Warmest winter yet

I can’t believe it’s already almost Christmas. I think because I spent the first half of December traveling around Laos, it hasn’t quite caught up with me yet. So right before Eve and I left, we had one big last night out with Mairi and Natalie, which was super fun but bittersweet in that way only real ‘last night’s’ can be.

The first thing we did was catch a 6 hr bus to Chang Khan, which is the Thai border town. It’s super small, but really pretty since it’s right along the Mekong. The next morn we got up early and crossed into Laos, where we then got onto a slow boat. The slow boats are really long and skinny, and totally packed to the gills. They make about 5 stops throughout the day, and it really is pretty slow. It’s mostly full of young’sh backpackers, who use it as an opportunity to get trashed. The boat stops for the night at Pak Beng, which was another tiny town along the river. Our friend Kirsten had warned us that when she stopped there someone tried to sell her crack and made it seem super shady, so we were expecting the worst (and may have referred to it as “crack town”). But it really wasn’t like that at all, it was just really sleepy. I’m not sure what’s up with the electricity in Laos, but the electricity in Pak Beng went out at about 10:30, so finding our guesthouse in the dark was a little tricky, but we’re survivors.

We then had another long day on the slow boat, until we got into Luang Prabang in the evening. Luang Prabang is an adorable town, and it felt awesome to get off that boat. The next day we caught a truck out to this gorgeous giant waterfall, and there were these beautiful little pools you could go swimming in. We scrambled up to the top of the waterfall, and had the lagoon to ourselves, which is where we choose to go for a swim. There was also this deserted mansion that looked like it had either burned down, or been hit by a tornado. Either way, we climbed around it and had a lot of fun. That night we went out with some of the travelers we had met on the slow boat, who were all super nice though various levels of cool. All the bars close before midnight, and then everyone heads out to the bowling alley because it’s the only thing that stays open late. By the by, Eve and I are terrible bowlers…The next day was Tuesday, which is apparently “no electricity day” in Luang Prabang, so we hung out by the river for a while, and then rented bikes and rode out to another, smaller waterfall. There we went swimming again, and got some much needed sun.

We got up early the next day and took a bus down to Vang Vienne with the awesome Canadian couple we had met on the slow boat. We got into town around 2, and Wednesday is apparently “no electricity day” in Vang Vienne, so went straight to the river. Vang Vienne is basically known as a place where you rent an inner tube, and float down the river and drink. They have all these bars, and slides and rope swings, and it’s super fun. We went out that night, to a bar aptly called “Smile Bar”, and I have to say it was the only super fan (read: dancey) place I found in the whole country. The dj was playing some MGMT, Justice, and this incredible mix of 3 minutes EVERY good song from Dirty Dancing. Needless to say, I was in heaven. I went down the river the next morning before all the drunken backpackers got up, and it was super peaceful and relaxing. Hard to believe it was the same route I had taken the night before.

From there we caught a VIP bus into Vientienne, which supposed to take 3 hours. However, this bus was the biggest joke of my life (read: death trap), and it took close to 7 hours. The transmission and suspension were both shot, and the bus was slanting at a scary level by the time we got off. Eve and I and the Canadian couple had ditched all the other kids by this point, so the four of us rolled into Vientienne a little after midnight. Of course all the affordable guesthouses were closed or full by that point, so we walked around the town (which is about 3.5 streets, smallest capital city ever I swear) for about an hour before we were approached by a tuk-tuk. He offered to take us out of town a little bit to a “cheap guesthouse”. We didn’t have many options at this point, so after he agreed not to leave us in the middle of nowhere if the “guesthouse” was full, we got in. He took us to a couple before we found one that wasn’t full. It seemed ok at first glance, so we paid up and got ready for bed. After about 10 minutes, we realized we were in fact staying in a fully functioning, in fact very busy Laos whorehouse. I won’t go into the details that first tipped us off, but the pimp outside and the loud whores coming and going made us pretty certain. We got new sheets to lie on top of, and Eve and cuddled for warmth since we clearly weren’t going to get under the covers. The next morning Eve booked it to the embassy to get a new Thai visa, and the Canadians and I found us a cute, guesthouse right on the river that did not rent rooms by the hour.

