So, it turns out that being in Bangkok isn't such a bad thing after all. The trick was realizing that I needed to escape the tourist ghetto of Banglamphu. While it happens to be quite cozy around streets such as Soi Rambuttri where my hostel is, it's effectively a fantasyland of sorts, made for tourists given the expectations of tourists, and thus allows you to miss out on what's special about thailand itself. So instead I walked for about 45 minutes, eating a questionable but tasty lunch made a little too spicy by liberal application of thailand's special spice, peppers marinated in soy sauce; found an excellent temple with very intriguing chinese style decorations, including some octagonal pagodas and even some chinese looking drawings of people; a flea market populated almost entirely by locals with good drinks sold on the side; and then the royal palace, with thousands of armed police loitering in front; and finally to vimanmek museum. I was really tired at that point and was grumpy about being forced to change into long trousers but it was quite a fun excursion. I took a tuktuk back out of tiredness. At night I planned on wandering to sukhumvit but I slept until like 8:30 and instead was resigned to dinner n the tourist stretch until I decided to walk outside for a bit, and went past a restaurant with signs entirely in thai that was just packed. Fortunately one waiter stopped me and told me it was a vietnamese place! oh, well I know what to order then - pho! It was quite different from the vietnamese variant, without as many vegetable leafy things and with slices of sausage. But with the addition of some atomic spices that looked like the chinese variety but proved to be more potent, it was delicious, made even better because they were selling loaves of bread for a buck a piece! I bought two, one that I dipped in pho and ate, the other that I saved for breakfast this morning. Yumyumyum.
Today I was thinking about going on a big adventure, but I'm headed to the airport at 3 so instead I'm checking the royal barges museum out and then going over to chinatown/indiatown (they have real names, I just forget them) for lunch. I filled up my camera with pictures yesterday, so if I can get a new computer charger, you can look forward to those...800 pictures in 42 days of traveling.
I suppose that at the tail-end of my journey it's starting to dawn on me how much I've learned about this part of the world in the last month. At times it's seemed a bit remote, at others foolhardy (I clearly do not have the budget to afford this trip). All the same, though, this has to have been an opportunity worth taking. And it leaves already plotting what I'll do if I get the chance to come back through this part of the world...
19.1.10
17.1.10
What does a Thai Scrabble tournament look like?
Since my laptop charger is broken, the pictures will have to wait a while, but here is my experience from this weekend, originally written in three instalments...necessary background: Thailand is a competitive Scrabble powerhouse, and the current world champion is Thai. Scrabble and other related games are played at the scholastic level by thousands of kids, as I found out this weekend...
oh man.
this tournament is so much crazier than anything I've ever seen before that it will likely take me a good half-hour to write all the things I want to say about it.
I showed up at the mall where the tournament was taking place at about 9:30 or so, knowing that the tournament was supposed to start some time around 10. I also knew I was supposed to find an aquarium somewhere on the ground floor. What I didn't expect is that I quickly stumbled upon wave after wave of schoolchildren. A lot of them were gathered by uniform, some younger, some older. But what was certainly the case is that there were hundreds of them, far more than mameow, my one contact in thai scrabble, had told me to expect. The official number was somewhere around 2000. This is for a minor regional tournament, mind you.
I literally spent twenty minutes wandering around trying to find where I was supposed to play scrabble. It felt like I was in a living ocean of sorts, surrounded by board after board. Not just Scrabble, but thai scrabble, a math game played on a scrabble board, even a sudoku competition with a good 200-300 competitors. Meanwhile, this was all surrounded by a very, very active mall, chiang mai's biggest, which was doing great business. Most popular of all was clearly the cookie store, with a line stretching out the door. I wandered everywhere on the ground floor and in every nook there seemed to be at least a couple of kids sipping on milkshakes or splaid out on the floor.
The internet cafe is closing up, but I'll be back tomorrow morning to tell you more about it...
my record: 6-3, 6th place!
I only have 15 minutes before I have to hop on a bus to the tourney but I'll try to condense that into a few paragraphs of awesome
Anyway, I figured out where I was only when Nawapadol and Amnuay (godfather of Thai scrabble, for those who don't know) saw the tall white guy wandering out in circles and figured it might be me. At that point I figured out why I had previously been unable to find the playing area - it didn't exist yet, and instead there was an opening ceremony going on, complete with pretty women, dignified long speeches in thai, an introductory video describing the state of Scrabble (known as crossword here) in Thailand, and the like. The one thing the video taught me is that I've missed my calling in life - Thailand's most prestigious university, Chulalongkorn University, apparently has an undergraduate degree in Crossword Games. The ceremony culminated with a dance done by ten little girls in ballerina's outfits and then a final speech by the prime minister of chiang mai, which is actually a province. This is the equivalent of your senator showing up for your next scrabble gathering. Amnuay and the prime minister stood next to each other and shook hands, and then a gigantic cannon belched glitter all over them. It was absolutely surreal and hysterical.
