One Month in Bangkok

Yes, I am back again, catching up. But I promise it won’t be nearly as long as the last one!! At least, I don't think it will...

I spent September in Thailand, consulting on a cross-border avian influenza project for FAO. To get there, I took an overnight flight from London, arriving in the afternoon on 2 September. Suffice to say, I had no idea that the government had declared a State of Emergency that day. I took a taxi to the Lamphu Tree Hotel, which I had found online. It is a very cute, clean, and comfortable hotel a short walk from the FAO office, the Democracy Monument, and Khao San Road. I highly recommend it!

Stacie was in town from Jakarta and staying at a hotel next door to FAO. I was anxious to meet up with her and so sent a text message that I was on my way to find her. She replied that earlier there had been a lot of shouting in the street outside her hotel, and that metal doors had been closed over storefronts early in the afternoon. I decided to try, anyway. After getting directions from the guy behind the desk, I walked down the large street across the canal from my hotel. When I got to the last major intersection before the river, the road I wanted to take was barricaded with stacked tires, barbed wire, and sentries. I decided to try an alternate route through a much smaller alley way. Although many of the storefronts were shuttered, there were a few people out and about. At the end of the alley, across from FAO, there was another pile of tires with a bit of barbed wire. However, one could walk past it, and several people were doing just that. Looking around the tires I saw a few people in the street with motorcycle helmets and yellow shirts, all with baton-like weapons, such as baseball bats or bamboo staffs. They didn’t seem to care about any of the other folks bypassing the alley barricade, so I darted across the street and into the New Siam Riverside Hotel. After a beer or two, we decided to head out for dinner. We looked both ways, saw a few more folks with helmets and batons, and then dashed across into the alley. Too bad I didn’t have my camera…

It turns out that one of the leaders of the opposition (PAD) party had a residence and a TV station at the end of the street running past FAO. The PAD supporters barricaded off the street in case other forces, such as the pro-government supporters, tried to interfere with the residence or the TV station. Inexplicably, FAO had been the only UN agency in Thailand to be open on that Tuesday morning, even though it was on a barricaded street with armed demonstrators out front. By lunchtime, they had wisely decided to close and evacuate everyone from FAO. However, no one mentioned that to Stacie, who was working quietly at a borrowed desk. So she worked there all day. It made me glad I decided to stay a bit away from the FAO office! I got a few emails from folks who heard about the state of emergency and were worried about me. I had decided, though, to stay where I was because my hotel was a bit hidden away from the main thoroughfares and all the Thais were telling us that the protests were not directed towards foreigners. The next morning the street was still barricaded but more stores were open and more people were going about their daily lives. The day after that, the tires were piled up against the outside wall at FAO, but no more barricades were erected while I was there. Nearly all the demonstrators were amassed at the protest camp surrounding the government house, much closer to the regional UN offices.

The FAO office is in an old section of town, along the river. There are 2 buildings – a lovely old house called Maliwan Mansion that apparently was built for the mistress of a royal, and the other, larger, very uninspiring office building. The mansion has settled in its riverbank foundation, so walking along the sloping, yet lovely, hardwood floors and stairs leaves one with a feeling of disorientation. Or drunkenness. Your pick. I really liked the building. The big building hosted a small cafeteria with outdoor, riverside seating. Bug repellant in hand, I had many morning coffee meetings while watching the river traffic go by. On occasion we would also have a simple, inexpensive but really good lunch there, too. However, I usually preferred to go out and explore other venues for yummy Thai food.

My typical work day started out with a few minutes of CNN to allow my brain time to wake up before getting out of bed. I would get ready and go down to breakfast, where Aman, the server, was awaiting me. With CNN to catch me up on the overnight happenings, I would happily tuck into my orange juice, fruit, one large banana pancake, bacon, and coffee. Every now and then I would have scrambled eggs or an omelet, but the banana pancake was just so light and yummy! Each morning I would usually take a tuk-tuk, or 3-wheeled motorcycle taxi, to work. It was just too darn hot to walk. I don’t like to start my day at work with sweat already running down my back! Bangkok was definitely hotter and more humid than Jakarta. I had been given a desk in the old building, in a room I shared with Jonathan R, a visiting Animal Health Economist from FAO HQ in Rome. I had met JR while working in Jakarta, and it was a pleasure to get to work with him again. We would frequently meet the other Jonathan (JG), the Regional Economist based in Bangkok, for our coffee-by-the-river meetings. JR has a love for fresh coconut milk, so often the 3 of us could be seen sipping fresh juice from chilled coconuts through straws. Lunch was usually a walk down the street somewhere for Thai food.

