I just wrote about our first four wheeled vehicle. A CNN news article today said there are now 800 million vehicles on the road and by mid century that could go to between 2 and 4 billion. The claim is that we are approaching gridlock in many parts of the world. It was written by someone from Ford Motor Company so I assume they meant four wheeled vehicles, because in this part of the world there are a whole lot more two wheeled vehicles.

This is not news to me, since we are just about to gridlock here in Nang Rong. At least half of the time I have been out in my four wheeled vehicle lately I have had to pull over and wait, maybe even back up a bit, or cause the other people to do the same. Yesterday I just had to stop in the middle of the street until people parked some ways out from the curb on both sides of the narrow street finally moved.

Nang Rong was built before there were motorcars, and Thailand has taken a great deal longer to acquire a significant number of cars than the US. Especially up here in Nang Rong. Well, we have them now. The streets are narrow, buildings built to within a few feet of them, leaving a narrow sidewalk which is usually loaded with shop goods so everyone walks in the street. View at corners is blocked by buildings so the average cornering speed, even off the main highway into Nang Rong, is about 2 miles an hour with your car coming within inches of the cars waiting at the light to go the other way.

Not the most narrow street in Nang Rong, certainly not the busiest, just the street in front of my house. My driveway is on the right just past the green stripped awning. One way traffic works here. It is a two way street, for motorbikes anyway.

Cars are relatively new here. Many even older people have just recently learned to drive them. They are not reckless or dangerous, you have to be young to be that, and most of the young people still don’t have that kind of money here. Their elders are very slow and careful. They may not yet have learned where the car is and so may park half a car’s width or more from the curb, which makes streets hard to navigate when the person on the other side parks that way also. Add traffic coming the other way and now it is impossible.

Some informal Thai rules of the road:
• Do not go the wrong way on a one way street unless it is for a short distance. Of course if you are a motorcycle one way does not apply.
• If motorcycles are parked at the curb you may park away from the curb outside of them.
• When you stop at one of the three lights in town leave space in front. If you don’t the motorbikes will go around you anyway, and those that don’t fit in front will get stuck beside you, making it that much harder for you to get going without knocking into them (narrow streets, remember?).
• Always use your turn signals when ready to turn. The motorbikes are going to pass you anyway, but you can influence on which side.
• Always watch out for motorbikes. Remember the “reckless and dangerous” young people I referred to above? Well guess what they drive.
• If you get a phone call while driving on the highway your natural Thai caution has you slow down to a few miles an hour – on a blind corner with possible high speed traffic just out of sight.
• When doing road maintenance on any road, even a major highway it’s OK to have an abrupt 6 inch change in level with no warning. Going down these is really not too bad, but going up them…
• Don’t EVER ride a motorbike fast at night (see above).
• If you need to do something really unusual or crazy, just turn on your flashers and everyone will understand.

Taken out of my driveway. He starts coming by at 7:30 AM. Do you suppose he bothers someone else even earlier?

This leads me to the next traffic problem: elections. Fortunately they only have them every four years. For a town of this size there are an unbelievable number of speaker trucks driving around town very slowly while making the most noise possible. They start on my street at about 7:30 AM every morning. The worst offender is candidate #3 (out of about 16). The announcer, with great excitement, yells his name several times in a row and then goes on to tell of his greatness in such an excited tone that it quickly leads to emotional overload and exhaustion. He comes by a number of times each day. Multiply that by 16 or more candidates and you begin to understand. Each candidate may have many trucks. They are all over and moving slow. At one point I saw six of them in a row, for different candidates, all with speakers going full. Whether a Thai could understand any of that I don’t know. I surely could not.

Six sound trucks, different candidates, all going full blast.

So, is it safe to drive here? I would say yes, it is overall. Certainly a lot safer than some other countries with which I am familiar, like India. if you try to keep to the daylight hours, and avoid holiday evenings when more people are drunk. I know more people here recently involved in accidents than I do in the US. The rate of severe injury and death from accidents is not so bad, because driving here is slower. Some things are safer. Riding a motorbike in town here is much safer than doing that the same in town in the US. The town is built close together, streets are narrow, you go so much slower, especially when there are lots of sound trucks. Actually, for motorcycle accidents, I know more people in the US…

Last Thursday was visiting day. Sue, myself, Walai (our managing director), Pisamai (bookkeeper and office manager) and Ruut (construction coordinator and sometime driver) made the rounds in Buriram city, the provincial capital.

Our first stop was Khun Paiwaan, the director of social services for the province. She previously was a member of our foundation’s board for a couple of years to help us get started. She is now very helpful in our dealings with her and other agencies. We caught her between two speaking engagements so this meeting was short, but it had been awhile since Sue and I had seen her so it was good to see her again.