More ridiculous still was the process of actually playing games. I had joked about how noisy it was with mameow before the games started, and she told me it would quiet down a little. Well, dif it did I couldn't tell, because the gigantic speakers next to the playing area kept blasting out music the whole time we were there. Whoever said there was a crossword game theme song is not quite correct because as far as I can tell there's a good 4 or 5 of them, each with different moods and styles. My favorite is the one with the kids where they list all the different games, but even I tend towards the suicidal when I hear that on repeat ten times and I'm trying to solve an endgame. Also crazy is that this is just out there in the atrium of a huge mall, which means that every once in a while during a game I would look around and see people three storeys up just chilling there watching me play, not to mention the huge throng right outside the playing area. It took me a long time indeed to feel comfortable at all, compounded by the 22 minute clock which made almost every game into a near-frenzy. Occasionally final events for other competitions would take place on the stage next to us while we were playing, at which point the speaker would switch to playing the Final Countdown on repeat - I definitely found myself rocking out to the guitar solo once or twice.
OK, so what about the games themselves? The field is only 22-24 people, but it is ridiculously stratified. To wit - there are 5 former WSC participants here, Panupol, Jakkrit, Charnwit, Marut Siriwangso and Pichai Limprsaert. I assume Amnuay made it at some point too, and Nawapadol is just directing. On the other hand some of the players playing in this open division are total greenhorns. Thus, after the first two games I was quite pleased with my 220 spread until I looked over at the standings and saw the top 3 at 2-0 +600, 2-0 +600 and 2-0 +599!! I joked to Nawapadol that they had to be cheating. In any case I think I was 2-1 against WSC players yesterday after lucking out against Jakkrit and Marut and losing by about 50 to Charnwit. One of my losses was a once in a lifetime game, though - they had a big board with magnetic tiles and we actually played on it, drawing tiles from the table in front of it! Absolute craziness! And there was an announcer! I made it competitive with a timely phony but unfortunately still lost by ten or so, but it was still a seriously fun time.
Panupol is 8-1 +1500 and likely unattainable, but I at least have a shot at everyone below him. but I'm late already, so here I go! later folks! wish me luck!
ok, that's an exaggeration and a half. But yeah, as usual, I managed to build up some hope and then wipe out at the end. 3-3 on the day, but in the morning I won all three and then afternoon I lost them all back. ack! The morning went pretty smoothly, then after lunch I lost the next game after leading until the very last play, where to my eye there was nothing I could do, and then in the deciding game to see who would go to the final to play panupol, I played marut and sucked it up. Very bad timing. I lost by almost two hundred when I really should've been in it with a chance to win, but ended up going over by 5 minutes. Meltdown. The last game was never in my reach either. So I went from having a chance to play at the big board in front of hundreds of schoolchildren to losing the game for placement!
Final standing 9-6, 6th place. So close!
Though I am still grumpy, I brought my camera today and took a bunch of pictures, most of them very chaotic looking because there are just so many kids in them. They had an award ceremony to end the day where they handed out lots and lots of prizes, with big cheers coming from their schoolmates. Then the adult division winners went on stage and no one really cheered because they weren't from their school or anything and thus there was no rooting interest! I thought it was a hysterical reawakening to reality - just because you think what you're doing is important doesn't mean everyone else has to as well.
I wonder about the health of Thai Scrabble. On the one hand they have thousands of students playing, some of whom choose to continue doing it after they grow up. On the other hand, the scene I witnessed was so crazy that I can't imagine anyone over 30 not being completely exhausted by it. Indeed, most of the adult competition players are also very young. It reflects the divergent base of financial support for scrabble here - it comes from the thousands of students who play rather than the american foundation of wealthy old people. So for anyone who thinks thai scrabble is the best - yeah, it's pretty great, but every system has its problems.
ok, bus to bangkok at 8 pm, so I'm going to go get some northern thai cuisine and then head off. Sawatdee khrap!
oh man.
this tournament is so much crazier than anything I've ever seen before that it will likely take me a good half-hour to write all the things I want to say about it.
