Sense of Place

Preaching on Reason

Recently, our ACE expert guide trainees prepared a community trail map of the their village, and the NATR staff accompanied them as they led their first community-based tours. I was paired with five guides from Kuraburi, and we set out on a soaking wet monsoon morning to explore the town I've called home for for half a year now.

We started at Wat Passan, the town's Buddhist temple, where the guides explained various aspects of Buddhism as we made a clockwise circiumambulation around the gilded structure. A statue stands sentinel near the entrance, with hands held in the "double abhāya mudrā" position, the most common representations of the Buddha in south-east Asian countries. It represents preaching on reason, and is one of many philosophies about this religion I find appealing.

The other is its views of death. Buddhists believe that each individual passes through many reincarnations until they are liberated from worldly illusions and passions; they have then entered nirvana, Sanskrit for "a blowing out as of a flame." The three components of any Buddhist funeral ceremony are sharing, the practice of good conduct, and developing a calm mind. You see these often in Thailand: entire streets blocked off to make way for tents and shrines decorated with lights and garland, where people gather to generate good energy for the deceased in his or her new incarnation.

On the temple grounds there's a batik making operation. In this process--which the rain deprived me of partaking in firsthand--cotton fabric is stretched over a wooden frame like a canvas, then patterns varying from the traditional pha lai yang to gaudy ocean vistas are outlined in a paraffin template. The canvas is then painted using commercial paints, boiled in water to remove the paraffin, then shellacked to preserve the pattern. The fabric is used for shirts, sarongs, and wall-hangings.

Elephant Capture

The small village of Tap Chang, which translates to "elephant capture," lies just southeast of Kuraburi. As the name implies, elephants were once captured here for farming use. (You know your life has changed forever when the sight of an elephant walking down the street no longer merits a double-take.)

We visited several farms here, starting at a fruit farm of belonging to Waewueng, one of the guide trainees. After meeting her family at their rustic traditional home, we set ofaf to explore the orchards, where I sampled a bouquet of locally-grown exotic fruits: mangosteen, rambutan, durian, jackfruit, banana, coconut, lamhut, longkong, ratong, orange, and lemon. The farm also produces morning glory, lemongrass, ginger, chilies, sweet potatoes, bamboo shoots, sweet basil, and, for good measure, they also operate a humble catfish farm.

I had the opportunity to harvest some mangosteen, an apple-sized fruit with a thick earth-toned pericarp encasing a sweet white antioxidant-rich core. The first time I glimpsed this surreal looking fruit I half expected to see a group of Teletubbies dancing in the background and giggling. It's harvested using a fifteen-foot-long bamboo pole topped with a small woven cradle, like a stretched-out lacrosse stick, you simply cup the fruit and twist it loose.

Next we explored a rubber plantation. Harvesting natural rubber requires scoring the trees with a narrow grove that runs about a foot down the tree in a helical twist, which then fills with a slow-moving rivulet of latex like the white stripe on a candy cane. The rubber is gathered in small metal buckets or coconut shells and later processed into slabs that look like welcome mats, which are then sold in the local market or sent to a factory in Surat Thani for further processing into any product imaginable from tires to dive suits.

The sight of taps and buckets transported me back in time for a split second to childhood, and of maple trees dressed in rich warm colors dripping sweet syrup through metal taps and into buckets; the crisp upstate New York autumn air infused with the scent of wood smoke. I'm filled with an instinctive desire to explore and keep exploring and to try and make sense of every last drop of the mysterious beauty of the natural world, a memory always tempered by an abdominal-wrenching hopelessness at the mountain of homework I was supposed to have completed and the abstract notion of a competitive job market.

Oil palm is the most productive oil seed in the world, and has become the world’s number one fruit crop, trouncing its nearest competitor, the humble banana. The crop is used for myriad purposes, from an ingredient in food products to engine lubricants to a base for cosmetics. It has a high yield: a single hectare of oil palm may produce up to 6,000 liters of crude oil, and as oil prices ratchet above $70 a barrel it is becoming an increasingly popular bio-fuel source--Thailand's revered king Bhumibol has actually patented his own oil palm/diesel hybrid fuel (Coolest. Leader. Ever.). Unfortunately, oil palm plantations now pose a severe threat to Asia’s diverse rainforests, as pristine jungle is increasingly converted to oil-palm cultivation.

