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!

Another week gone by

I came back into town Friday night ready to bite someone's head off.

It wasn't a particularly bad week, I was just tired.

When you are tired, you notice all the million tiny things going wrong with the world and they get under your skin.

For example:

1) Someone took the bungee cord I strap my bad onto the back of my bike with off of my bike. I look around the office parking space. It is nowhere to be seen. Bungee cords cost a measly 5 baht, but now I have two backpacks and a shoulder bag to carry on the bike ride home.

2) I have to stop at an internet cafe to check and see if anyone has emailed me about job interviews this weekend. I get the snootiest one-line email imaginable from someone I have never heard from. "I am quite surprised you have not contacted me regarding teaching at Umphium Mai refugee camp."

3) I get home and find out that my keys have fallen out of my pocket somewhere along the road. Turn around and go back, bags and all, looking for them.

4) Get home. Notice the mould growing all over my bamboo chair. It's rainy season. Everything is wet all the time, even when it's dry. Therefor, everything must be cleaned all the time. Throw a bunch of clothes that haven't even been worn into the bag to go to the laundry. Covered in mould.

5) See my computer on the desk. It is not covered in mould but it is equally useless. I have used it for all of three weeks. The battery is dead (cost to replace: $300 approximately). And recently, I have come to realize that the hard drive is also dead (cost to replace: several hundred dollars). The whole thing is a total loss and I have used it for about three weeks. All the information I have compiled on it over this time, however, including funding proposals and reports, is lost.

So I shower, sit down in my hammock and listen to jazz for awhile, starting to feel human again. The rain starts coming down. I watch a rather large lizard on the other side of a dripping window pane as it sneaks up behind an incredibly large moth and devours it.

And that's Friday night in Mae Sot.

Feeling Thankful

I wake up near midnight to a low blood sugar and a dark room. Outside there is the sound of rain dripping off the thatch and wind in the banana leaves. I can hear the creaking of bamboo as students turn in their sleep in the rooms around me, and a cool breeze comes through the gaps in the wall. I am warm and dry in my blankets, tucked warmly into my mosquito net, on my small mat on the floor. The rats are quiet tonight, perhaps they are snuggling together for warmth somewhere too, hiding from the rain. There is a little moonlight coming through the skylight in the roof. For awhile, I stay like that, taking it all in. Then, I reach beside me to light a candle. The circle of light only reinforces the coziness of the scene. I crunch on some sugar then dive into the bag of fresh rambutans. I peel away the red hairy shell and slip the sweet white flesh into my mouth. Somewhere out in the night, I hear the camp guards beating out signals to check in on the hour. Twelve taps – it must be midnight.

There are days when I am so exhausted I just want to sleep away a week. Days when I am frustrated and worried, nervous, trying to pull of a thousand feats that seem impossible. Days when nothing is going right, days when I just don’t care anymore. But then there are the moments that I am drowned in wonder. Days when I can’t stop smiling. Days that take my breath away. Days when I am sure I am going to wake up from this dream because I can’t believe that this is actually me doing this. I am twenty-three years old and I just opened the school year for a small but amazing school in a refugee camp on the border between Thailand and Burma. I somehow transported a handful of illegal students from all over the border past check points, security guards, deportation trucks and police just in time for the opening ceremonies on Tuesday morning. There they were: twenty students ready to change their lives. Twenty students looking at me and the staff and I wondered as I smiled at them and made my speech in front of the community, “Can I do it? Is this me?”

It’s rainy season in Thailand now and up in Umphium it is cold. The skies are almost always gray. The mist comes down off the mountains and into our rooms. Things never seem to dry, including my hair, my blankets, my clothes. But it’s breathtaking. The hills are an impossible bright shade of green, the sky a purpling dark gray, the wind brisk. Impossible not to feel alive and adventurous.

My actual adventures are not so noteworthy. In fact, I almost always work, which is why I haven’t been writing hardly at all. My apologies for the lack of emails and contact. I’m afraid that will continue for awhile as I teach full time during the week and try to hire a male teacher to replace the one I just lost, fund the school, understand a million tiny things that need to be done from budgeting to buying rice on the weekend. Thank you to all of you who write me such warm emails, send me your love and give me the support I need to get through all the hard times and keep me here. I am living out all my dreams, I am waking up in the morning smiling and I feel like the most fortunate woman in the world, so thank you.

