Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
Recently, two very dear friends of mine came to visit me at site. Christina and Ulrich took their vacation this year (about six weeks – they’re German, not American, and I’m jealous of how much time they had) to tour Southeast Asia. They started in Vietnam, came through Cambodia, and finally found their way to me in Thailand where I spent six days introducing them to my (very excited) community. We participated in preparations for a Bon Gratin, introduced my host family to German food, amazed everyone with how tall Germans can be, and had an all around great time. Here are some of Ulrich’s reflections on their time at my site:
This article was not written by a Peace Corps Thailand volunteer currently serving in country.
Ulrich Huber
Did you ever ask yourself why you travel around the world? What makes you sit in an airplane with very limited legroom for hours? What makes you struggle with jet lag and public transport in a country where all the instructions are likely in a language you can’t even read?
Some people are motivated by the promise of 14 days of relaxation at the pool. Others search for the next adrenaline kick or a physical challenge. And then there are people who travel to extend their horizon.
Every type of journey holds its challenges. Educational journeys are like finding a student with a true smile in a class photo. Most students will smile artificially, but from time to time you find a genuinely happy one. Similarly, it is hard to find sights and tours unbiased by the expectations and preferences of mass tourism. The list of top sights will include the most beautiful temple, this one museum with the perfectly curated exhibition of statues from the 12th century, and this really exotic food that is nowadays only made for tourists.
What you will not find on that list is a stay in a simple family home with an ant infestation. Neither will you join the women of a village to assemble banana leaves and flowers into a beautiful statue in preparation for the next religious ritual. Instead, you will see those statues standing in a temple as an offering and will never understand the joy these women had while assembling it.
Likely, you will sit in restaurants instead of enjoying sticky rice and extremely spicy food with some locals, in exchange for voting on which of their beers tastes best.
Finally, your understanding of social differences will probably never go below the surface. You will not even guess that a relationship might be defined entirely differently from what you are used to at home. And you will never know that students in this country are happy to include small preschoolers in their game of soccer without complaint.
For such experiences, you must leave the trodden path of mass tourism and walk your own trail. And hopefully the experiences you have on that journey will give you an answer to why you put up with all the hardships of traveling.
Thank you, Teresa, that we could visit you at your site and leave the trodden path behind us.
Sticky Rice 