The new and improved photo site is up and running, complete with pictures from the islands. However, it will be until tomorrow at least until I get up all the previous pictures, too (there's some up, but not all). Enjoy.

What with all my free time I've been having lately, I've been spending a lot of it on the computer, re-immersing myself in the old internet. Today I decided to do some research and dig up some good environmental websites and resources. I found a handful of good ones and posted them over on the side there. I haven't spent too much time with them yet, but they seem good, as far as I can tell. Either way, check them out. Grist is pretty solid in general. Orion has some good essays up: one about ecoterrorism ("Green Rage") and one about moving beyond cars ("Making Other Arrangements"). Both Tree Hugger and World Changing have a ton of news and information up about change actually taking place, and Tree Hugger in particular has some guides to "How to Go Green". The New York Times article is great, a good overview of the IPCC's (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the most authoritative body on the subject in the world) recent report on global warming, which is basically conclusive proof that the world is getting hotter, humans are causing it, and it's going to seriously mess things up for centuries down the road. This report is basically the point at which we say "That's it, no more arguing. Period." The Driving Green site is pretty cool. It's a carbon credit system, one of many out there. Basically, you go on and enter information for either your car or a flight you're taking, and it calculates how much carbon will be released as a result. It uses this number to calculate a fee that you can pay, which they take and invest in projects (such as tree planting or farm technologies) that offset the carbon you're putting into the atmosphere. I tried it for my return flight home, and it came out to only $48. Not bad. The Ecological Footprint quiz is just something that's kind of cool if you're not too familiar with the concept. So there you go, have at it.

And I'm back from the Adang Archipelago and comfortably in Chiang Mai, settling in for the home stretch. The course was amazing. It was absolutely beautiful, in the prototypical tropical paradise sort of way, i.e. white sand, turquoise water, vibrant reefs, normalized social/ecological oppression of marginalized indigenous groups by the state and tourism, you know, everything we love. The time basically broke down as follows:

For the first week or so, we were on Lipe, which is kind of the central, most developed island of the archipelago. We stayed at one of the twenty-odd bungalow resorts there, living a pretty comfortable life laying in hammocks, eating at restaurants, snorkeling in spare time, and completing an ethnography of the island. The ethnography was really interesting, and entailed walking around for a couple days talking to resort owners, tourists and school teachers, and also the actual native inhabitants of the archipelago, the chao lay (meaning "people of the sea"). Their story is basically this: they were former sea nomads, wandering around the archipelago for most of the century, until the national park moved in and decided to declare the region a protected marine national park, and forced the chao lay to give up their maverick ways and straighten up (including a forced relocation to Lipe, where the vast majority now live). With the arrival of tourism about twenty years ago, there was all sorts of complicated land deals made, a tricky and quite unfair situation when you're dealing with a culture who had previously had no concept of land ownership. So long story short, the chao lay got kind of pushed into the center of the island, where they now live, and work for the tourism industry as boat drivers/smiling simple natives during the tourism season, and as fishermen during the non-tourism season. So as for that ethnography... that's basically what we learned, in addition to what it's like in general for them all living there, what they do, who they work for, what they think of tourism, what they think of the environment, all that. It was a fun exercise, considering we had to conduct it all in Thai.

Moving on.

After Lipe, we spent the remaining ten days or so touring the rest of the archipelago. We visited three other beaches, each of which we reached via kayak. Once there, we spent the days snorkeling and burning and the nights making funny voices and praying the tide wouldn't steal our tents. One day we went to the one remaining group of chao lay who are still trying to make their lives by wandering about the islands and collecting things and fishing ("no tourism for us!" they say). This was probably my favorite day, as I got to help a man build a temporary house out of skinny trees (temporary because they will only be at that site for the next three months and then move on), which included having a great conversation about how illegal it all is, and then a romp through the mountain side in flip flops helping him cut down some more wood and carry it back.

As far as snorkeling, we saw some really stunning reefs (minus big fish, which have all been fished out). I saw, in no particular order: a black tip reef shark, a cuddle fish (a cousin of the squid), a puffer fish (un-puffed), bat fish, butterfly fish, a ray, legions of hermit crabs, clown fish ("Nemo" fish), giant clams, sea urchins, star fish, enormous jelly fish, parrot fish, barracuda, pipe fish (like an un-curled sea horse), and probably more that I can't recall right now.

As far as kayaking, it too was really really fun. The last paddle was easily the most exciting, and probably the most physically challenging thing I've done here. It was a four hour day, with a lunch break in the middle, that included two major channel crossings. When crossing these channels, we had to withstand not only a pounding current, but intense winds that were making three-foot white caps, pushing us in exactly the direction we did not want to go. These crossings took a couple hours each or so, which was spent paddling our little hearts out and getting completely soaked by waves and spray, and playing twenty questions with Nick (who was in a double with me), in which we picked the following people: King Tut, Rasputin, Marie Curie and Peggy Guggenheim.

And that was that.

I'm working on changing my pictures over to another picture website, and the internet is slow here anyway, so you'll have to wait until probably next week before I get them up and going.

And like I said, homestretch. My program officially ends as of midnight tonight and I'll be spending the rest of the time living with six people in a four person room and working at my former internship site. I leave March 6.

This will be short and sweet --- and moving chronologically in reverse --- as I don't have a whole lot of time to spare, as I'm trying to get everything together to head down to the islands tomorrow for my island ecology course. It's my final course with ISDSI, which is great. And it should be a good time. I've heard it's far more about laying in the sun, snorkeling, kyaking and drinking mango shakes than any sort of trace of academic learnin'. And in all honesty, fine with me. So yes, that's where I will be, the Adang Archipelego, for the next two and a half weeks or so. I'll be back on the 31st, I believe.

This week has been bearable at best. I've had the normal rigors of seminar week (the first week of every course, before we go out into the field), which means full school days (8-5), which I haven't had to deal with in a few years, plus a fair amount of reading. Un/fortunately, I've been able to supplement my time at nights with a pirated copy of the third season of Arrested Development, arguably the most clever show to every be put on television.

For the week before this week, my mom was over here for the last week of my break, which was fun. I probably don't need to go into that too much though, considering she's the only one who reads this. Before that I just read a ton. I read these books: You Shall Know Our Velocity!, The Hours, Beloved, White Noise, and am now working on Eggers' newest, What is the What. All are good.

Before that: Arrived in Thailand --- Sophomore year of college --- First year --- high school --- middle school --- little kid --- And then I was born.

More when I'm tanner.

Last night, in all our holiday joy, Nick and I decided to go out to our favorite classy joint, Berlin, for a drink or two. We were there, minding our own business, when all of a sudden the waiter comes up and hands us a paper coaster and says it's for us. We look at it, and there's a flirtatious message, of course. We ask who it's from, but who won't tell us. We find the whole thing rather ridiculous, so we decide to have some fun with it. The following images are re-creations, in sequence, of those anonymous paper coasters, shadows of a Christmas night rendevous between two dashing (only one of whom is heterosexual) American studs and two unknown Thai women, supposedly named Niel and Daniel. If it's difficult to read/see the pictures, just click on them to open up a bigger version.


Maybe we scared them away? We are truly children.