Friday, August 15, 2008

Final day in Thailand!

The Bioethics Museum at UNESCO Bangkok.

Our last day in Thailand was bittersweet, as final days usually are. We began the morning with our last official BIOCEP presentation ever, at the UNESCO Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Bangkok. For those of you who don't already know, UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and is an organization with branches operating in countries all over the world.

According to the website, UNESCO Bangkok promotes international co-operation, sets standards and disseminates information in the fields of education, the natural sciences, the social and human sciences, culture and communication in the Asia and Pacific region. The organization's mandate is the promotion of peace and human development through its operational strategies in education, science, culture and communication and information. UNESCO programs focus on promoting education for all; supporting the expression of cultural identities; protecting and enhancing the world's natural heritage; engaging in a new social contract between science and society at all levels; developing and promoting social policies; promoting the free flow of information, press freedom and the development of a pluralistic media; and strengthening communication capacities in developing countries.

A display about cloning, with models of Dolly and her clone.

The UNESCO representative with whom we met, a Dr. Darryl Mercer, is regional advisor in Social and Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific (RASHSAP) and an affiliated professor at teh UN University Institute of Advanced Studies in Japan. He gave us an excellent presentation, probably the most philosophically rigorous of the whole program, and one which I think would have been well-placed at the beginning, rather than the end, of BIOCEP. Oddly enough, I had had the pleasure of perusing some of Dr. Macer's books online before coming to Thailand, in an effort to prime myself on philosophy and bioethics in the East Asian setting. He lectured a bit on his own work -- particularly his effort to beat back the notion that "bioethics" is a modern invention rather than a pre-historic human concern, and his project of framing ethical impulses in terms of the imperatives of love -- and the work of UNESCO projects in the Asia-Pacific region, especially efforts to bring bioethics discussion and education to all parts of society in the region's developing countries. I really liked the way his talk described the multiple modalities of bioethics, emphasizing discussion-centered or collaborative bioethics (an enterprise that is neither wholly descriptive nor wholly prescriptive) that can take place outside the ivory tower and without extensive training in moral frameworks and advanced biotechnology -- a real need in areas like Thailand where the overall educational level is still quite low.

Hailing a taxi as we left the UNESCO headquarters,
we caught sight of a bunch of masked police officers
writing a ticket on a speeding (or illegally-parked?) moped.

After a quick tour of the Bioethics Museum, one example of the institute's work to bring bioethics to the children of Bangkok, and a wrap-up session with Brian and Coco covering our suggestions for future BIOCEP sessions, we were cut loose to finish up our papers and enjoy our final day in Thailand.

Bangkok Central, as seen from one of the escalators.

Our first stop was Bangkok Central, one of the city's biggest shopping malls. There was a big exhibition on green technology on the lowest level, which I was able to partly explore, sampling a variety of locally-produced snacks and drinks at a kind of "market" in the mall's center. However, the gustatory highlight of the afternoon was definitely lunch at a fancy restaurant on the seventh (?) floor, with snazzy blue-and-white decor and a nice view of the city below. There, I ate my final plate of my beloved som tum, and then was introduced the the ambrosial substance known as mango sticky rice. Why, oh why, did I wait until my final day in Bangkok to try this amazing dessert?? Janice and I split first one, then a second plate of the stuff. Expensive, but so worth it. I would go back to Thailand just for this dish.

Then we all took off for Starbucks, laptops in tow, and settled down to put the finishing touches on our respective papers/outlines/drafts for BIOCEP. Pantee and I had just a few more changes to make before our outline was done, though the internet connection at the mall was not great and I wasn't actually able to submit the paper until much later that night. After stashing my laptop in Pantee's car, we abandoned ourselves to one last wonderful afternoon of shopping for outrageous deals at the inexpensive Thai stalls in a nearby shopping center.

From left to right: Angie, me.

Having shopped up an appetite, the gang reconvened around six to pile into cars and meet up at a popular restaurant in downtown Bangkok. About halfway there, the heavens opened up and it began to pour, and a few minutes later the traffic slowed to a literal standstill. Still, five girls in a car will usually not find themselves at a loss for conversation, so we all chatted happily away as the car inched its way toward the restaurant and the rain pounded down outside, turning the lights of the city into neon smears of pink and green trickling down the windows.

The last dinner with the gang!
From left to right: Pao, Risa, Melissa, Me, Jen,
Yoon Joo, Sanchai (alias: Sunshine), Heny, Pantee, Janice.

We had, as always, a complete blast at dinner, joking and laughing and probably being too loud. No one wanted the fun to end, but most of us were leaving in the early hours of the following morning and still had packing to do. Around 10 or 11 we reluctantly said our goodbyes, then piled into one of the Thai students' cars and made our way through the puddle-strewn streets back to our empty suitcases in Salaya.

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