Ice Ice Baby

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words. Here are a few shots of me and my friend Ice. Ice lives on a commune for mothers fleeing abusive situations. We teach them human rights lessons once a week. If I am not in charge of giving the lesson, I like to go to the daycare and play games with Ice. I have taught him a few tricks like putting puzzle pieces on his feet, kicking them off, and trying to catch them (he has not quite mastered the catching part yet) He has really warmed up quite a bit since I first met him. Last time I went, he saw me and smiled. The girl working in the daycare said it was the first time she had seen him smile. He is a pretty serious kid most the time. I am glad we can have a little fun.

Energy in the Sky

I have lost 8 kg since arriving in Thailand. Clara and I hiked to Doi Suthep after work. I felt like skipping the whole way. As the sun set and the bugs and birds and creatures chorused jarring medleys around us, I became elated, almost requiring a harness to not run off into the forest leaving Clara alone. Doi Suthep glowed profoundly against the night. Thick billowing clouds reflecting city lights and shouting back with crashes and lightning. I could have stayed there all night, lighting pulsing with my blood. No red trucks at night meant we had to call Win for a lift back into the city. He left a romantic date at a rooftop restaurant and came to retrieve us. We stopped at a lookout halfway down the mountain and let the warm moist breeze of the imminent storm take our cares away.

Electricity circled the city in spastic waves and one by one the four of us commented on the feeling. “this is my first time watching lighting from a mountain” “Me too, its incredible” “Me too” When it was my turn, just silence. How many storms have I watched from the mountains? How many bolts have I dodged while running from mountain peaks? How many times have I stood above a city and shouted down to all the world that I don't have anything to worry about? Lightning is inside me and nothing makes me happier than to share it with my friends.

Meet Win

WIN-

Win says that the Thai speak with a melody, but he takes it to a whole new level. The tone and cadence of his English borders on campy or gay, but somehow he manages to remain entirely masculine while doing it, and it makes the girls go crazy for him. The rhythm and tone spike and fall dramatically even within a single word. "I luuuuv you. You are my number ooune" If he were not Asian, he could never get away with it, but he pulls it off nice.

Win In Thailand, the ideal person looks East Asian, (Korean, Japanese, or Chinese). Light skin and East Asian features. Tall, with a 6 pack and anime hair. Win is 20, and he fits the profile perfectly. So much so, that Thai people don't think he is Thai, and regularly talk about him, assuming he cannot understand. As we walk through the mall, people comment, "What is that Japanese doing with Farong (white foreigners)? Do you think he is gay? Look, he is Japanese. usually shakes it off, but occasionally embarrasses them by speaking in perfect northern Thai.

Win takes me to his gym to work out. He knows everyone there and it is obviously as much a social event as a workout. He does not even bother to change his clothes, opting to stay in his fashionable skinny jeans and puma high tops. The gym assigned me a personal trainer and I was working on my back as instructed. Win came up and said, "If I were you, I would not work on your back, girls cannot see your back, work on your arms, they can see that more" Win readily admits he is materialistic, and looking good is a high priority. He also has no qualms telling people where they might fall short. "Kyla, you are very beautiful and you have a good shape, but I can see your rolls and you could lose some weight" He actually asked the waiter at our restaurant to turn down the lights because the girls look better in the dark. "You both look so beautiful, in the dark." "Kyla, if the new girl is jorgeous (I am still working on the hard G sound with him), then you will be my number 2, but for now you are my number one" When a girl asked him how old he thought she was, he checked her out thoroughly and concluded that with the wrinkles, she must be 29. She was 23 and quite offended. Win could not understand why she might be mad. He likes older girls. His last girlfriend was 29.

Win has essentially raised himself since age 10 when his mother died. His father is a military supplier and spends most of his time away entertaining clients. He woos them with an unrivaled hospitality. "My father taught me that you cannot win someone's heart with money, you have to use your mind and your sense of hospitality. He takes care of his clients and makes sure they have the best time and that every need is taken care of." The message has resonated with Win and he shows me the same kind of hospitality. Every meal is an experience. We go to only the best restaurants, followed by only the best deserts. We ride around in his BMW M5 or his Nissan Maxima tasting the best of Chiang Mai and practicing English.

