Showtime at AUA

Some of you know that one of the things that had been keeping me busy all through June, July and the first half of August was that I had taken up learning Thai traditional dance. You can’t really be that surprised given my current interest in all things Thai as well as my long-standing interest in dance as an art form. Let us not forget my love of being the center of attention, heh heh. As part of AUA’s method to teach you about the culture associated with language, the Thai Department occasionally offers special “interest” courses that go beyond the normal instruction of language – even though the teaching method is untraditional in the first place. These include anything from Thai massage, Muay Thai (kick-boxing), cooking and even yoga. The most recent of these, obviously, was the Thai Dance class. When I learned that it was going to be offered, I was thrilled. I mean, how many Fulbrighters get a chance to learn about something beyond their areas of interest?

One of my Fulbright colleagues, Lawrence, down in Trang province in the South of Thailand is researching ethnomusicology, so he gets to experience lots of traditional dance and music. See the map below:


Right, you’re like “ethno-what?” It means the study of music in its cultural context or from an anthropological point of view. Still lost? Basically, ethnomusicology seeks to explain how music is a product of culture and in turn, how culture affects music. The point is that you can learn something about a people via their music. Much like you can study a culture or society and draw certain conclusions by analyzing their literature, popular media, history, religion or politics. At least, that’s my understanding of it. Anyhow, what is even more exciting is that Lawrence gets to learn about the traditions specific to the border culture region he is based out of – meaning anything from Malay to Thai or even Mon, I think. So it’s a very complex project that is rich with various traditions. Here I am with a boring ‘ol focus on economics. I mean, sheesh, who got the short end of the stick here? I get to spend my time in libraries and chasing people who are doing their best to dodge my attempts to interview them and Lawrence gets to go watch shows and talk to dancers and musicians. Granted, I don’t know too much about some of the challenges that he faces in his research or even in a more broad sense, his field; I still think his subject matter is offers a fabulous opportunity to interact and experience the rich culture present in Thailand.

So after two months of so of ten hours of Thai Dance a week, we were ready to strut our stuff for everybody to see. We performed a type of dance called “serng.” It comes from the Northeastern Region of Thailand, more commonly known as Isaan. The map below highlights the provinces considered part of Isaan.


I invited my friends Mai and Sarah as well as the Executive Director and Program Officer of Fulbright Thailand to the show. They surprised me by bringing along a group of scholars here on various Fulbright programs. When we finished our performance, I was presented with traditional Thai flower garlands often presented to favored performers. What’s better, they had money attached to them!





Roses from Mai -- she's so sweet ~




Gosh, I felt so loved =)…probably because nobody else got them! Heh heh. The teachers added their own bit to the dance portion of the program by performing a very well known play about love, politics and betrayal – things that are near and dear to Thais. All in all, the show was a smashing success and the students were able to experience something new in lieu of sitting in class all day.




Some of the performers and I celebrated by going out to dinner together. I only realized halfway through that all of them happen to be Japanese! Except of course, for me and my faithful supporters Mai and Sarah:

Cambodia: Take Two

So this entry is about my Seattle friend Sean’s visit to Thailand and Cambodia and how he became entwined in my family politics during the dreaded yet highly anticipated visit with my mom and grandma together under one roof. Once he escaped back to Seattle, they came to visit me in Bangkok, where said politics were to continue under my humble roof. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t really as bad as I made it out to be, but you know what they say about family…ya can’t pick ‘em!!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love them both to death, but it’s hard to spend too much time in their company as an adult – particularly when they still haven’t gotten used to the fact that you’re no longer a child and have been living independently for years. Hi mom! Hi grandma!

So Sean’s flight arrives in Bangkok a little earlier than I had anticipated, so the poor guy had to wander for a little bit before we finally ran into each other. Well, it was more like he spotted me and yelled my name across busy Suvarnnabhumi International Airport. We jumped into a taxi and chit-chatted for a little about his flight on the way back to my place. The day after, we just saw a little bit of Bangkok. We tried to get dinner at the Oriental Hotel, but were dressed inappropriately on account of my shorts and sandals -- stylish as they were.


I can't believe there is a sign that explicitly excludes backpackers. Even if they have the money to pay. How discriminatory. Thailand is so weird like that. They can hate with a smile. Absolutely infuriariating at times.


Here, we met up with Sarah and some gals who were in town for a feminist economics conference. We were just leaving from the karaoke bar:


The next day, we head out to Lopburi Province to see … MONKEYS! And my, were there plenty of them! The province has some history to it, as most places that are worth visiting in Thailand do. The specific city that we went to used to be the capital of a small kingdom during the pre-Ayutthaya period and serves as the provincial capital today. Also, what separates it from most of Central Thailand is that it used to be part of the Ancient Khmer Empire. As such, most of its ruins display a heavy Khmer influence in terms of style and construction. I’m no expert on ancient architecture, so I will just show you pictures instead and hope that that keeps you entertained, heh heh. As you can see from the pictures, Mai was our faithful guide and Carleen (an intern at the Fulbright) was the other fellow traveler.






