Jai Yen

I apologize for the delay in posting!  Between finishing up the term, going to Bali, and having a friend visit, it’s been a little hectic.  Now I’ve got a few days of downtime, to catch up on practicing, writing, and updating the blog, before my Mom comes to Thailand on Sunday (six months without a parental sighting!).   I guess the best place to start would be Bali, but my inability to effectively describe the place, its people, and my reactions might be made up for by throwing together a few anecdotes.  Enjoy! 

#1.  Happy Nyepi Day

Nyepi Day is the Hindu New Year on Bali, and is also referred to as the “Day of Silence”.  On this day, the Balinese will stay inside their home compounds, all businesses shut down, all lights shut off, so to fool any evil spirits from believing that people actually inhabit Bali.  TO THE CHAGRIN of evil spirits, including tourists, it means confinement for EVERYONE, not just the Balinese.  No sunning on the beach, no leaving your hotel to grab food.  So thank dumb luck for arriving the night of March 7, amidst throngs of Balinese celebrating the onset of Nyepi on March 8.  Dan and I walked through crowds in almost total darkness, walking from full hotel, to hotel with no food, to full hotel, to hotel with black mildew scented rooms, the two of us growing increasingly desperate to find a place.  It seemed that tourists were all staying at the same hotels, ones that you wouldn’t mind being confined to. Thank dumb luck again for coming across a resort right on the beach, with three immaculate swimming pools, a gleaming restaurant, and dozens of Russians and Aussies, kicking it with their Bintang and Bali Hai 22s on deckchairs.  Figuring it was both way beyond our price range and fully booked, we flopped ourselves before the reception desk, sweaty, hungry, harrowed, and were delighted by the receptionist’s news that the hotel had vacancy, AND, that he would slash the room rate in half for us. Though the place was not necessarily my speed, it was a serious blessing to have been stuck there of all places for Nyepi (the silence of which was not Exactly honored by the lit Aussie girls, screaming “OOGIE BOOGIE!” while splashing in the pool all afternoon).

The night of Nyepi Day was pretty amazing as well, all the guests gazing out onto the sunset from the hotel’s veranda (and the policemen patrolling the streets and beach beyond), then being ushered back to their rooms by the hotel staff, who quickly shut down everything as nighttime came.  Dan and I spent the evening of Nyepi watching Asian MTV and sitting on our room’s porch, drinking Bintangs and listening to the downpour occurring in the blackness all around, watching other hotel guests and staff silently maneuver the night with flashlights.

#2.  Say It With Fish! 

The second day on Bali, Dan and I escaped the developed area, and headed for Amed, a small fishing village on the east coast.  The next day, we went snorkeling.  As I have derived intense satisfaction from snorkeling in swimming pools and the lakes of Michigan, finding in those fluorescent plastic rings, algaed rocks, and the occasional band of silver fish, actually seeing coral, anemone, dozens of species of fish along the entire color spectrum, and yes, a Japanese shipwreck, affirmed that I could never make or even attempt to make something as beautiful and strange, ever.  All around the water crackled, and several stings from tiny jellyfish forced me to keep a semblance of guard.  The closest reference I had was the lilt of David Attenborough narrating the Planet Earth series, but even with that, the humorous and lightly educational frame placed around the creatures’ lives was just that - their beauty in person spoke for itself, and no amount of PE’s sentimental violin sweeps, or sparse xylophone runs, could come close to accurate reflection.

Here I am, post-snorkel:

After snorkeling, Dan and I had lunch at a warung on the shore.  Still dazed from swimming I walked about the restaurant like a seven-year-old impatient for her food.  My eyes caught a poster on the wall, entitled “FISH OF BALI”.  The poster had faded, displaying a lineup of various blue, gray, and white fishes.  Of all the fish listed on the sun-faded poster, my favorites were the Sweetlips.  Spotted Sweetlips, Painted Sweetlips, Six-Banded Sweetlips.  The seven-year-old fantasy of becoming a marine biologist came back to haunt me - though I reassured myself of other namings to look forward to, still, who wouldn’t want the privilege to name an entire species?  Wasn’t exactly sure why the Sweetlips’ lips were so deserving as to achieve namesake status, but at that moment, the waitress brought my lunch of fish satay to the table, and I stopped all conscious thinking about live fish, marine beauty, and failed scientific dreams, and concentrated only on “grilled fish on a stick to mouth, repeat”. 

