Singapore

Photographs from my recent weekend birthday adventure in Singapore. One of these days I'll write something again but for now, I spent my birthday wandering the city streets in large sunglasses made in the 70's and the evening dining on a feast of food at Newton Circus.





Yes, I am now 26 years old.

Paw Yu Lee & Mickey Goggin

Photos from the wedding of good friends Paw Yu Lee and Mickey Goggin

Burma's Waiting Game

I began planning my trip into Burma sometime in April this year. At first I thought I would take a month off writing and go in mid-September. I found a monastic school in Mandalay where I could stay and made contact. I planned to teach for July and August, spend a few weeks getting ready, then take off.

For a number of reasons, I ended up pushing back my travel date to October 22nd and now it seems like I may not go at all. I haven’t heard any word from the monastery where I had planned to stay but the monasteries in Rangoon are emptying. Monks are disappearing and being arrested. Bodies of robed men float in rivers and photographs come out of empty monk’s quarters where nothing is left of the monks save the pools of their blood.

We sit in front of our computers, just 6 kilometers from the border crossing into a country that is exploding, hoping for news. For anyone doing the same, some of the best news is coming from amazing people blogging from Burma and getting news out of a country which is increasingly tightening controls on internet and phone lines.

MizzimaNews has some of the best breaking news but Ko-Htike, Moemaka, and Niknayman have information directly from the inside with disturbing pictures and videos to match.

I am currently in Chiang Mai living at a school for women and teaching there for a few days. Yesterday we practiced reading strategies while looking at the news. I stood beside a woman who cried silently looking at pictures of the dead bodies of monks.

After that, I couldn’t stand the soft, cultured voice on the BBC anymore. We listened to a reporter from Singapore who was in Rangoon for a few days and delivered richly descriptive reports missing several key facts.

“The key difference,” say the BBC voices, “is that, unlike the demonstrations in 1988 when an estimated 3,000 lost their lives, the Burmese protesters today have access to the internet, to blogs, to digital cameras and the media.”

It seems to be doing very little good. Just how many dead bodies do they have to document before someone does anything? Does anyone have any idea what the death toll of this government is since it first slaughtered those 3,000 in the streets of Rangoon in 1988?

So we sit here, on the border waiting for a massacre, wondering just how many bodies have to pile up.

The waiting is driving me crazy.

Update

It’s late Tuesday night and I am on dorm duty at a migrant school in Mae Sot. The students are busy participating in a special ceremony for someone’s daughter’s birthday so things are quiet. One student has remained behind, noisily chatting with her brother in Burmese on a cell phone. Otherwise, the only sounds I can hear are of the crickets and other night creatures humming happily away in the dark, and the occasional murmur of discontent from the ginger cat who has taken to following me around.

I’m not sure how it got to be the end of July but suddenly a month has passed and it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything or even updated anyone about what I’m doing.

This month and next month I am teaching at the Wide Horizons migrant educational project in Mae Sot. I teach every afternoon for three hours from Monday to Friday and I live at the dorm two nights a week helping students with homework and being on call if any emergencies arise. Emergencies occur when students get arrested outside the school compound (which happens a few times a year), when word comes of a police raid (which is rare) or when someone lobs a bomb at a building next door (which happened once last year).

Mostly dorm nights are quiet and are spend in the same way I spent so many nights in the refugee camp, living on a different time frame almost in a different world. So much of my evenings here are spent in conversation, just talking to people, eating together, washing dishes together, chatting about homework, hopes and whatever else people care to share.

Usually sometime after dinner I have a shower but not tonight because our water has been cut off for two day and soon there won’t even be enough to flush the toilets. Showers can be taken in one of two ways. The first way is to get a big bucket, fill it with water from the cistern, go into the bathroom, strip down and use a scoop to wash. The second is to scoop directly from the cistern outside, wearing a sarong the entire time. Although showering outside in public can be quite refreshing and is always very social, I prefer the more private method, personally.

When it gets dark and people get tired, they go to sleep (if their teachers haven’t burdened them with piles of homework) and they get up early to go to the morning market, to light cooking fires or to finish that last minute homework.