Back in the Saddle

Well folks, it's been a long time, but here I am again on a sunny Saturday afternoon, sitting in my favorite internet cafe, typing away and watching time go by. Already today I have accomplished more than the average weekend morning. After sleeping in decadently late, I spoke with people who want to hire two of our graduates to come and work in their "leadership" school. Since they are reprentatives of one of the armed groups in the area, I suspect it is more of a propaganda school, but it is now my job to talk with them, keep on their good side, maintain relationships, send them interested graduates and give them my cell number in case they feel like chatting. Welcome back to Mae Sot, Jen.

After coffee, juicy mangoes and a swing in my hammock, I plug into my music and jump on my bike for a long meandering ride going nowhere in particular. I went out through the back of the market, to a small town nearby, then selected a random road to follow through the rice feilds and cow paddies. I stopped for water in a small store and "chatted" for awhile with the people there. The sun is full on my face, but there is a cool wind coming down off the mountains that are shrouded in rain clouds. Everything is green and bright and the sky in the distance is deep purple. I swerve to avoid hitting bright little lizards scuttling across the hot pavement. I pass feilds full of cows, and men squatting in the shade chewing betel nuts and watching them. I had forgotten what a beautiful country this is, and how lucky I am to live here.

I have emptied out the Thai bank account and finally have a ticket back to Canada for the wedding. I still have not gotten from Vancouver to Calgary, but I will work on that. I am flying Cathay Pacific, so even without a first class upgrade, the flight will be nice.

Itinerary:

1 CX 750S 24JUL SU BKKHKG HK1 1130 1510
2 CX 838S 24JUL SU HKGYVR HK1 1640 1330
3 CX 839S 05AUG FR YVRHKG HK1 1450 1905
4 CX 709S 06AUG SA HKGBKK HK1 2210 2350


As for work, well, I am sitting behind a desk. At least, that is what I have been doing all week. It helps that the desk is in a small office with three walls that are entirely windows, so that when I look up from my computer screen, document or book, I see palm trees, greenery and mountains in the distance.

Friday was entirely consumed with meetings. Some of them are fun and involve me making contact with all the community organizations that we work with, in this case an educational NGO who gives us funding. Other meetings, like the Consortium All Staff meeting, seem to drag endlessly on, reminding us all of the inverse function of number of people at meetings vs. actual productivity. Monday I shall be busy enough with my first teacher coming, training continuing of my counterpart (assistant) and a million things to do, as usual.

Enjoy your weekend!

The Snake

I've got a snake in my bed.
It would be nice if it were a lover waiting for me there when I come home from work, but alas, there really is a snake in my bed.

Some days, within the quietness of small town living, life feels like a whirlwind. While my co-workers are busy with all the stuffy language of USAID project proposals and fighting for a piece of the multimillion-dollar pie, I am busily trying to finish writing up the human rights abuses that have been documented in Burma over the year for the chapter on women. All of us are busy interviewing applicants for the teaching position at the school next year as well as conducting entrance exams for new students. Added to this, starting on Monday, every time I leave my house, I am going to have to face getting covered in water. Thai New Year celebrations are beginning soon. In most cities in Thailand, the water fights are relegated to one or two streets, or the area near the river or water. In Mae Sot, we celebrate Burmese style, with the whole town becoming a free for all for a full week. If you leave your house, you should prepare to get soaked. Also, it is necessary to wear the brightest, ugliest, tackiest shirt you can possibly find. To help you out on this front, a whole wealth of stalls have popped up around town flouting their Hawaiian-style wares. I personally acquired a lovely red/orange/yellow/green flowered chemise that is all the rage in Water Festival fashions this year.

Although we have spotted a few cars with the tell tale splashes on their usually dusty exteriors, for the most part, we have a few dry days left. So this morning, bright and all too early, we headed out to one of the nearby refugee camps to do another intake exam. I woke up to the sound of my new "Hello Kitty" pink alarm clock telling me in a chirpy voice "Wake up! Wake up! Goooooood Morning!" I woke up, but I did not have a good morning. Perhaps it was the confusion of the million things that need to be done before I can take my beach vacation, perhaps it was evil vibes from the pink Kitty - I managed to leave my insulin vials in the fridge. I bought the cold packs with me, of course, but had nothing that needed to be kept cold. And, in the brilliant vein with which I started my day, I realized my error when I finished my breakfast and had just arrived an hour down the road in Mae La, the biggest camp on the border.

