Cambodian Deportees Suicide

Many sent me this email earlier today while I was working on my paper for AAS 126:

Hey… One of my staff killed himself. Chan, he was 33, from Long Beach, California.

I was training for an AUSAID workshop in Kompong Som last Wednesday – Saturday and got the call Friday night around 1am. Smiley, Trip, Van and Saw found him hanging in his room. He'd been dead for over a day. Saw cut him down.

He was depressed and suicidal for a long time, he'd been here a year and had worked at Korsang for about 11 months. I kept him around because I knew how fucked up he was and that he needed support. In the states he had major depression with psychotic features and was on medication that basically kept him stable. Since his deportation out here he could never get the proper medications in Cambodia, so he went on a huge decline into some really deep dark place. And then he started smoking yama and that escalated his demise. I got him meds from the clinic, but they didn't work, I got him a counselor from the Australian Embassy, but he couldn't keep appointments.

Needless to say the staff is messed up, again. And I came back from the workshop to a critical debriefing with the staff who found him.

Chan was a very sweet, sad, gentle, fragile, quite guy. This has to stop.

I want to use Chan's death to stop the deportation of Cambodian's with a diagnosed mental health disorder. It's a death sentence. Can we try to do something?

Thanx, Holly

It made me question really, what am I doing sitting here in my living room writing some paper on Southeast Asian second generation youth when there are Southeast Asian second generation youth shoot each other and themselves somewhere in the world. How will my paper help the community? Or how will this degree help me help myself and my community?

Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are. Why do I sit here with my 23 units when I could be doing something down the street in Oakland or Richmond.

I suppose one can only be an effective advocate for the community if they are educated about the community. Otherwise, I guess I would just be another uninformed charity person who is doing work as a result of sympathy or pity as opposed to a true advocate.

Looking at the greater picture, this paper is probably very important. It's just emails like these that make me want to hop on a plane and head back to Southeast Asia.

why smoking weed is illegal

today in my social welfare policy class, my professor went into this tangent about why marijuana is illegal in the United States.

First he made the claim that the conservatives today are just pissed off at the liberals who were smoking, getting high, and fun in the 60s and now they're trying to get back at them.

Then he pointed out that before the hippies, the artists and jazz musicians were the ones that were smoking marijuana. That kind of lifestyle went againist out whole puritan work ethic thing because essentially, our country was built by people who wanted to form a country that didn't have fun.

That was great. He has a PhD.

sometimes, i love berkeley.

. . would you rather be poor in a poor country or poor in a rich country?

Reading an article by Morrison Wong about post-1965 Asian immigrants to the United States brought about this question.

It outlined the normal highlights of higher education and higher income of Asian's in the United States. However, unlike most articles that only give Southeast Asians an honorary mention in a paragraph or so, Wong mentioned Southeast Asians in every one of his highlights and even explained these constrasts in an extensive conclusion.

Asians are usually more educated than average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians generally make more money than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have tight ethnic enclaves to support them, unlike the Average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have lower fertility rates than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

More than half of Asians own houses.
Not Southeast Asians.

These past ten months here in Thailand has made me almost feel as if working internationally in developing countries is where I want to be. Now I'm not so sure.

Whats worst. Would you rather be in a developing country with no real hope of first rate opportunities or be in a developed country with no real chance of first rate opportunities? In a developing country, sometimes it's okay to be poor because everyone else is also. However, in a developed country and you're poor, you get to sit on the sidewalk in some metropolitan city and watch all the hotshots walking to work in their suits carrying their briefcases. What hits you more. Being apart of the developing world or being apart of the developed world but sitting on the side as only a second class citizen? Someone without access to the healthcare. Someone without access to the education. Someone without access to the labor rights. Someone without access to the high standard of living.

Whats worst? Not having the opportunity or seeing the opportunity just within your grasp?

I dont know.

International Relations / Humanitarian Rights? Public Interests?

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Today, my co-worker, Maliwan, mentioned to me how it must be so hard to be an Asian student in the states now – post Virginia Tech… which got me into this talk about Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and blah blah blah…

The following discussion does not in anyway mean that I agree with or support the actions that were taken by Cho Seung-Hui on the Virginia Tech campus on 17 April 2007. As a college student and as a person, my heart goes out to the students, friends, and families of the victims who have had to suffer as a result of this massacre.

What do I do not agree with, however, is the way in which the media is presenting and spinning the coverage of this incident both during and especially after the massacre.

I was sitting in the Behavioral Medicine reception office of Bumrungrad International Hospital (the most “high-so” or bougie private hospital in Bangkok) when I first heard about the incident.

I’ve come to the conclusion that anything with “international” on it in Thailand means that not only is it catered to rich foreigners, but is one instance in which illustrates very clearly the wealth disparity that exists here in Bangkok.

The waiting room had a flat screen television that was turned to CNN and on it was a man who was on the scene of the massacre. The reporter caught my attention with his zealous tone of voice speaking of the worst school shooting in history.

Great, I thought. As if people around the world didn’t already think Americans were overly violent and America as already extremely unsafe.

