PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff A hungry leech begins to
dine (top). Another leech gets full, leaves a trace of blood
flowing, which is stopped by a cigarette.
By Patil Armenian
Daily Bruin Senior Staff Tuesday, May 8 Ahhh …
the smell of durian. Durian actually smells a little gross, like
“sickly sweet old toothpaste” as third-year
evolutionary biology and ecology student Kevin Carter described it.
It’s a giant fruit shaped like an oversized rugby ball, with
sharp spines protruding from its flesh. Hitting someone on the head
with a durian could cause some serious damage. We bought large
quantities of durian, pomelos, jackfruit, rambutan and other fruits
at a farmer’s market on the way to Khao Yai National Park
today. The market had hundreds of stalls, along a quarter mile of
one side of a highway.
PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Interesting fruits
beckon the group to have a taste at a roadside farmer’s
market on the way to Khao Yai National Park.
Vendors were hawking items ranging from fruit to iced tea in
plastic bags to dried crabs. Their umbrellas, red, blue and yellow,
enhanced the colors of the fruits they were selling, lending a
technicolor quality to the scene. Laden with our fruit and drink
purchases, we reached Khao Yai National Park with our caravan of
three vans. Khao Yai greeted us with torrential rain, which
according to organismic biology, ecology and evolution Professor
Philip Rundel, was completely normal. We had arrived in Thailand
for the start of the wet season. Because of the tropical monsoon
climate, it poured at least once every day. After our long journey
from Los Angeles to Osaka, Japan to Bangkok, Thailand to Khao Yai,
we were eager to get settled into our rooms. Fifteen American
students from UCLA and 12 Thai students from Ramkhamhaeng and
Mahidol Universities shared barrack-styled quarters at the Training
Center. Since applying for the Field Biology Quarter program
offered through the OBEE department during winter quarter, we had
all been waiting to get to Thailand.
PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff The forest canopy is a
long way down as I climb up a 46-meter tower at the Sakaerat
Environmental Research Station.
Friday, May 11 Today, Professor Peter Narins
and I were walking to the cafeteria lodge for lunch and he said,
“Patil, can you believe we’re here? We’re
physiological science people!” Physiology research is
laboratory based, so it was especially exciting for us to be out in
the field doing research. For the past few days, Narins, Rundel and
our teaching assistants, C.J. Fotheringham and Jeff Thomas, have
been leading us on hikes and discussions. Everyone is trying to
figure out what they want to study in the forest. The rainforest
species diversity is so overwhelming that most of us can’t
decide on a research project. We’ve been going on long hikes
to get a feel for the environment. A few of the Thai students led
us on a hike deep into the forest where there is a tower about 20
meters up in a large old growth tree. Ladders have been nailed on
the trunk, until the top where there is a small wooden platform.
There, we set up instruments which measure different properties of
the microclimate at that canopy level. The trail leading to the
tree began as we walked on a rickety footbridge across a stream. It
wound through trees with lichen covered trunks, leeches that wanted
our blood, lianas that hung off trees down to eye-level,
glow-in-the-dark mushrooms and spiderwebs that grabbed onto your
skin. Once we crossed another stream, the platform tree was in
view. One by one, the students climbed up to the platform where
Nimitr Osathanon was waiting for us. There, high above the canopy,
we absorbed the view of the whole forest.
PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff (from left) Liz
McNaughton, Marieta Chanco and
Juta-rat Sutjaritturkan sing on the dorm’s
porch at Khao Yai.
Wednesday, May 16 Everyone has been seriously
working on their projects, since we only have six data collection
days left at Khao Yai. Laura Anderle has been measuring trees and
lianas; Liz McNaughton and Jenny Sun have been working with frogs
at night. Virginia Goss and Wendy Ho have been studying lichens
with Jutarat Sutjaritturkan. Marieta Chanco and Boratha Yeang have
been listening to cicadas. Lisa Chaudhari has been tracking down
five bulbul species; Kevin and Munju Mohan have been observing
leeches while trying not to get bitten. All the while, Jason
Diodati has been waiting for the sun to come out; Stacie Somes has
been collecting leech and frog data for two experiments; Lindsay
Young and Nat Kittisarapong have been waiting for gibbons to call.
I’ve been staring at fireflies flashing. Meanwhile, the two
professors and two TAs have been running around trying to help all
of us.
Sunday, May 20 Only one data collection day
left. There are students working at all hours of the day on their
projects, from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. every day. We all want to have
enough data so that our findings will be significant. Two weeks at
one site is not enough, because nature doesn’t tend to
cooperate with field biologists.
Thursday, May 23 We finished collecting data
and left Khao Yai two days ago. We were at the Sakaerat
Environmental Research Station for two days, and are now on our way
to Bangkok. Last night at Sakaerat, the Thai students showed their
incredibly kind and caring nature in a ceremony that brought almost
everyone to tears. They gave each one of us a silk rose and thin
white candle as we entered a darkened room. We sat on the ground,
lined against three walls of the room. The Thai students sat facing
us, against the other wall, singing traditional Thai songs as
Polyiam Wetchasart played the guitar. They lit one of the candles,
and the flame danced from one person to another until
everyone’s candle was lit. Professor Kansri Boonpragob led
the Thai students in tying cream-colored strings around each one of
our wrists while wishing us luck on our journey back home. No one
tied the strings in exactly the same way. Some rolled the string on
your wrist three times before tying, whereas others simply tied it
in a knot. Soon, each one of us had about 15 strings wrapped around
our wrists. Almost all the American students cried. We cried
because the Thai students were so giving and we felt like we gave
them nothing in return. We cried because we met amazing people that
we don’t know if we’ll ever see again. We cried because
of the melancholy beauty of the candle-lit circle. We cried because
we didn’t want to go home.
Saturday, May 26 We will land in Los Angeles in
about two hours. We’re a sad, sleepy group right now. It
seems like we’ve had such little time in Thailand; we all
tried to sleep as little as possible to get the most out of every
day. Most of us want to be back in Bangkok, talking and laughing
with the Thai students. Living and conducting research with the
Thai student has definitely been the best part of this trip. We now
have to re-adjust to real life in Los Angeles. Instead of living in
barracks, we will live in the biomedical library and our
professors’ and TAs’ offices, busily working on our
research papers.
PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff A long hike at Sakaerat
is interrupted as a giant spider appears in front of the hikers.
PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Kevin
Carter (left) is absorbed in eating mangoes and sticky
rice at the cafeteria as Jason Diodati laughs
feverishly. Fifteen UCLA students lived in barrack-styled
quarters.