Mae Sariang, Thailand

Mae Sariang, a small border town about 5 hours north of Mae Sot.

My partner organization had its bi-annual six-day malaria control program training in Mae Sariang. My coworkers and I went along to train, help out, learn more about the program, meet the medics, make a lot of copies, etc etc... A little hectic, not much time for sleep, but a great time anyway. The pictures focus on the fun little parts of the training, but don't you worry, we had all the standard training type pictures too. They're just not as interesting.


First things first, we were given amazing Karen (but not spicy) food everyday for lunch. Along with a plateful of cucumbers! Heaven? Yes! Below: Karen pumpkin curry

We rented motorbikes and drove around the hills of Mae Sariang the first day. This was a good idea because the rest of the week was spent waking up early to get things copied and then staying up late revising forms so that they were ready to be brought to the copying place in the morning. Definitely no time for motorbiking. Below: Scenery from the ride to the training location, Our hike from the driveway to house we used for training, and my new shoes. The hike is way steeper than it looks and, unlike in this picture, it was usually really muddy. I bought new, $1 plastic rain shoes to battle the elements. This is a continuation of my quest to have the exact same wardrobe as the mahouts at ENP.

I watched a chicken jump in a window, walk across the keyboard of my laptop, and start heading up the steps of the house. I panicked and waved by arms, but the chicken didn't care. An old lady, however, came to rescue, by grabbing the chicken by the neck and throwing it back out the window. This is another chicken, who didn't try to walk on my computer.

Our training was long, intense and tough, but one of my co-workers kept it real by playing American club hip hop during the breaks. I took the role of trying to get the trainees, Karen jungle medics, to dance to it. It wasn't easy, and even though the success was small, it was worth it.

During some other breaks, my supervisor lead a couple of mini yoga sessions. They seemed to love it, even the medic with a prosthetic leg. In triangle pose - "Ok, now put your foot completely on the ground." "I can't! Ha ha ha!" Below: Yoga break and the trainee with a prosthetic leg. Super sweet guy, one of my faves, he also has a tattoo that says, in English, "I hate you but I love you." He speaks Karen and Thai, so I could actually talk with him, which was nice. Not so much verbal communication with most of the other trainees. The leg looks pretty good, huh?

I learned that the Macarena is a big hit in Karen State.

I learned a couple of Karen action songs. When we asked about one of them we were told it was about "killing Santa". We got really confused. We knew they were Christian, but we didn't know of a Christianity that was anti-Santa. We said, "Really? You're killing Santa? The happy, fat guy in red?" and the whole room nodded eagerly. It was weird. About 5 minutes later, someone finally realized the song was more likely about killing Satan, not Santa. They confirmed it. If you can find a Karen speaker and ask him or her to pronounce Satan, you'll see how eerily close it sounds to Santa. Someone really should have considered this before naming Santa, Santa.

We went to a creepy karaoke place which I had been assuming wasn't a creepy karaoke place because the girls working there were so unattractive. I was wrong and I'm sorry for judging. Apparently, no females are too unattractive, overweight, or old to work in a creepy karaoke place. The women there weren't creepy to us (2 co-workers, one girl, one guy and me, all American). People bought beer for us and requested songs they wanted to hear sung in English. Which was nice, kinda, but a little uncomfortable when we had never heard of the song (Westlife - My Love). I think we kind of rocked it, though.

The next night we tried another karaoke place, which didn't have girls working there, but did have a continuous slideshow of young Asian girls in lingerie as the background on the TV screen where you have to read the words from. This place also had Winnie the Pooh vinyl table clothes just to balance things out. Just like America...

For breakfast one day a co-worker and I went to Mae Sariang's morning market and ended up with a strangely Southern, yet very much Thai, breakfast. Below: Before (waffles, fried chicken, sticky rice and crispy roti, and soft roti) and After (lots of bags!)

The day I got back from Mae Sariang, I actually was able to meet up with some US Campaign for Burma people and go with them to Mae La Refugee Camp. It's the largest camp on the Thai/Burma border and there are somewhere between 40-50,000 refugees there. It was quite a feeling to see the actual place I had heard and read so much about. We walked around and went to an English class. In talking with the people there, they're mostly just really really bored. They come to English class because they finished high school and they're bored and it's something to do. Some want to move to America. One kid's dad calls from Fort Wayne, Indiana every night. He's waiting for paperwork to get finished so he can go there too. Some don't care for America, but want to work in Thailand or go back to Burma. A lot of the refugees I know in New York came from Mae La. I actually had the address, in Mae La Camp, of the son and daughter in law of a Burmese guy I used to meet for English conversation class at IRC in New York. It didn't work out this time because the camp is huge and we were in a completely different zone, but I think within a year, I'll be able to make it happen. Below: English Class Students (future business man in the hat, and future Fort Wayne, Indiana resident in the striped shirt), Huts, Karen Women's Weaving Project, Happy Little Kids and Not So Happy Little Kids.

This concludes the interesting events of the first two weeks of August!

Lots of learning and lots of mud!

