2. Daily Postings | Fieldwork and Documentation

University Scholars Programme

8/1

The highlight of today was definitely the amazing race that we had around Chiang Mai. My group was so fired up for the event! We decided to pack our lunches and head straight to the venue to start strategically planning for the race (we had collected various maps from the hotel lobby). We seemed competitive,…

7/1

Today my group travelled to Chiang Rai and visited both the White Temple and the Black House. The White Temple is an ornately carved building painted white to symbolize purity. It is intricately designed by several artists who started the project in 1997. 500 sculptured concrete arms rose beneath the ‘bridge to heaven’, seemingly seeking…

6/1

Today was a really fun day! My group had been given time to freely explore Chiang Mai in the afternoon. Before that, we headed to Doi Su Thep, a sacred and holy temple to both locals and foreigners. We slowly made our way up 306 flights of steps (though we managed to count only 289…

5/1

We started off the day by visiting Fulldome.pro, a company that specializes in portable fulldome projection systems that function as visualization theaters. Fulldome’s office is located in a small rural district in Chiang Mai called Baan Pong. Its office is hidden among tall bamboo trees, situated far away from the main city. The peaceful and…

4/1

Today was an incredibly tiring and busy day. My group woke up early and promptly set off to CMU after eating breakfast (yum), where we conducted interviews and focus group discussions with the students and professors there for the day. As the tour bus pulled up right outside the Faculty of Fine Arts, I couldn’t…

3/1

We are finally in Chiang Mai! My first impression of Chiang Mai is that it has a really friendly environment. You can almost immediately tell that the people of Chiang Mai are extremely welcoming and approachable because they always greet you with a warm smile. The land of smiles indeed. Chiang Mai’s lifestyle is definitely…

Day 5 [Jan 8]

Today was the last day of our TOPS so we had to make sure that all the loose ends were tied up. We also had to ensure that we managed to get the footages that we had planned to document. The visit and tea session at the local tourism authority proved to be an informative…

Day 4 [Jan 7]

My group headed to CMU for a guest lecture on globalization by one of the professors. It was indeed an eye-opener to get to understand the impact from the perspective of Chiangmai. We planned to conduct a focus group discussion with some of the CMU students as arranged by May, our CMU attached student, during…

Day 5: A Whole New World

On the second last day of the trip, we split off into our subgroups to partake in the Amazing Race organized by our seniors. It was quite an interesting race because it was done in a foreign land, as well as doing it without the use of phones. I thought the rational at first was…

Day 4: Black & White

On the fourth day of our trip, we embarked on a 4 hour ride to Chiang Rai, a small town near Chiang Mai, to visit the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun) as well as the Black House (Baan Si Dum). The road trip was surprisingly bumpy and it was not as therapeutic I would imagine…