Khun Thanee Samartkit is the new provincial governor this year. A friend of Ruut is on his staff, so Ruut called him to see if we might stop by. No problem, Khun Samartkit was happy to see us. We discussed some of the recent “hot button” social problems in the province, one being the accelerating teenage pregnancy rate. He emphasized doing all that we can to keep mothers and their children together.

He has a point there. One factor of an NGO’s “success” can be how many children it has under its roof. This has on some occasions led a mother to give up her children simply because their education or housing might be better the institution. We’ll take kids if they are getting no housing, parenting or education at all, but just improving these things is no reason to take a child. A mother who loves her child is worth a whole boatload of that stuff.

The province is currently working new ways to support these young mothers so they can keep their children and we intend to participate in that effort. Better yet we’ll be working on prevention of teen pregnancies to the extent that is possible. It’s a pretty difficult problem, as many of us in the U.S. know.

If a child is in an abusive situation, only the governor has the authority to remove that child from its family to another guardian, whether that be a government agency, individual or our foundation. So if we something we feel is bad enough, he or his representative will be who we will contact.

Our final visit was to the Buriram shelter. We work closely with them and sometimes take children from them. In fact, we have a few right now. While they operate for the whole province, they do not handle long term residents, whereas we can.

It was a productive day of meetings, and we got back early afternoon in time for Sue to play language games with our girls, but that is another story.

Opportunity Foundation does not involve itself in politics and does not take sides in issues like the current one, so I will not comment on my feelings about the political issues. I will say that if I needed to get back to Thailand in the next few days for some reason the current political unrest would not have the least influence on my travel plans. The only thing that might bother me is if they shut down the airport there again, but I really think that is not going to happen a second time.

I would avoid the areas of demonstrator activity, however. Unfortunately, one of these near the Chidlom BTS (sky train) station is in a tourist area with some major hotels. The Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and Hyatt Erawan are among them. Other than that there should be no problems for a foreigner in Thailand.

There is no anti American or anti European sentiment that I am aware of. The problem is entirely domestic. I have never heard anyone say they thought foreigners have anything to do with it. Thais are still friendly to foreigners. That has not changed. If you need help out on the street, ask a Thai.

The basic rule in Thailand, Myanmar or any other country is, if you see a political demonstration or some other form of unrest, go the other way. The Japanese news photographer killed recently in Bangkok as well as the one killed a few years ago on the streets of Yangon, Myanmar two weeks before Sue and I arrived in that city were obviously not following this rule.

A local adoption occurs when a child of Thais that is adopted within Thailand usually to Thais. This is much easier than the second kind and usually does not involve a lot of money. Often a parent of the child is available or can be found and signs off the adoption. Since adoption is a legal transaction, there is no way the government cannot be involved, usually at the provincial level. It’s pretty clean and relatively easy with everyone working for the good of the child, at least in our experiences.

International adoptions are another thing entirely. There are not a lot of these, numbers I have are 69 children in 2004, 59 in 2008. (You can check for various Thailand adoption regulations.) As in all international adoptions, a lot of money, at least by Thai standards, is involved. This invites abuses of the system. Lawyers, tests, interviews, pre placement reports, post placement reports, etc. I can’t blame the government for not wanting this process to go off the rails in any way, whether government corruption, abusive adoptive parents, or anything else that the tabloid news just loves to put in headlines.

After running across the CNN article, I looked a little more and found a blog article written in February 2009 which tells much the same thing, citing Guatemala as a worst case of international adoption abuse. Because of the article length I reproduce here its short comment about Thailand:

Given this article’s anti international adoption stance, that is high praise. In fact, if I had to pick a country that comes out looking best in this particular article, it would be Thailand. It also talks about abuses of the system in nearby Cambodia, some of which was ended with reforms in 2001.

There are cases, although not many, that clearly allow for international adoption in Thailand. One is if the baby was abandoned and no relatives at all can be found. If the parents have died and there are no relatives who can or want to take in the child is another. Actually, the quote above implies that a birth mother, after counseling, can still decide to give up a baby. This is maybe a third. I need to check, but I’m pretty sure the government would check that she would get no incentive other than knowledge of a good home for her child. One more case can be the “failed” village abortion, where at times it is established that the mother (if still alive) REALLY does not want the child. In all of this there is also the assumption that no qualified family can be found in Thailand.

Child adoption is by no means our major activity at Opportunity Foundation, but we can be involved in it. We are preparing to assist the Thai government in caring for pre adoption children. This would avoid a stay of a year or more in the government orphanages which just cannot give the level of care we can. We hope to avoid developmental and other issues that can come with living in larger institutions. Don’t ask us about adopting a child, however! That is still done through the government and those NGO’s so empowered. We do not influence that process.

The Thai government keeps tight control over international adoptions, and from what I have learned, they need to. I would like to see some streamlining of the process so children do not have to be held so long, even if by us, before adoption can occur.