This is the beach at Amed, where we stayed/snorkelled.  The sand was black, not too great to walk on, but definitely, at some point, from the volcano in the backdrop:

#3.  The Delightful Taste of Glass Shards

The last few days of the trip we went to Ubud, the cultural mecca of Bali.  Definitely got our kecak and gamelan fixes there, going so far as to take a private gamelan lesson (for all our sakes I won’t post the incredibly dorky picture of me banging on the slenthem and gender).

On one of our last days in Ubud, we went for a stroll through the Sacred Monkey Sanctuary.  It was a series of ancient temples, moss covered and ridden with silver macaques (and despite my seven-year-old self, and that my favorite childhood game show took place in/around an artificial Mayan temple, I imagined that a temple guardian would at any moment pop out and demand one of my Pendants of Life).

Here’s Dan making friends with one of the many long-tongued statues:

And here’s one of them:

There’s a reason why the trash can advises “unorganic” only - the hundreds of monkeys at the sanctuary have the hunger, and hands.  Grubby, greedy, sneaky fast hands, hands that can reach into garbage bins, and unattended bags, for any sign of food.  Of course in the literal ten seconds I set my bag down, a monkey zoomed in and grabbed the small box containing a jar of sea salt I’d purchased but fifteen minutes prior.  I run after the monkey, with the “I’m bigger than it is, I can scare it” mentality, but after my pathetic attempt at being intimidating, the monkey bares its ebola teeth and me, screams as I scream, and clutches even more fiercely onto the box.  In despair I watched the monkey defend its prize from other monkeys, rip apart the box, and clumsily pick up and drop the jar, until it broke into a huge streak of salt on the pavement:

In my rage I shouted at the monkey, “I hope you like the taste of glass shards in your intestines, ___ ___!”.  But, but … it looked really cute as it ate all the salt.  Like these guys:

Do you ever hear the sound of the geckos in the middle of the night?  Yeah, it makes me really mad.  Ha, I could see you jumping out of bed in anger.  Yes, I stare them down.  They aggravate me so much, and it’s because they just sometimes, cannot stop croaking.  And you can’t see where they’ve gone a lot of times.  It freaks me out more than anything, if I’m half-asleep and…That’s what I’m saying, that’s why I get mad at them.  

They usually creep out after sunset, and really, geckos aren’t so bad. It’s just when they screech at very short intervals in the middle of the night, about two hours before the prayers at 4. 

Ah well, scary yet marketing-empire-friendly animals are one thing.  Sunsets here are another.  Perhaps the worst part about winter back home are the 90 straight gray days - it’s the sunsets here that truly mess with my concept of “February”.  This time last year: bursting into tears walking home from class. Drinking 100 proof Hot Damn! while tromping through feet-covered sidewalks. Helping host an unforgettable longjohns-themed party. Racing from the parking lot to the front doors of WDET. I remember sitting in the production booth at WDET, checking constantly for updates on Tucson’s weather, brain-salivating with fantasies of the dry, temperate, and sunny days I would encounter during spring break.  Visiting Mara, escaping the icy mitten’s grip, being taken aback every day by colors I hadn’t seen in months, was pure salvation.  

Now, if you will, stretch out that joy from now until the end of November.  You’ll notice how it doesn’t feel like joy anymore.  It’s not a sunny stupor, or any reeling manic giddiness.  Rather, a calm acceptance. An inability to conceive of thick layers, or waiting desperately for the car to warm up, or slushy socks.  Speaking of socks - haven’t worn them, seriously, since I left. Before you commence the Laurel hating, make sure you continue to read on, you know, when I get to talking about the asphyxiating, mood-tarring pollution.  

But in the meantime, it’s the onset of summer.  From 10 AM until 5 PM it’s like being glazed with melted, simmering sunshine, a hot, unfailingly brilliant sun coating your arms, legs, hair, creeping up into your nostrils and other exposed cavities.  It is capital S stupid (or in my mom’s dialect, st-oohpid) to walk any faster than what constitutes forward motion.  Iced beverages take on a whole new level of clarity.  You get sticky and tired real fast, and only when the sun starts to ease up do you really appreciate the weather for what it’s worth.  The sunsets climax each and every deep fried hot day with God/science affirming splendor, and bring on the cool, breezy evenings, which, in looking back upon stampeding to February 2007’s night shifts, make me giggle.  (Sunny stupor comment retracted). 

