A community of flood memories living with(in) the riverine landscape in ayutthaya 3

31
3. Methodology
Solvitur ambulando - It is solved by walking.

3.1 Overview

Police: Luuk [child], where are you going? Why are you walking? It is
too hot! Are there no tuktuk? Why don’t you rent a bike? We can give
you a lift to the shop.

Serene: Thank you loong [uncle], but we’re not going anywhere. I like to
walk – I can talk to people while I walk, and pay more attention to the
things around me.

Police: [Laughs] Aww… young people. Don’t walk in the sun!

Sidewalk encounters, May, 2014:
a conversation with a couple of policemen in Ayutthaya
With the development of modern terrestrial modes of transport such as cars,
buses and in Ayutthaya, mini-vans with open backs affectionately known as tuktuk,
walking has become a surprising, and some may even say strange, thing to do.
However, there is much more to walking than walking (Middleton, 2010; Ingold, &
Vergunst, 2008). Beyond the rhythmic tread of feet from one place to another, the
movement of walking has been conceived as a way of knowing. Walking in instead of
walking to allows one to immerse oneself into the fray of activities, social relations
and the various rhythms of the landscape. It is also a method to explore peoples’
relationships with, and knowledge of, the environment (Lorimer & Lund, 2008;
Wunderlich, 2008).
In this chapter, I document how I employed walking as a means to get to
know Ayutthaya, and for people to know me. Subsequently, walking became my

mode of inquiry to understand how a community of flood memories is coming into
being in Ayutthaya, and how flood memories are productively and selectively utilized
to make everyday interventions in the landscape. I combined walking with having
conversations, photography and site/participant observation. This form of
‘ethnographic walking’ allows the landscape to feature as a part of the conversation.

32
It also disrupts the power relations and barriers between the researcher/participants.
I further situate ethnographic walking as part of an unspoken collaborative process
involving me – the researcher - and the various participants and more-than-human
actors within the landscape. Thus, I have learnt not about, but from and with the
people and the landscape. This collaborative process has influenced the research
direction, dispelled unfounded assumptions and also raised questions which I
continue to grapple with as I write. I will also reflect on how my position as a young
Singaporean female researcher constantly (re)shaped this research and my place in
the ‘community of flood memories’.
3.2 It started with a walk: the theoretical traditions of walking
Ayutthaya is a relatively small city; it is possible to walk across the island in
about three hours. I first walked around Ayutthaya two years ago as a tourist.
Walking at this point was a means to get from one ancient temple ruin to another. Yet,
while I was not ‘consciously a geographer’ that Saturday morning (Cosgrove, 1989:
118-119), I could not help but wonder about the ubiquitous mud line on the walls of
buildings, structures and trees in the city: Why are they there? Do various individuals
preserve them deliberately as a symbolic reminder of a flood? Or is it simply too
troublesome to remove them? How do people feel about these flood lines? As I
pointed these out to my increasingly irate friend – one could hardly blame him, it was
almost forty degrees Celsius – we came to a rest stop, hoping to get some ice cream.
Incredibly, the mud line at the rest stop was highlighted with blue ink, and marked
‘FLOOD, 8 OCT 2011’ (Figure 3.1). I engaged the shop owner – P’Bi
6

– in a
conversation of rudimentary Thai, English, Mandarin Chinese and gestures:

6
P’ is a gender-neutral Thai suffix for ‘Senior’, an informally polite way of addressing
someone older. Names of participants have been changed in accordance to the NUS
Institutional Review Board standards. Informed consent was also sought from the participants
– including P’Bi whom I visited again in 2014 – to publish their personal information and parts
of our conversations in this thesis.

33
Serene: P’, why is this here [points to the mud line on the wall]?

P’Bi: Flood was this [gestures to the mud line] high! People have to
remember.

Serene: Who to remember? Ayutthaya people? Foreigners [sic]?

P’Bi: Aww! Ayutthaya people always remember [laughs], we remember
every day. Remind foreigners [gestures towards me, and says ‘tourist’,
lu ke, in Mandarin Chinese], Ayutthaya also floods. Not only Khrung
Thep - you know, Bangkok! We write in English [points to the date].
P’Bi/ 39/ Shop owner/ Female/ January 2013

Figure 3.1: The mud line deposited by the 2011 flood at a rest stop in Long Law,
Ayutthaya is labeled and adorned with pictures of the flood. Note that the peak
water level (as represented by the line) was about 1.9m high.