I showed up at the mall where the tournament was taking place at about 9:30 or so, knowing that the tournament was supposed to start some time around 10. I also knew I was supposed to find an aquarium somewhere on the ground floor. What I didn't expect is that I quickly stumbled upon wave after wave of schoolchildren. A lot of them were gathered by uniform, some younger, some older. But what was certainly the case is that there were hundreds of them, far more than mameow, my one contact in thai scrabble, had told me to expect. The official number was somewhere around 2000. This is for a minor regional tournament, mind you.
I literally spent twenty minutes wandering around trying to find where I was supposed to play scrabble. It felt like I was in a living ocean of sorts, surrounded by board after board. Not just Scrabble, but thai scrabble, a math game played on a scrabble board, even a sudoku competition with a good 200-300 competitors. Meanwhile, this was all surrounded by a very, very active mall, chiang mai's biggest, which was doing great business. Most popular of all was clearly the cookie store, with a line stretching out the door. I wandered everywhere on the ground floor and in every nook there seemed to be at least a couple of kids sipping on milkshakes or splaid out on the floor.
The internet cafe is closing up, but I'll be back tomorrow morning to tell you more about it...
my record: 6-3, 6th place!
I only have 15 minutes before I have to hop on a bus to the tourney but I'll try to condense that into a few paragraphs of awesome
Anyway, I figured out where I was only when Nawapadol and Amnuay (godfather of Thai scrabble, for those who don't know) saw the tall white guy wandering out in circles and figured it might be me. At that point I figured out why I had previously been unable to find the playing area - it didn't exist yet, and instead there was an opening ceremony going on, complete with pretty women, dignified long speeches in thai, an introductory video describing the state of Scrabble (known as crossword here) in Thailand, and the like. The one thing the video taught me is that I've missed my calling in life - Thailand's most prestigious university, Chulalongkorn University, apparently has an undergraduate degree in Crossword Games. The ceremony culminated with a dance done by ten little girls in ballerina's outfits and then a final speech by the prime minister of chiang mai, which is actually a province. This is the equivalent of your senator showing up for your next scrabble gathering. Amnuay and the prime minister stood next to each other and shook hands, and then a gigantic cannon belched glitter all over them. It was absolutely surreal and hysterical.
More ridiculous still was the process of actually playing games. I had joked about how noisy it was with mameow before the games started, and she told me it would quiet down a little. Well, dif it did I couldn't tell, because the gigantic speakers next to the playing area kept blasting out music the whole time we were there. Whoever said there was a crossword game theme song is not quite correct because as far as I can tell there's a good 4 or 5 of them, each with different moods and styles. My favorite is the one with the kids where they list all the different games, but even I tend towards the suicidal when I hear that on repeat ten times and I'm trying to solve an endgame. Also crazy is that this is just out there in the atrium of a huge mall, which means that every once in a while during a game I would look around and see people three storeys up just chilling there watching me play, not to mention the huge throng right outside the playing area. It took me a long time indeed to feel comfortable at all, compounded by the 22 minute clock which made almost every game into a near-frenzy. Occasionally final events for other competitions would take place on the stage next to us while we were playing, at which point the speaker would switch to playing the Final Countdown on repeat - I definitely found myself rocking out to the guitar solo once or twice.
OK, so what about the games themselves? The field is only 22-24 people, but it is ridiculously stratified. To wit - there are 5 former WSC participants here, Panupol, Jakkrit, Charnwit, Marut Siriwangso and Pichai Limprsaert. I assume Amnuay made it at some point too, and Nawapadol is just directing. On the other hand some of the players playing in this open division are total greenhorns. Thus, after the first two games I was quite pleased with my 220 spread until I looked over at the standings and saw the top 3 at 2-0 +600, 2-0 +600 and 2-0 +599!! I joked to Nawapadol that they had to be cheating. In any case I think I was 2-1 against WSC players yesterday after lucking out against Jakkrit and Marut and losing by about 50 to Charnwit. One of my losses was a once in a lifetime game, though - they had a big board with magnetic tiles and we actually played on it, drawing tiles from the table in front of it! Absolute craziness! And there was an announcer! I made it competitive with a timely phony but unfortunately still lost by ten or so, but it was still a seriously fun time.
Panupol is 8-1 +1500 and likely unattainable, but I at least have a shot at everyone below him. but I'm late already, so here I go! later folks! wish me luck!
ok, that's an exaggeration and a half. But yeah, as usual, I managed to build up some hope and then wipe out at the end. 3-3 on the day, but in the morning I won all three and then afternoon I lost them all back. ack! The morning went pretty smoothly, then after lunch I lost the next game after leading until the very last play, where to my eye there was nothing I could do, and then in the deciding game to see who would go to the final to play panupol, I played marut and sucked it up. Very bad timing. I lost by almost two hundred when I really should've been in it with a chance to win, but ended up going over by 5 minutes. Meltdown. The last game was never in my reach either. So I went from having a chance to play at the big board in front of hundreds of schoolchildren to losing the game for placement!
