Kop Khun Ma Ka Rotary!

There is an expression, “All good things must come to an end.”  I don’t particularly like this expression, nor believe in it, but at the end of September, I had to deliver my ‘farewell’ speech to my host Rotary club here in Bangkok.  I would certainly not call it a farewell speech and do not plan on my good times with Rotary ending at this moment, as I am still living in Bangkok and attending Rotary meetings and volunteering at Rotary events, but it was a unique opportunity to share my experiences with Rotary in the past year and thank Rotary for the opportunities it has afforded me.

While I have not yet had the chance to present at my home club in Foster City and other clubs in California, I did want to share a portion of my final speech here in Bangkok, as I spent a great deal of time thinking of what I could possibly say to the group of people who gave me the opportunity to follow my dreams and change my life.  The answer is most likely nothing, but the following is a portion of what I presented to the Rotary Club of Bangkok on 4 October 2012.  Titled “Ashley’s Nine Tales: Lessons Learned from One Year in Thailand” I spoke about the opportunities I had been given here, the friends I had met, and the important life lessons I had learned.  Thailand is known as the Land of A Thousand Smiles, but for me, it was the Land of a Thousand Life Lessons – it was difficult to narrow them down to a few!  Below are the nine that I would like to share with you in hopes that perhaps you already are wise and have acquired this information, or that you hopefully find these own lessons on your own soon:

 

1: Life is short.  This one year went by faster than I ever could have imagined.  So take that jump, quit your job, move across the world and make every single moment absolutely worth it.

2:  There is no reward or learning in life without taking a risk.  You can only grow once you step outside of your comfort zone.  So get out!

3:  Life is too short not to try the goat fighting ball stew in Myanmar, bugs on a stick in Vietnam, or your 50^th mango sticky rice on the street just to make sure it still tastes delicious.

Trying beetlenut for the first time in Myanmar!

4: Never doubt that the power of two small drops has the ability to change the world.  Big things always start with little beginnings.  So be the start of something big.

5: The more I learn, the more I realize how little I actually know, and how much more I have to learn.

Jon, Linda and I at a Rotary Polio Day in Thailand

6: Get some perspective.  When you become worried or obsessed over one little problem – like an exam, or an argument with a friend – you have lost your perspective.  So get back out there and gain it back, to understand the larger picture in what is truly important.

7: Never take for granted what you have, and never forget what others don’t have.  If you remember this – you will never lose sight of that perspective.

8:  The destination doesn’t matter.  The important part is the journey.

9: People will not change no matter how badly you want them to.  People will only change if they want to.  So instead of worrying about trying to change others, change yourself.  Change your family.  And with fellow your Rotarians, you can change the world.

Bangkok Rotarians at the District Conference in May 2012

I cannot thank Rotary enough for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime – to chase (and taste!) my dreams halfway around the world.  The education I have gained is unparalleled, the friends and contacts I have made are exceptional, and the experiences I have lived are life-changing and one of a kind.  Thank you so much for supporting me on this journey and making my dreams become a reality.

Thank you especially to the Club of Foster City, namely Jon, Linda and Greg.  Without you, I would not be who I am today, and I am not sure exactly how life led me to you, but I consider myself incredibly lucky and forever grateful.  At a later stage in my life, I sincerely plan on becoming a Rotarian myself, and can only hope that I am able to touch the amount of lives that you have in your time as Rotarians – all over the world!  I hope there are many more years ahead with me and the Club that Cooks!

Hanging out with the birthday boys of FC- September 2011

Oh…by the way, I graduated!

Woah - Life is FLYING by!  Slow Down please!

Yikes I apologize that it has been SO long since I wrote in this blog…life seems to be progressing faster than the speed of light, and I am holding on with my cheeks flapping in the wind. 

Good news is: in the last few months I have successfully graduated from my one-year intensive Master’s program, and have picked up several interesting consultancy positions within the area.  I have traveled to Indonesia to present my thesis at an International Conference on Human Rights, I traveled to Myanmar for a friend’s wedding, and went to Cambodia to present a co-authored report at the ASEAN Summit.  (Don’t worry I will fill you in on all of this in more detail in the subsequent posts!)  

That million dollar question that everyone seems to ask me: “What are you going to do now that you graduated?”  I have had people ask me this question so often I sometimes come up with snarky answers like, “Oh I don’t know, maybe travel the world, or spend time on the beach – I can’t really be bothered by much at the moment.”  As most people might suspect, or as the chain of events goes, after you are a poor measly student – you need to get a job.  So there is nothing that is profound or unique about my upcoming months here – I am trying to get a job!

Me with my published thesis :)  DONE!

