Chiang Mai to Panya Project

Yesterday we landed at the Panya Project, an intentional permaculture community about an hour north of Chiang Mai.  The community was started by a young man who graduated from Western with a teaching degree, actually.  The volunteer coordinator here, Martha Asselin, graduated from Fairhaven a few years ago and it was connecting with her before she left the states that resulted in this link.  Turns out I also know the founder, Christian.  We were at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop together three years ago.  Small world.

This community has been working for about three years as an educational site for permaculture and adobe, cob and wattle building projects.  This morning the students built adobe bricks which are now drying in the sun and harvested bananas.  This afternoon we'll go work on another building next door.  They offer permaculture courses and internships, and there are folks here from Belgium, England, and the US right now.  

One of the permanent residents, Kae, is a Thai woman with the three year old child.  We had a great interview this morning about her ideas about children and how she sees the differences between Thai and US culture.  She particularly commented on how in US families, children leave home when their 18, much more independent than Thai kids.  Thai kids are more likely to stay with their families for a long time.

The bell just rang for the building project, so more later.  I'll try to find a way to get pictures up.

M

Chiang Mai Night Market

Chiang Mai has the oldest night market in all of Thailand.  Alex, our interpreter, says that these markets are a very important part of Thai culture.  Where ever a few Thai gather, a market will sprout.  We all gathered together to head over and spend some time wandering through the stalls set up on one of the main streets.  I can't imagine what it takes to put up and take down these booths every night of the year!

The vendors are selling a mixture of the worst of kitsch, cheap clothing and jewelry, but intermixed are some of the beautiful crafts from the hilltribe villagers.  The feel is chaotic, too many people packed together in too small a space and every vendor sees a farang (westerner) as an easy target, trying to pull you into their booths.  Bargaining is the norm, so you're expected to do that dance, which everyone seems to love, before buying anything.   

Everywhere I go I am trying to pay attention to the children and the interactions between the children and the adults.  Even though this is a school night and the market runs from eight to midnight, there are lots of children here, many helping with the sales or the smaller ones playing around the booths.  Alex says that in Thai culture, the children belong to the community more than at home and there is a sense that all adults will watch out for any child, so sometimes, as the vendor is bargaining with a customer, I could see a very small toddler wandering down the street, ending up interacting with another adults three booths down who shoos him  back to his mother. 

In one booth, an older child, maybe eight or nine, is doing his homework, oblivious to the noise and commotion around him as he adds his list of numbers.

Tomorrow to the Panya Project, an intentional permaculture community.

M

Bangkok to Chiang Mai

I don't remember when I last posted.  The days are starting to blur together.  We took the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, actually in a sleeper car.  I haven't ridden in a sleeper car since we used to travel across the country from Tacoma to Philadelphia to visit Uncle Furman's farm.   I actually slept, and woke to see Thailand's countryside slipping by outside the window.  A flat landscape of palm, banana, rice paddies and then into the small towns that line the railroad.  Poverty looks so familiar.  Manifests the same in any country  -- corrugated iron roofed shacks, women cooking meals outside, dirt paths and beat up old bikes.  

Then the landscape changes, hills, bouganvilla and water lilies and more rice paddies.  A woman with a water buffalo headed down the dirt road toward the fileds as the sun gilds the early morning mists.  The haze is shining.  

Finally into the jungle;  vegetation thickens around the cars of the train.  We're gliding through a dusty emerald corridor and then a break in the trees and below is a placid river winding lazily into a valley, flat grey water and then back into the green.

At one of the stops a food vendor climbs on the train selling little packets of pad thai in wrapped in newspaper.  After all night and just a food bar, the smells are so tantalizing that I bought one.  Delicious.  One of the students in the group is doing a pad thai sampler of Thailand, ordering it in every venue.

When we finally rolled into Chiang Mai, Ted was there to meet us and take us to the guest house.   Glad to be landed.

M

Bangkok!

Landed safely in Bangkok and will rendevous with some of the folks from the Institute for Village Studies today to head north to Chiang Mai and then out to the villages. Flights were seamless, though long - The only snafu was arriving at 1 am at the Shanti Lodge to discover that there was a misunderstanding about when I would arrive. Late AM on January 29, NOT evening of January 29, so there was no room. The folks here are great, however and found me a place to sleep.

This morning, wandering the streets near the lodge, bathed in the competing smells of roasting vegetables and chiles in the street vendors carts, the profusion of flowers,and exhaust from the multitude of scooters, all against a faint background of urine. The air is warm (85s), soft and wet on the skin. Feels like being in a steam bath.

On the way to the bank I passed the door to what I think is a preschool. All the children were gathered in the front courtyard in their white shirts and dark pants/skirts singing, singing. Their voices bouncing off the white tile spread out into the street to blend with the traffic and vendor calls. Entrancing. I stood in the door and just took it in, noticing that these children move in groups, little clusters breaking off from the whole group as the singing ended and they headed off, perhaps to their classrooms, all in a line with smiles that could crack open the world.

I am looking forward to working in the schools up north next week.

M

Take-off!

Tomorrow morning we'll head for Seattle and Mary Ellen will drop me off for the long! flight to Bangkok.  A direct flight from Seattle to Seoul and then another hop to Bangkok.  I arrive sometime in the very early morning on January 29.

James, my co-instructor, and all the students left a week ago. (I had to lag behind because of two important conferences).  They've been sending reports about warm weather (80 F) and great curries.  I'll be heading north to Chiang Mai to meet them on the evening train on the 29th.  

I have been reading about the roles that parents and other adults play in the development of language and the rules of social interdependence and gender roles in culture and I am eager to get a chance to observe and talk with children and adults in the family and schools settings we will visit in the north of Thailand.  We will primarily working with the Karen people, a minority group in Thailand who come from Myanmar (once Burma) and I believe will have the chance to work in a school and an orphanage. 

We also will have the chance to visit the Panya Project, a permaculture farm (www.Panyaproject.org) where a recent Fairhaven grad, Martha Asselin, is the volunteer coordinator.

So today is most taking care of the last little details and collecting a few things that the others who are already there requested, and then the adventure begins!

Marie

Countdown

Less than a month from now, we'll be in Thailand.  The trip is taking on shape as we continue to plan and watch the political scene. The tentative itinerary still holds, but both Ted and Peg are in contact with their friends and sources on the ground to take the local temperature.  

I have been in contact with Dr. Jain, who runs the SAVE Project, developing schools in Sarnath for the Dalit children.  He has set us up with a series of opportunities to work with the children there, from preschool to highschool.

Tonight, a group of students and I are meeting to make books for us to use (and leave behind) as we teach lessons about the Pacific Northwest, including images of our region, the kinds of food we plant and eat, children in schools here, and the work that the adults do here.  We've been collecting pictures and will build the books with simple text and laminate them.  Should be a fun project.

Marie