Yes, Thai food on and just off the street in Thailand is better than Thai food in a restaurant somewhere else. Pad thai just means fried noodles and could be found everywhere. The curries and tom yum were sometimes quite hot but always delicious. My absolute favorite, though, was a mild coconut milk soup with crab, flavored with lemon grass, ginger, and who-knows-what else. Sooo good! I had it at a smaller, less fancy backpacker restaurant that Stacie found for us. I definitely went back for more. I also really liked stir fries with cashew nuts. And, of course, mango with sticky rice for dessert. Between all the yummy Thai food and beverages with FAO colleagues, no wonder I left well-insulated for China’s cold winter! There was one restaurant open late at night that I would walk past on my way to my hotel. It seemed to be the kind of place you could order anything, and the smells were generally very inviting. Sadly, I never quite mustered up the courage and Thai language skills to give it a try. Next time!

Stacie was around for my first week in Bangkok. Lots of catching up by the pool, exploring the nightlife, and indulging in spa experiences. All too soon, she had to go. I managed to see a few of the other city sights – Wat Po (Reclining Buddha Temple), the traditional Thai massage school, the amulet market, and parts of the river. I had seen the King’s Palace when I was here in 1995 so didn’t do it again. Taking the public river boat was a great way to see Bangkok from a different vantage point; I highly recommend it. JR and I made a shopping excursion one day, ending with a riverside cocktail at the venerable Oriental Hotel. They didn’t want to seat two sweaty, backpack-toting ruffians, such as ourselves, where we might spoil the view or their image. Unfortunately for them, a prime table opened up at just that moment, so we plunked down. And enjoyed the classic Bangkok location.

What else to say about the city? Hmmm. My favorite place to go is the weekend market. You can buy pretty much anything there – it is huge! I managed to only buy a few items; I just had too much to haul around already. And, just to prove how small of a world it is, while at the market I ran into two friends from the diving course on Bali. After leaving the market that day, JR and I just managed to escape a heavy downpour by hopping onto the Sky Train. An umbrella is a must during the rainy season in Bangkok! My Teva sandals were also having some serious delamination issues, which I guess isn’t unexpected since I have had them for 13 years. And they have never been resoled. There was a shoe repair guy who would sit out on the sidewalk on my way to FAO, so I had him glue my Tevas back together. It was fun to watch him work; he was so diligent. So far so good. The soles seem to be staying on pretty well since he worked on them!

For one of my few weekends in Thailand, I went down to Pattaya for a diving trip. Now, if you have heard of Pattaya, it was probably because of its, well, lascivious reputation. It certainly isn’t for the diving. A small group of us, mostly from FAO, had formed and planned our weekend away. I had brought my dive mask to Thailand with me, on the off chance I would get to go diving. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t have room for my lovely new wetsuit!

I drove down with a woman from the regional UN office. We got a bit lost leaving the city but were soon on our way. Getting to the right place in Pattaya was more of a challenge than getting the right road out of Bangkok. The directions given to us by the dive center were minimal and not very good. As it turns out, that was pretty representative of my whole experience with them. To make matters more difficult, there was a power outage in the section of town where we were headed. Not only did we have trouble figuring out the right street, but we could no longer even see the streets! Fortunately, two guys from the center came out to the street corner carrying glow sticks. Aha! Problem solved. We grabbed drinks and dinner with the dive team before checking in to one of the many cheap hotels lining the streets. At least they had A/C and hot water. And only one hair on the bedsheets. Thank goodness I had brought my own sleeping sheet to cower in! Too bad a mosquito bit me several times right through it…

The next morning, we got up early to sit and wait at the dive center. Let’s just say things were about as organized as the directions they had given us to find them the night before. After my truly wonderful experiences with Bali Scuba, I was suitably unimpressed by these guys. In fact, it began to make me a little anxious about diving with them. We drove about an hour south to catch our dive boat out to some small islands that are part of a big navy base. The boat left from a fishing marina and passed small islands out to the dive site. It was a beautiful day. The boat was long and built for diving, with a large dive platform and lots of space for tanks and equipment. The woman who organized the trip had recently completed her Open Water certification and was about to catch her first dive since her training. She was my buddy. We had initially been told we would go out with her dive instructor, but a change in plans had us going out with a relatively new addition to the dive center staff. We sat out the first dive at a wreck site that was too deep for us. As much as I love wreck diving, it was ok to miss that one because the wreck is spread out, it is deep - so the dive lasts only a few minutes at the actual site, and it is dark due to the depth. More sun on the deck seemed fine with me.