We had to spend a full 4 days in Vientienne, since we got there on a Friday and it takes 2 working days to process a Visa. Many people had told us it wasn’t that dope of a town, but we really enjoyed it. The architecture and food were clearly French influenced, which was a nice change of pace from Thailand. We found a small (but still really fun) water park, and just walked around checking out the sights. We also caught a bus out of town one day to check out this beautiful Buddha Park, which had this one giant circular thing you could climb way up in. There’s definitely no good night life there, but we found plenty of fun hanging out with our new Canadian friends and lurking around. Overall, I had a really great time in Laos, and I think 12 days was a good amount of time to spend. It’s definitely not as developed as Thailand, but the food just might be better. It was weird too, because in total we had almost a full day on busses to get back to Chiang Mai, which was clearly annoying. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point Chiang Mai became “home”, because once I got there I just kept thinking how glad I was to be there.

Not a ton has been going on at my work. Today was my project head’s last day, as she is resigning. It’s starting to dawn on me that my boss may not be the best manager, and quite a few key staff people seem to be looking for other jobs. So for now, the situation analysis has sort of been put on hold, until we can either hire a new project head, or rent one from another NGO. But I get the impression my boss isn’t really going to do much about that until the New Year. Apparently next week some of us will be going down to Lamphun to build a house for one of the kids who recieves a living fund for us, though I'm not exactly clear how our NGO has the skills/materials/experience needed to build a house....I'll keep you posted. In the meantime we’ve been spending our time at work trying to plan our New Years, we are most likely going to go down south to the island of Ko Chang. Ok, hope you all are doing well, and those of you on the East Coast aren’t freezing.

Xoxo
Rae

Sorry it's been a while, things have been really busy out here. Work is going well, however slowly. At our last meeting we sat down and developed the questionnaires for the focus groups we will conduct as the next step in our situation analysis. Apparently we will spend this month coordinating and planning with people in the community, and actually go into Lamphun in January. However, I the OVC project head has submitted her resignation, which may slow things down somewhat. I'm getting the impression that our boss, who is really knowledgeable and nice, may be severely lacking in some key managerial skills, such as time management. So...we may have to outsource a research team to help with the situation analysis, or else hire and then train new staff, so we'll see how things develop.

In other news, some of you may have heard about the political turmoil going on. Protesters took over both of the airports in Bangkok, and even the one here in Chiang Mai for a day. They were protesting against the government, though for the most part people up here in CM were supportive. However, a few days ago the Thai courts decided that the Prime Minister and his party were guilty of electoral fraud, resulting in the immediate dismembering of the current government. So...none of this really affected us, except that my roommate Natalie was supposed to fly home a week ago, and got an extra week out here. Needless to say that has been fun for all of us, especially after she finally got her flight situation handled.

I've been doing a good job of mixing fun and work, going to lots of interesting seminars while making sure to make the most of my time of with my roommates. I'm sad to say that tonight is actually the last night with 2 of them, Mairi and Natalie are out. (Though for those of who know me well, I know you can imagine that I've been pulling "our second to last Thursday out!" for a while now...) A little bit back we spent a day at the zoo, and then up to Doi Suthep. The zoo was seriously amazing, you could get absurdly (read: dangerously) close to a lot of the animals. They also had 2 pandas on loan from China's zoo, which were beyond ador. Doi Suthep is this super amazing temple 12km up into the mountain, and then you climb almost 400 steps and have this sweet view of all of Chiang Mai. I also heard some cool talks on the HIV affected population in prison, the situation on the Thai-Burma border, and the situation for HIV affected youth in Lamphun, though that one was mostly in Thai.

Tomorrow is a national holiday here, as is next Wednesday. Eve and I had already planned to go to Laos for a little bit, and then my boss decided our office would have next Friday off instead of Wednesday, so...we now get a full 10 days in Laos! I'm super excited to check out a new place, I can't believe how little travelling I've done since getting here. We are taking the slow boat to Luang Prabang, and then after a few days heading to Vang Vienne, then hitting up Ventienne quickly in order to catch a bus back home. Luang Prabang is supposed to be super chilled out with some gorgeous waterfalls right outside the city, and Vang Vienne is supposed to be tons of fun. Apparently you spend all day floating down a river and going on zip lines and slides, so it should be a good time. Ok, we booked a sketchily cheap guesthouse in Luang Prabang, so wish me luck, and if you don't hear from me by the 16'th or so start to get worried...

