Thursday, December 17, 2009

25: Worshipping Giant Chickens, Cinderula, and the Sizzler.

One Saturday evening, Jon and Film took me to a triple birthday party. Of the three men celebrating the passing of another year, I was acquainted with two. One of the birthday-ees was the fifth grade teacher at my small school, Krue (teacher) Piirat. Piirat is a rather unusual looking fellow by any standards, but particularly in Thailand. He is jollily rotund with freckles, a mustache, and a short ponytail- none of which I have ever seen on another Thai person. At the party, he continually asked me if I was drunk yet, when I was clearly drinking only water, and was merciless in his attempts to make me eat more of the field rat curry. Many of Jon’s friends were there, as well as people I knew from around the village. But, one man was conspicuously absent, Ay. Ay was Jon’s close friend and a member of our biking group. We had biked together every day for months when suddenly he disappeared. I asked Jon where he went, and was told that Ay was sick. It wasn’t until this Saturday night that I found out it was brain cancer, and Ay only had a few days left to live, if that. I promised to go visit him with Jon and Film the next morning. We entered Ay’s house to find a gaggle of women keeping vigil on the floor (traditional Thai houses have very little furniture), next to a pile of blankets. It took me a minute to realize Ay was underneath them, laid out to rest on a mat. Naturally slight, the illness rendered him emaciated, and all I could see among the fabric were sunken cheek bones. He was not conscious, but we talked to him just the same. True to Thai culture, there were no displays of emotion, but rather every effort was made to ensure his comfort. He passed away later that night.
I arrived at school the next morning to find all the teachers dressed in black. Normally on Mondays, we wear white as a sign of Buddhist purity, and the hushed voices told me something was wrong. Apparently over the weekend, three eighth grade students on a motor scooter were hit by a car- two boys and one girl. One student had been killed, while the other two remained in the hospital. The cremation ceremony was the next day. That night, I went with Jon and Film to the wat for the first day of Ay’s funeral. I’ve been to multiple Thai funerals before, but never of someone I had known. As we lit our incense stick s in front of the shrine and listened to the monks chant, I focused my mind on Ay’s memory and saying goodbye to a man who had been kind and welcoming to me.
The next day, I spent hours helping my sixth graders prepare for Wednesday’s regional academic competition. The Thais take these competitions very seriously and everyone was freaking out over various projects and preparations. My students were going to perform an English skit of Cinderella, which Pii Som renamed “Cinderula” for some reason. Moments of the skit preparation were fun, such as training a puberty aged boy to be an evil stepsister and orchestrating the final kiss scene, where Cindy had to “kiss” a prince charming a foot shorter and 40 pounds lighter. These moments aside, Pii Som and I were continually at odds all day. While I was encouraging the students to have fun and be silly with the skit, and she was yelling at them for not memorizing their lines fast enough. Som can be impatient with the students. She blames them for not learning fast enough or not understanding, when really the responsibility lies with her, for not teaching them adequately. She kept exclaiming how unintelligent and slow they were in front of them, for simply forgetting a line or not reading dramatically enough. I felt she was being unfair and mean, and she felt if she didn’t insult them, they wouldn’t practice hard enough. It was a tense afternoon. I coped by giving the kids big smiles and thumbs up whenever she wasn’t looking.
School closed an hour early that day for the cremation ceremony. There was a big crowd. At the end, as per tradition, everyone takes a flower, walks up the stairs onto the platform of the crematorium, and places it in front of the coffin. Crossing the platform, I caught a glimpse of the deceased student’s picture, standing next to the coffin. It was a girl, not a boy as Pii Som had told me, and a girl I knew. I stood there in shock, shaken and disoriented. I knew the girl, she was one of the first students to reach out and talk to me on my first day at school, when I was overwhelmed and being treated like an alien by a majority of the students. She was a smart kid with a chance of a future beyond rice farming, and the surprise of seeing her face next to the coffin rather than the anonymous boy I was expecting pushed my already teetering emotions over the edge. I put on my sunglasses and walked away from the crowd, breathing deeply and trying desperately not to cry as the teachers discussed the lack of food options at the funeral. That night, I went to the second night of Ay’s funeral. Three funerary events in 24 hours was more than I could take.
