eagoodwin04 – GW Blogs from Abroad

Research Time!

AdminMay 21, 2015December 14, 2018

I can’t believe that it is officially the beginning of my last month here in Thailand! This past week, I finished all of my classes, handed in all of my finals, and shifted all of my attention to my final research project, which I will be working on until I leave.

For our final project of the semester, students are expected to choose a topic that we have studied this semester that has interested them and revisit the issue. The research topics students are looking at are varied - some students are looking at maternal health, others are looking at poverty strategies, and some are researching traditional Thai dance.

For my research, I will be working with three other students to study the effects of the Thai government’s land and forest policy on the people of Thailand. We will be visiting two villages in Thailand to conduct research. One village we are visiting is in Kalasin province and the other one is in Sakon Nakhon province. Both provinces are about 2-3 hours away from Khon Kaen province, where I’m studying.

While in these villages, my research group and I will be working with an NGO based out of Sakon Nakhon province to tell the story of 27 farmers and their families who were accused of trespassing and who had their land and homes seized by the government.

My group of four students will be working on a documentary, a journalism feature article and an academic policy paper on the issue. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I am excited to get researching and get the story out there!

Another Isaan Treasure

AdminMay 14, 2015December 17, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

As I walked through the village of Chonnabot in Northeastern Thailand, I could see every step of the silk-weaving process. I saw silk worms feeding on mulberry leaves and yellow silk being extracted from the worms and spun onto giant spools. Women weaved in the shade of the open space beneath their wooden houses raised on stilts. The beautiful and rich-colored silks popped against the simple, wooden looms they were woven on.

Thailand is famous for its silk and weaving is an important part of Thai culture. On Wednesday, I visited the village of Chonnabot in Khon Kaen province, which is famous for having some of the finest mut mee silk in the country. The mut mee process is often referred to as “tie-dying.” The silk threads are tied together with a fiber before dyeing to resist the dye and create a design. When the dye is dry, the fiber is cut away and the undyed spots are painted with other colors. The more colors in a piece of mut mee silk, the more complicated the silk is to design and make.

While I was in Chonnabot, I stayed with a family who make their living from mut mee weaving. They gave me a first hand tour of the village, bringing me first to their neighbors who raised silk worms. In order to extract the silk, you have to boil the worm in the cocoon and then the thread is taken off the cocoon and threaded onto a spool. The leftover boiled worms, they eat. I, of course, had to try a boiled silkworm and they weren’t too bad! Just very chewy…

After chomping on a silkworm, we headed over to a woman who weaves using the traditional loom. She had a consistent rhythm. Step on the left peddle, thread, step on the right peddle, thread, and so on. She made the process look so easy! However, after sitting down and trying to weave a bit myself, I experienced how difficult weaving is firsthand. I was terrified of messing up the intricate pattern they had already begun!

The whole silk extraction and weaving process impressed me, but what impressed me and surprised me the most is how the loom has become in many ways the center of the village. It is how the village supports themselves and preserves their culture. Weaving, I’ve discovered, is just one of the many treasures of Isaan!

The World’s Most Massive Water Fight

AdminMay 8, 2015December 17, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

There was nowhere to run and there was no place to hide during the Songkran Water Festival. I found myself amidst a massive crowd of people, all wearing tropical shirts and carrying water guns. The streets were lined with stages of live music and street food and my ears were filled with the contrasting sounds of traditional Isaan music and bumping bass.

I desperately ducked and swerved as buckets of ice water were thrown in my direction and water guns were aimed at my body. The water was coming from every angle and every side; even out of passing cars driving by. Strangers came up to me and slathered wet baby powder all over my face. I was in the middle of the world’s most massive water fight.

Songkran, a three-day festival to ring in the New Year, takes place throughout all of Thailand, and in neighboring countries like Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Sri Lanka as well. The name “Songkran” is a Sanskrit word, which means, “to move forward,” and marks the new astrological year as the sun moves from Aires to Taurus.

During Songkran, Thais start their day by giving alms to the monks at a temple and paying respect to the Buddha and end their day by celebrating with a massive water fight. The water symbolizes cleansing; an opportunity to wash away any bad luck and move into the new year with a clean start.

Here in Thailand, it is officially the year 2558 and I can’t wait to see what this year will bring!

"Same Same But Different"

AdminApril 15, 2015December 14, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

There’s a phrase in Thailand that one will see plastered on t-shirts and hear spoken by Thais all over the country and it is “same same but different.” This phrase means exactly what is sounds like; it’s used to describe something that is essentially the same, but just a little different.

