Tuk Tuk

As an addendum or perhaps apology for a previous post full of white-man guilt, instead I present nice pictures that all can enjoy, with commentary you are free to pass over. Here I am at Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Thai Buddhist architecture really stood out in literally bright contrast to the Japanese temples I am used to seeing. Usually I try to minimize taking pictures of me standing in front of things with a dumb look on my face, so this was taken by Maiko. I much more like to take pictures of her - she, of course, makes a good model - but occasionally she wants ones of me for some reason as well. Anyways, I figure I should have at least one with me in it so it doesn't look like I just pulled these off some Thai tourism website.

This was the first temple I saw in Thailand, and it blew me away. Cloudy the day before, it cleared up just as we set out that morning, and I honestly had to wear my sunglasses most of the day just to be able to look directly at the buildings. It's difficult to conceive of these being places built by people. Also, I wonder about the religious motive of their construction. Perhaps like European cathedrals they were built to inspire faith by impressing upon citizens the majesty of God, or perhaps not the majesty of the religion but the power of the rulers. Certainly, though amazing, all this ostentation seems rather unbecoming of a Buddhist institution to me.

Apparently many people tour the grounds without ever seeing the Emerald Buddha statue itself, which I can understand entirely. After wandering around a while slack-jawed with and gazing up at the sky like some simpleton, I almost forgot myself that the place contains something else worth seeing. The Emerald Buddha however, was rather anticlimatic, being only 66cm tall and placed high above all worshippers in an inner shrine building. I couldn't even take a picture of it, photography being prohibited inside the temple. Actually, photography was prohibited inside most every temple, as these are actually being used by Thais as places of worship. There are swarms of foreign tourists crowding around, oohing and ahhing at the buildings and shuffling into the inner sanctums without properly removing their shoes or hats, yet one still finds Thais lost in reverence or prayer. I suppose they have to practice a great deal of Buddha-proscribed patience just to study the Buddha in the first place.

However, this was not a feeling or quality absorbed by much of the other tourists. This was taken at the next temple we visited that day, Wat Pho, the home of the Reclining Buddha. A Buddha in a reclining pose represents him at the very moment of Enlightenment. To take a clear picture of this was quite difficult because of the throng of people that kept knocking into me, walking directly in front of me, or just tapping their feet in exasperation behind me. This reached the apex when I was trying to take a picture of Maiko in front of it and a few fat middle-aged Americans, not content to wait 30 seconds, started clearing their throats really loudly behind my back, wanting their turn. The incongruence and irony of this extreme act of rudeness inside a temple and in front of a GIANT STATUE OF THE BUDDHA, symbol of compassion and contentment, really amused me terribly, but rather than pointing this out to them along with the admonishment that one of the many virtues the Buddha praised was patience, I simply cursed at them in Japanese for a while.

Amusing sidebar to this, I discovered Maiko didn't know what clearing one's throat as a sign of impatience meant, since Japanese people never would do that (A Japanese would simply stand directly behind you very quietly for as long as it takes, and so when you finally turned around to discover they had been inconvenienced you would feel shamed). So she had no problem ignoring them and was just standing their fairly oblivious to what was going on, suspecting they all had sore throats, I guess.

After we viewed the statue, we were walking around the grounds of Wat Pho, thinking about getting a massage at the massage school connected to the temple that had a branch on the grounds. We stroll past a group of four Thai girls, when one of them says something garbled to me in what I take as Thai. I glance back over my shoulder, "Eh?" They get real excited that I responded and rush back to us, and, holding out their cameras, ask in labored English if we would take a picture. I am rather suspicious at this point because earlier some guy outside the temple had tried to tell us it was closed for Christmas and we should go with him to another temple, which I knew was a scam, having read about a similar approach as well as being generally aware that there is no reason a Buddhist temple in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas would be closed on a Christian holiday. No harm done, except of course to my attitude towards people approaching us. After a string of such experiences, I honestly suspect that perhaps these girls are going to distract us while someone comes up from behind to pick my pocket. So, eyeing them warily, I agree to take their picture.

"No, no!" they say, "Not our picture, a picture with you two!" Then I notice that this is just a group of sweet 12 year old girls, and are all carrying English conversation phrasebooks because they wanted to meet people and practice. I relax and shake my head at my distrust of such sincere kids. They pose, excited but embarassed, next to Maiko and I, and we chat for a while. They are extremely excited when they find out she's Japanese, since they also learned a little of that language. Actually, I talk with them in Japanese as well, since I simply cannot understand Thai pronounciation of English. I think they mistake us for stars or some visiting international luminaries, or maybe they just wanted to take a picture with a beautiful Japanese girl and had to accept me as well. Anyway, though I felt rather awful for ever thinking poorly of them, meeting them does raise my spirits again and my kind of hope in the general goodness of people.

