Thailand Part 1

Well it’s been a while. I’ve settled into working on my different jobs, trying to scrape together enough to get by, and spending two to three days a week volunteering. I seem to have gotten myself into a regular weekly schedule out here, working Monday through Friday and then letting loose, and enjoying the sun, over the weekends. It is nice however as I am rarely in the same place two days in a row. Sometimes I’m at the East Bali Poverty Project office, sometimes working from home, a day or two a week at Paul Ropp’s office (a local fashion designer who as hired Dan to help with his accounting and asked me to help him with sales and marketing on a part-time basis), and other days at various meetings around the island for this environmental NGO startup. During the past month or so I’ve stopped taking as many pictures, and although my life is still very interesting to me, the intricacies have probably become a little less interesting to all of you.

With that being said Dan and I just got back from a 10-day trip to Thailand to get our new visa’s processed, and that my friends is what we’ll be discussing here today.

We got into Bangkok on Thursday afternoon and immediately had a head-on battle with the furious city traffic. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a city with worse traffic and lazier drivers. We probably spent half of our time there in cabs doubling as park benches. The other options for travel are the sky train, which only has one line that either never had a stop where we were or didn’t have a stop close to where we were going, or tuk-tuk’s. The tuk-tuk’s are little carts that have been mounted on the back of motorcycles, and are operated by insane men who think that they can charge you double the price of a cab for a ride that is just as long and twice as cramped. It’s fun to do once or twice but the constant haggling can be a little much sometimes. Especially because no matter where we’d want to go the drivers would try to insist on taking us to the Pat-Pong district for one of Bangkok’s most famous shows. To entice us (I think) they would show us a menu of different acts that we could have the pleasure of seeing…Yikes!

Accommodation all around Thailand is as cheap as you want it to be, both in cost and quality. We stayed mostly in guesthouses everywhere we went, which cost us each no more than $5 a night, but as you can see from our room in Bangkok sometimes you get exactly what you pay for. In the other locations we stayed rooms were much nicer. Guesthouses, for me, are the perfect places to stay, but if you’re looking for clean and comfortable you best look elsewhere. In all of the bathrooms you were practically showering while on the toilet, flushing the toilet by dumping buckets of water into the bowl, and sleeping on a bed that was either made of bricks or regular padding with giant sinkholes in the middle of them.

But all of these issues become insignificant while traveling. You only go to your room to drop off your bags, shower, and pass out after a night at the bars. You never really notice how hot or uncomfortable a place is until you wake up the next morning, and the discomfort can mostly be blamed on a hangover. But the sights you see, the people you meet, and the experiences you have, combined with a bank account that you hope will not be too traumatized when all is said and done, make comfort an unnecessary luxury.

We stayed a couple nights up in the Khoa San road area in Bangkok, which is an international haven for backpackers. Cheap rooms, cheap food, tons of cheap bars and more westerners than New York…but it still keep its Thailand charm. A lot of people claim that the Khoa San area in true Thailand, which I agree with if we’re talking about the country before any western presence, but on the flip side if it’s not Thailand what is it? It’s unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been that’s for sure. It’s also in a great location to explore the Grand Palace, the big Wats (temples) and the Bangkok canal system.

The palace Wat’s are a series of huge ornate buildings, with gold and glass mosaic walls glistening in the sun. The temples themselves speak to the rich Buddhist culture in Thailand, as well as the proud Thai history. One of the temples houses the Jade Buddha; an iconic religious relic discovered hundreds of years ago with no true knowledge of where and when it was carved, but a long detailed list of stops before arriving at the Grand Palace. The inside of the palace walls are lined with fresco’s from famous Thai painters over hundred’s of years and describe a beautiful mixture of history and Thai religion that we could merely admire but never truly understand.

The boat trip through the canals is like a portal back in time. Dilapidated houses line the waterways as people come out on their canoes to greet your boat and try to make a sale. Kids play in the water, happy to provide entertainment for a couple of wide-eyed westerners. We had the captain of our boat stop so we could take a few pictures of kids jumping off a bridge, of which the one here is the best I could get (timing is tough). A little further down the way we passed a giant Komodo Dragon, which alone would deter me from ever swimming in these canals, let alone the fact that these canals make the Hudson river look like Swiss spring water.

