Mai

About sixty klicks north of Bangkok is the Asian Institute of Technology. I was fortunate to run four-week summer workshops there over several years, the trainees being from various neighbouring countries, including Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia and Cambodia, as well as some local delegates from Thailand. AIT is in a beautiful setting, with parklike gardens, a golfcourse with lots of rough areas, and a large area devoted to experimental agriculture. In other words, a paradise for a birdwatcher. I used to get up every morning at first light and take my morning bird walk before breakfast, and then go out every evening for an hour or so before dark. One summer, I was joined on my evening walk by one of my Vietnamese students, a very serious young woman called Mai. Mai asked me what I was doing. I told her. She accompanied me round the experimental farm, where I pointed out various species of birds. She said – her exact words – “You are a very strange man”. And she met me most evenings after that to walk round with me, listening solemnly to what I said about the birds, although she never wanted to look at them through my binoculars. I thought she was the strange one.
Some years later, by coincidence, I ran two workshops at her university in Hanoi, but sadly couldn’t make contact with her. I loved AIT, and I loved the birds I watched in the grounds there.
I liked Mai too.