Name: James Macrae
Location: Thailand
Report Title: Cielidh in Thailand
Report Date: 07/07/2010
My Time in Thailand – James Macrae – June 2010 June already…I can’t believe it, only two months left, it feels like it’s now only a matter of days until I have to come home!!! Firstly, I have an important announcement: finally after nine months, Tak’s first unofficial Ceilidh dance has taken place!!!! SUCCESS!!!! To be truthful, on the night it was a bit chaotic, what with the girls refusing to dance with the boys (something about them being smelly), the boys refusing to dance with the girls, which then lead to a refusal to dance at all. When the dancing eventually got going there were several injuries, including a number of quite severe bumps, bruises and grazes, not to mention a spectacular pile up that could rival something on the M6, due to the cable to the CD player creating an unexpected hazard. However…I’m looking back on it now as an unrivalled success. I ended my last report with my tearful farewell to the Mattayom 6’s as they left Tak Pittayakom School for the wide world of University and employment. However their departure also meant something else: the start of the summer holidays and Travel!!! Two months of no lesson plans, timetables and waking up at the crack of dawn. Bliss. We had an absolutely fantastic time. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, which could probably fill several weighty travel books, so I’ll give you the abridged account. We started off by travelling up into Laos with five of the other volunteers (which was an absolute nightmare, 28 hours on a bus-without a toilet, and with a 5am wakeup call by the Vietnamese border police) and then into Vietnam. Vietnam had some good points and some bad. Top of the good: FRENCH BREAD: After 9 months to have real bread was amazing (in Thailand, bread is horribly sweet, and only obtainable from one of the large shopping centres). French bread and pastries are particularly popular amongst the Vietnamese from the time of France’s colonial rule there. The weather: especially in the north was great, around the low twenties. Hanoi: I loved it, a really chilled place, except for the traffic. All the architecture looks like it belongs in Paris, with tree lined boulevards, parks, and small bistro cafes, but with the addition of the odd Chinese influenced shrine and wizened old men squatting and playing checkers on street corners. No doubt because of Vietnam’s scarred past, we found that even now everyone mistrusts, and even dislikes Western travellers and is out to try and get every penny they can from them. I know this may seem like a horribly unfair stereotypical observation to make and we did find some rare exceptions but for the most part, unfortunately, that’s how it was for us. I dare say that possibly, if we had come straight from Britain, we might not have noticed it as much, but coming from Thailand where everyone is friendly and will go out of their way to help you, we felt very uncomfortable. The traffic was the worst I’ve ever seen - thousands of motorcyclists going at full speed like swarms of angry wasps, horns blaring constantly. The main roads were even worse, 40 ton trucks driving on both sides of the road, unperturbed that there were two equally large trucks coming the other way! Despite this we traveled down the length of the country from Hanoi to Ho Chi Min City. On the way we saw some amazing sights and had some great experiences, which included seeing the limestone islands at Ha Long Bay (apparently there are something like 2000 of them; we went on a tour of the bay in a junk, and although it was foggy, this added to the drama as the cliffs emerged and then disappeared again in the mist). We also had some very fine silk suits made-to-measure in Hoi An. We then flew from Vietnam back to Bangkok, and made our way up to Ubon (in the far east of Thailand, near the border with Cambodia) for what can only be described as some of the best days of my life: Songkran. For those of you who have never heard of, or worse still, never experienced Songkran, Songkran is basically the Thai New Year, which is celebrated in the middle of April by a nationwide water-fight, which lasts for 3 days or in some places 5 days. Now when I say water-fight I don’t merely mean children squirting water pistols at each other in their garden, Oh No No No!!! Everybody and I mean everybody gets involved in Songkran. I can testify to coming across an 82 year old woman staggering under the weight of three super soakers, shrieking war cries, and resembling something close to Sylvester Stallone in Rambo 4, accompanied by a rather weary looking water buffalo pulling a bath full of water. The first two days were spent driving about the countryside in a pick-up truck crammed full of Thai people and two massive barrels of water soaking everyone and anyone who went passed us. By day three of this “savage” and very wet battle, we (most of the volunteers had come to Ubon to celebrate Songkran) were in Ubon’s city centre. The entire city’s traffic network had been shut down due to the roads being crammed, bumper to bumper in total gridlock, with similar pick up trucks with people throwing water, smearing each other in talcum powder and everyone jumping up and down and dancing - often on the actual car/truck roof. Massive speakers from peoples houses, hotels, clubs, bar and even cinemas had been set up everywhere with every variation of Thai pop being played at full volume! We were there the entire day and well into the evening. I’m not going to lie when I say it was absolute mayhem, even the monks from local monasteries were out! It wasn’t until about eleven at night that we remembered we hadn’t eaten, so finally, sunburnt, dripping and soggy, we laid down the buckets and water pistols and beat a hasty