The Tap Chang primary school is located in the heart of just such a plantation. As they receive no financial assistance from the government, the isolated school relies completely on profits from the crop to fund everything from salaries to textbooks. Seven teachers educate the school's 90 students. I was introduced to a nine-year-old girl who’d apparently been sexually assaulted at her home while her parents were toiling the in fields. She's now suffering severe learning impairments. For several days I obsessed on the aggrandizing social injustices of runaway free-market economics, a maddening philosophical debate which every time ends in hopelessness.

He Who Controls the Spice ...

A thousand years ago the Nongyon River in Kuraburi was part of the Indonesian spice route, and tangible evidence of this can be found just below the surface of the river's muddy banks, a few kilometers from my bungalow. Ancient beads are mined by and our guide Ris was able to locate a few for me in minutes (I put them back, not one to contribute to the pillage of what ought to be protected archeological sites). We had lunch a little further upstream at failed resort constructed using traditional Thai architecture.

The day ended with a visit to the home of Mortieng, the "wisdom of local and traditional medicine," also a stone's throw from my house.

The Legend of Seven Waves

I noticed the sinister-looking bank of clouds outside our office window one afternoon in mid-May, moments before Bodhi exclaimed “Wow--is that it?” Then, before anyone could ask him what he was talking about, he answered himself, as he often does, “Yes! It’s moving east! Ladies and gentlemen: the Andaman monsoon!” I started whistling the Storm Trooper song from Star Wars.

The rain started within the hour and continued non-stop for weeks, reminiscent of my early days in Berkeley, and perhaps payback for narrowly escaping the rainiest spring in Bay Area history a few months ago. But the inclement weather served as a contrast to the mood I’d been in; with the rains I briefly found my stride with NATR and with teaching. It’s been an absolutely maddening learning curve.

English on the Beach

The objective for week two of our Adventure, Community, and Eco (ACE) expert guide training was field work at the area’s most significant tourist attraction: Koh Surin Marine National Park, home to several pristine corral reefs and some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world. On April 24 we set sail from Kuraburi pier on a 50-foot commercial dive boat. Not long into the journey, Bong Muht, our Muslim ACE trainer--a turbaned amalgam of Erik Estrada and Green Tortoise bus mechanic Somar Tellez--gave a safety lecture to our twenty-six trainees: "There is a very dangerous surge in the sea today. Stay inside the cabin with your lifejackets on at all times!" As if staged, at that very moment the students started shouting “teacher!” and pointing at the cabin windows, the other side of which yours truly was clinging to the railing of the boat as I battled the ocean spray and the boat's violent rocking while making my way to the bow. (We used episode as an excuse to highlight the importance of communicating crucial warnings to idiot farang.) I needed space to breathe. My English lesson had imploded the day before, only moments before a motorcyclist got hit by a pick-up truck in front of our community center--his guttural moans and bloodied face still vivid in my mind. And to top that off some gob of plankton from my past who obviously spent a lot of time in my pimpin’ digs in West Oakland chose that day to cough up a ball of caustic diatribe in the comments of my last full post. While several of the ACE Experts became sea sick, I gazed ahead at the sight of a fog-enshrouded Koh Surin looming on the horizon. Nothing seemed clear to me anymore; the rear-view mirrors obscured by the soot of burning bridges. Driving by Braille, as a wise ex-Green Tortoise driver used to say.

Helen and I--NATR’s two full-time English teachers--came along as part of the program, and planned our first lesson that afternoon on the beach while taking occasional breaks to photograph hermit crabs. The theme was health and safety; I’d drawn up a life-sized person the night before who we named Ivan and I used him to elicit body part lexis. The lesson culminated in some total physical response: “pin the body part on Ivan” and a swinging rendition of “head and shoulders knees and toes.” The lesson was chaotic and broke down several times in front of the whole NATR staff. Tired, humiliated, and feeling wretched, I took a long solo hike through the jungle after it was over--depriving myself of an afternoon of free snorkeling--and, convinced I was jeopardizing my student’s futures with my gross incompetence, seriously debated leaving NATR for the good of the organization.

