As Spotted on the Thai Side

Journaling Life in Thailand

Happy Tuesday! What’s in your cup today? Me, I’m drinking some nice, floral Jasmine tea. Life is slowly settling back into routine, and I find I like that just fine.

We went up to Chiang Rai this weekend to work at SOLD, and this time I taught the kids how to make Chinese dragon puppets.

I’m all excited about it because I think I’ve finally hit on something that seems just right for their speed.


(It only took me a year of Saturdays to figure it out…)

They may not be ready for fine art lessons, or deeper reflections on life. But these kinds of arts and crafts, they can do.

They’re super shy at the beginning, skeptical of the point of doing anything, and absolutely terrified of making mistakes. But when they finish, and hold something beautiful that they created with their own hands…

That wonder and amazement in their eyes makes everything worth it. I feel like dancing. So I will continue with crafts like these to help build up their confidence, and then, when I feel they’re ready, I’ll start slipping in some higher lessons.

It’s a process, and I’m learning too. Sometimes, it’s hard to see how this is really helping, but I have to believe that every bit of pride in self I can instill in them is just one more barrier preventing them from thinking that selling themselves is a way out of poverty.


In other news, I’m currently awaiting feedback on my novel from a small group of writers and readers. Once I hear back from them, I can make a final set of edits and then start shopping my book out. Call me Excitement and Impatience. I think this is the part where I feel most unproductive. I’m still writing and practicing my craft…but mostly I’m just waiting.

Otherwise, this is a pretty low key day. Laundry demands some attention, and we have to go renew the registration on our motorbikes, but I’ll spend most of the day writing. I have plans to make some home made hamburgers for dinner tonight. I even splurged and bought some cheese – really expensive stuff here, probably twice the price that it is in the States. After entertaining for over three months, we’re ready for some serious downtime, with simple home cooked food.

Salads. We miss salads.

Last night, I made some rice and chicken (rubbed with cumin, salt, garlic, spices, and a touch of Worcestershire sauce) and steamed asparagus. Simple, right? Heavenly because we didn’t have to go out anywhere and it wasn’t restaurant food. It’s funny how eating out used to be an indulgence, and now the rare meal at home has become the treat.


If we were really meeting for coffee today, I’d probably tell you how I’ve been getting back into listening to music lately, especially with some old favorites. Tori Amos is one in particular I’ve had on repeat. I remember listening to Cornflake Girl on the bus on my way to high school in the mornings and liking the song well enough, but I never knew what it was about. Only just a couple of days ago, I actually read up on the song’s meaning and inspiration…and realized Tori Amos is far more complex than I originally appreciated. And these lines, from Silent All These Years, keep running through my head: “Cause what if I’m a mermaid/In these jeans of his/With her name still on it/Hey but I don’t care/Cause sometimes/I said sometimes/I hear my voice/And it’s been here/Silent all these years”

Anyway, it’s getting late. I’d better get going on that laundry if it’s going to get dry before that sun goes down. What’s on the docket for you this week? (And let’s just not talk about how it’s already February tomorrow, m’kay?)

 

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Monday, January 30th, 2012

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Simply, Sparkle

For the past month or so, I’ve fallen prey to a feeling that isn’t homesickness, so much as it is fatigue. I’m tired and want to retreat, to hide away from the seemingly simple things I can’t understand and the basic, easy concepts that I just can’t explain. I’m tired of fighting to find the words, and hearing ones I don’t recognize. No matter how quickly I learn, there’s always more, and the better I get at speaking Thai, paradoxically, the more impatience I meet when there is something I don’t understand. I hate seeing that look, the one that says they’re mistaking a lack of language for a lack of general mental capacity. And I think that, maybe I did that too: that, in impatience, maybe I treated someone as though their inability to express themselves in English meant they had little inside to express at all.

Long time readers will know about the struggle I had getting my ID card here, and then our battle for T’s visa renewal, and now my American passport needs to be renewed from abroad. These all seem like basic things, but then, each time, it’s never nearly as easy as these things should be. Where once it was an adventure and a story to tell, it’s now beginning to feel like we’re under constant attack, fighting a never ending fight for the right to simply be.

In my fatigue, there are times I know I’ve stopped dancing the dance of social niceties and gone straight to honesty, because I just don’t have it in me to dance. My feet hurt, and I’m going to sit this one out simply because I can.

