Chiang Mai

[Above photo: Fever dreams. ]

2 April 2023

[I’m including the paragraph below to lend perspective to my kvetching in last week’s post, for which I felt embarrassment. I added it after the fact but likely no one saw the edited version.

Despite the inconveniences of the trip from Portland to Bangkok, it is pretty miraculous. At least 50% of those embarking on such a journey 200 years ago wouldn’t be expected ever to be seen again: wild storms, contagion, tropical diseases, scurvy, hostile crew or natives, wild animals, poor navigation, and so forth. Imagine travelling north from Boston, over Hudson’s Bay, traversing northern Canada and southern Alaska, south along the east coast of Kamchatka Island, crossing north over Honshu Island to Incheon. Then 5 hours more, mostly over eastern China. All in less than 24 hours. Given all the ramifications of air travel, including its immense carbon footprint, I’m unsure if it is a good thing or not. But it is something.]

”Steve’s” is a wonderful open-air restaurant right on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, a 25 minute walk from my hotel. It is filled with Thai, which is a good sign for the food quality. It is not easy to find, tucked away down a couple of alleys behind a large temple. I met Kim, who arrived on the back of a motorbike taxi, there for a memorable feast. She was my landlady in Portland, a late-30’s daughter of a Maine dairy farmer who went to Dartmouth and then did graduate studies in International Development. She worked for the UN for 6 years in China and 5 in Thailand. Now she’s back for 8 months, helping with sustainable building design in Cambodia and Indonesia. But her boyfriend is in Montreal with an ailing father and she is both lonely and unhappy with the job. She must work with other groups within the UN and finds some of the crucial players pretty incompetent and not accessible to change.  I know it isn’t an unusual situation, partly because a UN job often pays better and has better working conditions than much else in developing countries and people are loathe to admit a lack of knowledge lest they lose their employment. One job often supports an entire extended family.

We are so incredibly fortunate, being white, educated, and living in the richest country in the world. It is too bad that consumerism is such a massive engine for development, possessions displacing relationships, including with oneself, as deserving the most of our time and focus. “In getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” William Wordsworth. We are so easily manipulated and marketed to, yours truly included.

I’m in Chiang Mai, ensconced in our rented 5 bedroom house with 5 of the 12 students. The other 7 arrive this evening. I flailed about yesterday morning, trying to get “Candy”, the proprietress, to send the directions, the address, and the entry code to the house. Previously she’d answered my emails instantly after I sent them.  Once when I was jet-lagged and awake at 4AM I sent her a query and she responded immediately. Was she in another time zone, I wondered?  This time, the day we were to move in, she didn’t respond to 4 or 5 entreaties by me over 3 hours. I thought, having just been scammed by the fake TSA website, it’s happened again. My final ask was “Please let me know if this is a scam so I can move on to make other arrangements.” By then I’d found another, lovely place nearby. She finally replied, apologizing that she’d been in a conference all morning. When I finally went to the house, I found one of my students pulling up and we tried the gate code together. It didn’t work. I called “Candy” and she apologized again; it was a # not a * after the numbers.

We moved in and although it is stark, it is clean, modern, and functional with seemingly thousands of bathrooms and showers, excellent wi-fi, and enough seating and beds for us all. We ordered delivery of some food, two of us walked to the nearby 7-11 for beer and salty snacks, we ascertained that I could use the massive tv in the dining room to project my PowerPoints—sorry to have schlepped the projector—and everyone sighed in relief: for me, that we were in and all systems seemed to be “Go!”; for them, to be in a peaceful, not-conflict, zone and who knows for what other reasons.

The night before moving in I visited my friends and neighbors from Yangon. We ate, partied, and played poker together regularly for the last year I was in Burma. Their house was a lovely multi-level affair filled with old teak furniture and beautiful carpets. Now they are in a rural area outside of Chiang Mai in a gorgeous house with a pool, backing onto a mountain. We talked late and I ended up spending the night, retrieving two cartons of books and a suitcase of toys that I’d left behind in Yangon and which joined their moving shipment. Their previously traumatized, overweight, lethargic, and very unfriendly dog, Ollie, is now svelte, energetic, and almost-friendly, the magical result of treating hypothyroidism. Jose and Irene generously volunteered their pool if I wanted to bring the students out for an afternoon. 

The air pollution has been wretched, that for which N-95 masks are designed. Each morning the sun has looked indistinct, orange, and blurry. Temperatures hover in the 95 range. With the smog, the heat, and the noise of motorbikes buzzing by, it feels apocalyptic in the center of the Old Town, where most of the tourists are wandering about, looking dazed by 11AM.  If I didn’t have a task, I’d have caught the next plane out. The air has improved significantly overnight.

Today I rose and hailed a cab for the Jing Jai Farmer’s Market, which is known for great food and crafts. I joined two 50ish Thai sisters at their table and enjoyed eating delicious sour pork steamed in bamboo leaves, satay grilled chicken, and sausages.  I’ll catch up on my veggies later! I am happy to discover that it is, after all, mango, mangosteen, and durian season, which is a real treat.  The course begins tomorrow morning and I found 12 cute crocheted dolls at the market, the final objects to complete the toy kits I’ve prepared for each student. It’ll be good to get started with the course proper, as I’ve been anticipating it for months.

I found a terrific copy/printing store—they do this well in the developing world—and had them complete the scanning I began in Portland, as well as printing some papers we’ll read and discuss. At the end of the course I’ll share all my PowerPoint presentations with them, as well as give them digital versions of two texts on play therapy. It’ll be a start.

It is difficult to understand why our Attorney General has been so sluggish in investigating and indicting DT. Here we are, well over two years since the attempted coup he encouraged. I am fearful of hoping that Merrick Garland has really gotten the goods on the guy, given his pace and our disappointing experience with the Mueller Investigation.