Angkor Wat Area, Cambodia

Dear Friends,

I wish I'd thought to close my eyes in the photo above.  That way, you would have mistaken my profile for that of the Serene Buddha, right?

I've just returned from Siem Reap, Cambodia, where I spent two days touring the temple complexes of Angkor, and two days faffing around in town. I had joked on Facebook, prior to the trip, that I would discover there my inner Lara Croft,  since Tomb Raider was filmed in the Ta Prohm temple. While apparently I don't have one after all (never having been a gamer, and having found the movie too silly to sit through), I defy anyone of my generation not to feel a bit like Indiana Jones while clambering around these jungle temples:

The true inner self that I discovered on this trip, however, was my "foreign correspondent" alter ego.  I was a full month behind on my travel journal, and I had many postcards to write (since that is a medium surprisingly scarce in Bangkok--one can't even find postcards in the airport).  So I spent significant time sitting in bars and cafés, on wicker furniture, under ceiling fans and terrace awnings, alternating between caffeine and cocktails, writing away.  I'm a foreigner and I was working on my correspondences, so that counts as being a "foreign correspondent," right? The aesthetic certainly fit, although I thankfully wasn't in a war zone, like journalists were back in the day.

Below is a photo of a bullet hole (center left) in Angkor Wat itself.  Thanks, Pol Pot.

Here I am on the causeway approaching Angkor Wat, practicing my Wonder-Woman pose:

Below are two photos that I posted together on Facebook, with the caption, "Two spiky creatures whom one might not expect to find in a 1000 year old temple complex in Cambodia: one that looks like a stegosaurus, and one who looks like Dr. Fiona Murphy."

My friend LH commented, "You could be twins!!"

Well, no one would ever mistake me for an herbivore, but there are some similarities.

LH: "You and the half naked lady, not the monster!"

The waist-to-hip ratio is about right. And the celestial nymph depicted in the carving might have eaten the dessert shown below, bought from a roadside stand.  It is sticky rice with coconut, black beans, and some sugar, packet into a bamboo shoot and grilled. Delicious!  And I got to feel like a Panda Bear, peeling away the bamboo to access the deliciousness inside.  

This trip of a lifetime was enhanced 1000% by my amazing tour guide, Chhouk Tong Vatey, of "Angkor Explore" tours.

(Click here for her contact information, and her review page "Trip Advisor")

Cambodia had such a terrible stretch in the second part of the 20th century, but being at Angkor and seeing how deep the roots of this civilization are, witnessing how much a part of daily life religion is to Cambodian people, and appreciating Vatey's intelligence and patience and kindness in our two days together, all these things help put the dark history into perspective.  

Vatey took me 60 kilometers off the beaten path, to Beng Mealea, the most ruined temple in Cambodia, one that has been taken over by jungle and vines.  The area around this complex, unlike those in and around Angkor, was a stronghold for Khmer Rouge forces, so the land was heavily mined, and the reverberations from the explosions destabilized the temple and reduced much of it to rubble.

To hell with the Khmer Rouge. The "foreign influence" that they tried so hard to root out is now pouring money and opportunity into Cambodia,  and the culture, education, and intellectual life of the Cambodian people, that they attempted to eradicate, is only getting stronger. 

Laundry and Lizards, Massages and Nicknames

Dear Friends,

Time flies when you’re having fun. Specifically, time between blog posts flies when you’re learning the ropes of a new . . . OK new everything.

Many things in Bangkok are very fun.  On the “less than fun” list is that it is hard to keep my things clean (and I include my own body under the category of “things”--sweat, sunscreen, bug spray . . . yeah).  

Anyone who has lived in South or Southeast Asia nods in wry recognition when I talk about adding “Dettol” (a serious disinfectant) to the laundry water, to make sure that whatever yuck needs to be killed will be, but that doesn’t help with the stains that never come out.   This is because the clothes washers here aren’t very good. They are top loaded but don’t have agitators, and they don’t use hot water. Also, there aren’t clothes dryers (at least where I live. I assume it’s different downtown) and everything is air dried. So between those last two, clothing gets stretched out quickly.  My clothes are feeling shapeless and sloppy already, and it’s only been 2.5 months.

