PCPhilippines Update #83

Dumaguete Progress:  Just like anywhere in the world I guess, infrastructure and new buildings, along with updated businesses, are always being made.  Progress!  While at first I doubted progress would happen in Dumaguete, living here for over two years has allowed us to experience it just like anywhere else in the world . . .  and probably also a bit different than everywhere else in the world.

Bank Ng Pilipinas on National Highway

Since Alana and I arrived, foreign and local investors put up about a half dozen brand new progressive looking buildings on the main strip of the national highway running through town that have huge tented glass windows, star-studded lighting, underground garages, and tiled entrances.

Building Center on National Highway

These are buildings for companies like the Suzuki, a Bank Ng Pilipinas, A.M. Builders Depot (Filipino Home Depot), and Cang's Shopping Complex.  We can now imagine a brand new looking Dumaguete in the next 10-20 years if this continues, with modern looking storefronts replacing bamboo shack stores.

Cang's Shopping Complex on National Highway

We've watched a 15-story hotel going up downtown for the last 14 months and it is just about finished.  Although some of the building techniques, machinery, and technology used to erect a building like this at times seem outdated and unnecessarily laborous, the building ends up looking just like any other progressive building in the end.  The safety measures for the public, since the hotel is five feet from national highway, were extraordinary.

Safety Measures for the Public

At one point I watched a half dozen men labor over breaking up a slab of sidewalk that was 10x12 feet in size.  They did it with hammers hitting big nails that were pushed into half inch PVC pipe so they could hold the nail upright and not hammer their fingers.  This process took about 3 weeks.  At the same time down the road a bit I watched a hand held jackhammer at work operated by a guy with no shoes, no shirt, no helmet, nor any other kind of safety equipment.  He got his job done in an afternoon.

New Roofed Home

I've been especially observant of day to day building progress on my walks to and from school/work. I got to see all the stages of a new roof being affixed to a nice home.  They erected the new roof, tore out the old roof from underneath it, made improvements to the outside of the home and even added a small addition to the back, connected the new roof to the house, then patched, plastered, tiled, and painted the entire outside structure.  This process took at least 4 months and I noticed the family moved out as soon as the work got started and move back in immediately after the painting.  Where did they go for 4 months?  That may be a situation where the relatives move in and little Joey has to share his bedroom with Auntie Maggie.

NoName Neighborhood Eatery

Just down the road is a local neighborhood eatery.  When we first arrived to Dumaguete in August of 2010 I walked by it every day on my way to technical skills class during training.  The lot had what looked like a 5x5 meter (15x15 foot) bamboo pavilion on it and the man who I saw roaming around in it every day seemed to live in the 3x4 meter (9x12 foot) shack in the back corner of the lot.  Months later (it was on the same path as my walk to NORSU) there were tables and booths under the pavilion; then came a bathroom, then a painted gate, then an outdoor kitchen, and the place kept getting more built up and nicer every month.  I haven't seen anyone eating there.  Maybe it's because I walk/ride by during the day and he is only open at night.  It's a very nice place now even though there has never been a sign advertising it and the man still seems to live in the un-renovated shack.

Outside of NORSU Gates

NORSU Touchups:  One week I watched the process of repaving the road stretching in front of the governor's building and outside of NORSU's university gates.  It was a wild process.  They first dumped rocks and 3/4 inch gravel in the potholes.  Then they filled them using buckets and shovels with a tar looking substance they got from 55 gallon barrels they had built fires underneath.  After spraying the entire road with about 1/2 inch of the same tar substance, it got covered with 1/2 inch of dirt.

Tar 4 Roads

Students and faculty walked campus for days with handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses because of the tar in the air.  Cars and scooters almost immediately started using the roads and to pack down the tar under the dirt and the dirt eventually blew away in the wind or got washed away by the rain.

Along with many others, I watched the governor's mansion ditch (next door to NORSU) being dug out, sewer pipes rerouted, the ditch cemented, and a sidewalk put up on top of it, again, all by hand.

Dr Sojor added a second floor to the dentistry and computer technology building.  This work was done, just like all the work I see, by men with no safety equipment, usually working in shorts, flip flops, and t-shirts tied around their heads to lessen their sun exposure. The addition took about 9 months to finish.  It's crazy seeing the conditions the men work under and how slow something simple looking can take because they have no tools.  Hand cranked cement mixers, materials hauled by hand, rope pulleys to lift anything to the second floor, rickety bamboo and wood scaffolding, and not a power tool in sight.

