The Tops

My life has taken a turn for the more convenient now that I’ve discovered a Tops Super in the mall next to the night market. Now I can get all the things that are comforting to me and whose appeal confuses Thai people: cereal, milk, peanut butter (crunchy only though) and of course, Tim Tams. Also, I don’t know why I haven’t gone yet, but there’s a Swensen’s ice cream shop in that building. I think it’s because of the logistics – I go to the night market to get dinner, but I take it home to eat (because of the mosquitoes), so why would I then go back to get ice cream? I mean, it wouldn’t be impossible, just inconvenient.

Editor's note: A few days later I actually ate at the Swensen's before dinner because I had an ice cream craving and I didn't want to walk back there after dinner to get it. This girl manages.

The Soup

They sell these do-it-yourself tom yum kits at the market for like 5 baht (15 cents). It comes with a few stalks of lemongrass, a few stems of kaffir lime leaves, and a small piece of galangal root – all together enough to make a family-size pot of tom yum soup, and then some.

Tom yum kung is a Thai hot and sour soup with shrimp. My co-worker gave me the recipe a few days ago. It was DEE licious, just like what you get at restaurants here. I sent some pictures of my food to Brady because he’s in Sudan, where there’s talk of a famine.

“Oh my God!” he said. “I’m licking my computer screen.”



Here's what you put in it, if you're a real Thai:

Lemongrass
Kaffir lime leaves
Galangal root
Fresh chili
Lime juice
Soup stock (pork is preferred here)
Meat of choice: shrimp, chicken, beef, pork, fish or anything else you feel like throwing in

Also, I've been getting friendly with the mangosteen again. They're expensive considering how much of it is just fibrous gristle. Forty baht per kilo is the market price these days - more than a dollar.

There's this quirk though: Ants live under the leaves, so when you break the mangosteen open they rush out onto the flesh of the fruit to gulp down the sweet juice before you become an unsuspecting anteater. Because if you eat a mangosteen, one day you'll eat an ant.

I had these mangosteens in the fridge for two days, and when I went to fetch them tonight, the ants were still there, tearing around waiting for me to break open the fruit.

The Lazy Saturday

Woke up this morning very slowly. The weather outside was gorgeous – overcast and cool, for this place anyway. I haven’t needed to turn on the AC yet this morning. I had a hard time getting out of bed because I didn’t really know what to do all day.

From my living room balcony, I can see the corner of a shimmering aqua blue swimming pool in someone’s back yard. I look at it every day, to see if anyone is using it, because there’s nothing I’d like better than to live in a swimming pool for the next six months. This is surely the hottest country in the world.

As far as I can tell, this neighbor of mine with the swimming pool has never used it. It’s gotten to the point that I’m no longer convinced that it’s a swimming pool, except that I can see the house reflected in its surface, and when the sun shines in the afternoon I can see its ripples reflected off the house. It’s torture. I want to scale their wall, jump in and start splashing around. In this picture you can see it in the lower left corner. I'll try to take a better picture on the next clear day.



Oay called me this afternoon with a phone number for her friend, Mary, who might be willing to be my Thai teacher. This has been a source of constant debate for the last week: Where can I take Thai classes?

Oay suggested that I take a Thai class with Burmese migrants, because there are plenty of schools in Mahachai that teach that crowd.

“But I don’t understand Burmese,” I said.

“No problem!” Oay said. “Teacher speak Thai!”

Well, I insisted that if I was going to pay good money to learn Thai, my teacher was going to at least speak English well enough to explain Thai to me.

“Maybe I have neice,” she said. “She in high school. Maybe she teach you.”

Just because someone is actively studying English in school doesn’t mean they speak it any better than an adult.

“I ask her make time teach you.”

I told Oay that I wanted a real teacher, not some poor teenager who got her arm twisted by her aunt.

So this afternoon, at Oay’s urging, I called the mysterious Mary, who was expecting my call.

“Hello?” I said. “May I speak to Mary?”

A man’s voice on the other end said, “Thai thai thai thai.”

“Mary,” I said.