I get out of bed at the last possible moment, climb into clothes and find some hot water for a cup of coffee but I wake up fairly early myself. The compound where the school is located is also the home of several families and their various animals which include a large flock of ducks. Ducks, for anyone who doesn’t know this, are loud animals. Much louder than chickens, or even roosters. Every morning, it is the sound of the ducks under the house that wakes me up and I lie in bed drifting in and out of duck influenced dreams.

In the morning I sit at a little desk in the wooden house that is our office and type out the assignments I have for my writing job. Every week I rewrite ten articles about news relating to Iceland. If that seems a little random, it is. But in this fashion I have learned several interesting facts:

• Icelandair flies from Canada and the US to Europe and offers free stops in Iceland. Their prices are right and their business plan is brilliant.
• The government of Iceland recently opened up commercial whaling which is mostly supported by the local population but which draws huge international protests
• A lot of cool music and art comes from Iceland including strange woolen hats with knitted mustaches attached
• Iceland has glaciers as well as huge black sand deserts. It wasn’t always this way. Once it was green. People blame it on the sheep.

I also write a number of travel related articles every week, post a number of comments on my own travel related articles and post a number of articles about travel to various regions in Thailand.

Occasionally, I also plan lessons and correct homework, of course.

I was hired to teach two things: tools for critical thinking and teaching skills. This week marks the end of the first phase and today we started the unit on teaching. For the last two weeks of August I won’t be teaching at all, but rather observing my students as they take up two-week teaching positions in migrant schools around town and offering them feedback.

I’m living in the same house I’ve lived in since October 2005, a Thai style house made of wood with lots of windows high up on stilts. The house is shared with a beautiful cat named Frankie Baby who recently developed hereby unprecedented abilities to cuddle, a development which I am rather enjoying. Around the corner lives my boyfriend, a charming Australian whose wit, insight and general company I also enjoy.

Frankie Baby’s three kittens live at the school and one of them is currently curled up at my feet, mother of four newborn kittens herself. She follows me around everywhere meowing loudly whether she is fed or not. When I’m teaching, she often curls up at the edge of the classroom, if the dogs don’t chase her away. Chickens wander through the class as well and, of course, the ducks make up a lovely symphony in the background.

I have a ticket home to Calgary, Canada on December 18th 2007 and I plan to return from those cold climes sometime in January. Beyond that, plans for the future are rather thin on the ground, but when has it been otherwise?

Just another day... in paradise.

Some days you wake up and it’s just another ordinary day. And then, sometimes, there are these mornings when you wake up and it’s like the first day you ever lived. As if your eyes had opened for the first time, as if you were wearing a new skin that could feel everything, as if you were a child again, suffused with wonder and drinking it all in.

The other day I took an overnight bus back to Mae Sot from Bangkok. It arrived around 4:30am and I hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi to go back home. The sky was still dark, but I could see stars in the sky and there was enough moonlight to show my surroundings. We went through fields of green, with palm trees silhouetted against the sky. Perhaps more than anything it was the texture of the air that stirred my soul: the cool freshness that comes after a rain, the pre-dawn stillness that is full of the excitement of a whole blank day still to come, the heaviness of the tropical moisture in the air…

Flying through the night, with the wind in my hair, it wasn’t long before I had a broad smile on my face. I have been here for so long, but it just suddenly occurred to me with a wonderful thrill: Oh my God! I’m in South East Asia!

And I laughed out loud under the stars at the remarkable joy in it. How on earth did I end up here? It’s still a mystery to me, but on that wonderful morning, I was reveling in the mystery instead of sunk in it, skipping along the surface of the glorious waves that bear us places in life so that we wake up one morning and finally open our eyes and notice that where we are is truly remarkable.

I just wanted to share that with you. It’s a cool, wet day here in Thailand and I am spending a quiet Saturday morning with my coffee on the balcony, listening to the sound of the rain falling on the roof, watching the water slide down the sides of the green banana leaves in the garden and I am so happy to be here. So happy to be here.