It’s also hard to keep the house clean because of . . . you got it from the title . . . lizards.  No one I know has any success in keeping little gekko-type lizards out of our houses.  “At least they eat mosquitoes,” everyone says philosophically. “But they poop on the floors and the walls,” everyone adds in weary resignation.  These are predictable exchanges.  And there aren’t mosquitoes in the house if one is careful, so the plus column is artificial.

Yes, that’s right, one can be minding one’s own business inside one’s own home and see a little lizard scurry across the floor. Or wall.  I know they must be terrified in seeing me, and I just act like we are playing a game: “OK, I’m going to pretend that you’re not there, and you pretend that I can’t see you, and we’ll both be fine. Please don’t poop in my house. And tell you friends not to do so either.”   

Better lizards than snakes any day of the week. I haven’t seen a snake yet, and will happily go through my entire time in Thailand (and everywhere else, for that matter) without doing so.  

My townhouse is at the end of the row, giving me a whole wall of windows and French doors overlooking the neighborhood park, which is great. It’s green and lovely, I can see and hear the fountain, and in the afternoons and evenings all the neighborhood kids and young families are playing there, which is cheerful.  The location also makes my side yard particularly inviting to cats, and I’ll often look outside to see a cat slinking through. Or not even slinking, sometimes walking through like they own the place. Cats.

My yard in Arkansas also tended to attract feline visitors, my thought upon seeing one of them would be either the neutral, “Oh, a cat,” or the generically positive, “Oh, hello Kitty Cat.  How are you, today?”  Here, my first thought is, “Oh good. If there’s a cat, there’s no chance that there’s a snake.”  

I’m not sure my logic is unassailable on that one, but I’ll stick with it as long as I can.

By now, I’ve gotten used to the laundry situation and I don’t think about it that much, but a few weeks ago, it was really bothering me.  I was able to shake that off one Saturday when I biked up to the my neighborhood’s main drag to get a pedicure, and on my way home, with my little toesies looking fresh and pretty and my feet feeling buffed and pampered, I ran into a friend and stopped to chat.

She was on her way to get a massage, and she invited me along.  Massage is such a part of life in Thailand that even in my little neighborhood there are about 5 spas, and those are just the ones I’ve noticed. Surely there are many more on side streets.  Once doesn’t need to make an appointment; one can just show up, so that’s not as weird as it sounds, that I could just join her on the spur of the moment.

So I had a great massage, and afterwards, we decided to pick up some lunch. At the end of the afternoon, I did the math.  I got a pedicure, a hour-long massage, and lunch, all for the equivalent of $13.  And I also enjoyed a nice chat with a friend, because this is a place where people often socialize casually.  I love that.

I get between one and two massages a week, at 200 bhat (about $6) for an hour, or 300 bhat (less than $10) for two hours.  It’ll take a lot of massage over a long period of time to break up the knots I’ve got, but this is the place to do it.  

When considering that, the laundry and lizard situations don’t really seem like such a tough trade-off.  

To change subjects, I wanted to say something about Thai names.  Many of my students have Western nicknames, which makes things much easier on teachers, since it’s always hard to remember a room full of students’ names, and with very long, totally unfamiliar Thai names, it would be truly daunting for us Farang.  

These Western nicknames can be either recognizable first names (“Mary,” “Dan,” “Junior,” etc.), or they can be more fanciful adjectives or nouns, which I find charming.  “Earth,” “Proud,” and “Best” are students of mine.

I have started teaching Sunday School, and I have an adorable set of 10-year-old triplets named “Sing,” “Sang,” and “Song.”  The words themselves are easy to remember.  Assigning the right name to the right child is not yet one of my proficiencies.  

Then again, I’m having issues with my own name, here. Because the Thai government is so bureaucratic, all of my paperwork had to match.  For instance, when I was still in the U.S. preparing for the trip, I needed to change the name on my Teaching Certificate from “First + Last Name” to “First + Middle + Second Middle + Last Name,” since that is the name on both my Passport and my Berkeley Diploma.  

The end result is that my “name” in Thailand has become my full legal name.  On all of my school paperwork, at any doctor’s office, in any hotel, on the Ministry of Education’s paperwork, on my Work Permit--it’s all the whole shebang. That means having to write a lot of signatures of a really long name.  

