Trip Preparation Notes - posted June 8 2008
Attached here is an interesting article about the new Olympic complex in Beijing, including the “Bird’s Nest” national Stadium and the Aquatic Center. Because of our busy itinerary we may not have time to visit the site, but if there is time on Sunday we will try to see it.
Beijing Olympics Article 2008
Some of you have asked about bringing gifts. If you want to bring a couple of gifts for hosts and people you meet, it will be appreciated. The one occasion where you definitely should give a gift is to your home stay host on June 29, where you and one or two other students will be staying overnight and the next morning at the house of one of our current Thai students in Bangkok. There will be other occasions – our visit to Beijing #2 High School, our dinner as guests of Jenny Laophongsit Tabor ’92 in Chiang Rai, our dinners at the Phenjatis (Ike ’10) and Biggy’s Dad’s restaurant in Bangkok, our dinner at the China Club in Beijing hosted by Tabor alumna Dede Nickerson – where a gift might be very appreciated. On most occasions we will give a “group” gift that I will purchase and bring, and I will have Tabor pins for you to give at Beijing #2 High School if we meet students there. So there is no pressure on you to bring lots of gifts. If you bring a few simple gifts, you may have a chance to make some people happy.
The emergency telephone number for the trip is 011-881631610508. It is a satellite phone and we will use it for emergencies only. Parents if you want to contact us, please call one of the three faculty cell phone whose numbers we will post on the trip page on the Tabor website on the first or second day in China.
A reminder that if you have a United Mileage Plus frequent flyer number, please email it to me by tomorrow Monday afternoon so I can register it with United. If you wait until we are doing check-ins there may not be time to attach it to your ticket. We will be checking in 17 people at once and it is a challenge to get all the paperwork done.
Trip Preparation Notes - posted June 4, 2008
A week from this morning we will be en route to Asia. Here are some final preparation guidelines and thoughts:
(1) Itinerary: You received in your mailboxes yesterday a packet from our agency in NYC that coordinates our reservations. Although some of the comments do not apply to our trip, you can find some good tips about travel as well as itinerary, accommodation, and transportation details.
(2) Departure: For our 9:54 AM departure from Logan Airport next Wednesday June 11th (please note this is morning, not evening), please either be at the Tabor flagpole in front of the Academic Center at 5:30 AM, or at the United Airlines check-in area at departure level at 6:30 AM. I will keep your passports and tickets throughout the trip, except at check-in when you will present them yourself. On Wednesday morning June 11th I will be carrying cell phone 508-748-2405 before we take off; please call me if you have any questions or problems.
(3) Safety: Stay with the group! The areas we will visit in China and Thailand are safe and secure, but if you get lost you will produce a massive headache for everyone. There will be time on the trip for exploration and initiative, but only at set times and only with partners. Tabor rules apply, including no drugs and no alcohol. You will return home early from the trip at your cost if you break these rules. Please remember - do not bring or purchase lighters, matches, knives, swords, toy guns, alcohol, snakes in wine bottles, etc. Thank you for your cooperation with all of this.
(4) Smart Travel: We will depend on each other these three weeks for many things, including support, friendship, discovery, and getting to each destination. Please be open to everyone and don’t spend your time with just one or two people. Between jet lag, altitude, and trekking, we may be quite tired at times. Please come promptly when we meet, and please be patient if and when we experience delays or troubles. You can change money easily on the trip, so I suggest you bring $200-300 spending money in cash, $20 bills. Don’t spend it all the first few days! We will have trip cell phones for emergencies, and we will stop regularly at Internet Cafes to check in. There will be a Tabor website trip page updated daily with a daily entry from the trip captain for that day, and also a trip blog that you will be invited to contribute to.
(5) Faculty: Mrs. Gardiner, Mr. DaSilva and I are all very excited about the trip, and we are looking forward to sharing this experience with you. Each of us will play a part in helping to lead the trip, and you as students will also take a turn as “captain” for a day during the trip.
(5) Packing: Please pack light, one large check-in bag. Almost everything can be purchased cheaply when we get there, so be a minimalist! We will visit a school on June 13th in Beijing, attend a Tabor dinner on June 14th in Beijing, , and attend dinners as guests of Tabor families or alumni on June 27th in Chiang Rai Thailand, and June 29th and June 30th in Bangkok. Please bring one or two nice sets of clothing to wear for these occasions. You may check in (not carry on) liquid (not spray) bug repellent in your baggage. We will use bug spray on our trek in Thailand, although you can buy it the morning the trek begins.
