Independence Day

Greetings from the Happy Hotel in the Khao San Road area of Bangkok. I'm on a three-day holiday here with some former NATR peeps who are passing through en route to other worldly destinations. With any luck this high-speed Internet will inspire a minty fresh new adventure for you in a couple days. In the meantime, satiate your thirst for Kuraburi happenings with the latest update from NATR--they're always a good read.

Full Link: http://www.northandamantsunamirelief.com/updates.html

Cheers,
E

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

Throwing Water

There were several days this week when I had to restrain myself from banging my head against the wall. In addition to a new section of general English, we launched our Adventure, Community, and Eco (ACE) initiative, in which we will teach English and guiding skills to twenty-five villagers. It’s been manic to say the least; every lucid moment when I was in my blog-writing zone was otherwise accounted for ... and when I have worked on it I’ve either barely been able to string together a coherent thought or suffered from guilt that I should be doing something else (like sleeping). I fear the resulting lack of quality will be evident, and for this I offer whatever remains of my patient readership a sincere apology.

The Evaluation

Teaching at NATR is like working in a vacuum. I constantly question my pace, methodology, effectiveness, and the logic of the curriculum. My only feedback so far has been the Thai smile. So it was with great anticipation two weeks ago Saturday when Linette--one of my evaluators at Transworld Schools who, by remarkable coincidence, is now teaching in nearby Khao Lak--came to Khuraburi to evaluate our program and observe my classes that day.

The night before was filled with anxiety as I prepared a lesson on indefinite articles and countable versus non-countable nouns. As I do every week, I went through a lengthy process of deciding what specific skills to teach, creating all my own paper tasks using the Internet, Word, and Photoshop (I have yet to find a textbook that's culturally relevant or that I jibe with pedagogically); optimizing my boardwork for maximum efficiency; and creating "activation" games with all necessary materials and realia. Apparently the maxim among ESL teachers is one hour of prep time per hour of lesson. In my case the ratio is more like eight to one. I’ve placed a Herculean burden of responsibility on myself to deliver a quality product to these amazing and resilient people.

I got to bed at about 3 a.m. and had a brief and fitful night's sleep. In a dream I was eating macaroni and cheese (I dream of cheese often) in a cafeteria and noticed my high school chemistry teacher a few tables away. It's worth noting that without the inspiration and confidence this great man instilled in me--the first teacher I ever had who made me want to learn--I’d have probably have ended up working as either a forklift operator or a bus driver (um … right). Regrettably, I couldn’t remember a word of our conversation upon waking.

When the lesson was over the next day I felt as though I'd just subjected the class to a horror worse than the tsunami. I went through the motions of bowing and politely responding to each “Thank you, teacher.” When I finally mustered the courage to face Linette, she was beaming. "Great lesson!" she exclaimed. To my perplexed look she continued, "Didn't you notice? They got it!" In my anxiety I'd apparently missed the amazing moment she then recounted, as several of the struggling students' eyes lit up and they whispered "oh!" when the concepts crystallized for them. Linette's only genuine criticism is that I need to get over myself and not stress out so hard. I feel I’ve heard this before.

The next day I left on what was supposed to be a three day respite on Koh Samui with a friend, but what instead turned into an eight-day-long adventure that sent me hop-scotching all over the Kingdom.

When in Rome ...

I traveled by bus and ferry to Koh Samui the next day with Linette, who was also meeting a friend there. Koh Samui proved a shining example of exactly the sort of irresponsible tourism we’re trying to prevent from happening in the north Andaman; it’s a garish, overdeveloped resort town complete with Starbucks, McDonalds, and shopping malls. I walked the streets of Chaweng beach, observing in revulsion the farang (the Thai word for Caucasians) in culturally offensive dress, treating the place as their personal playground and the Thais like second-class citizens. I wished for one of those infernal “Same Same but Different” shirts, only written in Thai … or anything to distance myself from these idiots in the eyes of the natives. Do people who visit this absurd place actually claim to have experienced Thailand?

Now I’ll step down from my sanctimonious platform for a paragraph and confess that I did indulge wildly in the abundant creature comforts of this place. The first night my friend Phylippa and I holed up in her room with several bottles of wine and watched, in a marathon session, season two of “Lost” on DVD. The next night night, following a day of leisurely sauntering about town, I convinced Phyl, Linette, and Linette’s friend Salem to go bowling. Yes, bowling. I scored a 108--forty points higher than the second-highest score--and, well into our third pitcher of Singha, I let it slip that in my youth I’d been on a league. To the resulting laughter and taunts of being a “tosser” that followed, I urged my companions spend a night in Clifton Park, New York--the uninspiring maze of vinyl-sided McHouses where I spent my childhood--for it to make infinite sense.

