NICOLE: FINAL ENTRY By Nicole Trombley

Julio and I parted yesterday at the Taipei airport, me home to Southern
California and him off to Germany to transition out of Asia back to the
States. [The baker's wife and son (from our Japanese bakery, see previous
posts) were actually on our flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, off to
Japan to see her family for a month. First they were travelling in
Thailand to buy silk for her father's business; he makes traditional
Japanese Kimono.] And for the record, as I arrived in LA lastnight, it was
clear to me that LAX seemed much more of a third world country than
Thailand.

Food & belly:
Julio has already commented a lot on this. But we really did tour Chiang
Mai via our bellies..pastries, curries, stir-fries, all sorts of fried
things including these spinach pancakes served cut up with a spicey soy
sauce, mango and sticky rice, curry baked into a custard consistency in a
banana leaf over an open flame, various versions of drunken noodles, crazy
little coconut milk things, fried fish with chillies, spicey glass noodle
salads...lots of garlic, lots of chilli pepper...lots of rice. We ate
often and a lot and, as Julio mentioned, washed it all down with Thai
beer. The cooking course early on in our trip gave me a good sense of Thai
cuisine (beyond Pad Thai): the balances between spicey curries and more
cooling foods; the tartness and tang of kefir limes, lemongrass and
cilantro; the role of fish sauce. This gave us tools we didn't have (or I
didn't at least), so we could then navigate the food stands at the market
and gain a greater sense of what was exciting.

As Julio has documented, we both came to love spicey food and came to
learn that the spice enters and leaves your body with equal potency. I
felt very lucky to not get sick while I was there - we ate on the street
and everywhere, trying to be smart about water, eating only from vendors
that were cooking fresh or had a good turnover of food, cooking things
thouroughly. BUT here I am home in San Diego feeling a little "Bangkok
Belly". I didn't leave unscathed, but I really don't think I "ate
something bad" -- I mean Jules and I ate all the same food and he's not
sick. And other than a certain sensation in my lower GI, I don't feel sick
at all. But instead, I theorize that I traumatized my intestines, too
much food, too much chilli pepper, too much Chang Beer, too much coffee.
My belly is having its own version of repetetive stress syndrome.

In fact, I just looked in the Lonely Planet Thailand, and they comment
about eating on the street and food safety, - Surely you've heard the
rumors about what foood in Bangkok is sage to eat, right? Let's see, how
does it go: avoid ground meat, crushed ice, something borrowed, something
blue - not that's not quite it. Just to be on the safe side, take that
mental list and trash it. By and large, most street food is not only
hygenic but delicious. Granted, you'll get Bangkok belly, which is often
personal intolerance to chillies or Beer Chang, rather than a tainted
plate of fried food.

Oh yes, and confession: I only ate one bug. I took me about 3 minutes of
focussed breathing and "letting go" to actually put it in my mouth (with
some tough love "just do it" coaching from J.). And when you see the
pictures, the one with me with a bug in front of my mouth is fake - Julio
ate that one.

Thai Massage
My purpose/excuse for this trip was taking a Thai Massage course. Thai
Massage is an Asian healing art with connections to Buddhism and yoga. The
receiver is fully clothed, and the massage is received on a futon on the
floor. The giver applies various compressions and stretches to the
receiver, and then proceeds to stretch them through some yoga poses. It is
becoming increasingly popular in the West, most likely because of its
connection to yoga; in fact, often it is called Thai Yoga Massage. The
system is based on an understanding of energy lines in the body, the Sen
Sib, which massage aims to clear up and open. Though some of these lines
correspond to the meridians worked in chinese massage, acupuncture and
Shiatsu, the larger system is different. And while some parts of the Sen
Sib have sanskrit names, the system seems to have only been influenced
early on by Indian massage. There is a Northern Style, based in Chiang Mai
and a more Southern Style, based out of Wat Pho (a major temple that has
served as a massage "school") in Bangkok; Julio and I have pictures from
Wat Pho of sculptures demonstrating yoga and massage. In the late 80's and
early 90's a revival movement began to solidfy and document "what is thai
massage" -- systemizing it, and making it "safe, effective and polite."
They are movign toward standardizing all techniques. From what I
understand, this is not an innovative, intuitive massage, but rather a
formulaic series, so that not matter what practitioner you go to, you will
receive a similar massage. My teachers did not talk about this, but I am
sure that the sex tourist industry's connection to "massage" was a major
factor pushing massage professionals to get official government
rccognition. "Politeness" was also a big deal: there will be no climbing
over the receiver on the floor, your fingers can only point in certain
directions, and you don't want to accidently look like you are simulating
sex acts with the receiver: that would be very impolite.

I had taken a course here in San Diego 4 or 5 years ago, and always
fancied heading off to thailand to take a more "authentic" course. Julio's
travels were the perfect excuse. I was in class for 5 days, while other
students in the school were completing a 10 or 20 week program (most of
them had no other massage training and had to learn anatomy, etc.). I was
reminded several times why I would not want to be in an intensive program
like that for more than a week or two. This school was definitely more
geared toward westerners; it is even recognized as a continuing ed
provider by US massage accredidation organizations. While I was there the
school received word that it has just been given the "Royal Award" as the
most outstanding Thai Massage school in Thailand - and no suprise to most
of us, it's run by two Thai dykes!!!!

The other amazing thing about this school was that I was able to work in
an international context for the first time since becoming a massage
therapist. Granted, most of the students were from Western and English
speaking countries, except for two Japanese surfers, the teachers and the
curriculum were 100% Thai. In massage, we usually think very locally; I
greatly appreciated the sense of being part of an international community
of bodyworkers. AND my cohort was particularly fabulous.

