Foreign Tours Bangkok Trip 2004

Mid East Trip 2001 | Bangkok Trip 2004 | Bangkok Trip 2004 Photos

Report on Bangkok trip

By Rosemary Goudreau

The Tampa Tribune A couple of months back, the offer of a lifetime popped onto the NCEW list-serve: Join us, said the invitation – one a trip to Bangkok, Cambodia and India.

My first reaction was to ignore it. The idea of a trip to the Far East seemed a luxury given staff vacations, endorsement interviews and the pressure of producing the daily miracle.

But persuasive writing from one of our best, Kate Stanley of The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, somehow propelled me into a corner of the world whose future, I now vividly see, is vitally linked to our own.

The two-week trip was made possible because of NCEW's commitment to furthering members' education on foreign affairs. A few months back, the board authorized Kate to pursue grants from the United Nations Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which pursue public education as part of their philanthropic efforts. Kate coaxed money from the funders,  making the trip affordable even to members at our smallest papers.

Our purpose? To examine the human and political costs of the growing AIDS epidemic in Asia. We started at the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, where we met everybody who is anybody in the world of AIDS. These leaders seemed intrigued by our visit, aware of our ability to influence public opinion and policy.

With them, we debated America's decision to divide financial support between the Global Fund, which underwrites promising projects in developing countries, and President Bush's emergency AIDS fund, which assists 15 countries of strategic importance. Political differences on abstinence, condoms, copycat drugs, accountability and abortion drive the divide.

In Phnom Penh, we met the human face of AIDS and saw that, increasingly, it belongs to a poor, married woman. In a slum of 50,000 bordering the city's dump, we looked into the eyes of a woman certain to die because she doesn't qualify for anti-retroviral drugs, which are rationed because of supply and cost. At the nearby Russian Hospital, we met another woman lucky enough to receive treatment. She was healthy, energized and hoping to find work.

In everyone we met, we probed the hidden scars left by the Khmer Rouge, who killed almost 2 million people in a country of 9 million. Pictures of their victims haunt Teul Seng prison, where instruments of torture still lie on broken beds. Most of our interpreters and guides had lost their parents - along with about ten or 12 other family members - during the genocide. Most remain reluctant to talk about it because the country's government remains unstable and has yet to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to trial. We continued our exploration of frontline AIDS programs in India, where we met a group of commercial sex workers who looked nothing like what you'd expect. Some had gray hair, thick glasses and skin of leather. We learned many had been sold to brothels by destitute families. One woman was sold by a neighbor lady who tricked her into going to New Delhi with promises of meeting movie stars and foreigners. To escape, she must re-pay her purchase price of 20,000 rupees, or about $450. Given that sex is sold for less than a dollar - and the brothel deducts rent and utilities - no one in the group of 27 stood close to escaping.

Many more stories will come from our trip. Those we print will focus on the people we met, whose stories bring a human dimension to the world's political choices.

Those stories we don't print come from the tall tales we told one another while drinking a beer, visiting a tourist site, eating peculiar foods or shopping at a bazaar. We bonded as a group, and made friends for a lifetime.

The next time an exotic NCEW email pops into your basket, I urge you to respond. Your life will be enriched, and your readers better informed, because of this special gift from NCEW.

Last Updated:

07/30/2004