Chau Doc: Lauryn's Blog on Family Travel

Chau Doc, Vietnam

Lauryn is Anita's sister, Karen's, daughter. An only child at home, she had an idea what she was getting herself in for when travel with the MacDonalds. Still, it's always shocking to discover you've become the gravitational center of three kids' universe. She contributed this blog entry before heading back to the States for soccer camp.

Carrie & Lauryn stand on the edge. Siem Reap, Cambodia

Lauryn's Blog on Traveling With the Family

Traveling with the family has probably been one of the biggest adventures throughout my time on this trip. On June 17th we met up the MacDonald family in Siem Reap where we stayed in the Gloria Hotel for three nights. These days and nights included many types of travel such as by tuk tuk to the night market and restaurants, a van to temples, and a good deal of walking. The most exciting of these transportation methods was the tuk tuks which are little open carriages that are driven by motor bike. Grace was especially excited to be driven on these and the possible risks did not seem to phase her. Me on other hand was nervous on every single ride and let the safety risks overcome my excitement. Liam and Carrie seemed more or less indifferent about the experience.

Our usual tuk tuk ride to dinner. Siem Reap, Cambodia

The next traveling opportunity was on the June 21th when the entire family would take a six hour bus ride to a major Cambodian city Phnom Penn. The bus ride aroused some excitement because of the free wifi. The tides soon turned when it was made clear their could only be two people to a seat. We decided to be fair the kids would alternate every few hours in order to allow everyone to sit by who they wanted to. The bus ride was a bit rough at the beginning. I got a migraine and a bit of nausea but after some advil and dramamine it was smooth sailing. First I sat with Carrie for about two hours. We mainly just spent the time getting the most of our free wifi, which we were both pumped about. After that I sat with Grace for another two hours. We mainly spent our time laughing eating snacks and playing various games that Grace made up usually involving a celebrity or girlfriend and boyfriend. I think its fair to say me and Grace had a Blast! For the last part of this six hour journey I sat with Liam and the competition was on! It turned into a tournament of who could get the highest score on various games. The main game we focused on was called Ski Safari this was the game that really spiked our emotions. While others were trying to sleep Liam and I were uncontrollably  laughing at "epic fails" each other had. This caused a lot of hushes and stares from other passengers and family members but it was worth it. Soon enough we were in Phnom Penn.

After two days in Phnom Penn we faced our next travel adventure to Vietnam. But this time we weren't taking a bus or a plane we were going to be taking a boat. When faced with this information the kids (myself included) did not know what to think. We got to the boat station at 12:00 pm and waited around for about forty five minutes. In this time their was some fighting but that seems to happen about every five minutes on this trip. The plot usually goes Carrie says something, Grace gets mad screams for a few minutes calls Carrie a jerk and peace somehow gets restored. But none the less everyone had somewhat high spirits when boarding the boat. The boat had nice seats but thats about it. There was no air conditioning or free wifi which was kind of a bummer for us kids, but we soon found other things to do. Grace liked to stand up on top the boat and look around. Soon almost all the kids began doing this which lead to another fight... but thats another story. I sat with Carrie most of the trip and we played hard core games of Life on her iPhone (which i always won). Then we discovered these jelly candies and we began slurping them all over the place, after noticing the excitement Grace joined in fun and soon jelly candies were flying all over the seat. It was a BLAST! Later we stopped to get or passports checked in order to go into Vietnam which was very rushed and frantic because this was the time Grace discovered she had lost track of her iPod. When we got back on the bus everyone searched and searched for Graces iPod with no luck lets just say their was a lot of tears and yelling. The good news is just when everyone thought all hope was lost as we were preparing to get off the boat we found her iPod buried in the snack bag. So i guess that's a happy ending for everyone.

Mission on the Mekong: no naval gunboat, this capable craft transported us for our own
Joseph Conrad/Apocalypse Now experience. Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Chau Doc, Vietnam.

Chau Doc, Vietnam: Angkor Video Blog

Chau Doc, Vietnam

Today was Carrie's 13th birthday. Anita and I are now officially parents of a teenager. She celebrated with an afternoon in a fancy spa. The rest of us celebrated with a tony dinner and a very fancy cake we got from a bakery that happened to be right across the street from our hotel and, wonder of wonders, happened to make a cake everyone agreed was delicious. Happy birthday, Carrie!

