Back in Laos (pronounced Lao by the people here... the "s" is silent)

(Sigh) I am back in Laos. This time I am alone. It’s quite a scary thing, and I am slightly worried for my sanity. (smile) I have only been here about an hour. I took care of my passport and dropped Ter off. The Electricity is off at the house, but it is working here. I feel a bit isolated. Like I am a little island in the middle of the ocean, with only minimal contact with anyone. There is no one here who speaks English fluently, so every conversation is a chore for me to understand what is being said, and at the same time it is quite a chore for them to communicate what they mean. They are often saying words in English, but some of their consonants are not clear, and the Lao people have a terribly difficult with some of the sounds we put at the end of our words. For example the ending “s.” They just can’t do it, and they don’t have the “L” sound, so bill becomes bin. Ter was trying to tell me something about Jay the other day, and I couldn’t understand what the word was she was using. You would think the name Jay would be easy, but something she did with the “J” made it so I had no idea what she was taking about. Try saying Jay’s name without the “J.” Would you be able to understand that? Some of the people I am in contact with don’t speak any English, and that is even more difficult (laugh). I sure I will be fine, but right now this whole situation is quite overwhelming.

Now I really need to go back and fill in a bunch of information from my time in Thailand. This may be quite long, so you may want to take a break in the middle. No really, It is LONG. I even took a break writing it. please don't hurt yourself.

June 1st
First of all, before we left for Thailand Jay and Milka went online to reserve some Hotel rooms in Bangkok. They ended up finding an excellent deal for the middle of Bangkok. Two rooms at the Baiyoke Hotel for about $40 each. On the drive across Thailand, they mentioned eating at a great place in Bangkok. When we got to Bangkok Milka was driving and she took an exit before she really wanted to. The road did a big loop and we got a bit turned around only to find out that maybe it wasn’t such a bad place to exit here. As we continued to drive, we saw that it was indeed a good accident, and Jay used the words “Divine Mistake.” I liked it very much. It was quite appropriate. Then we were looking for the road to the Hotel and we turned down what I would call a two-way alley with barely enough room for cars to slowly drive past each other. We were certain we had turned to early, so when we got to the end and were wondering how in the world we could turn around in this small space we asked where to go to get to the Baiyoke. a man pointed to the left, and we drove directly into he parking garage. Mistake—yes. Luck—I don’t think so.

The Baiyoke Hotel was the tallest building in Bangkok about 15 years ago. Now it is about the same height as many of the buildings around it, and it is under the shadow of Baiyoke Sky, the Tallest Hotel in the world—84 Stories. This building was only a couple blocks away. From the parking Garage, we went up the elevator to a temporary lobby at the top of the Baiyoke (just a reminder, I am in the old Baiyoke… I don’t want you to get confused.) The view was really great, and it started raining while we were checking into the hotel.

We were completely surprised with our rooms—more accurately we were shocked. We had suites! They were huge! Two big rooms and a Bathroom. A very nice but old hotel—not bad at all for $40! Jay was surprised too. I don’t think he realized we were getting suites either. Jay Milka and Sky got one room and Miku and I got the other.

The bathroom was a typical bathroom (by American standards) maybe even a little bit small, but to me. It was quite a luxury. Have I mentioned bathrooms here? Some of them have normal American style toilets others have the porcelain holes in the ground that you pour water into (from a bucket nearby) to flush them. I haven’t had to use the these very much, but they are relatively common. The other thing is the shower. I don’t think I have seen very many bathtubs here. The think they have is a shower head on a hose (which is very convenient for washing, and they don’t often have a shower stall, or even a curtain. The whole bathroom is the shower. There is a drain in the corner of the room. So when you take a shower, unless you are careful everything gets wet. And one of the showers I have used does not have the ability to be mounted on the wall, so you only have one hand at a time for showering, because the other is holding the hose. So, all this is to say that a more American shower was much appreciated.