proud to be an american

 I'm seriously so stoked about the election outcomes, I have a feeling all the Americans will be out to celebrate tonight. At least, all the cool ones ;)

Anyways, things are going good at work. It was really interesting to go to Lamphun and see how they actually do a situation analysis. We basically visited schools and "village headmen" during the days. Still not sure exactly how they are defining a village, because they seemed pretty small. I'm thinking neighborhood size...But the headmen are elected positions, and it's their job to know all sorts of stats on the villages and keep things running smoothly. However, everyone we spoke to said HIV was not a really big problem in Lamphun, but the district hospital said a lot of people in the area were affected. Unclear if the people we spoke with were lying, honestly didn't know about the HIV status of their populations, or else the hospital was somehow wrong/misleading. I think the OVC team will go back in a few weeks to do some more research. I'm not sure if they want me to go, as my input/help is clearly limited by the language barrier. But overall, it was cool to get to know my co-workers better. We stayed in this awesome temple, and did hella karaoke every night, which was hilarious. Who knew there was a "hip hop" version of the Cranberries Zombie, or a "techno-remix" of Blondie's One Way or Another?

Halloween was a blast, I went to a party at an American friends house and we all had a great time. Although my tuk tuk driver was completely clueless as to how to get me there, and ended up dropping me off near a convenience store where I got way too many uncomfortable stares since Thia's don't really do Halloween....But I met some really cool Americans who all teach English out here, and I think we will all go out again this weekend.

Other than that, nothing too crazy.  The other night my housemates and I decided we needed to find a bar super close to our house and make it ours.  After a rigorous search (read: 2 bars) with a comprehensive criteria rating system, we found a winner.  Yellowbird Cafe is a 10 minute walk from our house, super friendly/chill with good tunes, cheap drinks, and had Jenga and a really nice guitar they let me play.  Though Freedom Bar came in at a close second, especially with their Western toilet equipped with tp.   Otherwise, just gearing up for the next month. On November 12 Thailand has a national holiday which apparently is celebrated best in Chiang Mai. I guess there will be a bunch of floating lanterns that are set off in the moat and then fill the sky, looking forward to it for sure. 

3'rd week check-up

First off, I want to thank everyone for all the birthday wishes, ya’ll are the best! And I seriously had an awesome time, most Thai bday yet! Since my cousin was here all week, we carried on the celebrations long after I officially turned 25, so I def can’t complain.

Work has been going pretty well. It sort of varies dramatically from having a ton to do, to spending all my time gchatting and playing with the new office puppy. For reals, I am not a dog person, but this puppy is ador. Anyways, still working on the final write up reports, but I anticipate doing more “real” work this week, which I’m pumped about. Although apparently along with running on Thai time, Thai people like to keep things up in the air and change their plans all kinds, which is clearly super convenient. Like, work is taking me to another province, and first they said we would leave Monday, then Sunday, then Tuesday, and now it’s Wednesday; though I’m actually ok with that. The reason we are waiting is because there is apparently an NGO forum held in both Thai and English on the last Tuesday of every month here in Chiang Mai. Tomorrow’s forum is going to be related to the psychology of helping people cope with living with HIV, so I think that should be interesting. And then I guess on Wednesday we head to Lamphun province, which is just about an hour east of here. We are going to meet up with the OVC (Orphan and Vulnerable Children) team and help them in conducting their situation analysis. So for you non MPH’ers, a situation analysis is when you gather baseline data in order to tailor your project appropriately so you can best meet the needs of the communities/people you are helping. In our case, I can only assume we will be getting data on the general health of the target populations, how big of a problem HIV and HIV related discrimination is, what services are currently being offered and by whom, what the population knows about transmission, stuff like that. I’ll check back in next week after we’ve actually done it.

Other than that, I’ve just been hanging out with the roomies, getting to know Chiang Mai. I seriously do feel so lucky that we all get along so well and have such a good time together. On Saturday we decided to finally do some of the cultural/touristy things we had been meaning to do. We checked out some the more famous Wats in our city, and they were pretty awesome. One of my fave’s was made entirely of teak wood, and another one had these gorg giant paintings on the inside. All of them had a bunch of donation bowls with the names of the week by them. One of my Thai co-workers explained to me that for good luck, you are meant to give a donation to the one correlating to the day you were born. Yeah…he seemed pretty shocked I didn’t know…(it’s a Wed.) We also went to the “Lucky Fish Spa”, which was more disconcerting than I imagined it would be. Basically, you stick your feet in this big pool and these fish bite off the dead skin. Yeah, I thought it would tickle a little, but it was honestly just kinda whack and uncomfortable.