The intake exams weren't great. More than half the people who showed up didn’t meet the basic requirements of becoming a student at our school. But there were one or two bright stars in the bunch, and that's who we are looking for.

I spent the whole ride back trying to keep my eyes open and looking forward to my needle and fix. The truck pulled up at my house so I could grab my drugs and we spotted a big sign on my door:

JEN: DO NOT GO INSIDE YOUR HOUSE. A LARGE SNAKE WENT IN! I got keys from our landlady and a posse of Thais went in to get the snake but no one really dared to go into your upstairs rooms to find it. It went in under your front door. We searched all downstairs but suspect it went up.

My neighbor's door is locked, and clearly he has evacuated his building and left me this warning. I started swearing. I had been almost five hours without my insulin and needed some, stat. Brooke looked nervous and suggested a pharmacy in town. The driver, once the situation was explained, didn't see a problem going in with me, so in we went. He made me go first, and followed behind with a large stick. I think I lack the basic understanding of the danger presented by the snake. If someone had said that there was a black bear in my house, that would be a different story, something I could relate to. On the other hand, it isn't likely that a black bear would be any good at hiding in anyone's house. In we went.

I opened the big roller door that enters into my garage and stepped back quickly. Brooke waited in the car. Patrick watched us from a safe distance. Which makes one wonder: what is a safe distance anyways? Snakes are speedy suckers, I figure. Not like I have ever been face to face with a "large" one. Now I've got one for a bedmate.

The furniture, (what little I have) was in the middle of the room and things were a bit everywhere. It looked just as you would imagine a room might if a "posse of Thais" had come through it looking for a snake. My Thai wandered around behind me with his big stick. I crept inside, trying to look all around me all at once. Nothing moved or lurked or curled up anywhere so I grabbed my insulin and got out.

But now I wonder, when is it safe for me to go back?

Photos

I have uploaded more photographs:

To see photos from the school and of my now former students, click here.

To see photos from my last border run into Myawaddy, Burma, click here.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently released a call for proposals. Agencies working with refugees and migrants in Thailand on health and education projects are urged to submit project proposals for a grant totalling $22.4 million(or is it 22.6?). The organization I now work for is fighting for a peice of that pie so the office is bustling with frantic activity. We have one month to submit a proposal responding to USAID's requirements for a five year program plan. If we succeed, the organization's will expand their activities as well as the locations they cover. Winning the proposal means I won't spend all of next year madly fundraising to keep the school afloat. It might also mean expanding the school. If we lose, the organization shuts down and I lose my salary and start fundraising.

What would you do with $22.4 million?

The Dog

On Wednesday, one of my students, Phyo Kyaw Kyaw, was given a dog. He put it in one of the unused classrooms of the Teacher Preparation Course next to the EIP Boy's Dorm.

Thursday was the student's last day of final exams. There were six students left to make their final speeches and four students left to complete their teaching practicum exam. In the afternoon, they all sat their last TOEFL exam. While the teaching labs were taking place, I went to the market with the school director, Paw Yu Lee. We were picking up some bits and pieces for the end of exams party that night.

We heard the commotion while buying batteries in one of the stalls. There was drumming and music and the sound of many people. We came around the corner to see a group of colorful dancing people. It was a monk initiation celebration. I could barely see the young monks kneeling inside one fo the market stalls, sweltering in the heat, decked out in artificial flowers and elaborate dress, fanning themselves with bamboo fans. Before they become monks, children first become princes, taking on all the worldly richness they can before shedding it all for monkhood. The crowd consisted mainly of older people. There was someone playing an electronic keyboard, another on tambourine, and several men with bamboo sticks for a drumbeat. Old women were dancing, and people in the market had gathered around.

At first, Paw Yu Lee and I stood to the side of the only path through the market and watched. But after awhile, we wanted to continue on our way. Seeing someone else worm their way through the crowd, Paw Yu Lee said, "I think it's ok. We can go." She started to make her way through the dancing people.

I tried to follow, but the moment I stepped out of the shadows of the market stall where we had been standing, people started to notice me. I am not hard to notice, being big and white. Immediately, one of the dancers, a very old, very short woman with bright red lipstick over very few teeth and artificial flowers in her hair, came up to me and grabbed my hands. She wanted me to dance with her. I obliged, laughing, and waved my hands in the air, doing my impression of Karen-style dancing. This seemed to make the old woman happy, so I turned and tried to continue on my way. I couldn't move. The old woman was holding onto my bag. "Ok, ok," I thought, "I will dance a little more." And I did.