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I just took a break from writing to go eat some lunch. I really think I should adopt the slogan, “Before you despair, take a moment to eat,” or “Problems seem smaller after a good meal.” I was quite nervous this morning, and when I wrote the beginning of this entry I was quite worried, (I don’t know how clearly that was communicated) but now, during my break, I spent some time writing ideas for teaching, and then I ate, and now I feel so much better. The sun seems to be shining brighter, and I just had a short conversation with one of the Lao workers, and it was not too difficult really. Lunch was quite good. I think I will take a moment to describe it to you. It was plain, white, rice noodles. There was also a mildly flavored chicken broth, and some white chicken meat that had been shredded into small bite-size pieces. The idea was you take the noodles in your bowl, add some of the broth and the chicken, and then flavor it with the other things at the table as you wish. It was kind of like a simple Thai or Lao Ramen Noodles (the spelling on Ramen, is it correct?) The things used to flavor my food were limes, soy sauce, fish sauce, crushed peanuts, onions, garlic, and chili peppers. (a short note on the chili peppers: it is common to just refer to the chili peppers as “chili.” As a result a common mistake is for someone to ask, “Is that Chilly?” I never really thought about it before, I suppose that is where the name for the spicy tomato based soup with beans came from) A girl who cooks the noon meal for Jay’s family will make lunch for me every day. (I think it will be something with those noodles every day) and then Ter will take care of my evening meal. (I have no idea what that will be… probably some typical Thai or Lao food.)

(It is currently raining outside)

Ok, now back to June 1st and the Baiyoke Hotel. After getting settled in our rooms, I found that as a special treat we were going to eat at the restaurant that they had been talking about on the way to Bangkok. This restaurant is an international buffet at the top of Baiyoke Sky. (that’s right, the tallest hotel in the world) Because of our hotel rooms the price was knocked down to only $11 per person. Jay let me know that this was special, and they don’t do expensive things like this very often. We enjoyed the view before going into the dining room. Baiyoke Sky is special, because you are able to go up to the 84th floor and walk around the top of the building outside! It was marvelous (so much better than having to look through glass that reflects glare back at you… you can feel the wind, and look right down the side of the building) It was dark, and we could see the traffic jams that we just missed getting stuck in (if we had taken an hour longer to eat or stop for a bathroom break, or had just driven a little slower, we would have had to drive through that) We also observed the roads we took to the hotel, and we saw how our “accidental” way we traveled was perfect—there was no better way to travel there. You had to backtrack and go around. Bangkok is really poorly organized. There are only a few large roads, and they are far apart, and then in the city, the only streets you can take are not equipped to handle much traffic. They are like the little alley we were on. It is like they never planned to have cars drive in Bangkok. Only bikes, motorcycles, and tuk tuks. (those little three wheeled taxis if you don’t remember what a tuk tuk is) We also noticed how short our hotel was (only 43 stories)

The Buffet was huge! it wrapped around the inside of the tower ¾ of the way around. There was food from around the world, soup, seafood, pasta, American, French, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, etc. I took several plates with small amounts of everything. seafood, prawn (is the plural of prawn, prawn?) curry, spaghetti, chicken, soup, pizza, sushi, desert, fruit, ice cream, etc. In the middle of our meal, we decided that since all of our birthdays are in May, June, and July, it was a special birthday celebration meal. The food was excellent, and I think we all ate quite enough food to make it worth the price of $11.

Our stay at the Baiyoke was very pleasant, and everything worked out so well. I couldn’t help but think of Elise and Hanna’s trip to Washington D.C. this year, where everything worked out so perfectly.

June 2nd
My cousin Miku is a very silly energetic boy. On the second of June, we was very excited about the Digital Camera he had been saving money to buy for months on end. Today was the day he would finally get a chance to buy it. He woke up at 5:00 AM and thought it was 6:00 AM. He went outside the room after he had showered (now 5:45, but he thought 6:45) so that he could go with his mom to the Finnish embassy at 7:00 AM. He was locked out of the hotel room for one hour. ( a very long time for an 11 year old boy). He pounded on our doors, but because our rooms were suites, the sound was lost to our sleeping ears (there is a large room and a closed door between the outside door and the bedrooms) Finally at about 6:45 I was half awake and I heard a commotion outside. I wondered what the noise was and ignored it. A little while later I was awake enough to begin thinking, and it dawned on me that someone might be at the door. I opened the door and found a very relieved Miku. The whole situation was quite comical.

