Daily Life – some details of the trivial.......

THE WEATHER
It’s been about 36-40 degrees & really humid all week. Pretty much dripping with sweat 24/7. Not long till the six month monsoon season, and we had a taste of it last night. When it rains here it pours. Luckily we have good drainage in our street.

THE COMMUTE TO WORK
I travel most places in red Songtaews. These are little red trucks with 2 rows of seats in the back. Songtaews are not metered, and the drivers have no fixed destination. And often not much English. The 5-20 minute trip to work (depending on the traffic and the routes taken for other passengers) generally costs about 75 cents. Songtaews are everywhere, but it sometimes takes around 6 attempts to get one willing to go to the destination. Amusing at times, but I have always arrived where I’d intended.

I’ve mentioned before that it is very rare to see a Thai person walking anywhere. Generally they travel in Chiang Mai by motorcycle, or too often by huge 4WDs. The cost of petrol and electricity here is on par with Australian costs – hugely expensive for the average Thai. I’ve seen plenty of motorcycles with 3-4 people on them –today I saw a girl holding an umbrella, talking on a mobile and negotiating puddles on her motorcycle in a short skirt/high heels get up. Good luck to her.

EATING
The closest I have come to cooking a meal since I’ve been here is adding the boiled water to a pack of 2 minute noodles (which incidentally taste heaps better over here with the Thai spice sachets). It is such a convenience culture – costs a lot more to buy kitchen ingredients from the supermarket than to eat in restaurants. There are vendors and little open air eating areas every 10 paces. I'm hating the excessive packaging and rubbish. There's good recycling though - both times we've put bottles outside they've been collected by salvagers within 2 minutes.

I’ve heard that Thais consume more sugar per capita than any other country and I could easily believe it. Chiang Mai dentists do well. Sometimes I reach for a Pepsi as a low-sugar option, which is a real shocker. Wasn’t happy when I saw the quantity of sugar syrup added to my favourite drink – fresh pineapple ice shake. I found a small western supermarket that does not add sugar to it's bread - so good! Have been drinking about 4 litres of water a day in the heat.

CONFESSION
I headed to my “first in living memory” dawn ANZAC service on Wednesday. Oops for every other year I’ve missed. The service was great, and Chiang Mai is remarkably pleasant at 5:30 in the morning.

WORK THIS WEEK
This week I’ve headed up the mountain every day to run school environmental education modules at the research nursery and to conduct forest walks. It’s been great to spend so much time bush in this placement – so far at least. The 15km of intensely winding road to get there is not so exciting though. Best on an empty stomach.

WORK MATES
I work with a group of education and research ex-students, around my age group. They have fun nicknames (Thai names are really long) such as Dear, Joy and Gai (translation: chicken). My boss is English and has been here for 20 years. It's interesting to hear his views of the changing culture over that time period. 40% of Thailand forests have been cleared in the last 50 years. Not a nice legacy.

I'M JUST THAT KINDA PERSON.....
I made a 5 year old Thai girl cry this week. Just be being a farang. She was squealing loudly and her mother sent her off in disgrace. My workmate siddled up to me and told me what the problem was. I would have liked to have the opportunity to tell the mum that I'm much scarier to look at first thing in the morning.....

Happy Thai New Year

Welcome. If I’ve posted this blog then it means that I have survived Songkran! Songkran is a one of a kind experience – the Thai equivalent of the running of the bulls or the tomato throwing festivals so famous in Europe. We live a few blocks away from the centre of the action along the moat. During the Songkran five day holiday there is a huge traffic jam in that area, mostly of utes with up to 15 people in the back throwing and spraying water from large bins. It's the iced water you have to watch out for! On the moat edge, buckets with rope do the job. It’s impossible to not get saturated. A bit of a departure from the original tradition of pouring water on the hands of your family elders to honour them..... At one point we passed through the middle of a road Rave Party with water cannons and Thai techno music - a scuffle broke out Thai kick boxing style so we hightailed out of there pretty quickly. Three volunteers working with the UN in Bangkok came up for the weekend, so the five of us walked the streets equipped with very small, inadequate water pistols. Lots of fun.

