Juggling, Tea Festival, and Tha Ton's many Buddhas

As Joseph said before he kayak accidentally flipped over spilling him into Lago de Atitlan (I would also accidentally follow only moments later), “This is what traveling is all about.”

Today was like that.

After a chilly night in Mae Salong (temperature dropped to around 50 degrees and without heat, you simply bundle up in multiple blankets and sweaters), I woke to the sound of the morning market. Looking out my window, the sky was just starting to light up and sun slowly peeking over the mountains in the horizon. I hastily got washed and made my way partially up the hill for a better view of the sunrise.
The morning market by now was in full swing. While small, it had a very nice feel, local, authentic, devoid of tourists and normal fanfare surrounding tourist oriented markets. You could watch people from the local tribes – Akhan, Luisa, and Lahu – trading, selling and purchasing goods much as they had done for decades, probably centuries. I bought a few bracelets as souvenirs and decided to collect them from any place that held a special place during my travels.

I left the market and returned to my guesthouse (which was essentially just a family’s home, where they rented out one room). The main host was playing guitar, and he had two guitars so we jammed and chatted for a little bit. After he left, a couple cute kids watched and listened as I played, and I decided this was a good time to introduce a little juggling in the fray. When I first started juggling, their faces simply lit up, entranced, and then giggling with joy. For the next hour or so, I juggled for the kids, trying to teach them the basics. They brought their parents and relatives, and the common area of the house had become quite a lively area. The best is always slowly building the relationship with the kids, where they might be a little shy at first, nervous around this strange “farang” (white man) in their house, until they loosen up and became relaxed, fighting with each other for a spot on my lap.



The kids had to leave for school, and I headed to the local tea festival. Initially, I had been worried when I arrived at Mae Salong because most of the guesthouses were full (I thought it might be flooded by tourists). It was flooded, but in a different way. Rather than Western tourists, it was mostly Thai tourists and mostly from surrounding villages for the annual several day long tea festival. It was still pretty early at that time, so I visited a nearby wat overlooking the valley. On the way back, the festival was in full swing. Dozens of food, tea, and souvenir stands. Various dance groups began to perform on the fairly large stage. I saw dances from the various nearby villages – Akhan, Luisa, Lahu, and one or two more. And amazingly, I was the only white face in the crowd.

Around noon, I needed to head to my next destination Tha Ton, so I found the minibus down to the Tha Ton bus station. The ride cut along the ridge of the mountain, sweeping around the curves with gorgeous views of the surrounding valleys. At the bottom, the overcrowded bus to Tha Ton was heading off, so I tossed my bag on top and grabbed onto the back of the bus or really pick-up truck. After a pretty ride, I found myself at Tha Ton.

Tha Ton is another really pretty town. Mostly one street, Burmese Shan refugees make up a substantial portion of the population due to Tha Ton’s proximity to Myanmar (and due to the outgoing violence against the Shan in Myanmar). Tha Ton is basically cut in half by the Maekong River, with a pretty bridge connecting the two sides, and towering mountains forming the background on either side. The main attraction is the various temples and Buddha statues on the mountain. In 9 stages, you walk or drive up the hill visiting the various sites. And they are definitely worth visiting. Probably even more spectacular than Mae Salong, the various statues are massive and ornate – the glimmering white sitting Buddha, the golden Buddha with dragons surrounding him, the massive multicolored stupa overlooking the valley and Maekong (with multiple levels and overlooks inside), and the famous standing Buddha (with its back turned towards Myanmar).







I spent the afternoon exploring the various sites, and returned to the stupa to watch the sunset.

All in all, it was a great day.

Tomorrow I head to either Chiang Mai or Phitsanoluk for New Years. I’m not sure which yet.

