Local(ish) Travels

We apologize for the absence of posts here on our little blog - we've been a bit preoccupied this past week with some travels in the local area.  We'll recap (and include some photos) these trips, and then at the bottom of this post we've included a couple prayer requests/praise reports.

Trip #1: Mae Sot.

One of the couples that lives here at BSF (Pong and Jahrunee - Pong is in charge of maintenance and Jahrunee does housekeeping) had a family member's wedding in Mae Sot last weekend.  They were planning to go to Mae Sot with their children (Gideon, Kaudia, and Blessing), and they invited Pete and Patti and us Kirkwoods to join them.  Pong and Jahrunee are from one of the hill tribes originating here in Northern Thailand and the surrounding region - they are from the Karen tribe.  If you know nothing about the Karen people, they're famous for the cultural norm of women wearing rings around their neck and stretching out their necks, but that's only specific "branches" of the Karen people.  Jahrunee doesn't have rings around her neck!  A book we are reading right now (To The Golden Shore - a fascinating read on the life of Adoniram Judson, one of the first missionaries sent out from the USA to Burma in 1811) talks about the Karen people, because Adoniram and his fellow missionaries had some interaction with them.  In fact, they were some of the earliest converts to Christianity in this part of Asia:

"The Karens had some peculiar legends which suggested the Bible, even including one about the consequences of the eating of forbidden fruit from a 'tree of death.'  One of these involved a Creator called "Y'wa," who had seven sons, of whom the Karen was the first-born, the white man the youngest.  Y'aw was to go on a journey and invited the Karen to go with him.  The Karen refused because he had to clear his field.  The Burman refused, too, but he and the Karen each gave their father a gift.  Finally, the white brother went with Y'wa." (To the Golden Shore, by Courtney Anderson, pg 401)  Legend said that the white brother would eventually bring a book to the Karen from across the water.  To this day, many of the believers in Thailand are Karen.

Anyhow, Pong and Jahrunee's daughter was a flower girl in their relative's wedding, so we loaded up into the BSF 18 passenger van, and away we went!  It was about a 6 hour drive for us, and the last 2 hours or so were pretty intense mountain-pass roads.  Pong used to drive an ambulance, so he's a very capable and well-practiced driver, but FYI, Moms, we still wore seatbelts (not commonly done here if you're not in the front seat) so we felt a bit safer!

Kaudia in traditional Karen robe/dress ready to be one of the flower girls.

The wedding was a beautiful, hot, morning event.  We spent the evening before (after arriving in Mae Sot), wandering around and getting some snacks, shopping along the Burmese border (the main thing for sale over the fence between the two countries was black-market cigarettes... less than tempting!), and trying to avoid getting hit by the traffic (this is a usual pastime in Thailand pretty much anywhere, we think!).  Mae Sot has a relatively large Muslim influence, along with a large population of Burmese refugees, and it didn't seem to be nearly as "Westernized" as Chiang Mai is.  For example, we didn't notice any shopping malls or very many restaurants that had names in English.  In general, Mae Sot felt a little less-friendly and a little more "dark" than Chiang Mai, but that could also be partially due to the fact that we're getting used to the landmarks, social life, and routines of the Chiang Mai area.

See the razor-wire along the fence?  That's the border.
This is a Burmese kiosk-on-stilts, built to sell goods
"duty-free" across the wall separating Thailand from Burma.

BBQ'd pork and sticky-rice - traveling snack!

After we returned to Chiang Mai, we found an email from our friend Sean that he was going to be in Pattaya, Thailand, for a layover/rest time from his job this week.  We waited to hear a little more firmly what his schedule was, and once we got it, we decided to make the most of our last week of no-school and off we went on....

Trip #2: Pattaya:

The quickest way to get to Pattaya from Chiang Mai is to fly to the airport a little south of Pattaya and then taxi into town.  We didn't go the quickest route.  Instead, we decided to take the more "Thai -experience" route, so we planned to take the 2nd class sleeper-train car with AC.

Unfortunately, GETTING to the train station proved to be a little challenging.  We live about 15 or 20 km outside of central Chiang Mai, and although there are some of the Thai version of public buses that come out our way (they're called song-taews), they are apparently few and far between.  We stood for about an hour in the village that's close to where we live waiting for one to come... sweating... in the sun and the 40C/105F temperature... with our laptop bags for our luggage... and none came.  Gabe started asking anybody and everybody that had a pickup truck that might be willing to take us toward town, and a sweet Thai gentleman came across the street to where Dani was waiting to hail down a song-taew if any came by and tried to help her in broken English... Although the success of his mission was questionable, we really appreciated the thought!

