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So after a tough debate with myself over whether to take a human rights officer post with the UN peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire (which, after Senegal, I knew I would love), or an associate resettlement officer job in northern Thailand with UNHCR…you all know where I ended up. Having worked previously in Africa, I was eager to gain experience in a new cultural context like Asia. Also my background has been primarily in refugee status determination, and I knew it would round out my resume to branch out into resettlement work. And there is no better place to work on resettlement than Thailand, from where the United States has accepted to resettle 17,000 refugees a year. It is a unique, historic operation so it was not a chance to pass up. (Before I get away with too much jargon: resettlement is what happens when someone is a refugee, and there is no reasonable chance they will get to return to their home country, and also no reasonable chance they can locally integrate in their country of asylum, so the only durable solution is for them to resettle in a third country and start over there. Refugees from Burma are in
this situation: no one expects Burma to become safe for its minorities and political dissidents anytime soon, and Thailand won't let them regularize their status so they can make lives here, so the only option they have is to move to third countries like Australia, Canada, Finland, etc.)
I finally settled on EVA Airways, a Taiwanese airline, for my one-way trip to Thailand, and set March 16 as my day of departure. Mommy dropped me, two suitcases weighing EXACTLY fifty pounds each, plus the beautiful Martin acoustic guitar Daddy bought me a few years ago, at the Houston airport, and I was off for my new adventure. It’s kinda neat to have a job that’s an adventure.
My final destination was Mae Hong Son, a small town in the mountains of northern Thailand, just east of the border with Burma. All I knew about it was what I had read and re-read countless times in the 2-page entry in the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand I'd recently acquired: “Surrounded by mountains…punctuated by small but picturesque Jong Kham Lake…provincial capital…relatively peaceful…part of Thailand’s standard tourist circuit…” I also knew that I would be arriving here at the worst possible
time of year: just before the peak of the hot season, in April, and the time when farmers set fire to their land each year, engulfing the area in smoke so heavy flights into town have to be cancelled. Nonetheless, the handful of pictures of mist-covered mountains and lake-side temples I managed to find on the internet, and the presence of the famous “hilltribes” such as the “Longneck” people whose women wear stacks of neck-elongating gold rings, had me very impatient to land.
I first had to spend a few days in Bangkok for orientation at the UNHCR regional office, and to make arrangements for a local bank account, permits for the refugee camps, etc. Thanks to the fairly generous DSA (daily subsistence allowance) that applies in Bangkok, I stayed in a pretty nice hotel on the river, in the neighborhood near the UN office: the Navalai River Resort. It’s brand new, has a rooftop pool (which is priceless in this heat), and there’s a riverboat taxi (a lot like Venice’s vaporetto) stop right on the premises. My city view room cost around $38 a night, and came with free wifi, cable tv, dvd player, and a buffet breakfast
(a
real buffet, with tons of fruit, hot dishes, cheese, bread…). I highly recommend it.
I spent my days in Bangkok meeting with a slew of UNHCR officers in the UN’s huge Bangkok compound, getting briefings about the resettlement operation here. In the evening I did my best to explore, though Bangkok is unbelievably huge and overwhelming—and I didn’t know the meaning of jet lag until I flew across the Pacific—so I didn’t get very far. Taxis are super cheap, but traffic is unbearably slow so even in the heat it was preferable to explore my little corner of town on foot. I promised myself that next time I was in town I would learn to use the public transport system and head to other parts of the city, which are more famous for shopping and food (which is all incredibly cheap as well).
