I finally posted my pictures from the Khao Lak trip. Enjoy.

My last post from Thailand was somewhat cynical, and I owe this blog a more balanced account, now that the trip is over. While my cynicism didn’t really go away, I ended the experience with an overall good feeling about it. It helped that in the middle of week two, I finally got to see the destroyed homes we were replacing.

In the end, it didn’t really matter to me whether the net benefit of the experience was to me or the people I was ostensibly helping. The fact is, I had a good travel experience, and I helped build a couple of houses for people who needed them.

I enjoyed making simple jokes with the villagers I worked closely with – simple enough to be communicated via sign language. I enjoyed eating delicious thai food with cold Singha beer for a fraction of what it costs me to park for a day at my office. I enjoyed hard physical work in the hot thai sun, away from my desk and computer screen.

Toward the end of week one, I was moved from my job site to two other sites to help a group of guys transport 18 tall concrete columns a hundred meters or so and position them in 1.4 meter deep footings. The columns were heavy – the tallest of them probably close to 1000 pounds. We moved them by hand, using bicycle tires, wooden poles and muscle power. Either two or three wooden poles, four people per wooden pole – two on each side of the column. I was taller than the others, and they put me on the heavy end of the column, on the inside – shoulder to shoulder with a guy named Mai.

Since I was taller than Mai, he didn’t end up carrying any weight when we moved the columns. This cracked him up to no end. The sun was beating down on us, there was no shade to be found, and none of us really wanted to work. To him, I was a crazy farang who traveled halfway around the world to schlep heavy objects in the hot sun, and he was certainly going to let me go ahead and do that.

After we moved the eighth column, we had a bit of a break. I went to our cooler (we foreigners had a cooler), grabbed a handful of ice cubes and walked back to the guys I was working with. I handed out the ice cubes til I had none. They said “kap kun krab”, held the ice to the backs of their necks and we idled for a while. Mai offered me a smoke. I declined, and we both laughed.

When we got around to moving the next few columns, he stood on his toes in order to give me as much help as he could.

Today I started to question this whole gig. It feels more than a little strange in a country where labor is cheap to have paid money to come here to build houses with a team of twelve other people who have little or no construction experience, when the same money could have paid for more than twice the number of experienced builders. I don’t want to be cynical, but feels just slightly artificial, designed to make some well-to-do foreigners feel better about ourselves.

We were split into two groups today, and I worked with four other team members and a dozen or so local construction guys to transport and raise eighteen concrete columns and set them into the footing holes of two houses. It was hard work, and it felt good to have done it. But there were a few local guys just hanging around, and it made me scratch my head a little.

Meanwhile, the folks I’m with are so eager to lend a hand it’s comical sometimes. If a guy turns and reaches for, say, a shovel to scoop sand into a basket, my habitat compadres leap into action. One goes for a shovel, another a basket. Without really knowing what the guy wants to do with them. Or knowing only perhaps that the sand is for mixing into mortar. So the sign language ensues.

Shoulder shrug, hands in the “huh?” position [how many baskets?].

Wrinkled brow, some words in Thai [I don't know what you're asking me].

Or, maybe no wrinkled brow and some other words in Thai [add six baskets of sand].

???

And so it goes. Eventually, the baskets get filled with sand and tossed into the mortar mix, and all is good.

I think I’m just cranky. Having someone who’s never done a thing in her life tell me how I should do that thing is something that apparently rubs me the wrong way.

I’m also feeling pretty done with traveling alone, after almost a year in Singapore and weeks of travel in the region, here I am again. If I didn’t have to use this two weeks before the end of the year, I’d have saved it.

But what a thing to complain about. My Singapore stint was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything, and I’m sure this will be too.

My eyes are puffy and sore.

Tonight I went to see some sort of celebration. It was no big production, and it wasn’t all that interesting, but the vibe was good.

Some people in a village 30 minutes south of here set up a small stage by a big blue boat that washed into their village during the tsunami. A band was playing. People were selling silk flowers, woven handbags and other crafts. A group of women had set up a booth offering free foot massages. All of it was to raise money to rebuild the waterfont there, and also to support the burmese community. Legal and illegal aliens from Myanmar who make up a significant percentage of the population in this part of Thailand, and who perform most of the construction and labor jobs around here.

They’re leaving the boat there, in the middle of their town, as a tourist attraction. Makes sense. It would cost money to take it away, but if they work it right, people will pay to see it, buy postcards of it, etc. They’ve nicknamed it the ‘blue angel’ because as it drifted through the village, it didn’t hurt anyone or damage a single house. In fact, a number of people were able to cling to it for support and buoyancy before it finally came to rest.

An orange boat down the road, on the other hand, has been dubbed “the demon” because of the death and destruction it left in its wake.

The angel and the demon. Blue and orange – opposite colors on the color wheel.

Today I learned to lay cinderblock. Something I’d never done before. All fourteen of us worked on one house. A few of the villagers helped too. They don’t speak any English, but we have a translater whom we keep plenty busy. In any case, the language of smiles and hard work is enough to get us through most interchanges. We dug holes together, hauled blocks, mixed concrete.

