Here are some bits and pieces from my journal from March...


March 1 Monday In the morning after eating the free breakfast we booked a bicycle tour for tomorrow. Then we headed out into the city for the day. We met Gabe's high school classmate Ken, who is Thai and is a vice president of Citibank for the region. He had a box of items that Gabe's parents had sent for him that we needed to retrieve. We started out with him treating us to lunch and it was quite good. There were not many vegetarian options so I got a Thai papaya salad, which like many Thai foods was spicy, with a bit of sweetness. After eating and looking through all the things Gabe had in his care package we took a taxi down to the piers. Ken recommended we buy the day pass as we would be using the river quite a bit for the rest of the day. Our first stop was the Grand Palace, just so we could see where it was. It is quite expensive and during lunch Gabe discovered that his camera battery was dead, so we knew we would be coming back to a few of these places and did not need to spend the money now. Back at the piers we took a short ride to Wat Pho and walked around about a quarter of the grounds. There is a closed off portion that you pay 50 baht to enter and see an enormous reclining buddha, but with dead cameras it was not going to be today. Ken showed us where the Museum of Siam was behind the temple and though it was closed for the holiday, he highly recommended we come back for a visit. Back to the river and a short ride to the other side brought us to Wat Arun and we each paid 50 baht to get in. This is also known as the Temple of the Dawn. It has a number of towering spires with external staircases, which people seemed to have much more difficulty coming back down than climbing in the first place. Crossing back over the river we stopped at a small cafe for smoothies before walking into the Chinatown of BKK. Now it seems like a very familiar place. The decorations were still up for New Years and the vendors all have similar wares to what we have been seeing for the past several months. On the edge of Chinatown, Ken took us to an all you can eat Japanese restaurant which was different from what I have seen before. The food came by on a conveyor belt and you picked whatever you wanted. There was a hot pot on the table and you cooked your food choices to your liking and ate and ate and ate. Afterwards, Ken pointed us in the direction of the metro, we said our goodbyes, and headed back to the hostel.


March 2 Tuesday Gabe and I had our very simple free breakfast, then got a taxi over to the Hotel that was our meeting point for our bike tour with Absoluteexplorer.com. We were met just outside the lobby by Panida, a tiny Thai girl with a big personality. She brought us through a street market near the hotel that was mainly farmers from where she was going to be taking us. She showed and identified a number of unusual items in the market from roasted ants/ant larvae to bell apples (which I actually like, but had not known what they were called). Then we had an hour long train ride out to Klong Bang Phra, which translates to Canal Thin Monk village. For the next 6 hours or so we meandered through rice paddies, fish farms, prawn farms, tiny villages, and small temples, stopping to talk to local people, sample fruits, shaved ice, and plants, have lunch, see snakes, praying mantis, pick mangoes from a tree, visit a local elementary school, etc. It was a very hot day, but we were provided with plenty of water and most of the terrain was level. It is interesting that we know of mangoes for example, and know a couple kinds back in the states, but here there are at least 23 types of mangoes. There are a host of different eggplants, papayas, and many of the other vegetables we know as a single type are greatly varied here. Gabe and I both fell asleep during the train ride home. When we got to our station, Gabe headed straight back to the hostel, but I took about an hour to walk around the area of the station and photograph some of the graffiti work.

