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Thailand Year Two (1971-1972) by Peter Crall

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Thailand Year Two (1971-1972) by Peter Crall Thailand Year Two (1971-1972) by Peter Crall We didn't mind that Chiang Rai lacked the excitement and culture of bigger cities and that it really wasn't much more than a large market town. In those days, the rice fields were still close enough to the center of town that you could encounter an occasional stray water buffalo wandering down the street, minus the little dek [kid] with a stick who should have been tending it. That was OK. It was where we lived. Our first night back in town, we had dinner at the Silana restaurant, one of the nicer places, but still a study in cracked plastic and bad lighting. An epileptic fan on the wall struggled to deliver a breeze. A large framed picture showed King Bhumipon and Walt Disney holding a Mickey Mouse flag. Settling back into our little green house really felt like coming home. It was a place where we were comfortable, surrounded by familiar sights and sounds. But, of course, we were government employees, not tourists, and the rent had to be paid, literally and figuratively, and that meant a return to the classroom and another long cycle of work. As we plunged into our second year of teaching in Chiang Rai, we knew what to expect on the first day of school and were somewhat more relaxed, but that was not to say it was any easier. Learning English was a real challenge for some students, and as their attention wandered and they became frustrated, that caused discipline problems for me. We always struggled with inadequate teaching materials and there was an ongoing drama - in my English department at least - to write, type and crank out substitute content, and I seem to remember always being elected the repairman who would get his hands and his nice teaching clothes covered with grime trying to clear a jammed Gestetner mimeograph machine, or winding up as the designated grunt who would bicycle into town for reams of paper and tubes of ink. It was nice that we already had an established community of friends, even though we occasionally got on each other's nerves. That support network might change over time as volunteers rotated in and out, or as Thai teachers moved between Ministry of Education postings, but they were the indispensable social cushion in our daily lives - the antidote to loneliness and isolation, and we probably didn't show our appreciation to our compatriots as much as we should have. To give us perspective on our situation and to help us value the support we had, there was always the story of the first Peace Corps volunteer in Mae Hong Son. Her tale stood as an example of how isolated some of the first teaching assignments in Thailand really were. In the early 1960s, there was one dirt track into that far northwestern province, whose culture was Shan, not Thai. It followed the military road which had been cut by the Japanese during World War II. Vehicles could get through in dry weather, but rains had made the way impassable at the start of the school year. So while the highway experts in Bangkok were still working on plans for an all-weather road from Chiang Mai, a young American woman climbed aboard an elephant with her suitcase and teaching materials and began the mountainous, five day jungle trek to her assigned school - a hundred miles from the outside world. Safe to say the mail was slow getting to her, but, while she waited, she had the experience of a lifetime. Ten years later, when we were on the scene, Mae Hong Son had acquired that all-weather gravel road as well as an airport. Despite these improvements, however, that little town in its mist-shrouded valley still felt like a very distant place - a world far removed from the mainstream of Thai life. A new volunteer in town for the school year was Nick Handy from Seattle, who arrived to teach at the Christian school Chiang Rai Wittayakhom. He would spend one year there before transferring to the school at Ban Farm Sampantakit. There he had the Turnbulls as neighbors and lived in the house vacated by Frank Younkin and his family when they returned to the States. We both liked Nick very much. In addition, he loved camping and was a hard-core, trail-pounding hiker, so the three of us were a natural team. He was with us on all our most memorable outings. We went backpacking in the Cascades with him after we had all returned home. Samakkee school maintained its connection with Canada, even though Ajaan Bunjong with his Canadian Masters Degree had moved on to another position. We got another Canadian CUSO volunteer after we bid farewell to Randy Weekes. We greeted Karina Rosenberg, who was fresh out of university, tall, red-headed and eager to plunge into the classroom and pass on her native language. Thais love to throw parties, and since the school staff had given Randy his liang sohng [farewell dinner], they gave Karina a liang rahp [welcome dinner]. They did not cut the modest new girl a break. To her everlasting mortification, they made her stand up at the microphone and sing, and then ramwong around the room. Royse and I were old hands at this by now and felt totally relaxed when they called us up. After the formal party, a female Samakkee teacher named Jintana took Karina to Chiang Rai's one and only nightclub - a seedy place packed with Chiang Rai's least eligible bachelors and reeking of alcohol. To Karina's relief, at least this time, she was not called upon to provide the entertainment. Onstage a stripper gave a singularly vulgar performance. The crowning touch for the young Canadian was some bad diarrhea the next day from all the food and drink. The party fever spilled over into the community development sector. Dick and Kathy Placke were returning home to Indiana after two years of pigs and chickens and they got the farewell works not only from the local farang gang but also from their provincial Thai department as well, in the form of a rather swish evening lawn party, featuring fluorescent lights, northeastern-style lahp [chopped intestines], and lots of alcohol and dancing late into the night. Larry Rose, one of the other community development stalwarts, was staying on for another year, and one weekend we visited his work site in a remote hamlet called Ban Mae Tam Tai, far out in flat rice farming country east of Chiang Rai town. One of Larry's responsibilities was locating and surveying appropriate sites where small irrigation dams could be built. Designing the dam and overseeing construction were the next steps. There was also a complex social component to this process, since he had to work with individual farmers, village elders, and multiple levels of Thai officialdom. At Mae Tam Tai, we could see what he had accomplished with the help of his full-time assistant Naret. The dam was nearing completion, and after a tour of inspection we took a dip with the local kids in the delightful swimming hole that had been created upstream from his project. It was complete with a tree that overhung the water and allowed the dek to leap off a branch in daredevil plunges. As the sun set and dusk gathered, we walked beside the rice paddies and enjoyed the peace and solitude of the countryside, and the sounds of a day's end in a small village. That evening we had chicken and sticky rice at the home of Buan, the phuu yai ban [village leader] and stayed the night as guests in his home. In the morning we took a bus back to Chiang Rai to prepare for another week of school. Royse and Karina started taking classical Thai dance lessons given at Chiang Rai Wittayakhom school on Saturday mornings. This type of dance is highly stylized and requires quite a bit of subtlety and control, and Thai girls start at a very young age to master it. The learning challenges for a Western woman in her twenties are quite considerable. Royse had an extensive background in dance so she picked it up easily. Karina lacked such experience but she gave it her best effort and did well. The Thais are not above finding some humor in watching foreigners mess things up. Susie Miller related the story of a female volunteer in another province who had worked very hard - with limited success - to learn Thai classical dance and had offered to perform in public at a festival. The day before she was due on stage, a loud speaker truck drove through town blaring the urgent announcement, "Come see the foreign girl dance! She's got really white skin!" A crowd of men came to watch the pale lady struggle through her routine. It was painful, but it was self-inflicted pain. June 9, 1971, marked the 25th anniversary of King Bhumipon's ascension to the throne. This was quite a blast in Bangkok, and for the entire country it meant ceremonies, parades, and no school. In Chiang Rai, we sat in Mengrai Hall at the old salaklang [provincial headquarters] from 9:00 AM to 10:30 and listened to eleven decrepit monks chant sacred scriptures. Then, on a signal from Bangkok, a gong sounded and everyone stood and listened to the national anthem. There was also a public service component connected to the day, and around noon Royse and I biked north three miles to Ban Du where several thousand students were clearing ground for a teacher training college which was to be built there.
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