Yet I’ve also acquired a short name, also unintentionally. When I give my name to be called (say, at a taxi stand, for example), I abbreviate it, with the goal of making life easier on the other person.  Surely “Fi” is easier than my given name for a foreigner to hear and write down, no?

No.

If the person speaks any English, it always comes back to me as “Free.”

My Thai name:  “Free.”

I’m truly going native.

"Jai Yen": cool heart

Dear Friends,

In my post of 2 weeks ago, I was talking about what a safety-minded dame I am, even in the context of having quit my tenure-track professorship to move across the world to Bangkok.  To follow up on that theme, I seem to be the only person in Thailand who cares much about traffic safety.

People here don't use seat belts.

Vehicles here don’t even have seat belts, except in the front seat.

Not even on the school vans.

When I am in a taxi with others, I will ride in the back so as to be able to talk with friends. But when I am by myself, I always take the driver rather aback by climbing into the front seat to sit with him--the shotgun seat is the only one with a seatbelt.  

Likewise with bike helmets.  When I tried to buy one, I couldn’t find one large enough for my head; they were all in children’s sizes (and one store wouldn’t even sell me a bike mirror, insisting that they were only for children).  I have to have a sense of humor about the fact that my eyeglasses are “Barbie Doll” brand.  That and “Hello Kitty” were the ones that would fit my teeny tiny little head. If I couldn’t get my western hips into a Thai accessory, that would be one thing, but my head?? When I finally found an adult helmet and bought it, it felt so cheap and useless that I ended up borrowing an American one from a colleague who wasn’t using hers.  (Side note to my mother: yes, “bike helmet” is on the list I am compiling of things I’ll ask you to bring me when you come to visit this winter)

This brings me to the next surprising thing: Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Australians all seem get off the plane and say “Woo Hoo!  No more of those pesky safety standards!” I’ve grown accustomed to seeing entire Thai families all piled onto one scooter, kids balanced complacently, everyone having a good time.  But I still do a double-take when I see all my colleagues riding scooters, bicycles, and even motorcycles without helmets.  Then again, the result is that there was a helmet available for me to borrow on a long term basis, so I’m benefiting from this.  I suppose that everyone who is drawn to international teaching has a cowboy or cowgirl streak to some degree, but mine doesn’t extend as far as riding without a helmet or a seatbelt.  

My friend AK, who has traveled extensively in India, gave me the excellent advice that when I am a motor vehicle passenger and I find myself alarmed by the driver’s total non-adherence to traffic laws, I should try to think of myself as being in a chase scene in an adventure movie. That way, I can try to enjoy a death-defying ride instead of just being terrified that I’m going to be one of Bangkok's many traffic accident victims.

To be fair, I haven’t experienced anything like the kind of life-threatening journeys that she described (and don't wish to do so).  I’m always just bemused that Bangkok drivers, as a matter of course, will turn a one-lane road into a two-lane road by driving on the shoulder, or drive in the oncoming lane for half a block or so if it’s convenient.  You get the idea.

Here’s the amazing thing: as congested as the traffic is in Bangkok, and as idiosyncratic as the drivers are, nobody honks.  It is considered rude.  I live in a gated neighborhood, and on occasion I have rung my bike bell when approaching the gates, when I get the impression that the guards haven’t noticed me.  I have been in suspense one too many times about whether the gate is going to open or whether I’ll need to brake suddenly, but I’m reconsidering this practice.  I’ll need to check with a colleague more familiar with Thailand than I.  What is practical at home may be deemed terribly aggressive here.

Regarding the astonishing combination of bad traffic, eccentric driving, and no honking, one of the values that Thai culture highly esteems is jai yen, to have a “cool heart.”  It helps maintain the smooth workings of daily social interaction if people avoid feeding their hot-headedness, or, to give a literal definition, hot-heartedness (jai ron means “hot heart”).  The flip side is that this can lead to passive aggressiveness, or conflict-avoidance in other unproductive ways, but on the whole, I’m a big fan of the concept, and trying to be a novice practitioner.  To have a cool heart--it’s a good goal.