March3 Wednesday Now armed with the knowledge we had gathered with Ken on Monday we retraced some of our steps. We made it down to the Express Boat central pier and just took the single leg ticket for 25 baht. This made more sense than the full day ticket and would have saved us money even on Monday when we used the river a lot. We headed straight for the Grand Palace complex, not planning to go in because of the high cost, but to get what pictures we could. When we had been there before we had seen a place where it was possible to walk in without paying although this was a loophole that was easily cut off. Well we took pictures in the open area of the palace complex and then we got separated. I had walked into the toilet since it was convenient and apparently Gabe did not see me do that. When I came back out about two minutes later he was no where to be found. Well great, thanks for waiting! I checked all over the area I had access to and did not see him and after waiting a full 45 minutes with no sign of him, I left to continue my day on my own. We had made a basic outline of the places we had wanted to visit, so next on my list was Wat Pho. I walked down the east side of the Grand Palace to Wat Pho and went in. I spent a good hour wandering through the portions that were open to the public, where I could go into several shrines, observe a memorial service in progress, see where the temple massage school was (too expensive though), visit a sacred tree, and see plenty of Buddhist iconography. I did go to see the center piece Reclining Buddha, which is a massive gold colored buddha. Because of the way the temple is build around the statue it was difficult to get a full picture, but I did get a number of sectional shots. The feet were quite interesting as the pattern on the soles was made up of several hundred smaller images of plants, other gods, animals, etc. The whole time there is a musical accompaniment as people in the procession around the buddha drop coins into a line of offering drums that follow the entire length of the building. In several of the shrines were smaller buddha icons covered in gold leaf. It was beautiful the way they seemed to be decaying and shedding gold skin. I got a lot of pictures of these. When I completed my tour of Wat Pho, I returned to the pier and crossed the river to Wat Arun., I had already been there a few days before and since my camera was working at the time I already had pictures, but I figured it might be a good picture location at sunset and now I was on the right side of the river at least. Instead of going right into the Arun complex, I went along the north side and into the city away from the river. Once I got out to a major road I followed it towards another Wat we had seen during our rides on the river. Along the way I passed several Naval facilities, including one where some sort of graduation ceremony had just concluded. Swarms of people were clustered around young men and women in uniforms, showering them with flowers and gifts and piling into cars to head home. Further down the road, I was momentarily stopped in my tracks when three foot length of tail was hanging out of a bush into the sidewalk. I approached cautiously and what did I see? Crikey, ain't she a beauty! A large monitor lizard resting up. I grabbed the tail and got no response, but the creature was definitely alive and did not appear to have been hit by a car or anything. Still not a very safe place and I wonder how an animal that large survives in the midst of a city. Shortly after that incident I was at the temple and it was not nearly as impressive as the others, but still interesting. It was listed as one of 9 temples that are considered the holiest in all of Bangkok.


March 4 Thursday We returned to the area near Wat Pho this morning and split up temporarily. Gabe to really see Wat Arun across the river and me to see if I could get into the Grand Palace. We would meet in an hour and a half at the Museum of Siam. Well, when I got to the Grand Palace, the path that Gabe had been able to sneak into was blocked by a convention of toilet cleaning personnel. There was no chance of me getting in. So I made my way down to the Museum of Siam and waited in the air conditioned cafe drinking a tamarind fruit juice. Gabe arrived a few minutes after our scheduled meeting time and we then discovered that the museum was quite expensive. They could give us a group rate if we waited around and found four other people to join us. Well, we waited a bit, but not many people were coming in. Then one of the attendants told us if we came back at 4:30pm the museum was free for the last hour and a half. No problem, we can deal with that and so we set out to see a few other things in the area until 4:30. We took a tuk tuk (after turning down about 20 of his compatriots with their outrageous prices) with a driver that was willing to negotiate the price with us. The first stop was the Giant Swing, which is really a disappointment. In the middle of a large intersection is the frame work for a mega swing, probably 20+ meters high, but there is no swing. It has been removed for safety reasons. Boo boo boooooo. Our driver took us next to the Golden Mount and we released him there as we planned to walk back. The mount is a man made hill with a number of tombs, thousands of small buddha images, and a large golden shrine at the pinnacle. There were bells at each landing as you climbed the artificial mountain and the sounds are pleasant and all around you. Our walk back to the museum was rushed because we spent more time at the Golden Mount, with its great panoramic view of the city. This is a much more centralized point and you can see a lot from here.

Back at the Museum, we were met with a multitude of interactive exhibits details all aspects of Thai history and culture, including the contributions of the many non Thai groups that have had impacts here. There is a wealth of information here and Gabe was very impressed with the museum on the whole. I guess I was not that impressed, although I know they put a lot of work into it. It was smaller than I expected and while the interactive portions of the facility probably are great for school groups, I did not find too many of them engaging.