At last we reached the site of our first dive. Our dive master had not been to that site before. It was to be a shallow dive to look at some islands of coral reef. My buddy was nervous, but that wasn’t unexpected for her first dive in a few months and right after getting certified. We did a thorough check of our equipment and then jumped in. We went down to just a few meters below the surface. The dive master had my buddy practice clearing her mask and then made me do it, too. I don’t like doing it if I don’t have to, because it messes up my otherwise perfectly-clear mask! Most of what we could see was dead coral. While the dive master was trying to figure out where to go, my buddy was out in front, zigging and zagging all over the place. I followed behind so I could keep them in view. After a few abrupt course changes and more squirreling around, they were a few meters in front of me. That’s when my regulator (the part that one breathes through) blocked up. I went to take a breath and there was no air to be had. I tried again and got a mouthful of water. Hmmm. Training never really covered what to do with a mouthful of water instead of air. In the ideal world of a PADI training video, I would have made the ‘out of air’ signal to my buddy and then used her spare regulator. But she was a bit too far away. So was the dive master. And neither was looking behind to see me start to panic. I was eyeing the distance to them … and to the surface … them … the surface … when, finally, the animal part of my brain reminded me that my last breath was still in my lungs and rapidly running out. I went for the surface. Thank goodness it was a shallow dive. If it had been deep, I would have been in more serious trouble.

Now, you readers who are also divers will think, um, why didn’t I use the purge valve? You know, to purge the regulator. That’s what it is for. And to that I would reply, “Good thinking!” Only I wasn’t thinking about that. I know I had a purge valve. But the neurons that make up that reaction pathway weren’t wired yet when I was down there choking on my last breath. Another option would have been to reach for my own spare regulator. Duh. DUH! Again, I was lacking that particular reaction. In training, they teach you to go for your buddy’s spare regulator if there is a problem. That was the only trained reaction I had and there was no room for clear thinking of other alternatives with the surface and survival urgently beckoning.

Shortly after I reached the surface, coughing and appreciative to take big deep breaths of the sky, the dive master popped up next to me. I told him what happened. I suggested that, silly me, I should have gone for my spare. He told me that the best option would have been to go for my buddy’s. Um, that’s ok if the buddy is near enough. (Which, incidentally, is kind of the dive master’s job – to make sure people keep together and out of trouble.) We hailed the boat to come get us, and I decided to have them change out my regulator so we could finish our dive. The rest of the dive went well, although we were always too shallow to see much coral. After a very uninspired lunch, we made our second dive at a different site. Again, this one was pretty shallow but the coral was soooo much better. My buddy stayed a lot closer, and it ended up being a great dive. Lots of clown fish to see!

That evening we had dinner with some of the dive guys and then we, the 3 remaining ladies from our UN group, went to check out the famed “Walking Street.” It was a busy street crowded with restaurants, clubs, bars, shops, vendors, and signs. The allure is supposed to be the unrestricted sexuality. Honestly, I only saw one club with women pole dancing. At street level, there really wasn’t anything risqué to be seen. We planted ourselves across the street from a Thai boxing ring to watch the boxing and the people walking by. It was some of the best people-watching I have ever seen. Many nationalities going past, but the Indians were the easiest to pick out. They looked the most sheepish and uncomfortable. We wanted to find the street called Boys’ Town (or something like that) but somehow kept missing it. Verdict: I highly recommend Walking Street for the people-watching, but don’t expect to get an eyeful unless you leave the curb.

The next morning my dive buddy went out diving again, but I chose to indulge this time in terrestrial pleasures. I wen riding went horseback riding with the woman I drove down with and Willy, a guy who keeps horses outside Pattaya. He is German and has lived in Thailand for a long time. I hadn’t planned to ride and so was very inappropriately dressed. I wore capri pants and Teva sandals! Willy lent me a helmet and half chaps before putting me up on Ivan. Although a bit lazy, he was a nice enough horse. Good attitude. And it was wonderful to be back on a horse again! We rode between pineapple and cassava fields, up into the hills where we could look down on Pattaya. It was lovely.

Overall, a good weekend with some valuable lessons learned about selecting dive centers and buddies, keeping my dive buddy close, visualizing multiple options to a problem – ahead of time, and maybe carrying some sort of noise maker to get attention underwater. I hope those lessons are hard-wired in before I need to use them again!

