Merry Christmas 2008 update

This is the mass email I just sent out, in case you didn't get it.




Dear friends and family,

This is my yearly update, to let you know about my adventures and maybe even get a reply about what you've been up to. It's a tad bit long, so feel free to ignore it or read only bits here and there. This is not going to include too many stories, because then it would turn into a full-on novel. But you can find stories and photos from most of these things on my blog if you care.

The year started out in Uppsala, Sweden, where I'm just about to finish my Masters of Humanitarian Action (gotta hand in a pesky thesis in the next few months). It was freezing cold and dark, and I had metal spikes on my bike tires to cycle 7km each way to/from class on ice and snow. In January I visited friends in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht for a week, then moved into a new flat near the Uppsala city centre, with way cheaper rent. That cut my bike commute hugely, but instead of a bachelor pad I then had a bedroom in a shared flat with 4 other guys. It was really great, though, and we had lots of space for guests and parties. I was one of 4 students in our program who didn't go on exchange for the second semester of classes, and I'm really happy I stayed in Uppsala. The students who came on exchange from our partner universities (there were 7 European universities running my degree at the time, now there are 9) were really cool, and most of our classes were better than the first semester (and reportedly better than most of the other unis).

During the semester, I went on a weekend cruise (incredibly cheap) to Helsinki, Finland with some friends and another one to Tallinn, Estonia. In March, I flew to Dublin to visit a friend I met in Cameroon, and some UBC friends, for St Patrick weekend, then spent a day in Uppsala before flying to Vancouver for a 10 day visit to get my knee examined by specialists and schedule a surgery. Back in Uppsala at the end of March, a few of us self-organised a May study field trip to the Balkans (actually I did very little organising, but I did the flight bookings).

April 30 in Sweden, and particularly in Uppsala, is Valborg, which is a massssive all-day party with thousands of young (and not-so-young) people out on the town to celebrate the arrival of Spring and whatnot. We hosted a big group of people at our flat who came in from other countries for the occasion, and a series of large parties ensued. A few days later I had to head to a conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, so I flew alone to Ljubljana and spent a week there before flying to Sarajevo, Bosnia to meet up with my classmates for our field trip. I really loved Slovenia and the people I met there. We also had a good week in Bosnia and a very short but nice stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia before heading back to Sweden.

Back in Sweden, we had a few final class sessions and then at the end of May I caught a train to Göteborg to meet up with Vania, Ratana, and Karin, all of whom were at the Uni of Otago with me in New Zealand. We were joined by Henrik, who was at Otago the year after me. A weekend of fun, and then it was off to the airport at 5something in the morning! I landed in Vancouver May 26 (the previous year I left Vancouver for Cameroon on May 27), had reconstructive surgery on my left knee (ACL replacement, partial meniscectomy) June 2, and spent the next 2 months on crutches and then cane, while going to physio 2-3 times a week.

On August 13 I flew out of Vancouver again, and spent the next month in Oxford, England for an internship with the Fritz Institute hosted at Oxfam GB headquarters, which was a really neat experience. I learned a fair bit and met some really cool people, including my boss Fraser who's an exceptional guy. After my four weeks were up, I spent a week visiting friends in the UK (Vania in Manchester, Will in Aberystwyth, Augustine in Cardiff) before heading to Germany for a weeklong roadtrip with Marcus and Prashna, two of my flatmates when I lived in New Zealand. We went to Oktoberfest in Munich, then visited our friend in Göttingen, made a trip up to Berlin, and then all the way down to Düsseldorf where Marcus lives, and I then flew from the Köln-Bonn airport back to Uppsala.

I spent all of October in Uppsala, working on my thesis background research and framework, seeing a few friends, and attending two days of thesis defences (half my class defended at the end of October, a number defended just before Christmas, and I'll be one of a handful to defend in the Spring). Soon it was time to leave cold, dark Sweden for a brighter place - Thailand!

I spent a night in London for an extremely short visit with my childhood friend Aidan, who I hadn't seen in years, then off to Thailand via Kuwait. I landed November 5, spent a few nights in Bangkok to get rid of jetlag and visit my friends Pavel (friend I met in Cameroon) and Nick (studied with me in Uppsala), then an overnight bus took me up to Mae Sot, which is just beside the border with Burma.

I spent November and half of December in and around Mae Sot, eating amazing food at delicious prices, making new friends primarily among other expats as well as a few locals, and trying to get thesis work done. I've managed some interviews so far, but it looks like I need to get some more done, so hopefully January will see me finishing that up. It's a long process trying to get things done in the circumstances, so it's frustrating at times, but the end result will hopefully be worth the arduous process.