March 13 Sabbath Today we joined a group of new friends and took a long tail boat around Koh Phi Phi Don and the surrounding islands of Koh Phi Phi Le, Mosquito, and Bamboo. One guy was a young Chinese man who works in the Shanghai area. He was interested in talking to us about our time in his homeland. We were the first Americans he had encountered in a couple months of traveling through Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. We stopped at a different Monkey Beach than the one we walked to yesterday. We also stopped at several other beaches along Phi Phi Don for snorkeling, then broke away and headed to Bamboo for some beach time. I ended up walking all the way around the island. It is quite small so that was no great feat. We boated past Mosquito, but did not actually stop there.

March 14 Sunday After checking out and leaving our bags for later pickup, we went down to have some pancakes and then visit the viewpoint. The trail to what turned out to be three official viewpoints and numerous unmarked ones was very close to our bungalow. It was not a long walk, but it was mostly up stairs and very steep. We were both sweating quite a bit by the first viewpoint. The second viewpoint was the best with extra elevation and a clear view of the isthmus and both bays, plus Koh Phi Phi Le in the distance. The third viewpoint was further down the ridge and while nice, it has a number of trees that block any serious picture taking. It was a pleasant place to sit in the shade for a bit and just relax. We walked back on the ridge beyond where we could descend and discovered a viewpoint of our own. It was very nice although difficult to find and not as spectacular as viewpoint two. Returning to retrieve our bags, we had a short amount of time to use the internet, then made our way to the pier at 3pm to begin our 16 hour journey back to BKK. In what is appearing to be typical Thai fashion, what our tickets say and what actually occurred before we were in BKK are completely different. Our tickets said we had a boat to Krabi then a bus straight up to BKK (which should have picked us up from the Krabi pier). Well at the Krabi pier we were herded onto a bus that took us to another bus depot, where after a wait we did get onto a nice looking air conditioned bus. It was nice looking, but horrendous for both Gabe and my knees. And we headed for Surat Thani, which is definitely not the most direct route to BKK. They made a stop a little more than halfway to Surat Thani and unloaded those who would continue that way and the rest of us headed north.

March 15 Monday Because of the uncomfortable seating, neither of us got much in the way of sleep and when the bus pulled over to the side of the road in BKK at 6 am, we were just as confused as everyone else. We were literally dropped of at the roadside, not at the Southbound Bus Depot, where our tickets said we were headed. There was also a cloud of taxi drivers to pounce on us when we disembarked. That lead us to think it was part of a planned scheme to get us to use the taxis. A little later another option emerged. There were Red Shirt protesters by the thousands gathering near the Grand Palace and many bus routes had been modified and some roads closed. The helpful taxi drivers where shouting that there were no buses at all and we had to take taxis, even though buses were driving by right behind them as they spoke. It is absurd. We walked away from the scene to where we could catch a bus we knew would get us close to 'home', which is now with Bronson, a teacher at Ekkamai International School. Eventually we made it to Soi 37 off Sukhumvit 71, but it took an hour more before Bronson could escape class and get us the key. He invited us to lunch at another school down the street, where we had all we could eat.

March 19 Friday We had made a decision to go and do some things on our own for the day, so we headed first to the post office and I sent a package home and a letter back to China. Then we took the #40 bus down to Sukhumvit 25 and got info on extending Gabe's India visa. Which is to say, we found out that they will not extend a tourist visa, like what we have. Other visa types they have ways of doing it, but not for tourists. So Gabe did have one option: apply for a new visa to replace the one he has and pay the full cost again. He filled out the paperwork and we dropped it off, but he has to go into the embassy once more on Monday for an interview, probably to explain why he is trying to apply for a visa while he already has an existing one. So we can mull our options over during the weekend before he has to pay anything on this new wrinkle. With that out of the way, we let our curiosity get the better of us and we hopped on the BTS to go right to the area being occupied by the Red Shirt protesters. There have been warnings by the US government and the Australian government to avoid the areas where they are congregating, so there was definitely some risk in what we were doing. We made our way around a few blocks of government buildings and then walked through a blockade to where the red shirts have taken over the street and set up their temporary housing. The people were in high spirits, we got many friendly greetings, and many people wanted us to take pictures of them. We passed a very long line of Red Shirts waiting in a line to give blood. Those taking the blood were wearing Red Cross uniforms, so I do not think this blood was headed for the parliament steps like some earlier demonstrations. The crowds got thicker and thicker as we approached the Parliament Building, but everyone was orderly and seemed quite happy. We were given bottled water and some bananas and generally welcomed openly.

