It’s hard to capture some of my daily thoughts in blog posts, especially when I don’t post every day. While we were driving around on Saturday, I was thinking of some of my favorite things/most interesting experiences so far, so I thought I’d make a top ten list to share some of them with you. It started out at less than ten, and then I thought of more, so it’s actually a 10+ list... but we’ll just go with it.
1. Funniest “farang” moment: Okay, I’ll tell this story on myself now. Thankfully, my biggest “mistake” so far was because of something in the English language and wasn’t my fault at all. One of the first nights we were eating a dish with cooked greens in it. We were doing our typical exchange of English and Thai words for each ingredient, and when they asked what the one green was, I said, “Bok choy.” They all burst into laughter for reasons unbeknownst to me, and just kept repeating the word. I thought they just thought it sounded funny or sounded like Thai, so I tried to explain that I thought it was the Chinese name and English had borrowed it. They just kept laughing. At many dinners after that, Pim would point at the green, say bok choy and just die laughing. I still didn’t know why!
Finally, on Friday night Mae’s sister Lek and her friend came over for dinner. I was kind of the entertainment for the night as we tried to get to know each other with our limited Thai and English, I showed them the photos Mom sent with me, and Mae told a few stories on me. She told the bok choy story and everyone started laughing. Finally I asked what it meant, and everyone kind of quieted down. With a big grin on her face, Pim said she couldn’t tell me because it was rude. Then, out of total silence, Paw said, “Baby boy,” and mimed a small wee-wee and started laughing. Thank you translation errors! But hey, if the best story they have on me is that, I’m okay.
2. Most interesting note on Thai culture: One of the things I noticed very early on is the generational divide, or the differences between the more traditional culture and modernizing culture. The best way to describe this is with the phrase “rip roy,” which means something like respectful, considerate, and acceptable. All of our reading before coming to Thailand emphasized what was rip roy to wear and do, so we wouldn’t be culturally offensive. However, my first day here I saw young people walking around in tight, short fashionable clothes and young couples holding hands. What I’ve been realizing is that behaviors that aren’t rip roy are common among some young people. Moreover, some families or young people may follow most traditional customs, but be adapting to some more modern/Western practices (and I use those labels in a non-privileging way). A good example is with my host sisters, who both wear shorts that you’d see any day in the US (though I brought only long shorts and skirts because that’s what is rip roy). Mae and Paw are fine with them doing so, but when we went to a wat today, Pim couldn’t go in because her shorts are too short.
The same kinds of divisions are evident in material culture as well. I think my family is fairly middle class—more wealthy than some of my friends’ host families but definitely not as rich as others. It’s hard to tell though, because their lifestyle is such a mix of “traditional” and “modern.” They all have cell phones, the two girls have a laptop, and they have a pretty nice TV. But, there’s no internet. They have two nice cars and a motorcycle, but no washing machine. They have a western toilet, but a shower that doesn’t often work. These apparent contradictions reflect the overall divides between traditional and modern that you see throughout the streets of Chiang Mai.
3. Favorite Thai word: gao suwauy. It’s the word for regular (not sticky) rice, but it literally means beautiful rice. I think that sums up very well the relationship to rice in Thai culture!
It’s also a good example of how much sense Thai language makes. The way you say so many things is with a combination of words, and the individual terms used describe the items so logically. For instance:
· naam (water)à used in the words for bathroom (hong naam), soup, puddle, river, take a bath, and so on.
· rong (building)à the same first term used in the name for any building, like: school (rong rian), hospital (rong payabaan—literally building and doctor) and so forth.
· raan (shop)à pretty much any final word can be added to make the name for any type of shop: raan ajhan (restaurant), raan gafe (coffeshop), raan sura (clothing shop).
· ni means here and naan means there. Add wan (the first term for the days of the week) and you get today (wan ni) and tomorrow (wan naan)!
4. Best view: The view of the mountains from the top of the cliff we climbed on Friday was spectacular. Made the climb even more worth it! You could see all the mountains and rolling fields with all the tropical vegetation for miles.
The views in general are beautiful though. Dusk has always been one of my favorite times of day because I think the sky is a beautiful color then, even when there isn’t a vivid sunset. Here, there are always the most amazing cloud formations because of all the clouds they have for rainy season. At dusk every day when we’re driving home, the clouds and streaks of different blue hues make the most striking views.
5. Favorite place: Probably anywhere I go with my family, or Kahluang Market (talad Kaluang)
6. Best food: This is a hard one for me, because there are very few things I’ve eaten that I haven’t liked! The fruit here is amazing. There aren’t many apples, the grapes taste different, and oranges are a little bit expensive, so I haven’t been eating much of those—though they’re my favorite fruits in the US. Here I’ve eaten a lot of papaya (malago), lu pap (sharonfruit?), and dragonfruit (khaya mon khon) and a few of the little bananas (glui). So sweet and delicious! There are so many fruits in Thailand that we just don’t have in the US.