“Thai thai thai,” he said. “Thai?”

“Mary, please,” I said.

“Mary?” he said.

“Yes, Mary.”

“Hallo?” said a woman’s voice.

“Mary?”

“Hallo?”

“Are you Mary? I am Justina. Friend of Oay.”

“I don’t know.”

“You are Mary? I am friend of Oay.”

“Sorry. Don’t know.”

“Um…”

The man came back on. “Thai thai thai. Sorry. Thai thai thai. I don’t know you.”

“Okay.”

All I can say is that Thai people are really nice about wrong numbers. In the U.S. it would’ve been, “You got the wrong number, lady.” *click*

This poor couple actually tried to conjure up some English to explain to me that I had the wrong number. They were probably smiling the whole time, too.

The Phone Call

At lunch today, Caroline was telling me about her place in Bangkok. She rents a room for 1,500 baht, which explains why Noreen was so appalled that I pay 6,000 baht for my place. Unlike most Burmese migrants Caroline has mostly Thai neighbors.

“So I have a lot of privacy,” she said. “Thais don’t care what you do. My people, they’re so nosy, always come to see what you do, see a man come visit and talk who is this man, is he good, just talk talk.

“I think Thai people, they are higher developed than Burmese.”

I thought of yesterday’s dinner in the Burmese hood with all the neighbors sitting in the doorway staring at me while I ate.

This morning I started regretting giving my phone number to Lad and Bot. Someone kept calling at 7:30 this morning. I picked up, thinking maybe it was Caroline since we had arranged to meet up this morning and go to her drop-in center together.

“Hulloooh?” I said, trying not to sound sleepy.

I heard a bunch of Burmese chattering on the other end and occasionally, the word “English.”

“Nnghh…” I said. “Hullo?”

More Burmese chattering, probably about how they didn’t know any English and couldn’t communicate with me, which didn’t occur to them before they dialed.

I hung up on them and tried to go back to sleep, but they called three more times, and I hit “ignore” three more times. It was too early for me to find any humor in the situation. In their hands, my phone number had turned into a toy that they were determined to break before 9am on Christmas morning.

When I saw Caroline later she said she had met those guys at the market on her way to town. They told her they had tried to call me this morning but didn’t know how to speak to me in English.

No. Kidding.

The Burmese Dinner

Caroline let me tag along on one of her community outreaches this afternoon. She organizes informal small-group meetings where she and a few health volunteers she has trained lead discussions about family planning, condoms, dengue fever and STIs. Most of the people who attended were migrant women, although there were a few men.

After the session she took me into one of the housing communities where Burmese migrants live. She introduced me to a bunch of guys playing takraw, that popular kickball-volleyball game played with a bamboo ball. Some other people were loitering around and started getting interested in me after they noticed me fumbling with the one Burmese greeting I know. There was the usual confusion about where I come from and why I look Burmese. I’m pretty convinced that people in Southeast Asia can’t tell their own people apart from any other ethnic group.

A couple of the guys who were watching the takraw game started getting chatty. Through Caroline, they fired questions about where I come from, what I do, if I’m going to give them money, if I can take them back to America, and if I’ll marry one of them. The conversation alternated between tiresome and engaging.

Lad, Mr. Super Chatty, invited us to have a look inside his house because Caroline had explained that I’m a total dumbass and have no idea how Burmese migrants live. I felt like I was intruding on them, but they all seemed eager to share their world with me. Lad was actually complaining that I hadn’t brought my camera.

The housing block is a bunch of small rooms in a row much like the one we went to for the mobile clinic. Each room serves as the place where a family eats, sleeps and cooks.

We went inside Lad’s house and he and his sidekick, Bot, started pulling out food for us to eat. It was odd that they had all this food already prepared for us, but it turned out that everyone had already eaten, so these were leftovers.

We sat on the ground, barefoot of course, and suddenly a grand spread materialized in front of us. Fried fish, fried "cockroach shrimp" pancakes, raw vegetables, various chili sauces, rice, lily flower fish soup, steamed cockles…mm mm.