We saw all that we needed to see in Lopburi in one day and hopped on a bus back to Bangkok that evening. The following evening, Sean and I head off to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market in Ratchaburi Province just a few hours Southwest of Bangkok. We stayed at a pretty Spartan place called the Little Bird. I had read that the best way to do Damnoen Saduak was to stay the evening before and get up way early to go to the market. Apparently, Lonely Planet sends all the confused tourists who arrived by night bus there because the guy at the counter seemed to know why we were there and sold us on the idea of renting a motorized long-tail boat to take us to and through the market the next morning.








We got there too early to see too much on our first trip through, but it was easy to imagine what the place was like when it was full of boat vendors and tourists – it’s the quintessential Thailand postcard scene, after all. We cycled through and I bought a few touristy items at way inflated prices and then some expensive mangosteens on our way out. It turned out to be a good thing that we came very early because it started to get very hot and crowded on our trip back to the hotel – all the tour vans from BKK were just starting to get in. So we packed all of our stuff back at the Little Bird and jumped on a bus back to BKK to repack for our trip to Siem Reap on the same day. Talk about back-to-back traveling!

The one-hour trip to Siem Reap was over before we knew it – although our actual time on the plane was extended by the fact that we landed in a torrential downpour at Siem Reap International Airport. They had to go get a bus to take us the 100 meters to the terminal because the umbrellas that were in use by some of the airport staff were totally destroyed by the high winds that accompanied said rain. We went through immigration fairly quickly, where I got my usual round of questions about how long I’ve lived in America and what I was doing here on this particular trip. Our bags showed up shortly and we hopped into a taxi into town. We hadn’t made any reservations, so we asked our driver, Kim, to take us somewhere he knew – all too easy for him because the hotel and travel people all work like that anyway in tourist destinations. We ended up at a place along the river where we set about changing out of our wet clothes and I promptly turned on the TV to watch the Chinese dramas and movies that had been translated into Khmer; they’re something I can’t get in BKK (unfortunately). Kim came back to pick us up for the dinner-Apsara dance show, where we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves by gorging on pan-Asian cuisine and enjoying the company happy and fat tourists who were cheerily chowing down on the aforementioned gastronomic delights.

We told our driver to come pick us up in the morning for our full day of temple hopping and went to bed fairly early as we had been getting up quite early for our various trips; the next day was no exception. On my last visit to Angkor, we had rented a tuk-tuk for the day. I think it was something like $15. On this trip, Sean and I agreed to splurge a little to rent an air-conditioned taxi for $30 for the day. It was also somewhat necessary because we wanted to go to two temples that are a little further out of the main Angkor complex – Banteay Srey and Kbaal Spean. The following are photos we took and like my first entry about the Angkorian temples, I will leave it to you to ask me questions about particular photos.
















The day after (day 3 in Cambodia), we hopped onto a tour-bus heading off to Phnom Penh to meet my family. Once we got to the capital and off the bus, it was all the same as in BKK – we were mobbed by various drivers who were looking pick up a fare by taking us somewhere on their various modes of transportation. Luckily, I was able to fend them off by telling them that we already had a ride and that all I needed from them was to know where we were so I could tell my ride.

We crossed the street and had smoothies by the river while we waited for my mom – this was the first time that Sean got a taste for what he was going to be in for because one of the first comments my mom made to me was regarding my hair; this was to be a favorite topic of conversation for the next couple of weeks as she believes that respectable Asians should only have black hair. We got into a tuk-tuk yet again and went to grandma’s house, which was finished and fully furnished by this point. Apparently, my aunt and her husband and mother-in-law were also staying at grandma’s. This made for a cozy time. I quickly pushed to leave by insisting that we leave for the seaside town of Sihanoukville that day. My aunt was still somewhere in Siem Reap – we weren’t able to connect there and now we were leaving without her. Oh well. It was late in the day by the time we rolled into the bus/mini-van terminal. The buses to Sihanoukville had ceased to run for the day, so our only option was the mini-van. We could also have hired a taxi, but grandma has this rather irrational fear of road bandits. She wanted to leave the next day instead because she didn’t want to travel when it got dark – but time constraints made that unreasonable. Also, she didn’t want to pay the extra fee to rent the whole van so that we could get going instead of waiting for it to get full – which meant putting 20 people into a van that should really only seat about 12. Cambodians are just smaller, I guess. I blamed it on Sean and suggested that we leave right away by paying the extra fare to have the van to ourselves, saying he needs room to stretch out. They took the suggestion after about an hour of waiting and we were finally on our way to the beach, yay!

