Richer or poorer

My world was terribly small when I was a child. When I was twelve we studied South America in geography classes. I remember having to learn how to label the various countries on a blank map and doing something clever with contour lines to show the height of various peaks… It meant absolutely nothing to me. I never got turned on to geography and preferred to tour the world in my head, from the sofa, through reading.

One piece of the South American homework found me researching rubber trees. I found a picture in an ancient, musty encyclopaedia that had belonged to one of my grandfathers of a rubber tree and I copied it into my exercise book. It meant little to me except that I can still see the picture in my head today.

Two years ago I spent a little under a week at a community based tourism project, Andaman Discoveries, which grew out of the devastation of the 2004 tsunami. I was still brim full of the arrogance of the Westerner, despite having lived in Thailand for two years. I had thought I was the richer...

My second homestay was in Tung Nang Dam village. The only way to the village is by boat through mangroves. When the boat dropped us we walked across a long, narrow pier with random planks missing and then through cashew orchards, bamboo and rubber plantations until we arrived at the village. By this time in Thailand I was au fait with rubber trees - they are a regular view when travelling outside Bangkok - but I was still fascinated by them. On my last evening I told my host family the story of copying the picture of a rubber tree collecting sap from my Granddad’s encyclopaedia.

The following morning was my departure day. However, before we set off to catch the boat the wife of my host called one of their men to come into the rubber plantation next to the house. We walked into the dewy field and she instructed him to cut the rubber tree to show me the sap.

I went away richer and, I hope, with more humility.







































Previous mentions of my adventures with Andaman Discoveries can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

In memory

Today is the anniversary of the 2004 Asian Tsunami.

Son and I walked a mile or so down the beach road to Noppharatthara Beach – Phi Phi Islands National Park. Just off the road, through a winding wooden pathway, is a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois to commemorate the tsunami.

I forgot my purse and we brought no water, so when we got back to the hotel we stopped at the bar for a cold drink. The bartender asked me where we had been to get hot and bothered. I told her we had been down to the memorial ... and then she told me she had been working on Phi Phi Island during the tsunami. She said 'I had to run and run; up a hill.'

You can read about my amazing adventures with Andaman Discoveries here here here here and here which has details of the work that has gone into helping people rebuild their lives in the wake of the tragedy.

Preparation

Next week my children go away on their school residentials. All of the senior school – apart from years eleven and thirteen – go away for five days, leaving the school quiet for mock exams.

Last year I went to Andaman Discoveries which is community based tourism project set up in the wake of the tsunami. This year I’m off to write for five days in Khorat in the Nakhon Ratchasima province. Famous for its silk and stone industries, I might have to take a day trip out to Pak Thong Chai where the best silk cloth is rumoured to originate. The jungle at the nearby Khao Yai – Thailand’s oldest national park – was the backdrop for the film version of Alex Garland’s novel The Beach.

I was scrabbling away for somewhere to go last week, my priorities being:

Relatively cheap
Max half a day’s travel
Mountains in the distance
Internet

It isn’t a rural idyll as it's Thailand's third largest city but it’s a change of scenery and being away gets me out of my regular ‘stuff to do’ mode.

In the meantime, my ‘stuff to do’ list is gigantic as we have to purchase all sorts of things on the kids’ lists of essential items.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." (Take two)

How do I love thee, Fridays? Let me count the ways.

Not being one who works conventionally, I don't normally phew with relief at Friday. Apart from the family being mostly home all day on a weekend, I still potter about doing my artwork, website work, writing articles, planning to write novels and reading. But today, Oh I am glad it's Friday.

I'm not sure why. There are only three weeks of school to go til the end of term ... (we're back to school mid August, so don't go thinking we get three months break!) and I must confess I could do without the 5.45am starts to the day.

I was out last night, which might account for my lethargy. I went to see Sex and the City. I never watched the series *winces at the gasps of disbelief* but it was too good an invite to miss. The British Club in Bangkok had hired a VIP cinema to host a women only viewing of the movie (a couple of men did sneak in; nobody stoned them for being there, but Husband would have killed me for taking him along to it. Pah, no danger of that, this was a Girls Night Out.) The British Club hired the cinema, and then to make up the numbers invited the British Women's Group and the American Women's Group to attend. A glass of wine, a radioactive looking soft drink and rather splendid canapes were served, then coke and popcorn during the movie. The cinema seats recline: feet up and back ... well, back. And you get a blanket, which was just as well because the aircon was blowing a proper gale of about minus something.