I tried to turn away a second time, but she grabbed my wrist with a grip of steel. All the while, she was grinning at me with her few remaining betel nut stained teeth and reeking of alcohol. By this time, I had been picked up on the radar of every drunken dancer in the party. Clearly, I was not going anywhere. I looked around a little desperately for Paw Yu Lee. She was on the other side of the fray laughing uproariously. I disengaged from the old lady, still doing the hand moves, and made my way through the crowd. I was now thoroughly engulfed by the dancers, in the middle of everything. Two very old men now barred my way, grinning. "Ok, ok," I thought again. "A little more dancing won't hurt." Someone snapped frantic pictures on a disposable camera. "Look," they must have been saying, "the elusive dance of the great white girl!"

The trick was getting past the portable electronic keyboard and the line of musicians, but with a little force and a big smile and not a few hand waving and some time later, it was done. Hot, sweaty and unable to stop laughing, I grabbed Paw Yu Lee and marched her out of the market. "But Jen," she said, "you dance Karen-style very well!"

Our errands didn't take much time and when we were finished the baby monks and their entourage had moved elsewhere. We got back just in time for the TOEFL exam. When the exam was over, the cooking began.

The cooking took hours because there was so much food and also because most of the students went away to "beautify themselves," take showers, buy more snacks (as if we needed more food) and rest up after the rigors of exam week. I squatted down on the hard packed earth floor of the kitchen, pounding chilies and spices with the mortar and pestle and chatting with Paw Yu Lee, listening to the sounds of camp in the late afternoon. Somewhere, a dog was howling. It felt like cooking dinner with my Mum. Paw Yu Lee is my age, but she was explaining to me how to make the special curry we would prepare that evening.

The food was delicious. We had coconut rice, thick and creamy, and chicken and pork. The table was full of meat, something that never happens. After dinner, we hooked up the TV to the car battery and did some wild karaoke. Yours truly might have sung a few songs and done some dancing about.

When it was all over, seventeen students and their three teachers stumbled off to bed with full bellies and relieved minds, exams over, another year at EIP completed.

The next day, there was no longer a dog in the unused classroom.

Danger!

On Sunday, I became part of the Thai Witness Protection Program. I was sitting on the floor of my house (because I have no furniture and it's cooler that way anyways) reading the Bangkok Post and finishing my lunch. I had almost no warning before the attack came. My assailants were dressed in identical bright red uniforms and suddenly, at the stroke of 2:30pm precisely, my house was full of them. For a moment, I panicked. Then, I ran. I grabbed a bag that was near the door and hopped on my bike, slamming my door down behind me and locking it quickly. Several of them came out of the house after me, but I was on my bike speeding away.

In the bag I had grabbed was my bathing suit and towel, so I decided to spend the afternoon in hiding out at the reservoir. It was the hottest part of the day to be out on the highway on my bike, but the invasion of my house had left me no choice. I got changed in the bathroom of an Esso station along the way.

I had forgotten, however, about the drought. There was almost no water in the reservoir. The Thai news has been full of reports about the "cloud seeding" technology Thailand is using to try and increase rainfall in drought areas. Military planes have been diverted from whatever duties it is military planes perform in peacetime and now spread "rain inducing" chemicals into clouds at night. The Thai King has access to all of this technology from his home computer and receives nightly cloud reports on the situation.

While most of Thailand was waiting for rainy season to begin, Mae Sot had received its first big rain on Saturday. It was a fabulous storm full of lightening and thunder that took out the power grid along Main Street. I went out into the street to watch the lightning. It was incredible. The wind was so strong it had the palm trees bent almost in half. The bamboo trees were being whipped about, leaves flew through the air in wild whirlwinds. Some of the lightning was almost blinding, some of the thunder actually made the house shake. It felt like mountains were falling on us. The Burmese people peddling quickly through the rain to get home, must have thought I was crazy: a big white girl out in the mud dancing through the rain laughing, but they laughed with me. And the rain just kept coming down. After awhile, I went inside for a hot shower and to get dry. I curled up in my hammock near the front entrance with a steaming cup of coffee and a blanket and listened to the sound of the rain on the tin roof.

