We arrived late Saturday night. Travel day was fairly easy this time. Best part of travel day: on the way out of the airport, we have all of our big packs and stuff and we’re going down one of those escalators, but it’s not steps- just a flat surface going down to the next level. I get off and everything is going fine until a bag falls off of a cart at the end. More bags fall= huge buildup, but the thing belt is still going. We can’t get it to stop there are lots of people behind us. The mound gets so tall that we can’t get off the escalator. Yelling ensues as people start running into the big mound. There are others behind us that we don’t know who are yelling and trying to run back up the escalator. I see Kelly jump up on the handrail and hang on for dear life. All the workers go crazy trying to find the button to stop the thing. Absolute chaos. I’m trying to help, but I’m laughing so hard that I literally had to cross my legs so as not to pee myself. The button is finally found and everyone breaths easily. It was a good 5 minutes to do disaster clean up though. Nothing like making a good entrance into a country. Since then, we’ve been having meetings, worship, and eating good food. Here is what my first free day looked like: stung by a poisonous caterpillar at breakfast- burned all day, went to a huge Buddhist temple, saw the royal palace, saw the Kings arrival, almost got shot by a guard because we didn’t know we weren’t allowed to wave at the king, took pictures with random monuments, went to a crazy market, got invited to a nude swim by a 50 year old Canadian with no shoes on, ate pad Thai from a street vendor- yumm, watched as my friend, Jared, got kissed by a homeless man twice, had a long conversation with a funny Thai taxi driver that I couldn’t understand, and celebrated the whole day with a bag of candy corn I received from my mom. I would say that was a success. We have two more days here in Bangkok and then we will each go to our different ministry locations. I’m excited!!!