Cosgrove (1989) was right, geography is indeed everywhere. Unknowingly –
until later that evening when I was writing this encounter down in the hostel – I had

moved from being a tourist to a geographer. I was not simply walking from one place
to another; the walk was instead itself a ‘material journey and a temporal narrative’
(Tilley, 2012: 17). I was not merely following one of the pathways in the landscape.
Through the multiple encounters with the mud-lines, and my candid conversation

34
with P’Bi, I had contributed to one of the many entangled pathways which constitute
the lived landscape (Ingold, 2007: 103). I was walking within the lived landscape.
I returned to Ayutthaya again, intermittently, from February 2014 to May 2014
(see Appendix 1). This time purposefully as a geographer hoping to learn how and
why floods are being remembered. I disembarked from the philosophical starting
point of ‘a world in motion, a world in formation’ - an ethos aligned with that of the
more-than-representational geographers. Any attempts at a partial understanding of
this world in motion require some form of mobility. Like Lee & Ingold (2006: 70), I
believe that walking affords ‘real mobility’, useful as a methodological tool – the
slowness of the walk allows interactions, participation, observation and
contemplation. Increasingly, walking has become a credible methodology in
geographical research. From planned walks to ‘bimbling’ (i.e. wandering around
aimlessly), geographers have engaged walking as a way to question and understand
(re)interpretations and interventions in the landscape (see Pink, 2008; Wunderlich,
2008). Also, walking allows the unfolding of subjectivities formed via encounters with
an affective landscape (see Wylie, 2005; Sidaway, 2010; Tilley, 2012). Walks are
also conceived as an embodied practice and part of everyday life (see Winkler, 2002;
Middleton, 2010). Recent works in cultural geography have tended towards what
Wylie (2005) terms the ‘post-phenomenological’ approach to walking. Through
personal and self-conscious forms of chronicling one’s mobile experiences with
worldly phenomena, these walks have shown that self and landscape are ‘always
emergent, constantly shifting through repertoire of unbidden, of affective and
kinaesthetic contact’ (Lorimer, 2011: 25; Wylie, 2005). I have adopted some of these
approaches in my walks, paying particular attention to how self(s) and landscape are

constantly in process of becoming. However, given the nature of this research, unlike
walks by Wylie (2005) and Sidaway (2010), the walks I took were less centered upon
myself, though they were no less personal. Like Hill (2013: 382), I am cautious

35
against writings which tend to over-focus on the author’s personal thoughts, feelings
and memories, as they risk ‘writing others out of his [sic] accounts’. Correspondingly,
my writing in Chapter Four and Five reflect this de-centralization of the researcher – I
will reproduce parts of the conversations with the participants instead of merely what
I make of them.
The walks I took are situated within the broader context of ethnographic
research. According to Herbert (2000), ethnography is an under-utilized methodology
in geographical research. With its focus on the linkages between the ‘macrological
and micrological, between the enduring and structured aspects of social life and the
particulars of the everyday’ (Herbert, 2000: 554; Watson & Till, 2010), ethnography is
particularly useful for the understanding the various intersections of private and
collective memories. Generally, this is achieved through participant/site observations
and context-based semi-structured interviews - the researcher spends considerable
time interacting with and observing people (Crang & Cook, 2007). These
ethnographic observations and interactions emphasize what people do, in addition to
what they say (Watson & Till, 2010). Very rarely does one do things in situ, and
social relations too, are often ‘paced out along the ground’ (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008:
1; also see Hein et al, 2008). Thus, walking – around the house, workplace, place of
worship and neighbourhood – allows a fuller understanding of the practices and
relationships within the landscape. In this case, ethnographic walking is especially
helpful in understanding the materialization and enactment of memories as practice,
beyond the discursive.
While ethnography is oriented towards understanding a social group, I, the
researcher, am not simply a distant observer. Ethnography is also an overtly
interpretive practice on the researcher’s part (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Pillow, 2003).

