Leslie bai taambon OR How I ended up on my knees in the street at 6:30 this morning

I just got back from picking up breakfast. It's going to be: Pat fak tawng sai tawhoo gap cao daeng. Fried pumpkin with tofu and brown rice. It's also going to be fantastic. But I thought that before I did I should talk about this morning before it becomes lost in the bends and eddies of my twisted cloudy mind like so many other noteworthy events in the past little while.

This morning I got up to go with Ying to make merit. But lets back up a little bit.

Merit is a concept in Buddhism (especially in Theravada Buddhism which is quite prevalent in Southeast Asia). It can be obtained in a number of ways, most of which relate to doing good deeds for others or having good thoughts. These good deeds, acts or thoughts are thoguht to carry over to help you later in life, or to your next birth. Basically on the quest to reach ever higher levels of purity, merit is a helpfull push in the right direction on the quest for enlightenment.

I've been passively interested in Buddhism for quite a while now (which wouldn't be difficult considering how heavily the religion influences Thai culture and society), which is why I was fairly curious to see what this would be like. I think I've spoken before about seeing the monks out walking the streets barefoot in their brown or orange robes every morning with their copper offering bowls. Giving the monks food is one way to make merit, and from what I'm told, most (if not all) of what the monks eat at the Wats is donated.

I asked quite a few questions on the way to the vegetarian restaurant (one I frequent often because of the cheap food and good eats. I've also been going there every day for the past two weeks or so because of the Jay Festival, which is this big national vegetarian festival that takes place for 10 days at the end of September every year in Thailand. If you choose to be Jay, you can't smoke, drink, eat meat of any sort (eggs, fish and dairy included), or eat any food that is smelly, such as onions or garlic. I was (for the most part) successfull. Unfortunately one of my weekends teaching frisbee in the camps fell during the festival so I requested vegetarian food but I'm pretty sure there was garlic in it...I think it would've been worse overall not to eat the food that had been prepared though though, jay or not) about the proper technique for doing offerings:

You begin by taking off your shoes and waiting for a monk to reach you as he walks down the street. When the monk (or monks) come to you, you use your right hand (supported by your left to show respect) to place food in the offering bowl. We began with the rice, then the curry, then the desert, giving one set to each of the monks. After the food was given, we knelt down and waied (palms together, head (but not back) bent as low as possible, thumbs on the nose, pointer fingers between the eyebrows). As we knelt, the monks chanted a blessing which was somewhat surreal yet hauntingly beautiful. If in a group, sometimes they would be in unison, sometimes one would be chanting and the others silent. We gave offerings to four monks in total. Once the blessing is finished, the monks continue on, and we put our shoes on and went back inside to buy our breakfast.

Anyway, now that I'm up, I figured I would take the time to do some more research while the day is still young. I'm writing an article on food security in Burma for the annual journal published by NEED and wanted to get the rough draft finished by Wednesday. I don't know if this qualifies as "getting published" because it's not peer reviewed or anything, but it is distributed among a number of networks and is growing in popularity, so at this point I'll take what I can get. This research could also serve as background thesis research, and I was never one to pass up a two-birds-one-stone opportunity like this.

And you can take that to the bank.

Ultimate. It's everywhere.

Spent the last two weekends at two different Karenni refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border coaching ultimate frisbee and had an absolute blast and I've got the pictures to prove it.. It was organized through DARE (Drug and Alcohol Recovery and Education), which is the organization my friend Janeen is working with (although I don't think it had much to do with their organizational mandate, it had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol).

The road on the way to Nupo Camp was TERRIBLE

We stayed overnight at Nupo Camp the first weekend, which was my first sleeping on the floor experience. It was pretty chilly because we were high up in the mountains and being a fool I'd forgotten my sweater. Fortunately a sleeping bag was available, so I survived the night.

Ice-breaker games the first day. We played 'Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes' in as many languages as we could. I surprised myself by remember the words in french. Thanks Madame Sisti.

The boys and the girls sat on opposite sides of the building for some reason. In the front there, you can see our translator, Million Gold, who did a fantastic job all weekend

Going over the rules the first day

The field was gorgeous

Janeen and her kids



Some kids were just watching

Others were just fighting

Teaching how to mark

The girls did a FANTASTIC job, and kept up with the boys beautifully. Nobody minded when it began to pour and the field turned to a muddy disaster

Lunchtime!

To wrap things up, we had a tournament at the end of the weekend. The kids played amazingly, I couldn't get over how quickly they picked it up. I took this video the second day. Bear in mind that they had learned how to play less than 24 hours previously.

Exploring the camp in the evening

I couldn't believe how muddy it was.

Janeen has the feet of a poet. A dirty dirty poet. This was just after our walk.


I was told it works


I'm telling you, stunning vista-wise, Thailand definitely knows what it's doing. This was the scene that greeted me when I woke up Sunday morning to go home. It did nothing to ease the 12 hour trip home though. (3 hours from Umpang to Mae Sariang, 4 hours from Mae Sariang to Mae Sot, 5 Hours from Mae Sot to Chiang Mai)

This picture is from the second camp (the weekend just finished). It was also really beautiful (although I don't know if I'd find it so beautiful if I were told I wasn't allowed to leave).