Other adventures from the day included changing hotels (go, Karen!), my first ATM withdrawal in Vietnamese Dong (3rd try was a charm), and going on a boat ride to catch the local Mekong color -- like a Cham mosque. Yes, there are muslims in Vietnam, and there have been for about 1,00 years. Tomorrow I'll post our Joseph Conrad / Apocalypse Now moments, boating down from Phnom Pehn and into this little fish farm town in the upper reaches of the Mekong Delta. We've been engulfed by Vietnam.

This video blog goes back in time a few days to crisp memories that are beginning to get a golden glow. It's late because putting the video together took a few late nights, a long bus ride and a long boat ride, but I'm happy that it gives something of a sense for the place, and the sense the girls made of the place. Liam kept his comments close to his vest, I will say, when recording devices were present. He was fine being more vocal about his opinions at other times. Speaking of unhappy American children, see if you can hear a Dead Kennedy's song apropos that very topic buried in the mix of background music.

A big thrill for me this trip is the fun that Carrie is having with her iPhone camera. She's got an Instagram blog going for her friends back home. They are getting to see some really neat shots of frozen motion -- the video blog ends with one of her pictures and I hope to include more throughout the summer.

Phnom Penh: Carrie's Market Places

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Tonle Sap river family, Phnom Penh. The capital of Cambodia is at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and the mighty Mekong rivers. Tomorrow we'll be the Mekong river family, taking a speed boat into Vietnam.

Carrie's Blog: I have been enjoying my trip so far; it was just a couple things that kinda sucked! Today we went to a market that was full of junk, vegetables, fruits, and gross meat hanging from stalls!!! Honestly the food smelled HORRIBLE and we rejoiced when we got smell free air (even though that was full of smog but it smelled better than headless fish). My favorite kind of market we have been to so far was the night markets in Angkor Wat! They were full of people selling cute shirts, pants and jewelry and lots of other knickknacks! The thing I liked the most about the market was not the clothes or the junk it was all the hustle and bustle and that I felt like a local (except every one was yelling at us to by things which btw is not how you get someone to buy something). I felt so powerful because everything is so cheep and you could get like 10 things with only $20!! I’m having a great time and I miss America and I will really appreciate it when I get back!! JJJJJJJJJJ

Blessings on the Tonle Sap

P.S: to all my friends I am sorry I had to leave but I really miss you! JJJ

Personal wiring, like a long extension cord from the main road
Siem Reap, Cambodia

Liam on a loaded tuk tuk. It was a long day.

Siem Reap: Gracie's Angkor Day

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We may fall off the face of the Earth tomorrow, but once we were at Angkor Wat.
(Family with Anita's sister, Karen, and cousin Lauryn.)

Gracie's Blog: On Thursday we woke up at 4:00 am and then we got into our van with our guide to drive to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful. Carrie and Lauryn kept on taking pictures. Then they went down to a little grass beach and started throwing rocks to take pictures of the ripples very quickly because they were trying to make a stop motion video. Some other people were taking pictures and video of the sunrise. Some were even going inside the temple. It took a long time for the sun to rise, but finally it did. I thought it was delighting to see the new sun of the day. 

After breakfast we went to Praeh Khan, one of the temples that are very old. We learned a lot about how they build it and what kind of people were the statues of. We went along very quickly but slowly to see stuff. We saw a lot of broke stone. Then we also saw a lot of these Buddha altars where you could light incense and put it in this grey sand and pray or meditate. Then before we left out guide showed us a tower we could go up on to to see a beautiful site. Then when we went back down to go to the van we passed the dancing hall. Then, after we took some pictures of the carvings and us doing the dance poses the carvings were of we went back down to the van. I thought it was very very lovely. 

One of the things I really didn't like about yesterday was our mean parents driving us all around just to make us go to an interesting but boring and hot temple. 

We ate dinner at the marketplace. Before dinner Dad and I went looking around to see what we could get. We passed a scarf place and there were small scarves that were $1 each. Then she changed the prices because the owner of the scarves was very desperate. Then Dad said that we would come back later. After that situation we went back to eat our dinner. It was good. We had spring rolls and rice and my Aunt Karen has some coconut juice. After dinner when some people were done I went over to my Aunt Karen to ask her how to bargain, which we could do there because there were such low prices. She taught me some things about bargaining: when you go over to a thing, you can can ask the price. Then you should scowl and say that's too much then you should put it down slowly and walk away and they might come back to you and say I'll lower this to blah, blah, blah. Then you can try to change the price again, and if they don't go for it you can just walk away again. They might come back to you again and you can go back-and-forth like that until you get the price that you really want.