(PS. I'm starting to realize I blog in spurts... I'll have to work on being more regular with my posts)

Mae Salong

Following Chiang Rai, I took an early bus out to Mae Salong. I had to change at a tiny town, Ban Basang, to a pick-up truck turn taxi for the ride up the mountain. Mae Salong is built along the spine of the mountain. It’s basically one main street with a few houses, shops, restaurants, and guesthouses along the side. On the peak behind Mae Salong, there’s a large pagoda and temple overlooking the surrounding mountains and plains. I made the climb in the early afternoon after grabbing lunch in a Yunnan noodle shop (Mae Salong was actually founded by Chiang Kai-Shek after his nationalist army was driven from China and took shelter there; hence, it still retains a strong Chinese influence and often is seen as more Yunnan in its stylings than Thai).

Offering close to a 360 panorama, the view from Wat Santikeree was spectacular. Possibly even better than the buddha’s footprint near Krabi.





All in all, I really like Mae Salong. It’s largely devoid of tourists. The town is small and quaint, and people are friendly (including the nice Akhan woman at the guesthouse, peering over my shoulder as I type away on my mini-computer). The scenery is spectacular, and the chilly air (and it’s actually chilly up here, making me glad I’ve been carrying my fleece around) is a welcome relief.

Tomorrow I head to Tha Ton, another village town around the Golden Triangle (the area bordering Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma – I’ll be referring to it as Myanmar for most of my blogs because I need to get used to calling it that since I’m going there in about a week.. probably not good to accidentally call it Burma once I get there). The Wat Tha Ton is supposed to be excellent, with the massive standing Buddha on top of the mountain (largely the reason I’m going there).

Random thought at dinner, I think it’s interesting how geography and politics go together. You usually find mountains or rivers near the borders of countries. The Golden Triangle being the perfect examples, but you can also look at the Karen areas of Myanmar bordering Thailand, or the Shan areas further north, or the Kauchin areas of Myanmar bordering China (again mountains). The Malaysia-Thailand border also becomes mountainous all of sudden, and Singapore, of course, is cut off by water. Similar examples abound throughout the world, and the reasoning is fairly straight-forward, mountains form a natural defensive wall; they serve as markers to the legacies and histories of war and conflict, the ebb and flow of borders, settling on the most naturally defensive areas.

Chiang Rai - land of a thousand smiles... or a thousand tourists

12/28/08
So for a bit, I thought Chiang Rai wasn’t too touristy. I had just arrived by bus from Chiang Mai, passing some gorgeous temples and beautiful scenery along the way. I found a nice, isolated guesthouse (Ya House), where I got a second floor bungalow seemingly entirely made of straw and bamboo and offering the prospect of hot showers. After settling in, I made my way down to the river and came across several wats along the way, where the monks were just performing the final ceremony to close down for the evening. One of the temples had a pretty green backlight illuminating the emerald Buddha inside. Returning from the river, I walked past a nice night market and grabbed some duck-rice for dinner at a street corner. Nearby, the ornate, golden clock tower glimmered in the early evening light.

At that time, I preferred Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai. Tourists were few and far between. There was a lively night life removed from the lady bars and nightclubs on the main strip in Chiang Mai, and street food was common. I took my chance and continued on to the reportedly “tourist-centered” Night Bazaar. At first, it seemed fine. A wide variety of stalls and venders, similar to the night bazaar in Chiang Mai, flood the streets. There were also two stages for performances. One being worrisome, given that it had “Night Bazaar” in Thai, English and French (a warning if there ever is one). The first few acts were fine. A couple musicians, a dance, and then a group of pretty Thai woman took the stage, dressed in fancy, flowery outfits, then began to dance and lip-synch to a song… in English, about Thailand being the land of smiles and where all your dreams come true. So much for my illusions about it not being too touristy.

After the song, I made my way back to my bungalow. In all though, I really liked Chiang Rai. While the night bazaar is very touristy centered, it’s quite easy to get away from it to a decent day market and night market, which still seem to be focused on the locals and haven’t been inundated with Western tourists. Many of the wats in Chiang Rai are also quite pretty, and I preferred some of them to even the best that Chiang Mai had to offer. The new White Temple in particular was amazing.