On Friday night we went to a Muay Thai fight at Lumphini Boxing Stadium. We stood in the stands amongst a sea of Asian gambling nuts. I have no idea what the hell was going on but can simply describe it as the following: In between each round of the fights everyone would start screaming in Thai and shaking their hands around in the air. Sometimes they noticeably made eye contact with someone else, which I assume means a bet was initiated. Some of them just seemed to be shaking fingers around at nobody and shouting nonsense at the ceiling…none of them looked or acted happy at any point during or after any of the fights. It was impossible to tell who was won of lost a bet. The whole ordeal seemed like it was way more stress than it could be worth…but I guess a lot gets lost in translation.

Some other Bangkok highlights (I should move along as there were a few other stops to talk about): Markets the size of Rhode Island. I have never seen anything the size of the weekend market in Bangkok. We saw a nice little restaurant when we first got there and it took us more than two hours to find the place again, and that was after we had already given up and were trying to figure out where the hell the exit was. We had a traditional Thai massage (no funny stuff) where you literally pay for a 60 minute ass-beating that even some contortionists might not be able to handle…but truth be told after walking for days straight around a giant city in debilitating heat it’s just what we needed. We ate at a great restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms (I think it’s gets this name because these are the two most purchased things in Thailand), and we had a couple run-ins with elephants gallivanting through the city streets.

After a few days in Bangkok we were ready to move on, but had to wait a couple more days for our visa’s to process at the Indonesian Embassy, so we decided to head two hours north to the former Thai Capitol of Ayutthaya…and what a breath of fresh air it was. Ayutthaya is considered a small city in Thailand, but is really more of a town. Throughout the area are scattered temple ruins and the number one item on the menu of activities is to rent a push bike, meaning regular bike but because everyone in Asia over 2 years old owns a motorbike you need to specify, and ride around town to visit the various temple ruins, modern temples, Buddha statues, and 7 elevens (When you’re riding a push bike in sun like that with not a cloud in the sky you will amaze yourself at how excited you get dreaming of taking refuge in a nicely air-conditioned convenience store.) Temples, elephants, rivers, Buddha’s, more temples, more elephants…the scattered ruins of old Thailand mixed in amongst the newer town really draws you in. That mixed with the serenity of the area and the overwhelming kindness of the locals was more than enough to make this the favorite stop on our trip.

The monastery incident: As our first day in Ayutthaya was coming to a close Dan and I were riding our bikes around the outskirts of town. We had ventured over the moat and for tourists it seemed as though we were in relatively uncharted territory. We rode down a little back road and came upon some kids playing a street soccer game so we stopped for a little to watch. After some time we decide to keep going down the road to see what else this small villagesque area has in store. The path we’re on leads us to a small buddhist monastery that is seemingly the end of the road and eerily empty. Dan decided that this was probably our cue to turn back and shouted “I don’t think this road goes anywhere…” I’m a little up ahead of Dan and still in explorer mode. Thinking I heard his comment Dan turned around to leave, while take a right turn down a narrow wooden plank into the grounds of the monastery. A few seconds later a chorus of loud barks and growls erupt from around the corner and turning around to figure out what the commotion is about Dan sees me tearing ass around the corner, with about 10 or 15 dogs sprinting behind and next to me, barking, growling, bearing their teeth, nipping at my feet, while I, with a look of absolute pants-shitting fear, am screaming “WHAT! WHY! COME ON! NO! STOP IT! STOP IT!” After a short chase I got away...with a healthy new fear of dogs (in Asia).

New Year, New Jobs, Still Fun.

With the arrival of the new year has come a flurry of new job and volunteer opportunities that we have started to really get involved with, which has brought on a serious and fulfilling lifestyle change for us here in Bali. But before I get into that let's talk about New Years Eve.

For New Years Dan and I decided to take a little trip to Gili Trawangan island, a small island off the coast of Lombok (the island directly East of Bali) that is notorious for it's free spirited parties. In order to get there we had to take an hour and a half cab ride across Bali to the coastal port of Padang Bai. There we waited for an hour for the next ferry as we literally walked up to the previous one as the gate was closing...it's a frustrating things to see. We sat at the food stalls in the port and ordered some Nasi Campur from a small stand. Nasi Campur in this case means that the little old woman working the stand takes a plate of rice (Nasi) and mixes it with a few other things (chicken, tofu, eggs, chiles) that are already cooked (god knows when...hopefully fresh each morning) and on display in the window of her small cart, along with the bevy of flies that tend to accompany carts such as this one. She then proceeds to grab each part of the dish with her bare hand and place them around the rice. It may sound like at this point one would lose their appetite but I think you get used to things like this once you live out here for a little, and besides on trips like this you have to adopt the cliched mantra "when in Rome." The meal, including water, cost a total of 10,000 Rupiah (roughly 90 cents) and was surprisingly satisfying and definitely filling enough.