Soaked in Bangkok

Tuesday afternoon I dreamt that I’d flown back to California to renew my drivers’ license, and as I was standing in line at the DMV I realized I had no way to get back here. There was a brief panic at being (literally and figuratively) thousands of miles from where I was supposed to be, followed by a sinking disappointment: I’d forsaken the mission again. I awoke to a reality that didn’t feel much different.

Somewhere during the course of the previous day Phylippa had talked me into traveling with her to Bangkok to meet up with some friends, and we’d left at dawn that morning. I spent the whole afternoon sleeping off the trip on a hard mattress in a stark, cement-walled room in the Baan Sabai hotel on Khao San Road, unsure of why I’d chosen to spend so much as a day of my precious vacation in the armpit of Thailand, and in the process potentially jeopardizing the hope of celebrating the upcoming Thai new year and water-throwing holiday Songkran with my NATR friends at a beautiful island in the south, as I’d been planning for weeks.

That night we met up with a few former NATR Thai staff and ended up on a bender on the Khao San Road, where I found myself engaged in water-gun combat with passing cute Euro-farang, who were getting their Songkran on early. But in the blink of an eye the injustice filter that had blocked from my vision street vendors and their young children, who were ambling on the street well past midnight, failed. In that Jekyll-Hyde effect alcohol sometimes has on me, my privileged-white-man guilt came on so strong I could barely bid my fiends a proper goodnight before fleeing for the hotel.

By an incredible stroke of luck, the next day I scored one of the last available seats on a bus for Krabi, a city in southern Thailand where some friends from NATR would be the next morning. Being the eve of Thailand’s biggest holiday, the bus was packed and traffic leaving the city was gridlocked. Like all of my previous sleepless overnight bus experiences in this country, this one did not disappoint: the cute German girl in front of me reclined her seat back so far my legs were quite literally pinned in place, and the Frenchman next to me apparently needed to elbow me periodically to maintain his slumber. So I quickly resigned myself to staring through the windshield ahead, intently taking in the passing scenery in silhouette, reading (English) road signs, and estimating where we were and how long the journey would take.

I had a flashback to a night on my first trip as a Green Tortoise driver, on a westbound cross-country adventure, leaving New Orleans. I was driving a 1965 GMC 5303 "New Look" we called Sammy, one of the classic old buses that until recently were the hallmark of the company (and which allowed me to indulge my Neal Cassady fantasies). The coach bounced in step to the concrete slabs that comprise that stretch of Interstate 10, while behind me thirty world travelers slept off a night of revels in the big easy. As I inhaled the muggy bayou air it occurred to me for the first time that I'd actually done it: found a sustainable escape from the Dilbert cartoon of a life I'd been mired in for years. After several painful false starts in the late nineties I was finally on the path to whatever I've been searching for.

Somewhere near the village of Hua Hin I looked out the side window and noticed we were passing a truckload of elephants.

Gonna Party Like it’s 2549

Songkran, the Thai New Year (the word “Songkran” comes from the Sanskrit and refers to the beginning of a new solar year), is celebrated from April 13 to April 15. It occurs at the end of the dry season, the hottest time of the year in Thailand (temperatures can reach well over 40°C on some days). During the afternoon of the 13th, Buddha images are bathed as part of the ceremony, as it is believed that this will bring good luck and prosperity for the New Year. Traditionally, young people pour a small amount of lustral water into the hands of elders and parents as a mark of respect while seeking their blessing.

The modern age has added mobility and high-powered water guns to the ceremony. I met Bodhi, Jo, and fellow English teachers Helen and Jamie in Krabi at 9 a.m., and shortly thereafter we loaded the NATR pickup truck with a plastic rubbish bin filled with water, armed ourselves with buckets and water guns, and took to the streets to exchange festive dousings.

The Emerald Cove

It’s my belief that a life well lived requires exercising every muscle of your being; constantly pushing yourself beyond your limits. So, on a personal level, one of the driving forces for my decision to return to Thailand--and NATR in particular--is that being here not only exposes many of my personal shortcomings, but virutally pummels them into a raw pulp. Much like the wholly unfamiliar set of challenges I faced when I first came to the Green Tortoise, this new adventure has cast me light years outside of my comfort zone. Living in a foreign country, struggling to get through the most trivial interactions when you can’t speak the language, and working in a chaotic, extroverted, high-energy environment nearly reduces me to tears some days. But perhaps my biggest challenge has been relating to NATR’s complex director.