Another Thai cultural attitude that I’m trying to adopt is that of mai pen rai, which translates as “don’t worry,” or “it doesn’t matter.”  It’s an expression people use to shake off disagreement or aggravation.  Thais are famously tolerant, and part of this is that they cultivate an un-begrudging approach to engagement.  The attitude is that most things aren’t worth getting upset about.  Again, there can be a downside to this mentality (some things are worth getting upset about), but there’s a lot to be said for it.  

In closing, I’m attaching some photos of myself, from a friend’s birthday celebration.  This is a group of my coworkers, and we are out at Nest, the rooftop bar at LeFenix Hotel (and in the blurry shot, looking up at the mirrored ceiling of the elevator).  

And here I am with my buddy AG (fellow newcomer, Psychology and Creative Writing teacher) at the school’s “Welcome Back” party.

It was at a swanky hotel--ice sculpture of the school’s logo and all. The woman in the photo is Sudha, the Deputy Head of School, who hired me, so I’m a big fan.  

The Belated Photos from the Last Post

Bangkok's decoration in celebration of the Queen's Birthday

Alleyway in Chinatown

This is a Buddhist Temple, but you can see the Daoist influences in the Chinese figures in the front rows of the altar below.  In the back row, the Buddhas are arranged both to tell a story, and also to align with the Hindu astrological days of the week (the two "extra" are Rahu and Ketu). A visitor to the wat then makes an offering into the bowl that matches the figure who is in the position of his or her day of birth, so I made an offering in front of the "Friday/Venus" figure.  I appreciate what an inclusive religion Buddhism is.

River View from Hotel

In case you were wondering whether "anything goes" in Bangkok, apparently there are some activities that are discouraged in taxicabs, as you can see from this sticker.

And to my friend DE, who asked for a picture of me eating a scorpion, it'll be a long wait.  But here are some photos of fried insects for sale. The opportunity to take photos of said bugs was also for sale, which makes you know it was for tourists  

Signing off from Krung Thep,

Fiona

Krung Thep: "City of Angels, Great City of Immortals"

Dear Friends,

Bangkok's official title, in Pali and Sanskrit, goes on for quite awhile. I just gave the first few passages of its long name above; the abbreviation "Krung Thep" is the Thai name for the city.

I’ve been here for 3.5 weeks, which is hard to believe in that it seems both like such a short time and such a long time.  Asians are comfortable with paradox, and I suppose I’m embracing that mentality.

Monday will start the 3rd week of classes, which is a wildly misleading number.  The first day of classes was Thursday, August 7th, and then the we got a 4-day weekend, because the following Monday was Mother’s Day (in honor of the Queen), and Tuesday was the Queen’s birthday.  So the term started with a 2-day week followed by a 3-day week.  This is a civilized system.

Most of my colleagues went off traveling over the holiday, but I myself went to city center Bangkok, to be a tourist.  My school and neighborhood are in the boondocks of the city, which makes for clean air (in a notoriously polluted city) and a serene environment, but also for a feeling of isolation.  One can get astonishingly good rates on gorgeous hotel rooms, so it isn’t extravagant for a middle-class gal to go stay for a few nights in a 5 star hotel in what is technically her own city.  I will try to make a point of getting into Bangkok proper for a night or a weekend at least once a month, so I don’t get too narrowly-focused here in Min Buri (the district where the Ruamrudee International School is located).

I am having trouble synching my Android phone to my Mac computer (you’re getting the theme, right, that tech issues are not my strong suit?), so until I get that figured out, I can’t upload the photos that I took over my holiday.  My friends therefore will have here the “thousand words” and not the “picture” that ideally substitutes for them, in the famous formulation.  

I had contacted a Facebook friend who is a longtime Bangkok resident, LR, to ask if he would like to meet in person, while I was staying in his neighborhood. He and his girlfriend invited me to join their Saturday excursion to take another couple on a tour of the tea shops of Chinatown.  

It was so great to meet new people, to hear the insights, tips, and suggestions of Bangkok denizens (the two men were American and German, respectively, and the two women were Thai), and to make some friends who have nothing to do with my job.  