Final standing 9-6, 6th place. So close!
Though I am still grumpy, I brought my camera today and took a bunch of pictures, most of them very chaotic looking because there are just so many kids in them. They had an award ceremony to end the day where they handed out lots and lots of prizes, with big cheers coming from their schoolmates. Then the adult division winners went on stage and no one really cheered because they weren't from their school or anything and thus there was no rooting interest! I thought it was a hysterical reawakening to reality - just because you think what you're doing is important doesn't mean everyone else has to as well.
I wonder about the health of Thai Scrabble. On the one hand they have thousands of students playing, some of whom choose to continue doing it after they grow up. On the other hand, the scene I witnessed was so crazy that I can't imagine anyone over 30 not being completely exhausted by it. Indeed, most of the adult competition players are also very young. It reflects the divergent base of financial support for scrabble here - it comes from the thousands of students who play rather than the american foundation of wealthy old people. So for anyone who thinks thai scrabble is the best - yeah, it's pretty great, but every system has its problems.
ok, bus to bangkok at 8 pm, so I'm going to go get some northern thai cuisine and then head off. Sawatdee khrap!
15.1.10
return from the jungle
When I think about writing any sort of blog entry I always have a dozen ideas but when it comes down to it I am often tired and have forgotten what made my ideas so good in the first place.
So I will tell you quite simply that I have been TREKKING! It sounds a little more extreme than it is. When it comes down to it, it just consisted of some pretty tame hiking, swimming in waterfalls, rubber rafting, bamboo rafting (excellent fun, especially when it became a waterfight) and then elephant riding!
I am still not sure how I feel about tourism here, or perhaps even the concept of being a tourist. How am I supposed to feel when I go to an ethnic minority village where there a line of stands selling me local trinkets at high prices. Should I feel morally obligated to buy? Am I wrong to want some sort of more authentic scene? This trip wasn't so bad because we actually did walk through a couple of pretty remarkable villages. It's just that this particular brand of tourism seems to result in an awkwardness that permeats almost every participant except for teh guides and the locals themselves. the guide guides because it is lucrative and fun. the locals earn much more than they would otherwise by selling goods. It's just that sometimes the visitors stand on an awkward line between wanting to have fun and the feeling that their presence has fundamentally altered local life. Perhaps this indicates that tourists who go to thailand or ethnic minority villages are a little more culturally aware than average in the first place.
So I will tell you quite simply that I have been TREKKING! It sounds a little more extreme than it is. When it comes down to it, it just consisted of some pretty tame hiking, swimming in waterfalls, rubber rafting, bamboo rafting (excellent fun, especially when it became a waterfight) and then elephant riding!
I am still not sure how I feel about tourism here, or perhaps even the concept of being a tourist. How am I supposed to feel when I go to an ethnic minority village where there a line of stands selling me local trinkets at high prices. Should I feel morally obligated to buy? Am I wrong to want some sort of more authentic scene? This trip wasn't so bad because we actually did walk through a couple of pretty remarkable villages. It's just that this particular brand of tourism seems to result in an awkwardness that permeats almost every participant except for teh guides and the locals themselves. the guide guides because it is lucrative and fun. the locals earn much more than they would otherwise by selling goods. It's just that sometimes the visitors stand on an awkward line between wanting to have fun and the feeling that their presence has fundamentally altered local life. Perhaps this indicates that tourists who go to thailand or ethnic minority villages are a little more culturally aware than average in the first place.
12.1.10
Two nights ago - sushi in hong kong, bolt for shenzhen airport. sojourn in Hades. last night - fitful sleep on slightly too small bus, leaving me with very, very sore buttocks (I had no idea that was even possible). How about now? Lying back in a garden on a borrowed laptop, listening to backpackers talking in french about their liking for marijuana and water running from the fish pond. where am I? I am in a 150 baht a night guesthouse in chiangmai, switching to a 100 baht room tomorrow night. that's 5 bucks US for the former, 3 for the latter. I have a bed, a fan and the sound of running water. The bathroom may be outside but it's pleasant to the point that I plan on adopting a two shower a day schedule if I don't fall asleep first.
