Thursday, December 20, 2007

Today, I received some pictures of me trying, in vain to participate in the rice harvest at Dong Palan. Most of the photos were taken while the TV crew was there, so you'll have an idea of what I must have looked like on the Thai Nightly News (i.e. a silly farang).....
This is a picture of A. Phrek and I. Ps the man in the purple shirt is Phii Mur (he was the man I stayed with while in Dong Palan).


To the left of me, is Professor Budsara, she did her PhD on Dong Palan. To the right of me, is someone who is important to the village but I have no idea of her name.


The village head man, Anan, was the one who tried to teach me the techniques of traditional rice harvesting, he is the man in the blue outfit and the cowboy hat:
Here, Anan is teaching me how to get the threshing sticks around the rice straw, it is kind of tricky at first but it's easy to get the hand of it after a while.

This is where the villagers were questioning as to whether or not it was good idea for me to be even attempting to thresh the rice (after a few hours in the field , I think I changed their minds)....
Threshing rice takes some serious concentration. The man in the red jacket, although sadly I have forgotten his name, was a really funny guy, totally sweet and supportive of my efforts.

Here, we are fanning the rice, this was the one thing I didn't mess up with on my first try. Ps notice the video camera to the left, haha...
Sasha gets into the basket.... Yeah, I wasn't so good with the shoveling....

Well, I hope you enjoyed my photos. Enjoy the snow!

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

I don't know if any of you have been following Thai politics back in the good 'ol US of A but Thailand has a bit of an election coming up. Two years ago ( I believe it was two years), Prime Minister Thaksin was kicked out of Thailand during a peaceful coup. On December 23rd, Thailand will be having Democratic elections; the main runners are the People's Power Party and the Democratic Party. The People's Power Party is very strong in the north and north east, while the Democratic party is strong in the central and southern areas of Thailand. The People's Power Party has promised, if elected to basically bring back Thaksin and his political agenda. As of now, the polls have shown that the People's Power Party is winning by over 10%. The military has also said that if the People's Power Party wins, they will take back the government. One of the largest problems in Thai politics is vote buying and there have been a lot of campaigns trying to get people to not sell their votes. A lot of the vote buying has taken place in the Northern regions where there is a lot of poverty and a politician who gives you cash has already done more for you than one sitting in Bangkok writing proposals. So, it's a tricky situation, to say the least. Interestingly enough, for the next two weekends the selling of alcohol has been made illegal, this is probably a good thing and may increase the voter turn out.

If you guys have any questions concerning the upcoming elections I will try to answer them, but keep an eye out for any news of them and please pass it on to me, I get a very slanted view of politics here in Thailand.

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Yesterday, I was traumatized. I wanted a little haircut, we are talking a trim. After my last experience with Thai hair cuts, I thought it was be best to have Breta cut my hair but at the last second I realized that might not be the best idea. There is this new "fancy" hair parlor down the street from me and I thought that there, they might be able to cut my hair. So i went down there and told the women I wanted a little trim, keep the front longer and no bobs. Instead of doing anything I said, she went straight for the front and cut me bangs without asking. At that point I knew that nothing good could come out of this haircut. in the end, I left the hair dresser with a mullet like rat tail and bangs. In short, I was given, what I like to refer to as the Thai haircut. To say the least, I was near tears because if anyone knows anything about frizzy curly hair, bangs never work... Luckily, Breta quickly took care of the rat tail mullet but needless to say, I will be wearing a hat for the next couple of months...

In all honesty, I don't think this photo really shows how terrible the haircut is...

Saturday December 7th, 2007

On His Majesty the King's birthday, I went up to the North to my second field work site, Dong Palan. Dong Palan is involved in both contract vegetable farming (on an individual basis between farmers and companies) and a community based rice seed operation. The community has a 10 rai field were they grow glutinous rice for seed production. There are about 40 members in in the rice seed cooperative, they grow, harvest and sell the seeds as a community. Dong Palan also recently received an award from CMU for there ability to run this cooperative.

On Wednesday, i went to Dong Palan during their rice harvesting festival, where they exhibited both traditional and modern ways of harvesting rice. Because of their recent award, a TV crew came to document the traditional practices used and because I'm a farang they made me do all the different techniques used in front of the TV crew. Who knows maybe in the next few days, I will be on the Thai TV nightly news..... To say the least, I was not very good at it, considering I had never done of any of those things before, like thrashing rice, waving rice or shoveling rice (there is a technique to it). After the the TV crew left, we had a big feast of delicious Northern Thai food and I got to meet all of the heads of the village and tambon. On a side note, rural Thai villages are split up into villages, tambons (a collection of villages), then a collection of tambons etc... I'm not totally sure how exactly it works but there are a bunch of different levels of leadership, sorry to be so vague...

I went to Dong Palan to experience the rice harvest but found it very difficult as a foreigner and a women to really get involved in the harvest itself. Women are not involved in the hard labor of it all and are mostly involved in collecting the grains. The first day, I got do some thrashing but was soon whisked off to help with cleaning up after the big feast. The second day, I spent most of my time "hanging with the girls", ie hanging out with the women of the village. At some point during the day I was told to get into the side cart of a motorcycle (I didn't really know what was going on but I'm in Thailand, so i just got on). I was taken to a small vegetable farm, run by a husband and wife team and I helped them harvest some of their cabbage. Oddly enough, there farm was right next to one of the stations were the rice is de-husked, so luckily I got to see that part of the seed production. The third day, i actually got to do a fair amount of rice thrashing, simply because I kept rejecting breaks or suggestions of letting others take over. By the end, I think I was pretty decent at thrashing and I was quite proud of myself.

The hardest part of my stay were the cultural and language barriers, everyone talks extremely quickly and even if they talked slowly, I still wouldn't totally understand everything they are saying, I would get the gist but that's about it.... Culturally, it's hard to be a women interested in farming. At Dong Palan, women engage in the farming practices but they seemed to take a back seat to the males. I wanted to just hang out in the field with the men but culturally that could be taken very badly.Research wise, I didn't really get much but it was really interesting to see both traditional and mechanical rice harvesting practices and I defiantly got a lot of great pictures.

Speaking of photos, instead of trying to unload pictures onto my blog, which takes a life time, here is a link to my photos and descriptions of what exactly traditional rice farming is.... (click to see)