I feel compelled to wrap this up in a tidy bow, to find the sparkle in the ordinary glass of water, and to say something like, “it’s a journey, and maybe the soul just needs a rest,” or maybe “I think I expected to find home, and it turns out I’m still traveling,” or that I need to “buck up, sistah, because there’s lots who’ve got it worse than you.” There’s good. Lots of good, and hopefully my regular readers will know that I see the good too, and feel it in my bones. But right now, at this moment, this is my truth. I’m stripped to essentials, futilely trying to cover the exposed parts with my too-small hands.

::

…and admitting all that, it feels better already. Saying all that, I think, is exactly what I needed to do to cast off the burden making it too difficult to take the next step.

And so, the next step, I now take. And maybe I found that sparkle after all.

Have you found the bigger picture in a simple moment? Join us at Sarah’s!

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Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

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As Spotted on the Thai Side

Journaling Life in Thailand

Happy Chinese New Year and Welcome to the Year of the Dragon! I’m a monkey and apparently dragons and monkeys are good friends, so this year is supposed to be an auspicious one. Hear that, water dragon? Y’all better treat this metal monkey right!

Heh. What’s your Chinese sign? Does the dragon portend good or ill for you?

Chinese New Year does get some play in Thailand, especially if your ancestors were Chinese. There’s fireworks and dragons dancing through supermarkets followed by loud cymbals, and a flurry of red envelopes passed around. Everybody loves the red envelopes!

In other news, I think I might have been hit with a bit of culture shock upon coming home to Thailand after a week in Hong Kong. It’s funny how that happens: that the adjustment isn’t always in going away, but rather sometimes in coming back. I’m not sure what was going on exactly, but it was some kind of disgruntlement that lasted until I decided to go exploring. I found event calendars displaying what all of interest is going on in the city, found some intriguing Thai movies to go see, and started hunting for bakery and coffee supply shops for the specialty items missing in my life.

Ok, no lie. It’s the kitchen stuff that made me happy.

Especially when I found these:

See what’s up there on the shelf?

Pretty, vintage coffee grinders! Which I totally wanted to buy just to take a ton of pictures. Unfortunately, Luckily, I forgot to bring my cash with me.

The really funny thing was, I’d found a reference for one baking supply shop and one coffee supply shop. When I went looking for the coffee supply shop, I couldn’t find it. But I did find a store with baking supplies, including the rolling pin I needed. Then when I went looking for the baking supply shop, in it’s place was this fantastic coffee supply store with the above-mentioned vintage style coffee grinders. So Thailand for you.

This shop was a serious treasure trove though. It had everything you could imagine: flavored syrups, specialty stirrers, gorgeous latte cups, milk frothers, bialettis, adorable aprons, and even vacuum coffee machines that would look at home in any steampunk novel.

And in these days of calm after the storm, my little family of husband, wife, and dog, has been scrabbling close and closer to each other, so any lingering disgruntlement seems to have faded in those simple comforts.

In the meantime, one of the things I did bring back with me is a resurgence in my appreciation for tea. Good thing tea is easy to find in Thailand.

These days, I’m sipping jasmine.

What’s in your cup?

One more thing before you go! I know I don’t talk so much about my work with SOLD these days, but I’m writing on SOLD’s blog today, and I hope you’ll take a moment to read my post titled “It Happens So Fast”. A piece of my heart is there.

 

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Monday, January 23rd, 2012

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Writing: This Package

There is a little package I keep with me. It’s grey, with patterned white dots, fraying edges, and tied with a brown string like twine. I keep it tucked in my purse, mostly. On good days, I forget it on the bedside table. But some days, like today, I take it out and hold it in my hands, feeling the rough, cotton-fiber texture, and I tug at the corners of the wrapping, at turns tearing the edges and then smoothing them out with my dry, pruny, thin tapered fingertips.

It used to make me clench my teeth and hold my breath, this package. But now I find I can’t sit still at all, and the clenching has turned into more of a chattering or a gnashing, where before I never quite knew what it meant to “gnash one’s teeth.”

I turn the package over and over in my hands, splaying my palms against its weight. I theorize the whether and whys it all exists in the first place, hoping that comprehension will make it somehow less. That dropping it by the roadside somewhere is somehow a matter of choice.

It’s heavy, this package. But the hardest part to contemplate is the underlying sense that, if I were to actually open this package up, and strew its contents out on the floor, I’d find the whether and whys are all just trimming for the nothing that’s inside.

 

 Join in at Heather’s!

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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

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Virtual Coffee

Except, for me, today it’s tea. I must have eaten something of questionable quality yesterday because all last night and this morning…well. Let’s just say if Montezuma were Asian, he’d have exacted his revenge.

