AIT

The talk at AIT went well. Sue came with and we got the mini bus from Mo Chit - takes about half an hour along the expressway. Seems quite a long way out. When we got there it was baking hot and no one about - very different from Kasert which is always boiling with activity. As an international university it had a very different atmosphere, lots of foreigners and very few Thais.

There were 14 people in the class - all post grads - some from Indonesia, quite a few from India, other from China and Korea. The common language is English, but some struggle. They are just about to start their own research and they seemed to enjoy the practical side, what I did, how I did it. But I got the feeling they would have liked more hard conclusions about gender, but it isn't that easy to come up with hard and fast conclusions in such a short period, as they will find.. Babette pushed a bit but I didn't give in.

They gave me a nice present - a bag and a book and were all very gracious. Came back on the ordinary bus which took so long I was starving by the time we got back.

Chiang Mai, back again and protests

Thoord gave Bee and I a lift to CM on Sunday afternoon, as they were going to visit his dad in hospital. I have a feeling the frogs in the plastic bag were a present for him, but didn't like to enquire.

At CM I checked into the TopNorth Hotel, right in Farangcentral. Bit strange at first to be back in the world of bars and written English. However, Touristworld is fine for 24 hours - had a swim, a gin and tonic, bought a load of presents in the night market, and went to a bar where two Thais sang country and western songs in accents that missed out all of the consonants. I thought they were great and gave them a big tip. It absolutely threw it down most of the night and the next morning.

In the morning sat in my room and wrote most of my AIT presentation, then back late afternoon train. Managed to get hold of a copy of the The Bangkok Post which is full of stories about the escalating anti-govt protests in the city.

Tuesday eve - Sue due to arrive Weds so was running errands. Was going up to the little supermarket when one of the big marches came down Phaya Thai road. Found out later that this was one of the five demos that Tuesday. These people had been occupying one of the Ministries up the road, and having made their point they had left in the evening and were marching to rejoin the main big protest outside Govt House. There were thousands of them, all dressed in yellow, looking very happy and unthreatening, taking up three lanes of the road in a procession which stretched for over half a mile. They were singing, had a few drums and loads of 'We love the King' banners. Interestingly, there was hardly a policeman to be seen. If this was in England, there would be a policemen every 20'. The only policemen I saw was a traffic cop stopping the motorbikes driving into the demo from a side road.

Second trip to Mae Tha

A very successful trip to Mae Tha. Did six interviews - with women working in the electronics factories, a couple with women who worked in a noodle factory and one with a primary school teacher. One woman was making industrial size quantities of Som Tam in her back garden kitchen. She had a large tin bowl of live fresh water crabs which they had caught in the paddy belonging to a relative. As we were talking to her she picked them out of the bowl and put them in the blender, absently pushing them down as they tried to climb out, and then blended them whole. That was a short interview.
Thoord provided loads of secondary data which Bee got very excited about and downloaded a stats programme and proceeded to set up an enormous spreadsheet. I'm not completely sure what it all means, but may come in useful once I understand it. At one stage we had three laptops going and piles of paper spread over the floor.
Little PimPom was very pleased with her animal book and didn't let go of it all the time I was there. Although she has more than a lot of Thai kids she doesn't have a lot - and practically no other books. Her two friends were there for most of the weekend and the three little girls spent ages sitting in the hammock with the older one reading the words and the smaller ones looking at the pictures. I was sorry to leave Mae Tha - Thoord and Bim are lovely and I also really liked Pikot (I think she's a cousin) who was very helpful and kind. The picture shows her and PimPom outside Pikot's house. I went for a bike ride on Bim's bike on my last evening and went all round the valley as it was getting dark. The air was full of fireflies and the sky really clear so the constellations stood out.

On my travels again

Just spent a pleasant lunchtime in Kasert's specimen garden. Everything is labelled, I am trying to memorise at least one species every time I go in.

This evening off to Mae Tha again on the night train. Unfortunately we booked too late to get the bottom bunks, so we will be slotted in like parcels on the top shelf. Aim to spend three days at MT, interviewing women who work in the electronics factories in Lamphun to see what their attitude is to the CF. We will also go the the Royal Project and try again to get to the bottom of exactly what secondary data exists. And need to take as many photos as possible! Bee has borrowed her friend's digital camera, and is in charge of documenting everything we see.

In pursuit of something to read

Made another trip to raid the second hand bookstalls of the Khao San Road today. Got four books for 600B, or about nine quid, including a copy of Norman Lewis's travel book on Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in the early 1950's. Say what you like about backpacker land, it is a good source of books. For new books there are some very good bookshops in town, but the rate I go through fiction means it would be a very expensive undertaking. I was a bit disappointed by the British Council lending library - not many books, and mainly abbreviated versions of english classics for people learning English. The shortened versions of Trollope appeal even less than the full versions. AUA has apparently got a library - will have a look when I am next down there for another language class.