The trip finished Wednesday morning with a visit to the island’s Moken village. The Moken sea gypsies are the animist nomadic boat dwellers who have sailed the Andaman Sea for centuries; they have no written language, and spent seven months at sea on their boats (Kabang), settling only when the monsoon rains began. (Many of you will recall this photo of me with the Moken kids during their ancestral festival “Lorbong” last year.) They’ve been under intense pressure in recent years to settle and assimilate into Thai society, which they’ve been quietly refusing, but after the tsunami left them without boats they were placed in permanent settlements and in effect forced to shovel coal on the same runaway train the rest of us are blindly riding ... careening towards the same incipient fiery wreck. Alcoholism is rampant, children have traded timeless customs and survivial instincts for candy, Coca Cola, and DVDs, and most of the villagers looked lost, destitute, and most notably bored. It’s like every American Indian reservation I’ve ever spent time in.

Road Rules

I’ve done my share of driving in foreign countries--my favorite part of being a Green Tortoise driver is the challenge of Baja’s narrow roads, especially when you have a rocky cliff face on one side, a guardrail-free drop-off on the other, no shoulder, and a semi-truck coming at you in the other direction in dense fog at night. You quickly gear down, coming to a complete stop while edging as close to the precipice as you can, all the while striving not to wake or alarm your passengers. Turn on the flashers. Miss me. Your heart stops and you hold your breath and the bus rocks from the shear-force of the passing rig and you pray to your inner Bodhisattva that your good karma holds out just a bit longer please. The reward comes moments later with the all-encompassing tingly rush of heat as your blood starts pumping again and you slowly exhale and whisper kick ass under your breath and slide the stick back into first and let off the clutch. It’s a high that makes crack look like Nescafe, mi amigos. And with any luck an amazing young creature uses the excitement of the moment as her opening to come forward and sit next to you and chat the night away while the silhouettes of cardon cactus set against a backdrop of starry deep azure and the occasional candle-lit roadside shrine to La Virgen de Guadalupe pass by like a silent movie.

Driving in Thailand is a completely different ballgame. Although the roads are smoother and wider, the number of human obstacles is overwhelming. A few weeks ago I drove five of the ACE rangers to Phuket in the NATR truck for an eco-canoe trip in Phang Nga Bay. To my surprise, I've quickly adjusted to driving on the left side of the road, as well as having the stick-shift on my left (only once did I almost turn right without actually looking to my right). Unlike Mexico, where you can count on the rocky ledge not suddenly jumping out in front of you, here you never know when you’ll next have to dodge an entire family piled onto a motorbike cruising at 40 kilometers an hour, or the operator of a motorized cart loaded with various meats and curries will blindly pull onto the road without looking, or a car, truck, or bus will suddenly be in your lane and coming straight at you, often when rounding a blind turn.

In the town of Ban Yang an oncoming bus chose a less-than-opportune moment to pass several motorbikes; I played chicken with it for as long as I could, all the while keeping a close eye on the side of the road for a last-minute out. “Teacher!” one of the students finally shouted, and I replied with a short “I know.” When the bus started to swerve and brake, emitting a black plume of smoke, I finally surrendered and went off the road. The truck and its human cargo were fine. There are no enforced speed limits and it’s like you're constantly playing a real-life video game--we completed the mission without the dreaded "Game Over."

Welcome to the Jungle

Kuraburi is located in the heart of the oldest continually-evolving ecosystem on earth, undisturbed by glacial, geological, or direct human activity for 200 million years. On May 1st I moved into my “permanent” home, a bungalow surrounded by lush banana trees about twenty minutes from downtown by foot. At night I’m lulled to sleep by the croaking of frogs, and at dawn roused by gibbon calls. It has a generous front porch supported by ancient timber, with walls fashioned from woven bamboo. The front door is built of rough-cut planks and there’s a sole glassless window that opens and closes by way of a single shutter. Above my bed there’s a giant mosquito net that I’ve balled up and wrapped around the cross-beam from which it’s fastened. Illuminated by the moon, which peeks through an opening at the apex of the roof, it takes on the form of a guardian angel.

