Phonetic spelling fail

Isopoda

Woodlice aren't actually insects, but terrestrial crustaceans. Their ability to roll into a ball when disturbed has given the common name of 'pill bug'. I waited 10 minutes for this stubborn little bastard to unroll himself but he was so committed to his defensive strategy that I eventually gave up. Instead I found this, possibly the greatest Youtube clip ever. Play it with sound.

Pentatomidae

A member of the Pentatomidae family (so named for its 5-segmented antennae). Pentatomidae are commonly known as shield bugs (for their shape), or stink bugs (for the foul, almond-smelling substance they squirt when disturbed). They're apparently used in Vietnamese cuisine. Here two stink bugs work on creating a new generation of stink bug:

Envy me.

Polyphylla Tonkinensis

A member of the same genus as the June Bug. I often find these guys blundering around the porch lights in the late evening. The 'Tonkin' I assume refers to the Gulf of Tonkin, which would seem to indicate that these range across South-East Asia. And until they release the Google Insect Identification Database, that's all I can tell you about this one.

Scale:

Rit's Gym

This is my muay thai coach Rit, holding a picture of himself on the cover of a Thai kickboxing magazine. After his boxing career came to an end he worked as a cop for 10 years, then retired to teach muay thai from his ratty house on the outskirts of Mae Sot, where he lives with a shifting menagerie of cats, dogs, birds, fighters, and miscellaneous relatives.

Once we asked Rit if he had kids, and in reply he pointed to his preternaturally placid retriever, which is always wandering goofily through whatever ultra-violence is going on in the ring. Rit has trained the dog to shake hands when he saws 'Sawadhee krap' to it, and also to block kicks.

There's a major language barrier at the gym. Rit speaks almost no English, and I've made no effort to learn Thai, given that everybody at my work speaks Burmese exclusively. My Thai is very utilitarian, extending only as far as the words for 'five', 'ten'. 'knee', 'water', 'slowly' and 'push-up'. So I don't know anything about the little boy above, except that he's Karenni, he lives at the house, and Rit is training him to be a fighter. His parents are presumably in a refugee camp, in Burma, or dead. He trains every day, grunting ferociously as he hits the bags. Here he gives one of Rit's many relatives a massage:

This 15-year-old kid is the most terrifying of Rit's students:

Some of the many scrawny Kareni kids Rit trains:

Next: More insects.

Xylocopa Latipes

This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series on the insect life of Mae Sot. Xylocopa Latipes, also known as the Carpenter Bee, is the largest bee in the world, and common throughout Southeast Asia. I found this guy on the side of the highway as I was cycling back from muay thai. He has beautiful iridescent blue wings, pale grey compound eyes, and his body is about the size of my thumb. I don't think he was a well bee; he was dirty and dusty and crawling slowly into the traffic, breathing with apparent difficulty. I turned him around (carefully) and left him be.

Broken Bangkok

A few weeks ago I cut my trip to Burma short so I could get back to Bangkok and see the resolution of the Redshirt protests (which, as you know, turned out badly for all concerned). I arrived a few days before the curfew was implemented. The army had erected checkpoints on all the streets leading up to the protest areas, and the surrounding areas were eerily quiet. I told the taxi driver to take me to Patpong, (Bangkok's notorious red light district) figuring that it was A. adjacent to the protest areas and B. that nobody would question my motives for being there.

And this is Patpong, nearly deserted on a Friday night. As soon as I got out of the taxi I was mobbed by a crowd of desperate pimps. Bar? Drink? Massage? Hotel? 'Boom boom'? Pity the poor pimps, whose livelihood must have taken a serious hit during this period of unrest. A few bars were open, but the few sad old white dudes making up their clientele were vastly outnumbered by members of the press filming them, for news reports that you can probably write for yourself:

Deserted stations and deserted streets:

And that was it. The city was nervously holding its breath. And while it was clear that the government was going to take action to resolve the situation, it wasn't clear when that would be. The state of siege could have persisted for another week, and I didn't have a week to spare, so I went South to the islands. That's why when the army went in two days later, leaving 80 people dead, 2000 people injured, and the heart of Bangkok a smouldering ruin, I was here:

When I got back, things were almost entirely back to normal. The Redshirt rank-and-file had dispersed back to the countryside or into the mass of urban poor. The high-profile Redshirt leaders were under arrest or, in the case of Thaksin, sheltering from the Thai government's warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Montenegro, where he's a citizen. And the government seemed torn between the conflicting aims of promoting 'reconciliation' in the form of some kind of restorative justice process, and justifying the heavy-handedness of its response by demonising the Redshirts. The demonisation took two forms - portraying the protesters as terrorists, and insinuating that their true intention was to overthrow the monarchy. Dark comparisons were drawn with Nepal (where the monarchy was recently deposed), and with the storming of the Bastille. This is an especially serious charge in Thailand, with its archaic and punitive lèse majesté laws (I'm going to save my post on the monarchy for another day, perhaps when I'm no longer living in Thailand).

The city was being energetically cleaned, though evidence of the riots was still everywhere throughout the protest areas, like the melted bus shelter seats above and, of course, the smoking wreckage of the Central World mall. There are weird echoes of Fight Club in the targets that were chosen for destruction, all those shopping malls and boutiques and entertainment complexes and billboards. Was it just because they were convenient, or were they picked out as symbols of a consumer capitalism that has left so many in Thailand behind? Or a combination of the two? On the other side of the equation, the destruction of these landmarks elicited a suprising outpouring of grief. Something strikes me as odd about leaving flowers for a burnt-out mall where no-one actually died, while neglecting the numerous other symbolic sites available where people did actually die (the Rama VI statue in Lumphini, for example). It may be that the mall, by virtue of its high visibility and central location, became a convenient locus for a more general outpouring of grief. It may also be that by leaving flowers at the mall, Thais distance themselves from the Redshirts and proclaim their fealty to the established order. The op-eds that filled the Bangkok Post in the following weeks bewailing the loss of the mall and the theatre (but we'll always have the memories, etc) may have served the same purpose.

