Post-trip reflections

I shall start by saying how much I truly miss my time in Chiang Mai. As the semester starts and things get a little more hectic, I long for the enjoyable times that I had in Chiang Mai with the rest of my batch mates.

I believe one of the most important things that I have learnt from the trip is to always do things with an open mind. I would admit that prior to the trip, I was rather sceptical of what Chiang Mai had to offer. I always had the impression that there was nothing exciting in Chiang Mai for me to explore and I was not looking forward to a trip that required me to conduct research interviews and surveys. But looking, back I am glad that I was able to change my attitude towards Chiang Mai during my time there. I would also say that I was pleasantly surprised by what the city had to offer. The thought of a developing country brought images of dirty streets and heavily polluted air which definitely made me cringe a little in the beginning. However, I definitely learnt that Chiang Mai was so much more than that. From the rich culture to the delicious street food to the very helpful locals.

One other thing that I learnt was that I should always be responsive whenever conducting research on people. Firstly, since my group employed mainly the use of qualitative research, I learnt the importance of being able to adapt to the responses of the people we interview. I have noticed how the questions we prepared before the trip were mainly useful in ensuring a logical structure and flow in the interview but they were not meant to be the only source of questions. What I realised was that the questions that needed to be asked was never fixed and was highly dependent on the insights provided by the responded. As interviewers, there is a need to listen carefully and react to not only the words of the responded but also their body language. This would provide additional insight on how they really feel towards the issue. I feel that this skill is essential and would definitely be useful to us when conducting more research in future. It made me realise the importance of this experience as I personally did not have much experience interviewing people in the past and I felt that our time in Chiang Mai allowed us to practice this skill.

I would have to admit that in the beginning I was not too fond of the research question on nutrition labels. I naively thought that it was boring and did not have much significance in society. I was more interested in conducting research in something more exciting and controversial, something that had more profound impact on the lives of people. But upon more research and fieldwork before, during and after the trip I came to realise that nutrition labels were so underrated in today’s society. People often take them for granted. My group and I learnt so much about the relevance of nutrition labels on society and how governments have different approaches towards nutrition in their own country. I believe one of the key things that struck me was that the Thai government was not as invested in the nutrition and health of their people as other modern countries like in Singapore. One of the more striking things I saw was that the Thai authorities did not fully translate the nutrition labels of all their imported products, only choosing to translate the bare minimum.

I believe that we tend to see such an issue in isolation and write off the importance of having proper or adequate nutrition labels. However, I came across an article during my own secondary research that helped to put things into perspective. It reflected on how the mismatch of regulation in nutrition labels between developed and less developed countries actually prevent the export of food from the less developed nation. By looking at the issue in this way, I feel that Thailand would definitely benefit from having proper, more stringent regulation on their food. It would not only help to improve the health of their own people but open up avenues for export.

Thus, I feel that one very important thing that I have learnt is that no issue is too small for us to look into. It is often the less interesting issues that often get overlooked while controversial issues garner the most attention. I have learnt that I should always consider and study the impact of all issues, not just the larger ones because even the less noticeable problems, like nutrition labels, are capable of having a huge impact on the daily lives of people.