Wednesday morning, I woke up before dawn to go to the academic competition. All the teachers from Thangam school went together in Piirat’s pick-up truck, the windows of which were stuck in the down position. I sat shivering and miserable in the back of the truck for 2 hours as we wound through mountains. By the time we arrived, I was in less than a good mood and had a cold. I declined the offer of sticky rice and dried spicy pork (at 8 am) and dragged Orasa off with me in search of a hot beverage. We scrounged up coffee and then checked in. I was pegged to be a judge for the impromptu speech competition, and upon check-in, was informed my time slot was switched to the morning, which meant I would miss my kids performing Cinderella. I had worked with them for hours, revising and translating the script, helping them with emotions, providing costumes, and I was counting on viewing the final result. But no, instead I had to sit and listen to 15 students tell me in broken English the “notable” places in Phitsanulok province.
When things wrapped up, I took the lunch box they gave me with (surprise surprise) rice and a bag of curry, and set off to meet the teachers and students at our picnic site. Of course I dropped my curry bag on the way. The Wheel of Fortune had fallen from my smoking-project-success-loving-site high to an I-have-a-cold-and-hate-everyone-low. Plus I felt like crap. After lunch, I tried to feign interest and walk around the school, scouting other competition categories, but all the people and stares quickly overwhelmed me in my current state of mind. I felt unhinged, once again on the verge of tears. I asked Orasa if I could sit in a quiet corner somewhere and she installed me under a tree near the nurse’s office. I sat in blissful isolation for two hours, napping in the sun and reading Dostoyevsky. By the time she fetched me, my spirits were higher.
The next day was Thanksgiving. I imagine I would have felt homesick anyway- imagining my family and friends snug at home and gorging themselves on turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie- and the struggles of the week and my cold only made it worse. The difference in the way I dealt with the deaths of two people who mattered to me (namely to display emotion) and the way the Thais deal with it (saying that to cry is to behave like a child) made me feel more like an outsider than I had in a long time. I felt a gaping disconnect between me and the people in my village. They couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to be thousands of miles away from home on Thanksgiving, and that made me feel sad, distant, and a little resentful. I tried to explain Thanksgiving, but with my limited Thai, I only managed to convey we give thanks for our family, something vague about Indians and people from England, and that we worship giant chickens.
Fortunately, that weekend was the Unofficial Peace Corps Bangkok Thanksgiving Sizzler Extravaganza. My journey down started off an a high note when I made a bus driver and an entire bus of people wait 15 minutes for Kelsi to arrive from Sukothai. As soon as we were seated, I broke down in tears about my miserable week, and after a few snacks, promptly fell asleep. I crashed at the PC lounge that night, along with a big group of last year’s volunteers who were in BKK for their “Close of Service Conference”. They brought books and DVDs to pass on, and I happily pounced on the newly refreshed library, grabbing novels by Nabakov, Phillip Roth, and Thomas Hardy before anyone else could. I also found a salmon pink homecoming dress in the “donated clothes” box and wore it into the wee hours of the morning. The next day, Beau and I took the sky train out to Chatuchak market, a labyrinthine mix of booths that sell everything from stolen shoes to incense to puppies. We turned our market stroll into a beer crawl, and then met the rest of our friends for a night out.
Saturday morning was the Gender and Development Committee election. I ran for chair, and at the time of publication do not know if I was chosen or not. That afternoon, we held an informal Thanskgiving-esque sports day in Lumphini Park. Unfortunately, a pudgy Thai policewomen had a serious problem with us playing football on the grass, and said if we didn’t stop, we would be kicked out. And by “us playing football”, I mean I was lying on a mat on the side, eating fruit and listening to the guitar. The Sizzler dinner was quite the spectacle, with 60 volunteers descending en masse onto the unsuspecting patrons of the Thong Lo Sizzler. The food was less than delicious, but they sold actual wine and the “chocolate mousse” tasted ok if you mixed it with the “raspberry mousse” and covered them both in whipped cream. It felt American, and that is what mattered. A rooftop sky bar, impromptu dance party, English language movie, and trip to the foreign food grocery store helped squelch my homesickness. After a few days of good, old fashioned American fun, my equilibrium was back. And I can now check “going to Sizzler” off my bucket list.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Post 24: Smoking has a Bad Smell

The Impetus
Back in June, the teachers and I made a list of the problems facing our school. Through conversations and questionnaires, it became clear that one of the biggest issues is juvenile delinquency. Most of the students come from poor, farming families, and either have parents who are very young or absent. As I may have mentioned before, it is common for people in their twenties to leave the village in search of work, regardless of whether or not they have children. Many students thus live with their grandparents, who are for the most part too old to be diligent caretakers. There is not a ready supply of role models or guiding hands, and the kids have a fair degree of freedom. Furthermore, many students believe that they are going to become rice farmers anyway, so school is not important. All these factors lead to behavioral issues. I have 11 year old students who ask me for smoke breaks and get drunk on weekends. Yaa baa, or methamphetamine, is on the rise, which leads to fights and theft. Many girls do not continue their education past 9th grade due to pregnancy.