This past week, our program travelled to Koh Chang, an island off the coast of Thailand, to study tourism and it’s impacts on the environment. The island of Koh Chang has two sides. One can turn left and visit the local, preserved side of the island, or one can turn right and visit the developed, touristy side of the island. Ultimately, both sides of the island are the same, but different.

While developers have built up the right side of the island, causing many environmental problems like the accumulation of waste and water pollution, the left side has remained relatively untouched, only inhabited by the locals. The locals on this side of the island are hoping to increase community-based tourism; a system where locals would run the tourist industry and the money from tourism would go back into the community rather than leaving in the hands of developers.

Throughout the week, my classmates and I stayed with host families on the left side of the island learning how to promote community-based tourism and how to prevent environmental degradation from development policy. We had a boat tour around the island and went snorkeling so we could see the coral reef that is being destroyed by tourists who have damaged the coral by touching it and we hiked over a mountain to the only beach left on the island that hadn’t been bought by a developer yet. On the second to last night we were in Koh Chang, we travelled to the other side of the island; the right side that has been built up by developers.

On this side, the streets were covered by neon signs and shops catered to foreigners. There were hardly any Thais in sight and everything in this area was dirty and polluted. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to come to this side of the island when they could have an amazing, local and immersive experience on the left side of the island. Although the two sides of the island are ultimately the same, they are so very different.

U.S. vs. Thai Agricultural Practices

AdminMarch 13, 2015December 14, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

My program here in Thailand consists of five two-week academic units that we complete before beginning our research at the end of the semester. The first week is spent attending lectures, doing readings and participating in activities surrounding our topic. Then, for the last week we travel to a village in Thailand to live with a host family and participate in exchanges with different organizations. The units we will be studying this semester include Agriculture, Thai Politics, Chang Mai (a province in Thailand), Land Use/Forests, and Mining and Development. After spending the first month taking intensive Thai classes and immersing ourselves in Thai culture and history, we began our first unit on agriculture.

At the end of this unit, we stayed in a homestay in Yasothon province, where we lived with organic farmers. In Yasothon, we learned firsthand about the differences between organic and chemical farming and compared both the Thai and American agricultural systems. One thing I really enjoyed about the unit was learning about Thai perspectives on American agriculture.

On the last day of our stay in Yasothon, our group met with P. Ubon, the coordinator of the Alternative Agriculture Network in Thailand. The Alternative Agriculture Network is an organization that works with the Thai government and various NGOs to empower communities and farmers to move away from chemical-intensive monocropping.

Throughout the exchange with P. Ubon, we asked him a lot of questions about the future of Thailand’s agricultural system and the problems with the system as it is. In a lot of cases, he blamed the United States for the direction the Thai agricultural system is heading. He explained that because Thailand is developing so fast, the number of small-scale farms is decreasing and technology-based farming, like what is common in the U.S., is increasing. According to P. Ubon, this poses a large threat to the well being of the Thai people because it means there will be more health problems, debt and environmental degradation in Thailand. However, when we asked P. Ubon about how Thailand plans to address this shift in agricultural practices, he said it was the responsibility of the United States to solve.

P. Ubon’s answer really surprised me. While the United States may be able to reform the agricultural system of the U.S., it was difficult to understand how the U.S. would be able to change the future of Thailand’s farming practices. Though we ran out of time with P. Ubon, I would love to visit the province later in the semester and talk to him more about how the United States could help Thailand or why the United States might be interested in helping to preserve Thai farming practices.

Motorcycles, Selfies, and Bagged Drinks

AdminMarch 10, 2015December 14, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

Thailand is certainly very different from the United States and having been here three weeks now I’m picking up more and more on all of the little nuances and differences that make Thailand so unique. Below are three small, but significant observations about Thai culture.