2 years ago Win entered a Thailand-wide talent search contest to form a new boy-band. He won the whole contest, but his father would not let him be in the band. Win had to stay in college and he had to study law. The boy band dream will stay a dream. Still, Win shows no remorse for not being able to claim his fame and prize.

Other than not being in boy-bands, Win's father only has 3 rules that Win cannot break.

1) Never ride a scooter or motorcycle

2) Never become, date, or have anything to do with the lady-boys (Thailand's famous transgender people)

3) Always stay on top of your studies.

He broke the first rule when he was unfit to drive home, so I scooted him across town

He broke the second rule when he and I had to edit a manual educating Transgender people about their legal rights and how they can access health care.

I am trying to make sure he does not break the 3rd rule, but I think he might be just by hanging out so much.

3 things

Tze told me he only needs 3 things in life before he can be happy.

1) Japan Wood Sandals (the platform kind that I don't think anyone wears anymore)

2) A Micro-pig (the miniature pet pigs you keep like a dog)

3) A pack of Marlboro Smooths

I wonder what my top 3 are.

XXXXXL

Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my camera, so I am short on pictures.

What I wanted to take pictures of may not have fit in the camera anyway. I am too fat for Thai clothes. The first week in Thailand I went to the mall to buy some replacements for the 4 red shirts I packed. (Who packs 4 red shirts to go to Thailand in the middle of a Red Shirt revolution?) I did. I went into the first store because I could see it had a bunch of really cool shirts. The lady worker walked up to me and said, "Sorry. No, no." Then she motioned to by stomach. "Too big". I went store to store. Same thing. Nothing my size, or only really ugly shirts my size. I told my Thai friends and they said they would take me shopping where I could get clothes my size. We went to an outdoor market. Stall after stall we went and my friend kept asking if they had clothes that would fit me. Each one of them looked at me, shook their head and pointed to another stall. Finally, totally discouraged, my friend Win said, "I know where we can go, Export" Export, it turns out, is a store full of clothes made in Thailand, that were supposed to be shipped to America, but for some reason weren't. We walked in and there was a shirt at least 5 feet wide hanging on the wall. 5XL. I was in the right place.

Phuket Airport

Across the waiting room and behind a glass a wall, a stream of glassy-eyed tourists are taking their first breaths of Phuket air. Across from me, my friend is groggy and recovering. What a difference 2 days can make. 2 days of riding around on my scooter. My face and neck and arms are burned by the sun, seared by my lack of precaution, lack of protection.

2 more days in Phuket and my conscience might be seared as well. The arrogance of people using this country to do what they would never do at home.

Last week, on the way to the JDC, Tze pointed out a shirtless couple riding a motorcycle. (the girl had a bikini top). "Not polite" he said, "but they are farong (foreigners) so its OK." Tze's understanding is encouraging but the couples lack of understanding is symptomatic of so much that is wrong with Thailand. Over a hundred miles from the beach and they are riding through a city like they would never ride through Sweden or London. Like no Thai person would ride through Chiang Mai. This is their playground. It does not matter that it is someone else's home.

Patong is the same mentality amplified to an absurd extreme.

Innocent sounding ping pong shows are actually a huge tourist draw, one of the most popular and ubiquitous events. They feature women shooting ping pong balls from their vagina. The show escalates to women opening bottles of beer with it, inserting whole bananas, and that is where I asked the descriptions to stop.

A few interns thought it would be important to attend a show to understand what the women go through. They wanted to understand so much, some of them went twice.

I am not sure if I follow the logic, but then again I have only the description in my mind, shocking me to disgust- they have vivid close up images. On the other hand, they were well drunk by the time the show started, so maybe the images are not so vivid after all.