8/3 - It's been a while...

A lot has happen since my last blog entry. Sorry about the weird picture sizes. The ones from my computer came out small and the ones from the internet came out huge. Don't know how to fix this.

For this entry, we = my 4 roommates/colleagues/friends + me.

• I bought a bicycle.


• We went to Trivia night at one of the two foreigner/NGO bars and one of the questions was a 3 note name-that-tune and I got the correct answer - Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer.

• We bought and ate a ton of cooked bugs at the weekend market.
It’s a classic, “I live in Thailand” photo-op.


• We found roti guy #1. Outside 7-11 #1. His roti was really oily, not served in a convenient way and he was kind of a jerk, adding egg and charging more when he knew we only ordered banana. (I was inside 7-11 and the other girls didn't know how to make him stop.) But his banana rotis are only 15 baht, so far the cheapest in town. (Banana roti = flatten flour dough ball soaked in butter into flat thin circle, drop in oil, add butter, add more butter, add sliced banana, fold dough around banana to make a square shape, flip over, add more butter, remove from oil, top generously with condensed milk and sugar.)


• We moved into a house. It’s got 4 bedrooms, fans installed on the walls, screens on the windows, hot water showers, one western style toilet that you flush by scooping water from a plastic garbage can into the toilet and one squat toilet in a permanently flooded second bathroom. (The architectural geniuses made the first bathroom drain into the second bathroom with no slant in the flooring of the second bathroom to drain the water out of it.) We have two spirit houses outside our house to keep us safe from ghosts. Our neighbors are cows. We rented it fully furnished, which was really exciting because most houses for rent in Mae Sot come unfurnished, which means you have to buy not only the furniture and TV, but the stove, the sink and the shower too. Here's our house, chairs, one of two spirit houses and our neighbor, Bobby.




• I bought a mosquito zapper racket and named it Mortimer and then rest of the roommates grew to love him instantly. I stole this picture from a blog about Africa, but our Mortimer looks exactly the same, right down to the orange and snazzy lighting bolt design.


• We realized my roommate’s bizarre sickness was actually Dengue Fever. (We think it's from the old guesthouse we were staying in, not from the new house.)

• We found roti guy #2 - Supernice guy. We first met him at the Saturday market, which is great, but only available once a week. Turned out his regular spot is kind of far away and he usually closes before our regular roti eating time. We set our clocks and made the trek one day. It was worth it, but after roti-eating you really have to walk around a bit. We were out walking around and when it started raining, supernice guy he moved our bicycles under a covering! And we thought he was supernice even before that! Yay supernice guy! Not too oily, served in an easy to eat fashion, 25 baht.

• Roommate recovered from Dengue.

• The same roommate’s bicycle got stolen while parked with all of the rest of our bikes at the weekend market. It was locked. Didn't seem to matter. We talked to the police (by way of me saying in Thaim "Five people, four bicycles. Before, five bicycles! One bicycle gone already because of someone - we don't know who!") They pretended to care, but most onlookers told us "It's probably in Myawaddi (Burma) by now."

• We found roti guy #3 - Disco roti guy. He’s near 7-11 #2 which is actually closer, but on the one way road in the opposite direction. He's open late and has flashing lights, disco balls and I think music too. Nice guy, lots of choices, nice packaging, 25B.

• I got the first wave of Dengue Fever - felt like total crap, massive headaches and pain, couldn't do anything but sleep, but didn't realize it was Dengue. I thought it was because I had stayed up late working on Joel's birthday present.

• I started looking for a website where I could watch episodes of 30 Rock for free online.

• I felt surpsingly better two days later and went to visit a new refugee camp about 2 hours north of Mae Sot. These people came from an IDP camp in Karen state. What this means is that they had already had to leave their villages after being attacked by the Burmese army. And now, for a second time, they were attacked and had no where left to go except across the river to Thailand. I got tons more to say about this if you're interested.



• The next day I woke up with a fever, in massive pain, with a really gross rash all over my body. I realized this was the second wave of Dengue Fever. (The picture doesn't do this rash justice - trust me.) I graciously accepted the painkillers/fever reducers leftover from my friend who had already had Dengue. (You get it from mosquitoes, not people, so it's not her fault.)



• Two days later, when I thought I was capable of sitting in a tuk tuk to get to the hospital, I went to Mae Sot General Hospital to get tested officially and stronger painkillers for my back which was still in a lot of pain and made me feel like I was 100 years old.

• During the check-in process I got super nauseous and dizzy and then half passed-out in the bathroom. When I got back to the waiting room my skin was pale, cold and clammy, and I put my head down on bench to try to stop the spinning. This must have triggered something with the nurses, because they came rushing over. I got to skip the waiting line and was wheel-chaired to a hospital bed. They told me my I was hypotension (low blood pressure) and then they gave me my first-ever IV drip! The first half hour of coming back to life and feeling human again was actually pretty cool. The four and half hours folloing that ended up just being really boring.

• A blood test confirmed that I had the non-deadly kind of Dengue Fever.