But it’s not all sunshine and giggles and geckos in Thailand, as the increasingly rich sunsets can be attributed to the ever-hazier Chiang Mai sky.  The onset of summer brings with it the climax of Chiang Mai’s pollution, and of course right when both a dear friend and a Mom are about to visit.  I can thank the hill tribes, in renewing their cropland slash and burn style (this time last year there were many deaths and personalized handpainted masks at the Sunday night market) for that wonderful gift of smog, haze, and general guise to the noses and circulatory systems of every Chiang Mai resident.   Last year, it became so bad that the police went to the hills to fine the farmworkers -  and sure enough, a common excuse provided was “what? we were having a barbecue!”.

But mai pen rai, jai yen, mai pen rai.  ”No worries”, “Keep a cool heart”, “Whatevo”.  I love how the two most common Thai idioms both center around the concept of “chill out”, “don’t sweat it”, etc.  It’s probably a lot easier for hot-climate folks to be Buddhist, which conveniently brings me to another benefit of the onset of summer - the end of the first term!  Final projects!   

My tourism conversation students, 
,
had to give a tour of a temple of their choosing, so in the span of one weekend I saw eight groups present eight temples.  One of my favorites is the neighborhood’s actually, and though it’s pretty homebody, it’s got a wonderful museum, accompanied of course by an aged and eccentric curator.  He had this colony of gray lumps on his left ear, and insisted on showing me photos of quarterings and decapitations, laughing the whole time.  (I found out later that the curator is half Thai, half British - his father, who came to Thailand working for a British trading company, was born in 1890).

Another benefit of school almost being done?  The prospect of not walking to work.  While I’m all for walking, normally, along busy roads and in the heyday of haze?  At least I get to walk past a cowfield. 

This guy got all excited when he noticed some random ass farang, actually Walking by his field (note I am a freak in the eyes of students, teachers and passersby for walking to work), taking pictures of all things. I tried documenting the epic thoroughfare to highway to shopping mall to farmland walk to work, with limited success, but here are some highlights of the daily morning routine:

Keep in mind that Chiang Mai Thais don’t walk. This is not a Broad General Statement, this is fact. The only people you see walking on the poorly designed sidewalks are bumbling backpackers and farang residents. Granted even I think it’s sketch that I walk on the side of a highway to work, but when a scar on your face and fake teeth tell you that regular, much less motorized, bikes = BAD, what can you do. What’s really great is that now, it’s no longer the morning routine. Yes, the heat would eventually prohibit my walk to work, but the school term is officially done. I swear time is like the geckos squawking at 2 AM, making itself blatantly known at times, and at others, scurrying out of sight. This evening my Shakespeare students, all seniors, gave their final presentations, and I was pleasantly surprised by the either the quality or candor of the students’ effort. After all the kanom (snacks) had been eaten, and all the presentations completed, one of the students looked at me and calmly said, “I am done with school”. I wanted to share the moment with him more, but admitting that my graduation date had occurred only months ago might have compromised that whole, you know, teacher-student dynamic. And while that dynamic has already been thrown into question (throwing back 100 Pipers and Pepsi with students at Monkey Club), it felt precious moments at the time, and no amount of sunshine can mess with that.

At the largest temple in Chiang Mai, overlooking the city:Hiking: At Chang Dao, Thailand’s second tallest mountain, a monastery up a stairway: 

Though moving to the other side of the world might have erred on the side of, well, overkill in regards to discoveries, there are nevertheless ways to embrace and seek out the new within a comfort zone of routine and stasis.

New Music
Bird Thongchai McIntyre is to Thailand as Madonna is to the West. A 49 year old pop singer whose not-a-day-over-30 good looks and string pop (musically vapid and irritatingly infectious) hits have stolen my heart, I find myself bopping in the morning to his music that in previous times would have either made me vomit, or be interested for no longer than five minutes.