Misadventures in Malaysia

I flew out of the new airport in Bangkok on an Air Asia budget flight that cost me around $60 and took no-frill flying to a whole new level. You pay for everything on the flight from water to a pillow.



It's always struck me as odd how people line up to board their flights at the first opportunity. I've even seen pushing and shoving. Why bother when you have an assigned seat? I've always wondered. I'm not in a hurry to get packed onto a small space for a few hours, so I hang back and consequentially end up sandwiched in between two guys who chat over me the whole flight. Air Asia doesn't have assigned seats. It's a free for all. Delightful.



I arrived in the early hours of the morning. The airport was smaller than I had expected and there was only one ATM machine. It was out of order. I gave up on travellers cheques and changing money when I was about 18 and rely on airport ATMs for my in country cash entirely. I had Thai baht as a back up, but it seemed like I was stuck. Woops.



I convinced a bus company heading for "Sentral KL" to take the Thai money and give me a ticket. My guidebook told me that the buses heading for downtown will drop you pretty much anywhere and certainly at the guesthouses in China Town, which is where I wanted to stay. Had I been just a little more attentive, I would have realised that Sentral is not a synonym for downtown, but rather the name of the main train station, just north of the city centre. I was dropped there at 1:30am with no local currency on me.



Luckily, the station was open and I wandered past the security guards into the dark hall. I was in luck. I quickly located a bank of three ATMs. One had a large sign proclaiming no international service. The other had an out-of-service message blinking on the screen and the third, although initially promising, spat out my card with a message that the international banking link was down. So sorry.



It was 2am. I contemplated my options. I realised I hadn't eaten in a long time. I had no money for food. Finally I found a cab and asked the driver to take me to a big bank with ATM machines. It took me about ten minutes of wrestling with the machine to get it to give me a pitiful amount. I don't know why I was having so many problems. The taxi driver dropped me at the hotel and I handed him the cash. In my mind I was trying to convert to Thai money. The driver looked at me strangely.



"Is it ok?" I asked him, thinking perhaps I had messed it up.



He smiled and nodded and drove off. I checked into the hotel and fell onto the bed, sweaty and tired, just wanting to sleep. That's when it hit me. I had just given the taxi driver 10 times the amount I was supposed to. I thought about it further. If my banking troubles continued, I wouldn't be able to withdraw enough to pay for the visa I had come there for.


It took me a long time to get to sleep. I just lay there feeling stupid and embarrassed and stupid again. I swore a lot, tossed and turned and swore some more.



The next morning, determined to shake my bad mood, I wandered the streets of China Town, looking for breakfast. I settled on a small Malay restaurant with a menu that I could point to and ordered something. I ended up with a plate of fried rice and breathed in relief. Safe food. What can go wrong eating fried rice? The rice was yellow, spiced and delicious. Big chunks of vegetables littered the plate along with tender morsels of chicken, but suddenly I paused. It didn't taste good, it didn't taste very good at all.



Malaysian food is famous for satay and it seems I was not safe, even eating fried rice. The chicken chunks I had been enjoying were going to be the death of me, if I wasn't careful. I swallowed some pills quickly and left, trying to ignore to man at the counter glaring at the plate full of food I had left behind.



I have to admit, the two incidents weakened my sense of adventure considerably. As did my ongoing problems applying for the visa I had come for. I spent the rest of my time in Kuala Lumpur trying to salvage the trip.



The first day, I just walked. I walked to the old train station and admired the white minarets and architecture. I wandered under the palms past gorgeous mosques, listening to the call to prayer. I felt the heat of the streets and sat in the shade to watch all the people pass. If I could show you the map of the city and where I walked, I walked clear across the place in a day, getting sore and sunburned.



I walked past the famous KL Towers, the largest in the world (sorry Toronto) and out to the Thai embassy.



I walked around the bourgeois refurbished Central Market crammed with its tourist goods and all the way out to Chow Kit where people really buy things. No matter where I am in the world, I have yet to find a market I haven't liked. I love the crowded rows between stalls, the shout of vendors touting their wares, the smells that sneak up on you unaware, wafts of dried ginger and chili and pungent dried fish.