I wish I were celebrating Thanksgiving with you all there in the States. I do miss me some good cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, and good ol’ pumpkin pie. I miss that briskness in the air that comes with autumn and the hunkering down into cozy as we look towards winter. We’re heading into cold season now in Thailand too though, and you can see all the Thais preparing with their thick parkas and mittens as it drops down into the…70′s. (Tourists are still quite comfortable in their tank tops and shorts.) I must confess my husband and I have acclimated and consider this sweater and scarf weather too.

Not that you’d notice to look at the flora and fauna.

Are insects fauna?

Should look that up. But if any insects are fauna it should be dragonflies. Dragonflies are cool. Not mantises though. Mantises are smug.

If we were really meeting for coffee today, you might detect a touch of melancholy in my tone, perhaps a sad turn in my eyes. This month has been hard, I tell you. It has been hard. First there was all the flooding down in Bangkok and my cousin’s little school and two of my aunts’ houses getting flooded and they all had to evacuate, which is not easy for my mom’s eldest sister who is recovering from breast cancer and her husband who is quite unwell himself. The damage in Bangkok, from a month of flooding and the waters that still haven’t receded? Unfathomable. The sheer cost of repairs alone is enough to wipe entire families under.

Then we’re dealing with immigration and renewing my husband’s visa. Still yet to be resolved. If all goes well, he can stay another year. If it doesn’t, he’ll have 7 days to leave the country. Fun, no?

And then we heard news about two people very dear to us who are now confronted with the c-word. It’s no 4-letter word; it’s more insidious than that. It’s a word usually followed by treatment, but not cure.

My heart is heavy as we wait to learn more, as “prognosis” and estimated rates become part of our daily vocabulary. We are in limbo.

BUT.

Life goes on, whether or not you’re ready. Today I gave a small talk at a local Christian university about the work we do at SOLD and the issue of child trafficking in general and it was a good experience. The students asked tons of smart, thoughtful questions, and it felt both weird and completely normal to be part of an academic milieu again. I was nervous before the lecture, and then amazed at how easily I slipped back into those shoes. I brought copious notes, but do better when I ad-lib anyway.

This is Lyn-jii (how Thais pronounce "lychee"). You might have noticed I have a fondness for things that are wee.

Well, the tea grows cold and I think I need to find some lunch that will settle my stomach. Perhaps some boiled rice soup, if I can find some ginger somewhere in our fridge. Hope things are going well in your part of the world. Tell me what all you’re planning to cook/eat for Thanksgiving so I can live vicariously.

Much love.

 

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Monday, November 21st, 2011

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In Gratitude, I Seek Intention: A Renewal

I haven’t been living with intentionality of late. Even when I know how I should act, and how I want to act, I find myself incapable of turning intention into action. Impatience turns my head. Irritation twists my words. Even when I feel gratitude, I don’t exude it. Sometimes I make myself smile in the hopes that my expression will worm its way into my heart and settle me down.

It’s an effort.

Mostly, I think this stems from the fact that in just a week, we’ll have spent a year abroad. First, there are the practical matters: uprooting your entire life and starting anew means a lot of bureaucratic things are up for renewal at the same time. International driving permit renewals, lease renewals, car registration, immigration documents…the list goes on. What was once confusing and nerve-wracking before becomes confusing and nerve-wracking again, and it all takes a lot of effort to sort out.

And then there’s the heart renewal: where you realize you’ve survived a year. One year is ending and another begins. The honeymoon is over and you are no longer new transplants. You don’t make mistakes nearly so often, but when you do goof up, people cut you less slack because you’ve been here longer. You should know better.

But moving to Thailand in the first place was an act of living life with intention. It was a demand we placed upon ourselves to live exactly the life we wanted, not one prescribed for us. And I am grateful for the freedom we have to make such choices. In gratitude, we wanted to make the most of our freedoms. We pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone to remind ourselves exactly who we were when all else was stripped away. We questioned our most basic assumptions and molded a foundation of our own making. We created our blueprint for life.

But that blueprint is not a one-time deal, or we would negate the very action that helped us create it in the first place.

Living with intention is not something you do just once. It’s a habit of thought, a daily challenge for the soul.

So today, one week before our year anniversary of living abroad, I want to renew my vow to live life with intention. In gratitude, I seek to remember the purpose of this day. Let me not turn over the keys to my autopilot. Let me steer my own ship. And when the waters grow rough, let me guide my vessel with a steady hand and leave the waters smoother in my wake.

Join in celebrating this month of gratitude with the Bigger Picture community!
This week, you can find us at Alita’s!