Then my attention was drawn when the reporter started talking about the shooter. An Asian student from South Korea.

Even better. Now it’ll be even harder to for foreign exchange students who are trying to enjoy the pleasures of living, learning, and experiencing another culture and environment.

But later I found that, yes, the shooter was from South Korea. But his family lived in Virginia. His sister a graduate from Princeton. Him, an English major at Virginia Tech.

Great. He’s practically Asian American. Well, he’s as Asian American as my sister and believe me, Malisa is pretty American.

One of the biggest issues I’ve encountered living and traveling through Asia is that I’m never seen as western. Never seen as a “Genuine” American. Always catch people by surprise by my “wonderful English.”

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is a non-American born college student in the United States… it wasn’t his non-American-ness or Korean-ness that drove him to do what he did. It was growing up and living in America… as an American.

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is Asian and NOT American (in the sense that he was NOT born here)… it only reinforces the problems of being a perpetual foreigner that hangs over people of color in the states. Whether we were born in the U.S. or not, there will always be the assumption that we are not really American. We don’t belong. And maybe we’re just Cho Seung-Hui… another Asian kid in the states trying so hard to fit in by using academic excellence that we’re really just some ticking time bomb.

In any case. I really wouldn’t know how difficult it is to be an Asian college student in the states right now. But looking through facebook and the wave of groups that have sprung up denouncing Cho Seung-Hui as not representative of Asians… not representative of Koreans… etc. It looks like there is yet another issue to divide us in the already too fractured APA or API community.

when i'm feeling depressed . . .

i dont eat massive amounts of food like most people.
instead, i forget to eat and indulge in . . shopping.

a few things i'm going to miss about bangkok:

• 7 story shopping malls
• places where there are 4 malls literally next door to eachother
• 5% off everything just for being a "tourist"
• true cafe
• how kinokuniya wraps your books in plastic for you
• bus number 511

sometimes i ask myself: how can a place with so many beggars and almost no social welfare system have such beautiful shopping malls?

okay so. it's not sometimes. i ask myself that everyday. when i ride my bus from pinklao bridge through prathunam shopping center. turning left at where gaysorn and central world shopping malls are with their prada, versace, etc stores. going straight onto sukhumvit road, where some of the property costs more than homes in san francisco. and finally making it to where UNESCO is located, thonglor . . . aka: Beverly Hills of Bangkok.

on a different subject. since i've been feeling a little down in the dumps. i've been sitting on my ass watching dvds of tv shows. i'm done with greys anatomy and nip tuck. i've gone back to rewatching sex and the city . . for like the 8324 time. but hey. today was actually nice, which is why i was motivated enough to get off my ass and get out of this damn apartment.

i talked to some of my favorites and it made me happy. my mommy and daddy are funny. i had an interesting conversation with him about highly educated men and highly educated women. aparently, he believes that highly educated men dont have to be with highly educated women. in fact, he says they shouldn't. because if the woman is highly educated, they have a chance of falling below the women and highly educated men should never let that happen to them. it was funny.

i always thought my parents were relatively "modern" in thinking. and i think my dad is just upset with my brother and is pinpointing it to his girlfriend . . who has her BA in electrical engineering from ucla, her masters degree in electrical engineering from sdsu, and is currently in law school. i asked him about what he thought my prospects of getting married were. and it dawned on me. "hey daddy. no wonder you wanted me to go to sdsu and not berkeley. you just wanted to make sure i wouldn't intimidate the boys and i could get married huh??"

at that, my dad changed his mind and supported me on going to washington dc and new york this summer to go to my SEARAC conference AND check out colleges for grad school / law school.

so with that. here's to another night alone in my stupid apartment.

updates

i was having some trouble logging into my blog a few weeks ago and i just gave up. anyway.

utube was blocked in thailand. i was trying to look at danielle's election video and it wouldn't work. then i found out form diego that thailands government blocked.

yet another readon why a military junta ruling a country isn't a good idea.

on a different subject. songkran weekend. no school friday, monday, and tuesday. i'm heading back down to krabi. alone. umm. i think its time for me to go back to the states. i seem to have exhausted all my friends here in thailand because all they want to do is stay in bangkok.

on the subject of going back home. i'm still trying to fight the fight to take my exam early but it doesn't look like its gonna happen. its shit. yet another reason why i dont like the business program. or business people. they aren't nice to me the way they are to thai students. and they dont kiss my ass like they do the westerns. its bullshit because i pay a shit ton more tuition to come to thammasat. blah blah blah. bba sucks. especially when a final is set on 19 may while i would be done with school 4 may. a whole damn two weeks.

BUT on a brighter note. i like having connections with bus companies. yesterday i called my bus company to reserve a ticket for krabi and this was the conversation:

• me: hi, i'd like to reserve a ticket for krabi for tomorrow night
• him: sure, but the price is 550 not 350
• me: REALLY? why?
• him: well, it's songkran weekend so the price is higher.
  