7-singles

While walking along one of the main canals in Bangkok, I discovered a little known gem - Bangkok's juggling club. Actually, I don't know if it's official or anything, but a group of Thai jugglers meet pretty regularly at this small park near the canal. They're also joined by a decent amount of expats living in Thailand, a Belgium guy, one Japanese, and a Spaniard. Some of them were quite good, especially the Thai jugglers who are actually professional here. It was awesome doing the 10-club feed again, some nice runs at 7-singles, and teaching them the rotating Y-pattern. Oh, the joys of juggling...

land of queues

I went to get my visa for Thailand extended. And I can't help but comment on how inefficient the whole system was. First, you queue at the information desk to find out what to do. Then you get a form to fill out and queue for the line where there's actually space to fill it out. Then you queue to get back to the information desk to be told you need to photocopy some pages of your passport, so you can go queue at the photocopy store across the street, all so that you can finally queue again at the information desk to get your official number in the official "queue" for turning in your paperwork.

Oh and of course once you turn in your paper work, you get another number to queue for picking up your passport.

Phang-Nga

12/19/08
I just arrived in Phang-Nga. I wasn’t certain I would come here. I heard it was really nice but it’s a little out of my way to Bangkok. Still, I decided it was worth a detour, and so far it hasn’t disappointed. The town is basically set on one main street. On either side, there are souring cliffs and karsts cutting up from the plains. I made plans to do a tour of the nearby national park and a visit to the stilt village of Ko Panyi. This afternoon I made my way to a couple temples and then Tapan Cave (?) and Dragon Temple. The whole town is completely devoid of tourists (or rather western tourists), which is a nice break from the tourism central of Ko Phi Phi and Ao Nang. Prang-Nga seems to draw more local tourists visiting the rather ill-kept “places of the interest”.

Anyway, Tapan Cave and Dragon Temple were awesome. Similar to Haw Par Village, Dragon Temple featured morbid figurines of punishment in the afterlife. Such as:



To top it off, a pack of gibbons had taken over the area, hanging out the massive distorted statues, and the place was eerily quiet. There was also a small temple at the top of a cliff that offered some excellent views of the surrounding area.



Other photos:
Full moon rising over the mountain at the river town outside of Taman Negara


Petronas Towers at night:


Petronas Towers from KL or Menara Tower:


Reflection of Kaula Lumpur skyline:

Ton Sai and Pranang

12/16/08
So I arrived at Ton Sai yesterday. Ton Sai is the backpackers beach (basically cheaper and grudgier) in the area, and I actually like the scenery more. The setting is cozier, with massive imposing cliffs surrounding the beach (which is admittedly worse for swimming and sun-bathing, neither of which I particularly cared about). I found a cheap private bungalow in the back of the forest behind the beach. The bungalow is mostly wood and bamboo, and setting is perfect. The woods are filled with birds and animals; the nights quiet and still, except for the sounds of nature.

Ton Sai also has the advantage of being close to Rai Lei and Pranang, two of the nicest beaches in the area (Pranang is actually ranked by many as the second nicest beach in the world). Before visiting Pranang, I took a fairly steep hike and climb up to viewpoint over Rai Lei, and then another climb to this absolutely marvelous lagoon. The trail plunges straight down into this beautifully quiet and cool canyon, insolated from the sounds and chaos of the outside world. The canyon continued down to a crystal clear lagoon, surrounded by massive cliffs on all sides, with stalagmites hanging off the cliff faces.





After the lagoon, I made my way to Pranang for the sunset and some juggling. The beach definitely did not disappoint. Limestone islands rise out from the ocean, soaring cliffs with stalagmites form an auditorium-like setting, and crystal clear waters top it off. On one side of the beach, you can explore several caves. One of them leads into a pitch black chamber, where you feel your way through a small opening until a glimmer of light reveals the way out.

