Arriving in Siem Reap

Arriving in Siem Reap after a short flight from Bangkok, I was not amused when the motorcycle guy driving me to my hotel kept turning around to show me pictures of his disabled father or grandfather and insisting I hire him as a guide for the next three days because he was so hard done by. Actually, his English was quite good and I would have hired him if he had not been so oppressively’ in my face’ about how hard it was to live in Cambodia. I kept having similar exeriences. Outside of Angkor Wat, I offered a little girl some “coloured" currency because I just finished a coke and she wanted me to buy another one. She refused my charity because she said it was too little. As we drove away, she screamed how mad at me she was! Since when are these little urchins too good to take 25 cents? It was not the fact that I offered charity…it was the fact that I offered too little.

At every tourist stop there had to be dozens of sellers of drinks, postcards (who buys postcards today?), silk ware and T shirts outside of every single temple, and believe me there are lots of temples! Every merchant feels we owe them something because we have a white face. They are the ones with a sense of entitlement, not the old white guys as is the case in North America. They absolutely feel that as a right we owe them money because we are from the west and they have had a terrible quarter century

What about the Vietnamese who lives have been irrevocably change because of the Chinese French and American war? Do they stand at every street corner with their hands out and pick out rich Americans who did so much to destroy their lives? I don’t think so. In fact, they are working so hard it will not surprise me if it is the Americans with their hands out in a generation or two.

And what about the victims of the Holocaust? I cannot recall a single Jewish person who felt the world owed them a living because of what happened between 1942 and 1945. Some, if not all Holocaust survivors were a little to a lot crazy, but just got on with their lives and tried to make the best of it. Why should I give every Cambodian money because their lives were destroyed (by their own people). Admittedly,I do feel sorry for them as I see the maimed with lost legs and arms, deafness, and so on, but I should not feel like I owe them anything. The moral imperative is my own, not theirs!

Having said all that, I just walked into my hotel and a man with his little boy were playing just outside the front portico. When he started talking to me, I said to myself, here we go again and almost ignored him. When he asked where I was from I felt compelled to answer the question and then he replied with and “where are you from?” “Here”, he said,” and thank you so much for visiting my country” he said with heartfelt emotion.

Now, for the stones. They are absolutely either a tribute to man’s highest aspirations or a sign of our colossal egotism and waste. As you can see from the pictures, the temples are magnificent in so many ways, but how many people hours did it take to make these and at what cost? If you look at the iconography on the walls, they are warriors fighting each other with swords and bows and arrows. There are bas reliefs of soldiers offering the heads of the defeated to their king. There are the half naked Aspira dancing ladies, the face of Jayavarman V11 on all entrances showing his making of merit to his Gods ( at the expense) perhaps of thousands of lost lives. His workers literally spent their lives in making these monuments to his greatness.

Again, at least they were involved in productive work, something I am not so sure about when I am harassed at every turn by little girls selling me postcards.

Answer to Ron

Ron asked me how I liked this year compared to last which got me thinking. I guess the most obvious thing is that it is Sunday afternoon and I am not running around some tourist site snapping pictures. In fact, I doubt if I have posted any pictures in ages. When I see things that look like they are noteworthy of a picture, I tend to think I already have one somewhere. I guess, the real reason is I don’t even bother to take my camera with me! When I asked teachers last year what they were doing for the week-end and they kind of shrugged their shoulders as if to say, hanging around the apartment , I was flabbergasted. You mean you live in this interesting city and country and you shrug your shoulders as if there is nothing to do? Now, I guess I am them. I like nothing more than reading the paper or sitting down with a good book than run around the tourist sites, most of which I have probably seen, and more than once. As an aside, it is oppressively hot here and I know I have to go to Myanmar in a week which will be well above forty. You can be sure I am not looking forward to it. Playing golf in the heat is one thing, wearing a tie and sitting in some boring classroom is another.

Having said that, part of this journey is, of course, the people I meet and not the sites I have seen. For example, yesterday, I met a black civil rights lawyer from the United States who was taking a time out in her life and trying to get a job in Asia where she could make a difference, as she said. I met her last November as we were both apartment shopping and then met her again yesterday in a restaurant which provided us an opportunity to talk. There are so many fascinating people I have met who just want to make the world a better place and do not have the typical American attitude that their way is the better way. I offered her a job as our in house counsel in Singapore so it will be interesting if she takes up the offer.Being black in Asia, as she is, is not a help. There is such a colonial mentality throughout Asia that it certainly gives someone like me the upper hand, but we all know how crazy that is.

