Day 2: Minor Hiccups

On our ride back to Chiang Mai, we visited the White Temple. Originally doubtful of the tour guide’s excessive praises of the beauty of the architecture there, I was taken aback when I saw the white temple. No photograph would do that architectural masterpiece justice. Mirror pieces decorated the entire construct, allowing it to glisten in the morning sun. That someone could craft such a gem was awe-inspiring, and the stories by the tour guide on the architect’s humility made me respect the person even more (someone whom I would possibly never meet in my life). I originally believed that buildings are only truly beautiful when vacated (of humans and ghosts alike ahem). Yet, the temple had a beauty that was neither ephemeral nor conditional. It was truly a sight to remember.

Soon after, we went to visit Wat Chedi Luang temple to attend a Monk Chat session. The monk designated to my group was rather pleasant, and his standard of English surprised us. He studied philosophy at the monk university nearby, and had clear eyes full of vigour. However, when I asked if the monks could voice opinions regarding the political scene in Thailand, he started fidgeting and seemed uncomfortable before subsequently recollecting his composure. They were made to stay away from politics, and essentially led a life removed from our wordly concerns. We learned about how Thai monks use social media, and actually repost articles regarding their field of study online. However, they do not utilise social media as a platform to recruit potential monks, as that would mar the sincerity required in being a monk, and monkhood was not simply a position to be advertised.

The other group had some issues with getting consent for the interview, which was worrying. Two females had appeared out of nowhere claiming that the footage the other group had taken would damage the reputation of Thai monks. I tried to get our tour guide to translate for them and help iron out the problem. However, the tour guide was more worried about the bus picking us up and gathering us at the meeting point. The CMU student attached to us was talking to her boyfriend. There was no available translator for the other sub-group and I could see that tensions were rising. All I could do was pull my two group members away after they had got the informed consent signed, as it would do no good to have more bystanders embroiled in the conflict. I later learnt that they had to delete the entire footage, though they retained the audio recording. It was regrettable that I could not help salvage the situation in any way.

We journeyed to the road behind CMU after the monk chat. My sub-group split up into pairs, and each pair gathered about 15 responses within an hour. After that, we met up again at the café which the bus had originally dropped us off at, and decided to interview a student. The student we interviewed was a CMU student studying pharmacy. However, he did not have much of an opinion about the reigning government, and as such did not voice his opinions on social media. This was characteristics of his friends from other majors, not including majoring in political science. It was then that we realised the degree of interest in social and political issues was reflective of what the student was majoring in. We had to bank our hopes on the CMU political science students we were scheduled to interview on Thursday.

This unfortunate realisation was not my worst takeaway from the interview. What was truly most embarrassing out of the whole interview then was that silence of approximately 20 seconds when I was choking on the cigarette smoke in the café, at a loss of how to rephrase my questions after a series of banal one-liner replies; and Fye awaiting my instructions patiently, ready to translate my queries. That was perhaps my worst interview moment ever.

After resting for a while to catch my breath, we continued surveying people. We decided that we needed statistics, could not rely on street interviews, and should focus our efforts on making the best out of our upcoming focus group discussion with the CMU students. I only managed to observe the last few survey respondents, and realised to my horror, that they had done or left out some questions, or misunderstood the instructions in the question. I made them redo the survey questions, and apologised profusely at being so adamant on getting the questions done correctly. They smiled it off, but it was unmistakable that someone would be somewhat peeved by how they could not simply get this survey over and done with, and was bugged by this foreigner to correcct their mistakes.

Back at the hotel, after dinner we had a group meet-up and were keying in survey responses which had been completed on paper into GoogleForms. While sorting out, we realised that problem of misunderstanding the question had affecting 10 of our responses, which whittled down our 60 survey responses to 50 usable ones. It was most regrettable and an oversight on my part. I asked my groupmates if we ought to change the question instead, but that would waste the previous responses which we have gotten. As such, I was restricted to blaming my inadequacy in carrying out the surveys and collecting usable information.

It was an exhausting day indeed.