Festivities

Monday night was Loy Kathong, a fantastic festival in Thailand that signifies the repentance of a nation. The streets of Pattaya started to fill up on Friday and it wasn’t long that it appeared the whole of Bangkok had come on vacation for the weekend. Traffic was atrocious, forcing us all to motorcycles, and the sheer mass of humanity that filled the city was astounding. Pattaya is a relatively small city, with a labyrinth of little streets (called sois). As you head down toward the water and into the downtown area of the city near the beach these streets are literally bar after bar, with nothing in between, and girls lined up selling themselves to the night. There are thousands of girls in this small city. Loy Kathong marks the beginning of the tourist surge for Pattaya. As the Christmas season approaches the city nearly doubles in capacity and sex tourism becomes a very lucrative business for these girls. Girls who come from rural villages in the North East, where people live off of 3 dollars a day if they are lucky and have little hope of ever ending the cycle of poverty, have little other opportunity handed. These girls are often no older than 16 or 17 when they first come to the city. Impressionable young minds hoping to make something of them self and help to support their families become trapped in a web of exploitation and shame. Even in the crazy world of clashing cultures and sex tourism that Pattaya is, the night of the festival gave a real sense of deeply ingrained Thai traditions and respect for the culture.

The Loy Kathong festival is an amazing spectacle of traditional Thai dress and floating banana boats. Nearly everyone in the city sits down the day of the festival and makes small floating boats out of banana tree trunks and leaves, adorned with orchids and other flowers and a candle. As darkness falls there is an exodus of the city to the beach where thousands of people light their candles and launch their symbols of repentance into the sea. Many of the girls and even some men wear in the traditional Thai dress which is a colorful sparkling spectacle! Absolutely Beautiful. Even along Walking Street, Pattaya’s main drag of bars the city seemed to sparkle and take on a new identity for the night.

Look at my beautiful banana boat! ;)

Ging Cow (to eat rice)

yes, thats a chicken foot in my soup...

The delights of Thai cuisine are far from what you might expect from the tastes of your local Thai food restaurant. On the menu this week was:
Crispy Duck Beak
Chicken feet stew (I didn’t realize there was a chicken foot in my soup until I’d already tucked in)
Whole fish (eyeballs and all)
Rubbery Squid
Fungi of all sorts
And to top it off bugs for a midnight snack

Needless to say it’s not quite as palpable or easy to eat as you might like. Never the less Thai food is tasty as all else if you can wrap your head around foreign textures, new flavors and a heat that would burn through metal. Suffice it to say always ask for mai pet (not spicy). In Thailand not spicy means just about right for a western pallet, it’s got some heat but you can feel your mouth after you eat. Most of you know that I’ll eat just about anything or at least try it, and I have to applaud myself for my attempts to eat a lot of things here. Bugs are something I just can’t even think about putting in my body, dog is another, though dog isn’t common in Thailand unless you are Cambodian, or extremely poor. And I have to say that most of the time I really enjoy the food here. I’m definitely not going to waste away into nothing and die of starvation. On the other hand there is a big part of me that can’t wait to get home and gorge myself on western food until I’m sick. Just the idea of familiar flavors that don’t make my nose wrinkle occasionally will be fantastic! There is another side to Thai food that you don’t really think about when you think of the delights of the orient. How the hell am I suppose to order what I want. Nothing comes with a label on it that allows for ease of ordering, especially when you’re out at the market or getting from your local street vendor. It’s so much harder than you would expect and this leads to eating a lot of fried rice for the lack of ability to get your local vendor to figure out what it is that you’re after. I tend to try to keep the communication to a minimum and therefore end up eating lots of things like meat on a stick and soup of which I’m never sure what exactly is going to be in it. It is getting better though and my Thai is coming along… slowly but surely, thanks to the diligent Thai staff that I work with (they really are so patient and good teachers) and the urgings of my boss. Where is that Rosetta Stone when you need it?

Well that’s all I have to say about food for the moment its crazy weird but somehow I enjoy it.

