Thailand at last

A fallen flower I found and wore in my hair.

We're finally here!!!!!! It turns out that three other girls from BIOCEP were on my flight from HK to BKK, and I was actually seated next to one of them, so the last few hours of the journey were spent in a companionable sleep-deprived daze. We picked up our luggage, made it through immigration and customs, and found one of the Mahidol University organizers waiting for us when we left the arrivals area. After a quick stop for the others to exchange money, we were shepherded into a van that took us to the Salaya campus of Mahidol University's International College. The van ride took a lot longer than I expected, though I did manage to spend most of the time in a half-asleep-half-awake state that might have altered my perception of things.

Our dormitory!

In fact, tired though I was, I certainly didn't mean to doze on the ride back, since there was so much to see outside the windows. The airport itself was lined with beautiful murals and Thai art, and the streets outside were lined with new and fascinating things to see. We passed a big ceremonial gate to commemorate the King's birthday, countless tiny roadside stands, and every sign was written in the unfamiliar squiggles that I can't help finding both beautiful and bizarre. In Thailand, unlike in China and Taiwan, cars drive on the left side of the road, which I always find fun (so long as I'm not the one driving).

The street outside our dorm.

When we finally arrived at the International House where we are staying, it was all I could do to keep my eyes awake. We all removed our shoes before entering the house, which is beautifully furnished with dark wood, white walls, teal tiles in the bathrooms and teal-and-gold ironwork on the stair railings. The security guard helped carry my bag upstairs to my room, and I got my internet working in no time at all. A couple of the other participants happily availed themselves of it while I took a longed-for shower after a quick run to the local 7-11 for some water and iced tea.

I actually managed to sleep six hours last night, even making it through the dreaded 3-5am zone without waking up. I got up around 7, made some tea, and went for a quick walk around the neighborhood. We are staying in one of the wealthiest areas of Bangkok (no complaints here!), with lovely gated houses, bright statues, painted bridges, and carefully-cultivated tropical foliage everywhere you turn. As I walked outside, the streets were nearly empty of cars, but the neighborhood itself showed signs of life -- a couple walking their dog, a mother and child on her bike, a woman arranging cut flowers at her family shrine in the front yard. In front of several houses the Thai flag flapped in the light breeze.

Miniature Thai water gardens.

On my return, I met a friendly Thai student named Max who was very curious about who we all were and where we had come from. When he asked me what we were doing today, I suspect he found me rather disappointingly short on details: I know we are going to the beach (don't know which beach) for two days, with BIOCEP participants (not sure whether this includes the Thai students or not) for a "get-to-know-you" and intro session before the conference starts in earnest on Monday. I won't be bringing my computer to the beach, as I'm not sure what the internet situation is and would rather not have to carry it unnecessarily, so I'll be out of contact until Monday. I will, however, be bringing my camera, and will have lots of stories and pictures for you when I return!

The traditional feng shui ba gua, hung on someone's wall.
If you look closely (all pictures, by the way, are "clickable"
if you want to view them at a higher resolution),
you can see me reflected upside-down taking this picture
in the central mirror behind the white Thai script.

Quick note from Hong Kong!

Hooray!! We have finally touched down in Hong Kong, giving me a few hours to breathe and blog before boarding the plane that will take me to Bangkok. After staggering off the plane and into another round of security checks, I made my way to an exchange booth and changed money into both Thai bhat and a few extra Hong Kong dollars. I still have yet to master the elusive art of actually sleeping on airplanes... but perhaps that too will come with time. For now, although I'm so tired my face hurts, I'm reveling in the familiarity of the airport and its objects for sale. It's funny, because when I came to Hong Kong after having spent several weeks in Mandarin-speaking Taiwan, it seemed to me like everyone was speaking Cantonese, and I found it very confusing. Now, however, with ears sharpened by months of immersion in English, I hear Mandarin everywhere, and even the Cantonese sounds familiar compared to the Thai I'll soon be hearing. I grabbed a few familiar snacks at Japanese mega-store Muji, then treated myself to watermelon juice at a place called "My Nosh" with my remaining HKD. (My waitress loved the pink flowers on my little apple computer. I must say, they did match the juice.) I am exhausted but glad to be off the plane for a little bit at least! Will post again once I can get an internet connection in Bangkok. Miss you already!