An interesting thing about the hotel rooms here. they have a little spot next to the door where you put the key, and when the key is in that place, you have electricity. When you leave and take the key with you, the power goes out. That is why Miku got locked out. He wanted to leave the key for me.

I began to read a book Jay had lent me: Why not Women? by Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton Jay lent it to me so that we could discus some of the things in it. I am greatly enjoying it, and am on page 197 of 238) I would really recommend this book. In fact, I will officially recommend this book in bold, so that anyone who is just scanning this blog might take a moment to read what I am saying:

Please take the time to read:
Why Not Women?
by Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton
Buy it! Barrow it! Don’t steal it! But please READ it!

The afternoon of June second, Sky and Miku and I went to a huge Electronics store called “Computer City, while Jay and Mika had a meeting with a lady concerning their Tsunami project in a restaurant next door. I expected it to be like Best buy, but it was not at all. Instead it was more like a mall with lots of little booths (those of you who have been to the flea market by my house in Springfield will have an idea of what it was like) Computer city had five levels of these booths and all of them seem to have basically the same products. I have no idea how everyone survives. It was not a relaxing environment. Instead each booth had its own noises and music, and all of them competed for your attention. as you walk past, people come up to you holding their product saying “PC Game, DVD, CD” in their oriental accent. They keep repeating it shouting at you until you walked past their booth. I felt harassed, and if I wasn’t the calm, relaxed, patient person I am, I might have yelled at them and pushed them away. These “booths” are a common thing here. They don’t have many stores where they have their shop and you walk inside and look at their things. Instead there are these booths along the street and down the ally, and in places like this Computer City. (Miku finally bought his digital camera… it is a very nice camera… better than the one Jay owns)

I don’t think I have officially told you yet, but my stomach has stopped hurting. I am feeling quite normal again. The day after I wrote about my stomach hurting, it got better.

The night of the second was spent at a Finnish school. The school is a kind of boarding school or something where Finnish workers in Thailand can send their children. I guess this is where I had originally planned to teach English after Jay left (instead of staying in Laos)

June 3rd we traveled north of Bangkok about for about four hours to the province of Petchabun and the city of Nong Pi (please ignore spelling errors) We went for a women’s meeting that evening and another meeting about the Tsunami project the next day. Driving all over Thailand has let me see a lot of beautiful scenery mountains, plain, ocean. We drove through a valley between the mountains, and we got a chance to travel into the mountains in the afternoon, and Miku and I were eager to take pictures. Sky showed me a very interesting plant. If you touch it or make it shake, its leaves close up, folding so that they lie flat next to the stem. It is so neat. It looks like an animal when it moves (not like a plant).

That evening was a meeting, and it was interesting. I will take a moment to tell you a couple things about it. First of all the sound system was turned out just loud enough so that there was distortion. (Jay says the Thai and Lao people always have things loud… look at Computer City) Second, It was all in Thai, but Jay interpreted for me. Fifth. There were a number of people who spoke, and each person was given an opportunity to speak for a little while. But, when you give seven people a “short” time to share, it can get a little long.) I think it started at about 7:30 and went until 10:30. Most of the speaking was about the Tsunami project in the south. Stories about what is happening with the project. Some of these stories are quite amazing. It was great to hear how people's lives have changed for the better.

June 4th
Miku has been quite excited about his camera. In the first three days of his ownership of the camera, He took 614 pictures. Pictures of scenery, or peoples noses, all sorts of exciting things (smile).

All day of the fourth was spent at the house where we were staying. We read most of the day, and talked, played with Miku’s Camera, Miku and sky wrestled for a bit, etc. at about 5:30 PM we left and drove to Bangkok (dropping off a Thai passenger) and then driving on to Cha-Am. Cha-Am is the little beach town where we spent the next couple days as a Vacation (Jay and Milka haven’t had a vacation for a long time. They reserved rooms at a hotel, but were not scheduled to be there until the fifth, so we spent the night at cheep hotel (400 Baht per room aka $10—you can’t get a price like that for hotel in America, even if it is cheep… definitely not by the beach)

June 5th
The next day we moved into our hotel. It was a very nice hotel, right on the beach. A swimming pool and tennis courts. I bet you can find pictures if you type “Beach Garden Hotel Cha-Am” into google. It was very beautiful and we had a lovely time. I got the sunburn this day. We were playing in the sand on the beach, and I got burnt.

