March Madness!

A butterfly Hathai and I found on one of our seed collecting adventures...

My internship with the illustrious forest regeneration researcher, Hathai, ended up being amazing! I got to spend time exploring around Doi Suthep (Doi means mountain in Thai), a national park near Chiang Mai. Her research plots are on the back side of the mountain near a Hmong village. It has been so nice learning a lot about the forest ecology here and feeling like I'm doing something relevant to the future of forests and in a field I'm passionate about. It's hard to think about going back to thinking about English right now...thankfully I have a month of adventures before I have to that!

The biggest tree in Doi Suthep National Park, a strangler fig. I fit right in, no?

On one of our adventures we saw one those bright red Rafflesia flowers that make the smell like rotten meat (http://www.google.co.th/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=878&bih=347&q=Rafflesia&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=). Unfortunately, not all of doing research is fun...I did spend two days doing data entry at Hathai's house. This reinforced how I never want to have a full-time data entry job...On the upside, they had just adopted a three-day-old kitten so I got to rock the newly minted "cookie" to sleep. Cookie got her name because Hathai's daughter was told she was getting a surprise when she got home from school and she assumed it was baked goods and was disappointed that it was a kitten...thus the name Cookie.

The three-day-old kitten that adopted Hathai's family

For another part of the internship, I was farmed out to another professor and his grad student, P'Gook, who are studying giant honey bees. I spent two very long days counting bees flying in and out of a comb that had taken up residence on the balcony of a hotel in town. Apparently 200 stings from these suckers and you are a goner...and I was sitting right beneath them on the balcony counting. Thankfully no stings though! In one 5 minute period I counted over 400 bees leaving the comb. These bees aren't like the European honey bees that live in hives or tree trunks, they instead build a comb on a tree limb (or hotel balcony...) and have a layer of "curtain" bees that protect the hive and regulate its temperature. Twice a day, the bees break formation and instead of being in vertical rows, they start crawling horizontally then for about 5 minutes they all swarm away from the comb in what's called a "hive break." During the hive break, you have to use an infrared temperature gun to take the temperature every minute and record the timing. Usually, this requires two people but on my last day, P'Gook had to run an errand and left me to man the fort. I saw the signs that they were about to break and was hoping P'Gook would magically return, but I was on my own and managed just fine! Only a few minutes of frantic recording and trying to avoid getting stung while taking the temperature. All in all a crazy...only-in-Thailand experience!

The largest species of honey bees I was assisting to research!

Another highlight of this month was my spontaneous trip to Bangkok. Hathai had to attend a Fulbright conference for researchers, which happened to coincide with the arrival of my friend from Marin, Jen. She was on her way back from a study-abroad program in India and decided to stop through Bangkok. I took the overnight bus leaving from Chiang Mai at 8pm and arrived in Bangkok at 6am. I crawled into Jen's hostel bunk for a short nap before we were off on a three plus hour bus trip to Ko Samet. The closest island to Bangkok. We had a blast catching up, swimming, enjoying fireshows put on by resorts on the beach, and plenty of excellent Thai food and banana smoothies.

Jen Dwyer (a friend since 2nd grade) and I reunited at Ko Samet (an island three hours from Bangkok).

After Ko Samet, I met up with a couple of the ETAs who are doing their internships in Bangkok. We had Mediterranean food (!) and even went to Irish pub...they truly are everywhere! Jamie graciously let me stay with her in the 5-star hotel Fulbright provided for the conference and it was such a nice change from our more rustic accomodations on the island (the toilet wasn't even a flush one to give you some idea...). The next day we were swooped up by P'Ngae who is kind of like our Thai fairy godmother. She was the one who invited us to the fabulous New Year's celebration in the foothills of Chiang Rai. She took us to this garden restaurant in the middle of Bangkok where we were spoiled with cheese cake and Thai iced tea. Then she took us to a beautifully landscaped center run by Buddhist nuns where we admired a golden orb that represented the globe and a Buddha relic (we never did figure out what part of him it was...a toe?). It was a great!

P'Ngae, the most wonderful Fulbright board member who has adopted us ETAs


I'm headed to Kuching, Borneo tomorrow until April 6th and then visiting some friends on peninsular Malaysia in Dungun, Terengganu until I fly back to Chiang Mai on the 11th. After that it's Songkran which is the giant water festival in Thailand and then on the 15th it's off to Korea until April 24th. So a busy month ahead and a very exciting one!
Hopefully I'll be able to post on the road, but if not...until next time faithful blog readers!


P.S. Hi Grammy! Thanks for being the first one to check on me after the earthquake!