NongKai

Oct 23

Me and Sarah had to go to Laos this week to get our non immigrant visas. Nongkai is the border town in Thailand, and in the town there is a bridge that crosses over to Laos. Everyone told me that Nongkai was a really cool city so I was kind of excited to go and see it. Plus I was supposed to go to the market there and pick up some things for people. Turns out though that I didn’t see much of Nongkai at all.
We took a bus that went all night long Wed. night and stopped in Nongkai finally 5:30 am (10 hr bus ride). As soon as we landed at Tuk Tuk driver was holding my arm and asking me where I was going. I expected this kind of welcome though since we were the only white people on the bus. It’s never a bad experience, just different than what any other Thai person would experience. He told me he’d take me across the bridge to Lao for 2.5 dollars. I knew the bridge wasn’t open yet, and when I said 1.75 dollars he accepted right away. Even in my state of just waking up I knew I probably wasn’t getting much of a deal here. All of a sudden we were brought to some kind of a shed outside where this lady told us she’d get all our paperwork done for $45. I didn’t know what kind of a deal this was, but there wasn’t too many other options and I didn’t feel like we would be ripped off to bad. So, we handed over our passports, she made us some coffee and I got to see a nice sunrise. After it was done we were taken by the tuk tuk across the bridge with another woman from the Philippines who was in the same situation we were in. Then we were in Laos and found out we had to spend the night. The next day we picked up our passports from embassy and rode a bus back to Thailand. As soon as we got back to Nongkai we were hurried onto another bus where we spent another 10 hours going home.
It turns out that it was a great thing that the tuk tuk driver took us to that lady, otherwise we wouldn’t have had all our paperwork and would’ve had to run all over the place and spent another day out there trying to get it! I felt so out of control during that whole experience, but I also was able to trust that it would all work out somehow in the end. Nongkai probably is a beautiful city, too bad I didn’t get to see it!

Weekend in Reyong, etc.

Oct. 17

This weekend was pretty good I think. We went to some army base with a group called Friendship Foundation. They do a lot with children and want to do some joint things with CCD I think. I’m not too sure about everything that’s going on with it. It’s tough to sit through meetings when the person speaking has a difficult accent. I found myself last Tuesday sitting in some meeting that I had no idea what it was about, with the other volunteers and some of the Thai people from this foundation. As I started to space out a tad, the head guy here at CCD suddenly looked at me and said “Jeff, do you have any ideas for this, since you already have been here and know a little more?” That woke me up pretty quick, though I didn’t have much of an idea of what was going on. Next thing I know, me and the other volunteers here are on some army base 3 hours from Bangkok, getting to know a bunch of Thai college age students who also volunteer with this Friendship Foundation.
The other organization is not Christian, so I think that Koon Wasan (the founder of CCD) wanted us to be there so we could share with them why we would come from all around the world to volunteer our time with these kids. I think it went well. I still don’t have much of an idea about what we were doing there. Visit, who is the president of the other foundation, keeps talking about the three phases of his plan. I’m not sure what phase we’re in, but I think that we are supposed to meet up on the 13th of November with them again to give a presentation of what volunteering looks like in our own countries.
It was great though to be able to meet some other people from Bangkok and develop some friendships with some Thai people here in Thailand. It was a pretty interesting trip though, since there was about 24 Thai people, 4 Belgiums, 2 Americans, 2 Swedes, and 2 Brits from England. It makes me glad that my native language is English because I am always able to express fully what I want to say, even if the others don’t fully understand it! I am picking up more of the Thai language though. I find that I am able to understand more and more of what people are saying. I’m pretty bad at speaking it though as I tend to ignore the tones of words when I talk. I’m also getting faster at reading the language. TakTan, the Thai lady who lives here is really good at helping me out, though I think my unending questions about things might be overwhelming to her at times!
Good night.

Moments of Reality

Ok, so to start off, the weather is really hot here. They have 3 seasons in Thailand, hot, rainy, and cold season. surprisingly, hot season comes right after rainy season...not much in between. Although, all the Thai people say that the seasons are not hot, rainy, and cold, but rather hot, hotter and hottest! All I know is that rainy season is starting to end and we're heading into cold season! The bad news however, is that cold seasons seems to affect all of Thailand except Bangkok and the area surrounding it. Hot season here we come...

Oct 11

Oct 11

Today I was able to buy a bicycle finally. That was pretty nice since now I won’t have to pay the motorbike taxis for rides to work anymore, plus I’ll be able to get a workout at the same time. The bad thing is that the brakes don’t really stop me, just slow me down a little bit. The bike itself however was pretty cheap, I bought the bike and a lock for $40 USD. I’ll be able to leave it for other volunteers when I leave too so that’ll be nice for someone to use.
This weekend we’ll be going to Rayong, which is a beach a few hours away from here. We’re going with a group of Thai people who volunteer their time with other children from Thailand. Most of those kids have been abandoned, primarily due to AIDS. It’s going to be good to meet up with them and share with them why we would travel from around the world to spend time with these kids. Most of the people from this other organization are not Christians, so it’ll be nice to share with them. They have a big heart for the kids though and hopefully this will make for good connections between CCD and this other organization. They have a retreat every year for the kids in Thailand and try to bring kids from CCD as well. During our time in Rayong we’re going to plan for next years retreat and also build friendships with the people there. I’m looking forward to it, should be a good opportunity. Only the volunteers are going to be going on it though and I think that the Thai lady who lives in our house is a little disappointed that she wasn’t invited. The culture here is very passive though so she wouldn’t speak up about it. I’m not sure if I could say or do anything to help, but I think it’d be best if I just stayed out of it. She might enjoy a more peaceful weekend anyways with all of us gone.