The next day we went on a tour to the ancient capital of Thailand, Ayuthaya. From 1350 to 1767, when Thailand was still Siam, Ayuthaya served as the royal capital, a cosmopolitan city of more than a million people. It resisted almost four centuries of attempts at colonization by Western powers, only to be conquered and almost entirely razed to the ground instead by the Burmese atop battle-trained elephants(!). A few years later, the Thai regrouped under a new general and eventually moved the capital down river to what would later become Bangkok. The former capital Ayuthaya was left behind, and so remains today largely in ruins.

Though the fires of the Burmese conquerors and time itself have clearly left their mark on the buildings in the former capital, the most shocking desecration has to be the deliberate way the heads were lopped off nearly every Buddhist statue. It is rare to find one with the head still intact, since it seems they were just systematically decapitated by the invading forces. At first I assumed it must have been for religious reasons; similar to the Taliban destroying icons in Afganistan or the destruction of Greco-Roman statues of the naked human form. I thought the Burmese must simply be Muslims, since I couldn't imagine Buddhists or Hindus or any other of the religions of the region sanctioning pointless destruction such as this.

It turns out, however, they were Buddhist just as the Thai, and had cut off the heads as if the heads of their vanquished enemies. The whole scene was just one of ruin and quiet desolation. Not just in the sense of Shelley's Ozymandias, the sort of ruin that awaits all human pride and endeavor, but it seemed to me to be the ruin of humanity itself. Frankly, looking at all these statues made me more sad perhaps than the idea of all the Thai that were no doubt killed at the same time. To just destroy art and culture so wantonly displays not just a disrespect for human life, not just a hatred for another enemy or group, but a disrespect and hatred for humanity itself. To destroy the essence of the people conquered, that which is captured in their art, is to strike at their very humanity, and reveals a lack thereof in the conqueror.

When I told Maiko how sad it seemed she agreed that it was sad in what it showed us of people, but maintained that if the Burmese had wanted to really erase or mock the power of the statues, they had failed. To her, the statues were not sad, because - though they had been defaced, destroyed, humiliated - in reality, nothing could touch them or what they represented, as each statue was of a Buddha that had already reached Englightenment. For her, they were in this sense somewhat inspiring, having already transcended this place to somewhere they could not even be touched. I was rather impressed by her answer but, of course, pride would not allow me to admit this to her fully at the time. This is actually a rather interesting example of that triumph, a famous spot where a tree has enveloped a ruined statue and now cradles a Buddha head in its roots.

From there we saw the largest statue of the reclining Buddha - larger than the previous one, but at this size, the difference is pretty negligible. I find myself impressed by the size or magnitude or beauty of sculpture such as this, but often lacking any inspiration from faith. It's similar to why I didn't really enjoy the Louvre; I just don't feel anything looking at hundreds of pictures of Jesus and Mary, yeah they have halos behind their heads, they're holy I get it and I don't care. So, it was useful to have Maiko along as somewhat of a spiritual advisor; I can view the art or temples as a believer or, at least, someone more spiritual, through her eyes. She was touched by the happiness and contentment in the expression of the statue. I noticed how big it was. Putting those together, I have decided it was a really big, happy statue.

The trip back from Ayuthaya was a river cruise all the way to Bangkok. After lunch on board we could simply look out the windows at the passing scenery or go up on deck for a better look. The third option was to stay inside and look at a small tv playing old episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos. What blew me away was how many people took the third option. I wouldn't watch that show if I were sitting at home alone, sick, bored and unable to sleep in the middle of the night, yet people sat in a boat cruising down a river in Thailand on a trip they likely spent large sums of money on more interested in watching the antics of Bob Saget then craning their heads slightly to the right or left to see all the crazy shit passing them by. I spent a disproportionate amount of time complaining to Maiko about these people until she told me to stop wasting time criticizing them then and go up on the deck already.