My other trip outside Bangkok took me to northeast Thailand at the border with Laos, along the Mekong River. JR and I, and another woman from the office, went to visit 3 provinces that have had HPAI outbreaks in the past. Very early, we flew up to Udon Thani and then drove to Nong Kai . We had an early lunch – one of the best meals I ate in Thailand. (The best meals are usually found in the field!) There were thin rice pancakes that we filled with herbs and greens, pieces of chicken, and other seasonings before rolling them into awkward spring rolls. There were other spring rolls filled with greens and other delicious bits. I was instructed on the proper dipping sauce for each roll type. It was all sooo good! And then I had a dessert with coconut milk and chilled gelatin. Yum.

We met with local authorities and then a nice man who lost all his layer chickens in the last outbreak to hit that area. The poultry houses were on pilings over fish ponds, where the manure would fall through the slatted floor to feed the fish. After our visit there, we made a 400km drive to Nakhonphanom. Our poor driver had been up since 2am to bring the vehicle up from Bangkok. The roads were quite good, and along the way I kept seeing these vertically-oriented black light tubes, high up on posts, outside many of the houses. Closer to the bottom of the post, another black light tube would stick out from the post, oriented maybe 45 degrees to the ground. There would be a sheet or two of corrugated metal slanting down below the lower light tube. We had some discussion in the car about what the purpose of this arrangement might be, concluding it seemed as though it might trap insects. Indeed, it was confirmed the next day by local officers that the setup catches insects that are used to flavor certain food dishes. Ummm! Sky prawns for all!

We checked in to our hotel at 11pm. The next morning revealed the Mekong River right outside or balconies, sparkling in the morning light. It was a beautiful sight, although somehow not as romantic as I would have pictured life along the Mekong. It was wide and brown. After a substandard Asian hotel breakfast of fried rice, noodles, and bread products, we headed out to meet with the local authorities of Nakhonphanom Province. More discussion about outbreaks, border checkpoints, and control measures ensued. We went as far as the farm gate of a family that had farmed layers for generations. They had gotten HPAI and lost the entire flock. Many farms in the area had all their birds slaughtered, and not all of the farmers returned to raising poultry. A few that did restock formed a cooperative with reasonably high standards of biosecurity and a small feed mill for mixing their own feed. We got to visit an old temple area in the forest along the Mekong that had been the landing point of a group of people from Laos and the start of the community on the Thai side.

Our hotel that night didn’t have quite the view of the previous one, but we did manage to catch drinks up in a rooftop hotel lounge. The next morning we repeated the hotel breakfast and meetings with local officials. We also visited a couple that raised local-breed pigs as part of an effort to expand production of local suckling pigs - a favorite dish. The couple had approximately 20 sows that looked much like wild hogs, and the piglets were black or were brown with spots. The unbelievable thing about their production system is the nutrition. They feed these pigs some wheat bran and fresh plant matter (grass, weeds, whatever) cut from unimproved land surrounding the farm. Seriously, that is it. I really can't imagine pig production with fewer inputs. They get maybe a dozen piglets per sow. Unbelievable! I hope they preserve that breed, because it would be a shame to lose this very well-adapted, highly efficient production system. After our official visits were over, we had a few minutes to check out the riverside market in Mukdahan. Much of what was for sale had come across the river from Laos, some of it originating in China. My favorite were the ladies selling orchid plants. They had photos showing the different types of blooms, but the plants were not blooming and were just laying in piles without even being potted or secured to any kind of substrate. I longingly wished I could buy one but knew it was pure folly in my present transient state. Then it was off to the airport at Ubon Ratchathani and then back to Bangkok.

As much as I enjoyed the yummy meal of spring rolls, I was concerned about eating the uncooked greens. And, boy, did I pay for it later. Our field visit had been Monday through Wednesday. By Friday - before my last weekend in Thailand - I had an unyielding headache and the chills. It wasn’t until Saturday, though, that the return of tropical sprue revealed itself as the source of my angst. This time the acute phase was much worse than when I first got it in Indonesia. I stayed in bed to watch the first presidential candidate debate live but was able to rally for the debate replay hosted that night by Democrats Abroad. I first heard of Dems Abroad while in Jakarta, when we were the first to vote in the primary on Super Tuesday. It turns out they are pretty active all throughout Asia and probably everywhere else. They have a comprehensive instruction list for voting from overseas and lots of support to help people navigate all the paperwork. Very cool!

All in all, I had a good time in Thailand. The food was great, and I enjoyed the work. I wasn’t at all crazy about the heat; that would be hard for me to deal with on a regular basis. The riverside lifestyle and great shopping were also big plusses! I’m sorry I didn’t see much more of Thailand than Bangkok, Pattaya, and part of the border with Laos, but there is always next time…

E