The rain the day before hadn't seemed to do much for the local reservoir, however. I pull up covered in sweat only to find the pitiful shores lines with fisherfolk and their multiple fishing rods propped up into the mud while they rocked away in their hammocks. I lay in the shade of the bamboo trees and looked at the leaves swaying in the bright blue sky and watched the endless parade of ants in the branches above and on the ground below. "At least," I thought, "they will not find me out here."

But you can't hide forever and since Thailand, for all I know, doesn't really have a Witness Protection Program and since, even if they did, it wouldn't help me anyways, I resigned myself to going home.

"How was your swim?" asked my neighbor as I pulled my bike up outside the house.

"I didn't actually get a chance to swim," I replied. "Are they gone?" I asked, looking nervously at my locked door.

My neighbor shrugged and then went back inside to his work.

I opened my door nervously, expecting and onslaught. Nothing. I parked my bike inside and entered the house, scanning the floor and watching carefully where I stepped. Nothing. They had all left.

I was describing the incident to a long time Mae Sot resident last night over dinner. "I think the rain might have flooded their den," I explained. "They looked too big to have just hatched."

I have heard about the hatching that happens after the rains, especially for those of us who live in teak houses. After a storm, the termites hatch in huge numbers. Termites, when they are first born, have wings. They fly around for a little while, then drop their wings and disappear, burrowing into wood, I would imagine. I have been told that one or two times a year, they hatch in such hordes that you need to sweep your floor of the huge pile of wings they leave in their wake. Someone I know described how they couldn't' get down their stairs, there were so many wings lying in drifts on their floor.

"Tell me what they looked like again?" my Thai friend asked.

"They were bright red and about two inches long."

"Round or flat?"

"Definitely flat."

My Thai friend had an expression on her face I had seen once before. It was in Taiwan when I had described a cute little green snake I had encountered once when hiking alone on a mountain trail. My Taiwanese friend had gone pale and then proceeded to tell me that I had made the acquaintance of one of the most poisonous snakes in the country. My Thai friend had the same look.

"You should be very careful," she said. "Those things are really poisonous. Even if they touch you I have heard you have to go to hospital and they will cause you a lot of pain."

In some ways, it almost made me feel better. When I saw the horde of them wriggling across my floor towards me, I felt like such a girly-girl. All I could think of was jumping up and down going, "Ewwww! Ewwwww!" So it turns out that I did the right thing after all in evacuating the premises and hiding out until they had all gone. I have since investigated every corner of my house and found no trace of them, but you never really know when those red devils will strike again. That is definitely one of the things that I hate about tropical countries: damned insects and frighteningly poisonous things.

On Mute

Have you ever heard of an English Speaking class being taught by someone who couldn't speak?

On Thursday I had a sore throat. I woke up Friday morning, up in Umphium camp, able to speak only in a whisper and feeling otherwise fine. I was two hours from any substitute teacher and faced with only four weeks of class to go and a lot of things left to cover. I couldn't afford to cancel class just because I couldn't speak. On with the show!

It was quite the hilarious day. I taught in a whisper, writing things on the board, having students speak for me. Actually, I didn't do a lot of teaching, I got my students to do it for me. Not being able to speak kept me incredibly student-centered, always our goal, and focused on my 80:20 (student talking : teacher talking) ratio. What struck me afterwards is how easily my students went along with me. They never seemed to question my ability to teach a class without a voice. We had a great time. Of course, by the end of my five hours of teaching on Friday, I was quite exhausted.

The weekend went by fairly well also. I slept and read a lot. But it was not any more frustrating trying to communicate with people than it normally is around here. I went to the market where I don't speak Burmese or Thai, so not being able to speak at all was no big loss.

Three days later, I am gradually getting my voice back, but it is still quiet. I went out to the bar on Saturday night armed with a pad and pen, scribbling little notes to people and communicating mostly through their lip-reading skills and my body language. It was less difficult that I had imagined.

I encountered only one annoyance: a Norwegian woman who couldn't believe that I didn't lose my voice regularly. "If I couldn't speak, I'd be freaking out! You're dealing with this so well, you MUST have done this before." She actually didn't say that to me, she wrote it down on my pad of paper. Perhaps she was under the impression that my hearing was temporarily out of service along with my speaking ability. Her writing was almost illegible though. She kept bringing the conversation back to how sick I must be right now. Wasn't I so miserable? I'm sure it wouldn't have been that annoying if people weren’t so frequently wanting to feel sorry for me about my variety of illnesses and heath issues. Do people want to be pitied? Is sickness some special state they are secretly aspiring to? What is up people?

