Culture Wars

I had two conversations in succession recently, both over a beer and spicy delectables from the Chiang Rai night market, both on the balcony of my guesthouse. While the content and structure of the conversations were remarkably similar, the viewpoints presented were pretty opposed.

The first was with Jake, a devoted, impossibly kind British man who is the whole reason I ended up staying and working in Chiang Rai for the ten days I was there. Ok, maybe "reason" isn't the right word... more like "the first in a line of related events." He was Gabby's contact for the story about corrupt Christian missionaries that I actually wasn't shitting you about, and as we were determined to start with him, we hightailed it from the Chiang Rai bus station to his homebase. The only reason we stayed at that guesthouse is because of him, and the only reason I met Paul, the head of the Khom Loy Development Foundation (www.khomloy.org) where I volunteered for a week, is because Paul happened to be there one morning, Gabby happened to ask him how to get to the Hill Tribe Museum, and he happened to offer to drive us there.

Long story very short: There is an INSANE amount of Christian missionary work in the Chiang Rai province, the area where Thailand meets Myanmar/Burma (I hear mostly Burma still, in these parts) and Laos, as well as a short-ish distance from China's Yunnan province. Many different ethnic minorities from the region, known in the Chiang Rai area as "hill tribes," or nomadic peoples with their own languages and traditions, are now, like so many indigenous communities, butting heads with modern nations and their economic agendas. Most hill tribes in Thailand are denied Thai citizenship, which can mean limited access to public education and health care. They are often shooed off their land, discriminated against in a variety of ways, and live in increasingly desperate poverty. They are also, and have been for generations, relentlessly pursued by Christian missionary organizations from all over the world. Those organizations have in some cases been entirely successful. The Karen, for instance, famous for a subgroup that once encouraged young girls to wear successive metal rings around their necks to stretch them (there are now bulletins plastered with "Trek to Karen Longneck Village" across Chiang Mai, and I heard a rumor that this is a tradition that is only continued for tourists' benefit), are almost all practicing Christians now.

The story as a whole I find incredibly depressing (partly because, of course, it's so goddamn familiar): People who are living close to the land and close to each other for generations upon generations, developing localized languages, spiritual practices, herbal-medicinal knowledge, and all manner of interesting, valuable, necessary things, are suddenly confronted with a force that says: You are not enough. You do not have enough. This is because you do not know MY God. Therefore, your children need to come with me, and I will provide them with food and shelter and education, and they will know My God, and they will love My God. (Chatting with two recent college grads from the UK who were also volunteering for Khom Loy confirmed this kind of thing pretty literally: They attended a church service in Chiang Rai with some kids from the orphanage they were stationed at, and reported with surprise that a free lunch came with it. "All right! I mean, a free lunch, can you believe that? I'd go to church for a free lunch!" I laughed and replied with a sigh, "That's right, MY God gives you free lunch. Does YOUR God give you free lunch?")

Enough free lunches and educational or vocational opportunities, and slowly, slowly, over time, the former religious practices and cultural values of a community fade and subside. Languages die, beliefs disintegrate. This seems impossibly sad to me; this nightmarishly repeating story of imperialism and colonization the world over (though of course missionary work is sometimes -- not always -- less bloody). In some cases one might argue that this kind of blending, merging, submerging of cultures is inevitable (such as the clash between tourism and these populations); in this case I find it to be disgusting, morally abhorrent. To make matters worse, the story Gabby and I were planning on researching was about corruption that exceeded even the corruption that in my view is inherent in missionary work. (We didn't get very far since it seemed such an impossible wild good chase, especially given her limited time in the country before she took off to India.)

The investigation was regarding Bobby Morse, a Christian missionary born of Christian missionaries with his fingers in lots of exploitative pies, but especially among the Akha, a group a couple million strong in total but with about 70 thousand in northern Thailand. He and his organization would encourage Akha families to release their children to his missionary boarding school, where he promised not only free lunch, but free room and board and education. Not a tough sell if you're talking to people who've got too many mouths to feed. Unfortunately, not only are these schools brainwashing tanks, but Morse and his assistant were arrested by the Thai police for consistently molesting and raping Akha girls. The sickest part of the story is that, rumor has it, he was acquitted after a brief trial due to a big payoff by the American embassy. There was no media coverage of the incident besides one article in a local Thai paper, and by a few human rights activist organizations (specifically the Akha Heritage Foundation, www.akha.org, the reason Gabby was tipped off to this whole thing in the first place.) Gabby and I decided that, were we to pursue this further, our central question would have to be: Why (!!!!!) is the American Embassy protecting Bobby Morse? We were sent down a dizzying wormhole of conspiracy theories by Gabby's contact at the Akha Heritage Foundation, including the allegation that the CIA and Christian missionary organizations have always been in cahoots in the Golden Triangle due to the now-dying but historically lucrative opium trade. Ay yi. You can see, I hope, why I decided to drop the ball on this one for the time being.

