PB#5 Ghetto Spa

January and February in Chiang Mai tend to be heavenly. The mild weather of the cool season has been one factor that's kept me from traveling too much. Another factor has been a severe case of chronic muscle spasms in my right leg, apparently brought on by overexertion when I was training for a December triathlon that I wasn't able to race in. The situation was misdiagnosed for a good three months before we finally figured out what was going on. So now I've been avoiding busses and planes and other such cramped settings and making frequent trips to the hospital for physical therapy and acupuncture. Despite these leg problems, the beginning of 2006 has been full: a staff retreat/planning session; a late night out dancing; movie night; a visit from Jenna (including a horrendous ghetto spa experience); hosting a computer training for colleagues from Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Burma, and Colombia; and International Women's Day. All here in one blog posting.

In January, the "Transitional Justice Team" (SMTh, KMS, PW, 7, and I) spent a week together updating each other on our work for the last year, planning out 2006 activities, team building (with the help of Ginger, aka pii.king), and having a few nights out in Chiang Mai.

pii.king provided some gender balance as well as posing some gentle but challenging questions about how our team can work together effectively.

PW, KMS, and SMTh on a coffee break.

pii.king's mission is to develop a culture of self-care (in this case, post-lunch guided relaxation/meditation) in the human rights activist community. I'm all for that!

We could have used our friends Betsy and Katie at this retreat as well. Their mission is to instill some fashion sense among human rights activists. The need is all too clear.

We spent one night out playing putt-putt – the first time for most of my colleagues.

We also went bowling. Those are my 3-strikes in a row.

After a week at a semi-isolated retreat, it was time to get my boogie on. pii.king and Kristen (aka Dancing Kween) lived up to DK's name and hit the neighborhood club, "Warm Up."

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When I got back to my apartment after the retreat, there were notices up at the entrance and in the elevator saying that there had been a spate of robberies in our building, and that we should take extra care to make sure our doors and windows were locked. Chiang Mai is a very safe place, so this notice was rather surprising.

Perhaps more surprising was the notice that went up a week later. "Thief Caught!" with this photo identifying him. He's a cross-dresser who entered the building as a visitor, leaving his ID with the security guard, and then used a credit card to unlock poorly secured doors. One of the staff noticed an open door and knew the owner wasn't home, so they called the police who didn't show up. After 30 minutes, a gaggle of security guards, cleaning staff, and staff from the office surrounded the door and performed a "citizens' arrest." I came back to the apartment while they were interrogating the thief in the office. When I asked what was going on, someone explained the situation and encouraged me to go in and take some pictures! This was no Abu Ghraib, so I decided against it and settled for this photo announcing his capture.

Jenna, aka Faux'bian, came for a visit and we engaged in a full set of activities, starting with this viewing at my apartment of a great documentary, "Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World." Gay friends from Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand were really interested to see their experiences depicted in a serious way.

Dancing Kween checked out some of the latest trashy mags from the U.S., generously supplied by Jenna.

In Chiang Mai we have our choice of public transport. These red trucks run like a combination of taxi and bus. You can hail them down and tell them where you're going. If you're the first one in, the driver heads to your destination, but stops along the way to pick up other passengers if they're heading the same way. About 35 cents per ride if you stick to a main route.

Tuk-tuks take you directly where you're going without a stop. They're like open-air taxis so you get all the nasty traffic noise and pollution. I'm not a fan.

Jenna's making the big bucks, so we hopped in her Benz to get around town while she was here.

She's actually not making the big bucks, so we decided to spend a day relaxing at the Ghetto Spa in my neighborhood that costs about ½ what other spas do: $45 for 3½ hours of steam, scrub, massage, etc. I decided to forego the milk bath. As you can see in this pic, the "Jacuzzi" is actually a vacuum cleaner plugged into a super-size bathmat that blows bubbles. The spa earned its ghetto moniker during our trip, as the water in the whole place got turned off in between the scrub and the massage. So we had naked Jenna and Patrick, some yoghurt / coffee / vegetables concoction hardening into our skin, unable to be washed off. Thankfully, we didn't have our cameras with us so you'll have to use your imagination to picture it. After 20 minutes of being told "two more minutes," I cleaned myself off as best I could with a bottle of drinking water and headed out. Jenna is more patient then I am so stuck around for the water pump to get fixed and enjoyed her hour massage.

Besides getting her Thai food fix, catching up with friends, and meeting with her partner groups, Jenna also got to do some shopping. She's very proud of this ridiculous bag.

At the end of February, we started hosting a training for computer programmers working on projects with huge amounts of human rights data. Participants are from Burma, Guatemala, Colombia, and Sri Lanka. This is what the training looked like every day, all day.

I was a good influence I think. Arranged for elephant riding, a city tour, and a two-hour massage. $7.50 for two hours, and no water catastrophes.

The training participants also joined the March 8 International Women's Day march through the streets of Chiang Mai.

The Int'l Women's Day march and performances focused on some specific themes, including the labor rights of sex workers and domestic servants. Women working in those industries should have the legal protection of labor laws, from which they're currently excluded. A lot of the women working in massage parlors, bars, and karaoke joints are from rural Thailand or Burma, so the message of the day also focused on anti-human-trafficking measures and the right to travel that, if it were respected, would give greater freedoms and protection to these women.