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!