The most logical question that follows the “get a job” one, is “WHERE?”  And that is an interesting question.  The world seems like such a big place, and there are so many places I hope to travel to and live.  The expression “the world is your oyster” has never seemed more real and I often dream about the amazing places that I can work in this world.  I really could pick up and move anywhere!   However, I have managed to fall in love with Southeast Asia and find that the mix of development issues in this region are vast, complex and unique – and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here thus far and do not feel ready to part ways with this region just yet.  My grandmother and others can’t seem to understand why or how I could possibly want to work in this region of the world, and I honestly don’t know how to better explain it than by reviewing this blog and seeing all the wonderful, amazing and inspiring opportunities I have had here in the past year: working with refugees along the border, interviewing flood victims in mid-Thailand, creating agri-business plans with farmers in Viet Nam and enjoying tea with fisherman in rural Myanmar while discussing the impact of tourism development.  If that isn’t convincing enough – I don’t know what is!

The next few posts take a quick overview of the past two months, and try to encapsulate everything (or almost everything!) that I have done since graduating!

Turning a Blind Eye: How Authorities and the Public Darken the Shadow

I have been writing a few articles for a professor for a Southeast Asian magazine.  While I promise to share those publications soon, I wrote the following as a first draft, however, it was deemed too controversial.  Nevertheless, I learned an awful lot about prostitution and sex tourism in Southeast Asia…and wanted to share:

Turning a Blind Eye: How Authorities and the Public Darken the Shadow

Tourists in downtown Bangkok partaking in sex tourism

Through active denial, ignorance and participation, authorities and the public have furthered the presence and ensured the prevalence of illicit activities within Southeast Asia.  One of the most poignant examples of this sponsorship is the prevalence of prostitution in Southeast Asia.

Sex tourism overtly draws foreigners to the region and one report estimates that 4.6 million Thai men regularly, and 500,000 foreign tourists annually use prostituted women (Hughes, Sporcic, Mendelsohn & Chirgwin, 1999).  The largest sex industry market for Asian women however is in Japan, where over 150,000 non-Japanese women are in prostitution: more than half Filipinas and forty-percent Thai women (Hughes, et al., 1999).  Japanese men also constitute the largest number of sex tourists in Asia. The sex industry in Japan accounts for 1 percent of GNP and is equal to the defense budget (Hughes et al., 1999).  Furthermore, child prostitution is a serious issue where one-third of the total sex industry in the Greater Mekong Sub-region is comprised of minors between the ages of 12 and 17 years old (IRIN, 2009).

The legality of prostitution varies in each country and while most countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia and Malaysia have rules and regulations making the act illegal, other countries within the region do not specifically address the legal issue, such as Indonesia.  Singapore has actually made prostitution and brothel ownership legal, abiding mandatory health checks and minimum age requirements (ProCon.Org, 2009).  However, what is presented in the law and what occurs in practice are often two very different things.

One-third of the total sex industry in Southeast Asia is minors aged 12-17 years old

One International Labour Organisation (ILO) report, which outlined the sex sector in four Southeast Asian countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, concluded that prostitution accounted between 2 to 14 percent of GDP, with unaccounted larger revenues being collected by government authorities illegally in the form of bribes and corruption, and legally from licensing fees and taxes on many of the hotels, bars, restaurants and game rooms where the industry is often housed (ILO, 1998).  In Jakarta, Indonesia alone for example, there is an estimated annual turnover of $91 million USD from activities related to the sale of sex (ILO, 1998).

Given these profits, it is foreseeable how some might turn a blind eye to the issue, failing to report incidents or practices of prostitution due to the large sums of money it can bring.  Corruption, bribery and massive profits keep the industry alive – estimated to account for 3 percent of Thailand’s economy, equivalent to about $4.3 billion USD per year (ProCon.Org, 2009).

Turning a blind eye towards prostitution in Thailand is an entrenched practice, as indicated by the present industry’s booming success today.  Although prostitution has been illegal in the country since 1928, with further laws clarifying and strengthening the illegal practice in 1960, Thailand remains one of the world’s largest markets for sex tourism.  Chuwit Kamolvisit, the owner of several massage parlors in Bangkok and considered by many "a godfather of prostitution" in Thailand, revealed in 2003 that some of his best clients were senior politicians and police officers, whom he also claimed to have paid, over a decade, more than £1.5m in bribes so that his business, selling sex, could thrive (BBC News, 2003a; Scott-Clark & Levy, 2004).

