The evening I arrived I enjoyed a meal with members, family, and friends of the organization that I will be working with. After some delicious food and a whirlwind of introductions I was brought to the house in which I will be staying for the next three months.
The house is made up of a few spacious rooms, most of which are filled with donations for Burma’s IDPs. Clothes, tools, toothbrushes, and small toys for displaced children sit in boxes and rice sacks that line the walls. The kitchen has a working refrigerator and stove, but neither look like they’re used very often. Same goes for the dining table, which holds stacks of empty camera boxes.
Next to the table is a metal chair. The chair has no legs, but it is welded to a giant propeller with a gas tank. There’s a seatbelt. Once I’ve got it figured out I’ll let you know. As for the house, I love the place.
I spend my first couple of days in Chiang Mai proof-reading info material and gathering supplies for the organization. The city is beautiful. The sky is almost always clear and most of the buildings aren’t more than a few stories high. More than once I find myself with views of not so distant bright green hills from the middle of bustling urban intersections. I think of San Francisco often.
Still, the differences are more abundant than the similarities. A fact hard to ignore while I’m bouncing around the back of a songthaew past a golden Buddhist temple in a city where I don’t speak the language and downtown is still surrounded by a corroding defensive wall with a moat.