Reporting From Kings Project

Being Immersed:
The sun is setting over the hills, orange glow reflecting off the lake onto the patio of my weeklong lakeside home. This is luxury living. People pay money to stay in places like this. I guess I did too. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow and hike through the hills I will think differently, but this feels like a retreat, a splendid vacation. People also pay to work now that I think of it. My sister is a hiking guide at a spa that recently changed its name to “Biggest Loser Resort” in conjunction with a reality TV show where fat people compete to lose weight by working out. The spa makes millions off making fat people work. HAHA.. Maybe this summer is a weight loss program for me. If anything, it would be a wonderful added bonus.
Day 1
Turns out most communication is non verbal. Either that or filling bags with dirt is a remarkably simple task to learn.... scratch that. Our two teams combined filled 21 bags with dirt during our morning shift. The workers need to have 200 bags to make the two dams we were working on. 7 law school students could not keep pace with 2 50-something-year-old men. Why are some skills so valued and others not? Imagine filling bags with dirt for 8 hours. My oversized fake 501 jeans were soaked all the way through. My white boxers now totally blue. It felt remarkable. Doing something and immediately seeing the progress. I think something in human nature craves results. I am used to working in areas where the results are ambiguous and come very slowly. A semesters worth of reading and thinking boils down to one test which translates to one grade that when put next to other grades makes a cumulative number from which prospective employers base a portion of their assessment of me. What crap. Part of me would rather fill bags of dirt with some of the most cheerful people I know, and I don't even speak their language.


Tze Time
I like to tell stories. I also like to write stories, but sometimes, when I meet a truly interesting person, I just want to listen. Tze is in town and it could not have been better timed. Everyone was pretty exhausted and only drank lightly before heading off to bed. I stayed outside on the patio, amidst an orchestra of bugs and the laughs of lizards, talking with Tze. He told me the whole history of Thailand and the history of Burma, and the tenets of Budhism and his view on politics and Thai culture and dating and life. I can maybe thank a bottle of Chang for opening him up a bit, but it was so nice to sit and chat and listen to a totally new view of the world. I feel satisfied and dare I say “immersed” for the first time this week. I don't know that I will have another opportunity to have an intimate conversation like that with a Thai person this summer, but I look forward to working with Tze on any project.

Saem, the Dam, and the special light.
Saem and I walked to the dam and laid on our yoga mat beds looking up at the stars. She says she has never seen the stars so clearly before. It was hardly clear at all and I felt remarkably spoiled because I grew up in the desert and slept every summer night on my tampoline under clear star-filled skies. We saw a light in the sky. It looked small like a satellite, moving smoothly before it grew larger and larger becoming a bright orange ball of glow, then fading back down to a dot and sailing out of sight slowly. In all my years sleeping under the stars, I have never seen a light like this. I told Tze when we came back to check on us and he told Porn, our house mom. She consulted her husband PeTam and together they explained that it was a special light that usually only monks see to remind them of something special from their past life. They said they both had never seen such a light in all their lives, but they hope to one day. Tze said maybe we were Thai in a past life and that is why we got to see the light. I don't know about any of those theories, but this is a special place and I love being out here.

Kids are Kids, but these kids are also grown-ups
The school does not have enough supplies. The alphabet chart has “Uicon” (supposed to be Unicorn) for the U animal. X is xmasturkey, all one word. The is no A/C and we could not even find paper to play a game with. The kids in grades 1-3 range in age from 5-12. Some are tiny and some are quite large. They wrestle and goof off like any kids, but when it comes down to it, they watch out for each other. They make sure everyone gets a turn, that the big kids dont always win the games, and that they cooperate despite our complete failure to speak Thai. Sumchai is 12. He has some kind of physical disability but his english is the best of all the kids in the class, and he was eager to translate our directions into Thai. I was eager to let him. Each day he would hug me and hold on until I made him let go. What will happen to kids like Sumchai? I feel terrible for walking into his life for a week and then walking out. Friday when we left, he hugged me and said, “No see you tomorrow” and he ran away.

I make it rain.
All week we wanted rain. Anything to cool the air and make our furnace house more bearable. Sometime during dinner, Nur managed to finagle a saw and a hoe from PeTam and cut up a dead tree. A fire was burning on the beach before the sunlight was all the way gone. No one wanted to join him because the hot hot heat was already too much. I felt bad for Nor sitting down by the lake all alone so I told them I would go to the fire and do a rain dance to make it rain before bedtime. I swear, I took the energy from the fire and called in the storm. I know how preposterously superstitious that sounds, but it really really worked. The fire went from hot under clear skies to horizontal from the wind with thunderheads piling over our lake. They all came down and we danced. The rain lasted all night. I tried not to take all the credit I was given, but really, would rain dances be so popular for so long if they never ever worked?