That night we ended up at Ralay beach, a narrow isthmus near Ao Nang with a golden sandy beach on one side and a mangrove forest on the other, bounded on either side by limestone karsts and only accessible by longtail boat (I was vacationing on this beach exactly one year before the tsunami). At sunset Bodhi and I left on a hike, and I used the opportunity to confess that after two months I still often feel like I’m in over my head at NATR and fear that I’m a disappointment. Bodhi quickly assuaged my concerns, complimenting my ability to work independently, and confessing his own frustrations at being spread so thin that he can’t devote more time to checking in with me. “Man, we could get so much done!” Barefoot, Bodhi and I made a precarious ascent up the side of a limestone karst to get a better view of the sunset, while the conversation became increasingly intense and philosophical. He excitedly talked about how revolutionary NATR’s work is, and asked me to outline my own vision. I didn’t and still don’t have a clear answer--I’ve spent ten years chasing something I cannot define.

Bodhi, Jo, and I spent the next two days on the island of Koh Muk in the province of Trang. The island’s most famous attraction is what’s known as the emerald cove--a hidden beach accessible at low tide through a cave. Up to a thousand people a day visit it, but by sunset it’s deserted (because of how many people drown trying to get to it after dark, we later learned). Bodhi used his remarkable people skills to commandeer a kayak from a shop near our bungalow, then he and I set out on the Andaman Sea in search of it, just as the sky was acquiring that arresting fiery quality it gets at the end of the day here.

After about forty-five minutes we found the cave--no big feat as it’s well marked with buoys. Once we entered it, I, at the bow, had the duty of holding in my mouth the flashlight we’d brought, gradually rotating my head 180 degrees back and forth, as well as up, to navigate by--we were otherwise surrounded by complete darkness, with the echo of surging water amplified in our ears. We paddled forward, as Bodhi shouted out directions in which to point the light. We were deep into the cave with little encouragement of finding the beach, when suddenly we heard what sounded like a tidal wave coming at us from the abyss ahead. In that instant a great calm washed over me, as though a important mystery was about to be solved.

Bodhi shouted “Paddle Right!” I snapped out of my trance, and vigorously paddled on that side, turning the kayak at the slightly obtuse angle where the entrance to the cove had materialized before us. The roaring swell delivered us there effortlessly.

Imagine it like pipe (an entirely appropriate simile), where the cave is the stem, and the emerald cove is the bowl, with a sandy basin that slopes gently upwards from the entrance, and is surrounded on all sides by roughly 200-meter-high limestone cliffs draped with jungle flora. (I’m convinced this place was the inspiration of Alex Garland’s novel The Beach.) Bodhi and high-fived each other, screamed, and ran around in a kinetic release of the adrenaline rush. We then sat on the beach and stared up at the sky in a meditative trance.

Navigating the cave on our way out, we turned out the light and paddled gently, observing the phosphorescence, which traced each paddle stroke like pixie dust. On the open sea, I filled Bodhi in on the details of corporate job I had after finishing my degree, the luxury apartment and new car that followed, and of the emptiness it all brought me. "Eventually I packed what I could fit in the trunk of the car and drove to California to start over." "So, your biggest material possession literally became your vehicle of escape. That's hot, man!"

“This might sound like a strange question, but why aren’t you married?” Bodhi asked. Actually, I’ve reached a magical age where most people feel the need to make that inquiry--with varying levels of concern--and the amount of subsequent explanation it requires is as overwhelming as the prospect of doing a thousand chin-ups. My attempt to dismiss the whole matter with the response “Hey, why buy the cow?” was rightly ignored. So, after a pause I said, “There was a time when that was all I was searching for. But about ten years ago that equation completely reversed itself. I don’t know--I’m on a different path now.” Bodhi naturally inquired as to what changed my course so profoundly, but like divine intervention a distant burst of lightning distracted us and the thread was lost. The full moon was swallowed up by clouds, like a precious window of opportunity you missed.

We kayaked near the edge of the limestone karst, skirting the cavern formed where it cantilevers several meters from its base, which has been worn down by countless millennia of tidal battering. We came upon a smaller version of the cave we’d just navigated, and with each surge air was forced into it, trapped momentarily in the bronchi of the great stone beast before being exhaled with a deep, primordial howling. Bodhi and I stopped paddling for what may have been five minutes or half an hour, while rapid pulses of lightning created a strobe-like effect on the great vaulted sky above us and the earth communicated in a language most humans stopped speaking ten-thousand years ago.