retreat. After Songkran, around half of the 22 volunteers decided to travel down South together to the beaches and islands, where, amongst other things, we had a fantastic time at Ko Tarutao National Park where we decided to go totally Ray Mears, and camped on the beach. We must have been the only people there within 30 km! Of course the holidays didn’t last forever, so way too soon (the lie-ins had become rather nice) Billy and I had to return to Tak, and to what had become the rather daunting prospect of resuming our teaching duties. Our timetables had been shuffled around a bit so that I am now teaching Mattayom 2 and 3 (second and third year of High School) as opposed to Mattayom 1 and 6. Although I loved my Mattayom 6 class, I have discovered that Mattayom 2 and 3 are absolutely great to teach. You can make a fool of yourself, get students to act and even dress up and do role play, which are all things that just weren’t cool for my Mattayom 6 students. After school re-started, we had a fantastic week-end away when Billy and I were invited by a Thai friend (called Tammy) of one of the other volunteers, who lives over in Ubon in the East, to come to the Rocket Festival, which we soon found out is celebrated with the utmost…vigour. Anyway we actually went to Tammy’s rural village to celebrate it, which was a nice contrast to our experiences in the cities. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life. Children as young as three, though I did see younger, running around covered in mud (rain had turned everything into a swamp and jumping into the thick of it became very popular) screaming and hurling different types of explosives at anything that moved. Being chased by about 20 toddlers aiming rockets the size of small missiles at you, was truly terrifying! When I say rockets, I really mean rockets, the ones that you have to be over 21 and a fully trained fireman just to look at in Britain. And the amount that this small community had could rival the amount used in the millennium celebrations, worldwide. No doubt you have seen the news recently about Thailand’s political situation. We came close to being in the wrong place at the wrong time in April when we were passing through Bangkok on our way down to the islands in the South. Luckily however we decided to stay in Bangkok’s China Town at last minute rather than on Kow San road where the first incidents broke out. There’s actually not much I can tell you that you probably don’t already know. The BBC focused on the main rallies in Bangkok, and didn’t report much about the state of the rest of the country. In fact the majority of the country and particularly the North and East support the Red shirts, including the police and armed forces. The number of red shirt supporters easily outnumbers the Yellow shirts that reside mainly in and around Bangkok and a few other places, one of which coincidently happens to be Tak. Tak is predominately Yellow, which is odd being both in the North and a relatively working class population. When the curfews were instigated after the main demonstration was scattered in May, Tak was the only province in the north not to have one. There was of course a larger police presence at night, particularly at the weekends, and I took part in special riot training with the Thai army (which was terrific fun despite its seriousness). Fortunately very little happened in Tak, but there was trouble in Ubon and Chiang Mai as well as other major Red shirt strongholds, which broke out when one of the main Red shirt leader and Ex-army officer Major-General Khattiya Sawasdipol, or She Deng (which means, roughly translated Commander Red) was shot, and when the army moved into the main demonstration point in Bangkok. In Ubon, where two of the other Project Trust volunteers are, the Red shirt supporters stormed the City Hall and burned it to the ground, leaving two people dead. The volunteers could see the smoke from where they lived, which is only a five minute walk from the City Hall, and their school had to close after heavy gunfire was heard. In Chiang Mai, Red shirts took to the streets, smashing and burning cars, as well as looting and setting fire to shops. At this point, we came very close to being pulled out of Thailand by Project Trust, but fortunately the situation has calmed down again. We’ve found that the Thai people have been very reluctant to talk to us about what’s been going on, so I can’t give you any actual accounts by any of the locals, partly because most Thai people are reluctant to share their political views even with close friends and family – probably due to the non-confrontational attitude of Thai people generally. Although the situation has calmed down considerably (all the curfews have now been lifted) I have no doubt that future volunteers in Thailand will experience more change and possible disruption – hopefully though the eventual outcome will be a stable and more democratic life for all the Thai people. I am beginning to panic about the amount of time left to me in Thailand before I am shipped back home to the UK and a few plans are crystallizing in my mind – there is a Thai cookery course in Chiang Mai which is run by an old man who takes you shopping to the markets in the early morning to buy all the ingredients before teaching you how to cook a number of popular Thai dishes – I’d really like to do that… Also once my teaching comes to an end I’d like to take the opportunity to visit the Project Trust volunteers in Cambodia – I had planned to do that earlier this year but could only cram in so much…. Whatever happens in the next couple of months, I know that this year of volunteering has been the best experience of my life and I know that whatever happens in years to come, this is the start of a lifelong relationship with Thailand and I know I’ll be back.