For a change of pace we spent Saturday up Doi Suthep mountain nearby. Most Buddhist Thais head to temples at New Year to make merit, and the Wat on the mountain top is the most sacred in the region. A very beautiful location and it was interesting to see their traditions. We then headed across to the nearby FORRU research nursery and on a bush walk back down the mountain, passing a number of waterfalls.

Yesterday I went to visit some Australian prisoners. Usually this requires a consular visit and safety checks. I found it quite straightforward: just a zoo ticket. I went to visit Simpson, Brian and Coco the koalas to give them news from home.

some of the locals

The week leading up to Songkran was great. I celebrated Easter Sunday at Chiang Mai Community Church, which has a very large and diverse multi-denominational congregation of around 400 – very dynamic with lots of different ministries. It’s across town but worth making the effort for on Sunday afternoons. I hope to make some friends and contacts through the church.

Last Wednesday the community nursery at Ban Mae Sa Mai was officially opened by the sponsoring organisations with great fanfare. Unfortunately the fluid concept of “Thai time” operated for the 6am traditional pig slaughter: my arrival at 8:30 was spot on. In between hearing the commotion and seeing the close up photos that the uni intern boys took I caught most of it. Moving right along.....there were some great moments of traditional Kmong tribal dancing along with ribbon cutting, tree planting, bird watching, and a trip up the mountain to see the planting sites (the 8 year old one has 60 different plant species regenerating under the 10m high closed canopy cover of the 20-odd planted species).

Some of the hill tribe kids at the nursery opening

This fortnight we’ll be busy running through socio-economic modelling with a guy from Uni of Qld, followed by four days of school education programs with an Australian international school in Singapore. Bit of an Aussie theme, but I don’t mind.
Sadly the timing of our home internet connection has coincided with the banning of YouTube by the Thai government due to a posting dishonouring the king. ABC on cable is sounding good.

Home Sweet Hovel and Hill Tribes

First things first, we moved in on Saturday. I like calling it a hovel – it looks like a concrete cage from the street. Can’t beat The Hovel’s location for convenience. Minor problem of there being a very frustrated rooster cooped up in a tiny cage in the nearby “Museum of World Insects”(yeah, work out that logic) that’s been

crowing at all hours. Also in trying to communicate to the landlady that the toilet leaks, but we are making progress on that one.

Chiang Mai digs & new village nursery

Most of this week was spent outside of Chiang Mai. I’ve seen the two main FORRU nurseries. One is a research nursery up in the nearby mountain National Park in evergreen forest. The second nursery is in an agricultural Hmong hill tribe setting (in the same NP) about an hour north which will have its official opening on 11th April. I stayed at a basic guest house in the village with the education staff and 6 university interns for 3 nights. We ran environmental modules for an international school from Indonesia. Easily the highlight for me was spending time in the hill tribe community, particularly in being escorted by some enthusiastic village kids to see “the sacred tree” growing high up on the hill overlooking the village. Sounds like I’ll be spending quite a bit of time here in Ban Mae Sa Mai over the coming year. Drove past an elephant camp on the way back – a reminder that there are plenty of touristy activities I’ll have to make a start on.


FORRU Education Unit at new nursery, & hill tribe

In my job here I’ll be splitting my time with the researchers as well. Yesterday I headed an hour south, with 11 of us piled in a Ford Courier. Yes, it can be done, work friends. We counted resprouting seedlings in a burnt, rocky site in secondary deciduous forest. And it is hot over here – am very glad I didn’t come straight from a Goulburn winter. I’m scheduled to help GPS fig trees all over the national park near Chiang Mai later in the year – should be fun. The water festival has started already: we had water thrown at us 4 times on the way back to town – I wonder if the gleeful locals can keep up the enthusiasm for 2 weeks.

Everyone in the office (except for the English supervisor) speaks continually in Thai, so if I want to know what’s going on, I’m going to need to dedicate large amounts to memory – daunting. On another matter of adjustment, at the rate I’m going might be able to match the Windsor office boys in chilli-eating. Still getting used to chillies for breakfast.....

I’m looking forward to having a pretty quiet weekend and hope to get to a local church service and touch base with some local contacts. Maybe will even visit the famous Night Bazaar (street markets). Some other volunteers from Bangkok are heading up for the water festival next weekend, so it should be a big one.

I hope this finds you well,

Jen