After continually convincing everyone else at the little port market that we didn't want to stockpile sunglasses, or buy water to supplement the water we were already carrying, or basically that just because we're obvioulsy western doesn't mean we'll buy anything that is for sale, we got onto the next ferry. The ferry ride took about 5 hours and docked in the southern Lombok port of Lembar. We then took an hour and a half bus ride to the north of Lombok, passing small villages and herds of monkeys (is herd the correct nomencalture? packs? hoards? There were really a lot of them) to the northern coast of Lombok where we sat and waited for the ferry to Gili Trawangan while succumbing to the hard sell put on us by the local travel agents, a.k.a. every local person as they all seem to work for one "travel agency" or another, that all seem to sork together, to organize our trip back to Bali. We ended with an arrangement to pay just around USD $14 for the same itinerary back...not bad if you have 12 hours to spare and don't mind arriving home with next to unbearable ass pain.

Finally after a short ferry we arrived at the island and jumped in a donkey pulled cart that took us to our hotel. Our room was nice enough, in other words it had two beds and a bathroom, and was just a short walk from all the bars and restaurants along the beach. The running water for the sink and shower was salt water, and as far as I can tell was probably pumped directly out of the ocean...so I would end each shower by dumping a bottle of fresh water over my head.

The first night and next day leading up to New Years Eve were filled with torrential rain storms flooding the streets so unfortunately I didn't bring my camera and therefore have only a few pictures from our stay out there. The bars along the beach are all built for comfort; open air, bungalows and tables on the beach, cheap beers, and tons of people there raring to celebrate the occasion. Each bar, restaurant, and hotel had their own new years celebrations that were open to everyone. People overflowing into the streets, climbing and dancing on chairs and tables. Clubs and stages were built over the ocean with fireworks at midnight, and everything else that goes along with a party of this magnitude. Gili Trawangan is notorious for its lax drug policies, which not surprisingly leads to a lot of people selling marijuana throughout the island, and it is also famous for the fact that Magic Mushrooms are sold openly at a bunch of the bars. It's really a one of a kind place, and with so many people there for New Years that it was probably even hard to find a spot to sleep the night on the beach, I can safely say it was quite an experience.

New Years Day was spent lounging on the beach, snorkeling, reading, and watching a movie in the beachside bungalows. On January 2 we started our long journey home at 8:15 AM and got back to our house about 12 hours later.

Now onto the serious side of life. I'm still doing work for Craig smith on his Meaningful Broadband report on a task by task basis even though he is currently based out of Bangkok. On top of that I've also found a few other great opportunities that I am very excited about.

Dan and I have started volunteering for an organization known as the East Bali Povery Project. Started by a man named David Booth, it's aim is to bring health and nutrition information, education, resources such as water and food to a series of villages in Northeast Bali that are living in abject poverty. David started the organization in 1998, and since then he has done absolutely amazing things with the cooperation of the village. In his work he has devised several models for sustainable development within these villages that allow all of the people living there to become actively involved in the betterment of their own lives. I could go on forever about the things he's done for them such as building several schools, building several water resevoirs, teaching them how to farm for things to supplement their traditional diet of Cassava, Corn, and rice, and teaching them about property nutrition and hygiene. The biggest part of his mission with the villagers is to teach them the idea of "learning by doing." He refuses to simply bring them food and supplies because this way they would never learn how to improve their lives and the lives of their children once he's gone. If anyone is more interested you can check out the website as some of the projects he has put into place are absolutely remarkable.

My first project with EBPP is to design a curriculum for a journalism class for their higher level students. Keep in mind this will be a very basic level class, and even though I myself am not a journalist David seems to be impressed with my work so far. Maybe working at the magazine paid off? After doing this I'm going to go up to the village once a week and help teach the students there how to put together their own village newsletter that hopefully in the next couple months or so we will start printing and distributing around the village itself and to neighboring areas.

Last Friday Dan and I went with him up to the village and saw what a profound effect he has had on thousands of lives. People stopping him, and us, along the way to thank us for he has done for them and for what we might do. Going into the schools and seeing the smiling students who are so happy and eager to learn, and who know that just 8 years ago there were no schools in the area. We saw kids practicing Karate in unison, one of the only sports David could bring to the village being that the whole area is located on a mountainside terrain, with only tiny plots of land that can be flattened or used in this way. We saw kids in uniform making the 2 hour hike to and from school along the mountainside. Once again I could go on for hours about what we saw, and how inspiring it was, but I think that this short description can suffice for now.