Which leads me to talk about my job. Last year, as you know, I was the principal of a fairly large international school so my job was easy. I was presented with myriad problems every day and all I had to do was help people solve them. In between, I tried to look ahead and anticipate challenges we were going to have and try to make suggestions to make our school better. The job came to me.

This year my job is somewhat different. I am called the Dean of the Academies and what I do is travel from country to country and school to school to help wherever and however I am needed. I have spoken to parents groups, talked individually with unhappy parents , worked inside classrooms, taught demonstration lessons, written one on-line course with Vicky and some by myself and helped with negotiations when they need an old white guy with grey hair to sit in the same room or play golf with them.

Basically, the job is what I make of it, which, on the one hand, is good, because I can do whatever turns my crank, but bad in that I have to be accountable to myself. I feel guilty if I take a day off. Right now, I am sitting in Bangkok on a beautiful Sunday afternoon as I said, not swimming, not playing golf, not site seeing, but taking a break from arranging interviews for a new school we are opening up in Hanoi ( two in fact). Unlike the principal job where problems just came to me and I had to react, here I have to act and it is the difference between night and day.

The job did give me the opportunity of meeting many wonderful people, I guess a basic theme of this answer to Ron. We have a bunch of Philippinos working at the school and they have to be the most wonderful people on earth. They love music and will at the drop of a hat burst into song. They start every class with a song and there are usually a few more somewhere in between. For some crazy reason, they think I know something and tend to treat me like an educational guru. I guess the colour of my hair, my age and my educational jargon help.

So the theme is, I have even more people this year which is great, I have travelled on the company’s dime to Yangon, Mandalay, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Singapore and I feel good about myself. What will it be like, I wonder, when I am no longer working? How will I make myself feel good?

The interview

I have just spent the last week supposedly interviewing over 70 ESL teacher candidates for our two new schools in Hanoi.I say 'supposedly' because we advertised on a Thailand Internet site and initially 30 people were invited to my initial meeting and 10 showed up, despite the fact that they all confirmed they were coming. I set up about 7 interviews every day and typically about 3 people show up. My directions cannot be that bad (or could they?)

Daniel is right when he says any North Americans living in Asia and looking for work must be whacked, including myself, I guess.Two men in their forties came in, telling me, in their own words, their sob stories. One has a dying wife and is desperate to make money and the other has a three thousand pound visa debt. Because I am dealing with visas all the time, I could not believe that any visa could possibly cost 3000 pounds. When he saw the incredulity on my face, he explained it was a VISA credit card bill!

Another man who I just spoke to with a PhD in educational leadership told me that another interviewer berated him for dominating the conversation. This was after 25 minutes of him talking non-stop about his present job, Thai politics, students in general and so on and this was before I asked him one question. It was incredible. I wanted to tell him the other interviewer was absolutely right but I could not get in a word edge wise. Luckily the next appointment came and I pushed him out the door. What a nightmare.

I guess my test of whether or not I want to hire someone is their ‘likeability factor.” Do I enjoy spending time with them listening to their stories and so on and am I disappointed when the hour is over? Perhaps that is not fair, but I presume that is how most interviewers do it. You will not necessarily get the best people for the job this way, I suppose, but at least I will have a dinner companion when I visit Hanoi.

For example, there were two black men who I absolutely loved. One was a former Hollywood producer who was articulate, erudite and fascinating. His latest venture was to run the Bangkok Film Festival and another brilliant black guy who was phenomenal with computers. I am sure they could not only talk education but also deliver, as opposed to the PhD guy who actually sounded quite articulate (although quite boring) and I am confident a very poor teacher.

There are also the Asians and Africans whose working conditions in their own countries are so poor they have to move to Thailand where they barely make a living wage but I guess it is better than where they come from. These are really desperate people who keep writing and phoning begging me for a job the day after the interview. I told one guy that if he even responds to my e mail asking me if he has the job he would be automatically disqualified. I have to keep moving forward looking for the ideal candidate.(s)

Anyway, someone is knocking on the door. Got to go. Hope this interview is better!

The ESL Class

Last night I felt like I was in the middle of Maeve Benchley’s novel ‘Evening Class’. Yui, my former Thai teacher, invited me to work with her class and then have dinner with them afterwards.

There was the engineer, who sold huge boilers for factories. When I said to him he must sell one a month he replied; no… one every six months and had to supplement his income selling his tutoring skills in math. There was the really good looking sales executive who had to learn English to advance in his company, a guy who wanted to break away from his parents’ business selling used parts for motorcycles but felt he needed English to do this. In fact, when I went home with him on the BTS, he told me he lived in a house with his parents, grandparents, aunts ,uncles and cousins and could absolutely not imagine ever moving out. When he gets married, he said, the wife will move in with him.