We reached the beach just as the storm made landfall.

Endnotes:

Bire Lama, my Nepali brother, wrote to tell me he’s getting married in September. My desire to extend my stay here beyond August is now a full-blown mission of sorts, with a journey to Kathmandu in the fall.

My biological brother and his band Scamper advanced to the final round of the WBCN Rumble--competing against The Rudds and Campaign for Real Time--to determine Boston’s best band. Although in the end they didn't take home the gold, it was an awesome effort and a great honor. Nice one, boys.

Milestones

Greetings to the three people who haven't given up on this blog for lack of a timely update. As at least one person out there can attest, I love to write about my adventures, so when I fail to do so you can assume I have good reason. Life at NATR keeps me pretty busy.

Simon Says ...

Much like they were at Transworld, English lessons here are an emotional rollercoaster. A few weeks ago I taught my first class, a food-themed lesson on likes and dislikes, and it went astoundingly well; it was filled with fun activities and laughter, and by the end everyone was freely using the language. As the students exited the room they bowed to me with their hands clasped together and said "Thank you, teacher." It was perhaps one of the finest moments of my life.

That night, slightly buzzed on Singhas, I walked down one of Khuraburi's few side streets for several kilometers, until well after the sounds of blaring televisions and barking mongrels gave way to the ambient music of the jungle. I was practically skipping, reveling in having found something else that I'm great at and in such an amazing place. Then, a week later, I gave a grammar lesson on the verb "to be" that was so arduous I could barely keep from weeping before it was over. Things did pick up the next day when we played a game of "Simon Says" to act out some action verbs (I shall forever regret not getting a photo of me with the class as we jumped around singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire").

We're starting several new sections of English this month, including an absolute beginner class and several classes aimed specifically at guiding. The team and I have been working through our bloodshot eyeballs putting all this together, having zero previous real-world experience designing needs analyses or syllabi. Luckily a new teacher with three year's of TEFL experience arrives in a couple weeks to help out. Solid.

Visa Run

In a waste of time and energy so colossal it could only be official bureaucracy, last Tuesday I made my first "visa run." My first month in Thailand--as long as I was here last year--had already passed, and my Visa was set to expire. Several others in the same predicament piled in the NATR truck with me that afternoon and headed to the port town of Ranong, where we took a forty-five minute boat ride to the port in Kawthaung in the Union of Myanmar (Burma). An imposing, breathtaking gilded pagoda stands sentinel over the poverty-stricken city, whose welcome sign, written in Burmese with its loops and curls, made me think of lollipops. We walked around town for ten minutes, surrounded by a mob of urchins trying to sell us Burmese currency, while the boatmen dealt with our passports.

Back in Ranong, we found a "farang" restaurant and dined in pizza-induced bliss. With all due respect to the local Khuraburi cuisine, I can't believe I've survived a whole month without cheese.

CBT

All of my writerly energy of late has been focused on creating an article about our new community-based tourism (CBT) program for the coastal fishing villages in this area, targeted at the Crooked Trails audience. Crooked Trails is planning to incorporate NATR's CBT program into their Thailand itinerary next fall! Check out the article if you're interested in learning more about this awesome new program. (Warning: It's been described as "phosphorescent prose").

Happy Birthday!

Last Thursday marked the first birthday in several years that I didn't spend on a beach in Baja, Mexico, with the Green Tortoise drinking my fill of home-made margaritas (and, on one occasion, waking up the next morning to collect my clothing, which was mysteriously scattered all over the beach). Instead I rang in the big 25/34/44 (whichever age I've told you) in the coastal fishing village of Tung Nam Dam piloting our aforementioned CBT program with a family from Boulder, CO (from them I learned my favorite coffeeshop there, Penny Lane, has closed). We spent the day hiking, collecting and processing natural rubber, roasting cashew nuts, and talking with our host family through an interpreter. I was in bed by 9:00 pm having--as it is a Muslim village--celebrated my first birthday since age seventeen without a single drink.

The visiting family had been at Golden Buddha Beach when the tsunami hit last year, and we spent the next emotional day at the site of the resort on Koh Phratong together. Their stories were incredible--the father was videotaping the twenty-five-foot-high wave when it was still some fifty miles away, then ran for high ground with only seconds to spare. Their descriptions of the sounds and emotions from that morning made the tragedy real to me in new ways.

That night I made up for my birthday sobriety at an raucous NATR party, where I was privileged to get nicely acquainted a lovely young French woman from another tsunami-relief organization who'd joined the festivities. Viva.