The view of the riverside is a sort of fascinating sped-up timeline of Thailand, from the ruins of the old capital down through the countryside, the banks going from deep jungle to shacks and temples poking out from the brush, to the gradual paring away of the wilderness as the buildings get larger and more modern. Going past us on both sides zip men in thin, long and knife-like boats, couples being sheperded around on private cruises, giant barges being towed downstream, and fishing boats pulling long nets that scape the bottom. I spend most of the time trying to get a "Thailand" picture of one of the long boats in front of a temple, a skyscraper, or the shacks built out into the river on stilts. As you can clearly see, I was successful.

Though the trip went on for another day and there is more to tell, much of it was spent in malls and department stores - not the market stalls and back-alleys one associates with Bangkok - and so I'll just leave it with that last picture that satisfies the concept of Thailand I projected onto the country in the first place.

The ubiquitous Thai/Mexican fruit stand

I went to Bangkok for five days during Christmas. I was surprised at how Thailand is in many ways similar to Mexico.

It's hot:
The weather was almost exactly like Japan during the summer, but after a few months of cold here, I was unbelievably happy to be sweating in the humidity. T-shirts and sandals.

Cheap, delicious food:
Meals at real restaurants for less than $3, food off the street for less than a dollar.

You can't drink the water:
Only bottled water or beer, all drinks no ice.

People are devout believers:
Thailand is perhaps the most Buddhist country in the world; the average person seems genuinely content despite their situation.

Rampant poverty:
Giant department stores and expensive restaurants that only foreigners and a thin upper caste of Thais seem to be able to frequent

A country almost entirely based on tourism and cheap labor:
Thailand is a third-world country that functionally exists solely for the first-world. Thai schools require either English or Japanese language study - which you pick determines who you're going to serve, I suppose. Whether you're working in a hotel, a restaurant, or a sweatshop sewing wallets, you are serving some foreigner. Contrary to popular belief though, Thais themselves are the most frequent customers of brothels, not foreigners.

Almost everyone you meet is warm-hearted and helpful, except that the few that rip you off:
Kids approach us on the street to give us directions, the guy directing traffic in front of our hotel dances all day, the shop-keeper thanks you with a sort of elegant tranquility, the waitress in the restaurant asks how you are doing because she really does want to know. Then some guy tries to tell us a temple is closed to lead us into some back-alley trap, a taxi driver attempts to take us somewhere entirely different, and I catch another eyeing Maiko's bag. Suddenly I suspect these four little 13 year old girls that approach us to talk are just running some scam to distract me so another person can sneak up and pick my pocket. But then I notice they are all carrying English phrasebooks and just want to meet us and take pictures with us, and I feel terrible.

I really enjoy visiting and yet feel somehow guilty:
I am laying back in a recliner having my feet massaged for one hour by a squat, middle-aged Thai woman while sipping a fresh banana shake. This will all cost me less than $10, so I've been going every day. Rolling my neck, looking down and watching her brown, weathered hands kneading my deathly pale white feet, untouched by a day of hard work, I can't help but feel like I'm living some colonial fantasy. Though this amuses me greatly, I also feel guilty. Perhaps she is content in her work, something safe and easy that provides her with a stable income. Or maybe this is a great symbol of our relationship with poor nations; a white man sits in luxury tossing a sum of money literally at his feet to a servant that is but a pittance to him but her entire livelihood.

Conduct befitting an instructor

Being only 22 years old, I am at the most 6 years older than the students at school, something that I think makes them more comfortable in approaching me outside of class or opening up to me. The danger, of course, is that just as they can look up to me as almost an older brother, I can forget they're my students and start treating them like younger siblings. There is - I think, at least - a certain obligation that comes from being a teacher in which I have to act slightly different in my role at school than I would outside class, since it is a dual role that includes modeling correct behavior for the kids in the class. This mostly takes the form of pretending I don't still find gay jokes and scatalogical humor amusing. I can't think of a worse role model for not making fun of other people than myself.

For example, a few days ago I was teaching a class about Christmas and each of the students was writing a letter to Santa about what they wanted for Christmas and why. Afterwards, I asked if any of the students wanted to volunteer to tell the class, in return for points. This was Duck Boy's class, which is 21 boys and one girl, a class that is always quite rowdy. Him and his two buddies sit together and are constantly trying to joke around in class by volunteering funny answers to all the questions - which is in itself amusing because their attempts at diversion are really making them by far the most active and best participants out of all my classes. In this class, the first boy announces, "I want Power for Christmas, because I want to rule over Akira (another kid in the class)." This gets a laugh out of me, though I explain to Nietzsche that usually Santa can only grant objects, not metaphysical qualities. The next says, "I want a hot girlfriend. Because I want a hot girlfriend." I laugh again, while explaining that Santa is also not running some sort of dating or mail-order bride service.