Circa November 2011

Circa January 2012

Circa April 2012

Circa July 2012

Even Ralph had students from the department of 'refrigeratorology' :-) come in and fix the English Department air conditioner when it was ready to poop out.  No doubt they got some kind of grade compensation for their efforts.  Ingenuity!

Krissy's After Remodel, Closed on Sundays

Home Improvements:  Closer to home, we've watched our favorite local eatery, Krissy's, get remodeled.  The counters got moved around giving the staff more room to operate behind them, the wall between the counters and the kitchen was removed to give the place a more open feeling, and an office was added with a huge plexiglass window and hole in it so the owner can manage all the money, keep an eye on her staff, and yell at them when they are doing something wrong.  They created a sit down counter and hired a local carpenter to built some 1950 looking, round barstools.  They even added a professionally looking bamboo table and chairs for a more homey feeling.  All in all, very funksway.

Across The Street, Nearly Done

I think in an earlier update I wrote about the house being built directly across the street.  I mentioned how the workers lived on site all those months while working on the house and even move into the house once it got a roof on it.  Progress seemed to go just a little bit slower once they move into the house probably because it was a nice place to live for a while.  The same workers did all the work; foundation; cement framing, electricity, plumbing, doors and windows, fence building, roofing, and plumbing.  Rarely was a specialist called in to do any part of the work.

One of the best building projects for us to experience was the improvement of the neighborhood streets all around our apartment building from dirt to cement, including the one we live directly on.  We watched 40 + workers for months work on about 300 meters (300 yards) of streets.  Again, they built little shacks and lived in empty lots in the neighborhood during the job until the work was over.  

Circa February 2012

Circa April 2012

Circa June 2012 

Circa August 2012

One little shack was like a framed bunk bed with a roof on it.  It had three small stacked rooms, each 1 meter wide, 2 meters long, and 1 meter high (3 feet, 6 feet, 3 feet), and the whole thing was under one tin roof, no electricity or plumbing, with a tiny outdoor space for cooking.  We would see them doing their laundry in the late afternoon with buckets on the street.

These men were starving for attention and would holler and greet us every time we rode or walked by on the way home or to work.  "Hello amigo!" "Good morning my friend!"  "Where are you going?"  "How are you today?"  After a short period of this I just started hollering at them first, "Happy birthday!" "Happy Independence Day!"  "Maayong buntag!"  They seemed to love it and I became famous in our neighborhood with the workers as the 'Happy Birthday Guy.'  Alana and I were riding our bikes down the national highway one Sunday night, a few kilometers from home, after dinner with friends, and we heard someone yell out to us, "Happy birthday!"  Alana believes I was becoming recognizable and making an impression citywide.

They started by building the road up a little by dumping loads of dirt and spreading it out with one of those big yellow road graders.  When I passed close by the dormant grader one day I smelled my Uncle Jim.  You know that smell of salt, dust, sweat, and rust all rolled into one? . . . my cousins will know what I mean.  Months after they level the road out the workers show up to start digging out, fixing, and cementing (or re-cementing if necessary) the ditches. 

When the ditches are all in order they move on to cementing one lane at a time and do everything by hand.  They seemed to move about 20-30 meters a day.

Alana learned to make an amazing desert, crushed chocolate graham crackers and coconut cream, rolled up into balls the size of golf balls and put in the freezer.  Yum!  As she was making some for the LCP youth one Saturday she decided to be neighborly and make a batch for the road workers.

Already she was a favorite of theirs as they innocently flirted heavily with her every time she went by.  One of the workers specifically called her "Gwapa," which means beautiful, and in turn she teasingly called him "Gwapo," which means handsome, so she didn't have to ask his real name.  It was all in fun and they were all nice guys . . . until she brought them that batch of chocolate balls!

Workers Moving In And Setting Up Camp

3x3 Foot, 5 Foot Deep Holes Go In For Cement Foundation Post 

Let The Scaffolding Begin!

Framing Out The Second Floor

Let The Second Floor Cementing Begin!

I was with her and as soon as she turned the corner holding a plate of something, from 40 meters away one of the workers said, "Oh . . . thank you for bringing me something to eat." in jest of course, yet she really had.  When she started to reveal that the desert was really for them all 40+ workers started running towards her.  She quickly handed them off to her friend Gwapo and he got malled while we walked away.  Before we were out of site though, Gwapo yelled out something like, "Thank you for bringing us more tomorrow!"  These guys work hard, seem to have nothing, and seem starved for attention.