Ok, that’s about it for now. We get a fourth roomie in a few weeks. While I’m excited about fresh meat, I’m also clearly not looking forward to having to share the gigantic master bedroom, but oh well. I’ve had awesome luck in the past of becoming absolute besties with my randomly assigned roomies, so here’s to hoping for another Jenny!

Xoxo
Rae

Starting early...

So every Thursday night all the CCT employees come over to the volunteer house for "family dinner", which is super prec. And last night, I got an awesome surprise when Wad (the in-country director) made me a birthday cake! For those of you who know me, you know that I'm a firm believer in celebrating birthdays for a minimum of three days, so starting the celebration Thursday night was totally fun. And it was espescially nice since Eve is a lactard, he said he had to try hella times to get the consistency right of a banana cake with NO sugar or milk. And it was surpisingly good! Heavy as all hell, but tasty nonetheless.

Today I actually had to work ALL DAY, a first for me in...well, maybe ever. It's super time-consuming and at times really difficult changing this whole report from Thai to broken english to something a native English speaker can actually comprehend. But it is cool to learn so much about the project and the ways TLSDF works. I think the next few weeks will be hard, as I will just be writing final reports for the project that just ended. But after that, we will start doing a situation analysis for a new project, which I'm excited about it. It will include travelling to project sites, and helping with the design of the new project. A lot of the work they do is HIV/AIDS education in schools, which is totally right up my ally. Eve and I are gonna look into designing one part of the project related to that, so I have high hopes I will leave here having accomplished more than just typing up reports.

In the meantime, my English cousin David gets into Chiang Mai in the next hour or so, so I can't wait to meet up with him. And the other American intern has some other friends in the city, so we are going tonight which should be fun. Even though my actual birthday isn't until Sunday and I'm having people go out to celebrate it on Saturday night, we all know that in my mind, the birthday weekend has begun.

xoxo
Rae

weekend update

So on Friday night my 2 houemates and I met up with Auy from work, and his geek (=lover, not to be confused with his fean, which means boyfriend. Appar. we will never get to the meet bf b/c he doesn't like to go out, which is just funny since Auy is so social.) I guess lots of young Thai people just rent a room in an apartment, and it doesn't have a kitchen or living room. So instead of pre-gaming at people's houses, they just get together early and get a table at the bar with the bottle of liquor they bring in. So we met up at Warm Up at 9pm, and the place was already packed. As in, had to get a talbe outside, which was fine cause there was this really pretty koi fish pond in the middle of the patio. And lucky for me, Thai people totally heart taking cheesy pics, so for once I didn't have to beg to do some played out cliche pose.

On Saturday, we just lurked around Chaing Mai in all afternoon. Found some cool little markets off the main streets, and an awesome second hand English bookstore where I convinced Ive (my Aussie friend) that both The Great Gatsby and Siddhartha are ultimate life changers. Then that night we went for a "quiet night out" at the tourist bars. According to the Aussies, it's completely acceptable to use this term when referring to any night where you aren't in a "club". So even though we bar-hopped to 3 separate bars, and ended up heading to Rasta Bar at 1 am to go dancing to some sweet live reggae, it was still a "relaxing quiet night".

Sunday was...an experience to say the least. Our boss had asked all us interns in the previous week if we were interested in going to what we thought was some sort of festival. I heard "NGO volunteer" festival, Ive heard "floral festival", all we knew for sure was that there "four tickets" and that we should bring our baithing suits. In the morning we went out with Mairi (the Scot) to this cool flea market on the outskirts of town. Then, we were picked up by a fellow co-worker and we went and picked up Kirsten, the other American intern. We stopped at this really cool wad (temple) way up in mountains which had some awesome views of the city. Then, it becomes clear that we are in fact going to spend the afternoon at our boss's house. He lives in this nice gated community, which they call a village. The tickets he spoke of were actually pool passes, go figure. So I spent the afternoon swimming with his adorable 3 year old in this nice country club pool. Then for dinner our boss's wife had prepared this really nice dinner for us all, including her best efforts at a vegetarian potato salad for me, which was super sweet even if mildly grody. When we got home, Mairi was feeling a lil homesick for something familiar, so we all went to the movies. We saw Body of Lies, which actually wasn't bad. It was just kinda funny cause our tickets said 8:50, but they wouldn't even let us into the theater til just after 9. I guess even movies here run on Thai time....