The copious amount of notes and reflections scribbled down at the end of each day
is a material representation of this interpretive process. I understand, therefore, that I

36
run the risk of (re)presenting a version of the world that is ‘far tidier than what actually
exists’ (Herbert, 2000: 562; Pillow, 2003). I do not claim to (re)present wholly the
everyday lives of people whom I have interacted with, and I hope that this thesis
would be read as a partial understanding of flood memories and life in Ayutthaya.
Furthermore, my relationships with the research participants played a large role in
shaping what I would and could eventually write about them. I strongly believe that
the beauty of ethnography lies in the formation of relationships and empathetic
emotional engagements with research participants (Watson & Till, 2010). Walking
had allowed me to form relationships – walking with people, and subsequently,
sharing and creating a walking rhythm can lead to a very particular closeness and
bond (J. Anderson, 2004; Lee & Ingold, 2006). Indeed, some of these people who
have walked with me are now my friends. Some have argued that this blurred
boundary between ‘researcher’ and ‘the researched’ is problematic, and ethnography
is generally a flawed methodology because it ‘lacks objectivity’ (see Rengert, 1997:4
96). However, the call for ‘objectivity’ is largely overstated. This very subjective
immersion and positioning of the researcher encourages the development of trust,
and hence, allows rich, multifaceted perspectives from different actors to emerge.
Despite such subjective immersions and the formation of relationships, the
dualism between ‘researcher’ and ‘research subjects’ remains. Pignatelli (1998)
summarized succinctly the ethical conundrum of ethnographic representation and
authorship: vested with interpretative authority, authorship assumes that the
ethnographer is the sole producer of knowledge. The ethnographer learns about
people and landscape, and writes about what s/he has learnt. However, such a
stance assumes the passivity of the ‘research subjects’. It also discounts the host of
actors involved, often in ‘invisible’ and un-meditated ways, in our ‘individual’
production of knowledge. Serendipity – a combination of opportunities created by

(re)actions of various participants and the researcher’s intuitive reasoning – is a key

37
characteristic of ethnography; and it often shapes the direction of the research (Pieke,
2000; Rivoal & Salazar, 2013). It is time we recognize that ethnographers never
really work alone (Matsutake Worlds Research Group, 2009: 397; Till, 2009; Watson
& Till, 2010). Hence, like these ethnographers who are looking for a more egalitarian
way of doing and writing ethnography, I believe strongly, that we do not learn about
people and the landscape, but from and with them. As I will show, ethnography, in
this case, is a process of (unspoken) collaboration rather than appropriation (Lassiter,
2005; Till, 2009).
3.3 From spectre to spectacle, ‘young girls’ to ‘Singaporean researchers’
I understand that I cannot simply walk into other people’s worlds and expect
to immediately participate with them (Lee & Ingold, 2006). Hence, the first five days
of walking were designed to be solitary (see Appendix 1 for timeline). Along with my
friend and interpreter, P’Chon
7
, I wandered around Ayutthaya, hoping to get to know
people (vice versa), the flood stories and rhythms of the landscape a little better.
Prior to walking, I was anxious about what Wylie (2005: 246) terms the ‘spectral
nature of walking’. Wylie claims that the walker – especially the solitary walker – is
always caught in the liminal processes of arriving and departing. Although not
alienated from the landscape, the walker is, at best, a ghostly spectre who
supplements and disturbs the landscape. While Wylie does not see this as a
negative attribute – ‘haunting’ the landscape is indeed a way of being with it - this
spectral nature of walking did not bode well for a walker who was also an
ethnographer. How were we to engage and get to know people if we were thought to
be merely ‘passing through, passing into or emerging from’ (Wylie, 2005: 246)? Our

7

P’Chon is a seasoned ethnographer who has worked with NGOs in northern Thailand on
developmental and river-management issues. She understood the research as well as I did –
most of her translations were literal translations, and they included similes, idioms and
analogies. She also played a huge role in the research process as we discussed ideas,
approaches and possibilities in the field. Thus, the field research was really ‘our’ – rather than
‘my’ – effort, and I hope that the writing reflects this.

38
identities - two young Asian women, initially perceived to be Thai though ‘not native
to Ayutthaya’ – dispelled this sense of spectrality. Within the first hour of our first walk
in a residential area, Soi Si, we were approached by several residents – they thought
we were tourists who had lost our way. As they learnt about the research, our solitary
walk was reconfigured into a small but spirited parade around the neighbourhood
(Figure 3.2). Several people showed us mud lines, and others shared stories about
the 2011 floods. Rather than spectral, our presence was instead, almost a spectacle.
According to one of the residents, we were a ‘different sort of tourist’. Almost all
agreed to accompany us on walks over the next week around the neighbourhood
and welcomed us to their homes. We repeated our solitary walks in two other
residential areas, Long Law and Hua Ro. We were again, graciously received and
welcomed (Figure 3.3).