The lot next door to us, where the boys moved into the tree last year, has been under construction for about 4 months now.  The workers immediately built a 2x5 meter (6x15 foot) shack, split in half, one side for sleeping and side one for cooking, laundry, and bathroom.  They live on site and are pretty nice to us, which is helpful because they see and greet us every single day and they can now look right into our apartment windows.  It's hard for them not to look at us or talk to us because they literally work spitting distance from our little back and side yard.  The pictures are taken from our second story window.  We have them greeting us now with "Happy Birthday!"

One day I was around the back of our apartment getting our secret key we use to get into the house and I checked to see if anyone was looking.  No one was so I grabbed it and opened the back door.  I went to return the key and when I turned back around a worker's head was peaking right over the fence looking right into our little back yard area, and right at me hiding the key.  "Great!" I said, "Now I have to stop leaving a key outside."  In the end, I just found a new, better hiding place.

The latest greatest news is about the new Mall.  The only mall we currently have, Robinson's, is across town, on the outskirts of Dumaguete, about 4-5 kilometers  (2.5-3 miles) from our home.  We recently caught word that the SM Mall of Asia corporation plans to build a new mall in Dumaguete right in the middle of town JUST ONE BLOCK FROM OUR APARTMENT!

Red diamond is our apartment, red hexagon is LCP, bottom right by the 'G' in Google is NORSU.

There is a huge empty field right on the edge of our little neighborhood where we've watched locals for a few years graze their cows and goats and stop to pee along the fence line.  Such a nice, huge, open piece of property with big oak looking trees on it.  Now we understand who those nicely dressed men were looking at it about 6-8 months ago.

Yellow diamond is our apartment, one block from the new site for SM Mall of Asia.

Progress is sometimes a bummer and it'll be sad to loose that nice big open area right in the middle of town. It will no doubt add another few degrees of heat to the neighborhood and a whole bunch of new traffic I guess.  Wouldn't it be nicer to have the city build a big dog-walking park, running sidewalks, baseball diamonds for local t-ballers, or maybe a pond to feed the ducks (if people actually walked their dogs, ran, played t-ball, or if there were actually ducks here that is) instead of cementing the whole thing?

Alana and I are just glad we are getting out of here before all that chaotic construction starts happening.  It will be weird to visit this place, even on Google Earth, a few years from now when the mall is completed and national highway is littered with new, space age looking storefronts.  While I tend to call it progress, Alana calls some of it necessity and some of it disaster.  As always, only time will tell.

InHarmony

- Jaco

J Jacques Fournet II

US Peace Corps Volunteer

Philippines Batch 269

Daro, Dumaguete City

Negros Oriental

NORSU
LCP

PCPhilippines Update #78

From Alana:  Below is a link explaining my final project in the Philippines.  I'm working with a practitioner from California to introduce EFT to our Dumaguete community.  We're sharing this with everyone we know in an effort to raise funds to make the project happen.  Thank you for your time and interest in viewing the video.  It'll be very worth it!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/651374800/in-the-city-of-gentle-people

EFT (the Emotional Freedom Technique) is a therapeutic tool focused on balancing the energy systems of our body.  The intent is to reduce or erase the impact negative emotions and experiences have had on us in the past.  The science behind EFT is rapidly growing- shedding light on the powerful connection between our energies and healing.  While studying EFT, I met Rob Nelson via Skype.  He is a gentle soul passionate about sharing EFT with the world.  

While living in the Philippines, I've seen the power of limiting beliefs time and again.  I believe there is a collective unconsciousness here preventing bright Filipino locals, full of potential, from finding success.  EFT is a simple tool to use, proven to be very effective in improving negative and limiting thought patterns.  I'm excited to see EFT at work in our community!

From WORLDVIEW: The Magazine of the National Peace Corps Association

Summer 2012, Vol. 25, No. 2

 

The Peace Corps and Peace.  Time to re-emphasize "Peace" in the Peace Corps: (by Kevin F F Quigley) Within the Peace Corps community, we talk often about the agency's three goals, which can be paraphrased as: 1) help others help themselves, 2) help others understand Americans better, and 3) bring understanding of the world home.  Disappointingly, there is a lot less talk regarding the agency's overall mission established in the Peace Corps Act of 1961: promote world peace and friendship.

 

Promoting world peace was the overriding concern of Sargent Shriver, the architect of the Peace Corps.  As a World War II combat veteran, Shriver understood keenly the importance of a strategic and disciplined approach to waging peace.  In his last major public address at Yale University in November 2001, less than two months after the 9/11/01 attacks, Shriver suggested that the Peace Corps must place a much greater emphasis on peace.