They ride motorcycles, or as the Thais call them “morcyes,” everywhere. Walking anywhere in Thailand is extremely difficult. There are no sidewalks and when there are sidewalks they are completely uneven with huge drop offs. Also, there are giant holes on the side of the road that I’ve heard people do occasionally fall into. So it’s no surprise that Thais prefer to ride their motorcycles everywhere, even if it’s just down the street less than a quarter of a mile away to the local 7-11 or around the corner to the closest breakfast place which is only a two minute walk (something my Thai roommate does quite often).
The Thais love to take selfies and it seems there is never an inappropriate time to take a selfie. There is no such thing as “selfie-shame” in this country. In Thailand if you are at a coffee shop, the first thing you do is take a selfie with the coffee. If you go out with friends to the bar, the first thing you do is take a selfie. If you’re at the mall, you take a selfie. There isn’t really anywhere you wouldn’t take a selfie in Thailand.
Bagged drinks. If you order any type of drink in Thailand, you will receive the drink in a plastic bag with a straw. At first, I thought drinking out of a bag was extremely weird. It was hard to balance and I never knew how to set the drink on the table. However, once I figured out how to hold the bag properly and set it down, I realized that plastic bags make way more sense and are more convenient than to go cups. With bagged drinks, you can carry them on your wrists, thus freeing up your hands to carry other things. In addition, nothing spills out the top of a plastic bag and sloshes all over your hands the way overly filled cups do. Finally, the handles of the bag keep your hands from getting all wet and cold from the condensation that cold drinks produce. In my opinion, this is definitely a practice the United States should consider adopting.

My First (Of Many) Homestays

AdminMarch 8, 2015December 17, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

As part of my study abroad program, we stay with 6 different host families in various rural villages for a week each over the course of the semester. This past week, we stayed with a host family here in Khon Kaen, just 15 minutes away from where we are taking classes. While we spent the evenings and mornings with our families, we spent the day at classes here on campus. Though it wasn’t a complete immersion, this homestay was like a test-run to get us acclimated to staying with a family and improving our Thai.

I was paired with another American student in my program to stay with our host family, who lived in a neighborhood called the “4 Region Slum,” for four days. My family was huge and we spent most of the time trying to figure out just exactly how everyone was related. The other part of our time was spent desperately trying to understand what was going on. I thought I could understand basic Thai phrases until I realized I couldn’t even understand when our Meh (host mom) asked us “Chao mai?” (Early, no?). I just stared and went to my go to answer “Ka!” (Yes!); hoping of course it was an appropriate answer to respond yes to. In another embarrassing instance our Meh spent 10 minutes telling us to “Nang!” or in other words, sit down. Whereas, we spent those 10 minutes walking around the room asking “Nang?” while pointing at the garbage then “Nang?” while pointing at the food and finally after walking outside and noticing the bench “Oh, nang!”

On the last day of our homestay, the program arranged for an exchange with the students and our host families. There was a translator at the exchange so we could tell the families everything we had wanted to say, but didn’t know how and also so we could ask them questions about their community. During the exchange we were able to learn more in depth about how the community was founded, as well as how the community will progress into the future. Right now, a railroad track runs along side the community and during the exchange we learned that there are plans to expand these tracks 20 meters on either side to build a high-speed railway. By expanding the railway, every family in this community would be displaced and would lose everything they ever worked so hard to achieve. During our stay our family was so generous and kind. They had patience with us when we couldn’t understand anything they were saying, they took us to the market with them at 4 am and had a monk bless us, and then even invited us back to stay with them later in the semester. Although it was heartbreaking to learn that this development project could displace them in only a few months, it was inspiring to learn that they are currently in the process of organizing to send a representative to the Department of Transportation in Bangkok to fight and stop the expansion of the railroad.

Can you handle the spice?

AdminMarch 4, 2015December 14, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

When I first told people I would be studying abroad in Thailand, I got almost the same reaction from everyone: “You’re going to eat so much great food!” Thailand is definitely known for its cuisine. Thai food is the perfect combination of spicy, sweet, sour and salty. While I’ve eaten some stranger things since I’ve been in Thailand like ant eggs and grasshoppers, I’ve also eaten some amazing things that I’ll miss when I go back to America. In no particular order, I’ve ranked by top 5 favorite foods in Thailand.

Tom Yum Goong (Spicy Shrimp Soup)

photo (3) — Tom Yum Goong, or spicy shrimp soup

I’m not a big soup person, but this soup is so good I find myself ordering it at least once a week! The soup is made with lemongrass, chili, lime and shrimp.

Khao Niao (Sticky Rice)

I love sticky rice. It’s become an obsession since I’ve been in Thailand. The Thais eat rice with every single meal from breakfast to dinner. Regular rice is a core staple in Thailand, but in the Isaan province where I’m staying, sticky rice is the go-to. This glutinous rice sticks together so you can form a ball with the rice and mold it into a spoon to use to eat with your other dishes. Sticky rice is also used in a lot of Thai desserts. My favorite is Khao Lam, which is sticky rice that is roasted in a bamboo shoot and sweetened with coconut, sugar and red beans.