12/15/08
I decided to be a tourist for a day. After basically three weeks of backpacking, long train and bus rides, hiking through rainforests, and staying in some dingy $2-$3 a night dorms, I found a nice private room at Ao Nang beach in southern Thailand, off the Andaman Coast. Windows with screens (absolute luxury), so I didn't have to choose between stuffy hot air and mozzies harassing me during the night. Functioning, warmish showers. Basically the stuff of dreams, and well worth the $12 I spent on it. The scenery itself is quite spectacular. I took a longboat ride from the main town of Krabi after my morning hike to Wat Tham Suea. Wat Tham Suea is a massive Buddhist temple. The main part of the visit is climbing up one of the karsts to see the "buddha's footprint". I had done the Batu Caves outside of Kuala Lumpur, and much is made of the 237 odd steps you have to climb. Not to be outdone, you need to scale 1,239 steps to reach the buddha's footprint. But the view was pretty impressive, offering a 360 panorama of the surrounding karsts, mountains, and plains. And since ithasn't been really discovered by the tourist circuit (or people are discouraged by the number of steps), it was nice and quiet up at top.





So the longboat ride was also wonderful. You see fields of limestones karsts, cut through sparkling blue-ish green waters, and ride pass imposing cliffs, at times reaching through the water like bony fingers. My ride the next day would be even better. My tourist activity for the journey so far was an expensive speedboat tour of the surrounding islands, primarily Ko Phi Phi, Banana Islands, Monkey Island, and then a stop-over at Maya Beach (where the movie "The Beach" was filmed). The tour also slipped in three snorkeling stops, a couple of gorgeous alcoves, and a half decent buffer lunch. All for the exorbitant price of 900 baht, or around $25.



Rhys hanging off the back of the speedboat with me:


Maya Beach:




An alcove:




Today I head to Ton Sai, near Rai Lei beach to do some hikes, and then I'm off to Phang-Nga park and Bangkok.

Couple other random tidbits on my trip: Food tourism is awesome. In Singapore, I feasted at hawker centers. Basically Singapore's government decided to clean up the streets and moved all the street food into food or hawker centers. So in one food center, you'll have 30-40 amazing street food venders and feast for practically nothing. I got some kway toew (flat noodles) with oysters, a soup, half a duck and noodles, for around $5. And then when I got to Thailand, this is what they did to my food:



Ok so that was actually intentional. Pad Thai here is unbelievable. I had two massive orders last night... for about $2.

Haw Par Villa in Singapore... creep and morbid. The figurines depict some of the punishments in hell. Of course disobeying your parents gives you about the same amount of punishment as killing someone. Tells you something about Chinese culture. Some other highlights include the fireflies at Kuala Selangor. It's amazing watching the trees blinking with thousands of fireflies. I also spent a night there. It's kinda a dive, but there's a decent hike to one of the bukits (hills), where you can watch swarms of monkeys and get views of the Malacca Straits.

Bugatti, development, and souls

Writing in the New York Times magazine the philosopher Peter Singer once queried, “In the end, what is the ethical distinction between a Brazilian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one —knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need?” He based his analysis on the famous example of Peter Unger in Living High and Letting Die. Unger lays out an example where a man’s prized possession, an invaluable Bugatti car, and a child lie on opposite tracks. A runaway train is heading towards the child and about to kill it. The man can easily divert the track by flicking a switch, but by doing so, he would destroy his car. He chooses to let the train continue on its course. The child dies.

Most of us would view this as gravely wrong. It invokes individual horrors like the Kitty Genovese case, where people watched a woman being brutally raped and murdered and did nothing to help; it brings up images of the Clinton administration passively allowing genocide in Rwanda to unfold; and it invokes theological speculation on the divine bystander in the heavens. If we have the power to act, to stop evil, to end or alleviate the suffering around us, we have an obligation to do so. As the Holocaust Museum in DC reminds us, "Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."