When we got to Sihanoukville, it was already quite late, so we checked in, got dinner and went to bed. An interesting item of note is that the town was named after the former king, who is still alive. However, both mom and grandma referred to it only as Kompong Soum – which is the name of the province. I guess some people still haven’t made the switch over nor revere the kings of Cambodia as much as the people do here in Thailand. The next morning at about six, my mom comes pounding on the door, saying that we needed to get on with our day…yuck! This was supposed to be a vacation. For her, getting up at 6 is a luxury because she normally gets up at around 2 am for work these days. I had read in Lonely Planet Cambodia the previous night about beaches to hit up and suggested them the next morning at breakfast; grandma reluctantly agreed. My mom told me later that she saw that grandma seemed to be shaking with anger after we told the driver to take us to a different beach from the she goes to all the time. She also said I shouldn’t worry because old people just like to go to the same places, do the same thing and eat the same food. In short, predictability is paramount with grandma.

I think everybody ended up having a fairly good time, even though we were only in the water for about 30 minutes, if that. Still, it was not as nice as most of the beaches in Thailand – so I told mom and grandma that they had to come visit me Thailand so I could show them what a proper beach looks like. We got cleaned up, headed back to the hotel, packed our stuff and got on a bus back to Phnom Penh. I dodged the suggestion by grandma that we should stay at her place that night by saying Sean would rather stay at a hotel because he wanted to go see nightlife and didn’t want to disturb them when we came in for the night. Also, we were leaving fairly early the next day, so we didn’t want to wake them twice. It worked, with a little bit of support from my aunt (bless her soul).



We walked around a little bit after dropping our stuff off at the hotel but didn’t stay out too late because our flight back to BKK was at 7am the next morning. Sean headed back home the day after and that was the end of that for his trip to Thailand & Cambodia. Me on the other hand, I needed to ready my apartment for mom and grandma’s arrival. So I cleaned and cleaned.

Mom got here two days before grandma, which worked out very well because it meant she could have two days of peace and quiet pretty much to herself as I still had classes to go to. The day that grandma came was a little bit of an ordeal because she doesn’t speak any English, let alone read it. Nor does she speak any Thai. So we had to hire an air host to put her in a wheelchair and cart her around. Eventually, I called grandma (luckily, her Cambodian phone had service – but that’s because it is part of the AIS network, part of the ShinCorp family of companies, heh heh). I talked to the guy and told him where we were waiting. Still, it took about another 20 minutes or so for him to find us, which was strange considering that he is an airline employee and presumably at least familiar with the airport or who to ask for directions.

That afternoon, we head back to the beach, but nothing that was too far away. I didn’t want to take them to Pattaya given it’s er…vices. I’m not sure that mom and grandma would have been impressed. Instead, I opted to take them to beautiful Koh Samet, which is only a few hours away from BKK. We got to the Baan Phe (the little town where you catch a boat over to the island) a little too late to catch any outgoing boats at a reasonable price, so we stayed the night. The next morning, we got to the pier early, but found out that nobody gets up early to actually use the early morning trips. So we waited until we had at least 17 other passengers to make up the 20 required for the operators to make a trip.








The trip to the island was pleasant as the water was pretty still, albeit kind of gray and dingy. As we approached the island, I was delighted to see that the water there was in tip-top swimming condition. It was something slightly greener than azure – at least I think so ;). As we pulled into the pier, I saw a fairly crude advertisement that made mention of the 400 baht entrance fee into the park for non-Thais (Koh Samet is a national park and Thais pay only 40 baht to get in). Before leaving Bangkok, I had to make sure that I brought enough money for all of us to get in and stay for a few days because I didn’t know what the banking and currency exchange situation would be like. As we pulled up into the park entrance, the rangers asked me how many people. I replied three. As I was getting ready to pull out my thousand baht bills, he tells me that the total will be 120 baht. I was thrilled and gave him just that much. All the while, my talkative mother and grandma couldn’t understand why I was making funny jerky movements to encourage them not to be too verbose. I had passed off being a Thai once again and this time, it saved me over a thousand baht. Maybe he thought we were Chinese-Thais and that mom and grandma were speaking Tae Chiew as many older Chinese-Thais still do.

We checked into a nearby hotel and headed straight for the beach. It was quite beautiful – the sand was white and the water warm. The only thing that could have made it better was some sun. Unfortunately, for all of our stay there, it was fairly cloudy. The other fun thing was that there was a litter of puppies hanging out on the beach. I had never seen puppies out and about in Thailand before, which is strange given the number of stray dogs that haven’t been spayed or neutered running around. Over the next few days, I found out just how picky grandma could be. Nothing tasted good and everything was just “ok” when I asked her if she liked something. When we finally headed back to BKK (we spent two nights on Koh Samet), I was suddenly reminded of why I don’t live at home anymore. Mom would like to deny this, but she and grandma are two peas in a pod. On their last night here, we went to go see the Siam Niramit Thai Cultural Show – I had already been to see it once with Bruce, Sarah and Rufiena back in December, but I thought it would be something that mom and grandma would enjoy. Mom had a good time, but once again, it was just “ok” for grandma.

When I took them to the airport early the next morning, I was sad to see them go because I knew I would miss them. But at the same time, going back to bed in peace and quiet seemed like such a nice thing…