There are two guys in our group named Hal. Hal Schmitz and Hal Taylor. Both white-haired retirees. Hal the greater and Hal the lesser as they like to say. Hal the greater because he’s the team leader. Hal the lesser because he’s not. I like to think of them as Hal the serious and Hal the funny. Hal the funny is a rocket scientist. He actually worked on the Apollo project that sent men to the moon. Now he runs his own consulting business, working with firms – mostly in Russia – that mine titanium for aviation and aerospace applications. Hal’s got plenty of opinions and likes to talk about himself a lot, but in an amiable way that somehow doesn’t offend or annoy.

Hal the serious is a war veteran. Not exactly sure which war, but I’m thinking Korean. He’s the right age. He’s responsible for us, and the success of this project, so it makes sense that he’s a little more serious than the rest of us. But he’s starting to loosen up a little.

It’s a cloudy Sunday afternoon here, relatively cool. I woke up very early this morning, tossed and turned in the pitch darkness for a while, then watched the interior of my room gradually take shape as the sun rose. The air conditioner hummed along and cooled the room nicely, but filled it with a faint mildewy smell.

I have a roomate. Tom. He’s from L.A., a nice guy but the kind of nice you want to hate. He sold his company a few months ago, and he’s been traveling ever since. He’s got some money. He’s smart, good looking, in good shape.

At 7am, Tom’s alarm went off. He got up and showered, and I stepped outside to feel the air of the new day. Not a leaf was stirring, and there wasn’t so much as a ripple on the pool. Warm and humid, but not hot. I just stood there and enjoyed the silence for a while.

Today was not a work day.

We toured a few tsunami-impacted sites, taking pictures. It’s an amazing thing to see the exploded remnants of steel-reinforced concrete walls once belonging to a five-star resort. Even more amazing to see a 100 foot military police boat sitting in a farmer’s field, two kilometers from the sea’s edge (and to know it was two kilometers offshore when the waves hit). So, it was carried four kilometers from where it had been steadfastly guarding the king’s grandson, who was jetskiiing at the time and died that day.

On the much brighter side, we also saw some of the houses Habitat built in June. Met the happy homeowners and their grinning children, who proudly took us inside and toured us around.

We had a delicious family style lunch of cashew chicken, grilled salted fish, deep fried prawns and shrimp, tom yum soup, stir-fried greens with garlic and of course lots of steamed rice. After lunch, the group split. Some went back to the hotel, while the rest of us took a short 1km hike to a nice beach with a view.

We sat and chatted for a while, and then from there, we went to an elephant orphanage, where we were treated to a steep muddy ride. I kept thinking I was going to take a header over the front of the thing, but it was a lot of fun, and the elephants definitely deserved the bananas and pineapple we fed them at the end of the trail.

I’m in the Bangkok airport right now, with a couple hours to kill. Friends have asked me whether this trip is for business or pleasure, and the answer is a little more complicated than that.

It’s definitely not business. Let’s call it pleasure with a purpose.

I had a couple of weeks of time-off I needed to use before the end of the year, and I signed up for a trip with Habitat for Humanity to work in the tsunami-impacted town of Khao Lak for a couple of weeks. As far as I know, we’ll be working on a single house for one family, but I’ll post the details here after I get to Khao Lak and get the scoop.

Anyway, assuming I can find Internet access there, look for a bunch of new posts.

I was in thailand for 28 hours over the weekend – from touchdown to takeoff. The occasion was a stag party for one of my colleagues, who’s flying back to the states to get married next week.

Bangkok was hot.

Skin-melting hot.

The air is hot. The earth is hot. You can feel the pavement through your shoes. Thai food, of course, is hot. And Thai women…

Well, I don’t like to generalise about such things. But it was a stag party after all, so I had to say it.

The highlights of the weekend were a broken windshield and a chili shot.

We played golf in the afternoon on a nine hole par three course designed as a miniaturised sampling of famous courses around the world. We had caddies, which was a first for all of us, but it’s basically mandatory in Thailand. These were a bunch of giggling women who knew their golf, and their golfers.

For the first couple of holes, I second-guessed my caddy’s club choices, with bad results. So I followed her advice for the rest of the round. She also gave me quite a bit of coaching along the way. I’m no golfer, and I needed it.

Andy hooked his drive off the seventh tee and could only watch as the ball veered toward the adjacent highway. We lost sight of it then heard the one sound we didn’t want to hear. The crunch of safety glass smashing. The ball took out the windshield of a passing truck. The truck stopped. The driver got out to survey the damage and perhaps identify the culprit. We stood around like idiots until the caddies frantically ordered us to keep playing.

Jeff, the bachelor, won the day. As it should be.

After golf, we had dinner at Cabbages & Condoms, a well-known restaurant whose profits benefit various aids research and reproductive rights initiatives. It’s so named because its founders believe that birth control should be as available and accepted as produce.

We were a very sort of calm and well-behaved group of men when we sat down to eat, which was somewhat worrisome. Once the alcohol began to flow, however, things deteriorated nicely.

Bharat, trying to reassert his manhood after polishing off a blue girly drink, ordered a shot of tequila and dropped a big slice of a very hot chili into it. He downed the shot and chewed the chili and never blinked an eye. Damn.