Bird McIntyre is one of the prime examples of the insularity of Thai culture (Thais love all things Thai, and greatly support their domestic music, film, and television industries), as you hear his and other pop stars’ songs covered ad nauseam by bands in bars and at outdoor events. I think the overexposure to Thai pop, in 7-11s, in restaurants, booming from the clubs, in songtaews, in the mall, hummed by folks at the market, has for the time being altered my definition of what types of music are “listenable”. Almost three months ago I arrived to Thailand with an iTunes playlist comprised mostly of “difficult” listens. Though I still listen to and enjoy these groups/works, I have maybe lowered my standards, and reopened my ears to the candy delights of pop music. As a result, my favorite TV channels are the pop stations, which play insanely catchy Thai, Japanese, and Indian pop - as well as new hitz pouring in from the States (currently obsessed with Fergie’s “Clumsy” and Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine”).

New Foods
Tied for first as my first love, the gastronomical explorations to be had here are endless. In absence of the ability to cook at home (rare to find studio apartments with kitchens) I go out to eat every night, and always there is something new to try. Stand-bys are gao lao pak (salty, garlicky broth soup with bean sprouts, chinese broccoli, tofu, and crushed peanuts / deep fried wonton strips) and somtam (a Thai coleslaw of sorts - shredded unripe green papaya mashed with mortar n’ pestle with tomatoes, green beans, baby eggplant, peanuts, chillies, fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice). Recent new-tries I do not know all the names of - but are as follows: grilled balls of mashed potato crusted with black sesame, deep fried fish tofu squares served with spicy chili sauce, and grilled squares of sticky rice, sold with mini kebabs of chicken, pineapple, and chili pieces.

New Neighborhood

This is the view from my new apartment’s balcony. It might be difficult to see in the photo, but there are two large megaphones attached to the minarets in the background. They blast out prayers every few hours, and it is not uncommon for me to be woken up at 3 AM to the sound of creepy, beautiful singing, quickly followed by crescendos of barking dogs.

My new neighborhood is vastly better than my old one. I live on a quiet street in a beautiful hotel that rents out most of its rooms on a longterm basis. The place is owned by a well-to-do Thai family that owns a small chain of book stores in Chiang Mai, and every time I come back home I am greeted as if part of the family. Downstairs, there is a veranda with lots of tables, couches, a pool, a ping pong table, and a small stand with a hot water pot and a toaster, which is filled out with bread, coffee, and fruit in the mornings. Here’s pictures of my new place:

In addition to the newfound quiet (interspersed with loudspeaker chanting), I am only a five minute walk from Payap’s music department, and an hour’s walk from work. I may have found my freedom from the songtaews.

Other Things New
A Fellow Pop Music Enthusiast and Travel Companion:

Erica is from New York, a hapless victim of the throes of budget shopping, a dancer, and a kindergarten and 12th grade teacher.

Sea Kayaking:

Ko Samui:

Ko Samui was startlingly beautiful, vastly overpriced, and almost void of anything remotely related to Thai culture (with the one exception of a massive temple on the West side of the island, aptly called Big Buddha). Many, many Europeans were on holiday when we were there. We had the chance to spend Christmas Eve with a Swedish family, at a pub called Tropical Murphy’s:

The Dad loves Guinness, the Son loves The Killers, and I bonded with the Daughter by talking about a Finnish death metal band. The Mom died five months ago and they came to Ko Samui to escape what they assumed would be a too-painful Christmas spent at home. I hope the family got something out of being away from the rest of their relatives, in being able to solidify the new nuclear unit in a foreign place.

Despite the beautiful sights, weather, and good times, this past holiday season was difficult, not being around family and friends, not being annoyed by the hidden pine needles in the carpet, not being forced to endure huge photo-taking ordeals at the annual Christmas Eve event. I was grateful to have made a new friend, and to feel that absence, which, though rapidly and irreversibly turning me into a cheeseball, makes me that much more excited to see everyone in April.

(And if I’m ever worried about losing badass points, I can bust out this picture

A real update with photos and narrative soon. Here’s a conversation I had with a monk today, we rode in a songtaew together:

M:Where ah you from?

L:The United States?

M:Where?

L:Amelikaa.

M:Oh. Do you speak Thai?

L:No. I barely speak Thai.

M:Oh! How ah you liking Chiang Mai?