 

He lamented that: "No matter how many bombs we drop, no matter how skillfully our soldiers fight, we are not responding to the ultimate challenge until we show the world how and why we must all learn to live in peace - until peace becomes the only permanent alternative to war."  Shriver also knew that to succeed at winning peace would require comparable resources to waging war.  In that same speech he said, "Peace is much more than a mere absence of war.  Peace requires the simple yet powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us."

 

Although the Peace Corps creates this powerful common recognition of our shared humanity, Shriver lamented that the Peace Corps had fallen short of its promise in promoting peace by saying that, ". . . our dreams were big and our accomplishments were small . . . we did not do enough . . ."

 

Our country, much to Shriver's and others disappointment, has never really put the resources into waging peace. In fact, the Peace Corps entire budget in its first 50 years - roughly $8.7 billion - was spent by the Department of Defense budget in just five days this year alone.

 

Although not directly engaged in war zones, the Peace Corps is indirectly engaged.  The Peace Corps is not now or has not ever been engaged in places where peace is at greatest risk.  Today, that means countries like Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Despite the fact that the Peace Corps is not engaged there, one cannot travel to Khartourn, Baghdad, or Kabul without meeting Peace Corps alumni who are striving to create better conditions for peace in those war-torn places.

 

As the Peace Corps moves forward into its second half-century, a far greater part of how we bring the world home could be to aggressively promote the common recognition of shared humanity that Shriver spoke so eloquently about, along with a clear recommendation that our country must put more resources into waging peace.

 

 

From: Peace Corps Times (newspaper), Inside Issue 2, 2012

 

The Importance of Listening with Our Third Ear:  (by PCV Darlene Grant / Cambodia)  Recently, while sitting with a small group of my fellow Volunteers during a break from teaching activities at our respective sites, our conversation moved from pride in how much we've learned, to the things that frustrate us.  A generally universal lament in our country of service goes something like this, "I still don't understand why I can't get a straight answer.  My co-teacher and my students always answer 'yes' to my questions when I find out later was really 'no.'"

 

Maybe it's miscommunication or misinterpretation, or the desire to not seem negative on the part of my host family, students, and teaching counterparts, yet I do find myself arriving late, overdressed or underdressed for an actual occasion, and generally feeling behind or lost more often than not.

 

However, a fellow Volunteer, Lisa, recently provided an insight that has changed my perspective. First, in formal and informal speaking, Cambodians generally use the Khmer word for "yes," as a way of "pausing" or checking for clarity.  As another Volunteer put it, "It's like the American version of 'Ummmmmmm.'"

 

Lisa said, "It makes sense then, that in cross-cultural situations, we shouldn't be so quick to consider the 'yes' response as the definitive response to our queries.  Too many people make that mistake. 'Yes,' is usually not the actual answer, yet rather a 'pause,' or a way of letting us know they understand what we're asking and they are processing the information."

 

Bells went off for me as this revelation resulted in a simple, yet logical, answer to almost all daily challenges.  "Could it be as simple as "Ummmmmmmmm'?" I asked myself.  "Yes!" is my resounding and very Khmer response.

 

I now have a new appreciation of what successful integration into a cross-cultural context involves.  It requires Volunteers to cultivate and use many skills.  Among the most important is listening in context with a purposeful pause, to allow the possibility of nuanced information to break through our typical rushed interpretation of the response from the person with whom we're communicating.

 

We stand a better chance of understanding what's going on if we attend to the cultural pacing of communication, and how that might translate in our own interactions.  This epitomizes listening with our third ear.

 

 

Goals Two and Three a Tunisian Standard: (Unknown Author) In 1962, 13 newly sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteers arrived in the small northeastern African country of Tunisia to serve as architects.  The Volunteers worked collaboratively with their new counterparts to design buildings and other landmarks, eventually transferring their skill set to local Tunisian architects.  Over the next four decades, nearly 2,500 Volunteers went on to work in the country in areas like agriculture, education, health, and community and youth development until the program was closed in 1996.

 

President Barack Obama recently announced the re-opening of a Peace Corps program in Tunisia. The first Peace Corps Volunteer will arrive later this year to work in English language training and youth and skills development.  For many of the Peace Corps pioneers who served in Tunisia, it's exciting that 50 years since the first Volunteers arrived in the country, Volunteers will once again walk the same streets.