Blogging from the skies

As I'm typing this, my personal in-flight computer screen informs me that we are cruising comfortably somewhere over the North Pole in a high-altitude cloudscape of brilliant pastels. Cathay Pacific is really the most wonderful airline I’ve ever flown on. I thought this on my flight from Taiwan to Hong Kong last summer, but since that flight took barely two hours, I thought my judgment might be a little unfair. Nothing so far has disconfirmed this opinion: the food is excellent, the stewards and stewardesses all speak English, there is ample leg room (not that I need much, ha), the seats themselves are comfortable, and we were greeted not only with our own pillows and blankets, but a little pouch containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, earplugs, socks, breath mints, and a washcloth! (Naturally, I brought my own, but still!) Moreover, they have three (!!) kinds of hot tea on offer, including good old English tea, which would make my mom very happy. :)

The most fun I’ve had so far with the luxuries of Cathay Pacific’s economy class is definitely the personal computer embedded in the back headrest of the seat in front of me. It plays music, TV, news, and a HUGE selection of movies, as well as containing information about the flight (including a satellite tracking map and live camera view from a lens mounted on the outside of the plane), information about our destination, a list of in-flight services (including in-flight phone calls and ramen whenever you want it), and a mini-DVD of “Inflight Exercises” you can do while seated to stretch and prevent leg clots. This is a far cry from the insanely cramped quarters of a certain airline that shall remain nameless, on which we were denied food, liquids, and permission to open the windows for a stretch of enforced darkness lasting nearly eight hours, plus subjected to not one but two showings of The Chronicles of Narnia dubbed into Chinese. Those were not good times. This, comparatively, is paradise, or as close to paradise as you can get on a 20-hour flight to the other side of the world.

We still have about ten hours until touchdown in Hong Kong, where I intend to use some of my leftover HKD to buy a snack, exchange some RMB for Thai bhat at my favorite exchange booth in the airport, and let the jangling sound of Cantonese wash over me as I listen to conversations I can't understand. Until then, I’m blogging, reading a bit of Charles Taylor’s latest book, recommended to me at the last conference I attended, and using the “Infotainment” section of my little computer to read up on my destination.

According to Cathay Pacific, Bangkok is home to more than ten million people, comprising fifty districts spanning over six provinces. It was created as the Thai capital in 1782 by the first monarch of the present Chakri dynasty. They present an impressive list of cultural attractions, as well as places to eat, sleep, and shop, plus tips on transportation and emergency numbers. (One thing I always find more interesting than I probably should: how “911” varies from country to country. In Thailand, it is apparently “191.”)

In a way I can't help but feel like I'm parachuting in blind here -- I can barely speak a word of the language, and have done almost no research on the city of Bangkok. I have only a vague sense of the historical and geographical contours of the country I am visiting, and still find the squiggly writing system and its diacritical-laden transliteration baffling. When I visited China (my first trip abroad ever), I had studied the language for nearly a year, and researched the city and culture for weeks beforehand with bibliophilic zeal. By the time I made my way to Taiwan, I had not only studied an entire semester of the island's fraught political history, but was en route with my very own Taiwanese guide, so to speak. :)

Faithful blog readers (hi Mom, Dad, Amy!) might view this lack of preparation as a good thing, since it's been brought to my attention that certain overly dense blog posts, with too much history and not enough pictures, can be off-putting for friends back home. This time around, I'll be viewing the country with the eyes of a blissfully (?) uninformed tourist, stumbling through a handful of memorized phrases, and snapping photos of pretty things even if I have no idea what I'm looking at. According to my internet research, which thankfully turned up a database of audio for Thai phrases, these might come in handy:

sah-what-dee-ka = hello [if you're a girl],
cop-coon-ka = thank you [if you're a girl],
ka-taut-ka = excuse me [if you're a girl],
choy-doy = help! [for both genders, I guess].

NB: I made all these transliterations up based on what they sounded like to me, they're not in any way related to the actual transliterations, which, as I mentioned above, are pretty confusing.