This is what a typical song-taew looks like.

Eventually a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxi) came by and we hired his services for a bit higher than necessary, but our bartering power (and fortitude) were considerably compromised after standing for an hour melting and the tuk-tuk driver had SEEN us standing in one spot for an hour!

This is a tuk-tuk

We made it to the train and hustled to buy our tickets.  It oh-so-momentarily registered that the ticket agent said, "Second class sleeper with fan," when we were paying for our tickets, but alas, we were altogether brain-compromised by the heat (is that a thing?), and honestly, at that point, after all the trouble to GET to the train station, we were just excited to have made it in time to catch our train!  We realized more fully the gravity of our situation when we got on the train and went from melting to... well, maybe starting to vaporize!  When the train was underway and we were sitting in our seats with the windows wide open, it was almost comfortable (although our rear end and backs got quite sweaty, and where there is sweat combined with exhaust/dust/bugs, one generally gets encased in a coating of - oh, what shall we call it - "Fake tan"?).  The real trouble came when the conductor came along to switch all of the seats into their sleeping berths.  We both had upper sleeping berths, and therefore the windows were BELOW us.  There was a fan, as promised, but it was on a slow circulation from the ceiling, which meant it spent 1 second directing air a person lying on the bunk, and 6 seconds directing air at the other areas of the car.  Yes, we timed it.

Before we left Chiang Mai's station - hoping for a breeze!

Gabe sitting in his seat while it was still a seat.

Dani's bunk and the pathetic ceiling fan

These beautiful trees are in a glorious full red-flower bloom right now.

Passing through some rice fields.

Sunset from the train

Gabe's dinner on the train, chicken and spicy red curry (Amazing!).

To say that our night was sweaty and long would be an understatement.  Dani compared it to being a rotisserie chicken.  Gabe thought it was more like being inside a rice cooker.  The noise level from the clanking of the train and the whistling of going through towns and the odd crashes and jarring squeals from stopping and starting floating through the open windows all night long, combined with the constant shaking and shifting and rocking of slightly uneven tracks and abrupt braking and accelerating made us feel like we were inside Gabe's stone tumbler machine.  Fortunately, the train only lasted 15 hours, and once it was over, we were heartily amused comparing notes about our respective nights!

We got off the train in Bangkok, headed down into the metro (sweet, blissful Air Conditioning!  We could have stayed down there all day!), then transferred over to the skytrain, before arriving at the bus station we needed to catch our bus down to Pattaya.  The bus ride was uneventful (AC!), although Gabe managed to beat Dani quite terribly at Scrabble on our iPod, which didn't go over too well in Dani's sleep deprived state!  But if 15 hours roasting on a train didn't dampen our spirits too badly, the loss of a game couldn't ruin the trip either!

Once arrived in Pattaya, we found a coffee shop, started scouting online for someplace to stay (our Air B&B registration that we'd attempted to rush and get done the previous day before leaving Chiang Mai hadn't finished processing due to shaky internet, so the place we thought we'd stay didn't work out); eventually finding a well-reviewed, near-to-Sean's-hotel accommodation, so we booked it and shouldered our bags and wandered on through the city.

The helpful sign at the coffee shop.

Sean came in that night, so we sat with him for a few hours while he ate some dinner, and then we said goodbye and wandered back to our hotel.

With Sean, closing down the restaurant

Along the beachfront promenade

How to describe Pattaya?  Well, Gabe has been to Las Vegas and made the comparison that Pattaya is worse in some ways than Las Vegas.  Pattaya is one of the big sex-tourism towns in Thailand, and rather open about that.  A ladyboy made a bit of a grab at Gabe while we were walking (holding hands!) down the street.  During one of our dinners Dani had to make a conscious effort to not be distracted by the pole-dancing that was occurring at an open-air bar next door.  When we walked around the next day, there were countless couples strolling the beach-front promenade composed of elderly white men holding hands with young Thai women.  In all, it was a rather disturbing place.

However, we DID have a lovely several hours a one of Pattaya's HUGE malls doing a little shopping at H&M (yes, we know there is one in Portland, but honestly, we never ever seem to go there!) to get Gabe equipped with a few more school-appropriate clothes (we have to wear certain colors on certain days of the week), and we found a book store and bought a copy of Lonely Planet's guide to Thailand so we could be a bit more informed about places we were going in the future.