I’m especially sorry not to be able to attach the Chinatown photos here, but I’ll be in Bangkok for several years, so there will be other opportunities.  It was total sensory overload, in a great way (unlike the shopping malls, which are total sensory overload in a jarring way).  

When we took a break from the crowded streets in a delightful, air-conditioned, quiet tea shop (our third on the tour), I brought out my hand-sanitizer, as I habitually do, and offered it around.  The two women and the American each took some, with surprised gestures of “Oh, you do that? How quaint.”  The German just laughed good-naturedly and declined, saying that I was new to the country, and would soon learn not to worry about such things (after getting sick once or twice).  

I definitely seem to care more about sun protection here than anyone else does,  but that can be the case elsewhere, too.  In Arkansas, people thought it was so peculiar that I always wore a hat to protect my skin that they would ask me at night, or indoors, why I wasn’t wearing my hat, since apparently that was such a thing for me.  People considered that to be a deep eccentricity of mine, and commented on it constantly.  I still seem to be the only person around who wears a hat (those of us with Irish and German ancestors fall somewhere on the spectrum between vampire and albino, and therefore can’t be cavalier), and I daresay I’ll continue to be someone who also pulls out the hand sanitizer.  For all that my new friend anticipated my developing a devil-may-care attitude to match his own, I’ll emphasize the word “new” in the above description.  He doesn’t know me very well!  Germ protection,  skin protection, bug spray . . . I try to be prepared.  

Which brings me to my next point: I did register with the State Department’s “Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP),” so that they have all of my contact information in case of emergency.  (Everyone should do this when traveling abroad:  https://step.state.gov/step/).  Three years ago, RIS was closed for 5 weeks due to bad flooding in Bangkok, and the school evacuated all the teachers to the beach for that time.  People taught their classes via the web and made the best of a weird situation.  Should anything happen that would require me to leave town, I’ve been assured that the school would handle everything. And should I find myself feeling unsafe and thinking that regardless, I should take steps on my own, I live near the airport and can hop a plane to Singapore, or wherever, and sort out from there what my next move should be.

A dame who always ventures forth with sunscreen, a hat, and antibacterial gel isn’t one to take serious risks, even though she’s enjoying this great adventure of living abroad.  

During my downtown Bangkok weekend, I stopped in to one of the English-language bookstores (the only part of the mall that I truly enjoyed), and gleefully perused the “South East Asia” shelves of the Travel section.  In mid-October, I have to attend an IB training workshop in Jakarta, and I was happy to realize that it takes place the weekend before our week-long October break, so I can stay in Indonesia with my plane fare paid-for and enjoy a real visit before returning home.  (When I mention this to co-workers, every single one responds, “So you’ll go to Bali?”  Message received; I guess that’s the thing to do.)  It felt so exciting to be reading about all the places to which I will travel during my time here in SE Asia.

And to return to my point above about hotel prices, one can do these things on a teacher’s salary, here.  Stay in great hotels, go on international trips, head to beach resorts on every long weekend, take taxis everywhere, eat out as often as one likes, get massages/foot rubs/pedicures on a regular basis, etc.  It’s a strangely luxurious life, yet one that is sometimes combined with a vexatious absence of Western comforts--clothes dryers, hot water heaters, and in my case, an indoor kitchen!  My townhouse’s big drawback is that it has a traditional Thai kitchen in a nook out the back door. I insisted that the landlord put in a glass door, to seal it off from bugs, etc, and he seemed surprised by the request.  The newly installed door does make it much better, but all the same, it’s hard for Westerners to imagine such a thing: a lovely, clean, modern, new home without an indoor kitchen.  It feels like camping, except with a roof over my head.

When faced with such things, I’m trying to adopt an open-minded perspective: “Oh, that’s one of the ways they do things here?  How interesting!  I did come half-way around the world to try new things, so it’s good, in a way, that I’m not just reproducing familiar experiences.”  Sometimes it’s an effort, and I have to work my way out of what can be my default mode: “This sucks. Why don’t they do things the right way, the real way, the way we do it back in America?”

Because it’s a different country/culture/continent, and I’m here to expand my horizons. And boy, am I ever!