• me: now i dont know. i come and get my tickets here all the time but thats almost twice the regular price.
• him: i'm sorry. all the companies are doing this . . but wait. what is your name??
• me: oh, well this is monica.
• him: (in thai) MONICA! why didn't you say something? of course. you get special price. we'll charge you the 350.
• me: GREAT!

so. i guess the universe is yet again balanced. cons of being asian but american in bba. pros of being asian but american in traveling. funny thing is that it usually doesn't work this way.

well. happy new years. the real new years!

Myanmar: India collides with Southeast Asia

The country formerly known as Burma was like nothing I’ve ever experience and yet freakishly similar to everything I’ve experienced here in Southeast Asia… all at once.

I’ve never been to a country in the tourist trail is so completely laid out. It wasn’t until I successfully bypassed a part of it, skipped having to buy a plane ticket, and went out on my own that I had fun.

I felt a bit like an anthropologists by noticing the physical differences between the different types of people in Myanmar.

Yangon to Bagan to Mandalay to Hsipaw to Inle Lake and back to Yagon.

It was good and worth it.

smuggling

So with UNESCO, what I do is sift through all these google news alerts that are sent our trafficking email. We have alerts for certain keywords like prostitution, migration+asia, beggars, smuggling, etc.

Anyway, under the smuggling alerts, I always find it interesting what people smuggle into different countries.

For example, today’s news articles included cigarettes being smuggled into Singapore, heroine into the United States, precious minerals like gold into China, arms into Lebanon, and humans into Bulgaria.

Some other articles from the past that have stuck in my memory are articles about endangered owls into Europe, diet pills into Malaysia, exotic flowers into the states…

I don’t know. I wonder how many of these smuggling cases result in the characteristics we attribute to certain countries or if it’s the already established characteristics of the countries that result in these smuggling cases.

Do smuggling cases of heroine into the United States result because Americans are a bunch of heroine addicts or are we heroine addicts because it’s illegal and it has to be smuggled in?

Eh.

soi dogs

While walking back to the apartment after seeing Jimmy off, I saw the saddest soi dog. He had a really saggy ball sac. Like seriously. It was like wagging while he was walking ahead of me. It was like a second tail. I wonder how that happened.

However, in general, Thailand has really interesting dogs.

I’ve seen many dogs who are incredibly metropolitan. They’ve adapted to city life in Bangkok. One time, I saw a dog open a zip lock bag of food with his food and muzzle. Another time, I saw a dog successfully take a ferry across the river from Phra Pinklao to Tha Prachan.

Maybe the doggy needed to go to class too.

I wonder if he had to pay 3 baht to cross the river or if he had a coupon book of tickets like me.

king naresuan, part II.

Last night we went to Major Cineplex Pinklao and watched the second of the King Naresuan trilogy. I was actually kind of excited because I’m a geek that likes history and political upheavals.

So as usual, after 30 minutes of previews, the king’s song came on and we had to stand up and watch the ultra patriotic video of all the good things the king has done. As corny as it sounds, I guess it makes me feel kinda happy and proud that I’m in Thailand. Which is really strange I guess because Thailand wasn’t exactly a wonderful place my parents lived in.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie and was happy that Jimmy did too. Something I found really interesting was how Bunthing’s love interest was portrayed. Bunthing was the beggar boy that Prince Naresuna saved when he was kid and ended up growing up with him. Anyway. Apparently, Bunthing fell in love with the Princess of the Khang Kingdom. A kingdom from the north where women like the princess wore outfits that looked like a “hill tribe”… from the head wraps down to the leggings. There were pros and cons with how the princess was portrayed.

Pro: she was a kick ass fighter that killed a shit ton of people with her bow and arrow.
Con: she was sometimes in more revealing clothing AND she kept making out with Bunthing…

AKA: portraying people from the northern hill tribes as more promiscuous than the women from central thai… because OF COURSE central Thai people are more “proper” or “civilized” and ethnic minorities aren’t as good. BLAH BLAH.

Or maybe I’m just looking too into it. It reminds me of how every time Kevin and I go watch some musical, we’ll walk out and bitch about how the Asian person was portrayed. Like when we saw the Nut Cracker, it was interesting to see the “Siamese” dressed in Chinese clothing and have the actor be white. Eh.

care package from sister

i was having a really shitty day on friday.

my buddy is getting a little too clingly. i agreed to help her with her research in the morning and all of a sudden, she came with a bunch of bags and said we were spending the whole day together. also, she convinced me to go to nakhon pathom with her for the weekend. i thought i decided to not go to chiang rai to study but all of a sudden, i was swept away from bangkok once again. i should have been thrilled to travel, but i wasn't. i dont know.

but then i received the care package my sister sent me and it made me super super happy. it's funny how when she asked me what i needed, i didn't think i missed much. however, she cleverly hid away a bunch of good pills for me so i could deal with all my crap-o stuff. also, i had some hot cheetos which were oh so good. OH and i finally shaved my legs. it's been ages. HA.

living abroad has made me forget some little luxuries of the states and it was nice of sister to send some. YAY for:

• deordorant: the real kind . . not the fake stuff made for thai people who don't really sweat
• gillette divine razors: since i'm poor and can't afford to go waxing all the time, this is a better alternative than being hairy.
• hot cheetos: they have corn flavored cheetos here but no hot cheetos
• sour patch kids: i thought they were american but apparently, they're canadian
• welbutrin: happy happy happy pills.
• ambien: sleepy sleepy pills
• emergen - C: will be useful for myanmar!
• toothbrushes: i dont really understand why she sends them to me because we have toothbrushes here . . but the ones she sends me are a helluva better than the cheap ones i buy for myself.
• persi - gel: cause they know how disgusting my face is these days.
• luna bars: AHHHH the ultimate emergency food for backpacking. now i don't have to carry around a jar of peanut butter hoping i'll find bread when i'm in the middle of nowhere.
  

thailand v. hong kong

jimmy says that blogging is like having your own magazine. i really need to start blogging. i'm not very creative though.

anyway. mattea came for the weekend. sunday consisted of: fuji, babel, weza.

we walked for thirty minutes sipping our whiskey and coke in 7/11 cups trying to find this club. once our drinks ran out, we hopped into a cab instead.

i love love love it.

questions in thai

today i was walking to class and this thai girl came up to me and asked me for directions to the english learning building. in thai. AND i answered in THAI!

whoo hoo.

i guess uniform makes all the difference here.

i might be coming home.

Dear Antonette Escarsega,

Hi, my name is Monica and I am a undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley who is currently studying at Thammasat University here in Thailand.

I was originally staying only for the fall semester but decided to extend for an additional semester. At the time that I extended, I was unaware that my financial aid package for the second semester would be drastically lower than my first semester’s financial aid package (almost half).

I was confused about this and have contacted the EAP financial aid advisor at the Berkeley campus, Michael Mathews, and he explained to me what had happened. To my understanding, since I was planning to study in Thailand for just the fall semester, I received more than half of my funds available funds in the fall semester. Then when it came time for the spring, I did not have the same funds left in my year budget in Thailand and was only award what was left (which was much less than what I received the first semester).

Mr. Mathews said that he did not have the ability to increase my budget and he was bound to only grant as much as the budget is outline online. However, he did say that you might be able to help me if I contacted you.

I understand that it is my fault for assuming that I would be receiving the same amount of funds in the spring as I had received in the fall but was wondering if anything can be done to increase my spring budget. I was offered only $4,601.50 (not including my unsubsidized loans) and after the Tuition fees and medical fees, I will only be left with $957.50 for living expenses for the entire semester. Although Thailand is relatively cheaper than the United States (and many places in the world), it will be nearly impossible for me to survive on that amount of money. If I do not receive the needed amount of funds to get me through the semester here in Thailand, I will be forced to fly back to the United States and take the semester off completely.

Any kind of help and advice would be greatly appreciated and I’m hoping to hear from you soon.

- Monica

12 / Jan - 15 / Jan: Singapore

If any city could have characterized me pre-Bangkok or maybe even pre-college, it would probably be Singapore.

From it’s no curfews, expensive booze, gross photos on all the cigarette cases, cleanliness, hundreds of signs everywhere, Singapore (not considering the ending) was great.

It was wonderful change to Bangkok. Actually I guess it was kind of like being in the states but better.

I like how Lonely Planet put it. Anyone from the west will come to Singapore, look at the wonderful-ness of it all and think, “wow, maybe political freedom is just a small price for all of this.

holding hands.

I was rushing to my Rural Development class today and all of a sudden, I ran into something. I looked down and found there was a tote bag obstructing my way. These two Thai girls were helping each other hold it by each taking one handle.

I don’t understand.

Was the tote bag that heavy? Was it necessary to have two people carry the maybe two books in that one tote bag? Why couldn’t one person just carry it. Or if it was too heavy, why couldn’t they take the books out and each take one.

I guess it’s kind of like how Thai girls always walk around holding hands too. Or how each girl carries two bags: a cute purse and a tote bag that they carry their books in. What the heck. Why don’t they just carry one bag with everything in it?

OH YEAH. Big bags aren’t “cute.”

Some things in Thailand I will never understand. Maybe it’s because I’m American. Sometimes I wonder, is this what my mom wants me to be like? She always complains that I’m not feminine enough or whatever. Wait until she sees my legs. HA. Two huge motorbike burns and a infinite amount of scars from mosquito bites.

an update email

Dear Amorette,

It's been way too long. I apologize for not replying earlier. You were the first person to reply back to me and your email really really helped me. I'm actually just starting my second week of the second semester here at Thammasat and it's been a little crazy. Kevin Lee came up to Thailand for two weeks and spent the holidays with me and when we came back from New Years down south on Koh Phangan, we were greeted with all this news about the pre-New Years Eve bombings. We were extremely glad that we weren't here in Bangkok for New Years.

I landed an internship at UNESCO's Human Trafficking Division right before I left for China after finals but when I got back, there were some complications with my application and all that. The person I'm supposed to be working with is on leave in the states and his secretary isn't the friendliest person in the world. I almost want to just saw screw UNESCO and just do my informal volunteering at the Foundation for Women, which is much smaller and has much more of a friendly community feel to it.