The extended family and neighbors gathered at the door to see if I could eat Burmese food, which reminded me of the slack jaws and zoo-animal prodding from my first day in the village in Kenya. (“You know how to use flip flop? Then show us.”)

I was a little thrown off because I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to eat with my hands or not. (The answer: No hands. Spoons and forks.) They brought a basin of water for us to wash our hands in, which we shared and which was subsequently used to rinse off spoons before we ate. I see a health education session right there.

While Caroline and I ate, Lad, Bot and the Peanut Gallery neighbors peppered me with questions. How old am I? Am I married? What kind of work do I do? Do I have siblings? My stomach is still on fire a bit from the chili fish paste sauce.

Most migrants in Mahachai live in pretty basic quarters like Lad and his family. But they also have a lot of modern amenities. Lad’s house had electricity, a large TV, a pretty fancy stereo system with big speakers, and a fridge. He and his family have been in Thailand for more than ten years, so they’ve had some time to save a little money.

By the end of the meal, Lad and his wife were inviting me to stay the night. Their room was a bit small for guests, and even though Lad speaks Thai, I don’t. Plus, Bot had been much too interested in my marital status for my taste. Caroline had to catch a bus back to Bangkok so we made a hasty getaway, but not until Lad had put me on the spot and taken my phone number. It will be interesting to see what the Burmese version of phone stalking looks like. Stay tuned.

The Migrant Hood

Today was the first time since I arrived here that I was reminded that some parts of Thailand aren’t like Bangkok, or even idyllic Thai villages.

We hold a mobile clinic every Wednesday with the help of some staff from Samut Sakhon Hospital, the provincial hospital in Mahachai. Today we went into a migrant neighborhood with rows of low concrete buildings divided into small rooms by thin plywood. Dr. Khin and some nurses set up shop in one of the hallways.


I didn't get photos of the row houses, but one family stays in each room, and although you can close and lock your door, there’s not a lot of privacy from your neighbors’ prying ears. However, some families had TVs and refrigerators.

Other houses in the neighborhood were corrugated tin boxes on bamboo stilts, sitting over a black, fetid marsh full of garbage and toxic waste. The smell got worse once it started to rain.



Even without Lake Trash, the constant smell of fish drying in discarded fan cages is unmistakeable.

The Translators

I forgot my list of interview questions at home. I was at one of the Child Learning Centers run by my organization, located in a neighborhood called Krok Krak Nai. I wanted to interview some teachers for a report I'm writing about the child centers.


It turned out that I didn't need my list of questions. The interviews ended up being one big exercise in how to lose everything in translation.

The original plan was to conduct structured interviews with each teacher, and turn the data into a well-researched document about how the child center intervention model is being used to achieve the project objectives.

I love how grad school brainwashes you into thinking that systematic, analytical approaches to problem solving work.

I interviewed Yi first, a Burmese woman who taught high school before coming to Thailand. I was accompanied by a small team of interpreters. Oay translated my English into Thai, and then a ten-year-old Burmese kid tried to translate her Thai into Burmese.

My first question was very simple: In your opinion, what are the objectives of the child center?

I knew we weren’t going to get very far. When I was ten, I don’t think I knew the word “objective.” Oay and the kid discussed it for awhile, then he translated it into Burmese. There was only confusion on the other side.

I tried again, trying to use simpler language. What are the problems that the child center tries to help with?

The question was passed down the line like a bucket of water down a row of firefighters, a little bit of meaning sloshing out with each new person handling it.

A light bulb seemed to go off on Yi’s side, and she sent her reply back down the line.

“She says…” Oay began. “Sometimes kids fight, and the teachers try to talk to them, teach them not to fight, or they talk to the parents to try to help the problem.

“I think maybe she didn’t understand the question,” Oay added.

No kidding. Our Thai-to-Burmese interpreter is a 10-year-old.

Oay picked up her phone. “I call someone else to come translate.” A grown-up, I hope.

While we waited, I tried to ask the question again, simplifying even more. How does the child center help the kids?

