Yet again, I’m up and running….I returned from Bangkok yesterday at 5 Am, and leave for Loei Province (where I had orientation) tomorrow afternoon. However, my 4 day break was amazing! I left for Bangkok on an overnight bus at 12 AM on November 1st. The buses here are really plush because they are modeled after the business class sections of airplanes, so the seats are really large and recline almost all the way back, and there are even stewardesses on every bus ride. They dress in these really cute uniforms and pass out drinks and snacks, and make sure that everyone is comfortable…It’s really comical, but also quite nice!
We arrived in Bangkok at 6 in the morning and Kate and I walked all around until we were able to find a reasonable hotel that wasn’t a jail cell. After a couple of hours of searching we were able to finally found the perfect place! Then we took showers and we met up with our friend Hilary and Louisa, a friend of Hilary’s. We all went to Indian food, which was delicious, and then went out to talk and have coffee. Then we went shopping on Khaw Sahn Road, which is the most touristy place in all of Bangkok. It is filled with hundreds of farang (foreigners) who, for the most part, are incredibly rude to the Thai people who work there. However, it has really nice, cheap things that are unavailable in Khon Kaen, so I fell for the tourist trap as well.
However, the night did not end there! November 2nd is Loi Kratong, which is a big holiday in Thailand. It’s when you buy floats made out of banana leaves, filled with flowers and bananas that you put all of your negative feelings onto and then place into a body of water so that all of your worries and aggravations float away. In some places, huge lanterns are places into the air, like my experience at Tamui, but that didn’t occur in Bangkok. To celebrate, we went to the river and watched as everybody placed their floats into the water. We then met a nice professor who worked at Thammasat (the major university in Bangkok) who asked Hilary for a lighter to light the candles on his float. We talked with him for a little bit, and then he let us place all of our ill feelings onto his float, which was very generous of him…His poor float must have been feeling pretty heavy. We then went to a bakery where they had actual desserts!
The next day, was full of planning for the impending meeting on November 4th. We met at 9:30 am, and planned until 6 pm at night to decide the agenda of the meeting. Luckily, I don’t really mind meetings since I’m so used to them after being on this program, and we even got falafels, warm pita bread, and hummus for lunch: it was fabulous! At 6:30 pm, Hilary and I met with Metha, a well-known NGO who has lots of connections in Bangkok, for dinner to network and further discuss the meeting with him. He was a really nice guy, and it was cool to meet with someone who has such a stronghold on the youth movement in Bangkok albeit his need to constantly be the center of attention. After dinner, he took us to a great jazz bar that was full of locals, and I got a decent cup of tea (my first once since coming to Thailand)!
On November 4th, we woke up at 6 am and hopped in a taxi to go to the office of TVS (the Thai Volunteer Service) where we met with and debriefed the students who had come to Bangkok for the meeting from Isaan. Then we had lunch and made our way over to the meeting, which started late because of the terrible traffic in the city. The meeting had 25 people, and it was a great success! The people there came up with the main goals of the network, the name of the network: Youth Partnership for Human Rights, and the steering committee members to plan the big network meeting on December 10th. We were able to accomplish a lot, and it was really empowering to be there. In the U.S., I constantly find myself questioning what my real passion in life is, and whether or not peace studies is something that I’m really willing to commit to. Seeing 25, young members of Thai society come together to try and form a national human rights youth network was amazing, and it showed me that I should do what I want to do and pursue what I’m interested in, regardless of what others think.
My entire experience in Thailand has made me realize that human rights and grassroots movements are what make me happy. Fighting for people whose voices aren’t heard by their own governments or the international community is something that I find overwhelmingly rewarding. It’s interesting in this context because the concept of human rights in Thailand is brand new. Class action suits were introduced just a year ago. Furthermore, there is hi so (high society) and lo so (low society). Lo so, the people of Isaan, have this notion that they don’t possess any rights. If the government takes the villagers’ land, kills their relatives, and ruins their livelihoods, the villagers don’t think that they have any right to fight for what they have lost because the government is hi so. Therefore, it’s truly inspiring to see villagers and the youth fight against this idea that only those who are wealthy have human rights in Thailand. It also makes me feel so fortunate to live in a county, America, where everyone knows that they have rights and that the court system in the U.S. is much less corrupt and much more effective than in Thailand.
Sa wa dee ka (both “hello” and “goodbye” in Thai). I am now off to my 4th and final unit: mining. I am really excited, and can’t wait to write a ridiculously long blog post about my adventures!
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