Another organization I hope to begin work with shortly is a startup non-profit that is tentatively called ECO (Environmental Communications Organization) which will have a subsidiary organization called START (Sustainable Tourism And Responsible Travel). I met the founder, Muriel Ydo, through our friend Alan out here and took immediate interest in her mission. Muriel has been working with various non-profit organizations around the island helping with education, healthcare, and environmental management for years now. She brought the Cleanup the World campaign to Bali a few years ago and managed to gather 10,000 volunteers the first time around. With this new organization she wants to do a variety of things, mainly focused on saving the environment, around the island. Some of her ideas include establishing a set of best practices that we can push organizations (mainly in the tourism industry which literally is linked with almost every business on the island, which is where the idea for START comes from) to adopt that would not only be better for the environment, but will also help the businesses to save money in various ways. She also wants to use the organization as a logistics base for all of the non-profits and NGO's around the island. In doing this she hopes to makes all of these now separate entities work together in order to become more efficient, ensure less duplicitous efforts, thereby saving time and money that could be focused elsewhere, gathering and supplying research and information for anyone involved and interested, helping to align efforts on the island towards common goals and the most effective means to achieve this...etc. etc. etc.

I'm not sure exacly what I'll be doing for her yet but in the conversations that we've had so far it seems more and more likely that I might be able to play a nice role in the development of this organization.

There are also a couple other opportunities that could turn into part time jobs/ways to make money but as I've already probably bored all of you to death I'll hold off on any more details until it's worth elaborating.

With these two quasi jobs along with volunteering I've suddenly found myself pretty busy out here. I still try to run every evening along the beach, and go swimming a good amount, but most of you would be happy to know that my life out here is no longer simply a carefree vacation...it has transformed into a vacation with a purpose. but seriously, it's nice to have nothing to do for a little but after a while you just get restless, and start to feel unfulfilled. Now that I'm busy with work I hopefully won't take my free time for granted as much, and I'll get just as excited as I used to about going out on Friday and Saturday nights. On top of that the fact that I'm not just working as a bartender or some other "just to pay the bills" job, but actually working on projects that I care about, it makes me feel like I'm actually starting to achieve my objective out here of a well-rounded character growing experience.

One quick aside about this blog is that the material I was discussing didn't have many correlating photos so I just threw in a few nice pictures here and there to spice things up.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happines

So it's been a while since the last post, but there are very good reasons for that...

The first reason is we had to take a 4 day trip to Singapore in order to get our 6 month visas processed. It's safe to say that we actually had a really good time while we were there, but it's also safe to say it wasn't because of the city. Imagine a place where you can't chew gum, it seems like you would get beat mercilessly for littering or jay-walking, and where the fun and culture seem like they've been sucked out of the atmosphere like the scene from Spaceballs with the giant vacuum cleaner...put yourself in that city and you're still probably in a better place than Singapore. I guess that's a little harsh. After living in New Orleans for the past 6 years, and now Bali for the past couple months, two places absolutely overflowing with culture and a joy for life that make you realize how beautiful the world can be, it's hard to really find the beauty in a place like Singapore.

One of the cool parts of Singapore is how unique it is in its population. A major trading port for hundreds of years, and a British colony for a while as well, it is a relatively young country (a little over 50 years since its independence). The population there is a majority Chinese, with strong minority populations of Malaysians and Indians. They say that Singapore is good for two things, shopping and eating, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm not much of a shopper, so eating it was. We visited Little China for some Chinese food, Little India for some chicken tikka masala and a bunch of other things that tasted great even though I have no idea what they were and couldn't understand a word our waiter was saying. We visited food courts that felt like a hall of mirrors...each stall has the same exact menu and they still shove it in your face like that's all you needed to make up your mind.

Singapore is kind of like the song New York, New York. If you can make it (fun) there, you can make it (fun) anywhere. I think we succeeded in that which definitely is a good sign. One of our daily laughs came from our 45 floor elevator ride where we freaked out a few loads of Singaporeans by making ridiculous faces at ourselves in the mirrored walls. We also made sure to follow all of the instructions we saw, including signs painted on the road(check out the scene in the humps ahead photo)...




























