The early years in Thailand
Where in the world is Thailand?
“We’re posting you to Thailand,” the caller on the other end of the line said. It sounded like she was slightly relieved, ‘maybe’, she hoped, this would finally work out. ‘Yeah, whatever,’ was my silent response. This was the third such call in about as many months, and if it was like the others, this one too would end up washing out. I wasn’t going to make a mad dash for the library to find out where Thailand was like I’d done with the other two calls.
As I reread that last sentence and I think about the act of going to a Library and actually searching for books, it strikes me that the world has changed tremendously over the past 30 years. No one runs to a library anymore to do research in books unless they are students and need access to something in a university collection. And yet, there is nothing quite like sitting down in a comfortable chair in a library and slowly leafing through a book, reading random paragraphs and letting your mind wander; or perhaps to get up and search for another related book and returning to ensconce yourself once more in that small corner of quiet bliss and read and dream of far-off places, the only guide to those dreams the glossy pictures in lavishly printed coffee-table books. Your mind could wander and conjure up the most fanciful conjectures about those places; no referees to nix the comments of others scrolling up at the bottom of a page, or inane or asinine quips to interrupt and destroy the dream. So unlike today, where all you have to do is go online and punch in a country name and every sordid little detail pops up; ten thousand websites to troll before you actually have the information presented to you the way you want it, and not a moment of pure, dreamy bliss or imagination of what some far-off country may be like, as everybody is now online, and a critic. We didn’t have the internet yet then, we hardly had computers, and the ones that did exist were often of such gigantic proportions… Funny what a difference 30 years makes.
Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Ayuthaya
Third time is a charm…
So what was this call that was telling me I was going to Thailand? It was near the end of May, and the third call of this nature. The first one told me I’d be posted to Papua New Guinea. That didn’t work out because of political instability in that country at the time. Then I was told I’d be going to the tropical paradise islands of the New Hebrides, Vanuatu, and the nearby nation of Fiji. I’d be posted there as an agriculture journalist for one of the local radio stations, presenting agriculture reports on new methodology introduced to the islands. My French wasn’t good enough for that one, so I was told tout suite that c’est domage, but c’est la vie, n’est pas?. I wasn’t in any mood to go the ten miles to the nearest library the third time around to look up some ‘in-the-middle-of-nowhere’ country called Thailand, thighland or tieland or whatever other names people had come up with. A week later, I wished I’d looked it up, but I was hoping that the upcoming three-day orientation would give me all the answers and knowledge I would need.
Houseboats along the banks of the Chaophraya river
Orientation for the Orient
The orientation was a good introduction, but somehow or another there were very few things I remembered only a week after that orientation, and like all such events, it’s usually the more low-brow things that stick with you. The unfortunate thing of the Thai language is that although in Thailand the word is uttered as a sign of respect and propriety at the end of sentences, krap, in English, is just a little too much for small-minded young adults not to make some fun of.
Boats on the bank of the Mekong River
What’s more, we also learned that everybody wore skirts, men and women alike – the pa khao mah, and the sarong, respectively – and going to the toilet was going to require a certain level of gymnastic expertise as we would not likely encounter western-style toilets, but instead have to learn how to deal with Asian-style squat toilets. We sniggered and laughed as we thought about how we as westerners would have to balance ourselves to do our business – you laugh now, but not having trained for this since birth, it’s not easy to get enough of an angle in your ankles that you can squat and balance yourself; many of us are constantly looking for support behind us to prevent us from tipping over backwards – yes, you may laugh now.
The baseball bat
How to pack for 2 years
A few weeks after the training session in Ottawa, the paper work arrived: health checks, dental checks, storage papers for goods, payment forms, bank release forms, plane ticket information, passport requirements, visa applications, yellow fever and cholera vaccinations, a basic package on the country and it’s politics and culture, and a final checklist for packing things for two years. But that was the conundrum: how DO you pack a bag for a two-year trip? You’re allowed 70kgs. You’ve got a three-day stop-over in Brussels, and you’ve got to collect your luggage. The average person would grab two suitcases, put in as much clothing as they could, and then add some more. What do you put into two duffel bags or seaman’s bags?
A baseball bat and glove, two winter jackets and a sweater, a pair of shorts, a bunch of t-shirts, all the good shirts you own, three pairs of jeans, a good pair of hiking boots, all the cassette tapes you’ve got – LPs will break – a note book, lots of pens, letter writing paper, envelopes, and photographs.
Temple ruins in Sukhothai Historical Park
The plane left on time, and all the stops in between went fine, and the luggage didn’t get lost, and it wasn’t too much of a hassle lugging around two large over-stuffed seaman’s bags in Europe and on the trains, but what in the world was I doing going off to a country called Thailand?
