This week has seemed like one very long day that just never ended. My journey to Thailand started Monday morning. I travelled with my two closest friends, Pedrito & Vie. We headed for PDX at 9:30 Monday morning to catch a 2:20 p.m. flight from PDX to Japan. That was Plan A. Plan A stopped working around 1:30 Monday afternoon when we discovered there were mechanical problems with our plane. These ultimately resulted in a 3-hour delay, thus we didn’t take off from Portland until nearly 5:30. This was the beginning of the domino effect. The delay in Portland meant we missed our connecting flight in Japan. With that being the last flight from Japan to Bangkok we also missed our next flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Somewhere along the way we crossed the international date line. Apparently I never will live the day that was Tuesday, August 16, 2011. It could have been the best day of my life but now we’ll never know!
At some point, I honestly don’t know if it was Monday or Tuesday, we spent the night at the Radisson in Narika, Japan. A lovely hotel. Amusing though to see the size of the beds. The Japanese are considerably smaller in size than your average American – this is evident when you see the size of the beds. A bed for two people is not much larger than our American twin-size bed. We got a free breakfast the next morning then headed back to the airport.
When we arrived in Bangkok it was evidently now Wednesday. I don’t remember much about Bangkok, we hadn’t had much sleep at this point. We grabbed a room at a hotel quite some distance from the airport. It was in a very run-down area but the hotel was quite nice. They’d moved P&V’s reservation to the next day (because of the delayed flight) but nobody realized my name was also on the reservation so my room had been cancelled, but thankfully they just put the three of us up in a room for the night. There wasn’t much sleep to be had though. Pedrito’s phone started ringing around 2:00 a.m. because there was a problem with 2 members of our group. (By way of explanation – this is a group of volunteers from Walla Walla University, mostly students, who will be spending three weeks doing various projects in Thailand). It seems that one student had a Mexican passport. Although the travel agent had checked with the Thai consulate and been told that no visa was required for this student, when she got to PDX she was denied entry to the flight and told she needed a visa first. The other student was from El Salvador and nobody noticed that fact on his passport and he too needed a visa. All that is getting worked out and they’ll join our group this weekend. Thankfully Delta cooperated and rebooked their tickets.
Anyway, from 2:00 a.m. on there were e-mails and phone calls flying back and forth trying to get everything worked out so that these 2 students had a place to stay while in Portland, transportation to get to the consulate, the airport, etc., rebooked tickets, and a host of other arrangements. We got maybe another hour of sleep then had to get up at 5:00 to get back to the airport to catch an early morning flight to Chiang Mai. We were able to leave all our bags at the hotel, which enabled us to travel light for the quick trip to Chiang Mai.
Once in Chiang Mai we were met at the airport by a Rotarian from the area. He’s a retired president of an area university. Pedrito is active in Rotary and has worked hard to get his local Rotary to be more involved in international service projects. That Rotary has since taken on two long-term projects in Chiang Mai, Thailand so Pedrito needed to make a good-will visit and check on the progress of the projects. We met up with Allan & Joan Eubanks at a great little restaurant in C.M. Allan & Joan have worked as missionaries in Thailand for 50 years come this October. They’re Texans through and through. Joan was considered one of Broadway’s most promising young stars 50 years ago, but she met Allan and they got married and moved to Thailand shortly thereafter. Joan is one of the most lovely and gracious women you will ever meet. She’s fascinating and just a pure joy to talk with. Their son-in-law owned the restaurant. Not what you’d expect to find in Thailand – a refurbished two story-building with an eclectic collection of 1950s memorabilia and old Hollywood movie posters. The menu was American fair – amazing HUGE buttermilk pancakes, eggs, etc. Great ambiance and delicious food.
We jumped in the car after breakfast and traveled to a youth hostel on the outskirts of the city. I’ve been there two other times and watched it develop. They’ve done a lot of work here thanks to Rotary dollars – including a computer lab, a library, and modern plumbing. This project gives young people from the Wa tribe a chance to have an education and encourages them to go on to university after graduation. Rotary provides annual scholarships to help some of these students further their education. We were served fruit and a group of the high-school age children performed a musical number for us.
Then we jumped back in the car and headed to Chiang Mai Academy. Here is where I did my first volunteer project in Thailand. And here is where I met Komchan. This adorable little boy won my heart seven years ago when I first m
et him. Both his parents had died during the previous two years and he was living with an aunt. He was a very sad little boy with the most worried look on his face. I decided to sponsor him so he could stay at the academy and have been doing so ever since. This is my third trip to see him – he’s now 14 years old. He was on a field trip for the day so P&V and myself spent a little time touring the academy campus and seeing the new building projects. Then we ate with the school administrator and his wife (but we were still stuffed from the Texas-size pancakes we’d had for breakfast). Then jumped in the car and went back into the city to meet up with Komchan. We took him and a friend out for ice-cream then we went back to the airport where we caught an evening flight back to Bangkok.
Once in Bangkok we had to catch a shuttle back to the hotel, pick up our luggage and race back to the airport. Then we waited for the students to arrive. They landed around 11:00 but by the time they cleared customs and immigration it was well after midnight before we loaded the vans and headed for Muak Lek and Asia-Pacific International University where we’ll be staying for the rest of our time in Thailand. When P&V and I FINALLY got to our guest rooms at the university it was well after 3:00 a.m. I no longer remember the last time I’d had any sleep.
To be continued….
No comments:
Post a Comment