We love this beautiful green campus in the hills north of
Chiang Rai. Everywhere you look there are trees and flowers and water ponds and
modern (relatively stylish) buildings.
It is reputedly the prettiest university campus in Thailand,
a reputation that we believe to be correct.
Our bungalow is about 50 meters walk down a hill to the main
road, on which runs the “rod fai fa” (electric bus) every 15 minutes in both
directions. It goes up to the main
campus teaching, faculty offices, and administration buildings, passing by an
outdoor restaurant, Chinese cultural center, student dorms, the bank, a 7-11
store, etc. One day when Janet was
meeting David for lunch at the outdoor restaurant, the bus went by her full…and
it was a very hot sunny day. A student
on a motorbike (one of hundreds here) saw her get stranded, and stopped to
offer her a ride (he spoke almost no English, so their conversation was rather
limited…but she did get to the restaurant on time).
Often we eat at the open-air student “food hall,” an immense
room on the second floor of one of the large teaching buildings. There are about 15 different food stalls
offering everything from delicious “khao soi” (Northern Thailand’s
signature dish of curried chicken in hot coconut broth with both soft and
crispy noodles) to pickled pigs feet and other delicacies that we have not yet
dared to ingest. Our lunch the other day
cost about $1.10 for the two of us.
Students are everywhere on campus now that the term is
underway. The undergraduates all wear
required uniforms with a white or pastel shirt with a silver pin and black
skirt for the girls, and the guys with a necktie. On Fridays many of the girls wore traditional
long Thai skirts, gold and yellow and very pretty.
Some days many professors (now including David) wear a blue
denim Thai-style shirt embroidered with the MFU emblem. This seems preferable to the other required
“polite dress” of a long-sleeved shirt, nice slacks, and – if one is having a
meeting with the Dean – a necktie. The
mandate for “correct dress” is posted for students who want to enter many
university offices. Clearly form is at
least as important as substance in many situations here. |