I have loved living
in Thailand
for the last month!! Everything here is
so much different than what I expected in coming here. Not to mention, things with me were different
too. I spent my time here, in Bangkok, instead of with
my team and stayed with the Salt and 61 girls and loved their friendships that
grew over the month. The culture and
just the scenery is different from what I’ve expected as well. We’ve been to both the urban and rural areas
and there’s so much of a difference in each.
The rural area is
very lush, green and mountainous. It’s
also not as humid up there. Some people
have said that it reminds them of Hawaii. We stayed up there for a weekend and loved
just soaking up the beauty of everything.
The city itself is
like any big city in the states. There
are quite a few malls in the area that have movie theaters that are extremely
high class, (where I got to see Bourne UltimatumJ) bowling alleys, and
even a roller coaster in them. The town
itself has 7-11’s (yea, for Slurpees!!) on every corner and you can find
McDonald’s, KFC (which is actually found in more places around the world than
McD’s), Outback, A&W, Subway and other places all over. Vendors are on every street corner, including
fruit vendors that sell cut up fruit for really cheap and eat it with a
skewer. Everywhere you need to go, you
can get to by taxi, subway, air train, or bus.
The people are so
friendly and the country is actually referred to as the land of smiles. Everyone is smiling and more than willing to
help you whenever you need. I actually
even have a personal crossing guard that works by the YWAM base. I stood on the street corner for a long time,
waiting to cross when he spotted me. The
first time he saw me, he said, “Hello!!!
Okay…we are going to go…ready…here we go” and he ran out in the middle
of the road and stopped the traffic for me as I crossed and then said,
“okay…bye-bye”. He’s come out to do that
a few more times since then, and I just laugh, smile, and thank him. The city overall just has this big city
feel, but is very personal.
In fact, it reminds
me a lot of New York City. There’s kind of an interesting story behind
all of this as well. I’ve told Jenny
that for the past few months, I’ve really felt like something big was going to
happen to me in the future in NYC. I
would see pictures in every country that we’ve been to of the city and
something just caught me attention. I
just felt like at some point, NYC was going to be a big part of my life. She made me a bookmark of the city and I got
it laminated before I got to Thailand. Once here, I realized that there were so many
similarities between NYC and Bangkok. The first Sunday morning that I took a bus
ride, I sat staring out the window and watched the scenery pass by. It was then that I heard God say,
this is your New York. That alone, just made a huge impact on me and
how I spent my time here. I have no idea
what will come from it in the future, but even now, as I’m leaving, I’m so
looking forward to coming back at some point.