To keep up with the parade of events, here are some of the lingering impressions of the Angkor Temple complex.

Angkor Wat:

Ta Prohm

Angkor Thom South Gate

Bayon of Angkor Thom

Praeh Khan

Chiang Mai: Shutterbug Monks

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Last weekend the class traveled to a small Karen village's small temple complex built by Wat Sri Soda as part of the Dhamma Jarika (“Walking Dharma” or “Walking Buddhism”) project sponsored by this Chiang Mai foundation. I learned about Wat Sri Soda and this project 3 years ago when I visited Chiang Mai while setting-up the course. It is a unique temple in that it has made an effort to reach-out to hill tribal peoples in Northern Thailand who practice animism. Originally a effort to reduce opium growing and use, the project educates hill tribe boys at its monk school and then integrates them into their communities. The were very excited to take us to show us one of their exemplary projects.

Four hours outside of Chiang Mai we stopped in a pretty typical small Northern village. There we sat on floors to take our meals. We slept on mats under mosquito nettings last night. When we peed, it was in Asian squat toilets. While there we hiked to a hermitage, we joined a chanting ceremony dedicating a family’s new house, and we meditated in the wat. This morning after a fabulous breakfast we tutored and taught American school-yard games to the 30 or so Karen children who came for their Sunday morning Buddhist ethics class.

In a wonderful reversal of philosophy, it was my students who were wreathed in the simple pleasure of the moment. The monks who accompanied us were snapping photos all around them.

“I think they have 5 photos of us for every one we have of them,” Savannah speculated. At least 5.

I smiled remembering that an in example of cultural insensitivity and “essentializing” during one of my leadership preparation courses was photographing monks on their alms begging rounds. This very morning the monks changed the alms routine for the sake of photographic composition. They changed from two lines of students flanking their procession in front of the temple to a single line cascading down the front steps of the temple because that was easier to photograph. This isn’t some media-dependent political organization; these are record-conscious monks in a small hill tribe village moving foreigners around to make a better picture.

"Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Head, shoulders, knees and toes."

An earlier posted ended by recounting a Facebook exchange with my colleague, Rich Lee, about the encroachment of the West in Thailand. My students, too, are impressed with the Westernization of much of Thailand, and particularly, of course, urban Thailand. 7-11’s aren’t special – they’re so densely integrated into Thai street life that 7-11 is the default recommendation of Thai receptionists when one needs to pick up anything from an ice ceam to toothpaste. That’s not to mention the other brands on billboards and store shelves. Skin whiteners are so prominent they give me the heebeegeebies. I’ve had more than one encounter where a woman – usually a woman – has compared her arm to my post-Minnesota-winter-white arm and, with a smile, asked to borrow my complexion.

“Why?” I finally asked.

“Because its so beautiful,” one woman replied, completely unaware of how odd that sounded to the complexion’s owner. White is eerily good.

Still, I distrust arguments that derive primarily from the apologist position of cultural colonialism. In short, these arguments are at best incomplete, and at worst quite misleading and even solipsistic (self-centered) if they portray the culture in question in a largely passive roll unable to resist (as if they wanted to) the creeping hegemony of Western products and attitudes. I am increasingly of the opinion that the first question about adopting a foreign view or practice is why do they want it? Why do these monks want all these pictures of foreigners visiting their remote temple? Why do Thais want 7-11's? Only after the first lines of explanation that deal with animal spirits have been factored out can the truly weird stand in stark relief-- like the cult of whiteness. In this vein I hope some enterprising student has studied Asian people's toilet preferences, and the encroachment of the commode: are sitting toilets merely a status symbol, or do a significant proportion of the population now prefer to sit rather than squat?

... While I Play Unfitting Music

Bangkok, Thailand

I was awoken this morning by a call from my wife. She was at the airport this morning saying the first leg of her and the kids first flight on this journey had been delayed 4 hours. Now the butterfly effect has begun: they're laying over in Japan for 19 hours. By the time all is said-and-done, we'll be at least a day late getting to see my sister-in-law, Karen, in Cambodia -- she's arriving there this evening. So, that's an auspicious start for anyone who likes auguries.