L:I like it. I was unhappy when I got here, but now I am happy.

M:Oh. How long you stay in Chiang Mai?

L:Maybe until Octob – one year.

M:Oh, one leah.

(brief pause)

M:What is your religion?

L:I am not quite sure.

M:Buddhist? Clistiehn?

L:Oh, I don’t really know, maybe Agnostic -

M:Oh, Cattolic! OK. Do you speak Chiang Mai?

L:Excuse me?

M:You know, Chiang Mai is the same as Thai. Same same, you speak Chiang Mai?

L:No, I don’t speak Thai. I only know enough for songtaews and buying things. Nid, nid noy.

(brief pause, then monk gets off)

M:You are velly beautiful.

L:Thanks.

M:We will see each other again soon.

L:Yes, see you.

A small shower started up on the ride home. My Tuesday best became drenched and I worried about the safety of riding on the back of a motorbike. Once at my building Alexis told me that light showers like this weren’t much of a threat …

Of course, I have to hitch rides in style. Notice how the too-big helmet pitches to one side, and how striking my disposable pollution mask is.

Though now the rain is done, the workweek isn’t. At least I have Thanksgiving to look forward to - a family style dinner at one of Chiang Mai’s renowned Western-style restaurants, followed by crashing a party thrown by a pony-tailed, Night at The Roxbury type, who apparently got Smirnoff to sponsor the affair. I can’t equate vodka with Thanksgiving, nor the impending holiday stomachache.

Speaking of feasts:

The menu (top to bottom): sai muah (deep fried pork sausage patties, made with ground pork, chili paste, tamarind paste, and chopped lemongrass), nam prik (mashed roasted vegetables and chili paste, eaten with fish chips, cooked pumpkin and raw cucumbers), rice, and gang heng lay (a Burmese-style red pork curry, made with chili/tamarind paste, curry paste, palm sugar discs, fresh grated ginger, whole shallots and garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce).

This was at the hands of Ajarn Malee, one of the teachers from Payap, who came over to give us a cooking lesson on Sunday. It quickly turned into her telling us what to do with the 20 ingredients she brought over, and I chopped shallots, and peeled the charred skins off roast chillies.

Now all I have to do is to “not get fat”, which the ajarns kindly tell me happens to Westerners new to Thailand’s culinary glory. It’s a bizarre phenomenon. The female drive for thinness here is simultaneously overblown (it’s hard to find non-laxative tea at 7-11, pay-scales everywhere, you rarely see a female eat any of the foods I just described) and made cute, lighthearted, even funny.

Two examples:
1) The weight-loss product that’s all the rage in Chiang Mai has a billboard on the highway; the billboard displays the typical unhappy “before” woman next to the beaming “after” woman; I weigh approximately the “before” weight, and the “after” weight just barely breaches 100 pounds.
2) In Khon Kaen (a city five hours northwest of Bangkok) there’s a plus-size women’s store called “Fatty Girls”, and the logo for the store is a pudgy woman holding a hot dog in one hand, and an ice cream cone in the other.

I’m guessing weight was never a problem for the Buddha:

For awhile he only ate a grain of rice a day. The Buddha diet … if it worked for him, it can work for you!

Please excuse the schmultz of this post’s title.

Everyday small victories make us beam, some gained by our own merit, though most, by stupid luck. My first small victory of the day was guiding a successful reading of the first scene of Romeo and Juliet during my Shakespeare class. We all laughed hysterically as the lines were read, especially during the part in which two servants compared each other’s dicks to poor-john (dried, salted fish). That my students understood the 16th-century jokes made me so happy, for the conversation course I taught directly prior was like pulling teeth.

Here are some pictures of Payap University:

Being the language-gimp, motorbike-less farang that I am, I wince at the prospect of leaving Payap each day, for the songtaew drivers waiting at Payap are of the lazy-asshole breed who, with an incredible ability to make me feel worthless, charge me four times the normal fare to ride in their decrepit and fading trucks. This is what the inside of a songtaew looks like:

Today’s second small victory was the act of not handing over exorbitant chunks of baht to these jerks, and rather, catching a ride with one of the elusive and majestic Chiang Mai buses. The Chiang Mai buses have a highly irregular schedule and it’s rare to catch one, so when I saw one floating around the Payap entrance/exit my heart slightly leapt.

