Starting Out

Well, it has been a few days since I got to Thailand. Admittedly I have been more exhausted than anything else because of the time difference and because of wanting to shove a million things into a single day. But here I am, now able to work, typing at 6:41 AM on Friday, since I am awake, have nothing to do, with my body thinking it is 4:42 PM, I would like to spend this time with all of you. Since I have both my undivided attention and yours, let me fill you in on what has been happening.

Prologue

So in 2010, 9 Pepperdine students including myself, applied to a program called JOURNEY being offered through Malibu Presbyterian Church. This was a missions program offered to Pepperdine students, but the catch was that we did not know where we were going to go. In January of 2011, we found out. Kim Gao, Caleb Yee, Madison Hancock, Heather Stancl, and myself were selected to go to Chiang Mai, Thailand an work with the Free Burma Rangers, an NGO that assists the Burmese people and advocates for them worldwide. We spent the next few moths meeting and receiving info and training, preparing to leave for Thailand on May 2.

But that is not all, Caleb and I were seniors at Pepperdine, and seeing as we had completed all our classes, and spending another year at Pepperdine would cost (barring scholarships) approximately $50,000, it was time for us to graduate. So on top of preparing for Thailand, we had to prepare for Graduation. On April 30, we graduated.

After Graduating, I made my final preparations, including picking up a new thing of Malaria pills that will protect me form the disease but has the lovely side effect of nightmares. On May 2, we departed from LAX to Thailand.

Chapter 1: Flight

We left LAX at approximately 3:45 PM. Singapore Air was not that bad. Though it was lacking in leg room, the service was friendly, the food was edible, and the movie selection was superb. We were flying to Singapore via Narita, Japan, and that first flight was 12 hours. I truly dislike flying, I am not afraid, I just don’t like being shoved into tight spaces. But between sleeping, watching movies, and eating, I managed. I watched the following things:

Boston Legal

Family Guy

Not the Messiah: He’s a Very Naughty Boy

I also played a little more Final Fantasy IX on my PSP. After landing in Narita, we had to wait for the flight crew to change. So we spent an hour there. I have truly been to the Narita airport too many times (4 times), since I can figure out were everything is now. The flight from Narita to Singapore was 7 hours, and I tried to sleep, but even with stretching out across the seats (since the plane was now mostly empty and I had a full row) was tough.

Once we got to Singapore, it was 2:30 AM. We had about 6 hours to kill, and the airport was nearly dead, it was empty. So we decided to walk to the terminal, which would take us half an hour. While there, we played around on the travellators (the conveyor belts in the airport) making silly movies with our silly walks. We eventually left Singapore for Chiang Mai, and we finally reached Thailand. As the plane was landing, I was listening to the main theme from The King and I, I feel like I was Orientalizing the whole thing…

Chapter 2: Arrival

My word it is humid here. Not humid in the sense of “oh it is a little warmer,” it is humid in the sense that after you are practically breathing in a wall of moisture in 90+ degrees. We get off the plane and it hits you almost instantaneously. After going through Customs and baggage claim, we are picked up by Jesse, and we head to the Mountain View Guest House, where we will be living for the first few weeks. The place is pretty nice and the staff is friendly, and they have free wifi. The roof also has an amazing view of the city. We unpack and we have to take care of business.

We walk to the mall, which was a miserable experience since it is really hot and we are stopping to take pictures all the time. The mall we go to is this ugly brick structure, it really doesn’t look like a mall, but inside it is your standard mall…sort of…(I will post on the city later) We buy the cell phone, pull money from an atm, and do some shopping. The girls find a deal on shampoo, conditioner, and body wash for I think 149 Baht (the exchange rate is 1:30). It comes out to be comes out to be more, and they fight over what is realistically a few cents. We return from the mall, eat, and then pass out.

The next day we head to the Free Burma Rangers office, which is outside of the city proper. We get there via Songtao, a pickup truck converted into a taxi. We get there and no one is in the office. Some in our group become frustrated over the lack of organization in this whole process. I truly do not mind, I do not know what to expect, and we eventually work things out. The staff arrives and we are able to start an orientation and start working. For now we are office aids for them.

This is a summation of what we have done. In the next post I will describe the city of Chiang Mai, and some of the other fun stuff.

Later