So in the meantime, there's the KS Rd. It's on the other side of the city, which until now has meant a journey to the end of the Skytrain line, and then a boat. Not anymore though! Today I found the elusive no 59 bus and did the whole trip in under 20 mins. Had to run to catch it mind, it doesn't hang about and you need to ring the bell and get off sharpish, otherwise it's blasting on up the road in a cloud of filthy exhaust.

The Queen's birthday

Tuesday 12th August is a public holiday for the Queen's birthday. Lots of Thais take the Monday off to create a four day weekend, so the city is in holiday mode. Yesterday went to see local 'festival' recommended by the landlady. I decided to walk there, an achievement in itself, as walking is not something which is done in this city. I followed the railway tracks for half a mile west, which I have been meaning to explore for a while. There is a concrete path by the side of the tracks which I have seen a lot of people using. The walk down the tracks was quiet, but pretty squalid in places as a shanty town has been built on the spare land between the railway and the next row of houses. I saw a group of men building yet another house out of sheets of corrugated iron, on posts stuck in the remains of a lotus pond.

The 'festival' turned out to be a gathering of all the people who had been invited to an audience with the Queen to celebrate her birthday - there were thousands of them, mainly women of a certain age in formal silk suits, and hundreds of girls guides and boy scouts in uniform, a bit like an english royal garden party. They had obviously all been told to gather at a certain spot where they could entertain themselves for a couple of hours by looking at an exhibition of the Queen's good works before they were bussed to the Chitlada Palace. The exhibition was open to the public and was a bit like a royal trade fair in a marquee, with yards of Thai silk draped everywhere and three 6' high balls of thread to symbolise the Queen's support for handicrafts. A lot of effort had gone into making it as pretty as possible: there were fairy lights, lots of hanging baskets and even more flowers projected onto an indoor waterfall.

Outside was a market where you could buy produce from the royal projects and lots of royal-themed souvenirs - I was quite tempted by an umbrella which said' Long live our Beloved King' in English (and presumably) in Thai.

Lettuce palace

Today walked over to the Suan Pakkad aka the 'Lettuce Garden' a group of traditional Thai houses around a garden which have been turned into a museum. Inside is a collection of pottery, semi-precious stones and some rather random artifacts collected by Prince Chimbhot. Very little is labelled, and the collection is a strange mixture of royal odds and ends - e.g. a model throne, unwanted presents - (what else do you do with a banqueting set of matching victorian glasses?) and some really lovely and valuable things e.g. a 14th century Buddah and some lacquered panels. One of the houses holds a collection of puppets which when you press a button will creak into action and re-enact a section of the Ramakien (Thailand's version of the Ramayama). Outside the garden is full of birds and pretty peaceful considering it faces onto a main road. Not for long though - the Skytrain extension to the airport is being built at the back and soon there'll be a train going past overhead every 5 minutes.

The walk home

Left the Thai language class feeling despondent at my lack of any kind of grasp of this language and decided to walk home. In about a mile walked across an entire slice of Bangkok life. 300 yards up Rachadamri I came to the Erewan Shrine, where thai dancers in traditional costume and musicians were performing, and crowds of people were burning incense and buying little cages of sparrows to set free. Then left down to Siam Square where the six lanes of traffic is so heavy the only way of getting around is to walk above it on the elevated walkway. This runs out so you have to walk through the department stores - acres and acres of branded goods in dead air conditioned space. Then right onto Phaya Thai Road. Cross where the road goes over the stinky khlong. I stopped at a canal-side cafe bar which is popular with young trendy Thais - extremely fashionable, talking on their mobile phones. Then on up the road past the Asia Hotel with all the massage girls sitting out front. Another hair-raising traffic intersection to cross at Petburi, and a quick detour to the southern Thai pavement food stalls outside the mosque for some mangoes and sticky rice. Then up through the workaday streets of Ratchathewi - stalls, street food, people threading garlands, motorbikes. Then through the office car park that every one uses as a short cut, over the Skytrain station bridge, and home.

Lam yai

Spend Friday with Bee's parents in Lamphun. They are fruit farmers, growing lam yai, bananas and mangoes - but mainly lam yai. Bee's dad (see pic) explains that until about 10 years ago the whole area was down to rice, but now is all given over to fruit growing - presumably much less labour intensive than paddy. We go to have a look at how work is getting on in the orchards. The lam yai season is just about over, and two blokes are up a rickety ladder, chopping away the branches that have fruited. We spend some time pulling the last fruits off the chopped branches - these are the lowest quality ones which will sell for the least money.

Later we meet Bee's uncle at his factory. He is a local fruit magnate who has invested in huge drying sheds and machinery so that the lam yai fruits can be graded, dried and exported - mainly to China. Half a dozen young Karen seasonal workers are making some lunch out the back. They keep their distance from the boss. 'Work long, not much money' says Bee's uncle cheerfully, referring to his workforce . The drying process operates 24 hours a day. 'Do they eat lam yai in England?' he asks, hoping to open up another market. I tell him I don't think so and he gives me a large sack of dried fruit to take back to Bangkok.