Here's the link to the Bobby Morse story:

http://www.akha.org/content/missions/mossarrested.html

Anyway, back to Jake. A filmmaker of both documentary and dramatic films, he's interested, first and foremost, in promoting, documenting, and preserving extremely localized native cultures. He has been working for AFECT (Association for Akha Education and Culture in Thailand, www.afect.org), making DVDs and promotional materials for them, writing grants, developing fundraising ideas. He heard of the Bobby Morse ordeal and gave us a few names and a lot of background on this whole messy corner of the planet. After a few good conversations with him, especially the last one, I came to understand where his passion lay: in the folklore of the most untouched peoples in the remotest corners of the earth. "That's what's really good," he'd say. "That's where you get stories." (Wish I could include his accent in this post: long, curving British vowels..."stOHwries"...and he pronounced his "th's" like "f's".)

His viewpoint was this: We've got to preserve and protect these cultures at all costs. Document them in order to celebrate them. Almost as if these people were relics from some lost Paradise, innocent, unique, whole.

As a collector of stories myself, I can't help but rather agree. Certainly when it comes to missionary work, or unFair trade, or the bastardizing forces of tourism, or other blatant violations of human rights, it seems commendable to support and protect those who've lived mostly an isolated existence from all those legal and religious and economic winds... which is, perhaps, why there are so many NGOs in the region.

This brings me to my second conversation. This was with a young college grad from Vancouver Island, who was a nice enough guy and had some hilarious stories and interesting things to say, but I have to admit I started zoning out when he got to his obsession with zombies, kung fu movies, and drinking games. (In Pai, northern Thailand's tourist haven, there is a bar that apparently charts drinking champions by number of shots and country of origin on a big wall-sized chalkboard.) This fellow (don't remember if I ever got his name) is convinced that one rosy day, the whole world will speak the same language, use the same currency, all be the same "pale brown color," all be "earthlings" rather than belonging to any nation-state, and cultural norms, such as needing to take off your shoes and cover your shoulders when you enter a Buddhist temple, will be themselves only relics that he hopes people will preserve in museums. My first thought: Heaven forbid. Second thought: You poor, poor naive little fucker. But then, I admit it got me thinking: As the world "flattens," as we become increasingly "globalized," people are finding it more and more necessary to learn the same language, use the same currency. Today, it's English, it's the Euro, it's the dollar. I wonder how long this will last. Is there an ending point? Is there a limit to which we can use these things to be more connected, to more easily trade with one another? When and if we reach that limit, is it inevitable that the next superpower will step in and usher the next era of cultural ubiquity?


I'm obviously getting into really sticky territory here, as what does the word "culture" even mean... but... where do we strike that balance between equity and cultural preservation? If we're talking about the hill tribes, at what point does the presence of tourism or missionaries or a larger nation with a larger economy become a way through which these people can better themselves and their standard of living? Is it so wrong to provide choices to people in a world so sated with choice? That's what the NGOs are doing, trying to do: Provide these people with choices. (And maybe that's what a missionary would say, too: I am giving these people the knowledge, and therefore the choice to believe). Given the choice, people may opt to move out of that village, forget that needlework, stop speaking that language, stop believing in that god. Which is natural, which can and does and should happen; it just seems that, often, it's not exactly about choice...

I guess what struck me was the two opposing attitudes: Jake was so gung-ho about preserving these individual cultures at all costs, and the guy from Vancouver Island seemed almost to advocate for a seamless blending of cultures, as if this would plant us in a future of global harmony.

I don't think either is possible.


Photos: The Akha Foundation, not to be confused with the Akha Heritage Foundation, is a Christian missionary organization just outside of Chiang Rai, that I passed twice, once on motorbike and once on bicycle. The Akha swing, the teepee-shaped figure in the second photo, is present in all Akha villages and is part of regular ceremonies; interesting juxtaposition with the cross. Kids from a Mien village outside of Chiang Rai; mother/seamstress from a Hmong village called Tha Thong; toddler who adored me from that same Mien village, wearing a traditional hat (made, clearly, for far cooler climes); photo of Tha Thong from a hill.