I was at the British Club itself earlier in the day for a committee meeting and I managed to wangle an article in their magazine, Outpost, providing it's not too promotional, about my Andaman Discoveries trip - see November 07 for posts about this. However, the deadline is Tuesday! Aaagh. We never heard anything back from the Bangkok Post about my rewritten article, so I'm going to get going on finding somewhere else for that. Now that it's July June (thank you Lane) ... it might be worth thinking about the anniversary...

Anyway, so there I am: glad it's friday.

So, I've got a sick feeling in my tummy tonight.

So, I’ve got a sick feeling in my tummy tonight.

I keep forgetting why I’ve got it and then … I remember.

At lunchtime I tipped a cup of tea on my Blackberry. Oh, my, god, I’m, such, a, f… fu … fool: a clumsy fool.

And, as you’d expect, it’s not behaving quite as it should.

In an attempt to forget my clumsy f***wittery, let me tell you about my day.

This morning I went down to the SCAD (Soi Cats and Dogs) Health Centre. This is one of the charities who have asked me to write for them and this is where the street cats and dogs come to be treated. The main idea is to spay and neuter them, but they nearly always have other bits of treatment that require doing. There were some pitiful dogs there which made me sad … but, that is what SCAD is doing – trying to improve the lives of street cats and dogs.

This afternoon I came home and tipped a cup of tea … but I’m supposed to taking my mind off that, so instead …

I’m going to go back to Andaman Discoveries to show you my ludicrous eco warrior bandana. If you peer you can see the orchid I planted and my name tag.

After I got back to Bangkok I read this in my book:

'Spiders are everywhere, in the forest, in caves, atop mountains, even in your bedroom. Anyone with arachnophobia would not want to shine a torch on a forest floor at night to see the million pinpoints of light reflected in the eyes of the spiders.

'There are spiders that actively hunt and pounce of their prey; there are sedentary spiders which wait in ambush; there are web spinning spiders which construct elaborate traps and there are even flying spiders.'

I was just so glad I got out of there without seeing any large spiders.

Exhausted

For the whole five days of my trip, Khun Tui travels with me. She translates for me because my abysmal Thai is woefully inadequate (unless I want to say ‘turn right here’, ‘go straight’ or ‘how much is it?’) She is always there ready to explain a joke, or inform me of something somebody wants me to know.

I’ve suddenly become passionately interested in my fellow creature: from teeny weeny crabs to singing gibbons. In fact I’m interested in plants too. As a long time lover of cashew nuts, I’m fascinated by the many cashew trees all around me, and simultaneously gutted that I can’t shell cashew nuts with the villagers because it’s the wrong season.

For much of the time Khun Tui volunteers ‘that’s a mudskipper’ or that’s a ‘samet tree’ and I listen and wonder and then forget it and I have to ask her: what did you call that little fishy thing jumping about on the mud? I spend all my time scribbling notes in my orange notebook, trying to learn about the flora and fauna in this beautiful environment. But inevitably I get back to the home stay and I have to ask Khun Tui again ‘what was that tree called?’

Sometimes I ask her ‘what’s that?’ ‘How many years is it between planting a rubber tree and being able to get the sap? Then 'how long will you get sap from it?’ and when she doesn’t know she asks our guide. She tells me about a book back at the office all about the area and I vow to get hold of a copy. (I have). She is full of knowledge, and tirelessly tells me everything she knows.

On our last full day we’re both tired. I am planting orchids for the nursery and a little orchid to go straight into the jungle, and Khun Tui is lying on a hammock watching us and translating for my guide, Khun Noi when sign language no longer works.

I am nervous having seen a tiny, wee, almost microscopic spider in the coconut bowl I’m planting an orchid in. I leap from sitting cross legged into the air, and announce I don’t like spiders, please could someone remove it. Khun Noi and Khun Tui look at each other. “What?” I say, “don’t tell me, there are proper big spiders in the jungle?” They nod.

Eventually Khun Noi and I are finished and it’s time to start our trek into the jungle. It’s a two and a half hour walk, the first part of which is up into the forest. I am wearing metaphorical blinkers – I see some humongous spiders’ webs and I tighten the blinkers so I can only see a few feet in front of me.

Khun Noi points out many things to me, which Khun Tui dutifully translates. We pass by a sapling with a tiny bird’s nest in it at tummy height, ‘ahhh, sweet’ is all I can manage. Then we see another diminutive nest, low down in a branch, and further on yet another one. I wonder at the stupidity of a bird that makes its nest at eating height. I wonder if I’m really interested.

