June 05, 2006
A Farang in Bangkok
I arrived in Bangkok on Friday afternoon and today was my first day at work. I spent most of the weekend adjusting to the time change and wandering around the area around where I am living. Since I am living on the campus of Chulalongkorn University, there are not a lot of farangs around, and I definitely stick out like a sore thumb. I had a similar experience living in Khon Kaen last year, as the city is not a huge tourist destination, but I was with other Americans, so we got to feel self-conscious together. Feeling self-conscious alone is very different.
My big activity for the weekend was finding the supermarket so I wouldn't have to eat out all the time. Maboonkrong, a huge mall, is located right outside Chula's gates, but finding the supermarket within MBK was not easy. The place is enormous, putting most American malls I've been to to shame, and seems to be packed at all times. It was a little intimidating at first, but I found it on my second try. Wandering through the aisles it was exciting to find all the Thai snacks I ate on road trips through Isaan last year, and brought back a lot of memories.
Today I began my internship at the International Institute for Trade and Development. ITD was set up a couple years ago by the United Nations Council on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in conjunction with the Royal Thai Government, in part as a concrete thank-you to the country for hosting the tenth UNCTAD conference. The purpose of the institution is to find and disseminate knowledge on important issues in international trade and thier relavance to economic development, as well as provide training for trade-related personel in developing countries.
What I did today can be distinctly characterized as A LOT of reading. I read up on the backgroud of the institution as well as recent articles and publications put out by them. I have my own little cubicle, and work in a space with four other people. Two are researchers, and the other two are training coordinators (I have yet to figure out exactly what they do). They have all been very nice to me, but it is obvious that some are not quite sure what I am doing here. I did bond with one of the researchers though over college basketball and a disposition towards mathematics. As it turns out, we are both of the rare breed that is not completely averse to numbers and the like. He asked me to work with him on a project he is doing on the effects of trade liberalization on child labor in Thailand, which I was very flattered by. It sounds like an interesting project, especially since there is little literature on the topic in general and none concerning Thailand. It seems that I will have to simultaneously work on this project and my thesis, and I will probably try to find a way to incorporate this into my thesis.
On a more general note, after living in Thailand for four months I expected to be familiar with most of the food, but as it turns out, I am not. I guess most of what I ate before was traditionally Isaan, as well as the fact that a lot of the time I just ate what was in front of me, so I don't know what a lot of dishes are called. I do miss the mooping and kow ne-ow stands of KKU though (pork on a stick and sticky rice).
I am also slightly worried that I will not make as much progress on my thesis as I would have liked. I have not yet asked, as it is my first day, but setting up interviews might be more difficult then expected, especially since I work from nine to five. Seeing as my thesis is mainly focused at this point on individual policy preferences towards free trade agreements with the US and China, I really should take advantage of my short (unfortunately) time here to gather data, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about doing this. On the plus side, should I choose to put more of an emphasis on the political underpinnings of these agreements, I seem to have gotten lucky in that Thailand's political situation is pretty up in the air right now, with the Economist stating that it is unclear exactly who is running the country at the moment. It is possible that I have stumbled upon one of those rare natural experiments.
As for my Thai, it seems to be coming back to me bit by bit (the little I knew in the first place). I try to make a concious effort to speak it, but can never tell whether it is more offensive to rattle off in English or broken and badly pronounced Thai. Tonight I am going to sign up for language classes, so hopefully that will help.
Posted by abbysmit at June 5, 2006 04:40 AM