(6) Airlines: If you have a United Mileage Plus number, please email it to me and I will set this up in advance for your mileage credits. Please remember that your Mileage Plus Account must be in your name (student’s name as listed on passport). You cannot credit someone else for miles on your ticket.
(7) Local connections: We will spend two days of community service in Thailand, and also will visit several schools in China and Thailand. For some of you this may be the best part of the trip, where you get to meet people. The two days of community service in Thailand will fulfill your Community Service requirement at Tabor.
Trip Preparation Notes - posted May 20, 2008
After several conversations with our agent, we have worked out a five-day trip to the northern reaches of Yunnan province in China’s southwest. We will spend a night in Kunming, a modern city that is the provincial capital, then head to Lijiang, home to minority populations and an “old city” that preserves architecture from centuries ago. Final we will head by a long bus ride to Zhongdian, which is known from legend as “Shangri-La.”
This is a remote area of China that not many travelers get to see. It is above 9,000 feet, and we will see Tibetan monasteries and visit with Tibetans. It is a region that was historically part of greater Tibet. If the weather is good we will see fabulous views and head out to the countryside, some of it on horseback.
I am sorry that we can’t enter Tibet itself, and I would be the first to admit that Tibet is unique. I hope that what we will see will be worthwhile, educational, and fun. You may read the detailed itinerary on the Tabor website under ’Student Life”, the “China-Thailand Trip 2008”, then “Trip Itinerary.” There may be further changes in the itinerary, including the specific hotels we stay at, but this will show our general revised route.
Several of you have asked about getting additional immunizations, for malaria or other diseases. The immunizations we recommended for the trip came from the country-specific recommendations from the CDC (Center for Disease Control in Atlanta) website. These are recommendations only, and it is certainly appropriate to consult your own doctor and, if you wish, to get additional immunizations.
If you have not yet told me whether you will depart from the flagpole or meet us at Logan Airport in Boston on June 11, please tell me this week. There are several local families who have kindly offered to take in a student or two the night of June 10, if families from far away wish to take advantage of this offer.
Trip Preparation Notes - posted May 4th 2008
Our agency received word late last week from their Chinese affiliate that travel to Tibet may be reopened in “late June.” They asked us to be patient for a few more weeks to see whether we may be able to go. If not, we will plan an alternative route along the Silk Road.
This Thursday evening May 8 at 5:30 PM, there will be an optional short meeting for parents in the Admissions Living Room for meeting faculty and asking questions. Please don’t worry if you are unable to make the meeting.
As we discussed at our dinner last Thursday, it’s time to start to plan what you will pack and how you will carry it. The packing list is on the sheet that was handed out at dinner, and also is posted on the Tabor website under “Student Life,” then “China-Thailand Trip 2008.” You should take one big traveling bag and one small day pack/book bag for plane trips, day trips, and our three-day trek in Thailand. We encourage you not to bring a cell phone on the trip, so you can fully appreciate what you experience without being drawn back every phone call into the world of the familiar. We will post daily log entries written by each day’s trip captain on the Tabor website, computers and internet cafes permitting, and we will make available on the website when we get to China and Thailand the telephone numbers for the three trip phones carried by faculty for emergencies.
On Wednesday June 11 there will be a minibus leaving from the flagpole at Tabor at 5:30 AM, for our 9:54 AM departure from Logan. Please complete the worksheet below or send me an email with your plans in the next few weeks. Our past experience has been that most families will meet students at Logan Airport upon our return on July 1, although if you want a return ride from Logan to Tabor we will try to arrange this.
I hope to mail all our visa applications, passports, bank statements and school letter to our agent tomorrow Monday morning May 5, for her to take to the Chinese Embassy for our visas. This will take several weeks to process, and we need to do it now to make sure passports are back for the end of school. Biggy will be returning home with his passport after graduation, and then will fly from Bangkok to meet us in Beijing on June 11.
If time permits we will have one more Thursday or Sunday seminar this month with some selective background Chinese and Thai history.
Trip Preparation Notes - posted April 12th 2008
Attached in a separate email to individual parents is a trip Waiver and Health Immunizations Form for you and your parents to sign and return. Please complete all categories and sign it. There is a place at the bottom for both parents and students to sign. For parents of boarding students, please return fax or mail the form and I will get the student signature at Tabor. Please return this form by next Friday April 18.
