Night with Aiesecers

Aiesec Thailand seems to be great at surprising us. All the housemates and I had planned on visiting Phang Nga Bay this weekend, but we had a surprise visit from Ae (pronounced like the English vowel “a”), who is on the MC for Aiesec Thailand (national staff). He said there would be an English camp Sunday-Tuesday and that our help was needed.

The lack of equality (not a Thai, but a Western cultural value, I’m discovering) is not very important here. For example, if I respond to an American email immediately in the US, I usually expect to hear back quickly. If I take a while to respond, however, I don’t expect to receive an immediate response. This expectation does not hold up well as far as I’ve experienced with Aiesec Bangkok and Aiesec Thailand, which led to some frustration when I was told that we needed to stay in town for the English camp this weekend. I feel like we give them plenty of time to respond and they still usually don’t until the very last minute. However, they also contact us with a need at the last minute and expect us to deliver. According to “Thailand Fever”, a book I’m reading, this might be accounted for by the clash between the Western values of fairness and equality and the Thai value of generosity. The book implies that they are giving us an opportunity to show that we are generous, which is looked highly upon in Thai culture, by requesting things of us in the manner they do.

Anyway, Ae invited us to a “cooking party” with the 40 volunteers from Bangkok who came down to teach at the English camp. I was excited because I have been wanting to learn how to cook Thai food since before I arrived. Unfortunately, I did not learn in a very hands on way because there were so many people, speaking in Thai, running all over the place to cook all at once. I’m thankful I was still able to see how some things were made, and I asked about the sauces since they seem to be the only part I’m unsure of for my fave dishes.
At the "cooking party"

After dinner, there was an Aiesec meeting, even though the volunteers were not all Aiesecers. Just before dinner they had asked us trainees to make up a roll call and amazingly enough, we came up with the best one I’ve seen in a while, inspired by one of Will Ferrell’s SNL cheerleading acts (“sha sha booya”). After roll call, I was asked to help lead some of the Aiesec dances- Represent! The Indian song that makes Aiesec look like a cult instead of a CULTural organization, which is one of my faves, is not as popular here. And, they have a different dance for it- so unfortunate.

Later, all of us trainees talked about why we were here and what we had gotten out of the experience so far. During our mini speeches, one of the monkeys from the Khao Lak Nature Resort decided to join the meeting, which freaked everyone out. It looked so cute and cuddly until it opened its mouth and its fangs popped out. Eventually, someone from the resort came in, first with a rake, then with a banana, and the monkey left the meeting.