“We teach the kids how to brush their teeth, how to eat, to clean themselves,” came the answer.

A little closer, but not quite the big picture response I was looking for. To provide free day care services and teach basic language and life skills to children of Burmese migrant workers in the Krok Krak Nai community. That sort of thing.

Man, three days into this project and I could already invent objectives without interviewing the teachers, and be right. But that wouldn’t be a systematic or scientific approach, would it?

The new interpreter, a grownup, arrived and the poor kid was excused. We fared a little better, but the question about objectives just wasn’t surviving the gauntlet of translation.

It made me think of some of my professors who go into complex emergency situations in Africa or Eastern Europe and do rapid assessments. They interview people who not only speak a different language, but people who in many cases have just run for their lives, are sick and hungry, and have lost homes, livelihoods and family members.

And I was sitting barefoot on the floor of an air-conditioned office, ants zipping circles around me, feeling extremely awkward and reflecting on the absurdity of my situation, which was not so bad compared to what it could have been.

Again I'm struck by how silly it is that my organization agreed to take on an intern who doesn’t speak Thai. I’m sure they know something I don’t. They have a steady stream of foreign interns who don’t speak Thai. There must be a secret to this somewhere.
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I’ve discovered the ancient Thai secret to eating – buy more than one meal. I see people at the market carrying at least five bags stuffed full of food. It’s possible that they’re feeding their whole family, but still, there’s no way that people can survive on the tiny portions that they serve here. I think most people snack throughout the day, but my variation is just to eat two servings at every meal.

There’s a reason my tribal name in Kenya meant “the girl who is always hungry.” Gobble gobble.

The Mundane Monday

Back to work today after a long holiday weekend that included a successful excursion to Khao Yai National Park and an impromptu visit to Ayutthaya, one of the many former capitals of the kingdom that was burnt down by roving Burmese armies.

I really hate when people experience something like a sunset or a national park and instead of appreciating it at face value, write it off by saying, “Whatever. Such-and-such place had a better one.” But, I’m going to do it anyway.

Khao Yai is quite nice. But the Masai Mara had tons more animals.

Of course the two parks weren’t designed for comparison. Khao Yai is more about monkeys, birds, vibrant teal-colored scorpions, and a handful of elephants. Nevertheless, jungle foliage and leeches seem to be a good deterrent for crowds of shopping, eating people, and that was what I needed.

The leeches in Khao Yai were tiny. Borneo had bigger, thirstier ones.

Ayutthaya is popular on the tourist route because of its historical significance as well as its easy access from Bangkok, but one of the most notable landmarks in the town, in my opinion, is a rather unremarkable bridge with a very remarkable name: Pridi Damrong.

See photos in the sidebar there, including the Pridi Damrong bridge -->.
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Language is a gateway to so many things that I’ve always taken for granted. I went to the night market to get dinner last night, and even though it was nice to walk among the light Sunday night crowd listening to the night market sounds, I felt like an outsider. I didn’t understand a word anyone was saying. It’s weird blending in and knowing that everyone sees you and assumes you’re the same as them, but feeling completely different, and alone.

I haven’t seen another foreigner in town, except the one woman who was waiting for a minivan to Bangkok. Good call, lady.

Actually, that’s not true. I met this Indian dude who lives in my building. He’s the guy I call the Dude on the Internet, because he’s permanently attached to the computer in the lobby, always checking his email. He was there the afternoon I moved in, he’s there most evenings, and he was there yesterday when I went to drop off my laundry. And of course he was there two hours later, when I went to pick it up. This time, though, he stopped me.

“Excuse me,” he said. Do I hear English? “Were you at Victory Monument this afternoon?”

Why, yes I was. I had a deceptively simple task there: to transfer minivans. I was coming from Ayutthaya and trying to get on a van back to Mahachai.

It turned out that somewhere in the big mess of people at Victory Monument, I walked past the Dude on the Internet, and he recognized me but couldn’t place my face right away. What a very bizarre coincidence. That place was a total madhouse yesterday. I suppose that’s a dumb thing to say. It’s a total madhouse everyday. In fact, most places in Bangkok are a crowded disaster, especially if they’re designed for shopping or eating. And everything in Bangkok is designed for shopping or eating.