The next day was just more problems at the embassy, so I spent the afternoon getting out of the city. I took a bus to the Bantu Caves, a Hindu sacred site in some picturesque limestone mountains. It was nice just to get out of the city for a while.



There are almost three hundred steps leading up to the main cave, watched over by a large golden statue. Each step is numbered and I intended to make a thoughtful climb, aware of each step as I made it.


I was quickly distracted by the monkeys, however. I hope I am never in such a black pit of despair that monkeys and their antics can't make me smile. I know they are pests and they bring endless annoyance to people, but I'm a tourist and monkeys never cease to make me laugh and bring me joy.


In addition, the caves were spectacular. Particularly when I lay on my back on the marble floor of one of the Hindu shrines in the back and stared up the shapes hanging from the ceiling, getting the tacky paintings and litter on the floor out of my field of view. In the very back, the roof opened up to the sky and there were monkeys up there too, swinging from vines in the jungle far above, and petals drifting down in the breeze.

I got out of the city the next day and headed North to an island near the border with Thailand. I went to a number of guesthouses looking for a nice one and on the way seeing some very dodgy establishments. In one little house tucked in the back of a lovely garden courtyard, a very large man sat behind a counter, looking exactly like Jabba the Hut, the younger version. Not only did the man have a round shiny belly which could not be confined by his shirt, he also had this strange triangular tongue which continually flicked around outside his mouth as he talked with me. I didn't stay there.

Actually the island of Penang doesn't have much to recommend it. It's a quiet little town whose main attraction is the ease in getting visas into Thailand. I enjoyed it though. The cultural influences are more Chinese and Indian than Malay. There are Chinese temples and clan houses and a whole section of town with Indian tea and clothes and music. On my own, I loved exploring the book shops and cafes. But the main draw is, of course, the food.

My partner joined me the next day and we proceeded to gorge ourselves silly. He had recently been to India, and I Sri Lanka, so we both fell upon the Indian food with a vengeance. The tandoori chicken was especially fantastic but another night we ate at a small place with big vats of chicken masala, honey chicken, fragrant rice and roasting nan bread.

Then there was the Chinese cuisine. We settled into a round table at a busy dim sum restaurant, drinking pot after pot of green tea and grabbing treats off the cart every time it went by. I don't even know the names of all the things we ate there.

One day we took a bus out to the beach. The bus was slow and the trip to the Northern part of the island seemed to take forever. We ended up in a fishing village, walking along a grey beach lined with little boats and nets and restaurants serving seafood. We walked out along a long pier to look at the boats and stared down at the jellyfish in the water.

The beach was far from spectacular. The sand was somewhat grey and the water not at all enticing. Despite the incredible heat and our constant sweating, there was no question of going for a swim. A few families hid in the shade by no one approached the water.

The way back to Thailand was long. We caught the ferry back to the Malaysian mainland and then caught a train. The train ride was perhaps 20 hours to Bangkok. The seats and sleeping berths were very comfortable and the hours passed comfortably, rubber trees flying by outside the window, drinking beer, reading the newspaper, playing cards.

For a while, after coming back, Thailand seemed less hot. Unfortunately it didn't take long to catch up, and we are now in the middle of hot season. I'm writing from my wooden house, under the fan, sweating like crazy. It'll be a while before I get another beach vacation, but I think it's the perfect time for myself to go jump in the reservoir.

Map of Happiness

In looking for a map today to show some Canadians where the country of Burma, sometimes known as Myanmar, is located, I came across the Map of Happiness.





The map was made by Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at Leicester University's School of Psychology in the UK and it attempts, according to him, to measure "subjective well-being."


It is unclear, and somewhat doubtful to me if he actually talked to anyone in any location in the world. But the map is apparently derived from data from the following sources: UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the World Health Organisation, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer and the UNHDR. Supposedly this information comes from 100 some studies interviewing over 80,000 people worldwide.

So, how does one statistically measure happiness? Well this guy proposes that the national level of joy is related to health predominately, followed by indicators of wealth and education. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that Denmark and Switzerland come out on top of the rankings. Or that beloved Burma is almost at the bottom.