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Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

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Pinnacle Moments

Welcome to the fourth edition of Pinnacle Moments! For those of you just joining us, Pinnacle Moments is a series where we share a defining moment in our lives…maybe it’s a day you had an epiphany, or made a choice or faced a circumstance that changed the course of your life, or realized something about who you are deep down, etc. Or it can even be about your sweetest romantic memory…a defining moment in your relationship with your spouse or significant other! Last week, Brook from Red Head Reverie had an incredible story of strength and hope to share. This week, the tale is one of my own. It wasn’t an easy time in my life, by any stretch of the imagination. It was a painful time, but it’s one which I remain forever grateful to have experienced.
 

Here’s my story:

Seven months and a chasm lay between us. He arrived on my doorstep, quivering with sorrow. His old ’76 Dodge Dart Swinger was parked in my driveway, and the car radio emitted a Coldplay tune as he stood with placards displayed in his hands. Each placard told me how sorry he was, and as the song played, he dropped them one by one to the ground, each one telling me the tale of his heartbreak.

When he finished, I grabbed a jacket and wordlessly headed out into the night. He walked with me into the inky darkness. No lights marked out path leading to the pier, where we sat together, suspended over a colorless abyss.

Into that inky black night, we trembled to speak Truth. In that space between sea and sky, we let forth all that had ever existed between us – three years of love, then pain, folly, betrayal – and we uttered admissions of everything we had once hoped we could be. We walked through fire together. It seared our very marrows, and we emerged, fragile, yet cleansed, like phoenixes rising.

Emptied, we walked back in silence. Questions loomed like cloaks over our heads. Could there be hope? Could there be trust? Could there be more and better a second time around?

In my head, I heard the voices of all who loved me warning me. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be weak. And I believed them. I was prepared to say, “Never again.”

But then we stood facing each other, like little more than children upon a precipe, separated by a living room suffused with fear.

And that’s when I felt it: a great huge invisible chain with a claw for a hook thrust itself physically into my navel and yanked me towards the man standing before me. There is no rational reason to believe it to be true, but I felt it snatch me from the inside and it left me breathless. Never in my life, before or since, have I so physically felt there might be truth to the word soulmate.

And that’s when I knew I was dealing with something larger than myself. There was no escaping loving this man with more than I ever thought I had. I could exist without him. Seven months apart had proved I could move on with my life and move forward and be okay. But there was no escaping the depth of love we had for each other. It was beyond reason – nothing more or less than simple Truth.

And that’s when I learned it’s not stupidity or weakness to forgive the ones we love. Rather, it requires courage and clear-headedness. It requires strength. The first step towards healing and redemption turned out to be…

…a leap of faith.

And I leapt. I married that man 3 years later, and this year we celebrated our third wedding anniversary.

A couple of days ago, we were sitting in a restaurant with my parents and my husband went to take care of something. As I watched him go, my heart smiled and I said, “I have a good husband.” My mother nodded, and said, “Yes, you do.”

We have more tales next week! If you wish to share YOUR Pinnacle Moment, just let me know. Hope to see you here again next Wednesday!

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Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

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Random Sunday Musings

Found these guys (Hector & Josephine) at the night market. Naturally.

* It’s hot today in Chiang Mai. We’ve just arrived back home from a trip up north to visit The SOLD Project, where I work, and now I’m both tired and restless.

{Aside: Almost every time I go to SOLD, it feels like a personal trial: the challenges of the journey, the challenges of the work, my own mental blocks. But every time I go, I end up feeling grateful and happy I did.}

* I wrote a little; that helped. Then I decided what I really needed was a photo walk. I told myself, it’s high afternoon, I should wait until evening to catch the better light. And yet I found myself still grabbing the camera and my flip flops and heading out the door. Dot followed me and, walking together along the little creek in the neighborhood, I decided that sometimes taking a photo walk is the best thing, even if it’s in the worst possible light.

 

Plus, who can resist such enthusiastic company?

Excuse her…

Girl has no shame.

Found this little guy too. I don't actually like thinking too much about praying mantises though.

* I find myself often worrying about people whom I only know peripherally. Sometimes it’s because of some trial or challenge I know they’re going through, sometimes it’s because I haven’t heard from them in a while, sometimes there is no apparent reason. I wonder if this is a fruitless effort (like worrying often is), or if it sends a little package of good energy their way somehow.

* Today I drank a decadent cup of cappuccino and ate an avocado sandwich. And then I remembered how a year ago, we were so sad to think we might not find good coffee or taste an avocado in Thailand.