Bangkok, like New York, has too many people. In fact, Bangkok has even more people than the five boroughs: 9 million here, compared to 8 million in New York. That is about 7.25 million too many people.

Anyway, I’m not sure if all the stands are set up at Victory Monument everyday, on Sunday afternoons hundreds of stands selling clothes, watches, jewelry, makeup, bags, food, food and food pop up all around the Monument.

It turns out that the guy, my neighbor and new English-speaking friend, has been living in Thailand for three years, working for an American seafood company. He started out in India but was transferred here. I was curious to know what exactly he does for his company, since my organization works with the migrant laborers that these companies hire in droves. His card says "quality assurance." Is that IT-related or shrimp-related?
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As I was checking out of my hotel in Ayutthaya yesterday morning, I started chatting with another guest at the reception desk, also an Indian dude. He was also heading for Bangkok, but was going to have breakfast before boarding his minivan. I said, oh, okay, well good luck finding the minivan station, I’m headed there now. And I left, grateful for the only 35 mph English conversation I’d had in 24 hours.

In Bangkok a couple hours later, after circling Victory Monument at least twice on foot with a heavy backpack and no more bottled water, I finally found my minivan station. I stopped at one of those fruit carts that always look like a gift from God on a hot day. The fruit was flying off the vendor’s stand, everyone was so hot and thirsty. I stood and waited for the fruit man to slice a new watermelon, and noticed the guy from Ayutthaya standing next to me, also waiting for fruit.

I don’t know how to capture exactly how random it is to run into someone at Victory Monument. This place is massive and chaotic, and people bustle around like ants. Not a small, orderly place. I wonder what the probability is of crossing paths there with two people I know on the same day, especially given that I know about four people in the entire country.
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Lunch was a little embarrassing today. I ordered rice with duck, and the portion was so small that I was still hungry after licking my plate clean. Oay encouraged me to order a second meal, and offered to wait for me to eat. No one else was having seconds, even though they had all each eaten only a tiny bowl of noodle soup. But if I didn’t eat something else, I knew I’d still be hungry. So that’s me, Two-Lunch Justina. No one made fun of me or even seemed to think it was odd that I ate twice as much as they did. But then again, no one’s English is good enough to say, “Wow, fat lady, you sure can pack it away.”

I usually try to learn one or two new Thai phrases a day, so I asked Oay how to say “rice with duck.” I probably should have asked her how to say, “two orders of rice with duck.”

There was a hair salon in the shopping center where we were eating called “Porn Saloon.” First, why is it that so many countries refer to hair salons as saloons?

I asked Oay what “Porn” meant in Thai, because I see it a lot. She said it’s just a name, and doesn’t mean anything in particular, which is no fun. I wonder if there was actually someone named Pridi Damrong?

“Hi, my name is Pridi. Pridi Damrong.”

“Yes, you are, in my opinion.”

The Tones

Greenleaf Guesthouse and Tours, Pak Chong. So I managed to find my way here, which was an unexpectedly arduous feat. This may seem obvious, but EVERYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY IS WRITTEN IN THAI.

The northern bus terminal in Bangkok is massive, with several floors of ticket windows going to all northerly corners of the country. There were about three windows with destinations written in English, and luckily Pak Chong was one of them, presumably because foreign tourists like me travel there to get to Khao Yai National Park.

The bus to Pak Chong was standing room only. It was the Thai version of the Latin American chicken buses or the rattletrap Kenyan matatu-buses, which means it had a little rotating fan buzzing from the ceiling, passengers with all sorts of food in their laps, and ticket takers in tight uniforms droning in Thai. I got stuck sitting on the stairs, which wasn't so bad because I got to sit down, especially after I discovered that my Lonely Planet guide put just enough distance between my butt and the scalding metal steps.

