Post-Trip Reflection: Enriched and Enlightened

All our well wishes, still residing in the White Temple.

“One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before.” – Anne Rice.

After embarking on this trip, which has changed my perceptions on heritage preservation, this is a quote which I can relate to now more than ever. My world has indeed become something entirely different. It’s all a matter of perspective.

My group’s project was on heritage preservation. Throughout the course of our research, we realised that heritage is not just the culture of a place, or architecture of structures which have been preserved through the years. Heritage is an organic thing. There is only living heritage. In the form of accumulated human experience passed down from generation to generation.

In this post-trip reflection, I will touch upon various highlights of the trip that truly enabled me to reflect and learn more about heritage and personal values in general.

During my pre-trip reflection, I made a prediction that we were going to run into many unforeseen circumstances because of the nature of this trip. I was right. We had wrongly assumed in our research that Chiang Mai’s heritage lies mainly in its religious roots. This made our group panic. We felt dejected and lost. It was a feeling that I could vividly remember as thanks to that I didn’t even get to enjoy my buffet lunch (Which was only $8) as I was too busy thinking of how to salvage the situation.

Through this, I learnt that not everything goes according to plan. Whatever will go wrong, will go wrong. However, picking yourself up and trying to make best of the situation after something goes wrong, the ability to adapt, and the value of resilience; these are things that will help you get to your goal. Sure enough, my group rose up to the challenge and managed to do just that, which is also my second expectation made in my pre-trip reflection. As for why we managed to succeed in adapting, I believe that it is mainly because all of us wanted to do this meaningful task well. With a common goal and a heated passion, I believe few things will be ever able to quench this thirst for success.

This mistake we’ve made in our pre-trip research also led to a discovery of my own. “Deciding based on the most available information” also known as the availability heuristic in psychology.

In our pre-trip research, we found a lot of data related to heritage in Chiang Mai. However, most of these were about temples and the history of Chiang Mai. Upon retrospection, I realised that we immediately assumed Chiang Mai’s main root of heritage would stem from religion because there were so many websites on Chiang Mai’s temples and history! We were misled by the availability heuristic. From now on if I were to do any preliminary research, I would remind myself of this mistake and try to explore the possibility of making the same error again.

A huge and very important takeaway for me during this trip would be in the form of a question: “Does authentic heritage preservation truly exist?” From Prof Walsh’s lecture, we realised that heritage is very much linked to politics. It is an undeniable fact. Whenever the government decides to preserve or remove a heritage site, it will always be linked to politics. Why do they want to preserve this heritage site? Tourism revenue? If everything has an agenda, would there truly be some sort of authentic heritage preservation? Preservation of a heritage site just for the sake of letting people know what our ancestors did in the past in order to pass down their teachings with no ulterior motives? Frankly speaking, I think the odds are slim.

From this learning point, I can only remind myself that whatever heritage sites are preserved nowadays, they may truly contain information about the accumulated human experience passed down through the passage of time. However, as to why they are presented to us, it may have political agendas. It is quite a cynical way of thinking though… However, this will help me analyze things at a deeper level in future instead of just superficially taking things as they seem. Now, all I can think about is the new National Art Gallery in Singapore. Are the artworks there chosen for a reason? Who gets to choose the artwork? Is the government trying to “warp” our understanding of heritage to a more common theme?

Another learning point for me would touch on the fact of how truly privileged we are. After returning to Singapore, I noticed how we were taking even our most basic amenities for granted. In Chiang Mai, we could not even drink water from the tap. Our tour guide even recommended us not to boil the tap water in the hotel to drink from it. In Singapore we could safely drink from most taps but we always constantly forget it. How many beggars did we even see outside on the stretch of road in front of our hotel? Personally I saw no less than ten of them throughout this trip which lasted for only 6 day!

This made me think about why I still complaint about certain things in Singapore, even though I am very aware that we already are a very privileged bunch. I guess this is just another classic case of “people see what they want to see” and it is so much easier to see the negatives in life. It really takes a conscious effort to remind ourselves daily how privileged we are. Every time I feel like complaining now, I will try to consciously remind myself about this learning point I’ve taken away from this trip.

Ultimately, even though I have had many learning points from various highlights of the trip as I’ve stated above, the most impactful thing to me was still the interactions with my group mates. The very fact that all of us had to eat together, work together, sleep together ‘forced’ us to rely on one another. When put in this situation where everyone had to rely on one another to get the job done, there is this bond that forms and it isn’t a normal, superficial bond. I felt like I got to know everyone more personally and it felt like we were friends for a long time. Definitely not people whom I’ve just met 6 days ago. There is just this intangible type of bond that exists between people who’ve shared an overseas trip together and I think it is one of the most important things I’ve gotten out of this trip. If I wasn’t this happy and grateful to be part of the heritage group, I daresay that I wouldn’t have had the energy needed to delve deeper into the research topic and put in my 110% everyday for both the sake of myself and the group.

Another holistic learning point I’ve gotten out of this entire trip is how important it is to keep an open mind and remain inquisitive. Only by embracing everything that was presented to us with a curious and open mind did we manage to take away so many learning points from every single site we visited. For example, I’ve sat in 3 hour lectures before and most of the time, I don’t even make it through the first half of the lecture because I get bored and fall asleep. In the 3 hour lecture that I sat in during the first day, I did not even miss a sentence because I was so genuinely curious about everything he had to offer. Whatever Dr. Vithi said to us helped improved our understanding and knowledge of Thai culture and heritage to an even higher level and I was able to absorb whatever he wanted to tell us. Every interview gave me new insights and thoughts even though they revolved around the same questions because of the slightly different answers we got. Everything I did had meaning and purpose, simply because I was genuinely interested and curious about whatever Chiang Mai had to offer me.

Through this experience, I definitely realised how important it is to remain intellectually curious. There is always something to learn. From any place or any person. I am generally quite a curious person but I naturally have my preferences such as subjects like Psychology, Biology and Chemistry as compared to subjects such as Math and Chinese. Now, I’ll try to consciously remind myself to be more curious towards everything, not just the things i find interesting. This will definitely make me a more learned person which is something I want for myself. Curiosity may have killed the cat but I am not a cat.

However, there are still regrets and things I wish I could’ve done better. Personally, I wish I could’ve had more initiative to get to know the people I’ve met over in Chiang Mai. I did not make use of the time to properly go up to a stranger or an interviewee and ask them how was their day. To learn more about the stories of each and every individual I came across in Chiang Mai. I was too caught up in trying to interview people and getting data that I missed out on golden opportunities to properly communicate with people over there to broaden my horizons. However, I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to connect deeply with the people over there because of the language barrier. At times, I could tell from their body language that they were conveying something more than what was being translated. Nuances of tone and expressions that were lost in translation. This to me was the biggest obstacle of the trip that sort of hindered our learning. Nevertheless, I felt like we still got more than what we bargained for (not just the shopping) and this trip exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds.

To end off this reflection, I would just like to express my thanks to USP for giving us the chance to embark on this extremely meaningful, enriching and enlightening experience. I have learnt more than I ever thought I would have and made friends who’ve become even more close than I would have ever imagined. I am glad I did not take any minute in Chiang Mai for granted and made the most of my time there. However, this does not stop me from missing the trip very dearly. Even up till now.