A V.I.P. HITS THAILAND

NEWSFLASH! Phitsanulok has a new and highly esteemed visitor: my very own mother.

Well, I thought I knew Thai hospitality before this, but lo, I was so wrong. In honor of my mum's arrival, unimaginable heights of kindness have been summitted. My mother spent her first day in Thailand expertly guided by my coworkers around the ruins of the 15th century historical capital of Thailand, in the 100 degree heat. That was only the beginning. My teacher QT is off the charts.

Here's ma, receiving flowers at the departmental party celebrating her arrival.

Ma poses with the kiddies.

I'm so excited about her visit I'm even going to take a little vacay. Reckless, I know, but when you haven't seen family in nine months...

Happily,
Bec

How I realized Phitsanulok is home

In The Republic, Socrates introduces an extended metaphor for the city as a human soul. He presents the soul as having three components: eros, thumos, and logos, or, quite roughly, desires/love, spiritedness, and intellect. Thumos corresponds to the warrior class of the city, defending the things we love (including, of course, ourselves). Thumos is our vanity, our pride, our expectations, and even our anger at ourselves for not meeting expectations.

Most relevantly for this post, it's the part of ourselves that irrationally attaches us to things that are our own. As in, of course I liked my high school football team and went to every game even though our record in the four years I attended school must have been about 10-38. Our sports teams, our homes, even our family members: thumos is the part of ourselves that bonds us to those things that, objectively viewed, might not be all that great. Think Cubs fans, the way you like your mom's weird macaroni and cheese, the bizarre dent on your car you strangely take pleasure in. These things are ours, and just that is enough to make them valuable to us.

Last week, I hosted a 23 year-old Italian couch surfer on the floor of my one-room apartment. He was plenty amiable, at the mid-point of a two year journey (by land and boat only; no flights!) from Italy to Australia. He stayed here for a couple of days, taking in the sights and relaxing before hitching-hiking on to the next big town on the highway. I showed him the best P'lok has to offer: the big temple, the night bazaar, the best pad thai in town, the best juice stand, the market, my friends, even aerobics in the park. When he was packing up, I asked him what he thought of the place. He said, "it could be worse," as if this was the most natural observation about the place.

I was a little stunned. Hadn't I shown him the wonderful parts of town? The little secrets it took me months to accumulate? Had he been paying any attention? And that's when I remembered what I'd been struck by when I first got here: the anonymous melange of three-story high dingy store fronts that stretch for blocks and blocks, the unattractive amount of trash, the vague feeling of a town that doesn't matter but wishes it did. The Scranton of Thailand, maybe?

Then I realized, it had happened. Phitsanulok had become a part of me. I'd subsumed it under my umbrella of things that are my own and that thus I love. And so, couch surfers be damned, I am defending this place until the temple bells stop ringing and the giant rooster statue on the highway crumbles down. All I need now is someone at the Phitsanulok tourist office to please, please find me and hire me to write brochures.

Yours,
Rebecca

Mango season has arrived!

As of yesterday, mangoes are about 30 cents each with prices expected to fall as peak season nears. You should have seen the vendor’s face when I told her how expensive mangoes are back home.


I'm think I am growing increasingly competent at navigating the market. A few other shots from yesterday's grocery-shopping trip:




Love,
R

Getting to know Phitsanulok, Pt. II: the city of many festivals

You have likely already heard about Thailand's notorious full moon party, but I think that you might be unaware of another Thai paradise for party lovers: Phitsanulok. We don't just party once a month; we party all month long.

This town can throw a festival like no other. There's been a festival more or less since my arrival. Skeptical? First was Loy Krathong in November, followed by bike week in early December, followed by the international food festival of late December, followed by the King Naresuan festival of early January, and the famous Wat Yai festival of late January, followed immediately by the orchid festival of early February and then the Chinese new year festivities of mid February. As far as I can tell, late February is experiencing a freakish lull in festival action.

