As manistry month draws to an end, I look back o
n all the hard work we did. We spent hours upon hours of painting a church in the hot sun. We prepared for and had several church services all over northwestern Thailand. We got queasy while riding in the back of a pickup truck on winding mountain roads for hours on end. Then, of course, there was all the fun we had…
Our contact made it clear from the beginning that we were going to play hard this month. In the village we did our first bit of ministry in (see A Weekend in the Village blog), we were blessed by all the amazing views. We even got to go for a moonlit hike one evening and watch the fog roll over the hills.
We happened to be in Thailand in the hottest month of the year. Besides hot days, this also means that this is the month the Thai people celebrate Songkran. It is the time of the Thai new year and the water festival. For more or less a week in the middle of April, everyone gets time off from work to spend time with their families. It’s a sweet thought, until you realize that the families hang out in front of their homes and splash you with water. You see, that’s what the water festival is all about. Everyone gets out their hoses and garbage cans full of water, waiting for passers-by so they can drench them.
We were warned about the festival but really had no idea what to expect. As we sat in the back of a pickup truck (easy targets) driving slowly through the streets of Mae Sot, I knew we were in trouble. Shortly thereafter, we were attacked on several sides by children carrying buckets of water. They made short work of us, getting us completely soaked in a matter of moments. The water festival had begun.
Our wonderful contact continued to drive us through the city, slowing down or stopping every time he saw someone with water, just to make sure we got even more wet. We had to place electronics, money, and passports in plastic bags to keep them safe. Anything else you brought with you would be destroyed. Once you’re wet, it doesn’t really matter if you keep getting splashed…that is, until you get splashed with ice cold water. That will give you a shock. We started the day only a few kilometers from the border, but when we arrived there wasn’t a single dry spot on us. It was about that time that our contact informed us that he had a couple water guns for us to fight back with…we could have used those earlier!
on personnel were also in on the holiday. The nice lady had a water gun and used it whenever she saw fit. It didn’t seem to matter to her what happened to our passports! In a sneaky maneuver, Miles (one of the guys on the squad) was able to fight back with a hose. That bought us enough time to get out of there!
Once in B//urma, we hoped we were safe, but to no avail…they celebrate the water festival too! We rented a type of bicycle where you sit in the front and an individual pedals you around to our ministry site, and the slow speed gave people plenty of time to soak us again and again during the trip. He would also ring his little bell to let people know we were coming…whose side was he on? We largely dried off while at the church, but the ride back to the border got us completely soaked once again. While the festival went on for days, most of the other days we were in villages and did not get to experience getting completely soaked. 🙂
The following day, however, we took a trip to a river in the town of Hot. We ate some awesome chicken and sticky rice and made plans to relax on innertubes and float down the river. All the tubes were rented our, however, so we decided to float down as we 
were! After a few failed attempts at hitchhiking up the river a few kilometers, some of the guys sat down in the road to get the next truck to stop. A little reluctantly the driver agreed, and we were off!
We entered the river quite a ways upstream from where we ate and parked, and started floating down, only to find rapids along the way! They were nothing too intense, but we went over as many of them as we felt we safely could. There were a couple rapids that didn’t look so nice. Our trip down the river took us a few hours, and the river ranged from shallow to deep to shallow with rocks everywhere. We also stopped a few times to jump off rocks into the deeper part of the river. It was an amazing time!
A couple days later, we found ourselves heading on a dirt trail towards a village in the middle of nowhere. As we got closer, we watched as the road conditions deteriorated – from dirt to driving over large, loose rocks to driving through a river bed! I think this drive is the definition of Manistry – offroading in the back of a pickup truck through a jungle with low branches everywhere and the river beneath you – and of course, the danger of snakes and cows! Alright, cows aren’t dangerous, but we saw some on the way. At the village, we got to help out at a youth camp by singing worship songs, giving some testimony, and playing games with the kids. Another great time!
Our contact also took us to the Salawin River, which creates the border between Thailand the Bu//
/rma. On the Thailand side, you can take a longboat trip down the river and admire the scenery on both sides of the river. We brought lunch with us and stopped along the way to eat. The main purpose of this trip though was to spend some time in prayer for the Bu///rmese people. While you can see life on the Thai side, the Bu///rmese side is seemingly devoid of all life. It just makes you wonder what kind of things go on there. The group received some words about the country though, and we believe that it has a bright future.
After our church service in Ban Vua (see A Weekend in Another Village), we hiked to a cave in the bottom of a valley. This cave, largely unknown to the tourist world, has been formed by the river that still flows through it. The river is fairly low during the dry season, and this makes it perfect to hike through. Headlamps in hand (or on head), we walked through the cave, careful to watch out for rocks under the water and spiders and snakes on the walls. We also had to be careful of bat guano – especially after we stirred up all the bats with the light we created!