My first night there was filled with flashbacks of some of my earliest memories, roughly age four, of an old refrigerator box my dad had cut a door and similar window into and wrote “Erik’s House” over the entrance. Electrical engineer and all-around wizard that he is--give the man a bucket of bolts and wires and a six-pack and watch him build a computer out of it before your eyes--he even took the extra effort of installing an electric light and a switch. I recalled those silent home movies (yes, I’m that old) my grandfather made of me pretending to sell bottles of chocolate milk to my dad--then a twenty-four-year-old hippie having as much fun as I was--through that window.

As a kid I became fascinated with tropical rainforests, inspired by some combination of social studies class and National Geographic magazines and a general love for anything green. But now that I actually live in one there are unpleasant realities I never imagined. After a recent rainy weekend that I spent in nearby Khao Lak, I returned to find mold growing on all sorts of things, including clothes, as well as the disconcerting sight of an inordinate number of ants on my bedspread. The week before my neighbor Jo had pulled her rucksack out from under her bed to find it had been colonized by ants, to the degree that its dimensions seemed fluid. I feared a similar fate. Slowly, I pulled bags out from under the bed and checked. Nothing. I'd assumed I was in the clear when I casually lifted a rucksack I’d left on my bed and uncovered a mound of larvae and thousands of ants frantically defending it. I let out a shriek that I couldn’t begin to describe and ran outside, jumping and slapping imaginary bugs off my body like a speed freak.

Endnotes:

Time marches on: Farewell CCM

In 1988 the bubblegum pop star Tiffany gained fame and Mtv dominance for playing shows in suburban shopping malls. That same year I spent countless Friday nights wandering the halls of my own suburban town square substitute, Clifton Country Mall (CCM), amongst my peers from Shenendehowa High School, eager to see and be seen. Once clear of the dreaded obstacle of those bad-ass shop kids in their ripped jean jackets who loitered near the entrance smoking and lobbing idle threats, I was free to lose myself in the sugary magic of a retail cornucopia hand-in-hand with my first girlfriend, she with her pastel Camp Beverly Hills shirt and acid-washed jeans and frosted hair shellacked with a cubic-foot-of-lost-ozone's worth of Aqua Net in a bun that towered half-a-foot above her head, and me with my beloved Ron Jon surf shirt and a mullet that required an hour of blow-drying and enough styling products to also constitute a small fire hazard. Ah, the good old days.

My last trip to CCM (renamed Clifton Park Center a few years back in a desperate marketing maneuver to remake the place, which also included gluing a faux neo-classical façade over it) was in December of last year, and by then the place was more than half empty, and what spaces weren’t sheet-rocked over were mostly an eclectic mix of incense shops and performance spaces--the only thing missing was a church of some rogue denomination. Anyhow, just last week I got the news that, at age thirty and at the end of its design life, the wall are coming down, no doubt following the current trend of replacing shopping malls with warrens of big box retail outlets, which allow today’s busy shopper to avoid all that pesky walking and instead drive from one store to another to buy the products that keep us safe and free. What fate does this new incarnation, and the non-negotiable way of life it represents, face when gasoline prices rise above $5 a gallon in a few years?

Anybody Out There?

Greetings from monsoon-soaked Kuraburi. Just a quick update to let you know that I'm alive and well, and will have a spankin' new entry with photos up in a few days. I hope. Over the past several weeks I've been teaching English by day and programming websites by night--including the new site "Andaman Discoveries" for our community-based tourism program, which should go live this month--and haven't had a lot of creative energy to spare for the blog or even simple e-mail communications. I really regret this fact, especially considering so many positive and wonderful people have supported my endeavors, and I really want to give something back. There have been a lot of great stories to tell, but unfortunately the most interesting times in life tend to coincide with little free time.

Things are good here: My teaching continues to evolve and I've finally found my niche at NATR. Thailand increasingly feels like home now; as I ponder the future, every scenario includes a scheme to get back here. With a little financial recharging later this summer, I could come back for another six months (our English program just received funding for another three years).

Tomorrow the Kingdom celebrates the sixty-year anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's ascension to the throne. The King is one seriously cool cat--it's refreshing to be in a country with a thoughtful and generous leader. In honor of this, the NATR team is going to Phuket clad in yellow shirts to celebrate and let off some steam. It's been a manic few months, but all of our programs--English for the community, English for guiding, village English, Eco-guide training, computer skills--are up and running smoothly. We feel it's time to pat ourselves on the back for an afternoon.

With love,
E