Eventually, I have to ask: “Khun Tui, what makes this tiny bird’s nest?”

And she replies: “A tiny bird.”

Ban Talae Nok

This is the site of the old village before the tsunami. When they rebuilt it, they moved it further inland - which is where I stayed for my first homestay.

The ground here was covered with beautiful purple flowers, called sea morning glory. It made me weep - I find it so very difficult to imagine what happened. I thought of Flanders and the poppies.

Trying to process

I am:
Privileged to have been able to live among real Thai families.
Over-whelmed
Trying to process my thoughts
Thinking of all the articles I want to write.

I ate:
Goat curry
Deep fried grass – a speciality of this area
Prawns – after pulling their heads off. (This will only mean anything to people who know that I am squeamish and that I don’t ‘do’ seafood or things that look like creatures.)
Fresh coconut (not old tough ‘coconut-shy’ coconuts!)
Spicy fish soup
Muslim roti
Rice soup (traditional Thai breakfast)

I saw:
Mudskippers
Ghost crabs
Fiddler crabs
Horseshoe crabs
Sand-bubbling crab
Hermit crab transferring to a new home
Sanddollars (dead and alive)
A snake (my first in the wild)
A water monitor lizard
An elephant by the side of the road
A slow loris – a night monkey
Lar Gibbons
King Crown Gibbons
A Crab eating Macaque
An egrit
A nest of mating eagles
A Brahminy kite
Buffalo
Rubber trees – collecting sap

I didn’t see:
Big spiders in the jungle (phew)

I made:
A batik print
Soap
Packaged soap

I planted:
Orchids as part of a reforestation project
Seventeen Rhizophora mangrove trees

I dressed in:
Muslim dress for the celebration of a neighbour’s upcoming trip to Mecca.
A bandana!

I declined:
To eat the egg of the horseshoe crab, there and then on the beach.

I heard:
Gibbons singing
Cicadas
Black Crested Bulbuls singing
Kingfishers
Goats bleating
Cows mooing
Cats and kittens mewling
A cat fight
Cockerels cock-a-doodle dooing
The sea

I remembered:
One of the things I loved about Husband: that he knew stuff like this. I stopped listening at some point.
Being 11 and copying a picture from an ancient encyclopaedia for a project to show how rubber was collected.

I found it hard:
To sit on the floor all the time without fidgeting.
To use the squat toilets when my legs ached from sitting on the floor

Eco ... Tourist

I’m off today to be a researching eco tourist. I’ve bought myself a bandana in lieu of the dreadlocks. This is what my itinerary looks like:

Tuesday 20 Nov
Today I’m going to Ban Talae Nok village. After lunch with my host family I will make batik in the batik cooperative. Following a visit to a conservation centre I get the choice of community aerobics, beach football, helping prepare dinner or enjoying the sunset on the beach. I wonder which one I’ll do.

Wednesday 21 Nov
After breakfast with my host family I’m taking a boat trip through a mangrove forest. I’m particularly excited about this. This afternoon I’m going to an interactive workshop with tsunami soap cooperative followed by a creative workshop with children at community centre. ‘Making’ is something I like to do, so this will be fun.

I get the choice again of community aerobics, beach football, helping prepare dinner or enjoying the sunset on the beach.

Thursday 22 Nov
After breakfast I leave for Kuraburi pier to transfer to Tung Nang Dam pier. We can walk to the homestay from here (I hope the terrain is okay for my wheelie case. Oh dear, I’ll never make an eco warrior.)

I get to work on an orchid conservation at community nursery and go on a jungle hike to replant orchids. The hike finishes on the beach. No choice of activity tonight, I finish by admiring the sunset on the beach. Sounds good after an honest day’s work.

Friday 23 Nov
Today is my last day. After breakfast I prepare bags to leave village via Tung Nang Dam pier. Transferring back to Kuraburi pier, I get final briefing in the office before I go away to write the articles. I get to visit a waterfall if there’s time. After lunch we leave for Phuket airport and it’s back to life as a Mum and writer!

In between all these activities I will be scribbling notes about everything so that I can come back and write about my experience.

I am so excited.

I have no idea if I’ll be able to blog via the Blackberry or whether I’ll be right out of it. So I’ll see you here if I can make it and if not, on Friday!