If you want to know what I'm studying, since everyone seems to ask, here's the short version: I'm looking at young Karen refugees from Burma, to see whether there are any links between A) their levels of exploration and commitment to different ideas about things like occupation, religion, politics, male and female roles and B) their levels of exploration and commitment to ideas about the ongoing conflict in Karen State in Burma (the longest running civil war in the world, now over 60 years old!). I plan on having my thesis finished by the end of March, so at that time you can ask me if I found anything interesting and I can answer by sending you the pdf like the lazy man I am.

In October, while I was still home in Sweden, I booked a flight from Thailand to Vancouver, Canada. I kept it secret from everyone, both family and friends. On Dec 17th, after almost 24 hours of travelling, I landed in Vancouver and a couple hours later had made my way through the snow by public transit to my parents' home. I cut my hair (shaved head, it's easy), and shaved, took a shower, and put on clean clothes, then went upstairs to surprise my dad who was the only one home at the time. I've been here a week, and I'm leaving back to Thailand in a week. It's been a good week, though quite tiring at times with so much to do and so little time, and soooo much snow. I was a child the last time I remember seeing this much snow in Vancouver - we're used to rain all winter, not this strange white stuff! It's wonderful.

That's pretty much my whole year in a nutshell. If anything from this email in particular seems interesting to you, you can probably find some photos and stories to go with that on my blog at http://www.PhotoDiarist.com/ which is now 4 years old. Just look at the archives by date order and it should be easy to find anything you're looking for.

A lot of my friends ask me to keep in touch, and I'm not great at that, so I built a new set of websites to help force me to be more 'visible' to my friends and family without taking as much time and effort as it would for me to actually write emails and make phone calls on a regular basis. So check them out, at http://Li.feProject.com/ (yes that is the correct spelling - LifeProject.com was taken so I bought feProject.com and added a subdomain). One of the four sites is a photo-a-day thing (many of those pics never end up on my blog, so they're different) and one is a GPS tracking project where I put up maps of everywhere I've been each day. I try to keep them updated regularly, and you can add them to your feedreader (I suggest http://www.NetVibes.com/ as an online feedreader if you don't already have one) so it'll tell you if/when the sites are updated. The archives on the GPS site are a bit muddled right now, but should have them fixed soonish. So now no one can ask me where in the world I am - just look at the site and you can see not only the country but exactly where I've been to something around 5-10m accuracy!

Well, it's 130am on Christmas Day here in Vancouver and I have yet to wrap the gifts I bought my family in Bangkok last week, so time to get busy! I'd really like to hear from any/all of you about what you're up to, what your plans for 2009 will be, etc. If you're in Vancouver and want to meet up before Jan 3, my number here is 778.316.2129. Once I'm back in Thailand, my number is +66.80.071.3128 so feel free to call or text me any time. In March I'll be back to my Swedish number, +46.76.233.7879.

Merry Christmas, or as my Hungarian uncle likes to say, Cherry Mishmash! I hope the year has treated you well, and that 2009 is even better for you. Send me an email and update me on your life!

Christmas hugs,
Chris

Creatures of Thailand

*Warning* The last 4 photos in this post are spiders, in case you don't like looking at photos of spiders. The first 21 photos are not spiders.


Although the first photo is of dead creatures, the rest were alive at the time I shot the photos.


Fried cockroaches (for eating)




Cat on router:




Cows on lawn:




Three photos of a jewel beetle that used to visit us at the guesthouse:








Dog:




Strangest caterpillar I have ever seen:




Skink:




Live dragonfly:




Dead dragonfly with gecko:




Gibbon:




Frog on bookshelf:




Toad on floor:




Fly with moustache-face butt:




Kukri Snake:




A butterfly that landed on my shirt, then on a post:




Puppy at a migrant school:




Kitten at the same migrant school:




Water buffalo:




Goat:






The next / final four photos are spiders I've met at home and in the office:

A Tourist in Bangkok

On December 14th, after a few hours rest in Mae Sot (following an intense 3 day road trip), I caught an overnight bus to Bangkok. I only slept an hour or so maybe, and arrived in Bangkok at 430am. I was at Soi 1 Guesthouse (a really good hostel in Bangkok, not actually a guesthouse, if you're ever looking for one) by 5am, and sleeping on the couch in the lounge within a few minutes. I got up after 8 and set out to be a tourist and do some Christmas shopping, so I caught my "bus" which is actually a boat and, after disembarking, promptly got lost.

I've been to Bangkok a number of times, so I wasn't reeeally lost. It was just that the map didn't really match reality (which, it turns out, is actually true when I look at the real life map in Google Earth), but I found my way nonetheless.

I briefly checked out Wat Ratchanatdaram, and one of the little pagodas nearby.






I then walked past the Democracy Monument...




...and around the Royal Grounds, and past the Grand Palace. A neat window along the way:




After quite some time and a fair bit of sweat, I arrived at Wat Po (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, Wat Pho). This place is definitely worth seeing, even for those who are as templed-out as I am. It was really impressive, and well worth the 50 baht (CAD$1.75) it cost to get in.