Alternatively, this study could just be telling us that Denmark and Sweeden are rich and have great social services, whereas people in Burma are poor, with little access to health and education. But wait, we knew that already.

Its kind of crude, by my thought is to look at suicide rates to see who's happy. It's not an exact measure. A great many people live with unhappiness who would never kill themselves for a great many reasons. Anyways, the Map of Happiness tells us that Canada and the US are pretty happy. Yet I'm noticing that for countries where World Heath Organization statistics about suicide are available, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are pulling in at positions 26, 27, 28 and 29 respectively in list of the top 81 countries where people comit sucide. (Australia:21.5 per 100,000 people; Canada: 21.5 per 100,000 people; New Zealand: 20.5 per 100,000 people; Sweden: 20 per 100,000 people; United States: 19.8 per 100,000 people)


It seems like although people may be less happy (according to the map) in Tajikistan (#63/81), they tend to kill themselves a lot less often there.

And then there are those poor people trapped in the distant north. They are always committing suicide. Why? Because they are unhappy? They tend to be unhappy because they don't get enough sunlight in their brains. I wonder if the Map of Happiness took that into account. What kind of equation is balancing out all these correllations: the relationship between happiness, health, wealth, education and access to sunlight?

What kind of person funded this research anyways? I can think of ways to make a lot of people happy that wouldn't take nearly so much money, I bet. Sheesh!

Muay Thai: Boxing on the Border

Someone very close to my heart, with whom I spent a great deal of my time during my first weeks back in Mae Sot, read my blog, Back in the Saddle and indignantly demanded to know just what was so dull about it all.
It’s true. I can’t believe I could have forgotten about the highlight of my first week back, of which my friend so kindly reminded me.

I had only been back in town a few days with my friend and former neighbor, an Australian journalist, gave me a call early one morning. "Jen," he said, sounding desperate. "I need your help."

Actually, he didn’t really need me that badly. He needed my Australian neighbor and wanted my help in convincing him to go along with his crazy escapade. When I heard the plan, I was highly enthusiastic. Given that I hadn’t even had a coffee and it wasn’t even 8am yet, that’s quite a feat.

When I lived next door to the Australian journalist, I often tagged along after him, like he was my big brother, or like I was some kind of caped side-kick. We had a lot of fun together, often sharing one last beer in the early hours of the morning as the monks in the monastery across from our house were beginning their day and we were ending ours.

I don’t remember how it was that he first got interested in Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, but there are lots of events in our area. Kickboxing on the border takes on a particular flavor, as there are often highly emotive fights between Thai fighters and fighters from across the border (in which, more often than not the Thais win) and also between Muslim and Buddhist fighters. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed going to the fights. For one thing, it was a chance to see some of the Thai soul laid bare. It’s like looking into an animal’s mouth while it’s roaring, staring at the crowd at a fight. There are housewives in middle-class attire, with their children propped up against the ropes sweating in the heat and screaming their hearts out for one man to beat another man. It’s easy to lose yourself in the press of the crowd, let your sweat become your neighbor’s sweat, your voice become the voice of the crowd. It’s dark and the only light are the fluorescent lights strung up around the ring, all the people in the crowd like moths to the flame. As my neighbor went off to photograph, I never felt alone. It was too easy to get lost in the experience.

The more I went, the more I learned. My friend was following the story of certain boxers affiliated with a local school. At first we didn’t know their names. We called one "Pink Shorts," and another, "Ali." Sometimes we got right up close next to the ropes, other times we hung back on the fringe, betting beers on the fights and taking in the big picture. I got to recognize not only the fighters, but also the muscians who play the traditional music before the fight, and the announcers who wore huge aviator glasses and never hesitated to say annoying, embarrassing things about the white foreigners attending the match. One night, with a female friend, the announcer, who sounded quite drunk, made a point of calling the audience’s attention to the fact that I had left my seat and was proceeding to the bathroom. That’s right folks, the white girl is going to pee. "Good luck with that!" he called to me in Thai while I gritted my teeth and made my way through the seated crowd.

