back to bangkok

So... I thought I didnt really want to come back to Bangkok, but here I am on a free day! I guess part of the pull was the awesome hotel... and then there was this alleged mall with incredibly cheap computer software (all bootlegged). So I came and actually, its been a good day off so far.

We went out for a very late dinner last night at an amazing indian restaurant (so full of delicious spices), then went for a drink at this really strange dingy bar with a circus theme (I don't reccomend getting clown dolls and crappy flourescent lights involved in anyone's inebriating experiences.. it gets a little creepy). Woke up this morning to a relly nice buffet preakfast, and Kevin, Jason, and I took a taxi to this computer mall... whoa. It was nuts! Really, its like an outdoor asian market (crowded and loud and disorganized) but in a giant shopping mall with anything you could ever want for a computer, including photoshop for three dollars and movies that just came out in theaters, all sorts of hardware, digital cameras... its pretty wild. It was particularly funny to see monks in there... Kevin suggested that perhaps they were there to get microsoft word to.. type things up? who knows, but especially considering the austerity of some of the monks we've met on this trip, it made me believe the analyses of thai monks as not conservative as people usually think but actually incredibly corrupted by the bureaucracy of the sangha as well as consumerism itself.

So that was an experience. I think Bangkok is kind of an interesting place.. its obviously an asian city, but Kevin and I were talking.. it just doesnt seem like it has that much particularly thai character. My perception of a place like tokyo is that it is specificaly japanese.. but bankok is just gigantic and westernized with the addition of thai massage places everywhere and street vendors seling cheap clothes. Not that its bad, its definitely an exciting place to be.. but it doesn't feel as special as I expected.

The towns we've been visiting, on the other hand, have been really cool. We went to this town called Bo Nok yesterday and the day before. It's a town of 10,000 people that's so thai focused that its not even in my guidebook (I've been refering to lonely planet as my bible). When we told phra paisal we were going there he laughed because aparently almost not foreigners ever go there. But it was an amazing visit! We went to Bo Nok because it was the site of a 10 year long battle over the construction of a coal burning electricity plant that the villagers strongly opposed. They worked on their own (no politician or NGO suport) to stop the plant from being built.. closing down roads and trying to protect themselves from mafia who would shoot at their houses at night to try to intimidate them into accepting bribes to support the plant... after the project was cancelled, the villagers were working on trying to get this large plot of public land back because it had been taken by corrupt local influential people during the fight over the plant, and one of the leaders of the movement was shot seven times in the head and killed. He died about a year ago, and we spoke to his widow (another leader of the movement) as well as the abbot of the local monastery who was his older brother. It was just really inspiring to see such a strong community that fought off such powerful and wealthy governmental, corporate, and private interest opposition to finally get what they wanted, which was self governance, or at least the ability to make the decisions that would drastically affect their lives. It was kind of like how I imagine it would be to go to a zapatista community in mexico... they thanked us so sincerely for taking an interest in their struggle. How amazing, that they would thank us after all they had done. The widow and leader of the movement.. she served us our dinner at the restaurant we ate at.. how humble she was.

I keep remembering what an amazing opportunity this all has been and knowing that it is really all a gift.. its unbelievable the chance we have been given to learn from such fascinating and special people. This probably sounds so corny, but it is kind of renewing my interest in leadership, especially leadership as service and vice versa.

Tomorrow we travel to an orphanage that we raised 1300 dollars for back at school, then we go to Pathom Asoke, the community Erica stayed at last summer (self sustainable liberal buddhists in the sense that they are highly socially active and entirely vegetarian (!!!) but conservative in that they are strict about the division of the sexes and being covered up in terms of clothing... maybe fmore, too... I dont know yet). The next day we go to Bhikunni Dhammananda's temple (shes the first ordained female monk in thailand) and then... I think thats basically the end of the sudy tour. I still have to figure out my exact plans for after everyone leaves... I want to go to the north unless mom wasnts to do the same things up there that I do in which case I will wait for her and go to vietnam on the week off.

hope everyone's doin great back home or wherever you are in the world!

back from the forest

The last few days have been awesome.