39

Figure 3.2: First day of our solitary walks around Ayutthaya – a small group of
enthusiastic residents in Soi Si accompanying us around the neighborhood,
showing us mud lines and sharing stories.

Figure 3.3: A map of Ayutthaya island. Walks were carried out around three

residential areas Long Law, Soi Si and Hua Ro (highlighted in orange).
Additional walks and semi-structured interviews were also carried out in the
three temples – Wat Mongkhon Bophit, Wat Suwandaram and Wat
Senasaranam – the Ayutthaya Hospital, Ayutthaya historical park (areas in
green) and Ayutthaya Riverside hotel.

40
Later, we were repeatedly told that the situation would have been markedly
different if we were ‘boys or men’, and if we were ‘from Burma’. As Cupples (2002:
383) puts it – ‘an important part of positionality is not just how we feel, but how others
see us’. The general sense that we were ‘trustworthy’ stemmed from my identity as a
Singaporean [khon sinkapor], and P’Chon’s identity as a western-educated
Bangkokian [khon khrung thep
8
]. Drawing on geopolitical imaginations of Singapore
as a ‘developed’ and ‘wealthy’ ASEAN nation, contrasted with the negative
stereotypes towards the Burmese (see Chulanee & Thompson, 2007; Faucher,
2010), we were told time and again that ‘Singaporeans will not take anything away
[from us], unlike the Burmese
9
’. We were further labelled as ‘girls’ – based on our
gender and the assumption of our youth – and were characterized as ‘harmless’.
Thus, many were rather forthcoming with opinions (usually about politics) and
sharing parts of their lives with us. In this case, it is obvious again, that the
ethnographer is intimately connected with the field and the ethnographic work itself
(Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Cupples, 2002). Personal identities of gender, age and
nationality are always subjectively implicated in the ethnographic process, at times
resulting in the establishment of very productive connections.
The ethnographer’s attributes, too, can be problematic. Being perceived as
‘young’ and as ‘students’ (we were initially perceived as high school students!) also

denied us access to people deemed ‘important’ in the village and official bureaucratic
structures. Despite many attempts to speak with the village heads of Soi Si, Long
Law and Hua Ro, we were only eventually granted a ten-minute interview with the
village head of Long Law. During the interview, we were constantly told that he was
‘too busy for young girls’. Similarly, it was also difficult to approach the Department of

8
Khon is the Thai word for ‘person’ – khon sinkapor, in this case, is a person [from]
Singapore, i.e. A Singaporean. Khon Khrung Thep – a person [from] Khrung Thep, Khrung
Thep being the Thai name for Bangkok, i.e. a Bangkokian.
9
When pressed further, many referred to a vague sense of distrust towards the Burmese,
despite having never met any Burmese person. Others heatedly reminded us about how the
Burmese ‘burnt Ayutthaya in 1767’. The Burmese have always been conceived as the ‘enemy’
in Thai historical and popular discourses (see Chutintaranond, 1993).

41
Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) of the municipal government. Letters
from my supervisor were rejected, phone calls went unanswered or when answered,
we were told – rather curtly - to ‘return with a government official and a proper
researcher’. Hence, I could only rely on press releases to understand the importance
of flood memories to the organization.
This denial of access added another agenda to our solitary walks – the need
to move beyond the official structures of flood governance, since those were closed
to us. On hindsight, this was a positive development in the research. Subverting the
usual bureaucratic hierarchy in the production of memory and knowledge on floods,
we turned to institutions and actors not commonly associated with flood management,
but could potentially have an active role in curating the living archive of flood
memories in the city. Serendipitously, we were shown a book about the floods of
2011 by P’Pat, who introduced us to the author, P’Samlit (Figure 3.4). The latter is a

journalist who also runs a small but popular local cable television network. He was
very active during the 2011 flood, documenting the inundation and distributing
supplies around the island. Not only did P’Samlit agree to walk around the city with
us, he also wanted to introduce us to khun Gonggun – a local politician who runs one
of the biggest hotels in Ayutthaya
10
. Khun Gonggun had converted his hotel into a
temporary flood shelter and supply distribution center to help the municipality cope
with the 2011 flood. Due to P’Pat enthusiasm and the circulation of the book, we
were able to speak with two people who played huge, albeit informal, roles in
Ayutthaya’s flood response and memory production.