 

Roger K Lewis is one of the original Volunteers who served in the only Peace Corps program designed for architects, working as an architect to the Tunisia Ministry of Public Works and Housing in 1964.  "At the time, I and my Peace Corps colleagues did help set a few architectural precedents:  we designed modern buildings that, nevertheless, used traditional materials and construction methods. We also introduced aesthetic motifs that were challenging and new to the Tunisians," he says.

 

While noting that his impact as a Volunteer was felt in many ways beyond his architectural skills, Lewis states, "Perhaps the most enduring and important imprint on Tunisia was made in pursuing the Peace Corps' Second Goal:  living and working directly with Tunisians, enabling them to get to know, learn about, and better understand Americans."

 

Bruce Cohen, who served as a teacher from 1967 to 1969, agrees.  He says an initial case of mistaken identity endeared him to his community.  "They actually thought I was Tunisian.  When I went to the city of Tunis, I would have soldiers sleeping on me, people putting their chickens on my lap and asking me the price of tomatoes and so forth.  If you were tired it could get exasperating, yet if you were ready to be culturally immersed, you always had the opportunity."

 

"I think Tunisians will be anxious to learn and have their young people exposed directly to Americans rather than only hearing about us through the media and for our Volunteers to have that same opportunity," Cohen says, adding, "I'm very excited about the possibility of another opportunity for Americans, through Peace Corps, to be introduced to the Arab world and to see its beauty."

 

InHarmony

- Jaco

J Jacques Fournet II

US Peace Corps Volunteer

Philippines Batch 269

Daro, Dumaguete City

Negros Oriental

NORSU
LCP

Philippines Update #75

Galynn's Visit To The Philippines

Thailand versus Philippines:  We ended our one-month visit with Alana's sister, Galynn, by heading to Thailand for 10 days.  It was interesting; the Thai culture often reminded us of the Philippines and many things were also . . . oh . . . so different.  Here are a few of the highlights.

Time:  Generally, things ran on time.  Just like the Philippines, no one seemed in a rush or determined to get "there" like we've experienced back in the USA and people out in public and on the roads appeared to be peaceful.  "Road Rage" just doesn't seem like a consideration here in the Eastern world.  Unlike the Philippines, things started on time, whether participants were there are not.  If a tour van said they would come to get us at 8am, they were there at 8am.  If a program advertised it would start at noon, it started at noon.

The interesting part is there was resistance on the local people's part to predicting how long activities would take.  When asked, "How long will this cooking class be?" it was common to hear, "A few hours maybe."  Once they got going, the end was in a way . . . unpredictable.

So in general, things ran on time . . . except the trains.  No problem with the trains that had been at the station for hours or overnight waiting, yet many trains would pull into a station, drop passengers off, pick up new passengers, and continue on or head back from where it came from.  Those trains were notoriously late because once the started from their point of origin, there was no accurate prediction of how long it would take to get to it's destination.

Jacques Learning To Chill Out

For instance, we took a 9pm train out of Chiang Mai to Bangkok.  It was coming from Bangkok and turning right around and returning, scheduled to arrive back in Bangkok 11 hours later.  It ended up arriving in Chiang Mai at 10pm, leaving at 10:30pm, and arriving in Bangkok 13 hours later.  I have a lot to learn from time and the way it is perceived, honored, and used in these other non-type 'A' countries.

People:  Much like the Filipinos, the Thai people were mostly small, quiet, and reserved.  I think they are also a shame driven culture because I remember someone saying they would not in general look me in the eyes.  I found this to be true.  Maybe again, it was because we looked like giants in their country.

Street Market In Chiang Mai

They had many markets and roadside booths where they sold hand made items just like in the Philippines yet the quality of the items appeared better.  They seemed to know more about their merchandise I think because they actually produced it instead of ordering from somewhere else, taking items out of a box, and selling them to tourists for profit.

Great Thai Food

Our first night in Thailand was a Sunday in Chiang Mai.  They just happened to have a 20+ square block street market in full swing and it was a blast.  There was any kind of food, knick-knack, musical performance, or clothes you could imagine available.  It was also interesting to experience hundreds of people in the streets stopping in their tracks and launching into dead silence the second they heard their national anthem being played over the street loudspeakers in order to officially open the night market . . . very patriotic people.

