Abroad in Thailand

I am back in Chiang Mai now, having returned from my Agriculture block field study last week. The block finished up well, and the next block has already started after a weekend to reset!

This week we are beginning our Oceans block! We will be traveling to the Andaman province in the south of Thailand to learn about how ocean ecologies affect Thai culture and vice versa. We will be flying there, and I am preparing myself for a 3 hour flight leaving on Sunday morning because I am still traumatized from my marathon travel experience on the way to Chiang Mai in January. Never again will I spend 10 hours sitting in an airport for a layover if I can avoid it, even though the Taipei airport was very nice.

In this field study, we will be doing home stays with indigenous communities who rely on fishing as their livelihood and live intertwined with the ocean. We will be camping on the beach for a few nights and kayaking between locations, traveling to locations in both Krabi and Trang. I have been warned that the food in the south is very spicy, so I am nervous but I think it will really push my boundaries as a farrang (the Thai word for guava, which is also an affectionate word for Westerners). I’m really excited for fresh seafood and to swim every day, and I think I will be living my best life. I have a passion for the ocean and anything having to do with marine life, and this is absolutely the block out of the 4 we are doing that I am the most excited for. Nothing sounds better to me than skin diving on a coral reef, and I can’t believe I get to do it for school. This is an absolutely insane experience and every day I wake up and I can’t believe this is real life.

I keep catching myself in moments reminding myself that I’m going to miss this experience so much once it’s over and I have to appreciate it while it’s happening, and it’s honestly quite difficult for my to process because so much is happening and it’s all new and it’s going by so fast. I genuinely feel like I’ve grown so much in ways that are impossible to describe and I will forever have a hunger for traveling now. Seeing the world, especially in this capacity, at a deep level where I get to learn the local language and become immersed in a unique way of life, is an experience I am immensely grateful for and will definitely not take for granted.

I’m also so happy that my friendships with the others in the program are deepening, and I feel like I’ve been getting to know people better individually over the last couple of weeks. We stayed in a total of three different locations over the course of our field study during Agriculture, in the villages of Don Jiang, Mae Tha, and Doi Pang Bong Coffee Farm. At the coffee farm, which we stayed at after my last update, I got to stay in a little house on a hillside with two other girls in my program, just the three of us, who I had been dying to chat with and get to know, and they are the absolute sweetest. We dragged our cots out onto the house’s balcony and slept there overnight, after staying up late talking.

Obviously there are challenges to staying so long in such an unfamiliar environment, where everything is different, from the people, to the language, to the food. Several people in the program, including myself, have struggled with feelings of social uncertainty and homesickness. I think being out in the field for 15 days and never staying on one place for long was really difficult for me because there was just so much information coming at me at once with no days of rest, and I had barely any time to process it. I feel like there are several things that I have experienced that I’ve had no time to mull over and look back on to fully pick apart and enjoy, which I know I will, once this is all over, with a bittersweet point of view.

The last block ended successfully; I presented my final research project investigating how access to water for agriculture changes between the wet and dry seasons in Thailand, according to interviews and observations that I conducted in the field. I also had my final short answer exam, and turned in the field research notebook and essays and such. I tried my best to do daily reflections in my notebook, which will be really nice to have to look back on later. Tomorrow I have a 10 minute oral presentation for Thai class where I will introduce myself and talk about myself, my daily routine here in Chiang Mai, and everything about myself that I have the vocabulary to talk about. (10 minutes is a really long time to talk about myself for, and I honestly doubt my ability to reach the full 10 minutes as I currently have about 5 minutes written out and am unsure what else to talk about). Anyway, wish me luck (LOL).

Enjoy these photos!

My friend Wyn and I at a cannabis farm!

My homestay sister Ayanna and I with our host mom in Mae Tha!

On our way to learn how to harvest coffee cherries at Doi Pang Bong Coffee Farm!

Views from the slopes at Doi Pang Bong coffee orchard!

A sign with directions at Doi Pang Bong. Still working on trying to read it!

Fresh light roasted coffee beans!

Me and Mickey Schenk (she goes to DU yay I get to see her at home too!)

Dhenu, Hannah, Liv and I at a jazz bar back in Chiang Mai

Mickey, Wyn, Rhys, Lucy, Syann, Anna and I riding in a truck to learn about organic polyculture farming in Don Jiang!

A gorgeous fountain and garden next to a jade store, in a village that Mickey, Syann and I discovered while hiking part of the Monk Trail and Chiang Mai.