Each festival is different--the orchid festival had an unimaginable amount of orchids, the Wat Yai festival had an official fruit that was oblong and brown and absolutely everywhere, the King Naresuan festival had great fireworks--but there are also a lot of commonalities. Mostly I think this is because a fair portion of the economy of Phitsanulok is constituted by vendors who move from festival to festival. I'm starting to recognize them: the woman who sells the old timey photographs of Phitsanulok, the woman who sells the long skirts that won't bargain cheap enough for my liking, the guy who sells actual kitchen sinks.

That's another remarkable aspect of the festivals; you'd be amazed by the breadth of product available. Power tools to teak wood beds to sticky rice to squirrels. In one day, a whole street of the town will be transformed into a combination outdoor carnival, cabaret, dollar store, and Home Depot. A typical festival will throb for anywhere from three to ten days, pulsing with people, music, lights, smoke and smells. Families, shrieking children, deeply wrinkled elderly, self-aware teens with lip gloss, young couples: all will swarm around the many stalls and stages, eating, laughing, watching, bargaining. And then, as quickly as it arrived, the entire commotion will fold up and disappear, to reappear in slightly altered form a few days later.

I haven't done proper photodocumentation of the spectacles, but here's a shot of our decorations for Chinese New year. The town, like much of Thailand, has a fairly sizable population with Chinese heritage, and also our lady Mayor's husband is Chinese.


I'm not sure if I'll make it to the "biggest party in the Thailand," but I bet if I do, I'll find that they have considerably less excellent prices on extension cords. Phitsanulok, where the festival never ends. I think I should contact the Tourist Authority here to see if they want me to write any copy for them. Who knows, maybe they're paying me to make these blog entries?

Enjoying city life,
Rebecca

Getting to know Phitsanulok, Pt. I: Wat Yai

While perusing the endlessly amusing classroom anecdotes and the sundry pictures I’ve posted, it occurred to me that I haven’t given much wire time (what is the blog equivalent of air time?) to my own hometown. In a special TWO PART series of blog posts I seek to amend this grievous mistake.

Part I: Wat Yai

Wat Yai is the big deal in town. To be more exact, it’s the deal in town, dating back to 1357. Wat Yai, home to the “second most famous Buddha image in Thailand.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it: Phra Buddha Chinnarat? Yes, of course.

Though officially named Wat Phra Si Ratana Mahatat Woramahawihan, most everyone calls the place Wat Yai, which translates to “big temple.” It’s the heart of the town, everything else existing merely in relation, plotted on some orbit. When someone asks me where I live, I say “glai Wat Yai,” or “near the big temple.”

Indeed, I am lucky enough to live within spitting distance of the temple, sharing the very same small alley. From my little porch I can look out over the trees and spot the top of the temple tower. Every morning at six fifty, I hear the bell that calls the monks to gather, and at seven the chanting of the monks begins, keeping me company as I eat my muesli and yogurt.

The monks. That’s a great part of living next to the wat. It’s wonderful living in a Buddhist country, but the language barrier impedes my attempts to learn from the practitioners all around me. I have a million questions—about faith, about monkhood, about meditation, about what kind of food offerings the monks like best—but as I’m still mastering basic food vocabulary, I’m not up to the task of discussing the finer points of the four-fold path. However, my endless access to monks has given me an alternate way of learning: spying. Euphemistically, I suppose you could call it observation. I watch the monks. I watch them laugh amongst themselves. I watch them joke with vendors and board city buses. I even watch them (sometimes) in their apartments (which face my own building). I try not to be too invasive, but how can I ignore the gigantic Manchester United poster one of the monks has up on his wall? Or the monk seeking a moment of solitude in the alley to enjoy a cigarette? Sometimes a monk will even say “hello,” but that’s about the most contact I ever have. I swear one morning while I was waiting for the bus one monk asked me if I was a teacher at Triam Udom Suksa and I was so busy being nervous and bowing excessively that I couldn’t even compose a coherent reply.