it wasn't all good today - I rolled into chiang mai at 7:30 am with nowhere to stay, and ended up getting breakfast at one of the guesthouses and then alternately napping and reading foucault's pendulum, making an already odd book into a truly surreal one. Actually, the best part of the novel may well be its annotator, who has revealed a great deal about himself. His name is Eliot, he is 50-something, a wannabe writer, homosexual, a whiskey drinker, disorganized and evidently in the process of creating his masterpiece. The book is littered with notes such as "Use" or "NO" or passages that he thought particularly autobiographical, notated as "Me, Eliot". He seems to know a great deal about Eastern religions. It actually reminds me a little bit of Pale Fire, Nabokov's work where the erstwhile annotator effectively metamorphosizes into protagonist. Ironic that Eco already used Nova Zemlya and Ultima Thule in the first 100 pages...
so far chiang mai has been the perfect solution to my Hades doldrums. At 11:30 I met up with mameow, who traveled for an hour to meet me and didn't even mention it, and we spent the rest of the day wandering around together. Her english isn't great, but I gradually felt that to be less and less of a hurdle. She took me to the go-to tourist spot in chiang mai, the beautiful temple on the hillside whose thai name escapes me, and then we also played some crossword! She is also responsible for me finding the awesome guesthouse and in general having any idea what's going on at all.
the city somehow achieves a balance of foreign and local. the pace is markedly laidback. tourists and local farangs sit around at cafes in the old city and look quite happy about it as well. there are temples left and right to go with delicious street food, way better looking than bangkok. the climate is just a little bit milder, the guesthouses are much more bang-for-the-buck and it actually seems possible to find one's own quiet nook. I feel a lot better about Bangkok than I'm letting on here, but Chiang Mai seems to suit my current temperament and desires out of life.
Here is my plan for the rest of my time in chiangmai:
tomorrow - take it verrrry easy. walk around and see the sights. sleep.
tomorrow night - maybe try to hit up a khantoke joint? go watch muay thai? each of those is about 13 bucks US. Hell, I should really do both.
thursday - friday...debating going trekking into the hills which is pretty much what all tourists here end up doing evidently. 40 bucks for two days including food. Only worry is that my body has been complaining at me if I walk around too much, in which case I should get a massage...
I suppose it's not quite as cheap as I was hoping altogether. but while I'm here it seems so foolish not to take advantage in order to save 30-40 dollars...
and coming this weekend...
the scrabble tournament! mameow told me a lot more of the details today. For instance, the entry fee is 5 dollars US, while top prize is 300. and the open division will likely have 20-25 people. wow! however, it won't be easy because some heavy-hitters are reputedly showing up...charnwit and amnuay will be there for sure, with possible sighting of pakorn and panupol (though they might be headed to india). in any case, it's evidently 18 games, with a finals consisting of 2 more games! additionally the tournament will be starting at 10. I like it already. dear god, I will be getting my scrabble fix for sure. and maybe just maybe I will earn back the money I've spent on this trip...
it wasn't all good today - I rolled into chiang mai at 7:30 am with nowhere to stay, and ended up getting breakfast at one of the guesthouses and then alternately napping and reading foucault's pendulum, making an already odd book into a truly surreal one. Actually, the best part of the novel may well be its annotator, who has revealed a great deal about himself. His name is Eliot, he is 50-something, a wannabe writer, homosexual, a whiskey drinker, disorganized and evidently in the process of creating his masterpiece. The book is littered with notes such as "Use" or "NO" or passages that he thought particularly autobiographical, notated as "Me, Eliot". He seems to know a great deal about Eastern religions. It actually reminds me a little bit of Pale Fire, Nabokov's work where the erstwhile annotator effectively metamorphosizes into protagonist. Ironic that Eco already used Nova Zemlya and Ultima Thule in the first 100 pages...
so far chiang mai has been the perfect solution to my Hades doldrums. At 11:30 I met up with mameow, who traveled for an hour to meet me and didn't even mention it, and we spent the rest of the day wandering around together. Her english isn't great, but I gradually felt that to be less and less of a hurdle. She took me to the go-to tourist spot in chiang mai, the beautiful temple on the hillside whose thai name escapes me, and then we also played some crossword! She is also responsible for me finding the awesome guesthouse and in general having any idea what's going on at all.
the city somehow achieves a balance of foreign and local. the pace is markedly laidback. tourists and local farangs sit around at cafes in the old city and look quite happy about it as well. there are temples left and right to go with delicious street food, way better looking than bangkok. the climate is just a little bit milder, the guesthouses are much more bang-for-the-buck and it actually seems possible to find one's own quiet nook. I feel a lot better about Bangkok than I'm letting on here, but Chiang Mai seems to suit my current temperament and desires out of life.