Beyond this, I'm rather shockingly ill-prepared to be a tourist in Thailand. Still, I'm only going to be in Bangkok for two weeks, and nearly all of my waking hours will presumably be taken up with conference meetings, trips, and lectures. Since my main responsibility in Thailand will be BIOCEP, with any touristing taking place on the side, perhaps this is actually best.

I’ll try to post this during my layover in Hong Kong, since apparently they now have wireless internet in all their terminals.

Preparations

At this time (9:30am) in two days, I will be in JFK, preparing to board my flight! I'm first flying to Hong Kong (scene of past airport adventures) for a three-hour layover, then hopping on another plane that will take me to Bangkok. I've still got a few miscellaneous things to take care of -- locate my camera battery charger, exchange some money for Thai bhat -- but mostly I'm feeling excited and ready to go.

For the benefit of those who aren't quite sure what I'll be doing at this weird thing called BIOCEP, here is a bit more information, shamelessly lifted from the executive summary:

BIOCEP is a prototype for interscholastic cooperation designed to align students with modern international global issues in the area of bioethics. In this educational enrichment summer workshop, university students spend two weeks at Thailand with Mahidol University students engaged in lectures, discussions and on-site professional visits related to the challenges of bioethics and medical ethics. This comprehensive workshop is based on the extensive experience of Columbia University’s faculty in the areas of bioethics and public health education. This program focuses on how different cultures, religions, and governments respond to and resolve bioethical challenges including: emerging infections (SARS, avian flu, malaria), the integration of Western and Eastern medicines, medical tourism, stem cell research, abortion, public health, HIV, genetic testing, and reproductive medicine. BIOCEP’s interdisciplinary program aims to enrich students’ cross-cultural awareness and analytical skills concerning the ways in which different religions and cultures work to resolve complex issues in bioethics and Public Health. For the 2008 program, BIOCEP has opened up three slots for students from other American institutions of higher education. Students must have completed at one year of graduate studies to participate.

Thailand is an emerging country that is engaged in resolving a wide variety of bioethical issues. Thailand has a predominantly Buddhist-based culture that contrasts with the major religions that most students are exposed to in the United States. Both the United States and Thai governments recognize the value of biomedical research. Like Singapore, China, Japan, and Malaysia, Thailand has committed hundreds of million dollars over the next ten years to enhance biomedical research. These research funds will be provided to support stem cell research and combating major public health concerns such as malaria and HIV Thailand and the United States share common bioethical and medical ethical issues such as:

• How to allocate limited funds to support biomedical research and clinical programs,
• How to resolve bioethical issues related to stem cell research,
• How to balance religious and cultural values with biomedical research and clinical application of new biotechnologies,
• How to apply new biotechnologies in reproductive medicine within an ethical platform,
• How to resolve public health issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, smoking, and unwanted pregnancies.

There are also many ethical issues that Thailand faces that are unique to that region. These include:

• Medical tourism (cosmetic surgery, sex change operations, dentistry, and organ transplantation),
• Developing detection, educational, and treatment programs for emerging infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria, avian flu and SARS,
• The integration of Western medicine with traditional Eastern alternative medical procedures and medications,
• Developing innovative educational and treatment programs for genetic based diseases such as Thalassemia.

Students will visit several biomedical research laboratories, private and public hospitals, public health clinics and rural medical facilities. These visits provide students with an opportunity to speak with researchers and physicians, and observe scientific research, biomedical research and health care in Thailand. Students will acquire first hand knowledge essential in understanding Thailand’s unique bioethical issues. For example, students would have the opportunity to visit clinics at Mahidol Institute for Tropical Diseases that has established sophisticated programs in the areas of emerging infections and controlling drug resistant pathogens. Students will also visit research laboratories such as the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Institute of Nutrition, “East meets West Clinic”, Thalessemia clinics, and malaria clinics. During the 2007 program many of the students were able to observe in vitro fertilization in Siriraj Hospital’s IVF clinic.

There's a whole bunch more information available here, if you're interested. I've been doing a bunch of reading on bioethics and biotechnology this summer in preparation for the trip (and, who am I kidding, for fun too). Recently, I found this great book online (do you love Google Books or what?) that was actually edited by a professor at Mahidol University, Pinit Ratanakul. I don't know if we'll be able to meet with him, but I certainly hope so. At any rate, the conference is shaping up to be a ton of fun!