Anyway, the second reason that I've been too busy to put this together is that I finally kind of maybe found work out here! Dan and I got hired on a temporary basis to help a guy we met out here, Craig Smith, with a new big project he's working on. A little background on Craig. He has worked for several non-profits throughout his life, and after writing an article for the Harvard Business Review about how to structure corporate philanthropy he was hired by Bill Gates, personally, to be the head of the philanthropy division at Microsoft. After 18 months he decided that the corporate life was not for him and he went on his way, but needless to say this guy knows some stuff.

We are currently helping him put together a report called the Meaningful Broadband Report, which will be presented to the Indonesian government along with his sponsors BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia - the bank with the most successful microfinance branch in the world), NSN (Nokia Siemens Network), and others. The report talks about how the effective implementation of widespread mobile broadband to the Middle of the Pyramid of the Indonesian population can help in numerous ways to help solidify the infrastructure of Indonesia and also provide a platform for sustainable economic development. I hesitate to elaborate more, and I'm not sure if Craig would want me to, as the report is still yet to be published. It's some pretty visionary stuff, but I must say that if this report is taken seriously by the government, and by investors, it could not only transform Indonesia, it will become a model for all the emerging/developing markets in the world, and will change the way that MNC's do business worldwide. Over the past two weeks we've been putting in some long hours with Craig trying to get the report together for his partner Ilham Habibie (son of the former president of Indonesia).



The third reason is that last week we went to Jakarta for the first time. Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia, and is located on the island of Java. A friend of ours out here, Alan Solow, has a beautiful place out there and invited us to stay with him for a few days. He wanted to introduce us to some of his business partners in the hopes that it might materialize into some good work opportunities for us. He also wanted to show us the nightlife in Jakarta which is absolutely insane. Clubs with elevators to take you to all the different floors, that don't close until Monday...and by that I mean they are open (and apparently always absolutely packed) 24 hours a day for 6 days of the week, and they close for about 6 hours on Monday afternoon to clean up for the reopening that night. Jakarta is the type of city you'd expect in a country like Indonesia. Hugely crowded, some of the worst traffic in the world, and a huge disparity between the immaculately clean ultra developed business area and the sprawling slum that is most of the rest of the city. It's crazy to think that the capitol city in a country with the biggest Muslim population in the world has one of the most off-the-wall party scenes anywhere in the world.

Now back to Bali. About a month ago we moved into a nice two bedroom villa. Our living room, as you can see in one of the pictures, is all open air. It feels like we are living in a bungalow in paradise...because we are. We have a "small" plunge pool in our garden/living room, and a bigger pool that we can use to swim laps about two doors down located at the cafe that delivers breakfast to us if we so choose consisting of eggs, bacon, bread, fruit salad, and your choice of coffee or tea for a reasonable fee of around $3. I also included a picture of my bedroom, bed complete with fan (a.k.a. air conditioning) and mosquito net, which provides futile defense against insects at night...small price to pay for living out here. We've both rented motorbikes to get around our area, which is amazing. I never used to like motorcycles that much but there is something exhilarating about just hopping on and going, weaving in and out of traffic, flying into the opposite lanes to get around slow moving cars...just kidding mom. The beach is about a 2 minute ride from our house and I usually go for a run right before sunset at around 5 PM, come back and jump in our pool, change clothes, and go back out to the beach to have a drink while I enjoy the sunset.

The nights here can be whatever you make of them. If you want you can find a nice quiet open air bar on the beach and have a few drinks, you can go dance salsa at some of the bars on Jalan Dyana Pura. There are world class clubs on the beaches in Seminyak, and Kuta if you're into that, but they don't really get going until around 2, 3, maybe even 4 am. Liquor is expensive out here as it is all imported, which means the prices are bumped up because of taxes and most likely even more because of massive corruption. So instead we drink Bintang, which is the local water...I mean beer. The clubs are always filled with a mix of Bule (westerners) and Indonesians, and I have to say that there must be something in the Bintang out here because the Indonesian women are absolutely gorgeous.

We are still having the time of our lives out here, and I just hope I can find some continual work so that I can stay longer than my current savings would allow. As usual I've also included some pictures of local friends, beaches, and some of the sites that we've seen over the past few weeks, and like the last time it is too hard to organize the pictures into the blog in the right places. I miss everyone back home, especially with thanksgiving passing and new years on the way, but you will never catch me complaining about the situation I’m in. That's all for now... If anyone reading this blog decides, screw this, I need some phone eric in my life, then download skype...my skype name is broaderic and as far as I know I'm the only broaderic living in seminyak Indonesia so I should be easy to find. Selemat Tahun Baru!