Som Tum (Spicy Green Papaya Salad)

Som Tum isn’t a dish that can be found in all of Thailand, but it is very popular in the Northeastern province where I am living and it is by far one of the spiciest foods I’ve had in Thailand. It’s made with shredded raw papaya, fish sauce, lime, chili and cherry tomato. This dish is one of those distinctive dishes that people either love or hate.

Khao Pad Tuna (Tuna Fried Rice)

As I mentioned before the rice in Thailand is really good and the fried rice is even better. I’m not used to eating fish in fried rice, but as a vegetarian in Thailand it can be hard to find protein so I try to incorporate as much fish into my meals as I can. This is a typical dish though and the fish in Thailand is much better than any fish I’ve ever had in the U.S. It’s super juicy and flavorful!

Fruit Smoothies

And finally, one of my favorite foods in Thailand isn’t really a food, but I will count it as such. Thailand has some of the best fresh fruit including dragon fruit, jackfruit, coconut, mango, banana, pineapple, watermelon, etc. The list goes on and on! Almost everyday I go to the fruit stand next to my classes and grab a fresh coconut, which they chop open for me and stick a straw in. If I’m not feeling the coconut, I go the smoothie stand next door to the fruit stand and get a fresh fruit smoothie. Just like everything else in Thailand, the smoothies are delicious and especially refreshing when it is 100 degrees out!

Meditating with Monks

AdminFebruary 6, 2015December 14, 2018

By LizGoodwin04

I arrived a week and a half ago to “The Land of Smiles,” also known as Thailand, and its nickname has certainly lived up to its reputation. This past weekend, our program arranged a trip for the students to visit a mountain forest temple in rural Thailand. To get to the hidden temple, we piled into the typical mode of public transportation in Thailand, a Songthaew (pronounced song-tau.) A Songthaew acts as a cross between a bus and a taxi. This taxi/bus hybrid is a pick up truck with a covered bed and two rows of benches facing each other; in Thai, song is two and thaew is bench. After a very bumpy, but beautiful one and a half hour ride through small villages, past forests of rubber trees and through rice fields, we arrived at the temple.

Once we arrived, we were brought to the most serene garden, where we sat on straw mats and got a lesson from a Thai monk on Buddhism. Different perspectives on life and the continuity of life fascinate me, so I was very excited to hear what the monk had to share with us. It was difficult to understand everything the monk was trying to convey, as he spoke little English, but his main message was to let go of suffering and pain, because while the body may die, the mind lives on forever. After his beautiful lesson, he led us in a one hour meditation.

Feeling calm and renewed, we went to set up the area where we would be sleeping that night. There was an awning in part of the forest, with straw mats placed underneath it to sleep. We hung our mosquito nets and then tried to go to sleep. However, we quickly learned why the Thais refer to their 95-degree weather as the cold season. At nighttime, it is freezing! Imagine 25 students in nothing but t-shirts and jeans in the middle of the forest in Thailand without any blankets or pillows, trying to sleep on the ground…. Not fun, but kind of funny. Note to future study abroad students in Thailand, bring a sweater because it is not always 95+ degrees!

After momentarily questioning our decision to sign up to sleep on a cold, hard ground, we were reassured we made the right decision the following morning. At 6 am, a nun (the term for a female Buddhist monk) woke us up with three strikes of a gong to meditate and help prepare breakfast. As the morning wore on, more and more Thais were showing up from the village below the temple to meet the farang (foreigner in Thai) and offer the monk, as well as us, food.

Offering alms to the monks of the village is a daily practice in Thai life. Typically, Thais will line up at sunrise to give food to the monks. At 8 am, we each lined up with a plate of cooked sticky rice and offered the rice to the monk of the temple, who collected the alms in a large metal pot. The monk must collect a lot of food in the morning because he is only allowed to eat one meal a day. This is an act to practice self-control and self-discipline, two very important tenets in the Buddhist faith.

After giving alms to the monk, we sat and meditated with the monk longer before diving into a feast of food. At this point, there were at least 30 villagers, the monk and nuns, as well as about 25 American students and we were all very hiu, or hungry. We scarfed down sticky rice, bananas, tamarind, fish, green papaya salad, and some brave ones even tried chicken heart and liver. Even after eating as much as we could, it seemed we hadn’t even made a dent in the food!

Shortly after breakfast, we paid respects to the monk and the villagers one last time before climbing back into songthaews to go back to the university in Khon Kaen. It was overwhelming to see how accepting everyone was to welcome us to their temple and it was so kind to see a group of strangers have such an outpouring of affection to people they had just met. It was interesting to compare the teachings of Buddhism side-by-side with the values of Buddhism in action.