All village shots are from the two days I spent traveling with Patricia from Khom Loy who runs Izara Arts (www.izaraarts.com), which will soon feature some of my words and images under the "producer profiles" link.

Fire and Water 2

So that first rally was all good feeling, at least for us farang (foreigners). It did get a little hairy a couple days later, though, when, following some serious violence outside the ASEAN summit in Pattaya (http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/14885/clash-at-pattaya-protest), some of it showed up in Bangkok. En force.... But only in certain areas. We started the day getting doused in water and white powder for Songkran festivities: people were bathing buddhas, decorating cake-shaped shrines at temples (in sand, too -- we had a lovely time building our own) and splashing, splashing, splashing with all their might, laughing ticklishly and tirelessly like little boys until despite the heat I felt rather tired of being sopping wet.

By the time we were heading home, though, on Sri Ayuttaya, an eye-of-the-storm feeling settled over blockaded streets, army tanks, piles of ash, trash, and tires, and the skeletons of burnt and flaming buses where clearly the riots had passed not too long before. (This video is actually from earlier in the day, the view from a taxi, but you get the picture. Again, Gabby took more video footage -- of soldiers marching past us, of me expressing some half-hearted courage in the face of what started to feel far less giddy and far more scary -- but the files are too damn big.)





We couldn't get home by our usual route, due to blockades and tanks and soldiers, and so we got bewilderingly lost in alleyways and residential areas. Some people laughed and celebrated Songkran in oblivious bliss while others stood around, mute, afraid, fascinated, as gunshots and shouts and smoke billowed a few hundred meters away.

Despite the intrigue, at this point I had a few knots in my stomach. It was getting late, we were getting hungry, we had a night bus to catch to Chiang Mai, and we had no idea how to get home, walking or otherwise. We were uncomfortably close to what was clearly real violence, and we found ourselves quite stranded among hundreds of Thais in smoky, unfamiliar streets. So we hopped on a completely incompetent motorcycle taxi (didn't know he was incompetent until he drove us all over the place, often the wrong way down one-way boulevards, not only because he had no idea where he was going, but also because any effort to go in the correct direction was made futile by police, blockades, burning buses, etc., and eventually he charged us 100 baht to bring us back to exactly where we started).

A second motorcycle taxi driver tried a little harder, and eventually -- just in the nick of time, really -- we were able to get back to our guesthouse, pick up our bags, grab some curry, and head back out to the bus station in a real taxi (read: metered, and with closed windows).

Closed windows during Songkran are a godsend. I remember specifically a moment when, close to our guesthouse, but still far enough away to feel scared and dejected, still damp and covered in white powder from the day's festivities, hungry, exhausted, frightened, hopped up on adrenaline, our motorcycle stopped at a red light. To our right was another motorcycle with mom and dad and a small child in the middle, bearing, of course, a supersoaker half his size. I looked wearily over and saw that with a puckish gleam in his eye he was pointing that supersoaker straight at us. Of course he sprayed, despite our pleas. To escape one kind of violence, only to be subjected to another.... Have mercy!

Thailand Taster 2

OK, forget political protests... Can I just talk about food for a moment? Thailand has THE BEST FOOD EVER. Hands down, absolutely positively, THE best food on the planet. Plus, in my experience, the cheaper the food is, the more delicious -- I swear it's a goddamn mathematical equation. All of my favorite meals, favorite fruits, everything that has prompted me to use words like "delicious" and "phenomenal" and "WOW this is amazing," have cost me 20-60 baht (75 cents to about $1.75), and usually come from either a tiny, local eatery or outdoor market. Most of said meals, mind you, were also purchased by throwing caution to the winds and pointing dumbly to a vague multicolored mush, the contents of which I hadn't the foggiest. Tonight, for example: 1) Puke-green colored mash with red flecks and wormlike chunks folded in banana leaf; 2) banana leaf wrapped around something I assumed was rice, but in fact wasn't; 3) something that looked like noodles and vegetables in the dim light but I couldn't quite tell; 4) bag of soup and vegetable just because it looked like it had vegetable. (Note to the reader: My Thai is virtually nonexistent. I learned my numbers, thanks to Gabby, and have "hello" and "thank you" down pat, and I think I can manage the word for "how much," but even if I knew "what is that," I don't have the vocabulary to understand the answer. Therefore, all of these transactions are conducted with a big, mute smile and often a self-deprecating shrug.) Result: 1) aromatic, melty, salty, spicy patty of minced tiny fish with tiny disintegrating bones; 2) fiery hot noodles with a bit of chicken and a bit of ginger and a bit of lemongrass and a bit of magic, I have no idea still; 3) noodles that were also fiery but with totally different ingredients and flavor, the oily fantasticness of which I can't even begin to describe; 4) I didn't even have room left to eat this, but stewed greens in a salty, fragrant broth.... wish I had a fridge cause it sucks to waste even a few baht of all this wonder.