Soundtrack Dissonance. Now to go back in time, to before the the flight delay, before the students' departure, to before even the students' arrival, to when I first arrived in Thailand from Malaysia in the first week of the Tip to Tundra tour. I was struck by what the wiki tvtropes.org* would call Scene Dissonance: the peace of the waves, the languid vines hanging from karst outcroppings, shopkeepers keeping their shops and no sign anywhere of an uptick in interest in the news, or concerns about having lost hard-won democratic freedoms. When I went back to my hotel room, I began making the soundtrack for this video blog, mashing up Life During Wartime with What a Wonderful World (the latter of which appears to be a common exemplar of the Soundtrack Dissonance subcategory of Scene Dissonance). I learned I may even have been cleaving to the youtube meme, "... While I Play Unfitting Music".

I've blogged previously about the coup and will not belabor the issue further herein. There is a schedule for new elections in 15 months. Of course democracy is more than elections. I haven't said too much about the beautiful islands in Thailand's south. I will simply point out that visiting them for the merest 24 hours allowed by my schedule was a kind of cruelty. I'd always avoided them before -- I'm not a particularly beach kind of guy. But I must say, I could get over my aversion for a few more days enjoying those turquoise waters.

* If you don't know tvtropes.org, I commend you to it without reservations, as they have undertaken the librarian's role of categorizing and filing the essential essence of story-making. 

Bangkok: All coup, no blood

There has been a hiatus in this blog dating back to two events: the overthrow of the elected government of Thailand and the arrival on that day of 24 American college students, also known as my students (naak rian phom). Without drama, I can assure the reader that it is the latter and not the former condition that has caused this hiatus.

The class is a 3½ week, 3 credit global seminar. So it is a pretty intensive undertaking. I’m writing now from the front sear of a van curling through the hills north of Chiang Mai on what promises to be, hands down, the greatest act of faith of the trip; we are going on an overnight in a village sponsored by Wat Sri Soda to see one of their projects in action. We’ll be eating with the villagers and sleeping on the floor of the temple (wat). I have given over the weekend to our hosts and it is off to a promising start – the roads are getting smaller and smaller, windier and twistier. Up in the clouds, Emily says, “It’s like we’re at the end of the Earth.”

Cooing about the Coup. Although teaching this course may be the primary reason for this blog’s hiatus, this post will be primarily about politics.

Some of my notes about martial law and the coup are based on news that arrives with a predictably filtered flavor through the Bangkok Post. The overall arch suggests that at first the coup seemed like a relief to many as a way of coping with a perceived political stalemate.

Uniformed news anchor who would occasionally interrupt
monotony of the National Council for Peace and Order sigils

I doubt there was in fact a political stalemate. Instead there was a popular (and populist) government elected and reaffirmed by election that was contrary to a former political elite and their allies in the army. There was legislation. Given the majority of the popularly elected Pheu Thai government, passing legislation was not a structural problem. There were protests – first from the right against the prime minister’s policies, which had largely burned out; then from the left when the judiciary ruled against the prime minister and her entire cabinet, causing the party to put in place a caretaker government. As an outside observer mindful of the slogans now bandied about by the ruling junta, it seems that some ideal of political harmony was not being upheld, and that frustrated people enough to be supportive – or at least resigned to – an unconstitutional coup.

Thailand, the land of smiles, simply can’t stand overt hardball politics. It wants its hardball politics closeted.

If there was any doubt as to who are not the democrats in Thailand, here is one description of the initial reaction of the Democrat Party's protest movement called the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC): “PDRC demonstrators greeted the news of the coup with cheers, blowing whistles and waving hand-clappers. Some stood up to wave national flags.”

Since the initial announcement on 20 May of martial law and then on 22 May of the coup, since the initial antipathy toward these developments (see the video blog post Life Under Martial Law), things began to take a more sinister flavor. Arrest warrants, “invitations”, were issued for members of both the left and right parties. Most politicians who responded to these have subsequently been released under various constraints to their speech. Other are still being sought. The National Council for Peace and Order, or NCPO, issues decrees every day that appear more and more dictatorial. One decree suggested the internet needed to be censured. Another decree restricted gatherings to no more than five people and prohibited the “three finger salute,” a wonderful example of life imitating art.