Unger and Singer use this example to cast a penetrating light to the indifference of our day-to-day lives: how time and again we stand idly by while children die of preventable diseases, how we linger as woman are gang-raped in Darfur. People starve while we gorge on fancy meals in New York and Paris. We take expensive vacations that could finance the education of hundreds of kids and provide thousands with 6-cent treatments that could save the lives of children from diarrhea.

But as a development worker in Sierra Leone, you also realize how imperfect this analogy is. Aid is often ineffective and even harmful. In south Sudan and Rwanda (especially in the refugee camps in Goma, Zaire), aid was manipulated by rebels and genocidiares to consolidate their position and continue to carry out massacres. Even something as supposedly non-political as food aid is, as Laurie Garrett notes, often harmful since it’s purchased in-kind (in the US or Europe for instance) rather than locally and requires massive transport costs. These in-kind food donations can undermine local markets, drive up prices through higher fuel costs, and create a costly dependency in communities – all in the name of aid. The presence of NGOs and UN agencies also has a distorting effect on local economies: increased demand from Western workers raises the price of certain commodities and basic goods, the middle class is drained because the best and brightest are hired into international development and relief organizations. And in general, as the former World Bank economist William Easterly comments, the West hasn’t been particularly stingy in aid (even with the lamentations of Bono and Jeff Sachs on the West missing the 0.7% of GDP target for foreign aid). The real question is why the $2.3 trillion given to Africa hasn’t shown more results in terms of improving living standards and promoting development. If we’re doing so much good, why aren’t things getting much better?

Merely pumping more money into the system might not be the correct response. For someone sitting in New York, the choice is rarely as clear cut as eating dinner at a fancy restaurant or saving a life. After all, even the calculation of programmatic expenses for NGOs and UN agencies is rarely properly understood. A substantial proportion of programmatic expenses are allocated to over-paid consultants (primarily in the EU and UN), and due to the reporting system, many NGOs and UN agencies “burn money” on large unnecessary (and harmful) construction projects so they can request more money from donors.

While I’m all for aid and I believe Singer and Unger’s analogy holds some important moral lessons, reality is not nearly so clear cut… Or at least not for everyone. Their moral argument does hold for some people though: the development workers such as myself.

For those of us who’ve chosen this life, we aren’t hundreds or thousands of miles away from the people in need; the children dying of hunger or preventable diseases aren't separated by layers of bureaucracy, inefficiency, corruption and outright incompetence. They're right next door; they're in the slums of Kroo Bay and Susan's Bay. They're asking for food and begging for money. They're the amputees you see every day, and the street children covered in dirt and flies. In Sierra Leone, when we purchase fancy meals from the splendid views of Country Lodge or the cool confines of Mamba point, the children needing help are just outside.

People like me find ourselves the ones most open to condemnation by Singer and Unger's analysis. For every night in a place like Sierra Leone, we spend relative fortunes on our housing, on our food, and children nearby go hungry, hidden in darkened hills of a pre-electricity age, sheltered by broken down and rusty metal rooftops, walking in streams of waste cutting and curving around the rolling hills of Freetown. We face the choice most days and make the choice to turn away, telling ourselves we need that comfort. And maybe we do. And maybe as good utilitarians offering ourselves this comfort, this escape will ultimately help more people.

But I also wonder about the choice to be here, the choice to be confronted so starkly with Singer’s pop quiz on a daily basis and knowing that you will fail this test repeatedly… perhaps the real sacrifice is not the material comforts of New York, but a sacrifice of one’s soul. Because we – more than most – are faced most starkly with daily tests of our own humanity, tests our humanity has demanded we expose ourselves to, and tests we fail time and again.

I have wondered about this many times. Maybe I should feel like a better person being here. But I feel dirtier than normal, like being here reminds me how dirty my hands are, or maybe being here makes my hands dirty, because I become the one turning away from the child right before me.

