes it. At that moment, all I cared about, however, was finding my drugs and kicking them back. A happy side effect of allergy drugs is that they induce sleepiness, so very soon after returning to my hotel, I had left my itchy body behind and fallen into my dreams. I didn't hear the usual night noises, the cats and the dogs and the rain on the roof and the noisy neighbors. All I heard in the morning was my alarm waking me up to send me on my way to the airport where I would head off for Canada and my brother's wedding.

The Days We Love Best

The great thing about Friday, the thing that everyone loves, the thing that makes Fridays such wonderful days, is that they are generally, with very few exceptions to the rule, followed by Saturdays. And even if you are like me, with far too much work to take the whole day off, Saturdays are by and large better days than, let's say, Mondays, this being wholly due to the fact that they are part of the weekend.

As grumpy as I was on Friday, then, Saturday more than made up for it.

For one thing, I listened to music for most of the day. I spent a large amount of time outdoors and I cycled everywhere at a high speed. The combination of music and fast biking, plus the fact that my hair is now long enough for pigtails, made me feel playful, purposeful and all around like the super spy chick we all know and love.

I undertook a raid of the Burmese market and came out with muddy feet and a basketful of red pepper and asparagus. I even managed to find a deliciously marinated grilled pork steak in a little known barbecue shop on the side of the road.

I bicycled the six kilometers out to the border with my music on high volume to drown out the sound of my own singing. Why was I singing, you ask? Simply because I felt like it and could see no reason why not. The highway is a wide, empty road with cars and motorcycles going by so fast, none of them, and certainly not me, can hear my horrible voice. The sky was the usual mass of gray/purple clouds shot through with glimpses of blue and rays of sunshine. I was speeding towards the ever elusive mountains of Burma – beautiful green hills wreathed in mist where my feet are never allowed to legally walk, where I will never explore or stare down from one of their high peaks. To either side of the road, the rice paddies spread out before me, full of muddy water, gray buffalo, men with straw hats and large nets fishing.

That's why I'm here. Not to get lost in the books, the budgets and the financial statements, but to get lost in the green, green, wonder of the world full of sunlight and the soft sound of rain.

On Sunday I sip iced coffee in an air conditioned café near the highway and write. I spend hours in my hammock peeling fruit and drinking in cool sweetness.

My house is a mess. I haven't swept the floor all week. I decide not to care. I would rather wear dirty feet and a smile.

On Monday, my desk is full but I get through most of my "TO DO" list. This includes meeting with a funder, with the finance team and a phone call to the UN. It also includes buying charcoal and staples. I interview a potential job candidate. I read a book about teaching. I mark papers, photocopy stories, plan lessons.

I am preparing to hunker down for a long evening when I get a phone call from the satellite phone in Umphium. "Don't come to school tomorrow, Jen. School is cancelled. It's KNLA Day!!"

Thailand has more national holidays than any other country in the world. Coupled with this, the Karen people have an equal, if not larger number. These holidays include Karen Revolution Day, Karen National Union Day, Karen National Liberation Army Day, Karen Liberation Day …

You know I have gotten into this teaching thing when I am actually frustrated by the obscene number of holidays in the school year. It's almost impossible to get anything done. This week, however, it means that for once, I am leaving the office at a reasonable hour (before 6pm, can it be?) and enjoying my evening. The rest of the work on my desk can wait until tomorrow.

Tonight, the sunshine is turning that mellow gold that signals the end of the day and I am going to watch the sun set through the leaves of the monastery from my view in my hammock. Happy KNLA Day, everyone!