After dinner… well… that’s where this story will end.

I survived most of my trip through Bangkok, Laos and Vietnam on street food, and although many other travellers – as well as friends back home – told me how “brave” they thought I was, I had no problems. Eating alone in restaurants always feels a bit strange to me, but there is no such stigma with regard to street food, so there’s a kind of social comfort factor. The street is also the place where you can fill your stomach for less than a dollar.

When I happened to look at the menus of Thai or Vietnamese restaurants, the selections did not seem all that different from their San Francisco counterparts. It was on the street where I felt like I could find something really new and different.

I also really liked how out-in-the-open these places were. On the streets of Hanoi, people cooked outside, ate outside, washed up outside – familes and vendors alike, on the busy sidewalks.

Even in my Hanoi hotel, when I ordered the traditional Vietnamese breakfast of pho bo (beef noodle soup) or chao ca (fish porridge) each morning, someone from the staff would carry an empty tray out the front door of the hotel and return a few minutes later with my food. Everything else on the menu came from their own kitchen, but for Vietnamese food, they knew they couldn’t beat what I could get on the street.

From spring rolls to sticky rice, it’s a street food paradise!

On my first day in Laos, beside the Mekong, I had an unbelievable papaya salad. There was a whole strip of vendors along the river, and I hardly ate anywhere else the whole time I was in Vientiane. I had fresh orange-pineapple juice, salt-encrusted grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass, rice noodles with sausage, peanuts, tomatoes and herbs.

Laos and Vietnam were both French colonies, and although that legacy is not without its bitterness, one thing the French left behind is the art of baking. French bread from a burlap sack on a Hanoi sidewalk – still warm in the early morning – easily rivaled what I’ve had in France, and the tarts and cakes from a small patisserie in Hoi An were as beautiful as they were delicious.

In frigid Sapa, my breakfast each morning was a fist-sized ball of steaming sweet sticky rice, wrapped in a banana leaf. I’d wash it down with a cup of Vietnamese coffee – strong and sweetened with condensed milk – and each time I’d swear to myself I’d never have coffee any other way for the rest of my life.

I also had the most unbelievably fresh fruits from beginning to end, including some I’d never heard of before. My favourite discovery was a Vietnamese fruit that’s called chiku in Singapore. I can’t remember the Vietnamese name for it, but the taste lies somewhere between a mango and a pear, laced with a very slight touch of cinnamon.

Hoi An is where I ended my street food spree. I ate my dinners in restaurants there, and I made a habit of buying chiku during my days and asking my waiter or waitress to please slice it for my dessert.

They happily complied with my unusual request, and more often than not, they sat down to share it with me.

My nightlife on this trip has included a lot of billiards, mostly because a game like billiards provides a good venue for a solo traveller to meet and chat with people. The billiards tables in southeast asia – in Singapore, Thailand and Laos anyway – all seem to serve the same mix of clientele: travellers, ex-pats, working girls and non-working locals.

As a side note, Vietnam is thankfully a bit different. I haven’t seen working girls in the bars. Late at night here, they seem to lurk in alleyways – on their motorbikes. When they see a passing prospect – like a white guy on the back of a motorbike, a chase ensues. In my case, when I reach my destination – my hotel, for example – they pull up and make their sales pitch. At this point, it’s easy for me to simply duck indoors.

Anyway, In Bangkok, a working girl called me a butterfly, because she said I didn’t stay too long in conversation with any one girl. She told me I flitted from person to person – not just girls, by the way. It’s a somewhat accurate observation, but I actually tend not to move around the bar.

I’ll engage anyone for conversation or a game. Since I stand out as a passing traveller, however, a working girl inevitably strolls up, and conversation will hover around a little harmless flirting. Eventually, some version of the standard “will you take me with you tonight” question comes up, and I make it clear that I’m interested in pool and conversation but no more. After a while, the girl usually goes seeking another prospect, and another steps in to take her place.

I suppose with the “Eligible Bachelors of Singapore” thing, and some of the other stories that I’ve heard are floating around (with some significant embellishments by the way), I’ve created the impression that I’m trying to relive my teenage years here. Not true. Sure there’s been a certain amount of flirting combined with loud music and alcohol, but mainly I’ve made some friends on this trip – female and male – each of whom has shown me something new and different about my temporary home in Asia.

I may be a butterfly, but I’m no playah.

I just checked my work email for the first time in a week, and I was very moved by all the emails you sent me, letting me know how much you care about my safety and well-being. I feel very blessed to have you in my life.

For anyone who wants to keep informed or help those affected by the disaster, here are some links…

American Red Cross International Response Fund
Americares
Direct Relief International
Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam
UNICEF

I’m too far inland to have felt anything myself, but two of my colleagues are travelling in southern Thailand. Thankfully, I heard from Tracy last night, and she and Max are safe. She reported that they literally missed a tidal wave by minutes and that the place where they were planning to dive (off Phi Phi) was hit hard. Hundreds who were there are still missing. As for my other colleague – no word yet, but I’m not sure where exactly she and her husband had decided to holiday.