Part of the problem is ignorance. There is no anti-drug or sex education in Thai schools. For boys, smoking and drinking are promoted as signs of masculinity, and often fathers will have no qualms if their teenage son downs whiskey or smokes a cig every now and then. That smoking is addictive, and exponentially more so if begun at a young age, is unknown. When the teachers lecture their 7th graders about not smoking, they say it is because smoking is smelly and impolite for girls. Cancer and other side effects are not brought into the equation. These kids have no-one giving them substantive, factual information. American students had sex ed and D.A.R.E. Granted, many American teenagers begin smoking and sleeping around at shockingly young ages, but at least they are aware of the consequences of their actions, and will not find themselves surprised at pregnancy or emphysema in their 40s because they simply did not know. Health education is a powerful thing, empowering students to make their own informed decisions, and in my opinion desperately needed in Thai schools.
I decided to work on developing a sex ed/D.A.R.E. like program for the middle schoolers, where a few times a year, the school would hold an educational seminar on a relevant topic, to spread accurate information, raise awareness, and open up discussions. My list if topics ranged from personal hygiene to rape prevention to HIV/AIDS. I decided to make the pilot project “anti-smoking”, because it was relevant, uncontroversial, and I know Pii Som cared about it. I began pushing for the campaign at the end of the first term, hoping that if I sowed the seeds well enough we could kick off term two incorporating health into the curriculum. I mentioned it every day, and usually received lukewarm responses in return. But as soon as I returned to site after my vacation, Pii Som asked me to pick a date. We selected November 19th, and cross-checked the date with the school’s director and the hospital staff.
At first, I felt a sense of disbelief at first that I was actually able to do a project which my school supported. It seemed too good to be true; none of the usual obstacles stood in my way. I heard horror stories during training of volunteers whose counterparts did not support their projects, and thus disabled them from executing any successfully. Pii Som was willing, or at least obliged me, in translating multiple documents and helped me write the formal project proposal/budget to give the school’s director. Additionally, many volunteers have problems finding funding. I specifically designed the project so money would not be an obstacle, and the school had sufficient money in the budget. The whole thing cost under $100.
Another dreaded Peace Corps legend is of the volunteer who spent 6 months planning a project to have it canceled the day before, or have no-one show up. Lucky for me, the staff at the local hospital seemed excited about the project and motivated to help. I wanted to include the hospital staff as a way to expand the project community wide, as well as imbue it with credibility. The teachers are constantly lecturing the students about one thing or another, which the students generally ignore. However, if health “professionals” are explaining to the students the health consequences of smoking, the kids are more likely to believe it and listen. My main challenge with the hospital staff was their lack of knowledge on the topic- they were not well-versed in smoking-related diseases and health effects. I remedied this by creating an informational packet with a description of each topic and activity; a list of 15 smoking-related facts, including smoking in general, smoking in Thailand, and youth smoking; and an outline of the various health-related consequences, from lung cancer to addiction to gum decay. The fact that cigarettes are addictive was a surprise to many. It felt bizarre that me, a 23 year-old with no background in health was teaching hospital staff about the symptoms of emphysema, but there is so little access to health education in the villages that many people genuinely do not know basic things, like washing hands staves off disease, eating massive amounts of deep fried white rice is not good nutrition, and smoking can kill you.
The project
I structured the seminar around 4 rotations: long-term health consequences, short-term health effects, temptation and refusal skills (saying no) and spreading information. There were 160 students total, and thus 40 kids per rotation. I designed each rotation myself, but the people from the hospital would lead them. The first rotation focused on lung cancer, oral cancer, emphysema, and cardiovascular disease. I created a poster and flashcards with the name of the diseases, their symptoms, and [gruesome] pictures. After reviewing the poster, the kids were divided into groups. Each group received an envelope with the flashcards and pictures all jumbled up. The task was to reassemble the diseases, symptoms, and images. It put the kids face to face with what smoking can do to the body, and made th`em consider each illness individually.
