Monday was the opening day of the conference. The list of keynote speakers was very impressive, including someone from the US Embassy, Mr. Howard, Chairman Korn, who is a former deputy prime minister, who challenged we academics in a most serious way, a Chinese professor...IPresident Chungacote (sp) of SSRU, don't have a program in front of me to help me remember.
In all, about 75 people attended the opening session. We had much fun with our "mouthful" topic, Environmentally and culturally sustainable local economic development (ECSLED).
After lunch and the end of the opening session, the delegates, about 20 of us, boarded several vans and went to the Grand Palace.....the pictures of this place will be wonderful and I hope to get some up on the blog soon. The Grand Palace was once where the kind lived, but no more, and it is also where the emerald buddha is...this is, as I understand, one of, if not THE largest piece of jade in the world, and there are three of them.
The temples are spectacular, they are built to "shine" through the use of shiny gold leaf surfaces and mirrors. The smell of sandalwood and lotus flower are everywhere.
It was, however, uncomfortable, going into the wat to see the buddha and the spectacular art there....although this is a tourist spot, others were on something of a pilgrimage. For instancde, outside the entrance was a large vat of water, with lotu flowers. With great joy, Thais would drip water with the lotus flower on the heads of each other. They joy on their faces was unmistakable. I suspect not unlike having holy water from the pope splashed on a Catholic. Monitors in the temple had to sternly remind the nonbuddhists to kneel. I knew this going in, but forgot when I got in so spectcular was the temple interior. i worry that someone might be offeneded by my and my colleagues ignorance.
After the Grand Palace, we returned for a shower and then off again for a dinner cruise on the ChaoPraya River that runs through Bangkok. This was fun, mostly farang (western foreigners) cruisers. A live band played an often odd selection of western pop music (rap, YMCA, John Denver, Wild Cherrym, etc). I am sure they did as good as if one of our local bands tried to do Thai pop music.
We visited the site of SSRU's future nursing school. This will be built in the middle of a salt farm. Thailand is a leading exporter of sea salt. They farm it through a repeated evaporation process of seawater. This is remarkable and low tech. Flood many fields with seawater, and a foot deep, then evaporate out all the water, then add, more, and so on, until there is a deposit of salt a foot deep. This process takes about 4 months and 10 fillings and evaporations. As the salt is near its "harvest" workers, build the salt into small mounds when it is a slurry, then once fully evaporated, use a small roler vehicle to flatten it out, then it is bagged by hand using a shovel. This sounds like it would be remarkably harmful to the environment, but we say many shore birds in them, feeding.
Today, was a day for getting out of Bangkok to see some of the smaller, river areas in the south. I felt like I was home in Florida. The river culture is, I suspect, similar to river culture everywhere....local boats designed specifically for the use there, using commonly available materials. In the case of the Sampon, the local material is mahogony, simple sampon are incredibly beautiful craft. Id like to try paddling one, most have motors on them but not typical outboards, think weedeater wtih a prop.
I was most impressed today with the flora...it is so similar to what I grew up with in Florida...even to the pot (long o), or gardenia....flem flim (not correct) but bouganvillea. Jasmine, wonderul.
One art form that Thais have maded their own from Japan is bonsai. I saw, today, many beautiful and closely trained bonsai.
Tonight's plan was to go to Kao San Road.....a popular tourist area, but I think the sun and heat of today's trip has worn us all out.
Tomorrow we begin discussing possible reserach projects. I talked today with three Thai professors, two in environmental science the other an economist. They want to tackle the problem in Thailand of solid waster recycling. Interestingly enough, they face virtually the same problems as we do....how to get people to reduce, reuse, recyle, sort their waste, and so on.
I ate lunch with them, they were wonderful as they were very willing to tell me everything I wanted to know about the foods we were eating......This restaurant was like my dream restaurant, right on the river. It is the place I would pick myself.!!!!
Tonight I am turning in early. I am tired and want to be fresh for the discussions tomorrow.