And now, shall I pluck a lychee from the tree outside my guesthouse, or should I stick to the miniature mangoes that grow outside the office where I'm volunteering and the incredible brown rice milk I've discovered at the 7-11?

There are also these lip-smackingly delicious snacks at the 7-11s and markets, what I've seen labeled in English on some of the packets as "broad beans;" in Thailand they are salty crispy nutty delights, a cross between a nut and a dried delicious mystery you might find the pale comparison of in an "oriental snack mix" in the bulk food section of a health food store. And my new favorite fruit, which I've only had once, on my birthday (you will appreciate this, Adam -- the closest thing to pifa I've had since Panama!): The Yamango, a name Gabby and I came up with to describe a brilliantly hued, mango-shaped and mango-colored fruit that is as close as you could possibly get to a fifty-fifty cross between a sweet potato and a mango. Not kidding. Tastes like a mango, has the sweetness and flavor of a mango, but has the rich, creamy, starchy, hearty, vitamin-A goodness of a sweet potato. It was extremely fortifying for my birthday bike ride up a mountain to Doi Suthep, that gorgeous Buddhist temple outside of Chiang Mai I mentioned. Or what about those small, yellow skinned, cherry-sized fruits that look rather like small plums or loquats but have four sour-sweet juicy pods inside, begging you, like most of the fruits here do, to slurp and suck and gnaw and dribble juice and morsels of peel all down your chin and hands?

The few established restaurants I've been to have been mediocre and/or, at least by Thai standards, insanely overpriced (i.e 6 to 9 US dollars for a meal? You must be CRAZY! That is more than I am paying for a night's lodging!). Today at lunch I ate an indescribable fish soup with minced fish and sticky rice. I was treated, so it was free, but even if I hadn't been, it would have cost me 30 baht (less than a dollar). As my dining companions agreed (Paul and Patricia, the co-founders of the Khom Loy Development Foundation, for whom I am randomly volunteering this week and loving it, it's like having a real job in Chiang Rai... but for a limited time... ahhhh.... and thank goodness for Paul's loan of this incredible bicycle -- I feel like a local, even the women who work at this guesthouse asked me "if I was going to work today"): you just can't describe this stuff. Fish balls and minced fish? With a plate of raw vegetables and rice? I mean, sure, sounds like you're getting fed, but this tiny, smoky hole-in-the-wall that only serves these two dishes (fish balls in soup and the minced fish) has produced perhaps the finest lunch I think I have ever had.

Thailand Taster

Thailand -- humid, fragrant, rich, raw, friendly, stunning, wacky Thailand -- keeps getting in the way of my actually starting this blog. I am currently drafting a little something about the odd and thrilling juxtaposition of water-partying in the streets for Thai new year and the fiery political protests we brushed up against in Bangkok.... In the meantime, I will whet my own blogging palate by posting some photos.

From the bottom up, I guess (please forgive the formatting... how the heck do you get Blogger to let you change the layout once you've uploaded them? This thing is a paaaiiinnnnnnn):

The long view of the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Bangkok.
Mark and his lady, Jeab, in Lumphini Park, Bangkok.
A woman roasting meat at the world's largest outdoor market, Chatuchak, Bangkok.
Three shots of the craziness on Bangkok's Khao San Road during Songkran celebrations.
The view of the canal near the Shanti Lodge, Bangkok.
Monk apprentices decorating at a Wat for Songkran, Chiang Mai.
My new best friend, Gabby, bathing the Buddha in Chiang Mai.
Chocolate Fact no. 1: In order to Live Chocolately, have a piece of cake at this place in Chiang Mai.
Fried creatures at the special Songkran night bazaar, Chiang Mai.
Shot of part of the temple I biked up a mountain to get to on my birthday: Doi Suthep, just outside of Chiang Mai.

More soon....

