Survived the Singapore Haze

I travelled to Singapore this past weekend to see Alex in the thick of his research with his new team, working on energy efficiency in building facades.  He goes every day to his lab at CREATE,

where the Berkeley team has a grant from the Singapore government to improve their building energy. The clocks on the right tell the time in Singapore and in San Francisco!  He will continue to work on this project when he returns to Berkeley in August.

Somewhat ironically, I left busy, congested Bangkok to be greeted by Singapore's haze, which arrives this time of year, every year, when Indonesia burns their palm tree forests and the smoke travels across the sea to Singapore.

But pollution levels hit an all-time high of 401 on the Pollutant Standards Index!  The upside of this was that Alex works with one of the world's leading experts in air quality, who insisted that we promptly move into a four-star hotel to avoid lifetime damage to our lungs. 

Comforted by the fact that we could return to our air-conditioned hotel room, we donned our masks and braved the Singapore haze in all its glory. 

Even in the haze, Singapore's manmade beauty cannot be matched.  I was awestruck by the buildings, which are truly the best of today's architecture. 

The Helix bridge (far left), Marina Bay Sands Hotel (center), and Art Science museum are pictured below.

In addition to being the most strikingly beautiful city I have ever seen, Singapore is also the most shockingly expensive city I have ever seen.  (says the New Yorker). 

Our Singapore Slings at the colonial Raffles Hotel nearly broke the bank, but it was worth it to pretend like we were British colonials for an evening.  The Raffles hotel is not only where the Singapore Sling was invented, but also where the last Singapore tiger was shot!

In addition to spending way too much money on drinks, we also traveled to Pulau Ubin, a jungle island across from the main island, considered the last "village" in Singapore, and how the whole country was in the 1960s.  We hiked to the top of a tower overlooking the jungle,

Had fresh fish and Tiger beer (Singapore's home brew) by the river,

And Alex pulled some dirt bike tricks.  (there is a huge dirt bike park here, apparently one of the Island's attractions though we were one of the few people we saw all day).

We made it out of the jungle island alive and back to Singapore reality.  We explored Chinatown, Little India, and strolled through Singapore's Botanical Gardens on Sunday!

It was a treat to walk the streets of clean and efficient Singapore, but I am glad to be back in Bangkok, where I can do much more without fear of fines like those listed in the subway station below!

Bangkok is like New York City

Only everything is 1/3 the price and the service is more polite!

Just like in New York, I have reconnected with old friends and made new ones.

I reconnected with my nursery school best friend, Lita, who I hadn't seen in 20 years,

Caught up with Joe (my Cambodia buddy!) to see Bangkok's Big Buddha,

And saw Lindsay Katona and her Dad, who stopped by their Aunt's house on their way to Vietnam!

There are some differences between NYC and BKK.  First, people do eat bugs, and not just poor people on the street.

(hard to tell all of the varieties but they include worms, grasshoppers, cockroaches, ant queens wrapped in betel leaves, and the grand delicacy, scorpions)

(Thai friend choosing to eat grasshoppers from hundreds of options at our hotel buffet)

Secondly, Thailand also is full of delicious exotic fruits, such as the durian (smells like ammonia):

Mangosteen (very sweet, like how I imagine the elixir of the greek gods to be):

And these "shampoo" fruits that look like red peppers but taste like a crunchy apple:

One Thai girl told me she was "bored in America because the only fruit to eat was bananas."

The Thai people eat all day and night, on the way to the gym, on the way back from dinner, and are as slim as can be.  

Thirdly, there are funny photos to be found, like this one in the bathroom stall.  The top right picture reads "no drinking water from the toilet canteen" and the bottom left picture reads "no washing vegetables in the toilet basin."