March 20 Sabbath It was a busy day. It was the final day of a seminar series by the same couple that is leading out the Child Evangelism programs we helped out with this week. Gabe, Bronson,and I met Pastor Doug and his family at the mission and he drove us all over to the RAIS campus, where they had set up in the school auditorium yesterday afternoon. There was some free food in the cafeteria and that was a good thing since we had skipped it. Only problem was that it was fried rice and a vegetable rice soup. Gabe decided he would hold out for lunch. I had two plates of fried rice and some fruit they brought out, then headed up to the church area. The seminar has been held over the past three weekends, where people were being trained in how to work with child evangelism and starting last Wednesday they had been implementing what they learned in real life situations at four locations around the city.

March 21 Sunday This was about the laziest day I have had in several months. We stayed indoors for almost the whole day sitting in front of our computers with the fans blowing on us. The windows and doors were all open and it was hot, but the moving air felt good anyway. I finished sending pictures to our travel mates from the South Great Wall, got a few things posted to the blog, emailed several people, listened to music, monitored the news for Red Shirt activity, etc. Eventually, we did leave for a while in the late afternoon to get food. We ended up at the Green House, a nearby restaurant owned by the parents of some students from the SDA school. The prices are decent and they will make any dish vegetarian. They also adjust the prices if you make a dish vegetarian. So I had a Bamboo shoot with chicken dish (normally 80 baht) which they substituted tofu for the chicken and my bill was 45 baht. Then I added a watermelon shake for 20 baht. Gabe had a sweet and sour fish dish and then we split a pad sae eu dish. So for just over $3 I had enough good food for my meal and a very sweet watermelon shake. Walking back home, we stopped at a street vendor and got more shakes – mine was apple/banana and Gabe tried a coconut/pineapple combo. His pineapple was not very ripe, so the drink had an odd taste, but mine was quite good.


March 22 Monday Up early to meet the team at the mission, where all the pastors from Thailand (well the majority of them, 93 or so) were having their yearly convocation. That meant it was a perfect opportunity for H4BKK to gather some information for the future. When we arrived nothing was set up and it quickly became clear that much of the needed equipment was at a different location and therefore unaccessible for the day. We managed to get four cameras set up, each one different and recording to a different media (hard drive, DV, SD card, etc.). Not the way you want to go into a shooting day, but later we learned why it would be okay. The plan was to interview about half of the pastors and their spouses today and catch the rest tomorrow. What the interviews were supposed to focus on was how God has been working on individuals within each pastor's congregation and the immediate community they interact with. Goi was tasked with playing the role of producer, getting the pastors to come over and do the interviews. She did not like doing it, but we had about 50 interviews done by early afternoon. Even though Gabe and I do not speak Thai, it soon became clear that most of the pastors were telling stories from their own life, and while that may have been interesting it was not the aim of this project. And we were fairly confident that the reason we were getting this sort of info was the question sheet they were being given. When we had a chance to talk to Pastor Doug as the meetings were winding down for the day, we confirmed that there was a problem. This was frustrating to all of us. Most of a day's work was essentially unusable and it had been like pulling teeth to get the pastors to cooperation in doing that. Now we would have to do it again tomorrow. Oh, and the reason that it was not really a problem to have multiple formats on the cameras is that the information was just to get stories from each church. Later on teams will visit each church and film a segment to expand those stories and that is when consistency will matter. Because of the issues throughout the day, Gabe called a debriefing for everyone involved in the video work. It is important for the other volunteers to see how these happen as well as go over the positives and negatives from the day, because there are almost always some of both. That lasted for a couple hours and Doug's wife brought some noodles for us to eat and some molasses cookies. Four of us stayed and talked until 11:30 about the politics and reasons for the tensions between some of the parties we have been working with.