Fire and Water 1

I arrived in Bangkok in the middle of the night, having flown from Kauai to Honolulu to Tokyo across the international dateline into jetlagged oblivion. After sharing a taxi from the airport with a leathery expat who accidentally gave me 150 euros instead of 150 baht to help pay for the fare (cha-ching!), I discovered that my reservation at the Shanti Lodge was moot because a hundred thousand political protesters had descended on Bangkok that day. I found myself on a cell phone at three a.m. with an exasperated woman trying her best to get it through my travel-numbed skull: No, I could NOT come tonight; a taxi literally could not push through the crowds and blockades to bring me there.

Sa wat dii kha, Thailand!

I knew it was nearly Songkran, the Thai lunar new year -- meaning that everyone and their mother was about to begin drenching each other for a good two to five days -- but what I didn't know was that Bangkok would be as full of fire as water. Mark (a friend from Berkeley), who'd been in Thailand since January, had a lot of information about the whole thing, including the fact or suspicion that the vast majority of the protesters had been paid to be there by the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin. (The former PM's shady financial dealings had him booted in 2006 and I think he's still in exile in Dubai, awaiting possible extradition to serve a jail sentence in Thailand.) The country sliced itself into two primary colors: the yellow shirts and the red shirts, or those who support the regime that stepped in after the coup and the recently-appointed Prime Minister Abhisit and those who don't. I've since heard a variety of conflicting good-guy bad-guy scenarios and honestly don't know what to believe. In any case, it was a pretty fascinating time to show up in Bangkok.

Over the next 48 hours, I managed to check into the nearest hotel, relocate to the Shanti Lodge, wander the Coca-cola bannered and tourist-plastered mayhem of Khao San Road, take the boat taxi to Wat Pho (enormous golden-plated reclining Buddha), eat coconut ice cream from a halved coconut, wander Lumphini Park and watch hundreds of Thais bouncing to jazzy step-aerobics and freezing in their tracks for a 6 p.m. recital of the Thai national anthem, and have a drink called "Tropical Bliss" at a swanky bar on the roof of a 59-story building for nearly the cost of a night's lodging. Political unrest? It was in the Bangkok Post, but I hadn't seen it yet.

The next morning, determined to both buy a bus ticket to Chiang Mai and visit Chatuchak, the largest open-air market in the world, I met Gabby, also an aspiring journalist and also headed north. We accomplished a good amount together -- plug adapters for our laptops, bus ticket purchases despite a fantastically torrential downpour, and hours of dizzy Chatuchak wandering, fingering bags and jewelry and eating quail's eggs and green sticky rice and fish curry and green mango with chiles.

As we were walking home along Sri Ayuttaya Rd. (which, it turns out, was both the location of our guesthouse and a ­­­­­­­­­hotbed of political activity), we passed what was clearly a gathering of redshirts. They were all wearing red, for starters. They piled out of trucks and motorbikes and rattled red and white plastic noisemakers and streamed down a road toward chanting and music. Gabby was fearless. "Let's follow them! I want to know what's happening!" I was much more apprehensive, as I knew next to nothing about what had been going on and we were clearly the only foreigners in sight as well as THE only people not wearing red... What did the red even mean? Was this going to turn violent? Would our ignorance and blatantly voyeuristic presence be insulting? I didn't want to rock the boat, and hung back, but Gabby was intent on going forward with her video camera, and... not to be outdone....I followed.

Remarkably, no one seemed to pay any attention for a little while. But as we sidled up to the action, someone called out, excitedly, in English, "Get some red shirt!!!"

For some reason, I felt better. It wasn't an angry yell. And when in true Thai style, we saw that even a protest was paved with countless food stands -- sticky rice, grilled meats, noodles and fruits -- we both felt a lot better. (The ubiquitous food stand: in Thailand, from political rallies to one-shack villages to remote waterfalls, there will always, always be food for sale.) Gabby promptly bought some sticky rice, and when people started really noticing us, almost every single face lit up and grinned and whooped. Within ten or fifteen minutes, we were being showered with red headbands and wristbands and cold bottles of water and rice and fried chicken and sweets and some passionate diatribes about the people coming together and having a voice. Most people seemed thrilled to welcome us and graciously assumed we knew far more about their cause than we did.

So, what were a couple of budding journalists to do? Naturally, we started interviewing. Gabby's Thai far exceeds mine, so there were a few conversations in Thai, but many spoke English, some broken and some quite fluent. "Democracy" was a key word, as was "truth" (many red t-shirts were emblazoned with the slogan, in English, "Truth Today"...?) -- and some people there claimed they didn't, in fact, support Thaksin; it was more about the principle of the thing.

We have a good amount of video footage of the evening, but the files are so big I'm going to look for a way to download some software and cut out a piece of one or two of them.