• I had to give a urine sample (not difficult) while being attached to an IV (more difficult) using a squat toilet (very difficult).

• I didn’t do it right and while I was in the bathroom my IV got reversed and filled with blood all the way into the bag. I didn’t have the fancy-schmancy rolling things. I just carried it and then put it on a hook in the bathroom. This is once people stopped freaking out and it was almost back to normal.


• Props to KR, who thought she was coming with me to get a blood test, some drugs and head home and instead ended up hanging out with me for the whole 5 hour ordeal. I paid for her noodle soup for dinner and somehow she got me to agree to cook lasagna for her, although she claims I agreed to it before the whole hospital thing.

• We saw a frog in our kitchen staring at the wall. He was in the exact same spot for several hours, so we figured he was most likely dead, but he was just so funny looking we decided to let him rest in peace, whatever his state was. His name was Leonardo. The next morning Leonardo was gone. We were happy he was alive and had found the strength to move on from whatever heartbreaking story led him to stare at the wall for so many hours.


• I recovered from Dengue Fever.

• We found roti guy #4 - Mohammad Ali. He didn’t make this up. He likes his name a lot and likes making the boxing gesture when introducing himself. He's right by our house, but not always open at night when we need him. The least oily, nice packaging, has an English menu, speaks some English, 25B.

• Leonardo showed up two nights later, in the exact same spot and angle. We tried to brainstorm why. I think he made plans for a hot froggy date and was waiting for his lady frog to show up and when she didn't show up he realized he probably got the date wrong and went home. And him coming back was him realizing he had written a 5 and not a 3. In the morning, he was gone again.

• I bought health insurance.

• I found a website from China that shows 30 Rock for free.

• Someone broke into our house while we were sleeping and stole a bunch of my roommate’s stuff. (Not the Dengue/bicycle roommate.) Really upsetting for my roommate whose stuff was stolen, and really scary and unsettling for everyone in the house. She's just in Mae Sot for a couple of weeks, so she's crashing in our living room. She was sleeping right next to the REALLY LOUD BROKEN SLIDING door that usually wakes the whole house up when it's opened. Somehow the person climbed over the gate, opened the door, climbed over her, took her stuff, climbed over her again, and then left (leaving the door open) without waking anyone up. Around 5 my bladder awakened me and me opening my bedroom door woke her up. I asked why the door was open. She said she sleepwalks so maybe she did it. We were both 1/2 asleep so we didn't even think twice about it. Then when she woke up for real a couple of hours later, we realized what had happened. Well, first she thought maybe she could have sleptwalked and moved her stuff somewhere, but after a thorough search of the entire house and ground with no results followed by someone noticing motorbike tracks in the mud leading up to the side of the gate, we realized she hadn't sleptwalked at all. Again we tried to talk to the police, who were happy to sit and listen and write some stuff down, but who were pretty much completely useless.

• On the upside, one officer took a blue wallet out his drawer and asked if we knew the American whose passport was inside and wanted to take it to give it to her. I said yes and I walked out with a new wallet and passport, with zero record being made of the transaction. I actually did know her and when I gave it back to her, she told me she had filed a report and called to follow up on it several times. When the officer handed it to me he said it had been sitting in the drawer about a month.

• Leonardo has been coming back every night to stare at the wall. He's always gone by the next morning. I'm now thinking he's actually a hired spy working for the guy who got into the house. Ok, not really, but only because Leo is in the kitchen, which 6 inches lower than the living room. Therefore, even Leo was using x-ray vision to see what's happening through the wall, he'd still only be able to see the concrete underneath our bedrooms.

• I got an official light blue polo shirt for one of my programs. This is exciting! To save money, they dated the shirts 2008- 2010. Nice work guys!

• As if banana roti itself wasn't not already the least healthy thing on the planet, we decided to try it with ice cream on top last night. Guess what... it was amazing. We're thinking of submitting it to http://thisiswhyyourefat.com.

• I bicycled past an begging elephant today. I’ve walked by and driven by elephants before, never bicycled. Although I don't like seeing elephants walking around streets begging for food, I decided bicycling by an elephant is my favorite way to pass one if I must. It gives you enough time to make real eye contact, but not too long that you think he might step on you.

• I stopped by a carnival tonight and saw Thai carnies. I thought I was real smart by not playing those games that look easy but are actually impossible. But then I paid 20 baht ($0.59, .41E, 4.79Quetzals) for the worst haunted house ever. I should have remembered that throwing things at other things is always fun, even if you don't win a gigantic stuffed animal and just used that 20 baht for the 'pop the balloons with darts' game.

• The soundtrack for a car racing game at the carnival was an actual car alarm. I can't even imagine how the lady who runs that deals.

• I'll finish with some pictures of Karen food. I don't know what the dishes are. What I do know is that Karen food is spicy, salty and uses a lot of fish paste and vegetables I've never seen before. Anyone who knows what any of this stuff is, feel free to chime in.




• Tomorrow I leave for Mae Sariang, where I'll be for the next week!