My first real night in town I had dinner in the hotel—don’t judge me, I had jet lag! I had been told the Navalai restaurant was good and it was so true. They have tables right on the river, and although really overpriced (around $6 for an appetizer of lemongrass shrimp—at least double if
River at dawn
This was my first morning in the hotel, my view at breakfast.not triple what it can be had for in a local joint), they know how to make good food. I ordered three appetizers (and naturally had to take about half of if home as leftovers!): cold lemongrass shrimp, pad thai with shrimp, and a hot and sour seafood soup. One thing I learned very quickly in Thailand is that pork appears in everything (for flavor), so be prepared to order soup with prawns and end up with soup with prawns
and pork. The pad thai was probably the best I have had since I got here, but I have learned that pad thai just isn’t the dish for me. It’s bland and there are just way more interesting noodles out there. The hot and sour soup was absolutely delicious, spicy, tangy, chock full of seafood, and freshened up with chopped spring onion and cilantro on top. Some of the seafood was unidentifiable to me, which isn’t really my cup of tea but would probably thrill the Todds of the world.
The spicy lemongrass salad was…heavenly. It was so good I persisted to get the recipe, even though it took several attempts to find a staff person who understood
My street in Bangkok
Lots...and lots...of motorbikes my query. (In Bangkok, probably like in any other super touristy city where there’s a huge language barrier, people who work in restaurants and taxis know how to respond to the most frequently asked questions—and that’s it. And us tourists, naturally, don’t know how to speak a word of the local language, so communication can be an adventure in itself.) When the four puzzled waiters who were by this point all standing around me figured out what I wanted, they were falling over themselves to teach me the recipe. “You know how to make
this?” They all kind of smiled and nodded like I had asked them something condescending like if they know the alphabet. Food is apparently such an obsession here that no one goes through life without knowing how to make a fine curry and a mean lemongrass and chili marinade. Most dishes here involve two key ingredients that you won’t find in the States unless in a can, in the “Asian” section: fish sauce, and chili paste. They don’t taste—or smell—like much on their own, but when combined with each other and with a little lime, sugar, and lemongrass…the result is simply divine. Spicy lemongrass salad recipe
is below.
The UNHCR representative to Malawi (i.e. my former big boss) Henry happened to be in town while I was there so he and his family took me to dinner on my second night. Aside from the food, the most exciting part of the evening was taking the Sky Train, Bangkok’s newest and trendiest mode of public transportation. Its routes are extremely limited, so we had to take a cab for twenty minutes just to get to the nearest station! But after Malawi, which shuts down after dark, it felt very exciting to be in a huge, modern city where one can ride public transportation safely at night. We zipped past huge, luxury shopping malls, open til midnight, decorated with huge fountains outside and lined with American chains like Starbucks.
We disembarked in a lively neighborhood and turned off the main road into a tiny
soi, or small one-way lane, towards a Bangkok culinary institution, Cabbages & Condoms. It’s a fantastic restaurant started by a former Thai health minister who is credited with averting an AIDS crisis in the country by promoting the use of condoms. The restaurant is set in a really lovely courtyard full of
View from my hotel in Mae Hong Son
Yes, that is the town's lone runway stretching in the background of the photo! greenery and art made with…condoms. Henry, having been a Peace Corps volunteer in central Thailand in his youth, speaks fluent Thai and knew his way around the menu. In addition to one of those delicious Thai hot and spicy soups, we had a very traditional, very bizarre dish consisting of bitter, raw green leaves wrapped up into little packets, inside which were all kinds of crunchy goodies like nuts and fried garlic, and which are dipped into a tangy sauce. It would be unfair to ask me how to pronounce the dish’s name until I’ve been here at least a year.
My third night in town, it was incredibly hot and I just felt like getting something light to eat, so I went to a local restaurant and ordered “morning glory salad.” Morning glory is a kind of green that is usually braised in garlic and soy sauce (“Chinese style”), so I was expecting something along those lines but served cold. That night I became a firm believer in the picture menu, because what I got was the farthest thing from “salad” I think I could ever imagine. I was served a huge plate heaped with
deep-fried, breaded morning
Mae Hong Son city office
Photos of the Thai king are permanent fixtures everywhere...including on the wall of my living room in my new house! glory leaves, surrounding a small bowl of a
hot soup-like dish chock-full of pork and seafood. Yes, they assured me, this was the very “salad” I had ordered. Mind you, it was delicious; the deep-friend greens were fluffy and crispy, the hot soup was sour and tangy. But try serving that “salad” to an American country club-type who hasn’t eaten a carb in over a decade, and things could get ugly.