* Life can be trying in ways that we cannot always talk about. I try to see the Bigger Picture, to see what lesson can be gleaned from adversity, but sometimes I think not every story in life has a moral in the end.

* When I was 8, I spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to see the world through another’s eyes. At 31, I spend most of the time wondering what to make of what I see through my own.

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Sunday, November 6th, 2011

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Virtual Coffee

Happy Tuesday everyone! Do y’all realize it’s November? Because me, I can’t quite wrap my head around that. I’m pretty sure, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still around August sometime. I wish I could throw the brakes on time for a few days – maybe a week – just to, you know, deal. Process.

Anyway, enough of the self-pity party!

Today, I am having some pomegranate with my Earl Grey. What are you having?


From what people tell me, it sounds like the government is keeping caps on too much news coming out about the flood situation here in Thailand, but basically it’s looking like the peak rush of floods hit on Monday and it should lessen after that. The north and west of Bangkok got hit the hardest, while they’ve been able to stave off the flooding from most of central Bangkok. The government declared a 5-day holiday last week since so many homes got hit and people couldn’t get out to go to work and travel is very dangerous, with snakes and crocodiles in the water (that sounds ridiculous to say, but Thailand is a tropical country, after all). The water is starting to turn very stinky with so much trash in it, as well as chemicals leaked from factories. There have been some reports of people with skin rashes from it, but the bigger concern is the potential for outbreak of water-borne diseases. While the worst of the onrush of water seems to have passed, they’re estimating Bangkok will still be under water (chest-high or worse in many places) for a few more weeks as they continue efforts to drain it out to sea as best as they can.

Chiang Mai has gotten much more crowded as a lot of people from Bangkok have escaped the floods. My own family who were in the flooded zones moved to Pattaya for a few weeks to wait this out. But there is a food & water shortage. I would encourage donations, but I’ve been hearing reports that government agencies have received a lot of donations and aren’t giving them out. They either wait to slap their own marketing labels on the water bottles and such, or things like boats that have been donated are kept locked up to be sold later. I can’t vouch for the veracity of these reports, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re true and don’t want anyone to get swindled like that.

So it might be tough for some time yet, especially for the poorer families and ones towards the suburbs and outskirts of the city, but we’re all hoping the worst of the flooding will have passed.

But for us personally, things are fine. It was my mom’s birthday yesterday and we did our darnedest to spoil her like she deserves. I took her out for a girlie day on Sunday to get our nails done and such. We also spent the afternoon of her birthday watching the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice, because that’s one of our favorite things to do together – that or watch Harry Potter. And we took her out for a fancy dinner at a hotel restaurant right on the edge of the river.

I’d never seen a hotel so beautifully appointed.

The whole thing was just gorgeous, without being at all kitsch or over-the-top.

And there was a pianist at dinner, playing beautiful old tunes.

And then we topped it off with a nightcap involving Tuaca and cappuccinos.

I think we mighta’ died for a minute there.

Anyway, if we were really meeting for coffee, this would be about the point where I might start asking you how you’re really doing. And if we got down to it, I’d probably tell you that I’m pooped. Really pooped. But all in all, fine. It feels good to be with my parents again. It’s good to see them, to talk to them, and to treat them to all our favorites around town. But I miss blogging too. I miss talking to everyone and being in touch with what’s going on around the world. I think I’ve done a little better this past week. I’m caught up on all the blogs in my feed reader, though I haven’t been as good about commenting. But I miss connecting, I miss taking photos, and I miss writing. I haven’t even done a single free write in weeks.

My language course will finish next Wednesday though, and I think that’ll give me a good deal more time again (an extra three hours a day), so I’m looking forward to that. I’m not even sure I’ll continue with language courses again afterward. My mom thinks my Thai is just fine and I don’t need to take any more classes. I’m not so optimistic. I would like to take the Level 4 (advanced) course, but they make you take two more reading & writing courses before you take that last one they offer. Just not sure I have it in me for all that. I read well enough to understand most signs and menus and such. I don’t plan to need to know how to write essays in Thai or anything. I don’t know. We’ll see.

Well my tea is growing cold and I’m anxious to get around and see what others have been up to. But before you go!! I just want to remind everyone to come back tomorrow for the next edition of Pinnacle Moments! Brook, whom many of you probably know from Red Head Reverie, will be sharing her Pinnacle Moment and I can’t even tell you how much I am in awe of her for this tale. It’s a story of power and hope. You don’t want to miss it!

Hope you all have a lovely Tuesday, and be sure to join in for more Virtual Coffee and Communal Global!

 

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Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

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Thursday, October 6th, 2011

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