The second rotation focused on short-term health effects, primarily lung damage, shortness of breath, addiction, and tooth and gum decay. I had a range of activities planned. My favorite was a “gross mouth” contest, where the students could use a smorgasbord of gummies, dried fruit, raisins, chocolates, and cookies to make their mouths look as if they were rotting. There was also a demonstration of smoking’s effect on the lungs, where a cigarette was stuck through a hole in an empty water bottle filled with cotton balls. By squeezing the bottle, the air flow simulates inhaling and exhaling, and the cotton balls turn brown. The students also breathed through straws and coffee stirrers to simulate shortness of breath. In the “Saying No” rotation, the students played a game where they refused toffees (it is difficult to explain) and then talked about peer pressure. Finally, small groups students had to make informational posters with what they learned and why they shouldn’t smoke. This was meant as a way for the students to process the information, as well as create something tangible to look at after the seminar was over and use to teach the younger students.
Pii Som and I went to multiple meetings at the hospital to brief the hospital staff and I spent hours and hours working on posters and the rotation activities at school and at home. I felt a huge sense of responsibility, because this project was my idea, I cared deeply that the students learn from it, and I wanted it to be the first of many. If it was a disaster, that could be the end to my grand vision of a health curriculum. I wanted to leave as little as possible up to chance or the efforts of other people. This meant I spent my evenings cutting up and organizing disease/symptom flashcards, after hours spent researching online and translating into Thai. I also made two educational posters, information packets for the hospital staff, photocopied worksheets and activity descriptions, and went personally to buy every material. I prepared everything I could and hoped with such a strong structure the seminar would go smoothly.
The day off, I was something of a nervous wreck. I enlisted Dan and Kelsi (my closest volunteer pals) to come help and keep me calm. Of course, their bus to Phitsanulok was stopped by the police and searched for drugs, delaying their arrival. Of course, the hospital staff showed up a half an hour late. Still, everything went remarkably well, if not exactly according to plan. Pii Som acted as MC and introduced the hospital staff before beginning the opening activity. We had each student write a question or statement related to smoking and then the teachers selected students to read out loud. Many of the students were facetious in their comments, which elicited laughter, but the questions were incredibly helpful in letting us know what the students knew already, and were curious about. Next, the hospital staff gave a presentation, using much of the information I gave them. After the presentation (which lasted about 30 minutes), the rotations began. Dan and Kelsi arrived just as they were starting. I grabbed their bags from their backs like a madwomen and shoved them into their rotations, promising to bring them food and water as soon as I could. I ran around from room to room answering questions, helping the hospital staff, and supplying missing materials. The first rotation was a bit shaky, but things quickly hit their stride and by the third rotation I was able to step back and act as photographer.
When the day was over, I felt ready to collapse and an overpowering sense of relief, as well as of accomplishment. The kids responded to each rotation and were smiling all the way through. The hospital staff did a wonderful job and the teachers were pleased with the outcome. I, for my part, squirreled away a pack of cookies we bought for the “gross mouth” activity and happily returned to my house with Dan and Kelsi after everything was clean to relax with a few beers (behind drawn curtains of course) and finally have the project off my mind. I used all my newfound free time to read The Idiot by Dostoyovevsky, buy food at the market, write a letter or two, and look forward to the Peace Corps Sizzler Thanskgiving Extravaganza.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

BRE 23: School’s Closed

Mom at Site

As I waited at the main bus station in Phitsanulok for my mom to arrive, I could not sit still. I paced around the terminal munching compulsively on banana chips until my jaw hurt. When she suddenly appeared, it was like a mirage, her familiar face oddly juxtaposed against the ugly background of a little-known Thai city among rice fields. We hurried to catch the van back to site, as it was the last day of school and we needed to get there before all the teachers left. Everyone shrieked with excitement when they saw her and repeatedly exclaimed how beautiful my mother is, how she looks like my sister, and how our faces are the same. I think mom was overwhelmed, having barely slept, flown half way across the world, and within 12 hours of arriving, finding herself at a village school with 10 Thai women chattering loudly at her. Still, she was an excellent sport about everything, from ants infiltrating her suitcase, to biking in the heat, to squat toilets without toilet paper.
