Tom, a Thai friend of mine, asked me if I wanted to teach English for a day or two at his Tom Karen Center. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, or if I could do it, but I said I would try.

Tom Karen Center is a learning center that Tom  built as an extension of his home in Ban Huisak, a village of about 500 Karen tribe people. It started out three years ago when he decided that it was his destiny to teach English to the kids in his village so that they could get better jobs. First he bought some chairs and a long table and put them in a spare room in his house, and I donated some paper and colored pencils. As time went on, he got more donations and bought books, pencils, paper, white boards, and built an out-building to use as a second classroom. Last year I donated some money for him to build 3 toilet stalls. This year, he has kids coming from neighboring villages as well as from his own village, and has about 40-60 students every day when school is not in session.

I arrived on a Thursday, and observed four volunteers from Canada and England teaching English to about 40 kids. Classes start at around 9:00 in the morning and go until about 4:30 in the afternoon. These volunteers  were university students in the filed of teaching and had been there for a week. They admitted that it was a challenge to teach kids a single subject for that long. They were going to teach one more day and leave Friday night. I spent Friday in Chiang Saen and came back to Ban Huisak on Saturday.

I was asked to teach the young group, ages 5-9.

I started off with a review of the ABCs, then the numbers 1-10, then the days of the week, then more ABCs, and more numbers. Then I got out a set of Thai/English flash cards that I have used to teach myself Thai.  We went through these twice, and then I had them play charades (something I stole from the volunteers bag of tricks).  It was 11:30 and I was exhausted and out of ideas. They were due for a lunch break at around 12:30, so I got some toys out of my duffel bag and declared free time. Later they had lunch and I took a nap. In the afternoon, Tom took the kids on a walking field trip, identifying things and speaking their English names. He suggested that I help Stang study.

Stang is in her last year of high school. She speaks English with a thick accent, but has a large vocabulary. She is going to a University next year, maybe studying English. She opened up a PDF of an exit exam that majors in English have to pass before graduating. There were about 25 little stories with 3-5 question about each story. 100 questions in total. She was getting about 60% of the questions correct, and I was able to confirm her answers were correct or ask her to try again. Then came a question, “Which month has fewer days, June or July”. Stang was unsure, and while she was trying to figure it out or guess, I showed her the knuckle mnemonic device. You know the one—where you put your two fists next to each other and count January (long month), February (short month)… She was delighted to learn this, and I was delighted to have taught something. If that question comes up again, she WILL get it RIGHT! I made a difference!

Today is better than tomorrow.

Kevin

This pretty much summarizes the Chiang Rai weather in March and the first half of April:

March was unrelentingly hot. One day I sought refuge from the heat in an air conditioned pizaa and pasta restaurant. I enjoyed a good pasta lunch in air conditioned comfort, and temporarily forgot about the heat. After I was done, I went up to the front to pay the cashier. While she was totaling up the bill and I was looking down at my wallet for the right combination of bills, I was hit by a blast of very hot air. “That’s strange”, I thought, “they have the pizza oven up here at the front.” I looked up and realized that the front door had been opened, and the outside air was rushing in.  Thankfully thundershowers have arrived in April—high winds, spectacular lightening, impressive thunder, and cooler temperatures, at least at night.

February–April is “burning season” in rural Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. Farmers burn rice stubble, sugar cane stubble, roadside undergrowth, and household trash. The air is noticeably dirty. The sun is a pumpkin orange at sunrise and sunset. During the day, the overhead sky is never quite cyan blue, rather a desaturated grayish blue. It never got so bad that my eyes and throat were stinging, but I don’t like it. It’s almost a deal breaker for me as far as living in Chiang Rai. Next year I might consider spending at least the month of March somewhere else. Now that it is raining for an hour or so most nights, the air has gotten noticeably cleaner. The chart below shows the effect of the rain. The air quality was always in the yellow zone in March, and as high as 150.  Now that it is raining at night, the air quality has improved into the green “OK to breathe” zone

Today is better than tomorrow.

Kevin

Since my arrival in Chiang Rai, I had been living in Orchids Guesthouse on Jedyod road. A very nice place. Small basic accommodations, but very clean with charming friendly staff. My kind of place. I looked at several houses available for rent, and settled on a place near the West edge of town.  I think it will do nicely for a few months, but I am going to look for something with a little more land and not so close to the neighbors. 5000 Baht per month.

Yard and front entrance

Front door

Screened in porch

Living room

Kitchen

Bedroom

Today is better than tomorrow.
Kevin

I am often asked what I like so much about Thailand. I usually reply that the people seem less cynical and more open and more kindhearted.