Sense of a Culture

I thought this week rather than write about my issues with loo role, I’d write about my experiences interacting with the culture here in Thailand. I am constantly confronted with the delicacy of Thai culture both in work and play here in Pattaya and out among the many villages that Openaid works with.
Thai culture is a complex set of unspoken social norms and cultural rules, dictated by centuries of cultural history. Thai people are the quintessential model of harmony and peace. Even their regular discontent and military overthrows are done in a spirit of quiet discontent and managed without bloodshed or even an appearance of disrespect. This at first seems like a pleasant and enjoyable working environment to be surrounded with. The realities require finding a delicate balance of working with people and figuring out how not to offend them because of cultural differences.
Coming from a western work ethic and an environment where things that need to be said are said this is a tough one. In the US when you work with someone it’s expected that the hard questions will eventually be asked, that its acceptable to push to understand and if you don’t agree with something you would normally say so. Granted we all have our limit of saying what we think is appropriate, but here in Thailand, I am learning, there is a fine line of saying too much. That line lies right around giving your opinion on just about anything that has to do with money, family structure, and just about anything deemed unpleasant to discuss. This becomes an absolutely huge challenge when trying to structure an organization with western leadership and Thai staff, or when going into a school to teach girls about the dangers of the sex industry. It becomes even more challenging when you sit with a family in a small village and attempt to determine their incomes, need and your ability to report on project work. As I continue to work more and more closely with Thai people I am learning that it is a constant battle to obtain the right kind of information and enough of it. And quite rightly, it is a very hard thing to ask of our Thai staff to intrude upon cultural law.
Sometimes I feel like all I have learned in 3 weeks here is just how much I have to learn about Thailand, and that it will never all fit in my head. I suppose that chipping away at it little by little and maintaining a sense of cultural sensitivity will be the key to not losing all respect. Fingers crossed!
I have attached a few pictures of the office today so you can all see what it’s like :)

Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes…

Today I taught three smart little kids this song in a small village in northern Thailand. We all came up here from the office yesterday to spend some time talking with the schools and families we are working with here along the Laos border in Nakon Panong province. This area is a very high risk area for girls to be trafficked or to easily fall into prostitution. Poverty is extremely high in the region and in every school there are many girls facing countless obstacles that could prevent them from finishing school. Openaid is trying to reach individual girls through the project support of the schools in different villages. Not an easy task or one that has immediate results. Building relationships, trust and results all take enormous amounts of time invested in each family and school. These are long term projects, targeting young girls in primary school and attempting to keep them in school until graduation, hopefully creating opportunity for continued education and a lifetime of jobs that will keep them from being exploited. It’s a huge learning curve working with the culture and families here but a rewarding task if you can keep just one girl safe. It all sounds a bit cliché when you put it that way but the reality for that one girl is such that it could be saving her from a life of exploitation and poverty.

Ants in my pants… quite literally.

As a matter of principle in southeast Asia, as a westerner you learn that one must keep all things edible, sweet or having scent, in the refrigerator or the ant colony will descend on your house like an untamable plague. Having lived over here before I have become quite savvy about this and keep all my lotions and potions out of reach. Today I devolved deep into my unpacked bag (I’m still in a hotel at the moment and it seemed counterproductive to unpack everything) for a shirt. A particular shirt – our new freedom 5k shirt. I hadn’t gotten a chance to wear it yet in my hast to move, so I thought I’d try it on. Well I headed out the door in a hurry to work and as I sat waiting for my ride I started to itch… like I was wearing a particularly scratchy wool. I thought that was a bit odd but put it down to the new shirt which is a new brand than last year. As the morning wore on it only seemed to get worse… some time after that was when I noticed miniscule ants all over my body and they were biting little suckers. This is how my day started. Fortunately it ended better than it started. Today I finished a report I had been working on for a couple of day, a six month review of one of the school projects we have going on. Then in the afternoon we brought three young sisters, 4, 6, and 10, to be with us at the office. These girls live in one of the slums in Pattaya. Their mother is gone most of the day and their father, a violent drunk, these girls are left to their one devices much of the time. We were able to feed them and love them for a bit while they helped us paint the upstairs room we plan to use as a craft room for kids at t office. Kids are amazing how they can be kids in any situation. This was a much better way to finish the day than it started.

A new day a new story

So seems to be each day in my short time in Thailand. Today is Saturday, a brilliant excuse for being lazy. I did do two things today of substance so it wasn’t a total loss… laundry and the purchase of a new pair of shoes, anyone who knows me in the slightest won’t be surprised in the least at the later, but more to come on that. I woke up early, attempted to sleep in after receiving a text message at 7 in the morning from my boss (who I’m now convinced never sleeps!!! Not kidding!!), but failed. So I watch a movie in bed, sorted laundry and dropped it off to be cleaned before I head up to the north next week. I’m still not sure how exactly I’m going to fit all my cloths back into my suitcase… So then had a coffee meeting with my boss and just talked about the week, how we were feeling about things so far. Good meeting. Well I was going to be adventurous this afternoon and go to the beach for a bit of a change, that never happened though as got sucked into a really cheesy movie, read my book, wrote some emails and then realized it was 6 o’clock. So not exactly to most productive day but my boss and his wife called to see if I wanted to go to the market later that night. Sounded great! I never pass up a chance to go shopping, really! Especially not at a Thai market, they’re brilliant! Thai markets are a fantastic! You can find just about anything you might need or want and a bunch of stuff you didn’t even know exist or thought only came in a happy meal. No joke there are some stellar finds, especially if your looking to go to a fancy dress party in the near future!
Well shortly after buying a pair of said shoes (with cherries on them) and milling around the market with Rattana and Kid (two ladies I work with) the sky opened up and decided dump an ocean’s worth of water on our heads. Ok so a little rain nothing I haven’t seen in Seattle, at least it’s warm here right. Well I left out the part about the fact that to beat the traffic we’d all gone on motorsi (motorcycles) to the market. Yes you heard right, the eminent truth that we were going to have to ride home in the rain. Ok so not that big of a deal until you understand the gravity of the little rain I’m talking about. In a matter of 5 minutes, while we sat hoping it would stop the street became a flooded mass of humanity. Cars, motorcycles, a man with no legs trying to cross the road in a wheelchair, stray dogs, all a wet mess. Needless to say, it was a great night and we all made it home safe, though considerably damp. I’m not sitting comfortably dry in my hotel room and enjoying the night sky light up with lightning. Asia during the rainy season brings a lot of smiles to my face I have to admit.

