Post-Trip Reflections

In retrospect, I am thankful to have achieved some of the things I hoped to attain in my pre-trip projections. Yet, there are also areas I could have done much better in. I will elaborate on my post-trip thoughts in the paragraphs below.

First, I feel that this trip has certainly given me chances to see how looking at issues from the perspective of multiple disciplines comes in useful in research. It helped me to better understand why locals from varying backgrounds had different opinions about Chinese tourists. For instance, knowledge of business helped me to understand why store owners may have a more positive opinion of Chinese tourists – because they could be potential customers. Meanwhile, understanding the value of culture to society, as advocates of culture preservation might, helped me to see why locals who cared about Chiang Mai’s culture were bitter about Chinese tourists not respecting it. I am definitely glad to have been able to use my multi-disciplinary toolbox to analyse issues during this trip.

Additionally, I got to see how knowledge from multiple disciplines does not simply help us analyse issues, but also helps us execute data collection. For example, expertise in how to conduct interviews and knowledge of the Thai language were critical in helping us successfully interview locals. I am glad my Communication Studies group mate and our group’s CMU buddy respectively possessed these skills so we could smoothly conduct interviews. This demonstrates to me the importance of having knowledge from different disciplines to help us conduct research as well.

Regarding skills acquired, I am glad that I had the chance to take some videos of interviews during this trip. However, a regret I have is that I should not have avoided the chance to be the main person asking questions during interviews, even when I had the opportunity to do so on the trip. Instead, I should have been more pro-active, especially since I wanted to learn soft skills on this trip. This is something I will bear in mind when I am faced with the opportunity to learn new things in the future. That aside, I also felt it was a pity that I did not have the chance to directly interview locals in Chiang Mai – instead, our interviews largely comprised of one of us asking the interview question and the CMU student in our student, Yok translating the question for the local. It is perhaps inevitable that conducting open-ended interviews on our own would be difficult because of our limited command of Thai. However, looking back, one thing we could have tried was to conduct close-ended interviews. These would have been easier to carry out since the locals could only give us fixed answers to our questions and we could have practised speaking in Thai at the same time!

On a positive note, I am glad to have met my personal goal of understanding the Chiang Mai way of life on this trip. The nights I spent thronging through night markets locals frequent, eating dinner by the road and riding Chiang Mai taxis are the bits of the trip I will always remember. To me, the Chiang Mai way of life feels simpler for it is less technologically advanced and lacks the high speed MRTs and Wi-Fi hotspots that characterise Singapore. Yet, the Chiang Mai way of life also feels exciting with locals finding other ways to have fun, thronging through night markets for instance. In fact, I wish Singapore had more night markets like Chiang Mai. It would bring more diversity to my shopping experiences in Singapore, which are mainly confined to malls.

Furthermore, during the globalisation lecture we had at CMU, I also gained insights into the challenges Chiang Mai faced as a result of globalisation – the influx of tourists and their related problems, foreign companies outdoing local ones when they can invest in Chiang Mai, etc. As a city of Northern Thailand at the crossroads of many cultures like that of the Chinese, Burmese, etc., Chiang Mai will be inevitably impacted by globalisation. It will be interesting to learn about how globalisation has impacted sustainability, tourism, healthcare, heritage and youths in Chiang Mai through the research projects my USP batch mates and I are working on for this trip. I am also eager to watch the continued impact of globalisation on these facets of Chiang Mai culture in the years to come.

Lastly, from my trips to temples in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, I gleaned that the people make Buddhism central to their lives in their search for a purer mind, away from the greed and evil of this world! In my opinion, it is perhaps the commitment of the locals to Buddhism that also influenced them to be peace-loving people, explaining the generally stable Chiang Mai/Chiang Rai society.

All in all, this trip has certainly been a highly educational one that helped me understand a part of Thailand I had hardly any idea of previously. Additionally, I managed to pick up research skills through this and made memories with my USP and CMU friends through this trip. This is definitely a highlight of my first year in university I will remember!