Sawasdeeka—(hello in Thai) which brings me to my point…I’M IN THAILAND! After 133 hours of traveling via buses, planes, vans, taxi, and by foot, I have finally made it to Thailand.
Arrived in Bangkok. Had some AMAZING Thai food, smoothies, a cultural briefing, and got a tattoo.
Went on a 10(ish) hour van ride to Chang Mai got there in the middle of the night, had more amazing Thai food and some more briefing on where I was going to be living, was then put on a truck and sent 3 more hours to stunning, mountainous, northern Thailand to a village called…Chang-something…I think.
This month, my one teammate Katie, and I are living with a Buddhist couple who are probably in their 50’s, May Pin and Paw Nit are their names…again, I think. They speak absolutely no English, and I speak zero Thai. We are living in their house, eating their Thai food, and totally embracing authentic Thai culture. In this village my team is spread out within 3 different houses. We must be up at 6 to help out with daily chores, and lights go out at about 8:30 or 9:00 pm.
I personally want to go to bed when it is still sunny out because of all the creatures that also inhabit this land. Depending on how well you know you will determine how funny you will find this blog.
On our first night here in the village the locals stayed up waiting for us to arrive and had a delicious feast waiting for us. As we were all sitting around the table (our team eats dinner together), everything was fine until one guy pointed out the HUGE bull-frog. So…being that I am scared to death of frogs…I freaked out. It was so embarrassing and so uncontrollable…I was squatting on my chair, with sheer panic all over my face, covering my eyes (because if I can’t see him, he can’t see me!). One sweet Thai lady saw that I was scared to death, she went over to the massive toad with TONGS…tongs, like what you flip a hotdog on the grill with…picked that joker up and threw him over a wall. I was dying.
This is just one of many frog encounters I’ve had so far. Katie and I are kind of living in Charolette’s Web. We have a HUGE rat in the kitchen, Templeton, who runs around the counter and scared the beans out of you when you are brushing your teeth. We also have Charolette, the massive spider, who is ALWAYS hanging out on the toilet; she is the size of a small pancake…so gross! Needless to say, getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom…yea, doesn’t happen.
Aside from the creatures, living in a Thai village is simply amazing. The food…every dish that has been placed in front of me is amazing. I am so thankful that I have not had a bowl of some crazy fish dish served to me…it’s only been pork or chicken. I will admit, I go to every meal a little bit scared that it’s going to be a bowl of sardines. So far, so good.
Also, way fun…
It is Water Festival 2012 right now. What that means, is when you are driving down the road in the back of a pick-up truck, there are clumps of people every so often waiting for you to come by and they slam you with tons of water. Ice cold water. Warm water. Pink water. Creepy yellow water. But I’m talking soaked! “Maeai Songkran” is one of the greatest festivals I’ve ever been a part of. I have been blasted (so hard my sun-glasses flew off) and I have been part of the clumps of people blasting. I even blasted a truck full of military men…oops! We need to start this up in America. It’s great!
I hope to be blogging more often this month. Thank you for reading and for your support. Please continue to pray for safety and health…I still have not been sick yet! Praise the Lord.