Bangkok Arrival

Dear Friends,

I arrived in Bangkok on the night of July 22, after a logistically perfect but physically arduous trip.  21 hours of travel, gate to gate, is 21 hours of travel—in commercial.

And it’s been non-stop activity since then.  

If I wait until I can write a polished blog post, it’ll never get done, so to quote my friend BSK, “good is good, but done is better.”

In abbreviated form, here are some of my first impressions of Bangkok:

Thai people truly live up to their reputations, and are noticeably gracious.  One of the secretaries at RIS, in helping print out a map of the neighborhood, said, “Thai people are very nice. They will help you if you need it.”  I’ve lived in a variety of places, and in each one, I’m certain that people would help out a lost stranger.  But to speak so categorically (which several people have done here, in describing their compatriots’ likelihood of offering assistance) is not something that would ever occur to me.

The food is wonderful (fresh fruits, grilled chicken, noodle dishes), but the irony is that I’ve had very little appetite.  For the first week, I ate only two meals a day, and even now, in many instances I feel full after only a few bites.  It’s so hot and humid that nature provides an appetite suppressant equivalent to gastric bypass.  Since the body doesn’t need to work to keep itself warm, however, I doubt that many Farang (Americans/Westerners) lose weight here.    

Yes, Bangkok is tropical, but the heat isn’t as oppressive as I’d feared it would be.  So far.  We newcomers have been told that we’ve been extremely fortunate with the weather that greeted our arrival.

My years in Arkansas prepared me for how heavy the rain showers can be, but a South East Asian storm is something to behold.  I got caught in one while out on my bicycle, and I felt as though I were underwater, I was so drenched. 

It’s great to be in a large cohort of new teachers, many of whom are veteran international educators, and almost all of whom are very experienced travelers.  

A blog isn’t a journal, but since I named mine after Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, here’s the confessional part, so it doesn’t all sound like: “Wow, everything is so exotic!” I was only intellectually prepared for how alienating it is to be in a place in which I don’t have any access to the language, whether aurally, verbally, or visually (the script is lovely to look at, but is impenetrable to me).  Google Translate is a great tool, but it can only get you so far.  I’m an enthusiastic pantomimer, and I readily and regularly impose on that famous Thai kindness by asking strangers for help (or whether they speak any English, or both), but until I take “Survival Thai” (and after, too, no doubt), the language barrier when I’m out in the city is tremendous.

And this isn’t very P.C. to say, but I’ve never been to a developing country before, and the adjustment has been harder for me than it has been for my fellow newcomers who have traveled much more broadly than I.  

One quickly adjusts to seeing the very wealthy areas and the very poor areas in close proximity to one another.  My school, and the immediate neighborhood in which I’ve rented a (modest) house, is in an upscale area, but where the roads go over the klongs (canals), one can see from the bridges extensive developments of shanty towns along the waterways.  

There are tons of stray dogs (called soi dogs, which essentially means “backstreet dogs”). Elsewhere, this would be terrifying (and I do stay on guard), but unless they pack up, the soi dogs seem to live up to this Buddhist country’s reputation for mellowness.

Which brings me to the political situation: thankfully, I don’t even notice it.  On the main road from Min Buri (the district in which I live and work) to downtown, one very occasionally passes a military checkpoint, and when I say “passes,” I mean “passes by,” not “passes through.”

I’ll address being a tourist in future posts, but for now, here is a picture of me and some new friends in the back of a Tuk Tuk taxi in downtown Bangkok.  You only do it when you’re a tourist, and maybe only once. But it was fun.

Why "Fiona's Lasso of Truth"?

I chose the title for this blog when I was looking for an appropriate totem, something to represent the mojo I'm channeling to make the big move to Bangkok in 10 days.   Since my heroine, Wonder Woman, is "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, as strong as Hercules, and as swift as Hermes," her iconic tool, the lasso of truth, came to mind.

And what good would a travel blog be if I myself did not feel a compulsion to tell the truth?  

Right now, the truth is that the logistics are overwhelming (deciding what to pack, getting a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, realizing that Google Maps won't let me save a map of Bangkok for offline use, etc. etc.).

But the prospect of teaching in Bangkok is mega mondo exciting, too.  

Best always,

Fiona