Oct 8 Revisitin Klong Toey

Oct 8

Today was a lot of fun. I went with the two sarah’s (one from America and the other from Sweden) and we met up with my friend Noon in Bangkok. Noon is one of the women I got to know last year while I was here. She lives in Klong Toey, one of the largest slums in Bangkok. She and her roommate moved into the slums to be able to minister to the people living there. We met up with her in Bangkok somewhere and then went to the slums to visit the family I stayed with last year. It was just like old time, sitting on the floor, drinking some water, and trying real hard to translate what they might possibly saying to me while most of the words just bounced off of my eyeballs. Noon speaks good English, so that helped a little, but most of the time I was just looking at them while they talked to me telling me stories of what was going on there. It was tough trying to keep up. The church in Klong Toey is doing good apparently. Last week they had an outdoor meeting where they had evangelists come into Klong Toey to preach for the people and talk to people in the community. 68 people accepted Christ that day. There was one man who was unable to use his arm, but he came and heard the message about the power of God. I’m not to clear on all the details of the story, but I do know that the man went home that night and decided he wanted to lift his arm, and to his surprise he could. He praised God and went and told everyone the good news.
It was real encouraging to hear the good news of what was going on there and to see my friends again. They invited me to come out there on Friday nights and pray with them at their prayer meetings that they have there. I’m definitely going to try to make many of those. I’ll probably be able to stay overnight with the family I stayed with last year, or find someone else to take me in for the evening so I can stay late and pray with them.
I’m learning the value of public buses too! Despite the time it takes to wait for the bus and then all the stops they make, they really make for cheap transportation that’ll take me all the way from one side of the city to the other when I need. I can take two buses to get to Klong Toey from where I am and it cost less than half a dollar to get there. I’m getting much more familiar with getting around here in Bangkok which is definitely making things much more fun. Now, if only I can get this language thing down fluently…

October 1

Oct 1

Today I went to the Sunday market with the Belgiums, though I didn’t stick with them but rather went off on my own. We had four and a half hours there but I wasn’t too interested in shopping. I did buy some fisherman pants and planned on buying a tennis racked that they use to electrocute mosquitoes with, but I forgot. It was tiring being there for that long, but I made it through the day fine. I haven’t eaten much today other than some pineapple and a couple slices of bread, but I don’t really desire to eat much now either. The day was pretty cool, I went to some park across the street and sat there and watched the people for a while. It was pleasant. There were lots of Thai people having picnics there in the grass, just like what I would imagine it to be like in a similar park in America. My bargaining skills aren’t yet up to par though. The days can be kind of boring at times around here since there isn’t that much to do and I don’t intend to spend too much money always going out to movies, etc. The Belgiums usually just speak Dutch to each other, which doesn’t bother me at all, but it’s harder to get into conversations with them. Many times I’ll be sitting in the living room with all of them, but it’s just like I’m sitting by myself. I started reading the Da Vinci code because they have it here and that seems to capture my attention pretty well. There’s another volunteer house which is occupied with a bunch of people from around the world that are here for the seminar that CCD is hosting for the next month. I think I’m going to wait for Sarah and Karina to get back home from eating and see if they wanna go over there and meet some of the other people and find something to do. I have a feeling though it’ll just be lots of sitting around with nothing to do also.

Sept 28

Sept 28

The second day of work for us was pretty uneventful. The staff for the house we are at are all in training so I don’t really know what is going on. With the Belgium students here I think that CCD has too many people volunteering for this week because there aren’t any staff working in the government complex with us. Otherwise, it’s pretty stinkin hot here. I have a hard time staying awake during the day because of the humidity. I just wanna go to sleep sometimes and I find myself dosing off unexpectedly. My stomach has hurt since I got here, sometimes I don’t really want to eat because it hurts when I do. Hopefully I’ll figure that one out soon though.

Sept 27

Sept 27

Today was the first day of work for us. It was kind of uneventful since we were in a place that we won’t be normally and neither us or the staff seemed to know what to do because it was a different kind of day. There was a church from Bangkok there to play with the kids so we were kind of just sitting around. After work we walked most of the way back, then Sarah got a taxi and I hitched a ride with a CCD van I saw.

After work we sat around and worked on our Thai and then we went out to eat. I wanted to find some pineapple afterwards but it’s hard to find now with all the road construction here and we got drenched in a hard rain. It was nice to be at work finally and settled in somewhat. There’s not much room here for being by yourself since the house is pretty crowded. No worries though.