March 27 Sabbath This was a great day that almost did not happen for me. Gabe was having some issues with his upper back (unrelated to his previous back issues) and so he was not going to participate, but we had been invited to go with the Prison Ministry group to a Thai prison. The hitch was that we had to meet at the mission at 5:30am. I set my alarm for 5am and went to bed early, but when I woke up it was 5:23am. I had enough time to go to the bathroom, throw my close on, and head out. When I reached the reception of Bronson's apartment building the doors were locked and the alarm panel on the side looked complicated. Usually there is someone manning the desk, but not this morning. I tried Bronson's apartment number to see if that was the code, but no success. I felt frustrated that I would have woken up, but been locked inside the building and would miss the Prison Ministry trip. I climbed back up the five flights of stairs to Bronson's and laid down to go back to sleep. About half an hour later Bronson's phone was ringing and he answered it. It was Leah calling to see if I was still coming, they still had not left if I wanted to make it. Well Bronson told me he did not know the code, but there was a sliding door I could go through. That worked and I was on my way. Only five of us left from the mission. There were 3 other vans meeting us at the prison. We had rice and soy milk for breakfast while traveling and I napped part of the 2 hour drive to Kanchanaburi. When we arrived I still did not really understand what kind of program we would be involved in presenting. There were about 20 young people from one of the BKK churches and they had guitars, so they were obviously planning on playing some music. I know in the states, prison ministries often gives a basic church service along with whatever else they offer and assumed that was what we may be doing. I guess since the vast majoirity of the population is Buddhist, that should have seemed less likely and indeed it was not what we did. The youth group did play contemporary Christian music (minus any drums) and typical youth group church music and seemed to get a great response. What I ended up doing was helping prisoners select free eyeglasses. We had a range from +2.00 to -4.00 in 0.25 increments. I was doling out glasses on the negative end of that spectrum and most of the prisoners really needed reading glasses, so I was not nearly as busy as the other table was. Some people really needed the glasses and took the time to find ones that were as close as possible to their ocular needs, but true to the foibles of human nature several of the men tried on a single pair and took it, while a number of the women seemed far more concerned about what the glasses looked like than if they improved their vision. While this was going on there were three dentists working with the female prison population. They finished close to noon and we then spent an hour passing out care packages to each prisoner in the place. There were 1700 men and 274 women and there were enough for everyone. The warden was passing out the packages with the rest of us. I was surprised by how young some of the prisoners looked. I don't know what the age is that they can be tried as adults here, but I can hardly imagine some of them were out of their teens. We were provided a basic lunch after that and the youth group left for home. Those of us that remained turned our space in the prison yard into a dental treadmill. One dentist was identifying the problem teeth and giving a basic local anesthetic to four men at a time. Then they waited in a short queue until there was an open chair. The four chairs were basically split between the husband and wife dentist team, but really it was first come first served as fast as we could go. And that was amazingly fast. I think by the end we had worked on 10 percent of the prisoners. I had a couple different roles. First I was stripping the labels off the drug vials, so that they would fit into the syringe casings, then once that was done I was primarily holding the heads of the patients still while the dentists worked. We worked in teams of four: a dentist, one assistant to hand utensils to the dentist and remove large chunks from the patients mouth as the dentist continued working, a flashlight man to make sure the dentist could see in the mouth and me keeping the patient as still as possible. If you ever think of having dental work done overseas or in a mission setting, please understand that there is basically one procedure: extraction of the problem tooth. There is no patching or capping; the tooth simply comes out. I have had several issues with my teeth and I know how much it hurt, but I do not know how some of these men could hold out until their teeth were in the state that we got to see them in. Lots of them were like ice cream cones without any ice cream. And that makes extraction difficult since there is not much to grab onto. It leads to cracked teeth and much messier digging into the gums to remove the remaining roots. I get very squeamish at the sight of my own blood, but not at that of others, I don't know why that is or what it says about me. It was fascinating to watch how efficiently the two dentists removed the teeth and despite that efficiently, they tried to minimize the pain the men felt and even with the drugs there was a lot of pain. But there were several problem situations that hurt to watch as they had to really dig and cut up the gum to get the last little pieces out. I won't describe it further than that.

Several of those helping us out were prisoners themselves and by the end most of them had their mouths packed with cotton from their own dental work. There was also a constant audience watching over the short fence that blocked us off from the rest of the prison yard.