Just like the Filipinos, most of the local merchandise was not marked with a price because they are also a people who value bargaining.  Alana got really good at haggling with shop and booth owners.  She heard that it is typical for them to start with a price that is up to 300% higher than what they will take and they didn't mind having tourists pay that if they were not savvy enough to haggle.  After being told the price was 299 baht ($9.64), Alana got me a quality, hand made, button down shirt for 180 baht ($5.81).  That girl is a shopping terror!

I didn't see any poor people!  We were in all types of environments (bus stations, train stations, subways) and in the Philippines we would have run into beggars by the mall as well as on the back streets.  Didn't see any in Thailand.  No one ever asked me for money.  I'm sure, like all parts of the world, they have poor people and I'm not sure where they were.  It's possible I was just living in my tourist bubble.

I also didn't see any men, who identified more with being a woman, in Thailand, called Bayotes or Baklas in the Philippines.  The girls seemed to be girls and the boys seemed to be boys.  At the end of the trip, getting on the plane in Bangkok headed back to Manila was telling when two women (from far away), wearing skimpy outfits, ended up being (from close up) two men.  It appeared they were in Thailand for breast enhancements, which they were excited to show off, along with a dozen shopping bags and flamboyant energy surrounding their entrance to the gate and boarding of the plane.  I found out after I returned to Dumaguete that there is actually a big population of these men in Thailand except they are beautiful, less flamboyant, and difficult to distinguish from other women.

All this being said, the entire trip I kept thinking to myself, "The people here are more similar to Filipino people than different."  Then, at the airport in Manila, as I waited for the plane to Dumaguete, I noticed and felt just how different my Filipino brethren were.  I can't pinpoint exactly what it was . . . it just felt familiar, like when I get on the plane in Houston headed to Lafayette with a bunch of other Cajuns . . . comfortable, familiar, warm, and friendly.

Awesome Veggie Selection

Food:  Thailand seemed to have the same food resources as the Philippines yet they are skilled at putting things together differently.  There was definitely less rice options and more noodles, along with more curry.  Something about the way they cooked and put together dishes felt healthier and Alana claimed every day that the food was much better than the Philippines.  You know me . . . I'm just an eater . . . and I noticed it too . . . a little.

Thai Chef Alana Fournet

They seemed to have the same kind of local food markets and fruit stands as the Filipino people and again their roadside joints were more about skillfully wrapping food in edible leaves than cooking things in sizzling grease.  Alana got the chance to take an afternoon cooking class in Koh Samui and learned some of their well-kept, ancient secrets and recipes so we are in good shape for reproducing some Thai dishes for visitors.

Oh . . . and spicy!  Wow!  In the Philippines, food is cooked with big pieces of Sili (spicy peppers apparently from Thailand) and I can order a dish and eat around them, which leaves a perfect kick in the food.  In Thailand, food is cooked with chopped up hot peppers, which is impossible to eat around.  So in Thailand, it was crucial to order the "not-spicy" version of the meal.

Jacques And Galynn Eating In The Restaurant Train Car

During one of our all night train rides that we almost missed, we ended up in the restaurant car.  We got to drinking local brew and I was h-u-n-g-r-y!  I didn't bother trying to avoid the spiciness of the food and almost went into cardiac arrest a few times.  I've never experienced not being able to see, breath, or move for several minutes because of soup!  Boy I paid for that for the next 36 hours.

Thailand Street Signs . . . In Thai!

Language:  Experiencing the language was very different than living in the Philippines.  Most of the music was in Thai, most of the TV I heard coming from homes and businesses was in Thai, and most of the traffic signs, billboards, and shop signs were in Thai.  If English was included, I was in little tiny letters below the Thai writing . . . I loved it!

Most of the people spoke very little English.  Even in the tourist industry they spoke just enough to get by and interact with us.  We were safe if we used the 50 words they typically knew to take our order or point us to Room 3.  We went to a local eatery one night and a teenage boy confidently approached to take our order.  When Alana asked him a simple question he immediately turned around and went to get his mother.  She wasn't much more helpful in the end.

They seemed to be very proud, comfortable, and confident with their language and culture . . . seemingly different than what we have experienced in the Philippines.

Breathe In . . . Breathe Out

Religion:  Buddha versus JC . . . really from the same clothe in many ways.  Instead of copious Catholic churches, Thailand was abounding with monks, sporting their orange garb, Buddhist monasteries, and golden temples with bells, statues, and dragons (called wats).  The people seemed to be less about guilt and more about the quest for peace.

