A busy few days

We have been pretty busy lately with program and travels to the northern regions of the country. One day was mostly spent in an airport, but even that was educational because there were several monks and Muslims traveling.
We are now in Chiang Rai province and have met with government officials and been to see an amazing project at Doi Tung that was started by the Princess Mother. I plan to write more about that later.
Tomorrow we head to our home stays at the village nearby. I don’t know much about the families except that they are in agriculture. Katie and I are staying with a family of four adults and two boys. We don’t have any Thais staying with us so we will need to rely on our dictionaries to help us out.
I think we get to ride an elephant on Monday too.
Since Internet access is limited, and or more costly as we head away from the cities, I will not be posting as often. I will try to catch up once we get to Chiang Mai or back to Bangkok.

Lost in translation

Almost everyone in our group has been trying to learn a few Thai words and phrases, hoping to make communication during our home-stays that much easier. I had a dictionary but left it on the plane so I’m in search of another. Many in our group had purchased a Lonely Planet book so we’re at least all working from the same text in that regard.

The language is tonal and voice inflection really matters — it can change the meaning of a word. For example, you could say suay –  beautiful or ugly depending on whether you raise your voice for the last syllable.

Montanee has been doing simultaneous translation for our trip.

But my favorite phrase in the translations so far has been when Ubon (she’s the translator in the counting video) told us at the Benjarong pottery shops to “make yourself small.” What she wanted to convey was that we couldn’t spread out and needed to be careful not to knock the pottery over. But ever since then, when we’ve had to fit into tight spaces or squish together for another group photo, I’ve been telling everyone that I’m trying to make myself small.

I’ll share a few phrases. Note that the spelling won’t be accurate because the sounds and letters aren’t easily matched between Thai and English. I’ve noticed that many of the Thais hesitate for a moment when I ask them to spell a word or name in English. Our translator Montanee says its because some of the sounds fall in between English letters, like g and k.

• huay — hungry; huay ma (rising) is very hungry.
• im — full; im ma, very full.
• sawatdee — hello.
• kap kuhn ka is thank you; kap khun ma ka is thank you very much.
• wai nam is swimming (sounds likes why)
• neat noi — a little bit
• gai is chicken and kai is egg.

As I listen to the Thai speak, I can pick out a few words or sounds that are being repeated but I can’t exactly tell what they mean. I do know that Ban means village and that it’s the first word in each village name, so instead of saying Jefferson City, in Thai it would be city Jefferson, for example.

So when the Thais said we’d been to Ban He and were having lunch on the Menam She, I said that would be easy to remember because it was He city and She river. They thought it funny.

I’ll definitely keep practicing, but at least I can read the menus at the Thai restaurants now.

Learning to count

I don’t know exactly why but I thought it would be useful to count to 10 in Thai for the trip. So, I listened to a CD from the library and downloaded some language translation apps to my iPhone.

The Thai participants learned that I could count and that some of us have learned prhases so we’ve been having periodic language lessons aboard the bus and during dinner. Each day on the bus, the Americans have to count off to make sure we’re all here, so we’ve been trying it in Thai, too.

Our translator Ubon helped us with that lesson the other day. Here’s a little video clip but I’m going to preface it by saying, I’m not good at taking video and we were on a bus at the time, so it’s likely a little shaky.

Papaya Salat

I’ve written about the food and crazy snacks in earlier posts, but if I had to chose one universally Thai dish, it would be the papaya salad.
It’s been served to us at nearly every meal. Some of the versions are spicier than others, some more sweet. I think it’s sort of like coleslaw or potato salad in the Midwest in that everyone knows how to make it, but family recipes are different.
On one of our bus trips outside Bangkok, Bum, a youth worker here, and Chalalai decided we needed to learn a children’s song about papaya salat (the Thai spelling of salad). So here they are singing it for us.
*Please note that the shaking in the video is compounded by a bumpy bus ride through the city and this is an unedited video.

Issan region and culture

On Sunday, we left Bangkok for the Issan region of Thailand. It’s the area near the borders of Laos, Cambodia, China and Myanmar or Burma.

The food here is much different than what we’ve had in Bangkok so far. Somewhat spicier but also more chicken and pork and less seafood, though we’ve been served a whole fried fish at nearly every meal. Our hotel even has sushi  available for breakfast.

We spent most of the past days at Khon Kaen University, seeing the programs at the college of nursing and agriculture. Today, Tuesday, we visited two villages in the province to learn more about how they’re training farmers and working on community development and sustainable agriculture.

On Monday evening we were treated to a wonderful dinner of Issan food — some of it so spicy that we Americans couldn’t finish it all — but delicious nonetheless. During the dinner, the school of fine and applied arts performed traditional Thai music and dancing.

I took video but should warn you that the quality isn’t stellar. It will give you an idea of what the songs and music were like. Each performer is a student at the university.

This video is a short clip, but more will come later. We were entertained with both dancing and musical instruments of the Issan region.

Demonstrations at Don Han

We visited two villages in Khon Kaen village today.

At Don Han, we learned about some farming training that the village leaders offer in connection with the university. What I’ve learned so far is that each village really tries to use as many byproducts as possible, to make their work most efficient.

Woimen chopped bananas and starfruit to add to molasses from sugar cane and turn it all into compost for their garden fields.Then the village head leader showed us about some insect repellents that they make from 10 different plants that grow nearby. The repellent is used on the farm/garden fields in the village.

Ting Li, who is from a village north of this province, shows us how it's done.

After that, we were shown the garden fields, where the work is done by people who benefit from the training on crop production. I saw many, many rows of cabbage, some cucumbers or squash plants and broccoli.

We made a loop back to the site where we began our tour, past the frog cages and some chickens and ducks.

It was fascinating to hear about how these villages are trying hard to keep their residents living here and not migrating to Bangkok for jobs.

Apparently the number of farmers in Thailand has dropped from 70 percent of the population about 10 years ago to only 49 percent of the population today, according to faculty at the College of Agriculture. Demonstration programs, working with farmers and villages for training programs and such are part of the mission of the university to help improve farming production in the country.

The village leader shows us how to make a trench for planting.

This was a really productive visit for many in our group because of their work in Extension back in Missouri and in gardening and education.

Communicating worldwide

Welcome to family and friends of the other GLE participants. I’ve gotten several comments from many of you.

I must admit that the photo quality and information is limited at the moment because we’re constantly moving and learning new things. It makes it hard to post with lots of regularity, but I’m trying my best.

We do love hearing from you — it’s fun to see what people are saying about our trip and good to hear from family and friends in the states.

My intention is to go back and revisit each day of our trip and add commentary and information about what we learned. I think the schedule is posted in much earlier drafts, but I’ll try to add it as a separate page tonight.

– Laura