What was wonderful about this class, other than all of the stories I could flesh out, is that it brought together people from all walks of life who were learning English for different reasons. There was the chambermaid who wanted to advance in her hotel, learning English at the same time asthe marketing executive. I imagine their incomes were similarly disproportionate to their job titles but when we went to the restaurant they all shared metaphorically as well as practically, both the food and their stories. In fact, it is a long week-end in Thailand (as well as all over Asia because of the May 1 labour day holiday ) and they were all talking about taking a trip together to the beach.

Two or three have cars and two or three probably can’t afford the price of a BTS ride. One pretty women could not raise her eyes to talk with anyone even though her English was pretty good, I imagine because she somehow must have felt inferior, but she was the exception. It was so great watching and listening to them practice their English and taking such delight in serving me the food and watching the smoke come out of my ears from eating all that spice.

Bangkok is so huge that I will never absolutely know all of it. I am continually astounded by all the areas just off the main streets that I never knew existed. We went to a restaurant called ‘To Sit’ which had a great singer, an outdoor area to eat (which I love since I hate air conditioning) and beautiful trees for shade, although we did not need the shade at night. It was funny when an apple fell on Yui’s head ( at least for the rest of us). Because I walk everyone I would not necessarily ever find these places until these guys drove me.

I am now doing an administrative job; in fact in a few minutes I have about 5 interviews lined up for a new school we are opening in Hanoi but there is nothing like teaching. I know I would be happy spending the rest of my life teaching an ‘evening class’ and learning their stories.

Singapore Nightlife

Last night we went to the Esplanade, a mix of the Sydney Opera House, Harbourfront and Yorkville all in one. 'Cats' was playing in the Opera House section, upstairs two soloists were playing Chinese instruments in an intimate surrounding with about fifty people listening, reading the paper and looking at the display of lamps and otherwise relaxing. In another part of the building there was a smaller theatre like the Bluma Appel Centre which had a reed group playing ( I think bamboo poles or something like that). For the Yorkville part they had tons of restaurants and bars, but unlike Yorkville, it was right on the Singapore River overlooking the Lion, the symbol of Singapore and the lights of the downtown core. There were about twenty photographers with tripods set up taking pictures which I thought was quite an amazing coincidence until I realized they were all int he same photography class.

The thing that amazed me really was how such a small country could sustain such a powerful cultural venue. I am sure that the Esplanade was not the only location for the arts. How is it that this country puts so much emphasis on the arts? I don't really know the answer, but I do know that the majority of the population is Chinese if that has anything to do with it.

After we had dinner at a delicious Japanese restaurant, the teachers took me to Clark Quay, one of the spots the young people go to party. It was the spot that Sam Raffles originally landed at as he came up the river. There was an incredible array of entertainment from a woman doing belly dancing to the loud bars and so on with a location right on the river. In fact, since Singapore is an island ( sort of) everything is on the water. I had a Singapore Sling...finally and it was nothing to write home about. Not sweet enough for my taste.

What I saw is that we could be doing a much better job with our Harbourfront in terms of variety and aesthetics. I also like the fact that there is a taxi stand at every tourist area and people line up in an orderly fashion to wait, and yes, the trains do run on time!

As I drove home I got an incredible cabby who had all of the music from Peter Paul and Mary, Harry Belafonte and so on. He knew the history, background and everything else, it seemed, about each group. I took his number and promised him that the next time I am in Singapore I will let him drive me to Malaysia so I can spend the evening ( 45 minutes really) listening to the music. ( I suppose I could buy a CD). It might be cheaper.

T.V. Star

Last night I was showing a colleague around the Lumpini night market when a reporter and cameraman from the Thailand Tourist Board stopped and asked me to do a little two minute interview/sound bite about what I thought of Thailand since the violence began last week. Since I am used to sound bites, I had no problem speaking in front of the camera. Afterwards, he said I was really professional (which is beside the point actually of why I am telling this story). The point is what I said. Although Thailand is virtually in a state of anarchy and has been for the past number of years, from the farang perspective, life goes on. I live on Sukhumvit, which is like Yonge Street, and as you walk up and down you see people going about their normal working lives. Having said that, at the night market last night there were many shops closed, so the economy is the same everywhere around the world but I assume they were closed because of the economy, not violence or the threat of it.