Aside from taking pictures of cool fruits and funny signs, I have been very busy going to seminars on Anti-trust law in the ASEAN community (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, scheduled to become an economic unit like the EU in 2015), and children in the Thai justice system.  This latter seminar was all in Thai, so my friend Tang translated for me.  It reminded me how we take language, and being literate, for granted.  Unless Tang wanted to translate for me, I had absolutely no clue what the panel was talking about.  Ironically, one major reform they were addressing was having adequate translation services available for children, because so often when foreign children are trafficked to Thailand they do not speak the language and are lost and helpless.

In addition to these two seminars, I have found my new desk at the Department of Special Investigation's Anti-Human trafficking bureau:

It is just me and the Thais!  It is cool to see the side of Thailand that does recognize the human trafficking problem and is working to end it, especially as some NGOs and the United States is critical of the Thai government (Thailand is still on Tier 2 "Watch List" of the annual U.S. Trafficking-in-Persons's report, one step away from Tier 3 countries, which receive sanctions.).

I go to a weekly prayer group where we pray for the prostitutes and the NGOs who are working with them.  We meet at Antique Cafe, one of the only NGOs who focuses on Lady Boys by offering those who want to get out of the sex industry employment at their coffee shop.

This morning, I visited NightLight, a jewelry business with the mission to help women, children, and lady boys find their ways from the go-go bars and streets to another life.  

                                      

Check out their beautiful jewelry, hand-made by the women (I saw about 25 women today, all previously prostitutes, working hard in their workshop to make this jewelry).  They are exclusively for profit so need to sell their jewelry to keep helping out the women.

Buy a piece and feel good about yourself HERE! 

And finally, my host family leaves today for America for weddings galore - I won't see them again but I will be "taking care of" their lovely apartment in Bangkok!  I will have only Pig (the snake) for company... 

Greetings from Siem Reap, Cambodia!  Purpose of the visit was a conference between Cambodia and Thailand to update their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the suppression of human trafficking.
                                   
I learned about how debt bondage is used to ensure forced labor; about how people are often retrafficked after being returned safely to their home countries because a "better life" is still worth the risk; and about how the Thai government is training its police officers and prosecutors to recognize trafficking victims and arrests have sky-rocketed.

And I have spent a wonderful last five days here, coming early to explore first with my American friend Joe (thank you Tina Detchon!):

Yes, we are American tourists and yes, we bought hats that say CAMBODIA on the brim.  For $12. (a rip-off, in case you were wondering, but we were charmed by our tough female bargainer!).

Of course the pictures don't do them justice, but the temples of Angkor Wat are really majestic and on a scale with Machu Picchu and Petra for human-built wonders in the natural world.

I then met up with the official Thai delegation team on Suppression of Human Trafficking for a conference to update the MOU between Thailand and Cambodia.  First, I got to see the temples a second-time around (my "mentor" Dr. Pisawat is third from the right),

Quite a different experience as we travelled with a police-car siren escort, a long line of black cars, and our VIP bus  ...

... right to the temple doors! 

This meeting was an even bigger deal than I thought because this is the first time that the entire delegation has met in the last 10 years.  The MOU was scheduled to be revised 5 years ago, but because of political tension it had been postponed until this year.  So the conference was a productive celebration and fun to be a part of.  After reading so much about how the Thai police is corrupt and "in on the trafficking," it was reassuring to be part of a conference which the head of police attended along with head ministers of tourism and social development.  It is a complex problem but at least the countries now are working together to combat it.

The official signing between Thailand and Cambodia

And the celebration! (complete with Khmer food, singing, and dancing, and a floating Angkor Wat)

Right now, though, my heart is breaking for the Cambodian people.  The Cambodian people are so eager to please, and wear captivating smiles.  But Siem Reap, the epicenter of tourism, is still very poor.  I thought these signs in my two hotels, which you would never see in a Western country, subtly told of the Cambodia today:

            In my cheap but adequate, $15/day guesthouse, a sign reading "no guns, bombs, or drugs"

              And in my expensive, $220/day hotel, a sign reading "no durians (a popular fruit that smells
                                         like ammonia) or other strong smelling foods"

The Cambodians of  my generation are the first to grow up with the Khmer Rouge as only a legacy and not a reality.  On my flight to Siem Reap I flew over the rice paddies where millions of Cambodians living in cities were forced to move and work during the terror years of the Khmer Rouge 1975-79. (although apparently they still exist and are a danger in the forests. And, guidebooks still warn consistently against the danger of land mines left over from these years).