10
Khun is the polite Thai word for ‘Mister’. Khun Gonggun is a real estate developer, who was
also a Member of Parliament affiliated with the Pheu Thai Party in 2011. He and his family run
the Ayutthaya Riverside Hotel.

42

Figure 3.4: P’Samlit is a journalist – he wrote and collated the picture book on
the 2011 flood. The profit from the sales of the book is donated to the Red
Cross. He is very well-connected and had used that connection to help others
during the 2011 flood.

We subsequently stumbled upon the Ayutthaya Hospital with a large, double-
layer floodwall under construction. We also came across temples and several shops
selling postcards and providing information about floods (Figure 3.5). Having learnt
from some residents at Soi Si that the Historical Parks Office (HPO) is in charge of
building laws and regulations, we also approached the HPO (see Appendix 2). As
Skelton (2009) asserts, identities are fluid and malleable: mindful of our previous

experiences, we deliberately downplayed our apparent youth as we approached
these institutions. Instead, we stressed our ‘seriousness’ as researchers from
Singapore and Bangkok. Thankfully, we were granted interviews and walks around
the hospital, a ‘cultural expert’ from the HPO also agreed to accompany us on walks

43
around the city. I vividly remember P’Chon’s laughter when she saw how we were
labelled on the hospital’s notice board - ‘the Singaporean university research team’.

Figure 3.5: Shops selling postcards and framed images of the 2011 flood
alongside images of revered Thai monks and monarchs.

3.4 Conversations on the feet
The walk shapes the rhythm of the talk, and the talk shapes the rhythm of
the walk.
Lorimer (2011), Walking, pp. 29
Talking comes easier when walking.
Hall et al (2006), Stories as Sorties, pp. 3
Following the ‘solitary’ walks, the subsequent series of walks were designed
to be accompanied walks. We encouraged thirty participants to walk with us around
their neighborhood and/or their homes and workplaces, to sites in the city significant
to their memories of floods (see Appendix 2). These participants range from the
wealthy – owners of construction companies – to the poor – odd job and part-time
workers. All of the participants live on the island, most of them in the three

44
aforementioned residential areas; others work or live near those areas. The walks
lasted from about forty-five minutes to three hours, and were anchored upon the
assumption that each journey is a story that participants wanted to share (Hall et al,
2006, Hein et al, 2008; Evans & P. Jones, 2011). Hence, the walks were designed to

be open and largely unregulated by the researcher. Some participants requested that
I photograph aspects of the walk deemed ‘important’, and all determined their own
routes. Often, on-the-spot choices by the participants – where to turn, where to stop
– dictated the rhythms of the walk.
During these walks, our identities – this time reconstructed by some
participants as sexualized subjects, as (arguably) ‘desirable foreign young women’ –
again determined the people we could walk with (Morton, 1995; Caplan, 1993;
Cupples, 2002). Ten of the participants were men; eight of them were married men.
We invited their wives to walk with us, but were rejected on all occasions. However,
some chose to shadow us as we walked with their husbands (Figure 3.6). One of our
male participants, P’Decha, joked that his wife was ‘worried about [him] going around
with two young girls’. At times, the wives also took over the direction of the walks and
monopolized the conversations. While some ethnographers have critiqued that the
male voice is implicitly dominant in ethnographies of ‘communities’ (Guijt & Kaul-
Shah, 1998; Cornwall, 2003), we found it ironically difficult to listen to the men.
Hence, this ethnographic account features mostly women’s stories and voices.

45

Figure 3.6: P’Decha sitting resting at his front yard after walking around Hua
Ro. While she declined to be part of this research, his wife, P’Daw
(background), followed us around.
With help from P’Chon, loosely structured and informal conversations took
place during these walks. General questions were asked about stories related to past
floods, physical remnants of floods and how the participants’ lives and lived
environments have been altered based on past floods. These conversations were not
simply interviews from which I ‘extracted information’ from the participants. They
were rather, conversations which transpired among the participants, P’Chon and I.
Like Hall et al (2006), I found that these conversations on the feet were less troubled
by estranged pauses and the awkwardness of question and answer. Furthermore,

the participants determined the routes undertaken, the materials brought along and
the stories told. Hence, they were not merely ‘informants’ but active collaborators in
the research process (J. Anderson, 2004). I tried, as much as I could, to avoid
reinforcing the conventional interviewer/informant, researcher/subject hierarchies in
which the interviewer/researcher directs all the questions and anticipates the
answers (Winkler, 2002; J. Anderson, 2004). This form of walking while talking was
particularly productive as I was introduced to a dimension and way of walking that I
did not anticipate. Many brought along photographs of the 2011 flood during the
walks, and I was asked to compare and imagine what certain places were like when