I was watching a show on Thai TV where a Thai woman was teaching English to Thai teenagers. She was reading a comic strip as a teaching aid. One of the characters, Tom, kept forgetting things, and another character said that Tom was absentminded. The teacher paused to explain what was likely a new word to the students.

“What does absentminded mean?”

She drew a stick figure. “This is Tom.”

Then she drew a heart on his chest.

“This is Tom’s heart or you can say mind. Same thing”

She drew another heart with wings on it, flying away from the body.

“It has flown way, and he is absentminded”

Of course, I would have used the brain to illustrate where the mind and the source of  thought and action is. But she used the heart. Hmmmm.

Today is better than tomorrow.
Kevin

040414
I am staying in Chiang Saen for a few days. I’m just learned that Chiang Saen was sacked in the early 1800s and was something of a ghost town for a hundred years. It shows. Chiang Saen lacks a certain vitality. It seems rather impoverished. Massage shops in Thailand may be a sort of bellwether. Like a Starbucks—if there is a Starbucks in the neighborhood, you know that there is a lot of foot traffic, and that people are spending money. Chiang Rai has an abundance of massage shops (probably too many) they cater to both tourists and locals with discretionary cash. Chiang Rai is thriving and has a vitality about it. I didn’t see any massage shops in Chiang Saen. It has some nice historical sites to see, but I wouldn’t want to live here.

I rented a motorbike from the only motorbike rental shop I could find within walking distance of my hotel. It was a dreary little shop. The bike I got had a lot of miles on it. It was hard to start,  the speedometer didn’t work, and the front end was a little squirrely. I drove it around the block and then took it back to get a better replacement, but it turned out it was the only bike in the shop that would start. So I slowly drove to to The Golden Triangle, about 10 km to the north.

My first stop was the Opium Museum. A very nice small privately run funky museum. This was my second visit to this museum. About five years ago I visited with a Thai lady friend. One of the first exhibits you come to is a recreation of a bamboo and straw hut that rural a Thai or Burmese might live in. Inside the hut was a wax or fiberglass man laying on his side on a platform, smoking opium. My friend looked in the hut and exclaimed PAPA! She forced her way through the door of the hut that was tied shut with a string and began talking to the man. She talked for at least two minutes with quite a bit of sadness in her voice while I stood outside looking on with my jaw dropped in stunned silence.

After she exited the hut, she explained that she didn’t remember her Father very well, because when she was about five years old, she and her brother were sent across the border from Myanmar by their mother to live with their Aunt in Thailand, because her father was an opium smoker and they were very poor.

After remembering that experience, I finished touring the museum and left for the much larger Hall of Opium Museum about 2 km to the north. The Hall of Opium is a Royal Project, and like the other Royal Projects I have seen in Thailand, it is a very impressive, very beautiful facility. But, at least on this day, not very popular. There was only one car in the rather large parking lot.

I walked up the the ticket office by the entrance, and said in my best Thai, “One, ticket, museum” That’s the best I could do. I am not too good at speaking in real sentences yet. The lovely Thai woman surprised me by asking in English, “Do you live here?” “Yes, in Chiang Rai”, I replied in English. She smiled and said, “One hundred and fifty baht.” It was then that I noticed the sign:
Foreigners: 200 Baht
Thai: 150 Baht
She had given me the Thai price, the locals price! I used to encounter the dual pricing system a lot in Bangkok, but I hadn’t seen it very often in Northern Thailand. I have always happily paid the foreigner price. That she gave me the Thai price struck me as rather amazing. I decided that, perhaps, by speaking in my fractured Thai, I had appeared to her something like the child dressed in a big cowboy hat and big boots appears. And what do we do when we encounter a child dressed like that? We extend to them exaggerated respect to make them happy. She charged my the locals price. It did make me rather happy.

I didn’t have exact change, so I gave her two hundred baht, and I was so flummoxed that I took my ticket and headed for the entrance without getting my change. And guess what? She ran after me, and gave me 50 Baht.

The museum was a very nice, interactive, multimedia, exhibit. Well worth visiting. It went on forever, and it took me about an hour to reach the end. I exited the building and was trying to figure out where I was, and where my motor bike was. There was a parking lot, but it was empty. I was walking around  trying to figure out where I parked, when a mini van driven by a man in uniform pulled up beside me.
“Are you looking for your car?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a car or a motor bike?”
“Motor bike”
“Get in.”

Now what the heck was this all about, I thought. Did I park my bike in the Prime Minister’s spot, and it got towed? Did it get stolen?

It turns, that after touring the museum, you exit at the rear of the building. This was an air conditioned shuttle service back to the front parking lot. And it’s along way—it would have been about a ten minute walk. Nice.

Today is better than tomorrow.
Kevin