Once on, the gay, rat-tailed bus attendant warned me that the bus would be going all the way around the south of town before landing in my neighborhood, but seeing that the ride was so cheap, and air-conditioned, I didn’t mind so much. I shared the huge and comfortable bus with uniformed schoolchildren, some dozing, a fat one drinking a sweating cup of juice. We picked up a monk near the airport, who proceeded to text on his cellphone until I got off. The ride took over an hour and I decided to get off about a ten-minute walk from my apartment building, and once back in my room, I distinctly noticed the lack of sour feeling I usually get after being cheated by the songtaew drivers.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

The serng is a traditional Northern Thai mandolin, with two pairs of strings as opposed to the usual four. I purchased this one at the Sunday Market and look forward to being able to play it well. The frets are raised and though my pick skills aren’t very good, it seems like an instrument that shouldn’t take too long to figure out. It is at times beautifully and slightly out of tune. It was my soundtrack to this evening’s sunset, which was a muted magenta, differing from the norm of orange or purple.

This is the 20-baht place, where all dishes cost only 20 baht. I eat here every night and though I question whether it offers truly organic and vegetarian fare, I keep my mouth open for impending and delicious bites of tofu stirfry. Or hot and sour soup. Or noodles. Or …

This is my apartment’s pool, in which I swim laps at night or on the weekends. I am sometimes accompanied by the noise of the construction site directly across the street, and with or without noise, it is an incredibly serene place and part of my day. There are sometimes other lap swimmers or kids and their mothers, but I am often alone in my blue lagoon.

Last night was the first official celebration of my arrival in Chiang Mai, complete with Thailand’s domestic brand of rum, Sangsom:

Needless to say I had a mighty hangover all day. The spirit swept us to Warm Up, a massive club, whereat a supposedly famous Thai actor was spinning pretty simple, yet overwhelming, dance tunes. This morning I lied in bed, watching TV5, the one French channel. There was an interesting program on Iranian food, and learned that with Iranian cuisine, specific dishes are allocated for women and men to prepare.

After forcing myself out of the apartment I went on a long walk to check out Chiang Mai University’s campus. Crossed a few highways and ate some somtam in the process.

Other than this endeavor I worked on music for a couple hours, read (Harry Potter 6), and napped.

Am currently obsessed with buns sold at 7-11 (either dim-sum style filled with barbecued pork, or the ones with pandan-flavored filling) and Huun-Huur-Tu. I am really sad to be missing their upcoming November show in A2!

It’s been a week since I’ve been in Chiang Mai. After enduring a heart-clenchingly terrifying flight (think plane dipping, lights flickering, screaming, “this is your captain speaking…”) from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (on One-Two-Go, the economy airline whose Phuket crash of last month killed over 70 people) I spent the next night in a bug-filled room, with window shutters clapping all night, to wake up with at least ten welts of questionable origin on my face. Not necessarily the best welcome.

Add to this the fact that Chiang Mai, a sprawling city of half a million, has zero public transportation, which essentially will force me onto one of these:

That I see mothers and babies together without helmets on them, dolled up college co-eds on hot pink versions of them, twelve year old boys on them … my notion of motorbike democracy makes me feel, initially, a little better.

Another motivating factor is the asshole songtaew (songtaew = covered red pick-up truck taxi) driver who tried to charge me seven times the normal fare to take me home today.

He prowls the university campus
I work at in the hopes of finding lame
farangs without transport, it sucks, I know.

That’s the other thing - prepping for the Shakespeare course I’ll be teaching has caused me to inadvertently coin sentences in iambic pentameter.

I found an organic and vegetarian and duh-delicious street restaurant today. As I ate my green curry I watched on the television there that deserted island movie with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche, you know, where they fend off evil pirates and kiss after washing up on the shore? Her rapid head movements were getting on my nerves, in addition to the fact that I found myself oddly attracted to the moderate machismo of Mr. Ford, but the movie made me excited about the trip I’m taking to Ko Si Chang this weekend … four days of beach island before work really starts.

P.S. I have no idea what it is about white bread slathered with colored, sweetened butter (maybe its shortening, maybe its frosting), but the Thais love it. So much you can find it fresh prepared at food stalls, or prepackaged at 7-11.