As I need to return to work tomorrow, I am going to have my first adventure with the Thai medical system this afternoon, which should be fun, particularly as I can't speak. But this weeks little ranting blog has a point:

Take a minute out of your day right now and think about all the things that you have that you are thankful for. Don’t just sit there and nod at another gushy cliché that belongs in a chain-email, really think about it for a second. Because being silent for a few days has made me learn a lot of things: about listening and judging how important what I have to say is before I have said it. But I am really looking forward to going back to being the big noisy girl that I am. I am thankful not only to be living in a world of lush greenery but that I have the capacity to see and appreciate it. I work in a place where you need your feet to get you where you're going and I have two healthy feet to take me there.

Amen.

Y2K

I ended up at Y2K for the first time on my first Friday night in Mae Sot. Patrick and Brooke told me they were taking me out to meet people, but the only people I met were their significant others and a British girl named Mel. We had some beers and chatted. Someone said, "Lets go to Y2K!" Brooke got very excited and told me that girls wear fur bikinis there, and it was settled. We went.

People who have lived in Mae Sot for ten years or more have never been there. Last night was my third time.

The second time we went, it was an organized outing. Inspired by our first evening there, several people were persuaded to join in and we went en masse. Last night, it was just kind of spontaneous. There we were again, drinking beer and feeling like dancing, so off we went.

One of the funny things about Y2K is that I still don't know how to get there. It's the fault of the quantity of beer we have to drink in order to feel like going. There's a tricky turn involved and a small back road. I often don't have any recollection at all of even getting home, let alone how I got there.

Whiskey seems to be the only drink on the menu there and you have to order it by the bottle. I had never drunk whiskey before coming to Thailand. Actually, whiskey and soda is a surprisingly good drink. Or maybe I'm just used to it now, who knows?

Y2K is the local disco. The music is so loud that the building actually does shake. You can hear it rattling when you pull up out front. Men in white shirts and ties escort you to a table, if there is one left, then take your order. (Will it be whiskey or whiskey? Hmmmm....) There are stools but mostly people stand around their table. Unfortunately, there is no dancefloor and actually not a lot of people dance. I haven't figured out yet why they go really. The music is atrociously loud, so there is no chance of having a conversation. There is a DJ and a band with two female singers that alternate. One of them indeed wears skimpy outfits although she has been favoring huge boots and silver spacegirl clothes on all of the occasions I have been. I have yet to see the fur bikini I was originally enticed with.

I, of course, go to dance and my mission is to get the most number of Thai people dancing with me. Last night this included a table of ladyboys celebrating someone's birthday. I dont' know any of the people there and I doubt they know me so its a good place to go a little crazy dance around and be the big white fool that I am.

And that's what I do for a change of pace and a shot of fun on a Saturday night. Oh, small town life, look at what it does to you.

Itinerary

April 27th 8:25am Depart Bangkok (China Airlines flight 66 & 32)
April 27th 9:25am Arrive in Vancouver
May 5th 18:20pm Depart Victoria (Westjet flight 502)
May 5th 20:35pm Arrive Calgary
May 16th 13:00pm Depart Calgary (WestJet flight 668)
May 16th Arrive Montreal 19:00
May 21st Depart Montreal for Toronto (ride anyone? bus?)
May 23rd 11:40am Depart Toronto (Westjet flight 817)
May 23rd 13:50 Arrive Vancouver
May 24th 11:35am Depart Vancouver (China Airlines flight 31 and 65)
May 25th 01:00am Arrive Bangkok

It'll be a wild ride, but I'm looking forward to seeing you all!!

Valentine's Day

After three months of waking up smiling, bounding out of bed and biking off to work full of energy and general un-Jen like morning symptoms, I suffered a relapse this morning. Not that I woke up in a bad mood or growled at anyone or stomped around the house with a frown, but it was a slow morning to get started. I decided not to force things and after whipping up a mango lasse in my brand-new blender from the yogurt in my brand-new fridge, I spent a delightful hour in my bedroom hammock swinging in and out of sunlight.