For some reason I assumed that if Pak Chong was written in English at the bus terminal, then it would be written in English somewhere in the actual town. So I didn't bother to ask where we were when we pulled into a town and some people got off the bus. After all, there was no sign anywhere that said, “Pak Chong.”

An hour later I looked at my watch and realized that I was three hours into a 1.5 hour bus ride. I tapped the guy next to me.

"Where is Pak Chong?" I said in Thai.

Blank stare. Thai is a tonal language so if you use the wrong tone people don't know what you're talking about.

"PAK Chong," I said, trying a different variation on the tones. "PAK CHONG?"

More blank stares.

"Bok Jong?" I said. "BOK Jong? Bok CHONG. Bak JONG. BAK Chong."

"Buck CHONG?" he said, his face lighting up. "Buck CHONG! Buck CHONG!"

I nodded vigorously.

"Buck CHONG!" he said, pointing behind the bus. "Pass already."

My standing-room-only neighbor started discussing my predicament with three other men, and after every head had managed to turn and stare at the idiot foreigner cleverly disguised as a Thai lady, they decided that I needed to stay on the bus until the next stop on the route, a city called Khorat (in Thai, goh-LAHD, if you ever want to find out if you’ve passed Buck CHONG). There I could catch a bus going back to Pak Chong.

Well, Khorat was another hour away. By the time I got there, found the right bus with the help of my kind and generous new friend, and took it back to Pak Chong, my 2-hour trip from Bangkok had become a 7-hour trip into the heart of Northeastern Thailand.

I think trying to get around in a country and culture and language I don't understand makes me realize how well I knew Kenya, and how comfortable I was getting around after living there for so long. It was really helpful to know Swahili, but I also knew how everything worked, and I could predict how people were going to behave. And because of that I knew how to navigate my environment to get what I needed. If I wanted to wash my underwear? Ask for a basin. If I wanted a hot bath? Ask the guide to boil water. The matatu tout will always remember to tell you where to alight if you ask him to. As much as Kenya infuriated me, it was very familiar place and I'd never be lost there.
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So, thumbs down on the people’s bus in Thailand. Yesterday evening I took a minivan into Bangkok with Dr. Khin, who makes the 1-hour commute to Mahachai everyday. Thumbs up on minivans. They are new, clean, air-conditioned, and only one person is allowed to sit in each seat. The entire vehicle still has all its original parts from the factory, instead of being a Frankenstein vehicle created by welding together the remains of four or five different dead cars harvested from accidents that happened 20 years ago in more developed countries. There are no rattling windows, no missing rearview mirrors, no touts hanging out the window trying to recruit more people to stuff inside, no passengers with teargas-grade body odor reading your book over your shoulder and holding your wrist to stop you from turning the page because they’re not done yet, no drivers falling asleep at the wheel, no rusty door sliding off its rails and clunking onto the ground while unemployed men on the street leap from their drunken stupor and run over to try to force it back into place.

Minivans here are a lovely ride. Still, my other car is a matatu.

The Recovery

I’m feeling a lot better today. At Dr. Khin’s suggestion I took a second day off from work. My coworkers have been great. Dr. Khin and Noreen just stopped by again, and of course the good doctor came with food--a brilliant four-part loaf of bread, to be exact. Each part has something different embedded inside. It goes, prosciutto (or its Thai equivalent), pork sung, hot dog, and raisins. It’s such genius, especially the hot dog. I love being in such a food-obsessed country.

Earlier this morning Jaep and Ahn stopped by. I was still wearing my glasses and padding around in sleepwear - wee boxer shorts and a shrunken t-shirt. I still don't know what's considered modest here, but they were polite enough not to stare or seem bothered. They didn’t stay long though. Maybe the shorts were like, “Go away! Go away!”

Dr. Khin is fond of asking about my poo. The first thing she said when I opened the door today was, “So how many times did you have diarrhea today?” And this morning she called to ask if it was watery or solid.

Other than that, I’m planning an excursion to Khao Yai National Park for the four-day Big Buddha weekend that starts tomorrow. Fortunately there are more public restrooms in Thailand than in New York City.