Alana and I took advantage of a two-hour meditation class put on by Buddhist monks in their home wat in Chiang Mai.  The class started with a question-answer session with a few monks and I was engrossed in learning about their lifestyles and beliefs.  Alana did notice that even though one of them had been a monk for 8 years and the other for 14, they didn't seem to have very deep or extensive answers to questions about why live the way they live or believe the things they believe.  They mainly kept referring back to, "That's the way we've been taught."  Sound familiar?

Two Monks

 Then we got to learn more about and practice meditation.  Wow!  I'm about as ADD as I thought.  Very hard to keep thoughts out of my mind and focus only on my breathing, especially with a construction crew pounding away on a building right outside the wat.  When I finally started to tune that out, it ended up being a very sleep inducing experience.  That is typically how I operate, I'm either going all out or falling asleep.  Practice, practice, practice.

King President Bhumibol Adulyadej

Their seemed to be less corruption in their country (I have no idea if that has anything to do with their spiritual beliefs I just needed somewhere to mention that), which is run under a constitutional monarchy.  They have had a king for the past 55+ years, Bhumibol Adulyadej, and apparently he is the world's longest-serving current head of state and the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history.  I don't really know much about it, just that his picture and videos of him and his wife were everywhere so the people must love him or he has access to a lot of grant money . . . long live the king!

Animals:  There was a stark contrast in the animal scene in Thailand compared to the Philippines.  I didn't see (or hear) any chickens, roosters, pigs, or cows hanging out in people's yards, empty fields, or on the edge of roads.

Water Buffalo Whisperer

There was no indication of a cock fighting culture although we saw on a Kho Samui Island map two Buffalo Fighting Arenas.  Never visited nor inquired about them yet the internet says this local sport was traditionally held as entertainment after the rice harvest and now is a regular gig with sometimes millions of baht changing hands over the course of a day.  Apparently it is a tradition only on Kho Samui.  Their buffalo are what I would call a water buffalo, plentiful in the Philippines (they call them caribou) and used for working fields, of which I didn't see many in Thailand, maybe because they aren't such a rice producing culture.

Good Lookin', Well Fed, Happy, Healthy, Thai Dog

The cats and dogs in Thailand were significantly fewer than the Philippines and the ones I did see looked much healthier.  They had all their hair and appeared well fed.  Just like the Philippines though, the dogs were good at hanging around the roadsides without getting tangled up in traffic.  I even saw a young pup just feet from the highway, watching big trucks roll on past without budging from his sitting position, and not mindlessly stepping into the road to get squished.  Maybe these Thai animals are into meditation also.

Galynn & Alana At Elephant Nature Park

The hands down significant difference in the animal world between the Philippines and Thailand is the existence and use of the Asian elephant.  The elephant is revered and honored in Thailand.  Even though it was often said that the country was built on the backs of elephants and they are the symbol of the nation, we also became painfully aware of the fact that 50 years ago there were over 100,000 of them and today only around 2,500 remain, mostly because of lack of forest that they were prominent figures in helping to log.

Galynn Feeding Mae Kaew

With all this in mind, we went the elephant education route.  We paid more than double the money NOT to ride an elephant.  The scores of other tours included a one hour elephant ride (much of it on concrete), a half hour ox-drawn cart ride, buffet lunch, river rafting on traditional bamboo rafts, visit to the local Karen Hill People's tribe, heck, I think some even threw in a zipline experience for the American and European adrenaline junkies.

We saw the concrete and dirt facilities for those tours on our way further up the mountain to the Elephant Nature Park & Rescue Center (www.elephantnaturepark.org) where all 34 elephant residents there had been rescued from sometimes decades of abuse and deadly environments.  Many of them were blind and cripple in some manner and most of them were 60-80 years old and had worked decades in the logging (legal and illegal) and trekking industries in Thailand.

Time For Mae Kaew's Bath

Getting A Closer Look

Adopted Baby Hope Leading The Way To Baths

Hope's Group's Afternoon Snack

Both of those industries typically treat the elephant more like livestock in the way they 'break' and maintain them, using them mostly as a tool to make money.  We learned tons from the 2+ hours of documentaries we watched that day, as well as were in awe when we got to participate in feeding them, bathing them , and watching them socialize in as normal of a natural environment as possible.  We learned most of their stories and I personally walked away with a few more heroes in my life :-)  It was an inspiring and moving experience.

Infrastructure:  Thailand must be a country with more resources and I bet it is tons easier to build and maintain infrastructure in a country that does not have over 7000 islands (the Philippines), because the infrastructure was modern, well kept, and reliable, much like the USA.  We didn't experience any brownouts (loss of electricity) while in Thailand and their power lines didn't seem disorganized or scary, like in the Philippines.