Dressed and ready for action, I rolled into the internet café fully intending to get some work done, but no one obliged by emailing me the relevant documents so, alas, I had to work on email. I also contacted several travel agents for details on flights home and although I found several good deals, I also learned that there is a special of flights to Madagascar: 575$ CDN return from Bangkok! Now, really, when am I going to get a deal like that?? Ok, ok, so I forced myself to look into Canadian flights again, but can't help dreaming of what escapades I might get up to at this time next year when I have left the refugee camp behind.

By that time of the morning, I decide that I should pick up lunch right away rather than go into the office, get a little work done and then have to go out again. I mean, we wouldn't want to be inefficient, would we? So I opt for a business lunch with Bridget Jones and her second set of diaries, despite having done absolutely no business in my day to date. There is something about working in a refugee camp that makes you appreciate the fluffiest trash in a way that is just not otherwise possible.

So here we go: rolling into work just before lunch and there is a management meeting in full swing downstairs. I have to walk by all the head people in order to get upstairs to my "office," so clearly I am starting off my week by making good impressions.

Air conditioner on, cup of coffee in hand, I settle down to work. My first order of business is reading through an immense tome in French on elements of translation. I am aiming to finish the translation unit in class this week and want to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything important. I love teaching things I don't know much about. Translation is definitely easier than the time I got stuck teaching a kayaking class although less fun. Clearly I abandon the tome and opt for some blogging.

Oh and that's right, it's Valentine's Day. It was non-stop love songs in the Pad Thai shop, which made eating difficult because the urge was to constantly gag. There have been the tackiest red roses and plastic hearts decorating the wealthier areas of town and the price of red roses in the market place (usually dirt cheap) has skyrocketed overnight, but the exact day eluded me. I am going to show my love for my students by writing their final translation exam today, This evening, I have a hot date in the park with an aerobics instructor. I am going to join millions of Thai women all over the country in their daily public aerobics work out. At the very least, it will help me remember how to count in Thai and I will be getting hot and sweaty on Valentines one way or another!

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year 
Last Monday I was awoken by the sounds of explosions going off at midnight. I smelled smoke and saw flashes of fire out my window. In my half-asleep daze, I was sure there was a gun battle raging in the Chinese factory next to the monastery. Machine guns rattled and retaliated. Someone threw a grenade. What to do? Sleepily I reproached myself, "Jen, you really should have thought up a plan for a situation like this." I did the only sensible thing when there is a gang war or military scheme unraveling across the street and rolled over and fell back asleep, dreaming that there were tanks rolling down the four lane highway near my house from the border.

The gun battles raged throughout Mae Sot all through the week and luckily I was in Umphiem most of the time so actually managed several nights of good sleep and preserved the integrity of my ear drums. There were no guns involved, obviously and no war going on, only unparalleled firecrackers of incredible power. They come on long strings and go off in clouds of smoke and fire, leaving behind shards of red paper which littered the streets all week. I got caught in a crowd and ended up next to one one morning. Even with my hands over my ears I was in pain. When the little explosions have gone off (the machine gun fire), there are two big ones at the end, (the grenade launchers I heard at midnight).

Chinese New Year was on Wednesday and the firecrackers have been going nonstop day and night from Monday until Saturday. In Bangkok, I am told there are over 3 million people gathered in the squares of China Town celebrating with the largest dragon dance outside of Beijing in the world. In Mae Sot the dragons dancing through town on Saturday morning were quite small but lively. Teams of young men wearing yellow danced through the streets wheeling huge drums, playing tambourines and cymbals and following the dragons. They left behind them clouds of smoke and perfumed incense. Shopkeepers were sweeping up the red papers for days. Every corner I turned yielded another dragon, another crowd of dancers. On a parallel street a parade passed with middle aged women in short skirts and a marching band. There was a sense of celebration and excitement and the thrill of the unexpected. Dragons entered shops, eating paper offerings and bestowing luck. One winked at me as it went by and the boys all capered before my camera. Everyone was out on the streets smiling in a blur of red and yellow and a swirl of smoke that tasted of gunpowder.

Happy New Year!

Food

I am hanging off the back of the line car staring up at the great blue sky and watching the bamboo leafs flutter, green, overhead. The car is very full. There are several families inside and a few people transporting big bags of goods to the market in Umphiem. And there is one big white girl hanging off the back with a big grin on her face and the cool breeze in her hair.

