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Thailand Newsletter # 8 - March 24, 2544 B.E. (= Buddhist Epoch,this is the year you see here used everywhere) Home Sweet Home…eventually?
Monday, we arrived at City Hall and were greeted by the mayor and her entourage. The mayor, wife of an ex-governor, ex-resident of the U.S., and a registered nurse, spoke perfect English. Our day was filled visiting the six municipal elementary and middle schools, meeting principals, English teachers and the current governor, and having lunch and dinner with the mayor, then resting in the comfort of a small, spotless hotel (with A/C and cable TV/HBO) run by the local teacher’s college. Tuesday, it took us two hours to open a savings account (for automatic deposit of our Peace Corps stipends) at the Bank of Bangkok. After the bank clerk completed a 50+-page stack of papers and after the computer network shut down twice, we finally walked out with our bank book and two functional ATM cards. For the rest of the morning and early afternoon, we were escorted around
by a driver, an assistant to the mayor, a principal of one of the elementary schools and her sister, who is a professor of education at the local teacher’s
college. We looked at housing possibilities and went on a buying frenzy at a nearby village that sells hand-woven textiles. After a disappointing house
-hunt, the two sisters suggested we talk with two contract After a rest at our hotel the mayor’s assistant and driver picked us up for a last minute tour of the city. One of the stops was at the statue of a famous local hero, tbe monument of Phraya Phichai Dap Hak. He fought alongside king Taksin the Great. After the liberation from Burmese occupation, he was assigned to rule Muang Phichai and promoted to Phraya Siharad Decho. Our “tour guide” made a donation at a flower stand and gave each one of us a jasmine garland. Whe had no idea what he was trying to tell us. Since we noticed all around the statue a large number of garlands, we decided we were supposed to kneel in front of the statue, pay our respect and add our own garlands. It was getting dark and we didn’t see a lot of the city during the rest of the tour. After a quick supper of strange but tasty Super Supreme Pizza (that included sliced hot dogs) at a restaurant next to the train station, we were on the overnight train back to Bangkok…this time in a less comfortable, less private but still satisfactory 2nd class sleeper car. Hearing stories from other trainees and their site visits was great fun. Here are a few examples: Stories from the Front: One 20’s something male trainee reported on his adventure returning to U -Thong from his site visit. First, his bus, one that was quite full, was an hour late leaving. Then, about 6 hours into the 10-hour trip, the bus broke down. Everyone was told to relax and sit down. Other buses passed by, passengers and drivers smiling and waving, but no one stopped. After about an hour, the driver’s brother showed up in his bus, ¾ full and everyone on the crippled vehicle loaded on. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room so a bunch of people had to sit with the luggage in the cargo hole. Because the trainee was a “farang” (foreigner) no one wanted to sit near him, so he was buried in bags , in the dark, riding along under the bus for the rest of the trip. Elizabeth, one of the older trainees, was greeted to her site by a room full of blank faces. She had the feeling that no one knew she was coming despite the broken English-Thai phone conversation she had had with someone there the previous day. She eventually had the idea to call an English-Thai speaking contact she had heard about from another volunteer. After the local people had a short conversation with her contact, Elizabeth felt relieved that they finally understood who she was…that is until they posed the question to her…”Why are you here?” Her uneasy first response was “I’m here because the Peace Corps sent me.” This was met with blank looks and a repeat of the question “Why are you here?” She tried again “I’m here because I like helping teachers.” Again…blank looks and “Why are you here?” Finally in frustration Elizabeth said with arms flailing, “Because your king asked me to come!” Sometime later Elizabeth learned that what the local people were trying to ask was “What are you planning to do here?” Devin is another 20’s something trainee who had hair down his back when he left for Peace Corps staging in Seattle. By the time we met him, he had cut his hair to shoulder length. After a few weeks in the Thai heat, he got something close to a “buzz cut.” Arriving at his site, the local people were surprised to see a young man. They said based on the picture that had been mailed to them they were expecting this lovely young American woman. Devin’s response: “Well, instead you got a handsome young man!” Then there was Karen who had to step over 2 tarantulas on the front porch of the first place she was shown when “shopping” for rent houses at her site…and there was Jan who declined a serving of something that looked like fried June bugs…and there was Elizabeth again who took a delicious bite of what looked like couscous and offered some to another foreigner who declined, informing her they were ant larva. Upcoming Events Next week, we are back to our regular schedule of traveling to U-Thong on Monday and returning to the village Tuesday through Saturday. Schools started summer vacation this Wednesday. The hot season is already here! Next Sunday, we will be split up into seven groups – destination unknown – for intensive teacher training. Then we return to U-Thong for one last week before heading back to Bangkok to finish-up and sworn in…should we decide to accept this “impossible mission”… The pictures Because of a defective 32 Mbytes memory chip in our camera, most of the pictures from our trip to Uttaradit got lost. The two we are including were taken during the last three weeks or so:
Woman with brooms: taken in U-Thong
“No condoms for me”:
before we left for our site visit, we had a fun morning. In small groups we had to stop a various stations to get used to situations we might encounter “out there”. This one was in a raunchy pub where Ajan Dusita, one of our language trainers who was posing as a hooker, was trying to talk me into taking the condoms and into following her to the back room. (I didn’t)
Mailing packages We can find many of the everyday toiletry items we are used to, shampoos , soap, deodorant, also sweets from Germany or Switzerland like Ritter Sport chocolate, Nutella, Ricola candy, Toblerone, from the U.S. peanut butter, pancake and even cake mixes (although few Thai people have ovens for baking). We also found ZIP disks in Uttaradit for the first time. So far we have not missed anything except Camera memory chips. (we still have two we can use with less capacity, 16 and 8 Mbytes). Any items mailed to us that can be found here will be taxed at a very high rate. Please, check with us before mailing anything. More next time. Thank you all for the e-mails and cards of encouragement and support. They have really helped! Love, Carol & Norbert P.S. Angela, don’t worry. I really didn’t want to do this but I had to cut off my beard before being allowed to board the plane in Seattle. Thai men never have beards; they don’t have enough facial hair. I needed to be culturally correct. After we return to the States, I will grow it again immediately. During the first few weeks here Carol kept looking at me saying that my face looked so fleshy and that I didn’t look like the man she married. Dad |
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Our trip to 
professors at the college…one from England and the other, a novel writer from California. They both believe we can get a very nice house with air conditioning and all the
amenities we want for our Peace Corps housing allowanced which in actuality is being paid for by the Thai government. (One volunteer came back from the trip with a five bedroom three bath mansion!)
Unfortunately in our town, finding such a place took four months for the British fellow! 