Public toilets were generally working and clean.  I only saw one man during our stay peeing in public, a common daily occurrence in the Philippines.  The sidewalks and public spaces were clean.  Trashcans were everywhere.  The morning after the huge street market in Chiang Mai there wasn't a piece of trash to be found.  At one point riding the train Alana turned to me and said, "I just saw four trashcans in a hundred meter stretch on the road next to the railway."

I couldn't find money dropped in the streets anywhere!  The roads were well built and well maintained and the highways were wide and big with many lanes, lines, and landscape, again, much different than the rough and rugged Philippines.

The only unnerving part of much of the transportation was that they drove on the left side of the road.  I can't tell you how many times it looked to me like there was a runaway vehicle because there was no one at the wheel.  Alana kept getting in the driver's side of our taxis and vans and one time it looked like she was determined to drive the bus.

There was not nearly as much construction going on in Thailand, which in the Philippines could be the sign of a young developing nation.  The few construction crews I saw looked like they were working with much more sophisticated tools and machinery than what I've seen in the Philippines.  It was comforting though to see a huge building going up totally surrounded by bamboo scaffolding.  Now that reminded me of Filipinos technology.

Innovative Bamboo Technology

Transportation:  While in Thailand, we traveled by foot, elevator, escalator, zipline, scooter, tuk-tuk, car taxi, van taxi, subway, overhead railway, bus, ferry, train, and plane.  They didn't have any colorful jeepneys like in the Philippines and I have to admit that I missed the character of such vehicles and the way the jeepney transportation operates.

Cold Cold Train Rides

Like I mentioned before, most everything was efficient and on time, with the exception of some of the trains.  We had a 36-hour train experience from northern mountain city of Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then Bangkok to the mid-southern island called Kho Samui.  It was cold!  It was common for temperatures on long bus and train rides to drop down to 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahreneit) and not one person would complain or ask for it to be changed.  I figure they enjoyed the cold when they could get it and I wasn't going to play "entitled tourist" and rob them of their "cold time."

Similarly to the Philippines, public transportation in general was cheap and the tuk-tuk and taxi drivers always worked to con and overcharge us.  Alana stayed in Thailand a few extra days with Galynn so I took the bus from Kho Samui to Bangkok. When the bus arrived in Bangkok a very nice gentleman was happy to give me all sort of information about how the only way to the airport was to take a 450 baht ($14.52) taxi ride to the skyway train then a 40 baht ($1.29) skyway ride to the airport, which apparently was another 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) away.

He survived my barrage of questions about, "How do people get to the airport if they don't have 450 baht? Isn't there a subway or bus or shuttle van? Don't a lot of people go from this bus terminal to the airport?"  Finally, after much scrutiny, I asked where the taxi stands were and he kindly offered to walk me there.  He walked me to an abandoned lot next to the bus station and proceeded to open the door of HIS taxi for me.  I said, "You are the taxi driver?  I'm not getting in your taxi!  You are the one who was giving me all the information.  What if you were lying to me to get my money?"

I calmly walked away and ignored all his explanations and further warnings of how difficult it was to get to the airport.  I went straight to an information booth (why hadn't I done that to start with?) and they pointed and walked me to the shuttle van that cost 35 baht ($1.13).  I wanted to find that taxi driver and say, "Shame on you!"

The shuttle van ended up meandering the Bangkok highway system for 45 minutes (45 minutes) and went from Bangkok's west bus terminal to Bangkok's east bus terminal.  When I asked the van driver how to get to the airport he just pointed to the terminal.  I went in, searched around, unsuccessfully asked a few people how to get to the airport, no one knew (Kriminy!  Doesn't anyone go from the bus terminal to the airport!), and finally a nice man behind a ticket counter told me I had to take a taxi!

The taxi driver outside wanted 500 baht ($16.13) yet finally agreed on the meter as I walked away.  After another 45 minute (45 minutes) ride, a 70 baht ($2.26) toll road fee, and the 230 baht ($7.42) taxi meter fee I was finally at the airport.  Yeah . . . you can do the math . . . even though the trip probably took an extra hour . . . I saved a whole 155 baht ($5).  Supertourist I am . . . don't I feel like the fool . . . such is the life :-)

SUPERTOURIST!

InHarmony,

- Jaco

J Jacques Fournet II

US Peace Corps Volunteer

Philippines Batch 269

Daro, Dumaguete City

Negros Oriental

NORSU

LCP