We watched a program on BBC about Vietnam, and everything America was responsible for. The film focused on all the horrible things America did. Later, watching the news, I realized how sad a state our world is in. It is really a mess.

For supper we went to a little restaurant, and ordered what Jay’s family calls spring rolls. We got the idea to eat them after I described this Vietnamese food my mom has a recipe for. It has glass noodles and chicken wrapped in rice paper. Jay said, oh, we can have that. You can get it just about anywhere. So we had cha chja (help me with the spelling mom). It was a lot more greasy, and I like the way my mom makes them better, but they were quite good. That night we also had some delicious fried rice, and some spicy sea food soup (with shrimp and squid, and possibly other sea food too.)

June 6th
More Swimming, Tennis, and relaxing.

I ran out of black ink in my favorite pen, and switched to red. I also observed that I have used about half of my journal, and I will need to purchase a new one before the summer is over.

We went to the beach town were I had a chance to go online and write a short blog entry. Oh, the beach town we visited was called Hua Hin.

The evening I went and walked on the beach by myself. It was so magnificent. The stars were out, and there was lightning flashing out to the north. I stood with in the water with the waves crashing on the shore at my feat. The temperature was mild, and the water was just a little warm. It was so amazing. There was no one else out on the beach except for me, so I sang songs as I walked. It was an incredible evening.

June 7th
David Olson’s birthday, but I didn’t have internet, and I had forgotten to send him a note while I was in the internet café. So Happy Birthday to David (if you are reading this)

This morning after Breakfast there was a small crowd of people at the volleyball area of the back. They had video cameras, and were video taping the crowd on the small “bleachers” they had constructed. I figured it was a special televised game. Every time one Thai girl said something, the people cheered real loud. Then after a little bit they all filed off. Jay realized they were video taping the crowd for the game, so that later they could combine clips of the people cheering and make it look like there was a crowd of people watching. I went swimming, but Jay kept watching. He told me it wasn’t a real game. They kept doing a couple hits, and then stopping and rerecording it. He figured it was an advertisement of some sort.

We went out and ate at a restaurant that Jay says has the best seafood in Thailand (it was really good.) we had Fish, shrimp, squid and clams and rice. Speaking of the food once again. I don’t want you to get the idea that Jay’s family is always spending a lot of money on “eating out.” Food is really inexpensive here. One person can eat for maybe 40 or 50 baht (40 baht equals $1) and it costs about the same for you to go to the market and make the food yourself.

In the afternoon I went out to sit on the beach and the people were still filming. Ter (who joined us when we went to Hua Hin) watched them most of the day. Apparently, it was not a commerial, instead it was a Thai television show. Ter recognized one of the actors (who is quite famous in Laos and Thailand). They filmed into evening, and Sky told me a little about Thai television shows. They alwas have two guys and a girl, and they compete and fight over a girl. The girl gets angry with them somewhere in the middle, and she leaves, and then the guys fight and the most handsome, richest guy gets the girl in the end. One more thing common of all Thai TV shows: horrible acting… they just can’t act at all.

June 8th
I Jay, Milka, and Miku played Tennis early in the morning. They got up at 5:30 AM, and I woke up too. I wanted to get a couple of pictures of the sunrise over the ocean. (By the way, the town we are at is on the east side of southern Thailand… the water we saw was the gulf of Thailand… if you would like a map, go to http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/th.html you won’t see the village we are in, but it will give you an idea of where we were at.) It was not the best sunrise I have ever seen, but it was nice. I am glad I got a couple pictures.

The evening of the eighth was back in Bangkok. that is where I wrote my last entry.

