A safe arrival

May 20
My face burns.

When I bought those razors at the tiny shop in Tha Ton I gave the frail Thai woman a big smile paired with a joyous “Khorb Koon Khrap!” (“thank you very much”) and then pranced along my way. Had I known how painful and humiliating an experience it would be actually using the tiny, paper-thin pieces of metal to scrape across my skin (with cold water and no lotion) in an attempt to remove some of my several-day-old whiskers, I may not have been so plum chipper. But, seeing as my toiletry kit was lost somewhere over the many thousands of miles of flying before I arrived in Bangkok, I didn’t really see myself as having much choice in the matter. We’ll just look on the bright side and call my first shaving drama another step towards “cultural immersion.”

So, as you’ve probably gathered, I arrived safely in Bangkok on Thursday just before midnight (which would be Wednesday at about noon for those keeping track as I am 12 hours ahead of you in [northern] Indiana now). I crashed at a guesthouse for the night and spent the next morning and afternoon wandering aimlessly around Bangkok, a city much like other large cities I’ve visited in southern Asia. When I’m in places like these, I’m constantly reminded of the way there seems to be no middle class: you’re either driving a BMW or a Mercedes or you’re peddling trinkets and living in a room with dirt floors. I did take the opportunity to play tourist and visited Wat Arun, a temple in West Bangkok. That is what the first few of photos are from. I’ve never been one for big cities in the first place, so it was a relief to get on the train that evening headed for Chiang Mai, a town in northern Thailand. The trip was about 13 hours and went straight through the night, which was nice as my car was a “sleeper” and the seats fold down into beds. I’ve always enjoyed the rocking of a train, so it and jet lag teamed up to knock me out by about 10pm.


I woke up the next morning and looked out the window to find myself in the middle of the jungle. There was more overgrowth and thickness than I had ever seen. It was quite beautiful really, even if I did expect Tarzan to come swinging out of a tree and wave at me as he was passing. As you move further north in Thailand the terrain gets much more mountainous. When we finally came to rest in Chiang Mai, the panorama held layers upon layers of cascading hills, a deep, lush green at first, and then a hazy blue and grey as they went into the distance.

From Chiang Mai I caught a bus to Chiang Rai, a city further north still. It was only about three and a half hours and it was there that I was to be picked up by a man I had been put into contact with before I left … or so I thought. When he wasn’t there upon my arrival I gave him a call and found out that I would need to take another bus, the one that goes to Mae Sai. Let me just type out what he told me from there as best I can remember…

“You take the bus to Mae Sai but you don’t go to Mae Sai, you get off at Mae Chan. Then when you ah in Mae Chan you see the big, blue gas station and you get on a green truck. The green truck goes to Mae Ai but you don’t go to Mae Ai you get off at top of mountain by military checkpoint. When you are at top of mountain sometime yellow truck come and you take yellow truck to Tha Ton and you call us an we come pick you up.”

Haha … yeah. Let’s see, I did find the bus to Mae Sai which had a super-sketchy driver that said I didn’t need a ticket but should instead just pay him … which I did. There was no real stop in Mae Chan, the bus only slowed for a few seconds while a few locals hopped on. When I looked at the woman next to me and said “Mae Chan?” she nodded her head in agreement about a half second before I threw my pack out the open bus door and dove out after it. When I had finished brushing myself off I stopped to look around and was met by silence and a few Thais sitting on a median staring at me blankly as they chewed on some unfamiliar fruit. Welcome to Mae Chan. They finally yelled something at me in Thai (of which I can speak about 25 phrases, the one they were using not being one of them) and we eventually determined that I did not speak Thai and they did not speak English. But I did figure out that I had to sit next to them to wait for the truck to Mae Ai (where I wasn’t actually going). We sat there and stared blankly at each other for a while, one of the men sitting in a lawn chair bursting forth in sing-song voice every once in a while with his apparently favorite phrase “Sorry, I doa nota speaka English,” in as perfect a British accent as he could muster. Pretty priceless.

I did make it to Tha Ton though and am staying at an orphanage that has almost 60 children, most of which have come from the Shan nation of Burma. They have been taking good care of me and I spent the day pouring a concrete floor and eating laichee, a succulent little fruit that sits inside a red, spiky shell. The last photo is an example of the way we mixed concrete. Some sand and concrete mixture compiled in a volcano-like shape with added water. Tomorrow I’m hoping to go to another village nearby where there are lots of Shan people with a woman who teaches English there on Sundays before the small church service.

Thank you for taking the time to check up on me. I’m not sure how often I will be able to update this, but I will surely do it as often as I’m able. Hope everything is going well with each of you!