Queer Thailand
We hung with several of my classmates throughout the lastweek - including
a trip to Simon's Cabaret - a Las Vegas calibar Thai caberet show,
featuring Ladyboys in full drag. From what I understand ladyboys are a
category that includes males who dress in drag to full transsexuals; it is
pretty common and rather well accepted. Most anthropological sources
categorize this as a "third sex" long accepted and present in Thai
culture. It certainly doesn't seem right to call them "gays" or
"transsexuals" -- from what we learned it seems the term encompasses a
wide spectrum that includes individuals in drag to those using surgery and
hormones. For more information, see:
http://dragoncastle.net/ladyboys.shtml , and if you haven't seen the film
"Iron Ladies", Clarissa and I saw it a few years ago at a film festival
and highly recommend it. The cabaret show was over the top, and of course,
you know it is "drag show" when JULIO is singled out from the audience,
smothered in lipstick and pulled up on stage to dance. Oh yes, we have
pictures.

"Farang"
In Thailand the term for foreigners and tourists (typically white
westerners) is "farang" -- I've heard a few stories of the origin of that
term. 1) Farang also means guava in thai. Some Thais told us that bccause
guava originally came from far away, it was appropriately used to label
foreign peoples as well. 2)Another source told me that "farang" is how the
Thai people pronounced "french" and it came to apply to all foreign
travellers. Regardless of the word origin, there are enough farang in
Thailand so that it becomes one of the first Thai words we learn - the
Thai businessmen on the train looking through the train car and pointing
at travellers, counting us, while commenting, "farang, farang, farang...";
or the little Thai boy eating dinner with his family who looks at me and
Julio and screams "farang! Farang!" really loudly despite his mother's
scolding. We soon learned to use the term ourselves, saying "no farang"
when a tuk-tuk driver tries to overcharge for a quick ride or when you are
ordering food and fearing you will get the bland version of the food they
serve to tourists. And, we soon turned it into a verb in our own
vernacular, commenting, "we've been faranged" when the cook puts NO chilli
peppers in your garlic pork rice dish or realize that you have been
overcharged at the market.

Trekking
Except for the first few days in Bangkok, we decided to spend our entire
trip in Chiang Mai - relax and see that city instead of being on an
exhausitn whirlwind tour. Our one excursion out of the city was on a
one-day trek. These "treks" are a huge part of the travel industry in
Chiang Mai - it seems every hotel, every street corner boasts their own
treks, and every traveller goes on at least one. Jules and I didn't do
extensive research (I was at school and he was busy looking pretty at the
pool reading his detective novels), so we used the time-honored tradition
of word-of-mouth. We took the advice of these documentary film making guys
in our cooking class. They loved their trek, loved the guide...that was
good enough for us! And it was a chance, and it was blah. Not that either
of us had high expectations, so it didn't not meet our expectations, but
we'd never do it again and wouldn't rec this tour to anybody else. We
went with three other people, a French-Spanish couple and fabulous Mr.
Wang from the UK. Here is the summary:

1)We rode elephants - in a big circle up a hill. It was really boring.
Though for a few minutes we could see the elephants' vulvas and were
really, really impressed --- though I guess if you need a vagina big
enough to birth a baby elephant.
2)We were led on a bamboo raft down a river. Not the exciting white river
rafting we had secretly anticipated. The most exciting part was when two
local kids who were swimming in the river thought it would be really fun
if they splashed us. They thoroughly soaked me - I was not happy - and if
I spoke a lick of Thai I would have given them the scolding of their
lifetimes. BUT...I got to frown and be sulky and wet.
3)We ate lunch at a restaurant along the street. The food was totally
farang. And the only other people who stopped by to lunch were other
farang in other buses/vans.
4)We went to visit a Hill Tribe village. The "Hill Tribes" in Northern
Thailand are semi-nomadic peoples; each tribe having its own language,
customs, mode of dress and spiritual beliefs. Our understanding is that
most do not belong to any one country (I think this means they lack
citizenship) and continually cross borders and cultures. The people we
visited had been in Thailand for about 20 years, having fled violence in
Burma. Our visit was the more interesting part of the trek, not because it
was exciting, but because of what came up within our little tour group.
Now let me premise this by saying that Julio took the opportunity to grill
the tour guide over lunch about the role of the Hill Tribe people in this
trek - did they receive any money from the tour? How do they benefit?
Despite his prior positive experience with an NGO-affiliated tour in South
Africa, we were assuming this was going to be a pretty exploitative
relationship. And it was. We arrived and "the village" was several
semi-open structures with hundreds of hand-woven scarves and such, and
women working at small looms producing new scarves. We arrived joining
several other groups. There was no intro, nothing. Just some totally
irrelevant info our tourguide told us about traditional dress women
sometimes wear. We took no pictures. And we bought some cool scarves. We
decided to buy the scarves because we wanted to participate directly in
their economy. The French couple did not buy anything and were a little
troubled, commenting, "we are having an ethical dilemma." They felt that
they were being made to feel guilty about others' poverty and they were
being manipulated into buying things. We talked with them for a bit, and
then with eachother. In the end, Julio and I seemed to agree that whatever
economic system these people had been participating in (our useless
tourguide hinted it was poppy (opium) cultivation; since wiped out by the
Thai government) was no longer available to them, and they were in the
middle of this tourism driven industry in Northern Thailand. Whether it is
right or wrong, exploitative or empowering, it is their reality - they
need to send their kids to school, they need to feed themselves. We chose
to go on this tour, to "see the Hill Tribe"; we chose to participate in
this economy. Buying the scarves was the less exploitative thing to do
given the choices we had already made.
5)We then hiked to a waterfall and went swimming. And watched some poor
lady fall really hard on wet slippery rocks.

"Into the Woods to Find the Giant..."
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