46
they flood (Figure 3.7). In this case, the photographic image was not only a
representation of the flooded landscape, but also a re-presentation of the flood (See
Latham & McCormack, 2009; more in Chapter Four). At the end of the walks, most
participants gave those photographs to me – ‘for your memory’, one of them said. I
started using these photographs as conversation starters (Watson & Till, 2010). Thus,
the more-than-human agency of photographic images was also an important part of
the conversation.

Figure 3.7: Various participants brought along pictures and many asked us to
compare the present landscape with the flooded landscape depicted in the
pictures.
As I have alluded to above, the landscape and its physical specificities were
also collaborators in the conversation and broader research as we walked within it.
During a conventional interview, the ‘noise’ and ‘distractions’ of the surrounding
landscape are removed as the interviewer and informant remain stationary, often
seated (Hall et al, 2006). It has been charged that movements put interviews at risk –
mobile conversations apparently shift control away from the researcher as interviews
are exposed to interruptions from the surrounding landscape (Denscombe, 1998).
This is, however, a rather limited perspective to the ways the landscape matter in

47
interviews. Largely overlooked in the role that it may play in influencing the direction
of, and knowledge produced during, the interview (Elwood & Martin, 2000; J.
Anderson, 2004). Interested in further disrupting the interviewer’s primary position in
research process, I argue that for a more heterarchical conversation to take place,
we cannot discount the material agency of the landscape. If the various subjectivities
of the self and memories are constantly emerging through encounters with the
landscape, conversations on the feet are productive as it allows and encourages
such encounters (Hall et al, 2006; Hein et al, 2008). For example, an unremarkable
pile of mud-stained dishes prompted paa Paket
11
to express her sense of resignation
towards the memory of a failed business following the 2011 flood (Figure 3.8). This
story did not surface as we walked around Long Law with paa Paket; it only came up
as we walked around her backyard where the plates were. In this case, the lived
landscape prompts and interjects, resulting in a dynamic three-way conversation
among the researchers, participants and the landscape.

Figure 3.8: The mud-stained dishes in paa Paket’s backyard, which prompted
her to share the story about the failed business after the 2011 flood.

11
Paa is the Thai word for ‘Auntie’.

48
Beyond walking, P’Chon and I were offered an alternative way to move within
the landscape. We met a tour boat operator, paa Toola
12
, during one of our initial

solitary walks around Long Law. She offered to take us around the island on her boat,
according to paa Toola, this is the ‘only way to understand how floods move’ (Figure
3.9). She brought us to the intersection of the Pasak River and Khlong Muang,
northeast of the island. Hua Ro is directly adjacent to the confluence of these two
waterways. Animatedly waving her hands inwards, paa Toola informed us that this
was the spot where the initial floodwaters would converge, thus, parts of Hua Ro
would be flooded seasonally. This input from paa Toola resulted in a turning point in
the ethnographic process – the residential area at Hua Ro subsequently became a
key site of our ethnographic walks. In addition, Paa Toola and the river also
reminded me of an important concept of memory – borrowing from Proust, Edensor
(2005) terms these ‘involuntary memories’. These memories are unpredictable and
contingent, often evoked through unexpected confrontations with sounds, smells or
‘atmosphere’ – largely more-than-visual experiences (Edensor, 2005). With my
(over)emphasis on the visuality of mud lines, images and paint markings, I had
overlooked the multi-sensual nature of memories. As we boated along a small canal,
we picked up an unpleasant stench of sewage and rotting garbage. This prompted
paa Toola to talk about how ‘the entire city smelled [like this] after [the flood of] 2011’
and the memory of hardship associated with the smell. From this encounter, I was
reminded that what is essential is often invisible to the eye. Hence, during the
subsequent accompanied walks, we paid particular attention to such more-than-
visual mnemonic cues and absences embedded within the landscape, and how
spontaneity matters in the community of flood memories.