How many stories of shopping can you count?

And another highlight of our time in Pattaya was one of our dinners (not the one with pole dancing next door).  We went to a little street-stand and were chatting with the gentleman who ran the operation.  He spoke great English, so for once, we could actually communicate about what we were eating - which is usually difficult because our Thai language skills are pretty slow in coming.  Dani invited the owner to cook her up whatever he most liked eating (within a few perimeters: not too much spice and probably not any seafood).  Gabe's from-the-menu order (Chicken in Peanut Curry Sauce) and Dani's special-order were both, hands down, the BEST meals we've eaten in Thailand so far!  We're talking MIND-BLOWINGLY delicious!  And the mango smoothie we enjoyed on the beach was a fun treat too :)

Look! We're at the beach!

Umbrellas and flowers included!

We opted to get an overnight bus directly from Pattaya to Chiang Mai on the way back, which included a seven hour wait at the bus station because we had to check out of our hotel by noon, the bus didn't leave until 8:30pm, and we were over spending any more time walking the streets of Pattaya.  However, Gabe read his book on the history of Southeast Asia and Dani read the Lonely Planet Guidebook, and we got onto the bus much more informed guests of this country!

The bus ride back was good, albeit long (about 12 hours).  The seats reclined pretty far, and we had individual screens to watch movies on, but not headphones.  So Dani watched "The Fault in Our Stars" like a silent film while Gabe mastered multiple games.  Dani braved the toilet on the bus sometime during the night, and THAT was a treacherous experience!  So far we've found Thai's to have high standards of cleanliness, so that wasn't a problem, but trying to balance and take care of business at the back of a huge bus going 60 or 70 miles per hour down the road is just a bit of an undertaking!

We arrived back in Chiang Mai early Saturday morning, eventually caught a song-taew to bring us home, and immediately showered and slept for a good chunk of the morning!

This has gotten really long and probably our Moms, Grandma, and sisters are the only ones who have read the entire thing, but we'll include some of our praise and prayer points below:

Praise/Prayer: We have been praying for a friend for Dani.  We've had some conversations with several guys around our age at church, but it has seemed intimidating to "break into" the female circle of 20s/30s at church.  Today she met a gal named Kate.  Kate is Korean, but went to school in Australia.  She and her boyfriend moved here to Chiang Mai in January to study Thai for a year.  We had a lovely chat after church, and we're praying that this might be an opportunity to invest in a friendship.  Kate's boyfriend wasn't at church (he apparently isn't much of a church person), but we'd love for you to join us in prayer that we might be able to develop a relationship with him too!

Prayer:  Gabe needs a friend too!  Pray that he will be able to find a way to connect with some of the other guys at church around his age.  He has the opportunity to go to a "Man's Night" this weekend for games/hang out/pizza, so pray that he will have energy at the end of the week to be able to go and build relationships.

Praise/Prayer: A LOT of people are leaving Chiang Mai right now, which means a lot of people are selling their stuff!  We found a scooter for inexpensive and finally decided to go ahead an get our own set of motorized wheels (See the story above regarding GETTING to the train station as Exhibit A for why we are ready to have a little more mobility!).  Pray that God would bless Tomas, the Icelandic wanderer that we're purchasing the scooter from this week.  We met up with him last week and he asked if he could keep the bike for another week so he could finish up tasks around Chiang Mai before he leaves.  We said no problem, partially because we looked forward to getting another chance to be around him and encourage him.

Praise/Prayer:  We start school tomorrow, so it's exciting to feel like we're actually getting to start the work that we came to do, but it's also intimidating because it will be a whole new learning curve to figure out how to teach together and how to meet the expectations.  We were working at the school late Saturday evening getting our classroom set up, and the school's committee/board had a meeting while we were there.  One of the couples that is on the board has a son who is in one of our classes.  This couple's first words to us were, "When we hear you come to Chiang Mai, we are so excited that you want to come here and serve God!"  They seem like absolutely precious people!  We're thrilled to be able to work with their son, and we also want to be sure to do a good job with what has been entrusted to us.

Prayer: This isn't for us, but Adrian and Jenny Oliver, a couple that has been leading the children's ministry at the church we've been attending here in Chiang Mai, are leaving to head back to their home in the UK after 9 years of being in Chiang Mai.  We've gotten to know the Olivers' a bit, as they come to BSF once a week to spend time with the kids.  We LOVE them, and we're sad they're heading out so soon after we've gotten to know them, but we are also grateful for this opportunity to meet them and be encouraged by them.  If you have a spare moment, please join us in praying for them, as this is a very bittersweet transition time in their life.