The last kid, the Duck Boy, points at a kid to the left of him, let's call him Y., and says, "Hey, Mr. Adams. Yes, yes! I know what Y. wants for Christmas!" I wonder where he's going with this, but since it really does involve an even more advanced use of English to make a joke about someone else, I'm kind of impressed and let him go on. He continues, "He asked Santa for a deep voice!"

This is funny, because it is so true. The Y. kid really does sound pre-pubescent to a ridiculous extent; he squeaks out all his words in a voice that always seems on the verge of breaking but never quite gets there. Sometimes, hearing him ask a question from across class, I really do mistake him for a girl. I feel sorry for the kid, but not so much that I wouldn't laugh at him, which I start doing, very hard. After the few seconds it takes the other kids to process what he said, they start laughing too. The rest of the class laughing is what shocks me back into the realization that I am teaching this class, not in this class, and I really cannot be laughing at this joke. This is hard for me because I love to laugh at other people, especially when accurately characterized. I tell the kid that he's being a jerk. He defends himself, looking up at me, his eyes wide with sincerity, pointing repeatedly at the other boy, "But listen. Listen to him! Yoshimura, talk! He has girl voice. So he wants more manly voice!" I bite my lip hard as the class erupts again.

Changing gears, I point out that while Y. might have a higher voice, he is in fact taller and bigger than the Duck Boy, who is in fact, rather tiny (I use the word "chibi" or shrimp), so overall, they're about equal as men. Yoshimura gets his chance to laugh back, the class joins in, and I figure at this point that this is really the only way to deal with these sort of situations.

After class, both kids come up to me and Duck Boy reiterates that Y. has a woman's voice to me, while Y. calls him a shrimp. Both are being playful about it though, so I figure no harm is done as long as the barbs are evenly spread. The whole serious disciplinarian angle just isn't going to work for me here, so perhaps I will have to be the one to supply wit or comebacks to those kids in need instead.

Profiles of the only students I am sure can talk

Like I said, there are only around 10 kids at the school that will regularly speak to me. Those ten as well could more aptly be divided into pairs and groups of three students, since students here seem unable to even visit the office or go to the bathroom alone. Not to say that students in the US - especially girls - don't travel in groups for protection, but I'd like to believe I was capable of completing basic tasks in my day without the support of an entourage. Students come up to me or other teachers almost always in groups, even if only one is going to speak to me. The office is filled with about 20 kids during the breaks between class, though maybe as few as 5 actually have reason to be in there. As the representative says his or her piece, his or her friends will mill around to the side, or simply stare at me, beaming.

I felt like writing about some of these kids because one might be left with the impression from previous posts that the students exist mostly to irritate me. On the contrary, usually the 10 kids with one comment easily outweigh any frustration I experience during the day dealing with their classmates. They are geniune, sweet, and often hilarious, even if unintentionally. Talking to kids here is usually the best part of my day, because I don't feel like they are putting up any sort of cynical or apathetic front. (As for example, many American students, like me, did in high school) So here are some student profiles, today just of some of the boys:

One of the strangest is this student who seems to make a point of asking how I am everyday. Just "How are you?". He has a keen sense as to when I am leaving for the day, and often abruptly materializes in front of me around 5 to say, "Hey, How are you!?" Sometimes he comes up from behind me, racing down the hallway after me until he reaches the proper position from which to yelp "How are you?!" The best is when I have my headphones on and I can't see him until he leaps in front of me, halfway bent over out of breath, and I realize he has just come from sprinting across the entire school just to get my attention so he can ask his one question. I've tried to engage him in some extended conversation but he just smiled and nodded his head continuously until I finally just edged around him and went home. I guess he just believes it is his solemn duty simply to find out every day if I'm doing alright. That done, he's fulfilled some self-assigned bond.

Another awesome student is this spry kid with that goofy hair that only Japanese boys have, the kind that inexplicably can stand up in all directions. This kid somehow reminds me of a duck. He has two buddies that are always shadowing him from his homeroom class. He often catches me passing him on the stairway between class and stops me to chat very briefly. Briefly as he usually has only some prepared statement for me that he reveals without warning. He reveals a certain enthusiasm in his conversations with me that I'm not sure he is even aware of, perhaps because he doesn't always seem to understand the denotation or the connotation of the words he uses.