Thanks to the support of our Health Center and its Director, Mrs. Allyn Streeter, and the town of Marion, the Hepatitis vaccine is being provided free of charge, and there is no administration charge. The immunization is 2 doses, 6 months apart. The first dose, which we will give in a few weeks, is effective until the second dose is given. Underclass students will get the second dose at Tabor next fall, and our senior (sorry for the inconvenience) must either return to Tabor then or arrange to get it at college. The Typhoid pills are 4 pills, one to be taken every other day over 8 days. The approximate cost is $62. The pills will be ordered from a drug store, and we will submit insurance claims for all of you, using your insurance account information on file at the Health Center. Any co-pay amount or unfilled claim will be billed to parents by the Tabor Business office. Parents please be sure to sign the immunizations permission on the form and to note any additional conditions for medications or allergies. The cost of this is remarkably small and having it here at Tabor is very convenient. I want to again thank the Health Center for their help with this.
Please give or mail passports to me by a week from next Monday, April 21. Also please come to the International Center this coming week so that I may take your photo for your visa application, and so that you may sign the visa application form. The cost of visas ($115) is included in the trip cost, and the photos are free.
The second optional seminar in our trip preparation series is an introduction to Chinese and Thai spoken language this Thursday April 17. Please come to classroom H-6 at 6:00 PM for 45 minutes of “survival Chinese” (how to make friends, how to haggle, how to find public facilities, how to get found if you are lost). Also we will introduce Thai phrases and culture. I believe the Academic Center is locked after 5:00 PM, so please come to the Math-Science Wing entry that faces the Library between 5:50-6:00 PM if you want to get in. Those of you who are taking Chinese are welcome to attend to help us learn Chinese and also for you to learn some Thai.
We will know more about whether we can go to Tibet in the coming weeks.
Tentatively we will have a dinner for all students on Thursday May 1 to discuss trip details including packing lists and airport transportation, as well as to start getting to know each other and discussing basic trip rules and procedures.
I have received interesting articles and good comments from many of you about the trip, and several of you came to see “Kundun” last Sunday. Thank you for taking an active role in what I hope will be a very positive adventure and unique learning experience for all of us.
Trip Preparation Notes - posted March 17th 2008
In the past week, protests of Tibetans in Tibet and elsewhere in China have led to a crackdown by Chinese authorities. Since China occupied Tibet 50 years ago, Tibetans have not enjoyed freedom of religion or speech, and more recently millions of Chinese Han immigrants have moved into Tibetan cities, making Tibetans a minority in some regions. In general Chinese people in mainland China do not have access to accurate and complete news reporting, and they believe that the current unrest is caused by Tibetans attacking Chinese with no cause. Today’s International Herald Tribune has a thoughtful commentary on the recent protests and events at this link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/17/asia/beijing.php
It is possible that these events may significantly affect our travel itinerary and plans for June. Our agent informed me today that the Chinese government is not at this time accepting applications for group travel to Tibet. Also the U.S. State Department as of last Friday advised Americans not to travel to Tibet for a minimum of one month, until at least April 14.
If we do not, either by necessity or by our choice, travel to Tibet, then our choice would be to travel elsewhere in China for those five days, or to cancel the trip. China is a big country and there are regions, including the Silk Road in the north and northwest, and minority areas in the southwest, where the landscape is beautiful and there are many historical and cultural stories to explore. Nothing is quite like Tibet, but I believe the trip can still be successful if we must devise an alternative plan that is both safe and appealing. I will stay in touch with you about this and will listen to your thoughts and suggestions.
For the time being I suggest we wait a few weeks before making any decisions or further plans. I am waiting for a couple of final payments, at which time I will pay our final tour cost. If it is necessary to change our itinerary, I will do so with the goal of not adding to the total cost of the trip.
For those of you who would like to learn more about Tibet’s religious tradition, Tibetan Buddhism, here is a link from a private organization with some interesting information:
http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/
Also here is a biography of the Dalai Lama from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1347735.stm
Trip Preparation Notes - posted March 12th 2008
Health immunizations: The immunizations recommended for our trip by the CDC in Atlanta are as follows: (1) MMR (measles-mumps-rubella), (2) Hepatitis B, (3) Polio, (4) DPT (diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus), (5) Hepatitis A, and (6) Typhoid booster. In our group, everyone has #1-4 and nearly everyone needs #5-6. Mrs. Allyn Streeter the Director of our Health Center has kindly identified who needs what, and I will be emailing a sheet to each parent to approve any needed vaccines listed and a trip waiver to sign and return to me.