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers!

Our classroom!

Home Sweet Home

In our last post we shared a photo of the outside of our home, but we thought it would be fun to upload some images of inside our house and the area around us.  Mom: enjoy this little pictorial tour of the neighborhood!

This is our home, as you probably saw in the last blog.  The truck does not belong to us, it belongs to the orphanage home here, it was just briefly parked in our carport.  Now we have our bikes in the carport (left for us by last year's teachers), and Gabe hung his hammock between the two posts in the carport.  We don't leave the hammock up all the time, as we wouldn't want it to be a dangerous toy for the home's kiddos to play with, but we're looking forward to utilizing it, particularly when we don't need to camp in front of a fan in order to stay comfortable!

This is the driveway going toward our duplex.  The driveway to the left (before the water tower) is ours.  There's a second duplex right behind the water tower out of sight of the camera.  The large structure on the right is the Ban San Faan home.  As you can see, there is also a soccer field where the older boys and members of the community come to play "futban" every evening.  There's a second soccer field behind our house. 

We went for a walk the other day and tried to capture some of the local scenery.  This is a house (with  dry rice paddies) that is just down the road from us.  This is a more modern structure, as it's built with concrete and bricks and tile. 

This is a temple a little further down the road.  The temple compounds are called Wats and they are everywhere.  They are usually very ornate, bright buildings. 

This is a scene on our walk.  As you can see, the roads are quite narrow, so when we walk we keep our eyes and ears open for cars and we try to jump off the road.  The red vehicle is called a Songtaew, which is the most common form of public transportation.  Different colored songtaews have different routes in Chiang Mai and the surrounding towns.  The vehicle is a small truck, with a canopy (with open windows) on it and two benches facing each other on the inside.  You hail songtaews as they're driving on the road, they pull over, you tell the driver where you're going, hop in, and then ride until your destination.  When you want to get off, you push a little button/buzzer that lets the driver know to pull over, you hop out, pay your fare (usually 15 or 20 baht - about 50-65 cents), and you continue on your way!

This is one of the older style of homes - it is made of teak wood upstairs, and originally it would have just had posts/silts for the house to sit on.  Many of the older homes have now been enclosed on the bottom with brick or concrete. 

Inside our house we have geckos.  We do have screens in the window, but the geckos come in under the door or they shimmy in through the cracks between the screen and the window sill.  This gecko, unfortunately, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He is now a skeleton - this unfortunate accident must have happened when the last person stayed in this house!

We were Facetiming with our family yesterday and we had a gecko running around on the wall, so we turned the camera so our nephew and niece could see it.  We told them that the geckos lived inside with us, but we hadn't given any of them names yet.  We asked Noah, our nephew, what we should call the gecko we were looking at and he promptly named him "Mike."  Since we aren't sure exactly how to tell the geckos apart yet, all the geckos in our house are currently being referred to as "Mike." 

Our internet was a little sketchy for the first few days, and these two fellows did a lot of work to get a booster set up on the corner of the duplex in front of our house so that we'd get internet INSIDE our house (and not just sitting in the front doorway).  We are thankful for their willingness to drill holes, climb ladders, and otherwise serve us to provide internet and wifi in the house! 

We regularly make smoothies for breakfast, and it's been fun to experiment with different kinds of fruits!  This is a dragon fruit, which was delicious added to our smoothie! 

A different shot of the dragon fruit, along with the little bananas that grow around here.  We have a banana tree outside our bedroom window, in fact! 

In Thailand, as elsewhere in tropical/Asian cultures, shoes are pretty much forbidden inside the house (other than a designated pair of sandals or "houseshoes").  So one of the pieces of furniture that we were quickly supplied with was a shoe rack.  Can you BELIEVE the number of shoes we have?  Four of them are Gabe's and the rest are Dani's... :) 

 This is our front/communal room.  The front door is to the left of the photo.  The chairs, fan, footstools, and couch were all here when we arrived.  We bought the little shelf to set up our "charging station" for our various electronics!

This is from standing by the two black chairs.  We brought the banner from home (it's block prints of Pacific NW birds that one of Dani's colleagues gave us as a wedding gift) with the hope of brightening up our little space.  The door to the kitchen is visible on the left.