Anyway, when you were here, where did you travel to? Did you happen to make it up to see any family? I've gone up to Laos to visit my mother's older brother twice and right after finals I went up to China to visit a bunch of family. It was really eye opening. The Thai people call my ethnic group Tai Lue and the Chinese simply call us the Dai (which is the same as Tai) and we occupy the autonomous region in Xishuangbanna in the Yunnan Province in China. It was crazy. I was actually a majority there. In the main cities, everything is labeled in English, Chinese, and our own Dai script. I didn't even know we had a written language and I was seeing it all over the place.

While I've always been a bit obsessed with the Second Indochina War / Viet Nam War aspect of my family history, seeing a bunch of my relatives in China also introduced a part of my family history that I guess I've been neglecting: the Cultural Revolution.

Also, I was extremely surprised by how "Chinese" my cousins were. They're older than me so of course they already have children and stuff but I would almost say they're as Chinese as my siblings and I are "American." Like for example, when they're talking to each other, they speak Mandarin and when they speak to their parents they speak our own dialect of Tai Lue. It was weird. But extremely beautiful, nonetheless.

I encountered something interesting on the way out of Xishuangbanna though. I had to catch a flight back to Bangkok from Macau and spent a few days in "real" China. I met these Chinese women on a train back home to Shanghai or something and there were passing around pictures from their holiday. They also spent a week in Xishuangbanna in the ethnic minority villages. Watching them look through their pictures and talk about the wonderful things they experienced reminded me of how foreigners loved the "Hill Tribe Trekking" in Chiang Mai. Xishuangbanna is like Chiang Mai, a place of ethnic minorities, and the Tai Lue are like the Hmong, Mien, Akha, etc., extremely exotified. I guess it disgusts me because it's like the west is obsessed with going to Zoos to see different creatures and how they live. Except here in Asia, the Zoos are villages and the creatures are people.

ANYWAY. About your summer abroad program... I DEFINITELY recommend Bangkok. It's like the NGO-Heaven of Southeast Asia. All I did was search on google for Human Trafficking organizations in Bangkok and there was a bunch. The intern that I'm supposed to be taking over was a Human Rights Lawyer who went back to get her Masters degree after she already had her Law degree. I think theres something for everyone here. There's the big international UN thing. The American organizations with offices in Thailand. I think the most rewarding might be the NGOs run by the Thai people though and since you can understand some Thai, that could work.

It sounds like your experience at Columbia is great. Man. That would be my dream school. If only if only. The diversity is great, aye? It's kind of like that here in Thailand too. You're not only learning about Thai culture, but you're learning from all the other exchange students from Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, etc.

I become extremely race conscious when I'm traveling though. It seems the only mobile people in the world lack color and sometime I'm a bit self-conscious and wonder if any of them look at me while I'm diving in Koh Tao or wandering around Angkor Wat and think that I don’t belong there. I just got back from Singapore, which was all but great except that I lost my wallet at the airport. Luckily I had my passport on me but now I have no credit cards, ATM cards, or cash. But I guess that’s okay. Financial Aid still hasn't sent me any money. The whole loosing wallet thing made me incredibly homesick though. Bleh. Anyway, please let me know if you're coming here! I'd love to play tour guide again. I haven't booked my flight back yet but it will be sometime in early June. Please keep in touch and I promise it wont take me this long to reply again =) Take Care.

Love,

Monica

-----Original Message-----

From: Amorette

Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 10:11 AM

To: Monica

Subject: Re: [GREETINGS FROM THAILAND]

Monica, darling!

I'm SOOO glad to hear from you. And you emailed me at such a great

time too when I can actually email people back! :) (I just finished

a midterm so my brain is in total chill-out mode for the rest of the

night...)

In any case, I absolutely SUPPORT your intuition of staying in

Thailand for one more semester. I totally feel like I was in your

shoes 3 years ago, except you're having WAAAY more fun than me. :) I

went through a lot of the same exact things, except you're actually

living out things that I wish I would've done like work at an NGO and

travel more! I also went through the whole thing about not really

being accepted as an American (I always got Japanese or Hong Kongnese,

especially when I got this fobby haircut there) and yet I was never

accepted as someone from the "homeland." Maybe that's why my time

there was kind of hard for me too - I thought I was going back to the

homeland, but it sort of just forsaked me. And at that time, the Thai

government was treating the Hmong refugees living at Wat Tham Krabok

like crap. Legislators in Thailand called us "social garbage" and

refused to allow the community to move into their districts... so

there was a lot going on emotionally and psychologically for me at

that time.

If I only had been as focused, energetic, and strong as you are, I

would've probably made more out of my trip there. I think that you

should TOTALLY take advantage of your opportunity to work at this

awesome NGO. No doubt. I totally know what you mean by feeling guilty

about not coming back, but to be honest... those organizations will

still be there and will still turn its wheels when you get back. This

experience in Thailand may never be the same again because you're not

bounded by ties (ie: commitments and major financial debt) and because

you have this thriving curiosity and energy right now. You also have

all these great resources at hand as a student protected by the UCs

and with health insurance (in case anything happens), etc. It's a

great time to be having the time of your life in another country! :)

It's never the same again in the future unless you move to Thailand

and work there.

