3/27/2001 - Visiting our Future Worksite

Welcome to the continuing saga of Denny & Lisa’s life as Peace Corps Trainees. As promised in the last update, we have visited Kanchanaburi, we visited a current Peace Corps volunteer in the Province of Ubon Ratchathani, and we visited our site in Surin (Amphur Sang Kha). Unfortunately there is relatively little UNO playing to report this time (we weren’t at our host family’s home more than 4 days in the last 2 weeks).

Before we get too far into this update, it seems appropriate to tell you a little about Thailand’s internal geo/political organization. Within Thailand there are 76 jangwats, which roughly translates as “province” (the largest of which is smaller than New Jersey). Each of the jangwats has a capitol city that bears the same name as the province itself. Within the jangwats there are amphurs (covering areas and populations slightly smaller than counties in the U.S.). As with the jangwat, the name for the amphur applies to both the whole area and to the urban center. There are two smaller divisions that go all the way down to the neighborhood. SOOOO, when we talk about visiting Kanchanaburi, we visited the capitol of the province. When we talk about visiting in the Province of Ubon, we visited in an amphur outside the capitol, and our site is the capitol city in the amphur of Sang Kha within the Province of Surin. We expect you to commit all of this to memory! Ha!

Moving on to our trip to Kanchanaburi, it was awesome! It was the first time since arriving in Thailand that Denny perceived beauty in the landscape. It was the first time we’d seen landscape that was NOT farmland to every horizon. It was the first time we took one of our days off (we only have 10 scheduled in the 12 weeks of training) and, with 3 other trainees, went somewhere for fun. Kanchanaburi is famous for “The Bridge over the river Kwai” (pronounced Kwaa as in quack) which is a book, a movie, and a train bridge. We've heard that the book and movie are a little different from the history, so here is a quick rundown on why this spot matters. During WWII, Japan was seeking to make a land connection between the gulf of Thailand and the Burmese battlefields to reduce shipping time South of Singapore. They chose to build a railroad using prisoners of war as the labor force. The conditions were terrible, and thousands of men died, thus earning the railway the moniker “death railway”. Near the end of the war the Allies bombed the bridges of this railroad that spanned the river Kwai to cripple Japan’s transportation plans. There were two bridges at the time, but only one was repaired/rebuilt and it is still in use today. Sooooo. . . we first visited the JEATH Museum (Japan, England, America/Australia, Thailand, Holland) which is a collection of photographs and articles about the living and working conditions of the labor force who built the Death Railway. It was simple but profound, and is nowhere near the bridge, but it is next to the river. So we hired a longboat driver (a longboat is a long riverboat whose hull, lengthwise, looks like an italics w and whose engine is generally an automobile engine balanced on a swivel with a 10+’ long drive shaft and a propeller at the end) for 550 Baht/$13 to take us sight seeing for the day. We went to a cemetery, a Wat and cave (where the picture was taken – note the hills and trees on the horizon, unlike other places we had seen in Thailand to date), and to the famous bridge. When we walked across the bridge a group of tourists from southern Thailand raved about how beautiful Lisa was and asked to take their picture with her – Denny couldn’t agree more with their assessment, but couldn’t help laughing about their need to take a group picture. Lisa’s not going to want to go back home where her pale white skin is no longer perceived as beautiful (“eeew – look how pale you are” . . . “nice Alaskan tan”. . .)

Our next adventure was heading off to Ubon Ratchathani via Bangkok. We took a van to Bangkok in the morning and managed to find the Peace Corps office, where we spent the afternoon and most of the evening becoming familiar with what was available in the office. We then took an overnight train to Ubon – an interesting experience. Having never been on a sleeper train before we had no idea what to expect, but it wasn’t too bad. There were singlewide bunks, upper and lower, on each side with a rather narrow aisle down the middle. The beds were more comfy than our ones with our host family, but the frequent stops and jostling of the train were not quite like lullabies to sooth us to sleep. From Ubon to Lori’s site(the PC volunteer we were visiting) was a small hassle, but once we arrived our pace slowed down. She made improvised pizza for us (on bread, with hot dogs for meat, and only a stove to cook on) and shared the affection of her cats with us. Lori was an inspiration in that she showed us that, while we are learning Thai, and we have not yet mastered it, a volunteer can be successful here in Thailand knowing less Thai than we do! She and her co-workers not only showed us her office and a couple of schools, but also showed us a village that makes tremendous handicrafts. The shop in the village is rated to have the 3rd best silk fabric in Thailand (Thai silk is pretty awesome to begin with, but this stuff was impressive) – we resisted the urge to buy too much, and instead took this picture of one of the women in action at the loom. They evidently make material 20 meters at a time, so the string from this loom stretched out of the frame of the picture to the right, over the top of the loom to the left, across the room, and was wound into a ball on the far wall. They were deft at making subtle shifts in the twisting of the thread to create a beautiful pattern – it was all pretty incredible. The next day we traveled to the capitol of Ubon and met with 2 other current volunteers and the trainees that were visiting them. We stayed in a hotel that would make all but the nicest of hotels in America look shabby for about 800 Baht/$20 for the night, and explored the town. It was a very nice, brief change of pace from our training.

We traveled from Ubon to Sang Kha by bus. We were traveling with a fellow trainee who still had several hours of bus riding after she left our site, and who had not made good contact with her office due to language difficulties. When we got off the bus, we were greeted by a woman and two men who smiled and called us by name in English and gave us flower leis – all of this while our friend was watching from the bus. We felt both good and bad. As it turns out, the woman is our co-worker from the regional school office and the men were English teachers. They all speak English well enough that if we suddenly stopped learning Thai we would survive for the next two years without trouble. We had heard stories of other volunteers visiting and staying with their co-worker or another Thai person who lives in nearby – we were housed with a Scottish man and his household. It was fun and we learned a lot, but we had been hoping to connect more with the Thai people in our area, and staying with a foreigner didn’t help (though for a week we ate virtually no Thai food). As it turns out there are quite a few foreigners living in Sang Kha already (enough that you see one almost every day in market, but not enough to see more that that). In our brief visit we set up a bank account, found a house to rent (we’ll send a picture later when we are sure we got it – Thai’s function on verbal agreement and do not sign leases), visited several schools and got a general sense for the layout of the community. The two biggest differences between Sang Kha and our training site are that there are no canals in Sang Kha so rice farming is once rather than 3 times a year, and there is more than one language spoken by the people in the area. Specifically, while most everyone speaks Thai on some level, there are some who speak Lao, some who speak Khmer (the dominant language group in Cambodia), and some who speak Suwai (another ethnic group in northeastern Thailand). We will be able to function most places with our Thai, but we will probably pick up a few phrases in other languages for talking in the markets.

We only have about 3 ½ weeks of training left, so we’ll likely be very busy. If anyone has any specific requests for pictures or information, or if anyone would like the hi-rez copies of our pictures, please let us know.

Denny & Lisa