Looking into the kitchen - we have a small table and two chairs, and a 1/2 bath (no shower) straight ahead.  We keep our two bowls, two plates, two knives, two forks, two spoons, four mugs, and 2 glasses under the table where it's easy to get to them when it's time to eat!  We did purchase the electric kettle because even though it is hot, we are BIG tea drinkers!  We brought the net produce bags hanging from the door handle in the foreground from home.  We figured they'd come in handy for the open markets.  The sink is to the right of the photo. 

Gabe working in the kitchen.  His back is toward the table and chairs.  We have one shelf (in front of Gabe's knee) where we put all of our kitchen equipment.  That includes our magic bullet cups, spare blade, and lids, a pot with a lid, a pitcher, and a large bowl to mix things and/or use for salad.  Our kitchen also came equipped with a toaster, a frying pan, a two-burner portable electric stovetop and a fridge.  On the fridge, as you might be BARELY able to see, is all of the photos we received in Christmas cards this year.  So if you happened to send us a Christmas Card photo, you are up on the fridge and regularly being prayed for!  Thanks for brightening up a little corner of our home!

This is looking into our bedroom.  Just to the right of this photo is the door leading into the kitchen.  We have a KING size bed which seems huge to us but also very convenient since it is hot at night and having a spouse's body generating heat RIGHT next to you isn't always enjoyable! 

This is from the far side of the bed looking toward the back/left side of the photo above.  That fan is pretty much our new best friend!  We have one in the bedroom, along with the one in the living room and in the kitchen.  This means that wherever we go in the house, we can keep air movement.  If you notice above the curtains, there is also a wall-mounted air-conditioning unit.  We only use it at night when we're ready to go to bed to cool down the bedroom.  It is a blessing to have it available for getting the temperature down more quickly than the outdoors cool off.  The door to our bathroom is barely visible on the left of the photo.

Looking into our bathroom - it is a large space!  That's the shower corner straight ahead.  Obvious the toilet itself is there on the right, and the edge of the sink is sticking out on the left.  After a shower, the floor is squeegeed down so we don't slip too much!

Directly across the hall from out bedroom door is a second door going into our second bedroom.  This room is pretty bare at the moment - we don't have any furniture in it besides a rack to hang our rain jackets on - but we could definitely get it outfitted in a jiffy if someone was to come visit (hint, hint!).  There is a bathroom in it just like in ours, and lots of space to the left of where the photo is for a bed.  I think we could make it quite comfortable if someone wanted to come use it!

Arrived!

This is our house!

Yes, we have safely made it to our destination, and are getting comfortably settled into our duplex on the outskirts of Chiang Mai!

En route. 

Gabe was asked to deliver Sven to one of the orphanage kids, so he was our trusty companion and main photo subject during our trip.

We left Portland on Thursday evening (our parents delivered us to the airport and we had a chance to hug some friends of the Shulkes before we went through security as well) with our 6 pieces of luggage and Sven, and flew to San Francisco. After a short layover there, we settled into our long flight across the Pacific on Singapore Airlines.

Sven and Dani hanging out on the airplane after a good night's rest.

If you need to make a cross-Pacific flight anytime in the near future, we'd highly recommend Singapore Airlines! They were great! The seats seemed to have a little more leg-room than normal in economy class, there was a plethora of new release videos to watch on a 12-inch screen, AND the seats reclined, like, 8 or 9 inches! Altogether, we had a comfortable experience! Of course, that could also be chalked up to the fact that we were pretty exhausted by the time we left San Francisco, so we both slept a full-night's sleep on the flight!  Our layover was short in Hong Kong, although we did have to go through security again, and then we were on to Singapore. 

Sven and a bowl of noodles.

Singapore offered fascinating sights like glass bowls built to fit around a tree trunk.

The Singapore airport's gardens.

We grabbed lunch in Singapore on our layover there, spent awhile walking around our terminal of the airport, enjoyed the lovely airport gardens, went through security again, and then flew on to Chiang Mai. Altogether, it was an uneventful, smooth flight experience.

We were met at the airport by the director of the orphan home and Bill, our Longview contact. They got us to our duplex where we dumped our luggage and then headed out to eat at a popular Italian food restaurant! We've been spoiled ever since by the care that the staff here have shown us and the delicious foods we've been eating.

We'll fill you in more on what we've been doing since we arrived in the next post – but we wanted to officially get the word out that we're safe and sound and doing well!