There are a number of buildings on the temple grounds, one of which houses one of the largest reclining Buddhas in the world. It felt smaller than the big cement reclining Buddha near Mae Sot.




There are "guards" at many of the entrances and gates within the complex:




And neat little windows sometimes:




There's a fair bit of maintenance / renewal work going on as well:








These photos don't even come close to illustrating how ornate, bright, and detailed the buildings are.








After Wat Po, I did some shopping and a lot of walking (getting lost again, but eventually finding my way as usual), then caught the boat back to the hostel. This is my bus stop, where I get on and off the canal boat in the split second between the boat pulling up and pulling away. The first time I took this boat in November, I missed the first one because I wasn't fast enough jumping on to the edge and climbing down into it.




After two days of shopping and chilling at the hostel, I caught a taxi to the recently reopened Suvarnabhumi Airport and took off to Taipei. I spent 6 hours in the Taipei airport, which luckily was nearly deserted and thus very quiet, then took off again to Vancouver to surprise my family and friends for Christmas. The flight from Bangkok was my 99th flight of my life, and the flight to Vancouver was my 100th! Yep, I have an Excel spreadsheet that lists all the flights I've ever taken. I'm a nerd like that.

Weekend motorbike trip to Mae Sariang

This blog post begins and ends with food photos.


On December 12th I set off with my friends, Matt and Hans, on a weekend motorcycle road trip from Mae Sot just over 200km up to Mae Sariang. First we filled up on petrol and I bought some chips. Tasty flavour!




We drove for about 15 minutes and stopped at a chicken stand to buy our lunch - two chickens with sticky rice and sauce! Yummmmmmmm!






An hour and a half later, we stopped in a little village to refill our tanks as Karen women walked along the road.




A typical hand-crank petrol station. It cost us $2.50 to fill up here, which was nearly twice what everyone else charges us, but there's no arguing when you're in the middle of nowhere getting petrol.




Hans demonstrating good riding technique by staying on the road:




Matty demonstrating how to drive on gravel with sidebag:




Matty's friend Goldie, a Karen girl he taught last year and who lives in Mae Sariang, has a red bike. It says "Organic Sport" on it. Explanations are welcome.




Matty's bike says "Ecology Power." Again, explanations happily accepted. My bike just says "Ultimate 4 Stroke Engine."




We arrived safely in Mae Sariang in the evening after a long day of driving on beautiful if not always well-maintained roads, and slept well at the North West guesthouse.


In the morning Goldie came to pick us up and lead us to her home village, a place called Mae Sam Laep, which is on the eastern (Thai) bank of the Salween River, the border between Thailand and Burma. Since Matt's rear brake wasn't working quite as well as it should have been, we got a mechanic in Mae Sam Laep to adjust and lubricate both his rear and front brakes. It's important to have good brakes when you're riding down a 45 degree incline, which happened at least twice to us.






After a little walking about, we found a boat skipper and worked out a price for the four of us to take an hour-long trip along the river, with Burma on one side of us, and Thailand on the other. Matt quite enjoyed his pink life vest.




River boats!




Two ladies and a young girl joined us in our boat, though not as tourists of course!




Our captain:




The boat was a bit less than five feet wide I'd say, though it looks much larger in this photo:






Every time I'm in Southeast Asia, I'm constantly reminded of M*A*S*H by the scenery.




An SPDC checkpoint:




After a great river trip and a nice chicken curry lunch, we were back on the windy mountain roads to Mae Sariang. The outskirts of Mae Sam Laep, just as we were leaving town, look something like this:




That evening Hans and I watched this fisherman in Mae Sariang catching something that looked from our distance like a snake or eel. Then he walked across the river, waist deep, and I presume went home to eat or sell it.




On Sunday we were on the road again, back to Mae Sot! The road is really something amazing, though it might not be amazing if you're riding in the back of a songthaew or someone's car even, depending on your predisposition to motion sickness on windy, steep, sometimes bumpy roads. And sometimes the locals like to share the road too:




At a certain point, the narrow, pothole-riddled, one-lane-each-way 'highway' turns into a big dirt construction site. This is where the new highway meets the old one. They've been working for a number of years to improve this highway, kilometre by kilometre.




Matty enjoys the dirt road like Hans and I:




Right after that dirt track, the road became an amazing, better-than-Canadian, wide and smooth highway. After a while on this great road, we reached Tha Song Yang, a small town where we had a delicious lunch. The Thai version of Pho. As you can see, Hans was ecstatic.




Matty seemed quite contented as well:




An hour and a half after leaving Tha Song Yang, we were back in Mae Sot for a quiet beer and I was off to get my bags packed and catch an overnight bus to Bangkok, where I did some touristing for once. But that's for the next post.