Random images of destruction - The corner of Lumphini Park where the main barricades were located. The only evidence that remains is the paving stones, ripped up to provide the protesters with ammunition.

A scorched palm:

A broken billboard:

The smoking remains of the venerable Siam Theatre:

Fortunately this poster advertising Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston in 'The Bounty Hunter' survived the blaze:

The government dotted the city centre with this cheerfully conciliatory ad campaign:

In the same spirit, the newspapers were full of stories of peppy, civic-minded teens taking to the streets to clean up the city. This zeal for putting things back in order and for empty rhetoric of conciliation (while simultaneously demonising everyone) virtually assures that the grievances which led to the whole mess will remain unaddressed. At least until the next coup or uprising.

A Triumph of Branding

A Peace Law Academy birthday

Last week one of my students, who I’ll call Aung Hpound, invited me to her birthday party at the school (the students all live in two dormitories on site). I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and she replied that she liked plush animals. What kind of plush animals? Big ones. The lady knows what she wants. So I spent the afternoon riding around town looking for a shop where I could buy a large plush Garfield for a young woman in her early 20s.

In an earlier writing exercise I’d learned that Aung Hpound doesn’t drink alcohol, as, like many Karen (Burmese ethnic group), she is a devout Baptist. Like all of her classmates, she doesn’t date (Burmese couples write each other sentimental emails, then get married). None of them smoke or take drugs. They’re so innocent that you can’t help infantilising them to some degree, even when you’re not buying them plush Garfields. But then you remember that they’ve all left their families behind and fled a vicious military dictatorship in order to get a decent education so that they can GO BACK, at the risk of imprisonment, torture, and retaliation against their families, and bring democracy to Burma. I can’t even put their names or photos on this blog for fear that the Burmese government will track them down retaliate against them or their families. It’s pretty humbling teaching a class of young people who are all heroes to varying degrees, especially when your own ideals are held with no consequences whatsoever.

Anyway: The party. I arrive to find all the chairs in the classroom set up in a circle, and the birthday girl sitting behind the teacher’s desk, with ‘Happy Birthday Aung Hpound’ written on the board with the date. Everyone takes their seats. One of the girls who I’ll call Ee Lguyen stands up and reads from a piece of paper.

“Good evening everybody, and thank you for coming to the birthday party of my friend Aung Hpound.
Agenda number 1 – Lee will sing a song.
Agenda number 2 – We will say a prayer.
Agenda number 3 – Aung will sing a song.
Agenda number 4 – We will eat cake and ice cream.
Agenda number 5 – We will play a game.
Thank you. Now for Agenda number 1, Lee will sing a song.”

Lee stands up and pulls a chair into the middle of the circle. He has good English, and is wearing a t-shirt that says, rather cryptically, ‘Kareni Zeroes for Christ’. Earlier he asked me when my birthday was. I told him and asked his. He didn’t know, because, he said, he was born in the jungle.

“I am sorry, but this song will be in Burmese” he says. This song is about our parents. They give birth to us in a time of war, and raise us, and now we are far away from them, and I know that Aung Hpound especially misses her parents very much.”

The song is very sad. Everyone applauds enthusiastically when he finishes.

“Thank you Lee,” says Ee Lguyen. “Now for agenda number 2, we will say a prayer”.

The prayer is in Burmese and goes for about 5 minutes, and I take the opportunity to look around the room and try to gauge who’s the most devout based on how tight they’re closing their eyes or how much fidgeting they’re doing. I put about a quarter down as being devout. For agenda number 3, Aung Hpound sings a happy song in Burmese while Lee plays the guitar. Everybody sings along. Agenda item 4 is cake and ice cream, and the students run around putting dabs of icing on each other’s faces. Gifts are presented – Aung Hpound loves her Garfield and I have to pose for a formal photograph with her, and then with half the other students.

Agenda number 5 is the highlight. The game is like musical chairs except we pass around a plastic cup full of water. When the Burmese pop stops, the person holding the glass has to take a rolled-up piece of paper from a box. On the paper is written an activity. I get to go first. The English on the paper is kind of unclear.

“So I have to declare my love for someone? Like, just acting it out?”
“No!” shouts Kyi Naing. “You have to choose a girl and declare your love for her!”
“OK, well I guess you’re it then.” She laughs and stands up, playing bashful. I feel deeply uncomfortable.
“Look, Kyi, there’s, uh, something I’ve been meaning to say for some time.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Well, this is very hard for me to say, but I guess, uh, I love you.”
“No!” shouts Kyi Naing. “You’ve waited too long!”
“But baby, that’s not my fault! I’m a man – these things are difficult for me to say!”
“I don’t care!” she says stamping her foot. “You shouldn’t have taken so long! I can’t wait for ever!”
“But baby I can change!”

The room is in hysterics, and I take the opportunity to run back to my seat. The game continues for a long time – do a funny dance, sing someone a romantic song, imitate someone, usually a teacher. The best part is seeing shy, demure Burmese girls reluctantly get up and suddenly break into startlingly accurate imitations of teachers and fellow students. One of them has to do me; she says “Everybody now; Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”, while waving her arms like a conductor. Apparently this is hilariously accurate. When the first set of activities is exhausted and paper and scissors are brought out to make another set, I make my escape. They're having so much fun they don't even notice.

Conclusion: I know I said I wouldn’t infantilise the students, but that party was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. Next post – my Muay Thai gym.