9th
We drove all the way from Bangkok to Mukdahan: I woke up at 6:00 (feeling quite refreshed) and then a little before 7:00 we took Mikko, Tomy, and Miku to the Tennis courts (Mikko and Tomy are finish people. Mikko works with Jay… Tomy is his son) then we drove north of Bangkok to where the road we were on hits the main road (Jay and Milka drove us to that point so that we wouldn’t get confused, or have to drive in the heavy traffic) It was 8:00 when we parted ways. The driving was quite simple on the four lane highway. I easily averaged 110 Km/h (what is that in mph?) When jay called us on the cell phone to see how we were doing, he was quite surprised at how far we had gotten. After the four lane road, we got on a two lane that was quite rough. A little later it smoothed out, and then somewhere we must have taken a wrong turn, because we came to an intersection, didn’t recognize any of the town names. (by the way… has only had her license for one year, and she didn’t know the way any better than I did). Ter asked someone a question and they pointed us in the right direction. Before long we were back on the road we were supposed to be on. (I have no idea how long we were on this little detour, but I would guess not much more than an hour). We drove and drove, mostly listening to CD’s and tapes that were in the Toyota, but also talking a little here and there. We arrived in Mukdahan at 4:00 PM We had never planned to make it so early, but we didn’t mind. We went to where the ferry goes across the river and found the last ferry had left at 3:30 PM. I was disappointed, but it didn’t really matter since we already had planned to spend the night at Jay’s rented house in Bangkok.

When we got to the house after a little confusion (because the road I wanted to take was under construction, and then I couldn’t find the apt). And I was quite relieved to be done driving. I didn’t realize how stressful driving for nine hours had been until we had stopped. I was a bit shaky for a while (the way your muscles quiver when you are exhausted from doing something intense), and I was emotionally drained. I don’t know what was so stressful (Luke says sarcastically) Maybe it was the fact that I wanted to make it to the ferry and we just missed it. Maybe it was the fact the Thai drivers are crazy, and you always have to watch out for the crazy stunts they pull, maybe it was having to drive a manual transition vehicle for nine hours (when you only learned to drive it a couple weeks ago), maybe it was having to drive on the left side of the road. (did I mention that yet… they drive on the left side in Thailand… like the people in Britain) Maybe it was trying to find the Apartment. I don’t really know why I was so exhausted.

That night we at supper at the Lotus (a store kind of like Walmart) The menu was all in Thai, and there were pictures, so I just looked at the pictures until I found something that looked good. Unfortunately I misunderstood the picture. What I thought was rice with mixed vegetables, was reallyrice with a ton of chili peppers. It was incredibly spicy. I think It is the spiciest food I have ever eaten I picked off all of the peppers and ate the rice and the beef and it was quite good. (I think I would have died if I had tried to eat the peppers.

June 10th
June 10th is today. We went to the ferry first thing in the morning, and made it through customs and passport control, and I got my visa. I really didn’t have much trouble at all. We had the ferry all to ourselves. (no one else was crossing that early) It was a little difficult when I got to Laos, because Ter couldn’t go inside for some reason (so she couldn’t translate for me), and I didn’t have the address of where I was staying.

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Responding to comments: (I’m a little behind on these, so these are from a few of the earlier blog entries)

Micah: you are awesome. Thanks for explaining how to swallow T. I laughed out load reading it.

A quick “hello” to Derek, Shanna, Heather, Bekah, Sarah, and Anonymous (hey Anonymous, sorry about your name… it must be really tough having a name like that. I bet kids on the playground at school where horrible… they probably said things like “Hey Anonymous, why don’t you go write a poem and then not attribute it to yourself,” or “Hey Anonymous, why don’t you go call the police and leave valuable information about a crime.”)

Julie: thanks for putting a link to my blog on yours let me return the favor. Anyone who likes art should go to Julie’s web page: http://www.loneprairie.net/ Julie is a close friend and fellow LOTR fan (anyone who does not know that abbreviation can just keep wondering… if you don’t know the abbreviation, you aren’t a big enough fan) She was the first one to tell me that they were turning the books into movies, and she put the preview to the first movie onto a CD so I could watch it. (Thanks Julie)

Christy: thanks for your comments on forgiveness in relation to Bard. very good. Very interesting to read.

That’s it… now you are caught up. I hope you enjoyed this update… it is only ten pages on Microsoft word in Arial size 12 font.