On Saturday afternoon, my fourth day in Bangkok, I headed back to the airport for my flight up to Mae Hong Son on Thai Airways. Most internal flights in Thailand are on large jets, but not the flight into the mountains. I think due to the mountainous topography and the tiny runway, jets can’t fly into Mae Hong Son so in Chiang Mai I switched onto a propeller plane for the 35-minute ride. Thankfully my flight hadn’t been cancelled due to the poor visibility caused by the smoke, though I didn’t get much of a view from the plane window. The UNHCR car was waiting when I landed, along with Sittipol, one of our four drivers. He was holding a big “UNHCR” placard which made me feel very
big and important 😊. Although it was Saturday, he kindly drove me around town a bit so I could get a feel for the city before dropping me at my hotel (which, ironically, was right next to the airport, and right next to the office).
After settling in for a bit I went to see what Mae Hong Son was like on a Saturday night. I was really happy to be able to walk around freely after dark; shops were open, restaurants, motorbikes were whizzing down even the smallest of streets. But I was a little nervous when I had gone through most of the town on foot in a couple of hours, and had yet to see anyplace with more than one or two tables occupied! On a
Saturday night? Uh-oh… Nonetheless, the town had a really cute night market, part of which is directed at tourists and focuses mostly on crafts, the other part of which is directed at Thais and has delicious, amazingly cheap food (as in 30 cents for a hefty serving of delicious cilantro and fried garlic noodles, or 90 cents for a serving of sliced, barbecued pork). On Sunday I explored some more,
going into the town’s couple of coffee shops and having lunch at what would become my almost-daily eatery, Salween restaurant. Then, when I got back to the hotel, I promptly went online and ordered absurdly expensive international subscriptions to my two favorite magazines from home…I had a feeling I would be doing a
lot of reading here!
Next, starting my new job… I should mention that in the interest of being able to speak more freely about my work, which can be politically sensitive, I will probably be making some of my future entries private. This will require you to create a Travelblog user account in order to be able to access them. I know it’s a hassle but I don’t see a way around it, if I want to be able to tell you about work. If you would like to be able to view the private entries, please create a Travelblog account, then send me your username and the email address you signed up with, so I can give you access.
Love,
Martina
Spicy Lemongrass Salad with Shrimp (Note: I felt lucky enough to understand the ingredients, let alone the measurements, so
View from my hotel - with smoke
Normally you would see houses back on the other side of the runway and mountains in the distance...but when it's smoky the sky is just white. the amounts listed below are estimates! Definitely adjust for taste.)
Ingredients:
- half pound of shrimp, peeled, tail on, steamed or boiled
- ½ cup thinly sliced shallots
- ½ cup sliced spring onion
- 2 Thai chillies, fresh, thinly sliced (remove seeds for less heat)
- 1 stalk fresh lemongrass, thinly sliced
- ¼ cup whole mint leaves
- ¼ cup Thai basil (or holy basil) cut into long slivers
- ¼ cup kaffir lime leaves cut into long slivers
- ¼ cup fresh lime juice
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp tamarind paste
- 1 tsp Thai chili paste
- 1 tsp sugar
Directions:
- combine wet ingredients (lime juice, fish sauce, tamarind paste, chili paste, and sugar) in a large bowl, whisk together to form sauce
- add shrimp, mix gently to coat in the sauce
- add remaining ingredients (shallots, onion, chillies, lemongrass, herbs), mix gently
- cover and put in fridge to marinate for at least a couple of hours, then garnish with a few fresh mint leaves and serve
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jim
non-member comment
food and family
happy to see you are surfacing, after a long hiatus. all that fish stuff makes Todd and Dad very interested. As for me, I will stick to the same side of the room as Kristen!!!! Keep well and hope you are enjoying your new assignment.