Where we would eat dinner was an issue for weeks before her arrival. Thais are obsessed with food and family. Additionally, this is a culture which puts great value on hospitality. Thus my mother’s visit meant that there were borderline battles over who would have the privilege of feeding us. In an effort to please everybody, we basically spent the entire weekend eating. Her first night at site, Mr Jon took a group of people to eat mugata (similar to Korean barbeque) for a birthday dinner. Mom was slightly weirded out by the bowl of raw assorted meats bowl placed in front of her, but graciously tried everything (except the cow internal organs). The next night, we ate with Jon, Film, Orasa, and a few others again, but this time at Jon’s house. I suggested a few dishes that were traditional and non-spicy for mom to try, like sweet and sour green curry, and stir fried vegetables. Both evenings were wonderful, with me translating back and forth between Thai and English and making all the people present laugh at my exuberance, as well as unceasing chatter. Granted I am an extremely fast talker and prone to being…verbose, under any circumstances, but Jon and Film (and the others) had never really seen me speaking English with an English speaker, and I think it showed them a different side of me, a side not restrained by a language barrier. I also kept accidentally saying things to my mom in Thai, which cracked them up.
Saturday morning, we biked to the daily market to buy food for making merit at the wat. We sauntered through the numerous stalls, buying anything that struck our fancy (anything we thought Buddha would enjoy). One of the local wats was having a fundraising events, with traditional Thai dance, which we peeked in at briefly, but made merit at a quieter, forested wat, where the head monk was kind enough to give us a grand tour, opening all the buildings in the wat complex and letting us ramble through. We spent the rest of the time on bikes, riding through rice fields and exploring various villages, as well as making som tum- traditional spicy papaya salad- with my neighbors.
We arrived in Chiang Mai on Sunday October 11 around dinner time. After checking in at the hotel, went straight to the legendary Sunday night walking market. Block after block is sectioned off in the middle of the city and packed with people, wandering among thousands of products from hand-made hill tribe purses to Thai silk scarves to $1 bracelets. I had a long list of things I wanted to buy, and all my pent-up shopping energy explored onto the night. I bought everything in sight, including linen pants, a school shirt, a purse, silver bangles, sunglasses, and woven bracelets, all together totaling under $30. We ate dinner by hopping food stalls, buying pad thai at one, dumplings at another, deep fried bananas at a third. When we had finally exhausted ourselves, I put her in a tuk tuk back to the hotel and met up with a few other volunteers at our favorite rasta bar to celebrate my birthday at midnight.
The next morning, I had a late start, having returned at 4 am. I luxuriated in the soft clean bed, dawdled in the hot shower, and ate 4-5 different types of breakfast pastry before I was ready to head out. We spent the day doing a “wat crawl” of Chiang Mai, hitting the most important temples and thereby walking from one end of the city to the other. That night, we took a long and nauseating song taio ride up to Wat Doi Suthep, where you can watch the sunset over the city from the top of a mountain, while the chants of monks and scent of incense mingle in the air behind you. Tuesday morning, we got Thai massages with hot herbal compresses and then ate traditional northern Thai curry noodles, and left for Vietnam that afternoon.

Vietnam and Cambodia
Our first stop in Vietnam was Hanoi. We arrived at night and stared out the dark windows of the cab at the foreign landscape. It felt odd to be a foreigner in an Asian country where I did not know the language. Thailand I understood, but Vietnam I did not. Our hotel was in the old quarter, and our cab meandered through narrow and decrepit streets with people and motorcycles brushing the sides of the car until pulling up to an alley and pointing to a sign for our hotel. The hotel was lovely, but like everything in Vietnam, tall and narrow in pagoda style. We dropped off our bags and went off in search of spring rolls before bed. The next day was rainy, but as it was our only day in Hanoi, we persevered and walked across town to the Temple of Literature, a Confucian influenced pagoda complex known for its beautiful gardens and education themed iconography. Vietnam is a primarily Buddhist country, but they practice a different strain of Buddhism (Mahayana) than Thailand (Therveda). Additionally, Vietnam is strongly influenced by Chinese culture, and Taoism and Confucianism are present everywhere. Vietnamese spirituality is really a blend of these three faiths, I was surprised at how evocative of China all the architecture was.