Mrs. Streeter has contacted Marion and New Bedford health bureaus to request the vaccine at minimum cost. The total retail cost of both vaccinations (Hepatitis A requires two doses taken one month apart) is around $225, but we are optimistic that local public agencies may be able to discount this by quite a bit. If so, we will take you by school van in the afternoon to one of the nearby public health agencies. Tabor’s Health Center cannot accept health insurance in place of cash or check, and cannot process insurance claims – they are not set up for fee-based services. So if you want to get the immunizations on your own please arrange this soon, over vacation if possible.
Trip orientation: Mr. DaSilva, and Mrs. Gardiner and I will offer several optional trip preparation sessions on Thursday late afternoons in April and May. We would like to give you a taste of history, language and culture of the civilizations we will explore – Han China, Tibet, and Thailand. You will also receive a briefing packet with background information and resources about the three regions to use as you wish. We will try to have a voluntary meeting for those parents who can come on a Thursday afternoon to answer questions and give parents a chance to meet faculty.
Links and news: Tibet has been in the news recently as protests on behalf of Tibetan culture and autonomy have begun to anticipate the Olympics next summer. Here is a link to today’s BBC coverage of marches by Tibetan exiles in Nepal and India: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7288072.stm
The following link (CNN) shows how Tibetans reacted to the Dalai Lama’s receiving of the American Congressional Gold Medal this winter, and how the Chinese police responded (there is a short ad before the video plays): http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2008/01/18/ray.china.tibet.monks.itn
And the following (CNN) dramatic and widely publicized video shows Tibetan refugees fleeing unarmed and being shot by Chinese military while trying to escape from their own country: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2006/10/15/rattansi.china.nepal.affl.affl?iref=videosearch
Trip preparation for your own benefit: in no special order, here are some suggestions and a warning or two to keep in mind as the trip approaches:
(1) Flexibility – this is a key quality to enjoy each day. Travel in China is almost guaranteed to have bumps and surprises, welcome and sometimes not welcome. If you try to keep control of everything, it may become frustrating. We will be treated with extraordinary kindness and hospitality by most of the people we meet.
(2) Water – please don’t drink tap water anywhere. This is a difficult habit to break. Do not drink any tap water even to brush your teeth. Please use bottled water, widely available and cheap.
(3) Street Food – it is very tasty, but the risk of indigestion or something more serious is too serious to try it. We will have great food and some interesting food varieties at the places we eat.
(4) Altitude – we fly into 10,000 feet in Lhasa, and some years have bused as high as 18,000 feet on the way to Shigatse. Lots of water, rest, and more rest, especially the first couple of days, are the best medicines. There are altitude medicines available, but the best recommendation is to just rely on water and rest. The first day it may take you several minutes to climb a flight of stairs.
(5) Being a good guest – we are fortunate to have quite a few invitations from Tabor families and alumni to events in both China and Thailand, and we will be staying for three nights at a beautiful hotel in northern Thailand owned by Tabor Thai alumni, the Laophongsits. Please be very conscious of what people do for us, and reply by being considerate, friendly, and thankful. It is easy to become careless or messy when you are tired and stressed by travel, and it takes an extra effort to be a good guest at such times. In Asia it is very common to take off shoes when entering someone’s home or a nice hotel room – please remember and practice this. Also a simple gift is a very appreciated way to say thank you in Asia. The gesture of a gift can mean as much or more than words, no matter how nice the words are.
(6) Community Service – our two days of community service outside of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand will be a wonderful way for us to repay the kindness we encounter and to make a difference to a part of the world where human and natural resources are sometimes scarce.
(7) Souvenirs – if you avoid being impulsive and spending all your money the first day, you will pick up wonderful gifts, and one or two items you may keep the rest of your life. Please for group welfare, safety, and airport security reasons, do NOT under any circumstances buy or obtain (1) lighters, even the cute ones with Chairman Mao (2) swords, knives, or battle spears (3) alcohol, even special wine bottles with snakes in them (4) toy guns that shoot water, paint, or anything else. If you buy these you will be asked to dispose of them immediately.
You will hear from me regularly this spring with a combination of logistics, orientation, and specific requests and answers to questions. I hope to have this material available on soon on the school website under “student life”, and to maintain this trip weblink for parents and others with daily reports while we are in China and Thailand. Thank you for the time and energy that you put into preparing for the trip. You will be rewarded many times by what you will experience when we get there.