Duck Boy: Hi Adams Sensei, how are you?
Luke: I'm a little tired.
Duck Boy: Oh! (very concerned) I am very sad! [He means "that is very sad"]
Luke: (Solemnly) Yes, yes you are. Anyways, what's up?
Duck Boy: Yes, well...(Nodding his head and looking at me appraisingly)...You are very handsome, I believe.
Luke: (Laughing) Well, thank you.
Duck Boy: I am very surprising! [He means, "I am surprised"]
Luke: Yes, you certainly are.
Duck Boy: Okay... (Nods one last time and continues on to class)

And I have learned to just laugh and shake my head after this sort of interchange, because it's just too hard to figure out what exactly he is getting out of our dialogue, but he at least seems to be happy with it.

Last week I began to get visits from a new group of three third year boys. They were the ones that accosted me in the library some time back, during the summer. Last week, they suddenly approached me at lunch and asked if I was free to talk. I was, and they sat down. I was rather bemused as they took seats at the desks of the surrounding teachers and began to pepper me with a series of entirely random albeit pre-prepared questions:

"What sports do you play?"
"What do you think of Bush?"
"How much do you weigh?"
"Do you listen to Eminem?"
I answer these and a few more, they seem satisfied, and finished with their inquiry, rise from their seats. I turn back to my work at my desk. One of them says, "See you tomorrow then Mr. Adams"

And it turns out he really meant it, because they came the next day. And the next. And the next. On Friday they waited almost a half an hour at my desk for me to return from the store where I was buying my lunch, just to ask:

"Do you have any brothers?"
"Do Americans think all Japanese are samurai?"
"Do you know that Washizu Sensei is a famous soccer player?"
"How tall are you?"

Then, "See you tomorrow Mr. Adams." And it seems that I will.

Tired ape

Most kids at school don't ever talk to me outside of class. Really, there are probably less than 10 that ever do talk to me on their own. 10 out of 400 of students I teach, or 10 out of 1200 total. There are however a lot of kids who yell "HELLO!" in hideously accented English at me every time they pass me in the hallway, at least 10 a day. But that doesn't count.

One, I don't think it counts because it isn't really a word at all since it sounds an awful lot more like "HARROW!" (rhyming with "borrow") Also, I don't like to count this because it depresses me deeply that after 3-6 years of English education, nigh every student in the school is incapable of pronouncing the absolute first word you should learn in an English class. I mean, that's the first day. You shouldn't be able to get through that day without being able to say "Hello". I just get the feeling the class went more like this:

Teacher: "Hello class"
Students (in unison): "HARROW!"
Teacher: "Hello!"
Students: "HARROW!"
Teacher: "No, no, no...He-llo"
Students: "Harrow?"
Teacher: "(sigh)...Alright, fine, "Harrow", whatever."

Then everyone gave up on pronunciation forever.

Anyways, this isn't just me making fun of kids for not being able to pronounce English words. While every greeting is a bold declaration of the failure of the educational system and a great blow to any confidence I have towards making a difference, I think we all know from years of stereotyping that Japanese people have problems with L's and R's. What really disturbs me about the kids yelling the word at me is the way in which they act saying it. I am not sure exactly what this signifies. The simple explanation is that they are just so pleased at themselves for saying something in English that they are just giggling with a mixture of pride and embarassment for taking the chance. But, I also question whether they are really trying to communicate at all.

Sometimes, I watch a group of girls draw near, and as a single one approaches me to yell "Harro!" and wave frantically in my face, running back to the safety of the group, watching my reaction with supreme fascination and anticipation, I wonder if this greeting is really not more akin to people yelling at a some great ape in the zoo, except this ape curiously can be found loping around the hallways of the school. I am the orangutan that students notice while walking with their friends, the gorilla with almost-human expressions and features. For the amusement of said friends, one intrepid student imitates noises to try to draw the beast out. Of course, they can't mimic the sounds exactly, but perhaps one comes close enough that the simian recognizes in the mockery a echoing of its own language (which is, of course, a mystery to this student and his or her friends), and - this is almost too much for them to bear - it evens attempts to reply in this mysterious primate tongue! Having accomplished their goal and all having had a good laugh, the students move on, leaving the ape where they found him, waiting for a conversation that will not come.

After about 10 of these a day, the ape often feels like pounding his head on the glass a bit. He understands why the gorilla at the San Diego Zoo liked to sit with his back to the glass; so he could ignore the people outside gesturing and yelling widly in an attempt to provoke him into acting like the dumb animal that he surely is.