After the temple, was hit up Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which was unfortunately closed to re-embalm Ho’s body, and then to the Museum of Ethnography, which has exhibits on the dozens of ethnic tribes Vietnam’s northern mountains host. We ended our day with a walking tour of the motorcycle, wandering through markets, almost being killed by motorcycles multiple times, and buying pastries at a French bakery. Since Vietnam was formerly a French colony, loafs of French-style bread are sold on the streets by old women in conical hats, and there are actually bakeries. That night, we saw a traditional Vietnamese folk puppet show and had wine at a French restaurant.
Hanoi is a 3 and a half hour drive from Halong Bay, a UNESCO heritage site. The bay is a large body of water with natural limestone cliffs standing eerie and tall throughout. In order to fully experience the bay, it is necessary to do an overnight on a “junk” or small wooden boat. Our boat was quite small, with only 5 cabins and 9 people aboard-me and mom, an American family of 3, a pair of Australian sisters, and a British couple from Liverpool. We had a leisurely lunch aboard as the boat set off into the depths of the bay. In the afternoon, we explored some caves, kayaked, and swam, and then had a few hours for relaxation and drinks before a decadent 7 course Vietnamese dinner. The next morning, our group visited a floating village in the bay.
From Hanoi we went down the coast to Hue, a seat of the Nguyen empire and home to the opulent tombs of the emperors, as well as an old citadel. The tombs were outside of Hue proper, and we hired a van to drive us from place to place. These were sprawling complexes, with ornate decoration and mystical gardens. I could feel the ghosts of concubines and eunuchs float past me in their silk robes, living in the tombs long after their emperor was deceased, devoting their life to the memory of the glorious dead.
We continued on in our journey to Hoi An, a quaint fishing town vaguely reminiscent of Venice. We took a map from the hotel and gave ourselves a self-guided tour of Hoi An, peeking down faded yellow alleyways and into Chinese assembly halls. Hoi An was a center for trade with China, and thus there is a palpable Chinese influence. The assembly halls were covered in bright lacquer molding, mythical sculpture, and shrines. Giant incense cones hung from the ceiling in one hall, while another had a fountain made out of leaping mosaic fish. In addition to its charm, Hoi An is known for its custom shoe-making. I had a pair of leather gladiator sandals made to fit my feet for $12. Even more exciting (to me anyway) was Hoi An’s renown as a culinary center. Mom and I wandered the streets until we found a cute restaurant with a balcony overlooking the main walking street. We ordered all of the local specialties on the menu, exclaiming how we could never eat all of it, but then, of course, left only crumbs. There were “white rose” dumplings with shrimp; light and crispy pancakes where you add in your own bean sprouts, pork, and delectable dipping sauce; and fish fried in banana leaves. Vietnamese food is considerably lighter and healthier than Thai food, a fact which both of us appreciated.
After Hoi An, we moved further South to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh city. Upon arrival, we realized it was a relatively generic-looking, metropolitan city, and decided to spend the next day on a trip to the Mekong Delta instead. The trip was a jam-packed day, including multiple boat rides, visits to a rice paper making shop and a coconut candy co-op, as well as a fruit sampling, musical show, horse-cart ride, and a canoe cruise. Having accomplished all of the above in a week’s time, we felt ready to leave Vietnam for Cambodia.
Our travels in Cambodia centered around Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom, but we had a bit of time in Phnom Penh to visit the Royal Palace and National Museum, as well as a spa. Phnom Penh is a small city and I’ll be honest when I say the highlight were the praline peanut pancakes available for breakfast at our hotel. Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom however, were awe-inspiring. We hired a guide and spent the day visiting the “highlights”, as there are hundreds and hundreds of temples in this old capital of the Khmer empire. To attempt and describe the experience, I fear, would reap trite and inadequate results. The structures are incredible for both their monumentality and their exquisite detail, photographs cannot do them justice, and they made me feel almost sad, because I felt there was a something powerful, universal, and elemental in their beauty that I could not fully comprehend. My favorite temple was Ta Phrom, made famous by Tomb Raider: Laura Croft and known for its carnivorous trees that appear to be devouring the temple whole. I love the idea of nature taking revenge.
Finally after all these travels and adventures, after seeing so much in so short a time, we flew back into Thailand. I felt like I had come back home, to a place where I spoke the language and knew how to navigate. We spent two days in Bangkok before Mom woke up at 4 am to fly back to America, and I said goodbye to her, as well as genuine comfort, and headed alone back to site.