Perhaps the real question then, is whether I love humanity enough to be willing to sacrifice a part of my own.

Iran and Democrats

With only a month left in my contract in Sierra Leone, I decided to change this into a more political oriented blog.

McCain spoke recently at the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC, where he sketched his approach to Iran. Democratic blogs like Huffington Post, Democracy Arsenal, Yglesias, and others of course have been jumping all over his "confrontational" approach, for instance arguing as David Shorr and Ilan Goldenberg do, that there should be direct talks with Iran. Some of the evidence they use to illustrate the value of engagement with Iran is ironic. They point to the 2003 letter sent to Cheney proposing a dialogue. They note the pro-American Iranian youth. They reflect on Larijani's rise to the speaker of the parliament, harkening a more pragmatic voice as opposed to Ahmadinejad. They downplay Ahmadinejad's role in foreign policy, especially now as even hardline clerics begin to turn against him, and of course, downplay the general threat to posed by Iran based, in part, on the 2007 NIE estimate.

But most of these examples provide evidence for a "confrontational" approach, not the conciliatory engagement advocated by the bloggers or scholars like Ray Takeyh and Vali Nasr. The NIE estimate says with "high confidence" that Iran stopped its program in 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, and the 2003 letter was also after the invasion of Iraq. Implying that like Libya's WMD disarmament, the invasion of Iraq might have led to some of the most substantial accomplishments in WMD and nuclear disarmament.

Ahmadinejad's influence in Iran has also waned as the US and international community (even the IAEA belatedly) has become more serious and united in opposition to Iran's nuclear program. And yes, his economic policies deserve much of the blame for weakening domestic support, but all the democratic, progressive bloggers also note that the sanctions have been hurting Iran's economy (ergo, based on their own logic, sanctions have helped create divisions in Iran and given space for a more pragmatic approach).

The simple fact is that the evidence suggests Iran responds more to pressure than just engagement. Clinton's endless overtures to Iran; Europe's endless offers of incentives to Iran; and numerous US offers to talks with Iran have gotten us virtually nothing. The only actions that have gotten either internal divisions in Iran, Iran to halt it's nuclear program in 2003, or Iran to actually reach out to the US for a dialogue have been because of pressure, not engagement. Even many Iranian diplomats admit this privately - that Iran didn't take the US seriously until we blew up some of their ships and ports.

Perhaps there's some compelling evidence hidden away that engagement has really worked with Iran. I haven't seen it, and given that even the advocates of engagement point to the results of confrontation to support their position, one has to wonder if such evidence can be found.

While I'm not an advocate of military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities or otherwise, we'd be remiss to think that direct talks and engagement are likely to produce anything unless they are coupled with serious pressure. Following Acheson's advice on negotiations, I tend to think we should focus on building up "positions of strength", increase multilateral and unilateral pressure on Iran, and also show the Iranian people that if Iran changes its behavior the US can and will really help them. Iran respects strength. If the US builds up its strength, keeps the door open for negotiations (at the lower levels first - which incidentally McCain supports, just not presidential talks), Iran will want to talk to US. After all, as the Democratic bloggers point out so well, the US still has most power regionally. We just have to make that power more usable.

(One last note on Iran's threat. I don't understand why people get so offended at the thought of military strikes against Iran. If they take US targeted military strikes against Iran as acts of war, why haven't Iranian backed terrorist attacks for the past 20+ years been considered acts of war? Iran kills US soldiers and citizens around the world; US does nothing, and then the US talks of hitting Iranian military sites and everyone criticizes the US confrontation, rather than noting US restraint. Nor should we be deluded about the existential threat to Israel that a nuclear Iran would pose. One nuclear weapon in Tel Aviv would destroy the Israel - and incidentally, Iranian "moderates" like Rafsanjani also make this argument, not just the crazies like Ahmadinejad.)