12
Interestingly, we met one of the few female tour boat operators in a largely male-dominated
profession!

49

Figure 3.9: Paa Toola (and P’Chon pictured in the foreground) bringing us

around Ayutthaya on her motorized boat.
3.5 Q & As: questions and assumptions
On several occasions, these conversations generated questions which
affected me – as a researcher – profoundly. When we met P’Samlit in April, he was
accompanied by a cameraman. What was supposed to be a relaxed walk around the
island was quickly reconfigured into a semi-formal sit-down interview. With the gaze
literally turned on me, I was asked several difficult questions. These questions
echoed those raised by Skelton’s (2009:402; also see Pillow, 2003) writings on
cross-cultural research: Who is this research for? What can this research do for the
people of Ayutthaya
13
? These are questions I still ask myself today as I write. To be
perfectly honest, I do not think that at this stage, this research can offer any direct
benefits to anyone – it is unlikely to evoke or inform any policy changes. I stand to
gain the most from it – I get to learn, and (hopefully) advance with a postgraduate
degree. However, several participants highlighted that they were ‘happy that [we are]

13
I was momentarily stymied – at this point I truly understood how uncomfortable it could be
for a respondent during an interview (see Katz, 1994)! The interview was broadcasted later
during the week; we were recognized during our walks around the island – again, our
presence became almost a spectacle.

50
interested in Ayutthaya’. The conversations were cathartic outlets to air their
grievances from the past and express their anxieties and hopes towards the future. It
also assured many that others were experiencing the similar discontent and anxieties,
and that they were not alone. I would also like to think we alleviated some of these
anxieties a little. While many participants have heard of and received help from khun
Gonggun during the 2011 flood, we highlighted the possibility of getting help from

khun Gonggun’s hotel to many others. Therefore, in a small way, I hope the research
has benefited some of the participants directly.
Many ethnographers have argued that the field is productive – research
questions are supposed to change with ‘good ethnography’ (Lassiter, 2005; Rivoal &
Salazar, 2013), indeed, from the above, this is true. However, less has been written
about how ethnography can change and impact the researcher’s worldviews.
Ethnographers enter the field with our own sets of assumptions, based on various
representations of certain ‘cultures’ socialized and normalized in our everyday lives.
In this case, I was often exposed to popular and academic portrayals of Thais as
practitioners of spirit and animistic worship (see Wilanwan, 1989; Van Beek, 1995; A.
Johnson, 2011; A. Johnson, 2014). According to this perspective, the Thais
supposedly pray to the water and river spirits yearly in November and especially
during the 2011 floods
14
. Steeped in this normative belief that Thais are
‘superstitious’, I failed to realize that this could be one of the many orientalistic myths
about the Thais (see White, 2003). Assumptions like these are of particular salience
as they influence the questions we ask, our perceptions of the research participants,
the ways we write and the representations we ultimately construct (Till, 2009). Good
ethnography, I believe, changes not just research questions but exposes these

14
The international media cited such examples – from Agence France-Presse (AFP):
and from
The New York Times: />thailand31.html?_r=1&. Also see />replies-to-ceremony-‘fuck-you’/ for a satirical response to such articles.

51
underlying assumptions. Despite P’Chon’s scepticism, I asked several participants –
including a Buddhist monk, tahn Jit
15

– about religious rituals, prayers and spirits
associated with rivers and floods. Several people laughed and others shook their
heads at these questions. In the words of loong Akhom, a retired fisherman, ‘most of
the floods today are man-made. No point praying to anyone.’ Tahn Jit further
informed us that such collective animistic rituals had not been practiced in Ayutthaya
over the last fifty years. I am embarrassed to say that I was surprised by this, and
upon further reflection, I realized I was imposing my personal, orientalist assumptions
of Thailand and Thai people on the participants. This is but one of the many
instances in which I was required to re-examine my closely-held beliefs. As Herbert
(2000: 563) reflects, ethnographies are as much about the culture of the
ethnographer as they are of the research participants. Through these interactions
with the participants, from them, I have learnt not about their lives and relationships
with the environment, but also about my own ‘hidden’ worldviews. I hope the writing
in the subsequent chapters reflect this newfound awareness.








15
Tahn is the Thai honorific for a monk (or someone with high authority).