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.)