Life Imitating Art. The Hunger Games is a young adult science fiction series in which a detached, indulgent urban elite (read oppressive university professors) lord over genuine, impoverished rural workers. The novels are set in a dystopic, future North America. However some clever leftist wag figured this was a pretty accurate portrayal of Thailand today. So, how do you bring this critique home to roost? You adopt the three-fingered salute of the fictional resistance in Hunger Games. In the second book and movie, protesters who show defiance by raising three fingers are dragged out of the crowd by masked and truncheon-wielding riot police and beaten for their insolence. Following NCPO’s decree against this three-fingered salute (“Even a bystander at a demonstration showing the three-fingered salute will be subject to arrest,” or some such language,) it is hard to imagine such scenes not playing themselves out somewhere around Democracy Monument in Bangkok.

Orwellianity with a Smile. Speaking of the Democracy Monument, the center of the anti-coup demonstrations in the past several weeks, the government had a brilliant idea to thwart the protests: a music concert! So instead of traffic in Bangkok being ground to a halt by political protest at this central hub, traffic was to grind to a halt because of this wonderful recreational opportunity brought to you by your favorite neighborhood Thai Psychological Operation (sic.) branch of the military government. In a wonderful coda to this hearts-and-minds offensive, the Post noted that the concert started 2 hours early because the crowd that had gathered beforehand was so large. I was unable to research the incident further, but it holds a special place in my heart as the only concert in the history of the universe to have started early.

On that first night I was informed about the coup by the hotel clerk when I asked him for a recommendation for a local restaurant that evening at 8:50. He indicated that I could not go out because there was a 9 pm curfew. I had not heard of a curfew and he did not know the word for coup, so it wasn’t until I headed, empty stomached and confused, back to my hotel room that I found on my Facebook feed a description of the day’s events. You can bet that made my evening. When I turned on the television for the latest news coverage, it was all the same channel playing patriotic songs that, from their screechy scratchy quality, must have been dusted off from a previous military take-over.

The beautifully painted murals on the walls of the royal Wat Phra Khaew
remind the observer that politics without gloves is no new thing in Thailand.

At about 11, still not entirely sure I had a class to teach or, if I had one whether they would be allowed to enter Bangkok from the airport, I received a call from a New York Post reporter. This poor reporter was cold calling hotels around Bangkok finagling receptionists to put him through to any Americans they might have staying at the hotel. Our receptionist, no bright bulb, I fear, thought he was part of the University of Minnesota apparatus trying to get ahold of me to answer my existential questions about the class. We spoke for only a few minutes, but it was enough to garner the headline, “Tourists gripe about coup’s inconvenience.” Tourist? Gripe? I felt so minimized. Clearly I have more to learn about public relations.

That night I sent out an inquiry on Facebook asking how best to incorporate these political developments with the themes of the course, Buddhist and addiction. My colleague in the Psychology Department, Rich Lee, bless his heart, did not hold back. He wrote, “Hang in there, Angus! And I hope you are also able to help students appreciate the rich Thai and Buddhist history and genuine life of the Thai people without students accidentially essentializing or completely pathologizing the culture, religion, and people. An interesting perspective is to incorporate the role of American militarism (and its accompanied facilitation of corruption and the drug trade) and American/Western-fueled sex trade of girls and young women as ways in which Whiteness and wealth exploit and corrupt developing countries.”

I think this captures a prominent bias among American academics for the past couple decades (roughly speaking the post-colonial, post-Orientalism, post cold-war era). I worded my response carefully, because I do appreciate Rich diving in with a theoretic position. I responded, “Thanks for your advice, Rich. I actually have a different analysis of the events, such that U.S. foreign and drug indiction policies are really quite peripheral to the current, very Thai, set of issues. In effect, the Thai's are struggling with a fundamental brittleness of democracy wherein a state is cobbled together by regions and classes with distinctly separate interests. In this case, the ruling Pheu Thai party has a sufficiently strong majority that they can, in effect, tyrannize the minority -- although in this case, that tyranny comes in the form of rice subsidies and other unsustainable policies. This has backed the so-called Democrat party into becoming anything but democratic -- they welcomed the coup because it was their only way of getting influence back. All this while parties of all colors repeat their allegiance to the monarch. There is a sex trade here, but to call it Western-fueled is to give the locals and their Asian neighbors short-shrift, while to see it underlying the political instability is a head scratcher.” In short, 65 million Thai's are creative enough to imagine their own political stalemate without the help of anyone else.