I don't quite remember where I stopped off in my recountings.. but I have a lot to catch up on. The day after we got to Hua Hin we went to Webster University where we had two seminars from Ted Mayer, a professor of Buddhist Studies here in Thailand and one of our guides for the trip (the other is Schroeder). We had some adventures in town that night locating an indian restaurant to serve up vegetarian eats for me and meredith (the previous night we had eaten vegetable fried rice at a seafood restaurant... I think there were maybe two veetables in the whole dish..) and then we came home to Wee I P and crashed.

We woke up early Friday morning for a full day of driving to Chaiyapoum, a province right in the center of Thailand where Phra Paisal, an engaged buddhist monk, lives in a small forest temple. By the time we drove the 15km down the dirt road to the temple, it was getting dark, and we opened the windows of the van, sticking out heads, hands, and cameras to take in the evening scenes of thai villagers preparing food and watching us pass. It was a wonderful welcome, despite being a bit dark and misty... I was so glad to see countryside!

I am running out of time on the computer so I'll give the short version of our stay: I slept on a straw mat on the floor of the sala, the place where the monks do chanting and meditation. We woke up at 5 am to the sound of gongs and dogs barking, did chanting, meditation, and went on an alms round thru the town where villagers give all the food that the monks will eat that day. We spent all day with Phra Paisal, asking questions and then following him on a hike up the mountain the temple is on to plant trees as a part of the temple;s forest conservation efforts. The food was prepared by the mae chi, the ordained woman (not a monk) who lives at the temple. It was all vegetarian, which was fantastic because it has been a little hard to find veggie food everywhere here.

Basically, the trip to Phra Paisal's temple was awesome... it was such a wonderful escape from everything, such a place of focus and contemplation, so beautiful... I am begining to think more about what I want to do with my free time here in thailand after the study tour is over and before mom arrives, and now I know that I want to be in the countryside, in vallages, away from Bankok.

that's all the time I have for now. maybe more tommorow? I feel like I am just scratching the surface, both in my explanations and in my discovery of this place. I want to tell you more about what Phra Paisal and Sulak said to us. I want to tell you about conclusions. Tomorrow, I hope.

so many things in a day...

we're in Hua Hin now, at the VIP Condominium Resort (that's pronounced Wee I P here cause there's no V sound in thai), a strange sort of liminal hotel/dorm combo. It used to be a resort between these two beach cities but apparently it was too far from either to attract tourists so it went out of business and was bought by webster university as dorm space. So it still has these hotel furnishings (the weird headboards for the beds and mauve colored wooden furniature) and a pool but its also got stuff like writing on the wall in orange highlighter that says "homesick" and guys playing guitar in their rooms with the doors open.

I guess the biggest concern tonight has been the bugs, which are gigantic and scary and perhaps carriers of malaria (though probably not). Everyone's all on the Deet (that gives ya cancer) and the citronella (that doesnt).. yep. There are geckos all over the walls in the lobby that run around eating the bugs. So far I haven't seen any giant cockroaches, but I hear they're around.

We did some cool stuff in Bankok last night: we went to a thai restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms that gives a large amount of their proceeds to AIDS edu and prevention. Then we walked thru the red light district. John said he thought it was something we ought to see. It was horrifying, in an incredibly sad way. It wasn't quite how I expected; I thought it would be all short jeans skirts and overdone lipstick and dyed hair catcalls in front of sleazy bars. It's more institutionalized. There are legit bars, and all the women stand out in front, sometimes holding signs saying "we have what you want" or "ugly girls here" or something equally degrading. The girls from a bar are all dressed alike, in those cheap clingy black or red dresses or in school girl outfits.. It was intensely disturbing. I got to the end of the street and turned to look back and just couldnt keep from crying.. so many women. There's white men (farangs) all ove the area walking around with a tiny thai girl on their arm, or leering at any asian looking girl they pass. I couldn't believe how pervasive it was.. I can't imagine what those girls lives must be like.