Someone from the boxing school called my journalist friend up early on my first Tuesday morning back in Mae Sot. What he understood from the conversation in Thai was that there was a big fight coming to Mae Sot and it was going to involve some foreign fighters from Canada and the Phillipines. There was some kind of press event going on and the white fighter wasn’t going to be able to make it, did he know anyone who could possibly put on a kit and stand it? He made it sound like some kind of photo shoot with my neighbour taking the photos. The problem was that he couldn’t think of anyone to do it. Apparently all the boys we know in town are terribly scrawny. So he called me, to enlist my help in convincing my new Aussie neighbour to be the poster boy for some white kickboxer from Canada.

The photo shoot was in the afternoon and since I was still unemployed, I joined them, hopping in the back of a pick up truck with some Burmese fighters and flying down the highway with the wind in my hair. The truck took us, to of all incomprehensible places, the Mae Sot Central Hill Hotel, a luxury resort at the end of town. "Perhaps it’s a pool side photo shoot," I thought to myself smiling. "Maybe all these muscled boys are going to get all oiled up and we can all jump in the water afterwards…"

But we were taken inside and lead downstairs to the conference room. The room was filled with long tables covered in white and staff were filling up water glasses with iced water. We were given chairs in the back corner and left to wonder what was going on. At the front of the room, behind to podium was a large poster in Thai and we worked out it was advertising the fights, which were to be telecast on the World Boxing Channel. This is rather a big deal, especially for a small town like Mae Sot.

Several other clues soon led us to believe that this press event was not some private photo shoot, but rather a somewhat large-scale press conference. And before anyone could have any second thoughts, the boxing coach was giving my friend a pair of tiny satin boxing shorts and taping up his hands.

He came out of the changing room wearing nothing but the little boxing shorts and looking a little shy. To make things worse, one of the boxers decided he wasn’t wearing the shorts properly and proceeded to hike them up even further, revealing more leg and looking decidedly uncomfortable. By that time, though, they had already put boxing gloves on him, so he was unable to adjust and I’m afraid I was too busy hiding behind a pillar laughing to be much help. I think you can see in the picture just how much fun I was having.

Before things got rolling, he posed with one of the fighters and one of the biggest boxing promoters in Thailand. Then he got up on stage with the rest of the boys and with the panel of delegates slated to speak at the conference, including the governor of the province. For the next hour, while they all made comments about the upcoming fight, he had to stand there, holding his hands up, trying to look fierce.

I took some pictures and tried not to giggle too loudly during the entire event, but it was somewhat difficult, particularly when the speeches were finished and the journalists swamped the stage with their cameras, microphones and video cameras.

And it’s true, it was the highlight of my week. That’s one of the great things about life in Mae Sot. So often dull, but now and again so wildly, weirdly unexpected.

An Experiment

I'm curious. Who are you? Why are you reading this?

I'm always surprised to hear of people reading my blog. I started out writing in order to keep in touch with my family mostly. But I noticed the other day that my profile has 410 views and I run into people now and again who tell me they've read me. No one leaves comments though, so it's hard to know that you're there.

So the experiment:
If you have a moment, whoever you are, I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch. Leave a comment saying hi. Or better yet, send me a postcard. I promise if you put your address on it, you'll most likely get a reply. What kind of person are you? What do you do? How did you find me? Why do you read this? I'm especially interested if you're someone I've never met before.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Jenny
PO Box 27
Mae Sot, Tak.
Thailand. 63110

Back in the Saddle

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am seated at a desk in front of an open window. Jack Johnson is playing and I spend more time looking out at the view than I do at the work I am supposed to be editing.

The last few weeks have been rather calm, perhaps even a little dull, certainly nothing particularly blog worthy. Perhaps that’s why I have this smile on my face. What, after all, could be much better than a day of luxurious laziness in a wooden house that gets the breeze in the middle of a warm, tropical country?