Here is my plan for the rest of my time in chiangmai:
tomorrow - take it verrrry easy. walk around and see the sights. sleep.
tomorrow night - maybe try to hit up a khantoke joint? go watch muay thai? each of those is about 13 bucks US. Hell, I should really do both.
thursday - friday...debating going trekking into the hills which is pretty much what all tourists here end up doing evidently. 40 bucks for two days including food. Only worry is that my body has been complaining at me if I walk around too much, in which case I should get a massage...
I suppose it's not quite as cheap as I was hoping altogether. but while I'm here it seems so foolish not to take advantage in order to save 30-40 dollars...
and coming this weekend...
the scrabble tournament! mameow told me a lot more of the details today. For instance, the entry fee is 5 dollars US, while top prize is 300. and the open division will likely have 20-25 people. wow! however, it won't be easy because some heavy-hitters are reputedly showing up...charnwit and amnuay will be there for sure, with possible sighting of pakorn and panupol (though they might be headed to india). in any case, it's evidently 18 games, with a finals consisting of 2 more games! additionally the tournament will be starting at 10. I like it already. dear god, I will be getting my scrabble fix for sure. and maybe just maybe I will earn back the money I've spent on this trip...
11.1.10
Adventures in Hades
As a backpacker or budget traveler visiting Bangkok, it seems to me that there is one particularly good option available: Going to Soi Rambuttri, a mostly quiet walkway, heavily touristed and pretty hard to get to from the airport, but largely peaceful. In particular the Bella Bella Hostel seems quite civilized and provides wireless, if you're into that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, having never been to this part of town, I landed at Bangkok airport at 1:30 am last night, courtesy of Airasia's budget flights, hopped in a taxi and asked to be taken to Khao Sanh Road (hereafter referred to as Hades), the most notorious backpacker street around. Even at 3 am the place was absolutely jammed with people, pool halls, food sellers, thumping music. A fun time, except that I had nowhere to stay and eventually wandered around for about twenty minutes, settling on 250 baht (8 dollars US) for my lodgings. It was certainly a rip-off because I ended up sleeping in a room with a fan, two beds (why?) and nothing else. The fan kept things just cool enough that I wasn't going out of my mind, but for the rest of the night I slept in no more than fifteen minute increments as the people around me drank, yelled, thumped repeatedly on the door (especially that one time at 6 am), moaned inappropriately and all that, all the while the music kept going and going and going. It was hard not to believe I'd been consigned to a prison sentence.
However, the rest of the town has been rather pleasant. I was here a few weeks ago so I have seen the things that are supposed to be seen and instead am contenting myself with taking life very, very easy. After my escape from Hades I ate a tasty three dollar lunch (sounds cheap until I realize it's actually expensive by China standards, but whatever), strolled around slowly, then stumbled across a used book seller with an eldritch copy of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. My computer charger appears to have burnt a fuse or something so I have very little in the way of entertainment except for a thin roman by Paulo Coelho and my scrabble dictionary, and there's only so much time I can spend with the latter without feeling too nerdy for words. In any case, the guy had a great selection but the clincher was looking through the weatherbeaten copy of foucault's pendulum and seeing that it was absolutely loaded with notes, sometimes very relevant and scholarly, sometimes snarky, at other times bizarre. Going through the annotations is almost as much of an adventure as reading the book itself. I needed that little episode to recover my feeling that everything in the world pretty much works out and doesn't have to be quite so artificial. if that makes any sense.
Tonight I head for chiang mai, at 5:30 to be precise. The price I received, 400 baht, makes it clear that some sort of scam is in the works. But hell, I am patient, and the alternative seemed to be hanging around Hades for another night, entirely out of the question. Though Bangkok is pretty there's something about this part of town that very much unsettles me. I think I've been in China too long, because the volume of foreigners and their sort of indifference to anything but having fun makes me depressed. I would rather have every third person look at me and exclaim at how tall I am.
Unfortunately, having never been to this part of town, I landed at Bangkok airport at 1:30 am last night, courtesy of Airasia's budget flights, hopped in a taxi and asked to be taken to Khao Sanh Road (hereafter referred to as Hades), the most notorious backpacker street around. Even at 3 am the place was absolutely jammed with people, pool halls, food sellers, thumping music. A fun time, except that I had nowhere to stay and eventually wandered around for about twenty minutes, settling on 250 baht (8 dollars US) for my lodgings. It was certainly a rip-off because I ended up sleeping in a room with a fan, two beds (why?) and nothing else. The fan kept things just cool enough that I wasn't going out of my mind, but for the rest of the night I slept in no more than fifteen minute increments as the people around me drank, yelled, thumped repeatedly on the door (especially that one time at 6 am), moaned inappropriately and all that, all the while the music kept going and going and going. It was hard not to believe I'd been consigned to a prison sentence.
