11/17/2002 - Traveling Thailand

For those of you keeping track of the L&D Zoo, the chicken is gone, the cows on the lawn have been replaced by water buffalo, the frogs still come and go, and a small mammal moved in behind our kitchen cabinets. We are now "borrowing" a cat from a teacher who lives nearby in order to encourage the rat/mouse/shrew to relocate, and to add some warm fuzzies to our life (it’s the cool season here, so it’s only 80 degrees now). The teacher in question, and her mother, sort of collect pets – they’ve got 6 or 7 dogs, and two half-grown cats. They "gave" us one of the cats until we leave next April. This is actually a nice arrangement, because when we need to be away from home, we have a place to leave the cat. The only problem is that Thai cats, like Thai people, are smaller than their Western cousins. So our half-grown cat is only slightly bigger than the full-grown rat living in our kitchen. And this is no ordinary rat. It eats through everything - wooden cupboard doors, cooking utensils, even an entire tube of superglue. We're still trying to figure out how it managed to eat the glue and not get its mouth stuck shut. The amazing thing about SuperRat: it can disappear through solid concrete walls. It runs behind our cabinet, so we pull the cabinet away from the wall - but where is the rat? Gone. Completely gone. It's not behind the cabinet, it's not in the cabinet, and it’s not under or on top of the cabinet...

Lisa's sister Stephanie (and Steph's friend Spring) came to visit in early October. Unfortunately their already short trip (8 days) was cut even shorter by a typhoon in Japan that cancelled their connecting flight, and left them with only 7 days in Thailand. After a day in Bangkok, we headed out to Ko Samet (an island in the Gulf of Thailand) where Spring promptly left her wallet, including her money and passport, at a rest stop along the way. Good news though, someone found the wallet and turned it in (minus a small self-initiated finder's fee) and the van company that brought us out to Ko Samet delivered the wallet to her. After spending a few days relaxing on the beach we headed to central Thailand to visit the ruins at Ayutthaya and to hike around Erawan Waterfall in Kanchanaburi. If those names sound familiar, it's because we've visited there several times before, and have talked about them in previous updates.

This year saw floods in much of Southeast Asia and China; Ayutthaya and Kanchanburi were no exception. Much of Ayutthaya was flooded (although the roads were free of water due to mud walls and sandbags) and acres of houses were under water up to their second story. Erawan Waterfall was overflowing with water, closing the upper half of the park due to dangerous conditions. Bangkok, while not permanently under water, experienced flooding twice a day as the tide came in and the swollen river couldn't handle any more water. This made for a nuisance while coming and going from our Bangkok guesthouse, because if we had bad timing, we had to wade through knee-deep water for about a hundred yards.

On their last day, Steph generously took us out to the newly-opened Outback Steakhouse in Bangkok for Lisa's birthday. Lisa: Ahhh, a real steak. Haven't had one of those since we left Alaska. Denny: Never really liked steak all that much, but the western atmosphere was great, including the unusually clean “used beer depository.”

Schools were closed in October, as it was between the first and second semesters. Since teachers also get a break (at least in theory), we’ve taken a couple of long weekend trips. The first was the week after Steph and Spring returned home; we took a quick trip down to Krabi in southern Thailand. Krabi is one of the most popular beach destinations in Thailand, as well as having lots of mangroves and snorkeling/diving opportunities. Even more importantly (for Denny), it is known for the limestone cliffs that bring thousands of rock climbers to the area every year.

We only spent one day climbing though, as it was pretty expensive for our Peace Corps budget. Experienced climbers, of course, can bring their own equipment and go climbing for free, but alas, we are not yet in that category. This was our first time climbing outdoors. We had a membership to the climbing gym in Anchorage, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but climbing outside is different. Lisa likes being able to plan her route in its entirety from the ground, which is easy to do in a gym with colored “rock” handholds bolted onto a flat cement wall. Lisa thought the natural rock was being unfair by camouflaging all of the handholds until you were right on top of them. Denny enjoyed the freedom of having a big chunk of rock to choose from (rather than a small chunk of cement in the gym) and enjoyed the natural scenery and surroundings.

We stayed in a bungalow on a virtually deserted beach, with enough seashells to give Lisa a field day. All in all it was a great trip – if we had one complaint it is that the mosquitoes get pretty mean in Krabi. We may complain about how Surin is on the southern edge of nowhere (Surin doesn't even qualify for the prestigious "middle of nowhere" title), but fortunately for us, even the mosquitoes don't want to live in Surin. But Krabi, with its mangrove swamps and all those tourists, is a mecca for mosquitoes. "Hey Marge, let's go out for Italian tonight."

You'd think that we'd be content to stay at home for a couple of weeks after all that traveling around, but no, last weekend we headed out again. We did an English camp with a friend a couple of hours away in Surin (work is a 4 letter word, but we do it sometimes), and then we headed up to the northern province of Nan. Every year the city of Nan hosts a boat race for Nan-style traditional Thai boats. These boats are shaped like canoes, except that they make a canoe look like a toy boat. The smallest of these racing canoes had 30 men, and the largest held 60 men. Added to the bow and stern are elaborate carvings of a dragon's head and tail (the head and tail are removable for transport on a trailer – incidentally, the dragon head is what distinguishes the Nan-style boats from others). The course was about a quarter mile long, and the banks of the river were lined with villagers, cheering on their village's boat. Each village provided cheerleaders as well, and completed their ensemble with mega-speakers (naturally), each trying to out-compete the other in noise, cheerleading moves, and general mayhem. Not only were the villagers on the sidelines decked out, but the boat crews themselves were a sight to see. They managed to have local businesses and political parties donate t-shirts and bandanas in the loudest possible colors. The opening ceremony, when all of the boats were together, was beautifully chaotic.

In addition to the races, there was a huge market. There was the normal Thai "market" stuff - clothes, cell phone accessories, pirated CDs, desserts that only Thai people like, etc. There was also a section of "One Village, One Product" booths. The king has been promoting this project, the idea being that each village in Thailand should specialize in making one product. The products are often a traditional Thai craft – the booths included hand-woven baskets, silver jewelry, wines, silks, woodcarvings, various food products, etc. The theory behind the “One village, One Product” plan is that people could give their village an economic boost with cottage industries. Denny: as with other cottage industries, the “one village, one product” program suffers from marketing difficulties – you only sell to the people who happen to drive on your road and happen to want your one product. The festival market in Nan gave them a chance to bring a large variety of village products together with a large audience – a good economic boost!

We’re heading out this weekend to help at yet another English Camp (‘tis the season) in central Thailand. The good news though, is that the American Women’s Club of Bangkok is planning the camp, and their camp last year was extremely organized and well-run; a pleasant change from the normal, “Oh, we haven’t planned any of our activities yet, the camp doesn’t start until the day after tomorrow. In fact, we were hoping that YOU would plan our camp for us.”

Well, that’s the news from your friendly PCV’s in Thailand. We hope you are all well.

Denny & Lisa