Anyways, I'm just a big proponent of you staying another semester

because I think it will be a great all-around experience for you. If

the only thing holding you back is guilt about organizations awaiting

your leadership - don't let that stop you. Like I said, they'll be

fine. That's how it was when I got back from Thailand! They were

doing great things and SASC's membership had actually grown!

Thanks for the update though. I've been meaning to email you to find

out how you are! it's great to hear your'e having an awesome time. I

think about Thailand so much these days!

I am actually seriously considering spending my summer out there next

summer for my summer internship that's required in my program. In a

way, it's to make up for all that I missed out on 3 years ago and to

really develop some great work experience out there. I will forever

be in the states, so why not take advantage of a summer abroad while I

can in grad school? Also, I really want to brush up on my Thai. My

boyfriend is currently in his first year of law school, and he's also

really interested in going out to Asia somewhere (maybe and hopefully!

Bangkok) for some international or human rights law work. It would be

great to spend a summer in Bangkok together!

Maybe you can give me some ideas on internships in Bangkok - your NGOs

sounds so awesome too. How did you find such cool places to work? I'm

open. I'm currently looking at American non-profits based in Bangkok,

like the Rockefeller Foundation.

As for what's happening here in New York, I am currently in the middle

of midterms and it's CRAZY like no other midterms I've faced before in

my life! It's midterm hell for sure. It's busier now than it will be

around finals... and it's just a TON of work - nothing like at

Berkeley. i've got 6 classes total and they are keeping me busy busy

busy! it's sometimes a bunch of bullshit busy work... which we think

is lame.

On the upside, I LOVE it here in NYC and I really love my classmates.

We're having a lot of fun outside of classes! Everyone comes from such

amazing backgrounds and experiences and from all over the world. It's

totally normal here to hear multiple languages being spoken at the

same, even in discussion sections and stuff. Only in my program here

at SIPA am I immediately seen as American right away instead of Asian.

I'm referred to as "American" more so than "Asian American" because

there are so many Asian international students here and they can tell

right away that I'm American. But in general it's pretty diverse here

and everyone is so into learning about each other and having a good

time together. I love it!

Anyways, have a WONDERFUL time on your travels in Southeast Asia and

do be safe! I'm SOOO envious. :) Maybe we'll be in Southeast Asia

together at some point! Keep the updates coming and please tell Dr.

Thanet that I said HELLO! He's such a great adviser! :)

Love, Amorette

09 / January / 2007 -- 21 Years Old... in Bangkok

I was expecting my 21^st birthday here in Thailand to be pretty depressing. In addition to the increasing contact from people I’d rather forget about and the lack of the close friends I always spend my birthday with… everything I should be celebrating, I've been doing for the past 5 months here in Thailand. I was ready to forget the day existed and go to my four classes without mention of it.

Stupid me, I forgot to take it off my facebook.

Monday night I moved into my new apartment (which is, by the way, extremely SWEEET… so you should all come visit me) and after forgetting my backpack (that had my glasses in it) and Michael left, I was feeling a bit lonely. Chiho isn’t moving in until the 19^th-20^th so I’m roommate-less. I sat there eating cup of noodle and watching Sex in the City.

Luckily for me, Diego called and asked if I wanted to join Carolina and Aerin for dinner at the barbeque/grill buffet place.

Coline was the first to wish me Happy Birthday. She texted me when she boarded her plane back to Paris.

“Happy Birthday Monica! I just got in the plane and miss Thailand already… See you soon!”

I like how she said, “See you soon!” As if she wasn’t going back to Paris to graduate and apply to graduate school while I’m back here in Bangkok. No more May Kaidees for vegetarian food every Wednesday. No more catching up and bitching about classes and planning trips for the weekends while sipping on mango shakes, as I pick at her tofu pieces, and we both laugh at how she STILL does not know how to use chopsticks.

I love the French and I love Coline. We’re going to meet up in New York City. Maybe she won’t go to grad school in Paris… maybe we’ll both end up in NYC. It’s half way.

Anyway, we finished dinner right at midnight and they wished me a happy birthday… Before going back home, we bought some huge beers and went to Diego’s to watch Borat. We felt incredibly “ghetto.” The four of us, each drinking our 40s of cheap Thai beer while watching an incredibly politically incorrect film.

Already, the birthday was off to a good start.

Class was great. I like. I think I’m only going to have class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. WHOO HOO! And I’ve realized, I’m better off taking classes taught by Thai professors. They’re the cream of the crop as opposed to the American/British professors who are mostly just expaths who teach here because they don’t want to be in the states. For example, my Cold War professor, who was a conservative American, from last semester was still working on his PhD dissertation while my Economy and Society professor, who is a Thai woman, has two Bachelor’s Degrees from USC, three Masters Degrees, and one PhD.