2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge years, whether from starvation, forced labor, or execution.  The accounts are similar to other accounts of genocide that we learn about in American schools, like the Holocaust.  I am reading First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, a moving memoir for anyone interested in learning more.  (*if you think this doesn't happen today, it is happening right now, in the slave labor prison camps of North Korea.  Click here to watch a CBS interview with Shin Dong-hyuk who escaped Camp 14 after nearly 23 years of starvation and slave labor).

Thankfully, just as I was staring at my book thinking how dark the world can be, I looked out the window to see a rainbow!  A sign of God's covenant with the Earth (Genesis 9:13 for those who don't read the Bible!).  So I was reminded that grace exists even in the darkest spots.

Sa-wat-dee-kah from Bangkok!

I arrived last Wednesday night to my good friend from UVA (thank you Joey Katona) Aunt's family's lovely apartment in the center of Bangkok, near the main public transportation intersection where the sky train meets the subway.

View of the city from my balcony

Judit (host mom) and Vegas (9 year old grandson) relaxing in the light & airy living room

Things noticed immediately upon arrival:
1.  Thais are very polite, bowing their head when they see you
2.  On my way in from the airport after midnight, I passed hordes of women out in the streets after midnight, either catching cabs to go out, or waiting by the massage parlors and nail salons.  Of course, they aren't waiting to give only massages...
3.  Thailand is the late-night food capital of the world, with dozens of street car vendors appearing at busy intersections after midnight along with plastic tables and chairs

Every morning on my way to work I take a short cut to the sky train by Soi Cowboy, also known as a red light district.  It is one short block and by day looks like a normal street, but by night the neon lights come on and the girls come out.

As a white foreign woman, this is the least I have ever been bothered walking on the streets (compared to Rabat, Morocco; Amman, Jordan; Delhi, India; and even Lyon, France!).  In fact, no one even notices me - they are much more concerned with the male farangs (Thai word for foreigners).

I spent my first two days in Bangkok helping out the entire Labor Department of Myanmar refine their English for their presentations to their supervisors when they return home to their country.  The Department came to Bangkok for a workshop put on by Dr. Pisawat Sukonthapan of the Mekong Region Law Center, whom I am working for.

Myanmar is one of the largest sources of trafficked people coming into Thailand. In these poorer countries like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and also the northern rural regions of Thailand, daughters have become more prized than sons over the last couple of decades because families realize the money they can bring to the family if they are sold off for sex.  If you think such a practice must be rare,  in the Northern Thai region of Mae Sai it was estimated that 70% of the 800 families living there have sold a daughter to a trafficker. (2001 Second World Congress Against Commercial Exploitation of Children).

Myanmar is still a very traditional country, as you can see the men and women here dressed in their traditional outfits:

They all work in Myanmar's new capital city, Naypyidaw, which was founded 8 years ago when the government clear-cut forest and built government buildings.  And why did the government choose to move its capital city here from its historic, coastal location in Yangon?  One theory is that the current "President" (really military ruler) is very superstitious, and when you fold up a map of Myanmar, the exact center is the location of the new capital!  (Another theory is that the capital city in the interior of the country is less vulnerable to attack in this war-torn country).

On my morning walk to the Myanmar workshop, I found evidence that the Thais love their King, Rama IX:

And their sex (or the money it brings, $4 billion annually):

That is all for now - more on anti-trafficking and Thailand's sex industry next week after I've done my first research assignment and paper, in preparation for my conference with the Thai team in Siem Reap, Cambodia next weekend!