Typical customers of Thailand's sex tourism

Support of prostitution is pervasive in political circles, clouting the industry with further corruption and bribes.  In 2003, Thailand’s ruling Thai Rak Thai Party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Thaksin were upset over party plans to ban members of parliament from having mistresses or visiting brothels.  One MP told The Nation that if the rules were enforced, the party would only be able to field around 30 candidates, compared to its more than 200 sitting MPs" (BBC News, 2003b).  Both politicians and police have been supporting and indulging in the prostitution industry openly.  Khun Tavich, a veteran politician aged 76, was under fire in 2005 for impregnating a 14-year-old girl who worked across the street from the parliament.  After a police raid on some of Bangkok’s parlors, in which policemen had sex with prostitutes, acting Suthisan Police chief Colonel Varanvas Karunyathat defended the police action, saying that the (police) officers involved “needed to have sex with the masseuses to gain evidence for the arrest" (Associated Press, 2009).  Similar practices by separate police forces were reported in Pattaya in May 2007 (Pattaya News, 2007).

While prostitution may in theory be illegal, in practice it feels promoted, as witnessed while walking down the colorful Soi Cowboy in the Nana area of Bangkok.  So how is it, that a practice that includes human trafficking, the abuse of children and minors, and illegal activity, is so widely promoted within Thailand?  Simply put - society accepts prostitution.  Attitudes towards women and prostitution were exemplified by MP Thirachai Sirikhan, who informed The Nation that, "To have a mia noi (mistress) is an individual's right. There should be no problem as long as the politician causes no trouble to his family or society" (BBC News, 2003b).  Kritaya Archavanitkul, a Thai human rights activist, interviewed by UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies, said,

“Thai social structure tends to accept this sort of abuse, and not only to accept – we have laws, we have bills that vitally support the existence of these sex establishments…we have a Mafia that is also involved in the political parties, so this keeps the abuse going. The second reason is a cultural factor… in Thailand the sexual behaviour of Thai men accepts prostitution.  Every class of Thai men accept it, although not all Thai men practise it…Because of the profit, I think there are many people with an interest involved, so they try to turn a blind eye to this problem.”

Prostitution in Thailand has come to not only be tolerated, but accepted and promoted as a tourist attraction in addition to the common societal practice.    Yet prostitution is only one example of the many illegal informal economies within Southeast Asia where a blind eye is turned; where instances of violence, environmental damage, violation of persons and species abound and are ignored for the benefit of large profit.

Eight year old Pet is a champion Muay Thai fighter in Thailand - one of over 30,000 child fighters

 BUFFALO GIRLS: 

“I want to win a lot of money to make Mom and Dad happy.  I am very poor.”

-        Pet, 8-year old female child boxer

Buffalo Girls is a 2012 documentary that follows the story of two eight-year-old Thai female boxers as they fight underground for their country’s national Muay Thai championship, a prize that could change their families’ lives forever.

The documentary states that there are 30,000 child boxers in Thailand, who, with their tiny fists, fight for prize money to offer their impoverished families a better life.

The documentary seeks to evoke emotion from its viewer and beckons judgment, questioning whether the new underground sport is exploitation, empowerment or economic necessity?

T-Day: The Defense

My thesis committee after my defense!

I got to my room ridiculously early – with enough time to set up my presentation, layout my papers, run through my presentation, and check to ensure that my Myanmar tome was folded properly five thousand times.  As I fidgeted with nerves, trying to keep my cool (with assistance from the air conditioner which blasting freezing cold air), my external examiner entered, followed by my Chair, supervisor and co-supervisor.  Four gentlemen, three Thai, one Australian.

One deep breath, a smile, and I was on my way talking through my presentation.  When you have pictures to describe the people you met and the experiences you gained, it brings everything to life and I could sense that the committee enjoyed seeing these pictures which gave faces to the individuals I mentioned in the interviews.  I finished my presentation, took a deep breath and braced myself for what was to come.

Passed!

Every fierce competitor entertains the idea of a ‘worst case scenario:’ The Olympian receiving silver, the spelling bee champion who misses the silent “e” in the finals, the ballerina who falls from a twirl she had successfully recited ten times earlier that week.  The beauty pageant contestant who practices her “loser” face.  I always practice my ‘loser’ face, not because I welcome defeat, but because sportsmanship was engraved in my brain since I was a little girl playing bunch ball (or soccer – depending on how you watched the game).

To be blunt, no worst case scenario could have prepared me for my defense.  It was brutal.  While we don’t need to go into detail, the spitfire questions that the committee hounded you with, and the amount of disagreeance amongst the committee members themselves, made it incredibly difficult to decipher what was important to change or adapt, and what could be left.

Nevertheless, two weeks later and I come back with signatures and full approval from the committee – I PASSED my thesis, and received the highest marks of “Very Good.”

This learning experience has been tremendous – and the opportunity to travel to Myanmar and conduct field research is a chance I may never get again, and one that I will never forget.  I never thought the field would be so much FUN – and I never thought it would have such an impactful impression on me.

I am incredibly happy to have jumped the next hurdle – but still have mountains of paperwork before the finish.  I have until September 21^st to submit everything and will be back under my massive boulder in the meantime!