Today I had my first bit of real work, which was a pleasant change. I met with the OVC (Orphan and Vulnerable Children) Project Head to start work on the 3'rd year write up of their projects in Lamphun district. We spent most of the morning going over a list of the accomplished activities, as she tried to translate everything into English for me. It's interesting work, and a good experience, but clearly the language barrier is a lil frustrating at times. I have faith that communication between us will get easier as we get used to each other's accents, but since today was the first day it took a while. It's just annoying because for this first part, they just need anyone with a command of the English language to type up this part of the report. But I feel like I have the public health background, and I would love to be putting it to good use, but at this step in the process it's just too time consuming and difficult to get all the details I feel are relevant. But I know it's a learning experience, and she seems to have the same ability I do to laugh at any situation, so we have fun time. (yeah, my Thai is vaguely improving, but my skills at broken english are shooting through the roof.) Ok, that's all for now, keep me updated on what all y'all are up to. And thanks for all the nice comments, they help me to keep on keepin on.

xoxo
Rae

Popping my blogging cherry

OK, this is my first time, so be gentle. I've now been here in Chaing Mai for one week, and I'm seriously loving it. I'm interning at this Thai org. called The Life Skills Development Foundation (TLSDF), and I found out about it through this American NGO called Cultural Canvas Thailand (CCT). So I live at the CCT volunteer house, currently with 2 other girls. This awesome Aussie who is also getting her MPH and is interning at TLSDF with me for 6 months, and this super sweet/funny Scottish girl who is an art therapist working at CCT for 2 months. We have a maid who cleans and cooks super delic. Thai food, and a driver who takes us to work everyday, aka, we are rolling in style. We all have our own rooms for now, but I'm told that may change in a few months depending on how many volunteers appply to CCT. I also have the master bedroom, which is sweet for now, but means I will probby be the first to have to share my room. Seriously though, I could do at least 5 cartwheels in there, it's massive.

The org. I'm working at is all about enhancing life skills for underpriveleged children in Northern Thailand, through 2 different types of projects. One focus is on early childhood development, and the other has to do with improving the quality of life for orphaned and vulnerable children. Considering my background, I'll be working on the OVC projects. Between the language barrier and the fact that everyone here runs on Thai Time (read: slower than slow), I'm not 100% clear on what I'll be doing. But I'll be working in the Lamphun province, which is just about 30 km's (see how quickly I'm adapting?) southeast of Chaing Mai. I think they just finished up one project, so I will help them with writing thier final analysis in the next few weeks after we get the reports back from the independent evaluators. After that, we will be starting a new project so I will be going on site to help write the situation analysis, I'm pretty excited to check it out.

I'm def starting to learn my way around Chiang Mai, which is awesome. The old city is kept in by a moat, and it's a perfect square. It's about 8 km along the border, so it's a pretty sweet run. Have only really been out twice so far, and nothing crazy yet. There is one part of town along the West side of the moat where all the touristy bars are, and another part of town outside the moat on the east near the University that is more popular among the Thais. The farang (foreign) bars are fun, but I'll probby go to the Thai places more often. At the Thai bars, you can bring in your own liquor, which I still can't fathom. The one time we went out there, it was serioulsy hilarious. Thai people are so friendly, and seemingly love farang's, as they would just come up and cheers with you and give you a thumbs up as if you were a mute 5 year old. And from what I saw, NO ONE dances up on tables, stages, pool tables, et al, even though the dance floor is so ridiculously packed, so for those of you who know me, you know what a challenge this will prove...But it's cool, I'm a "grown-up" now. Or something...

Anyways, this awesome dude we work with is taking us out dancing tonight, and our plan is to go out on Saturday and visit some temples/do some touristy stuff, so I'll make sure to take some pix and post them up. In the meantime, hit me up and let me know you haven't forgotten about me <3

xoxo
Rae