For dinner, I made reservations for 15 people at Cabbages and Condoms. The most politically correct birthday dinner I’ve ever had. Cabbages and Condoms is a restaurant that is part of a non-profit who promotes family planning and HIV/AIDs awareness. It was really good and I had to up the reservation from 15 to 25 because all of a sudden, I realized all the international students heard about it and came. After that we went to Bed Supper Club… my favorite.

All in all, it was good. It’s definitely not spending it with Angela in Vegas or the usual dinner I had with Felix… but I think that’s a good thing. Especially because I’m running out of anti-depressants and I don’t want to ask Malisa to send me some more. Maybe it’s time I REALLY try to ween myself off of them.

Long Live the King

As the new semester winds up to full swing, meeting all the new exchange students, taking them around, and sharing all their “firsts” makes me really excited and a bit nostalgic.

The other day, Michael and I watched a movie with Diego. His first movie in Thailand and, yes, we had to stand up for the King’s song.

I remember the first time I watched a movie in Thailand. Standing up for the King’s song was the first time I really felt like I was in Thailand. Its lame but I still get kind teary. HA. I guess I’m turning more Thai.

The overall massive love for the King is something I still have yet to get used to though. Yellow shirts on Mondays. Stopping everything you’re doing to stand at 8am and 6pm during the National Anthem. Standing up in silence before every movie for the King’s song and little slideshow. Yellow flags EVERYWHERE.

I don’t know.

[December 18, 2007 @ Twin Peaks Cafe in Yangshuo, China] reflections on Xishuabanna

"I fantacize about how it would feel to return to where I belong.
A place where everyone speaks my language, looks like me,
and shraes the same history."

I’m sitting here with a stuffy nose cipping on ginger tea.

I just finished reading First They Killed my Father. I can’t help but draw parallels with the stories I’ve heard from mom and dad. Not only that but it makes me wonder how much more similar their stories coincides with her story. This trip and the book has raised even more questions I have for my parents. It makes me want to ask and talk to my grandmother and more to my mom.

I wonder if how Luong had to leave Chou was how my mom felt when she left her twin brother, Na Tham. I wonder how it felt for her to leave him when she was 16 and not see him again until she turned 35… nineteen years without seeing your twin brother, whom you shared an entire womb with for 9 months.

I wonder if I would have been able to survive if I was bron through the war times. If I could live off rats and bugs. If I could stop being a vegetarian. If I could live with lice in my hair.

It makes me actually want to have children just so I could stay up with them and tell them stories about our family, our wondrous, glorious family of fighters and survivors… just the way my dad did with me.

It makes mw want to write things down, hurry up finish school, come back to Xishuanbanna to learn how to write and read in Tai Lue. Bring mom and dad so I could listen to them talk and reminisce with the family about old times. Its great how my great aunts talk about my dad when he was two years old… but I wonder how it would be to listen to them talk to HIM about when he was two years old…

I want mom to come. I want her to sit next to Na Tham. I want to compare their faces. The way their eyes both wrinkle up when they smile. I want to line all mom’s siblings up together and take a picture of them. My mom and my uncle in the United States. The one uncle in Laos. And the two uncles in China.

I want to come here with grandma. I want her to take me to where she was born. Where both her parents passed away when she was eleven. Where she has to raise her younger siblings alone. Where at the age of eleven, she became a mother up until now where she still is a mother and grandmother.

I want to bring Malisa and James. I want to show them the way to all these wonderful places. I want our relatives to see all of us all together. Malisa, born in some refugee camp in Thailand. James, born in some city in Minnesota where my parents were first sponsored to. Me, born in San Diego where my parents ended up settling in.

I want our relatives to laugh at how American we are like how we’d laught at how Chinese our other cousins are. I want them to come and see what mom and dad went through so I wouldn’t look like the only crazy child obsessed with the family history that mom never wants to talk about… grandma cries when thinking about… and dad is so proud of.

Yesterday Nir asked me if I could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be. For the past twenty (almost twenty-one) years, that one place has been Xishuanbanna. And last week I did it and it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

"Thai People Are Sexy"

I was on my computer this morning watching more Sex and the City and doing my usual rounds. You know, gmail, Microsoft outlook, myspace, facebook, yada yada.

I went on facebook and stumbled across the “Thai People Are Sexy” group. The description was this wonderfully long description about how great the country is and how you don’t meet so many Thai people because they only leave their country because of education. Of course, this implies that they are so happy with their country that they love to stay there. In reality, they just seem like sneaky people who have avoided any kind of conflict by giving away other people’s homes, who are weaker than them and trying to befriend everyone and their mama’s who is more powerful.

But that’s another blog entry… or one of the many rants I’ve gone through.

