Food

Hot off the street - deep fried sticky rice goodies and a banana chocolate crepe - total cost 40 Baht (about $1.33)

During Lunar/Chinese New Year, tables were set up to make offerings at the shrine outside MBK. The MBK sign behind the tables advertises the weekly Thai Boxing Fight night!

Grilled fish stuffed with lemon grass and herbs.

Andrea enjoying a Banana Roti!

School Days

A few more photos of our time in and around the Chula campus.

Andrea's first day of school.
Chula's Track and Field/Stadium

Sasin (the business school) usually holds a big party on Halloween which was cancelled this past year due to the flooding. Here they set up at the entrance of the school for the Heroes vs Monsters theme.

Our room for the past 6 weeks at Sast International House

A beautiful door on Chula's campus

Sunrise...

Friends/Small World Photos

We are going to be offline for the next two weeks as Andrea's parents will be visiting. But we have a few posts scheduled for your viewing interest!

We have continued to enjoy time with new friends here and catch up with friends from the past. Photo below - Andrea and some of her classmates on their tour of Chiva Som in Huahin.

We have really enjoyed hanging out with Fink and Fern and their friends on Sunday evenings after Fern has finished playing with the Bangkok Symphony at Lumphini Park. (Photo below, clockwise from top, Fern, Fing, Nan, Boss, Nalinee and Finda)

Clearly we have found a new eating spot with Fink and Fern! Photo below - Same place as previous photo (Fink and Fern, Andrea, LJ and Fink's dad.) Fink's dad is a well known musician in Thailand. LJ spent 4 years Tennessee during elementary school and also has a band named Kobe. A new video by Kobe can be seen here. Andrea unexpectedly had a Thai version of "turducken" - a hotdog, wrapped in ham, wrapped in chicken and deep fried!

We had a blast from the past surprise visit from Monty and Mary Smith. Monty was the Pastor of a church in Tacoma that at one point housed Northwest Leadership Foundation and Hilltop Health Ministries/Sound Youth Counseling. Monty (similar to Bradd in this earlier post) was literally walking out the door of NLF when a former colleague of Andrea and mine said..."You're going to Thailand..." Anyway, unfortunately Andrea had a prior interview scheduled for her MP, but I had a great evening catching up with Monty and Mary.

(Photo below - Iven, Kashmira, Izayla and Elian)

How do you get around Bangkok if you have four kids? Andy and Anne (Nini) sometimes do it on two bikes - 2 in the trailer, one on the back and one in the front!)

Duncan

What causes more offense? (Part 4 of Meat, Dogs and Skin)

Question. Which of these photos disturbs you more?

(Ok, this first one is just of clueless tourists who think they can roll out of bed and wear boxers around town...and specifically in the mall. I can deal, but really, could they not manage to dress up a little more?)

It's the next three that I really want to know about...

Hungry dog on the street...

Hungry homeless person sleeping on the street...

"Hungry" women for sale on the street...

These are the images and the realities of the Bangkok streets that I often cannot get out of my mind. Your thoughts?

Duncan

Skin and privilege (Part 3 of Meat, Dogs and Skin)

One other observation from Chula’s campus…As we are surrounded by Thai university students in their uniforms (yes, university students still wear uniforms – white top, black skirt/pants) we’ve noticed that there are very, very few dark skinned Thai students.

Keep in mind two things. First, so many Thai beauty products (lotion, cream, even deodorant) are advertised as “whitening.” Their selling power is based on the ability to make your skin whiter. The lighter and whiter your skin the better – this is the ideal that is held up. Most Thai's who work outside will be very careful to cover up completely (see photo of Thai women working at a construction site, wearing head covering, wide brimmed straw hat and finally a construction helmet.) Many (most) Thai celebrities will be very fair skinned and often one parent will be Caucasian.


Second, Chulalongkorn University is the Harvard (or Duke if you want) of Thailand and Thai universities. Only the best are afforded the opportunity to attend. This is similar to what occurs in the US where it is often only those with privilege and power who are able to attend the elite universities. The upper tier schools in the US may have some ethnic diversity but will have far fewer students from a diverse economic background. Here at Chula it appears on the surface that elite also translates as fair skinned.

One area you won’t find too many light skinned Thai people is a few streets off of Chula’s campus. It’s surrounded by a real Thai neighborhood and with many places to fix taxis and Tuk Tuks. It also seems to be the place to go if you want to buy an engine block, radiators, or pieces of an engine. I call it Engine Alley. The streets are slick and dark with oil and in some places engines are stacked as high as a one story building. I get strange looks when I pass through but it sure is an intriguing place.

Though separated by just a few streets from Chula's campus, it is a world apart.











Duncan

Outrageous!