Given my abundance of quality personal time (another euphemism?), I've taken to sitting around the wat rather than sitting in my apartment. Sometimes I aspire to meditate but mostly I just people watch. It’s neat to see the various roles the wat assumes. Wat Yai is many things: a source of local pride, fair grounds, space for a bustling herbal remedy and dried fruit market, a place for prayer, and host to the few tourists that roll up in giant air-con buses, to name a few. It is the density and substance from which local gravity radiates, holding everything together and making it comprehensible.

Here are a few pictures. This is the sort of back yard of the temple. These ruins date back to sometime in the 16th century I think? This is my favorite part of the wat:




Here are some more Buddhas, resting on a large stupa:


And...drumroll...here it is! The second most famous Buddha image in Thailand. Relish it. Appreciate the unique swooping dragons on the side of the Buddha. Be impressed (picture courtesy of wikipedia):


And our shared alley. The monks houses are on the left. The entrance to my apartment is on the right, just out of the frame.


So there it is, reader, a little bit more about my life here. Now you know what makes Phitsanulok tick. Are you ready to come visit so you can make a lotus blossom and incense offering with me? Great. See you soon! And stay tuned for part II of this thrilling series.

Yours,
R

Loy, Loy Krathong

I am in the midst of my second week of teaching, and I continue to flounder in a state of uncertainty about how and what to teach. The kids are so very sweet, but I am incessantly confusing them with ill-conceived and overly optimistic lesson plans. In carrying out yesterday’s lesson plan, I never even reached the “game with past perfect” activity because I couldn’t manage to adequately execute “make students fill in seating chart.”

So instead of regaling you with more tales of incompetence, let me and tell you about this lovely festival that coincided with my arrival in town: Loy Krathong.

Loy Krathong is an annual apology to the river, a making of amends for the usual take, take, taking of resources and pollution of the rest of the year. For Phitsanulok, this means apologizing to the Nan River, which cuts through the middle of town and serves as a hub of commercial and social activity. The very day I arrived, the whole town was busying itself in preparations for the night’s festivities. The area of the town along the river was transformed into a carnival of food, lights, theatre, and krathong vendors.

The Nan:



First among the many traditions I was exposed to, the parade:





For an hour and half, we watched as a mélange of high school bands, groups of small, costumed children, and countless neon floats bearing beautiful Thai women processed past us, moving in a streaming dance with the surrounding traffic (not redirected for the occasion).

As we watched the parade, the evening air began to fill with floating lanterns, delicate flaming lights borne up into the night. At first tens and then hundreds drifted slowly in the dark sky. I tried fruitlessly to take pictures to show you, dear reader, because I wanted you to see how pretty it was, but really there is no way to share the beauty of all of those lanterns suspended above our heads or convey the magic of their quiet and slow rising into the inky air.

A lantern lighting:





(I didn't take that second picture)

After a delicious dinner of street food and fresh ice cream (homemade with coconut milk), we readied to float our very own “krathongs.” We found our school’s energy club industriously selling krathongs as a fundraiser, and painstakingly selected the perfect ones. After hiking down the steep banks, we lit our krathongs and with a quiet prayer and a wish, released them onto the river. Here’s mine:



And P’Maew, one of my wonderful co-teachers, floating her krathong:



Finally, totally beat, my host teachers returned me to my little apartment nearby the river.

So what do you think? It’s pretty, right? In terms of environmental impact, Loy Krathong might be a touch of a problematic holiday, but at least most of the waste is biodegradable, which is a lot more than can be said for Christmas decorations.

Oh, I almost forgot, my favorite part, the Loy Krathong song! Take a listen.

Next time I plan to show you pictures of my house! It is my motivation to finish decorating. And maybe I’ll even write a little about my daily life here? Until then, farewell dear reader.

Yours,
Rebecca