I returned to Thailand and landed on January 12th. Everyone keeps asking how it felt to be back and it’s been a rather mixed bag. For one thing, it’s always difficult to leave the warm embrace of family, with our lively meals, good conversation and abundance of hugs. Usually this feeling is offset by the feeling of setting off towards the unknown, towards adventure. This time, however, I wasn’t exactly setting off towards the unknown. I’ve been living in Mae Sot for roughly two years now.

What is unknown, however, is what exactly I was going to do here anyway, another question I get asked quite frequently. I’m generally a woman with few plans. If I had them, in the past, they tended to be in four month blocks. Last year I managed to plan ahead for a whole year. I was rather proud of myself, until I felt the end of that year approaching and still had yet to make another plan.

I left Calgary just as a blizzard had begun rolling through. Overnight, the temperature dropped to –27 degrees celsius. By nighttime however, I had landed in Bangkok and the heat of the night (+27) was intense. It’s cold season here and at night I sleep with a blanket on, but I’m still getting used to the afternoons again. The heat makes me sleepy.

My first week back in Mae Sot was more difficult than I had thought. My old house was still occupied by the person who was subletting from me, so I continued to live out of a backpack in someone else’s home. The old friends I had were busy with work and often out of town, so I didn’t see much of them. The town was full of new people. I went out for dinner one night and only knew one other person at the table. It’s not because I went away; it’s just life in Mae Sot. If you don’t make an effort to get out and meet new people almost constantly, eventually you will find yourself alone. Everyone’s stay in Mae Sot is temporary. There is a leave date floating over everyone’s head and it’s just a matter of time before you have to say goodbye.

My days were full of errands and chores, like looking for a new mattress and getting the internet set up in my house. Eventually I moved back in and unpacked, decorating my walls with Hindu pictures and batik from Sri Lanka. I met with people, talked about work, tried to get work, tried to get a long term visa.

It’s strange to be in Mae Sot without work. Work is what brings people here. Nobody comes for any other reason. And here I was in Mae Sot, a foreigner without a job, a fish without fins. One of the first questions people here ask, often before even, "Where are you from?" is: "What do you do?" or alternatively, "Who are you working for?" It was quite fun to reply (at a party where I only knew 20% of the guests): "I’m unaffiliated."

If I were to print a business card for myself right now, I would be tempted for it to read: "Independent Operator." Because at the moment, I am operating. I’m unaffiliated, but I’m not unemployed. I have some well-paid part-time work and a small part-time contract at the moment. It would be nice, in the future, to continue to get such contracts. It’s certainly a lifestyle I am enjoying.

My part time work is with a company called Virtual Travel Guides, based out of Chiang Mai. I write short, low-grade travel guides for websites. Often the guides are being used as filler, to bulk up sites and increase their ratings on search engines like Google. There are currently about 20 of us working for the company, and it seems as if business is good and they will be expanding. I completed my first assignment last week, writing five short guides to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan and Bahrain. In case you’re wondering, I have never been to any of those countries and at no time will the company pay for me to travel anywhere. It’s all internet research and rewriting.

I haven’t done very much work for them yet, but the work I have done has been highly enjoyable. It’s a significant change of pace from working with refugees in a protracted conflict zone. It gets me writing, even if it isn’t the most quality work and I get to learn things about all kinds of places in the world. There are never too many hours of work a week, so I have plenty of time to take up other work and volunteer in the community, something that is very important to me.

The short term contract I have at the moment is to edit an English-language text book for an educational project involving refugees. Unit Three is sitting open beside the computer at the moment. I was just working on it when the urge to blog came over me.

This week I’ll also start working with the English Immersion Program again, as a part-time volunteer. The goal is to set up some kind of graduate program with targeted workplace trainings. I’m looking forward to working with lots of my old students on that.

With the exception of a couple of meetings once in a while, most of the work I have set up is based out of my home, which is why I have this desk set up in front of this window in my little wooden house that gets all the breeze. I can get up whenever I want, take coffee breaks whenever I want, and take a break to go for a jog whenever I want. Hopefully I have the self discipline to get all the work done by the time my employers want.

Still, it’s a pleasure to be in my pajamas at noon, listening to Cat Stevens and staring out the window with the breeze in my hair.