However, the rest of the town has been rather pleasant. I was here a few weeks ago so I have seen the things that are supposed to be seen and instead am contenting myself with taking life very, very easy. After my escape from Hades I ate a tasty three dollar lunch (sounds cheap until I realize it's actually expensive by China standards, but whatever), strolled around slowly, then stumbled across a used book seller with an eldritch copy of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. My computer charger appears to have burnt a fuse or something so I have very little in the way of entertainment except for a thin roman by Paulo Coelho and my scrabble dictionary, and there's only so much time I can spend with the latter without feeling too nerdy for words. In any case, the guy had a great selection but the clincher was looking through the weatherbeaten copy of foucault's pendulum and seeing that it was absolutely loaded with notes, sometimes very relevant and scholarly, sometimes snarky, at other times bizarre. Going through the annotations is almost as much of an adventure as reading the book itself. I needed that little episode to recover my feeling that everything in the world pretty much works out and doesn't have to be quite so artificial. if that makes any sense.
Tonight I head for chiang mai, at 5:30 to be precise. The price I received, 400 baht, makes it clear that some sort of scam is in the works. But hell, I am patient, and the alternative seemed to be hanging around Hades for another night, entirely out of the question. Though Bangkok is pretty there's something about this part of town that very much unsettles me. I think I've been in China too long, because the volume of foreigners and their sort of indifference to anything but having fun makes me depressed. I would rather have every third person look at me and exclaim at how tall I am.
7.1.10
My belated semester report
Jesse Day
Final Report
Associated Colleges in China, Fall ‘09
At the end of the semester, Ma laoshi, head of ACC, called me into her office to provide a message that was part injunction, part encouragement. Essentially, she was telling me that I needed to improve my attitude and be a role model of sorts for the new students of next semester. How, may you ask, did I gain the reputation for being a malcontent?
After being extremely happy with what I gained from HBA over the course of the summer, it was hard not to hold ACC to those standards. As a result, I came away with some mixed feelings when I might have been quite satisfied had this been my first experience in intensive Chinese study. As a third-year student the goal of the semester seemed to be providing a background in more formal Chinese, the kind used in news broadcasts, newspapers and scholar. On the one hand, the selection of articles definitely succeeded in introducing us to that particular style, although one of the textbooks (the light blue one, other students will know what I’m talking about) ended up seeing very heavy-handed and dull, likely due to how outdated the material was. As with any textbook some of the lessons seemed a bit arbitrary, but the choices all in all tended to provide a good sample of new vocabulary and discussions. The problem is that I found that most students felt a dissatisfaction with their ability to actually speak to Chinese people and participate in life in China - in other words, they wanted to work on their kouyu more. In general, I felt more of a sense of discontentment and tiredness at ACC than at HBA. The language pledge was not kept nearly as well, especially towards the end when lassitude seemed to overtake just about everyone.
Essentially, I felt that ACC didn’t stand up to HBA’s level of quality. This is certainly not to blame the teachers or the students. The teachers were hard-working and sociable. I would even say that a lot of them were excellent. The students worked hard and seemed to show more raw interest in China collectively than my HBA peers had. But I found ACC less effective than HBA at improving my Chinese. Part of this must be attributed to my situation. Being in China for the summer, and in particular studying at HBA, clearly gave me a head start. A lot of the grammar patterns early on looked rather familiar, though by the end that stopped being the case, and it seems to me that I may have had an easier time with the vocabulary due to already having studied a greater proportion of it. It’s also because the level of my fellow students was lower than at HBA. I liked the diversity of backgrounds of my classmates, but it also meant that they didn’t necessarily have the benefit of good first- and second-year programs. However, I think ACC can be squarely criticized on two fronts: Pronunciation and a lack of opportunities for creativity. The latter issue is that most students left third-year with pronunciation errors that the second-years at HBA had already eradicated. HBA dedicates half-an-hour a day just to reading aloud. I’m not saying that ACC has to do likewise, but I think that ACC teachers were too satisfied with a mediocre level of pronunciation. To my eyes, it often prevented my fellow students from communicating with Chinese people in elementary situations. The other issue is that HBA tended to leave students to invent phrases using a particular grammar, whereas ACC always gave an extremely specific sentence for students to repeat, taken from the lessons but irrelevant to real life. I felt that this left most people uncomfortable creating their own sentences even in routine circumstances. Ultimately, I don’t know about the validity of these complaints because I clearly made huge leaps forward in my Chinese ability. Perhaps my progress didn’t feel as dramatic as over the summer, but in my travels around China over the break I have never had any problems making myself understood. But I came away from the semester tired and a little bit disappointed.
