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Thailand Newsletter #3 - February 18, 2001CORRECTION: The trainer mentioned in Newsletter #1 had trichinosis not trichilosis…the Internet Café computer spell check did not catch the error. It’s in Thai, not English! Thai Tech Tidbit: To keep ants off of your picnic table, place the table legs in cups of water! Medical Info Henry Wilde, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute (WHO collaborating Center) and Chulalongkorn University Hospital in Bangkok, briefed us on malaria, rabies, snake bites, and other ugly healthy problems typical for Thailand. He gave us a sneak preview of his new video on rabies to be shared at the next World Health Organization conference this year. After that, we were all too ready to receive our 2nd Japanese encephalitis vaccine and put up with the dizziness afterward. Thai Night: We learned our first Thai song and dance to perform on “Thai Night” this coming Monday evening. Each trainee must order and pay for a specific food item from the market and bring it to the event. For about 80-150 baht, women trainees purchased “pahsins” (wrap around skirts) for the event. That’s only 2-3 US dollars. Men trainees had to buy baggy fishermen pants and shirts to go with their Pakamah, a waist wrap, they already have for going to and from the shower. The US Embassy will be sending some guests for the evening. Bridge over the River Kwai We were told that the point of the activity is to build confidence in our ability to travel around Thailand on our own. We’ve been divided into 7 groups of 4-5 trainees. Each group has its own destination. On Sunday, we must travel there and back without the help of trainers or staff. Couples had the option of splitting up or going together. We chose to stay together for this first time away. 3 others will join us for a 2-hour (one-way) trip to Kanchanaburi, location of the Bridge Over the River Kwai movie (Kwai, if mispronounced, means penis! We know from experience. The teenagers in our family were giggling and wouldn’t explain. Our adjan, our Thai teacher, finally clarified for us what it meant, wispering it into Carol’s ear so the men couldn’t hear it) We are to bring back receipts from our bus trip and from the WWII museum there. In true Peace Corps fashion, the information sheet given to us about the trip contained some deliberate mis-information. Instructions were to talk with our host families about the trip and to consult with teachers at the school. Those who fail to use local resources may end up traveling much farther than necessary, as we learned from our family. The unstated point to our trip is to show us the benefits of collaboration (especially with local Thais) and the drawbacks of an all-American-rugged-individualism-I-can do it myself without any help-approach. Health Update We’re still fine. I was a little dizzy and fatigued all week after another Japanese encephalitis shot, so I took a “sick day” Friday for some extra sleep. Norbert went on to class without me but brought lunch (45 cents) and two (15 cent) Cokes from the local open-air restaurant. Karen, our village “mate” from Colorado is still in the Bangkok hospital with Dengue Fever but due to be released Monday. She caught the virus from mosquitoes. Another trainee, Cherry, has been hospitalized for an eye infection. Heather was hospitalized for fever with vomiting and diarrhea, no diagnosis yet. Don’t be shocked to hear us talk of hospitalizations. Most of these problems would only send us as outpatients to a clinic in the U.S.. The Peace Corps nurse is just extremely cautious with our health. Our Village
The open area under the house is often used for cooking, doing laundry or for relaxing in hammocks and on large wooden platforms a foot off the ground. In the evenings, men sit and play dominoes, drinking cheap local whisky. Weekdays, they more often boil and bag peanuts, or grill fish or meat. On his evening walk to the market today, some invited Norbert to suck honey from one of many wild beehives pulled off trees in the area. All the second story floors we have seen are made of wooden planks. Windows, mostly without glass, surround the entire perimeter. Some houses have walled off one or two smaller rooms as bedrooms; otherwise, everyone sleeps together up there, on thin mattresses under mosquito nets. Most families use the space in the evening for watching TV or playing on the computer. Other than a small refrigerator and an occasional table (for the TV or computer) or wardrobe, we’ve seen little furniture. We eat dinner on the (very hard) floor. Rice is cooked in huge quantities in a rice cooker, a sort of crockpot. 4-5 veggie – meat dishes are served in bowls. Fruit or sweets are always available after the meal. Outside, the paths are filled with wandering chickens, roosters, dogs and cats, not to mention kids. We’ve seen a clay oven or two for making charcoal. There are fire pits for burning garbage, grilling meat, or boiling peanuts. Low places are often wet from shower and laundry (not toilet) that drain directly onto the ground. Our home, like most, has a washing machine but it’s not Maytag. It uses cold water only and after the washing cycle the clothes have to be transferred to a spinner. Drying is done on a line outside, on upper story terraces, or under the houses. We never need an alarm clock. Sounds of the house lizards are around all the time but at 4 a.m. the roosters begin to crow and seem to be chasing down the hens. Dogs start barking. Neighbors head to the U-Thong market on their motorcycles. Kids cry. Parents yell. Water splashes in the shower upstairs or out someone’s second floor window. Yesterday, half of the under eight crowd in the village showed up at our house where Norbert was teaching everyone to make paper airplanes. Within 15 minutes every balcony and roof had white paper on it. Kids were laughing. Adults were smiling and joining in. It was terrific. Today, the group returned showing us dances they learned in school and to use our markers and paper to draw animal pictures for us to name. In exchange, they shared with us their endless patience with our attempts to learn new words. The teen group showed up to practice English about 6 p.m. after the market closed. Aon is still the least shy of the bunch and our best translator. We tell ourselves over and over…how truly amazing this experience is for us. Regardless of our complaints about sanitation or the tough training schedule or the physical, mental, and emotional demands, we wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. Maybe we can stick through training after all. We miss hearing from you! ! e-mail us or send those cards and letters, too. Love to you all, Carol & Norbert
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We finally found out the name of our “moo-bahn” (village) is Na Lao. Houses here are very
close together with dirt paths and an occasional banana or coconut tree between. All are large and sturdy timber-frame construction, built up on piers like beach houses on the coast. In almost every
house, part of the floor on the second story closes like a large door over a steep stairway, but we’ve never seen one closed. Dogs (70% of which are strays) are very effective at keeping strangers
away! 
Most houses in this village seem to have indoor toilets and showers. A few have an outhouse. Some homes, like ours, have the downstairs area
enclosed with concrete block walls. Even though the entire downstairs area of our house is beautifully tiled, the family spends most of their time upstairs. Maybe they are trying to give us privacy.