Rosie and I went to a night market afterwards a few kilometers away. It was equally intense, but in a more amusing way. We got there and there was this giant stage with thai pop performers in tight little jeans and matching outfits singing and dancing choreographed moves. We laughed for a bit, then went off to the stalls... rows and rows of them! It was amazing to see so much stuff in such little space. Most ofthe aisles were hardly big enough for people to pass one another. Probably the most amazing part, though, was that nearly nothing was unique.. it was all the same stuff over and over again. Thai silk scarves (for 90 baht, about $2.50), carved wooden elepahants, tiny tank tops and dresses, those lose cotton pants and skirts erica brought back.. there must have been dozens of vendors selling each of them. I didn't buy anything. roies bought a handkerchief and some little bug magnets. Then we rode this giant ferris wheel and loked at the city from above. It was all bright lights and mopeds.

This morning we visited Sulak Sivaraksa, one of the main thai engaged buddhists. He invited us to his house, where we spoke with him for a few hours and lunched on thai street vendor food. It was a good visit. I'm not sure what to make of it.. I have to write about the experience with sulak for the journal our class is going to publish when we get back, so I suppose I'll have to collect my thoughts eventually. But now, I dont feel like I have a solidified opinion of him. So more on Sulak later.

Tomorrow we have two seminars on buddhism and key engaged buddhists, then a tour of Hua Hin and the night market here. Thursday we are off to Chayapoum (that's definitely the wrong spelling) to visit Prah Phaisal at his wat (temple). I'll post some more after we get back.

in Thailand!

so this post is a bit boring, cause we just got here, but I'm trying to document everything... so here it is!

So I'm in Bankok in an "internet cafe"... more like a set of computers in the middle of a mall. It costs 40 baht per half hour, which is just over a dollar. The conversion rate at the airport yesterday was 37.02 baht to the dollar.

The plane ride was long and tiring, but we made it. It was strange to realize once we got here that we had lost an entire day due to travel! The first leg (Dulles to Tokyo) was a 14 hour trip, which was long, but there were movies and books and sleep and japanese airplane food to amuse us. Then there was a three hour layover in the airport, which I mostly spent sleeping on the floor. There didn't seem to be many food choices in Tokyo aside from strange Japanese dried or pickled fish. There were a few western things to eat like ritz crackers and chocolate, but I didn't see any restaurants or realy anything too appetizing. I'd suggest you bring something for the airport if you think you might be hungry, or else you'll just have to tough it out til you get back on the plane, where the food is actually pretty good. I slept for most of the second leg (tokyo to bankok, which took 6 hours), then we all went thru cutsoms and immigration, got our stuff, and headed outside to be picked up by a bus to the hotel. A guy from the hotel met us and gave us leis (flower necklaces) and eventually our bus showed up.. a huge shiny double decker! We drove into Bankok to the hotel, about half an hour, where we were served some kind of chilled sweet tea (I think it was made afrom a flower?) and got our room keys, went to our rooms and got settled.They brought us coconut water in a coconut (I'm feeling pampered) and we went to sleep.

I didn't realize until this morning, but the view from our room is ridiculous! Bankok is HUGE, but you wouldn't know it from arriving at night. We are on the 14th floor, and it seems like you can see the city going for miles and miles when you look out the window. There is smog and buildings so far off its hard to believe its still the city.

I've yet to explore beyond the city block of the hotel. We woke up this morning relatively rested (I slept most of the night, waking up only a few times) and had brakfast at the hotel. There's a buffet with all kinds of food, thai and western. I had mostly western food, I guess.. though already I'm seeing that I'm going to be eating tons of strange fruits! I had some this morning (I have no clue what this fruit is called) that was kind of like a cross between watermelon and kiwi: it had a thin pink rind, and a white fruit with lots of little black seeds, like those in a kiwi. It was soft and smooth, silkier than watermelon but just as juicy. Strange, but cool! I'm gonna try to avoid really spicy food for a few days to get myself sort of adjusted. Someone else in the group said that some of the thai food this morning was really spicy, which proves something I read in a book, that thais will eat basically anything anytime of day.

After I finish with the email, I think I'm gonna go walk around bankok for a few hours, We are all meeting at the hotel this afternoon to take the skytrain to the grand palace and walk around there. Tonight we're eating laotian food together as a group. Tomorrow we are meeting with Sulak Sivaraksa, one of the premier engaged buddhists in Thailand, at his home here in Bankok, then traveling to Hua Hin which will be our home base for the rest of the trip.

I love you all and miss you. It looks like I will be able to easily get online, so feel free to comment on this post or email me.