Not to sound petty, but we all get annoyed by the little things in life… familiar or not. I am currently very annoyed by the toilet paper role in my hotel room bathroom, which has the prerogative to continually fall out of its holder, consequently falling on the ground and getting wet as there is always water on the floor from the shower. SO Annoying!

4 days on

I’ve somehow managed to visit the slums, visit the ‘big Buddha’, eat lots of yum thai food, push a truck through the mud, attempt to communicate with my colleges and very little English to write a report, received text messages in the middle of the night on repeated occasion and watch several very bad crime shows on tele.
Most of my time has been spent working and when not working I’ve been sleeping quite a bit. 14 hours of time difference has rendered me fairly dull this week. Working a nine to five again is something I’ve got to wrap my head around as its been a long time. Good thing though I’ve probably spent only a few of those hours in the office. Much of the this week has been getting acquainted with how OPENaid works, and who they work with and why they work with each person. I am continuously amazed at the reach that OPENaid has and how with so short staffed they manage all the projects they have. It takes hard work and a lot of it, with a drive to help so many. Today I went to a small slum that has probably 10 families, people living in squalor, little kids of all ages living life as they know no other. We brought with us art supplies to have an afternoon of painting. Kids are amazing how they see their world. They lit up as we came arms full of paint, paper and brushes. They didn’t mind that we had set up our studio in small structure of corrugated metal with garbage all around. They were just please we’d come, bright smiles on their faces and eager hands to create colorful. As I sat painting a with a small group of 2 year old while they painted the paper, each other and not to forget my toes, not exactly to cleanest bunch, they were pleasantly pleased with their accomplishments. The older kids created masters of elementary art. And then as soon as we had swept in the rain started and we swept out with many a picture taken and many a picture painted and many a smile shown.

a new beginning

Hmmm something like 7 hours and counting and already feel like I’ve had the world thrown at me… this is in a good way though. I have seen most of Pattaya from a car’s view, eaten Thai food and met everyone in the office, exchanged phone numbers, gotten a new number and had my picture taken for the website, as well as taken a short nap and cleaned up after a long flight… quite possible one of the longest days of my life and its only 4 o’clock. Things that have struck me so far is that Openaid has real passion and drive behind it. Not only has this been said in various ways but I can tell by the way the girls and Justin interact with the city, even from the car, ready at a moments notice. I am thrilled to see this passion because quite frankly it lacks heaps and bounds in most of the places I have worked in the past. There is a genuine care for the people of this city and the girls of Asia. They have their own pace and approach which I think will be easy to get used to and they all seem like a fairly genial group of like minded people. Pattaya strikes me as a place unusual and sour but not the way I had remembered it from my previous visit here. When I came the first time 2 years ago it struck me as a place of grit where the foulest of people seemed to hover and the air seemed to have a depressed sadness about it. Today though as I drove through the streets, and maybe its because I’m in a state of slight delirium, looked different to me. As passed the many bars and clubs and masses of humanity converging on each other, I no longer saw the outward distaste but rather saw a girls face as she sat in a bar speaking to an old man. I saw a look of disinterest, one of which her emotions had been severed from her soul. There was no sadness in her eyes rather a blank despair. It was in her face that I understood what Justin had been telling me earlier at lunch. Openaid works on a relationship basis, one person, one community. I really appreciate this approach. I really believe in this approach and it excites me to be able to work with an organization of a similar mind. You can’t change systems until you change lives, one at a time.

In addition to all the really fabulous and insightful things as afore mentioned… there is reality to set in. Sitting in my simple but comfortable hotel room, watch American talk shows on tv, I have to laugh a little. The conforts of home are far yet I don’t feel too terribly homesick. Aside from the strange flower pot like containers full of a muddy water and what appear to be thousands of tadpole like creatures feverishly swimming through the muck. Strange…