In recalling my experience for the semester I definitely need to step beyond just evaluating ACC. Although my frustration permeates a lot of my recollections, there were all sorts of positives to mention. I love living in Beijing, and I think that relative to other students I went through very few days where I felt unhappy with life in China. Chinese food is better than what’s in the States, in my opinion, while being as cheap as you want. My favorite lunch (daoxiaomian, down the alleyway after the secret Korean restaurant, for anyone curious) costs 6 kuai. While ACC kept me very busy at times, I still had the time to regularly head over to Wudaokou on the weekends to catch up with my friends over there, wander around the city and play ultimate frisbee. With the latter in particular, I was playing about two times a week and even went to Tianjin to run a clinic for university students at TEDA. Having a working computer, while damaging to my studies, made Chinese study considerably easier. It also coincidentally allowed me to develop my taste for Chinese music. I also had the good fortune of having a great host family who I would go visit about once a month. I can’t even really think of any quality of life issues, other than my occasional craving for steak.
I feel very comfortable with living in China and am excited to keep doing so for the next four months. In spite of my earlier whining, ACC is definitely responsible for this latter situation. My roommate turned out to be a great guy and good for my overall sanity. He had never been out of the States before, but I was really impressed with his willingness to try new stuff. For next semester, ACC set me up to have my own apartment with a Chinese roommate, which should be a superb opportunity. ACC does a good job of providing fun activities (almost to a fault) and the teachers were always willing to talk to me, even politics and other potentially touchy situations. A particular episode comes to mind where a laoshi spent at least a couple of minutes trying to explain to me what duotai meant, as I failed to understand. Another major part of the semester was continuing to discover the city. My favorite part of Beijing is that it seems to consist of a thousand different neighborhoods, all suitable to how you‘re feeling and what you want to see. Korean barbecue, going to Minzu daxue, one-on-one beer pong at Pyro’s, wandering through a market catered to Russians...it may not always have been didao, but it was a superb break to the endless swathes of ACC work. I would like to do even better, but I went to a lot of new places, best of which was easily 798 art district. I hope to go back there all the time next semester.
There are some tough aspects to life in Beijing. The one that comes most readily to mind is the trouble of getting around such a big town. Going anywhere seems to take an hour by default. The subway never seems to have any seats regardless of what time it is. I kept in worse contact with my friends on the other side of town than I had hoped. There was a visit to Fragrant Hills with my host family in particular that took a good two and a half hours each way. Playing ultimate required a streak of masochism because the hour spent getting there and back meant that I would be sleep-deprived for the next day, not to mentioned tired and sore. Perhaps as a result, life at ACC tended to assume some aspects of cabin fever, especially around the due dates of major products. Some people started adopting bizarre sleep schedules and seemed to go outside only sparingly. To any future ACC students: do not become them, I beg you. Find places to go outside of the campus. The weather also contributed more than a little. After flirting with blue skies and 60 degrees, Beijing weather decided somewhere around mid-October to skip the entire season of fall and drop to the freezing point. It snowed at least five times during the month of November alone. I fear returning to frigid Beijing from South-East Asia and Southern China where I’ve been traveling. However, I suppose the fact that I am mentioning the weather at all indicates that I don’t have more urgent problems in life.
All in all, I am pretty optimistic for next semester. Taking a good long break has rekindled my passion for improving Chinese. For all that I was far too negative about ACC for the past few months, the teachers are excellent, the lessons tend to be compelling and my Chinese skills made leaps and bounds. I feel prepared to take charge of my Chinese study and rely on my own methods if I feel unsatisfied with what ACC has to offer. I also want to state that, in spite of being a negligent blogger, I am extremely grateful to the Light Fellowship. My life has changed in ways that I notice only when I drop Chinese words in conversations with my friends from the States and react casually to the prospect of eating chicken feet. On a bigger scale, I am applying to geophysics graduate school at the moment in no small part because of my experiences in China and the thought that I might be able to return and use my language skills to make some contribution to China’s environmental issues. I appreciate the faith that the Light Fellowship placed in me, and I hope to do a better job of validating it over the course of next semester.
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