One of the bags of green mangoes gets jostled from its precarious perch as we rumble uphill in a cloud of exhaust. One rope holds it to the truck and it drags behind us as I try to motion to someone closer to pay attention and do something. By the time the closest man is aware of the problem, the plastic bag has a hole in it and green mangoes are tumbling out of the bag, rolling end over end down the hill and into the sunshine…

Green mangoes are almost more popular than ripened ones. You peel the mango and slice it up. You mix dried chilies with sugar and fish sauce, which in itself is quite the, um, flavorful, concoction. Then you dip the green mangoes into the sauce and eat. North Americans just don't have a taste sensation that is at all comparable. So sour it makes your eyes water, so spicy it makes your nose run, yet at the same time sweet and tasty. Strangely addictive.

There is one stall in the market that always fascinates me. There are tubs with fish that look like eels, still alive, squirming around in shallow, dirty water. There are small turtles doing turtle things amidst the market bustle with dead fish heads in their plastic containers (are turtles carnivores?) And there are bundles or fat frogs; still alive, jerking and tied in bunches. These must be special frogs because anyone who wanted the regular kind only has to sit out on a road at night. Biking outside of town in the dark, you have to drive slowly to avoid squashing the dark hunks slowly hopping across the road. In the morning, almost every road, including my own, is littered with the dead, flattened bodies of these nighttime creatures. Or perhaps they are toads. I can't claim to know the difference.

Frogs are good for several dishes. My favorite, however, is frog chili. For those of you who want to try this one at home, it is a fairly simple recipe, one that is sure to endear you with the neighbors and dinner guests:

Once the frogs have been prepared, (admittedly, I'm not sure how this is done. Do you have to remove the insides, or are they good to eat? Peel the skin off like potatoes?) Put the meat into a small pot of boiling water. (For extra flavor, add a bullion cube or use chicken stock.) Proceed to boil the crap out of that frog. In fact, the frog should be boiled to the point where its body has been reduced to a paste. This makes an excellent base for a chili, and it's full of protein too! (And who knows what else?) From this point on, your options are endless: boiled chilies, chili powder, fried chilies? Tomato and garlic frog chili? Fish paste and dried fish chili? I'll leave the additional ingredients up to your discretion.
Friday morning in the office, I am sipping Lipton's Yellow Label Tea and eating a store made loaf of banana bread. It's been a rough week on my stomach so I'm taking a break. Hmmmm…. I wonder why?

Buddhas in the Ruins

Buddhas in the ruins 


Buddhas 


feet 

UNESCO World Heritage Site

It was a fairly normal week in Mae Sot:

On Monday, I had food poisoning. On Tuesday, I had dinner with a private arms dealer. On Saturday, I rode in a truck with a sweat-shop owner and visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The World Heritage Site wasn't part of my normal week, actually. Despite being tired from the long trip back from camp, I have decided to do some traveling at least once a month and get out of Mae Sot and see some of Thailand. This weekend I took a minibus up to Sukhothai. Sukhothai is one of Thailand ancient capitals, a walled city full of temples and Wats. Today it is a tourist park with crumbling stone ruins and manicured lawns. It's the perfect place for a relaxing weekend getaway.

I rented a bicycle for the day and cycled through the ruins, taking over a hundred pictures of the stone Buddhas. I took off my sandals with the Thai Buddhists and walked on the hot stone, kneeling before the incense under the hot sun. Outside the old city walls, I found a route alongside a small canal where women waded, fishing with large nets and boys splashed about in the shade. The ruins outside the walls are emptier, overgrown with weeds. Buddhas sitting in lotus positions in niches are missing heads or parts of their legs. Pigeons rise from deserted stone towers. On the horizon, the mountains are clearly visible, getting hazier and more indistinct and fading into the sky in the distance. One of them is said to look like a reclining Buddha, but I can't tell which one.

To the West of the old city, I make what the Rough Guide describes as "a long haul" out to another ruin site. This long haul is well sign posted, entirely flat and amidst beautiful rice paddies and fields. It takes fifteen minutes of lazy cycling. I am alone at the site as I climb the stone slabs that lead to the top of this hill where an ancient Buddha is waiting. The view from the top is green, all green. In the distance things dissolve into smoke, but the towers from the ancient Wats are still visible.

I spend my evening quietly, reading on the teak porch of the guesthouse in the shade and wandering through the night market. It is nice not to have to talk to anyone, a reprieve from the usual intense conversations of Mae Sot. It's nice to by anonymous. I sip an Oreo milkshake in the night market with a smile … this is a beautiful life to be living.

Buddha on the hill