Anyway, what I thought was amazing was this little paragraph at the end of the description. It was kind of a message to the group or to the public:

W E L C O M E |||| ยินดีต้อนรับ
~~~ We've hit the 300 mark ~~~
Sawasdee Krub you sexy Thais. A big thank you goes to my Sexy Recruiters. This group just went from 0-150+ members in 3 days. Due to the volume of non-Thai (and therefore, non-sexy) people joining this group, it will now be closed. Membership will be given through invitation and membership request only. Sorry that it has to be this way but I belive in quality and not quantity :) Keep sexy everyone. Kob Khun mak mak for your cooperation.

I found it to be perfectly Thai. To have closed membership. To be exclusive in order to survive. I don’t know. There are a few things that I don’t understand that pertains to this facebook group.

First, the world’s fascination with the appearances of Thai people, which has led to many good and bad things… like making Thailand one of the biggest tourism spots in the world AND the biggest sex tourism spot in the world.

But maybe more importantly, second, who in the world decided to tell Thai people that this was how they felt. I think this message to the public by the facebook group might be a product of this second phenomenon.

... and besides. SHIT. If Thai people were so damn sexy, why have I not checked out a single Thai male (or Asian male for that matter) in the past five months. fuuuuck. Have I turned into one of those stereotypical Asian women who will end up dating only western men. AHH. maybe being Thailand has made me increasingly like Thai women here in Thailand. Great.

western food & western restaurants

I could successfully (or sadly) say that I’ve had western food all day today, which I know is extremely horrible seeing that I live in Thailand and Thai food is, well, amazing.

For breakfast, I had muesli with fruit and yogurt. For lunch, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And for dinner, I had a grilled cheese and ham sandwich (without the ham) and french fries.

While most people still view Bangkok as this exotic place with a rich culture that is very different from the west, in many ways its not. Just my day’s of food alone is proof that it is extremely easy to say very western in this Southeast Asian country.

This leads me to think that maybe that’s why there are so many foreigners who love Thailand so much. They come here with the initial intentions of experiencing something new and they do. Then they start to miss home. Then they start to just make Thailand like what they were trying to escape in the first place.

It’s really a vicious cycle, as is everything else in this world.

I guess that’s how Thailand began to have such large western pockets in Bangkok with all the great restaurants, movie theatres, shopping centers, etc… and what’s best is that it’s cheaper. It becomes like living in the west, but cheaper.

I was talking to Kevin about how living in Bangkok has actually probably raised my standard of living. Not in the economical sense, but in all the comforts. I guess it all balances out with all the other experiences that I’ve encountered traveling to other places like China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia where I had to “rough it out” a little more.

But all in all. It’s going to suck to go back to states and spend way too much money on clothes that isn’t hand sewn, fresh and organic fruit, homemade yogurt, etc. etc.

"do you have any rooms?"

i totally just remembered this happening in Koh Phangan on New Years Eve morning.

so kevin and i were sitting in some restaurant/guesthouse having breakfast and waiting for our snorkel trip to take off and there were hell backpackers just arriving in Koh Phangan just for the day/night to party for new years eve.

then all of a sudden these two western men came in and started talking in slow english and also using their hands to communicate, "do you have any rooms available?"

i snapped back at them, "uhh, i dont work here."

it reminds me of that time that stupid american interrupted mine and samanthas conversation at the pier to ask us why we were speaking to each other in english. first, he assumed we were thai. second, he assumed thai people HAD to talk to each other in thai. third, he would have never assumed we were americans.

being here in thailand, i've come to the conclusion that although, most of the time i resent that i'm american . . most of the time, i end up becoming very defensive about it. i guess to most people around the world, american is american. there is no such thing as asian-american.

kind of related, in laos . . after kevin told someone he was american, they asked him if he was part african. because OF COURSE . . if you're not white american, the only other immigrants are african-americans.

homeless in bangkok

i used to be really good at this blogging shizz . . back in the days i would blog more than once a day. i blame it on my current housing situation. or non-housing situation. since i've had a whole month off from school, i decided to move out of my apartment and not move into my new apartment until school starts again. since my ass has been moving around so much and only staying in bangkok a total of about three or four days . . i could save hella money instead of paying almost double rent -- rent in bangkok & paying for guest houses.

i've come to the conclusion that living out of guest houses in other countries has actually been cheaper than having an apartment here in bangkok which is totally a trip. i mean, in Laos or Cambodia . . i spent about 2 to 3 dollars a night. Here in Bangkok, i will be paying over 300 USD a month . . which is like ten bucks a month. so basically, its completely possible to travel for years and years like those damn europeans and australians.

when kevin and i went down to koh phangan for new years it just reconfirmed what i've experienced throughout my travels . . europeans and australians have some cool mindset where they could just take a year or two off and travel their brains out. whats wrong with americans? why do we stay in our homes and never leave the comforts of the familiar? is it just the way we've been raised? are we just too "focused" on being productive?

even looking at the study abroad patterns, it's obvious that most american college students go to western europe to study abroad. WHY? you pay more than twice as much as southeast asia AND you can't even travel anywhere else. i dont get it. but who knows. i guess it takes some weird characteristic for you to throw yourself in a place like thailand for a semester. someone not scared of squat toilets, malaria, pollution, traffic, cold showers, clothes that way too small for you, being mistaken as a prostitute, and island with barely enough running water to support the local population much less the tourists during high season.