But, I really love all the food. My family is impressed with the amount of spice I like, and that really allows me to eat anything. Since I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time, I was really hesitant about going back to eating meat (It’s impossible to be vegetarian here, because everything is cooked in with a little meat/in meat sauce). But I’ve actually really enjoyed some of the meat I’ve eaten. On Friday night, Mae’s sister Lek came over with her friend for dinner, and Paw barbecued pork out back. We ate it with sticky rice (gao niaw) and some spicy sauces (naam pik), and it was delicious.
7. Biggest “culture shock”: There are a lot of things that would probably fit here, so I’ll give it multiple parts!
a. Temperature: Though I’m always cold when I’m in air conditioned places in the US, I realize now how acclimated I am to living in that temperature and being cold! I’m not used to being in the warm humidity ALL the time. But, it’s not that bad now because some places (a few nicer stores/malls) have A/C, the ISDSI classrooms have AC systems they turn on during class, and everywhere has fans. I’m more worried for when we leave Chiang Mai to go on the field expeditions and there are no fans!
b. But, that aside, the biggest difference has probably been the lack of internet access. I just learned yesterday that there actually is Internet at home. The girls have a card they stick into their laptop, but Mae said it’s really slow so if I want to use the Internet we can go to the Internet café that is at the entrance to their village off the highway. That said, I’ve only been online a handful of times for about 15 minutes during my lunch break at ISDSI. I’m not a huge tech junkie or a Facebook addict, so it doesn’t bother me much for those reasons. But, I worked on my computer ALL day ALL summer long, so I was used to reading a ton of news. Without Internet, I have almost no way of knowing what’s going on in the world. One day, I saw online that the Libyan rebels took the capital, Tripoli, and yesterday I saw on TV at home that there was a hurricane in the US that was affecting DC and NYC (I think?) Other than that, I’ve had no news. And for a news junkie like me, that amounts to withdrawal!!
c. One thing that isn’t so hard for me to deal with, but that I’m surprised everyone here can deal with on a day to day basis is how long commuting and/or public transportation takes. We live outside of Chiang Mai off of one of the major highways. In the morning I leave the house at 6:50 to catch a rot dang (taxi) they’ve arranged for 7 of us to take every day, and we get to school about 7:40. In the afternoon, we take a rot dang to one of the central markets (Kaluang Market), where there is an open bus plaza. We then take a rot luang (bus) on the Doi Saket line all the way out to our houses. Usually, if we leave ISDSI at 5, I’ll get home about 6:40. And that’s not unusual. So many other students, professionals, and mothers are riding the rot luang when we do. The older of my host sisters, Pim, often has a late class and doesn’t arrive home til 8—and she drives! While that kind of commute may be normal in big cities in the US, I would say the majority of Americans don’t have to commute 1-1.5 hours both ways and would see it as a big waste of time.
d. Water. Anything that has to do with water is different in Thailand. You can’t drink the water, so everyone in the city gets water from a private bottling service that delivers water in these opaque water bottles. Ice is delivered too. The water pressure isn’t good enough for flushing, so you throw toilet paper away, but use a hose spray nozzle to clean off. Water pressure also isn’t strong enough for showers, so you use a tub of water with bowl to pour. My family also doesn’t have a washing machine, so we wash clothes by hand, put them through spinner, and hang to dry.
8. Biggest fear: I realized last week that my biggest fear is actually the field programs we’ll be embarking on after this month. While I’m adapting to life in Chiang Mai and with my host family fine, going out into the villages to live is going to be like a second culture shock. While I’m strong and have pretty good adaptation skills, I sometimes doubt how straight-up rugged I can be. Hiking and camping for three weeks straight is pretty strenuous and demanding, and we’re not just doing it for outdoor sporting fun… it’s to live and study people’s ways of life. All of those things put together, and not really knowing the details of anything, scares me somewhat.
9. Biggest misconception about Americans: Everyone characterizes American food as pizza, hamburgers, and sweets… which is definitely not what the majority of Americans eat on a day-to-day basis. I mean, I know the junk food and obesity epidemic really is an issue in the US, but most of us only eat those things on occasion and may have specific regional food cuisines that are actually interesting and healthy. Some of us were talking about this on the way home one day, and someone made the good point that our multinational companies are the only “culture” we really export, though. No one would know about southwestern or Creole cuisine if the only thing we send overseas is McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks. Similarly, the only other parts of our culture that we “export” are Hollywood movies (beauty culture), music (vulgar and sex/love obsessed) and cell phone/computer/home appliance technology (consumer culture). I think those things really are all the average person in Thailand knows about Americans… so imagine the stereotypes we have to explain our way out of!
10. Biggest misconception about Thais: Probably a lot of things that could be said here too, and I know I don’t understand the culture well enough to even know them all. But to me, I think the biggest mistake would be to lump all Asian cultures together—assuming that because they are geographically near, they must be pretty similar. Though there may be some underlying core values that are similar, overall that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been struck by the differences between the one’s I’ve experienced (Thai, Indian, and Chinese), whether regarding family, religion, food, city infrastructure, or even the advertising culture.
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