This past week was a busy week as both Andrea and I tried to get a lot of work done. Andrea continues to attend classes two full days a week, but most of her time is spent researching, writing and making contact with people for her thesis/master's project. This week she also finally met with individuals from the organization where she will be doing some volunteer work. On Friday she travelled three hours south of Bangkok to Huahin, one of our favorite places here in Thailand for an assigned class project. On Saturday morning her group met with the corporate social responsibility manager at Chiva Som, one of the more exclusive spa's in the world, before returning Saturday evening.

I spent a good portion of the week doing much of the global research and recruitment for my employer back in the US.

All of that is not so important but we wanted to tell you about an outrageous (in the best sense of the word) highlight from the week which brings us back to the "small world" theme in a previous post.

About ten days ago we noticed a comment on the blog from an old friend in Tacoma. Bradd said he would be coming to Bangkok briefly and asked could we get together. Bradd was a significant supporter of Sound Youth Counseling in a variety of ways and was often an encouragement to me back when we were living in Tacoma.

What we didn't know was that the connection might never have happened had the Seattle/Tacoma area not received the massive amount of snow that it did ten days ago. This resulted in Bradd having a snow day with family and friends including Elliot (another friend and my former boss in Tacoma), who when hearing that Bradd was headed to Thailand and Vietnam said, "You know Duncan and Andrea are in Bangkok..." So had it not snowed in Seattle/Tacoma we might not have had the great evening that we did this past Tuesday here in Bangkok.

Bradd finally did make it here (after a cancelled flight) along with a couple friends. After briefly catching up in his hotel we thought the best way to share this city with them in just a few hours was to take a quick taxi ride, followed by another short ride on the khlong boat (photo - Andrea, Bradd and friend Chad on the khlong boat. Chad contrary to how it looks did not have a black eye, it's just the shadow of the hanging rope) to end up having dinner at the Baiyoke Tower, Thailand's tallest building. Andrea and I had been to the Baiyoke before when we led a group here and had the experience of eating at the buffet on the 81st floor of the 92 story building peering down and out over Bangkok throught the floor to ceiling glass windows.

This time as we checked in, I briefly heard the words "very nice, open air" and wondered, hmmm, this will be interesting. When we arrived at our floor we were ushered out onto a small patio(?) attached somehow (?) to the side of the building. Open air it was, with a small, chest-high concrete and glass wall separating us from all of Bangkok. I'm not sure the photos do it justice but the word that we kept using was simply outrageous!

(photo: Andrea and Bradd looking out over part of the city.)

(photo: Bradd, Chad and Andrea enjoying dinner and the sunset from the 81st floor.)

And then there was the buffet that snaked its way around the entire inner part of the indoor seating area.

The view, the setting and the food were all fantastic but what really made it great was just having a good time and conversation with Bradd and Chad. As we said goodbye to them that evening and walked away, Andrea said, "That was so much fun and just what I needed." I concurred. Fun, outrageous and much to be thankful for - especially in this case when it all came together as a result of a random snow day back in the northwest!

Duncan
PS - For a couple videos of the khlong boat in action go here.

It's a Dog's World (Part 2 of Meat, Dogs and Skin)

Around the section of Chula’s campus that we live, as is true throughout the entire country, there are many dogs that live and hang out. Sometimes referred to as soi (side street) dogs, they don’t necessarily belong to anyone – but they might – but they aren't strays either. They aren’t pets (serving more of a security purpose) but they also don't live inside people's homes or compounds. They have their territory and don’t venture too far away into other dog’s territories. The dogs here in our area are mostly thriving because of the abundance of cafeteria and restaurant options which have lots of leftover food at the end of the day. Other dogs will be fed by a friendly security guard. However it happens, these dogs scrap and survive and unfortunately also reproduce in massive numbers. (That is an entirely different conversation though.) (Photo to the left - two napping members of "The Pride")

At this point we know and recognize certain dogs - for instance there are two that think they are working on their MBA’s and hang out in front of the Business School, the two mentioned in the previous post (including the scrawny little black pup that I feed) are a little further down the street and actually have quite a large territorial range (photo above is the little black pup and her friend napping on a gravel game court), there is a pack of 15 or so that actually live under the building next to us, squeezing through a hole in the ground when they need to disappear, (photo below - 7 of the 15 hanging out at night) and while 15 is quite the impressive number, they don’t compare to what I call "The Pride" that lives next to the Student Assistance Building a couple blocks from us. Though not as many as 15, the dogs in this group are all clearly related – same color and build and they own the plaza and lawn in front of the building. They are well fed and spend their time sleeping, exploring and marking their territory (Photos below: members of "The Pride" doing what they do!)

Yes, you too can come visit the animal park located on Chula’s campus! I’ll be happy to be your tour guide.

Duncan