When I think about what I see in south east Asia, it is surprising or lucky that we are doing so well in the west. Thailand is in a classic state of anarchy, Myanmar has a fascist dictatorship, Singapore is a one party state as Mike is quick to point out, Vietnam is a Communist country where there is no free speech and I have not even begun to describe Laos, Cambodia, or Bangladesh. Maybe what we see here is more akin to the human condition and what we have in North America is some aberration, wrought by a confluence of factors like natural resources, free education and just plain luck. Maybe Hobbes had it right when he said the nature of man is nasty, brutish and short. In this area of the world people are packed into a can like a bunch of sardines and are virtually fighting for some little piece of space. Perhaps we would move to the right if there were a 100 million of us, even though that would probably still seem empty in Canada compared to what I see over here.

I can’t remember when I wrote last or what I said, but I am definitely having fun. Last week I was in Hanoi. My company has formed a consortium and we are opening a few large schools. I had to explain to a board of consultants what international education really is and I gave an absolutely brilliant speech, (I am a legend in my own mind.) It is so easy to give speeches in a foreign country because when the translator is talking, you can gage body reaction, think about what you want to say next and keep your thoughts in order. In addition, as I discussed with my translator afterwards, he really softened a lot of what I had to say so it would be politically acceptable. For example, I said the absolutely first thing I would change would be to rip out all of the podiums where teachers stand and talk to make the statement that the nature of teaching and learning had to change in Vietnam from teacher-centred to student centred. He said something like we might consider removing the podiums in due course or words to that effect. I told them that the afternoon nap would also have to go. God knows how he translated that one.

I am now in Singapore, where there is a one hour time difference and guess what? My cell phone automatically changed times. Wow,:yet when I go back to Bangkok I will have to change the time manually. Another amazing thing. I went down to Singapore on an emptyish plane and had a chance to lay down and sleep after takeoff. Two and a half hours later I heard the pilot say we are about to land. I must be getting as good as Alana in travelling on planes!

How the Americans lost the Vietnam War

I was really privileged to be invited to supper the other night by a high ranking government official. Apparently, when you are invited to a home it is really something special and implies a very distinctive relationship. The meal, like the one I had in the restaurant a few weeks back, consisted of tons of food spread all over the table and you simply picked what you wanted to eat and put it in your one bowl. As the host explained, this is very democratic and you are not “served” as in the west where there is no choice of food.

Having said that, since I was the only ‘foreigner’, I was ‘given’ food which I had to eat because everyone was looking at me. I also committed two faux pas at the end of the meal. There was a huge rice bowl which I ate from directly instead of putting it in my bowl, which is bad enough and secondly, I remember my boss telling me at a Chinese wedding we attended together that you were supposed to decline the rice served at the end of the meal because it was a sign that you were hungry and the food was not adequate. No wonder I was the only one eating the rice!

I asked my host, who was a bit older than me, how he figured the Vietnamese were able to defeat the Chinese, then the French and then the Americans so successfully. He explained that they were simply smarter. For example, talking about food, he said the Americans ate tons of canned goods and then threw the cans outside their quarters. The Vietnamese then put frogs in all of the cans, which of course, eventually rattled. When one frog moved and caused a noise, the Americans came out and started shooting causing all of the frogs to start jumping around creating a tremendous racket and assured the Vietnamese that the Americans would shoot all of their ammunition at the phantom soldiers. Once their firepower was deleted, it made it al lot easier to capture them. He told a lot of stories like this which were quite humorous thirty-five years later, although not to Americans I don’t suppose.

Last night, after dinner, about eight of us went to a karaoke place. If you have never been, you go into a very nicely furnished room where there are couches, microphones and large TV with video and words to the music. Surprising, we ordered a bottle of whiskey and started drinking. Our age range probably varied from 35 to 65 and I quickly realized that the object of the exercise was to make everyone drunk, especially this one poor guy that was going to take up another post in a different country.

Within two hours, one guy fell asleep after vomiting, the ‘victim’ could hardly walk and everyone was laughing uproariously. As I have discussed with Joshua and Daniel so often I just don’t see where the enjoyment comes in???? I am sure you feel like hell the next day, it cost a ton of money, and vomiting does not seem like such a wonderful exercise.

I did not like the way they seemed to be picking on this one guy to drink to oblivion. For some reason, they seemed to respect the fact that I did not want to become engaged and eventually did not try to keep filling up my glass. There are a lot of things I can understand in this world even though I do not indulge or agree with them, but this is not one of them, no matter how much Joshua tries to explain it to me.

I