Et Cetera

A friend in Shanghai recently told me that she can't read this blog. These revolutionary ramblings are apparently censored in China!

If you clicked on the word "fun" in my last entry and watched the movie, that is in fact a small watermelon I smashed. Watermelon cricket is all the rage in our little NATR circle right now--the goal is to round the bases without getting hit by the watermelon shrapnel being hurled at you in all directions ... or to simply not lose an eye.

NATR legally became a corporation last week. I'm on the Board of Directors.

Opening my birthday gift--a Rublik's Cube!

The NATR gang in formal attire. That's cake on my face.

Who We Are

A heartfelt thank you to everybody who replied to the first post. It was encouraging to receive your positive comments and e-mails.

***

North Andaman Tsunami Relief (NATR) was founded in the days after the tsunami by a young visionary named Bodhi, who had been working as an environmental educator at Golden Buddha Beach, an eco-resort on Koh Phratong island. Bodhi was spending the holidays with his family in the US when the tsunami struck, and returned to find Golden Buddha, as well as many nearby villages, completely destroyed. These rural villages are not well-known coastal tourist destinations like Khao Lak or Phuket, and little aid was initially directed here. Bodhi identified the need to assist this specific area; to give back to the communities that had shown him so much kindness before the disaster. NATR--an initialism designed to invoke the word "nature"--was born.

I first learned of NATR through my friends at Crooked Trails, who were helping recruit volunteers. My schedule and commitments at the time didn't allow me to come until April, and I couldn't remain here much longer than three weeks. But that was long enough to form a powerful connection. NATR's model of community empowerment and self-reliance immediately resonated with me, and to witness so many people come together and toil so hard out of pure kindness and concern, frankly, overwhelmed me. When I left I felt as though I was abandoning a crucial mission in my life. So last fall I completed my certification to teach English, and when I was done I applied for only one job.

In the year that has passed a lot has changed here. We're in a new office that's equipped with a computer lab and classroom, and the focus of the organization has evolved from disaster relief to community development and long-term sustainability--we teach English and computer classes at TREC on weekends and are in the process of expanding these programs; we're working with several villages to create local community-based tourism programs through training guides and developing homestay programs; and we're identifying long-term markets for locally-produced handicrafts.

What hasn't changed here is the energy. Everyone comes together and is focused on only one mission: helping the people of these communities. It's an amazing team and I'm privileged to be a part of it.

It's not all business around here, though--we certainly have our share of fun. (I hope this works; regardless, wear headphones if you're at work.)

The Training, Resource, and Education Center (TREC) in Khuraburi--the new home of NATR's offices and classes.

The Tararin bungalows in Khuraburi--I stayed in one of the rustic ones last year.

The English classroom at TREC. I teach this group on weekends.

A recent party for a departing volunteer. Farewell Phyllipa!

A longtail boat at Mu Koh Surin, home of the Moken Sea Gypsies.

A view of downtown Khuraburi.

Welcome to Thailand

My first job was teaching--I was about eight years old introducing such lexis as "dog" and "cat" to my three-year-old brother Nate on a small slate blackboard that dated from my Dad's childhood. By the time Nate reached Kindergarten he was leisurely reading works by Nabakov and Dostoevsky; he learned to play the piano and guitar and now fronts a Boston rock band when he's not performing research at MIT. The only logical conclusion is that I'm a great teacher. Now let's see what I can do for the rural, tsunami-impacted villages along the north Andaman coast of Thailand.

***

I told you I was going to start this blog before I left California. Maybe I even promised you the simple courtesy of a thank-you note for supporting me with donations, storage space, mail forwarding, advice, or encouragement. I vowed I'd keep my karmic balance in check. But one distraction begets another--oh blissful rain on the window pane that last morning--and I found myself frantically packing the last of my things a mere five hours before my flight to Bangkok, as the gracious woman driving me to San Francisco airport and the wise-cracking bloke taking over my room patiently waited. Three weeks later and I'm still struggling to catch up. Please forgive me--I don't love or appreciate you any less.

I'm not going to put either of us through the odious task of recapping the past three weeks. Instead, think of this as a movie you walked into twenty minutes late because you got caught up in a philosophical debate outside the theater with a homeless person about the ramifications of passing Hubbert's peak on population dynamics (you never could pass up a friendly exchange on this topic). Take a deep breath and settle into your comfy seat and let the buttery goodness of that tub of popcorn coat your esophagus and soothe your insides (You glutton, you!). You'll figure out the plot and maybe even stick around to see how it ends. I'll try and make it worth your while.

Welcome to Thailand.