A classroom in the school. You'll notice everything in the camps is built out of bamboo, wood, leaves or other temporary materials. This is because the camps are supposed to be 'temporary living arrangements' so they aren't allowed to built 'permanent' buildings anywhere on the camp grounds. Meanwhile people have been living in them for 20 or 30 years.

All in all, a fantastic experience, I'm looking forward to one more weekend of coaching in November.

what's leslie been up to? a photo-update

A lot has gone down since I've last posted, but I thought it would be nicer to explain using pictures.

Graeme and Hridi(/everyone who participated in the poker tourney over the summer) donated money to the farm, and these new seeds and tools were the result. The guys at the farm were actually really happy, but were far too cool to smile for the photo.

Took a weekend trip to Pai, about three hours from Chiang Mai. It was all kinds of gorgeous, and I'm glad we went in the height of rainy season because although we did end up getting absolutely soaked twice, there were almost no other tourists there. During the dry season it's choked with tourists. This was the hotel. They had one of those neat pools where the water overflows the edges.

This was the view from the window I snapped just after waking up.


We rented a bike and drove for miles through the countryside. There was supposed to be a hike up the mountain as well, but being the rainy season the road to the trail head was underwater. We'd forgotten to bring trunks so we decided to give it a miss.

Also, I've started a second weekly Ultimate Frisbee game Wednesday nights 5PM at Chiang Mai University and it's been a huge success. You should drop by if you're ever in the area. I'm actually ON the poster (courtesy of the artistic talents of my buddy Ekk), I'm the silhouette in the middle of the triangle of guys on the left.

As you can see, football (soccer) is no laughing matter here. This was during a tight match between Man. U and Liverpool. This guy felt the need to remove his shirt in response to a Liverpool goal.


Oh, and I mountain bike now. I finally bought new bicycle tires and looked up trail maps. There are some really cool jungle trails a few kilometers from my place. Living at the base of a mountain definitely has it's perks. I snapped this during my first afternoon ride just before I turned around. Greg wasn't home (he's just picked up a bike as well, so we go riding together) so I went on my own. After about an hour I came to my senses and realized it had been a really stupid idea to go out solo, even though nothing happened.

The noble steed with the giant new tires. I love my bike and she loves me (although she probably wasn't loving me as much after my ride, things get pretty muddy, sand all over the gears and what not...I'm told bikes don't really like riding through streams, but she was a good sport nonetheless).

I have had some bike troubles though. I used to have a bell but it was stolen (as in someone took a screwdriver and unscrewed my bell...), and same with my bicycle headlight (they took the headlight mount as well). I've since replaced the headlight for safety reasons, but take it off and just leave the mount when I'm not using it. The light on the back remained untouched for some reason although it's given me it's fare share of grief as well. It isn't very secure and has fallen off while I'm riding 5 or 6 times, and when it does it EXPLODES (there are about 6 pieces including the batteries) all over the road. I then have to stop, go back and pick the pieces up, assemble them and put them back on my bicycle. This happened once on the highway, so here I was in the dark, running out onto the highway when there was a break in the cars to pick up pieces of my light. Miraculously nothing's broken yet, and it still works, although I've had to replace the batteries three times in the past two weeks. I think someone's been turning on the light at night when I'm not around and letting it run down. I have my suspicions about who's been messing with my bike, but no evidence so I can't really accuse anyone directly (*if this were a speech, I would pause at this point to stare accusingly at the building security guard who likes messing with bikes before continuing*) As of yesterday, I started taking the back light off as well. We'll see if this solves the problem.

There are definitely some talented graffiti artists around Chiang Mai (although I suspect this was stenciled)

Some home-cooked soul food. Panang tofu curry with fried morning glory and a fried egg to top it off. Serve over rice and enjoy.

The first time I saw these guys going through the garbage behind our building I thought they were cops. Further inquiry revealed that they're actually how garbage here gets recycled, even though there's no central recycling program. People go around, going through garbage cans and picking out the recyclables (if you look closely you'll notice he's got all the cardboard and plastic in the sidecar). They take the recyclables and sell it to the recycling plants. Not only does this niche provide jobs, it also means lazy schmucks like me don't have to sort their garbage.

I can't stress enough that weather here is ridiculous. I snapped this picture about 20 minutes before the one below it.

I live in a pretty trendy part of town, right by the university so there's a big student scene. I like this statue.

To introduce the unit on agriculture and natural systems, we took the students to the Chiang Mai waterfall. I hadn't been there before but it's only 20 minutes from my house and made for a great day. We basically wanted to get them to observe and take note of the components that make up a natural system so that they could start to think about how it might be possible to design an agricultural system to mimic nature. The day went well, and I took some really good pictures.

Biodiversity analysis anyone? It felt strange leading this activity considering I was doing the same thing in my Ecology course a year ago.


Of course we ended up getting caught in a downpour during the afternoon and had to take cover. Someone was keeping their pet beetle out of the rain. You see a lot of people with these giant beetles, they're tied to a piece of sugar cane, which I suppose provides food and a home to the bugs. From what I'm told, they're raised, traded and fought. Personally I would stick with roosters (if it wasn't for the fact that cockfighting is barbaric and cruel).