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Published: January 5th 2007
Happy New Year!
Juliette seemed to take a lot of solo pics, so I mocked her.Northern Thailand still proves to be heaps different than southern Thailand...exchange dread locked Thais for little old ladies wearing hill tribe garb and soaking in the rays for trekking through the mountains. Not a bad exchange if you ask me, though to be honest I will forever miss the days on Koh Phangan...a truly pristine island that granted me some life long memories and a wicked tan. I look forward to the next time the Lord provides a hammock, a white sand beach and a coconut shake.
The day after my up close and personal King Cobra encounter, I had an encounter of a different sort on the paintball field. I lived at Hume Lake for a collective year and a half and I somehow missed out on the sport completely. Maybe it was because I would see people with bleeding welts on their arms after they played paintball. Whatever the case, I really was missing out. We met some missionaries the night we went to dinner for Heather and Peter's anniversary and they invited us to go paintballing on Sunday morning. How could we turn that down? Ron picked us up from the hotel at 9am and we headed
Juliette and Dallas
this is for Meagan RM (who knows how to spell her name?) out to the paintball field where we pulled up to meet our opponents: a group of seven 8-13 year olds and, of course, their Grandma. Little did we know that we were about to take a seriously paintfilled beating from this group of militant pre-pubescent snipers...and the Gramenator. We came out to the field really confident that we would do some damage, but when it came time to play, they worked us. In our defense, we were down three people. At one point Dallas and I were heading up the right side and he went to make a dash for the flag when Gramenator came out of nowhere and relentlessly pummeled Dallas all the way to the flag. I was shooting at the Gramenator like I were a starving Indian and she was last buffalo on the plane, but that did not stop her. When all was said and done, Grandma had a HUGE welt on her neck that, proudly, I had given her. She told Dallas, "You were mine boy. I was not letting up." Whoa Gramenator, it's just a game.
Dirty, bruised, and even bleeding, we dragged our way through the mall to catch some lunch and
then headed back to the hotel to clean up for church. We visited Chiang Mai Community Church that evening and, once again, it was so great to be in fellowship. Not the most conventional church service, but still good to be there. After church we went to dinner down by the river and, as it was New Years Eve, before we knew the sky was alive with lanterns. It is tradition to send off these huge paper lanterns "for happiness" into the sky and it sure made us happy because it was absolutely beautiful. We went and wandered the night market then headed back to the hotel to watch fireworks. It was absolutely spectacular. At midnight the sky was full of lanterns floating up up and up and everywhere you looked among the city scape there were fireworks exploding in the sky. We oohed and aahed with a group of Thais and than crashed out for the night.
Heidi, Doc, Mike, and Heidi's parents headed home on New Years Eve and Dallas and I decided to hang with the rest of the group for a few days in Chiang Mai. On New Years day we hired a Song Tao
(pick up truck taxi) and Bjorn, Juliette, Dallas and I headed about an hour outside of the city to visit some caves we heard about. The country side was so beautiful! The caves were quite interesting. Because it was New Years Day they were bustling with worshippers as there are several temples in and around the caves. It was interesting to see the temples so busy. Once inside the caves there are all these warning signs that tell travellers not to go alone because it's so dark. We, being Americans, assume that they wouldn't put you in harms way at a tourist attraction, but we all know that doesn't apply to Thailand, so we hired a guide who had a lantern. He didn't know so much english, so everything we came across in the cave was an elephant. He would point at different cave formations and say, "Elephant." And you know what? The more you look at those cave formations the more they really all do look like elephants. Well done tour guide. We crawled in and out of that cave and when we got back outside we browsed the market, that was really more like a wizard's apothecary. We
could buy roots and shoots for all sorts of ailments. Anything from sore back to protection from black magic. It was interesting to see this type of market and to realize that these "potions" are still used today.
Dallas and I headed out the next morning for Chiang Rai and we could only hop the non-AC bus up north, but it turned out to be alright because the weather is so cool up here. The upside is that tourists don't want to take the non-AC bus, so we got to spend the afternoon on a bus full of Thais. On the way back to Chiang Mai today there weren't very many seats and this little old Thai man was forced to sit next to Dallas and he made it very clear that he was not happy to sit next to the "farang" (foreigner). Chiang Rai is a quant little town that is really worth a visit, but unfortunately to view anything in the area you have to pay quite a bit of money. We opted to just hire a song tao to take us to the Mayanmar border so that we could renew our visa and he said he
would take us to a few other spots on the way.
Our first stop was to an area where you could visit three different hill tribes and see how they live their daily lives. We arrived and bought our ticket in (which seems a little weird at first, like you're paying for a living museum...or a zoo) and the man behind the counter points to his left and says, "Follow the Boy." We look over and there is this four or five year old little Thai boy standing there with two walking sticks: Our Trusty Guide. We grab the walking sticks and follow Polle through the series of trails to the Akah tribe. Polle doesn't speak a word of english...besides "Thank You"...so he wasn't exactly informative. He decided to laugh and play on the swing while we made our way through the Akah village. An old villager shared some rice goo-like stuff with us and we had some tea. They played a song for us and we enjoyed their company as much as we could without speaking. From there we headed to the Lahu tribe...not the most eventful stop. They sang and danced, but weren't too interested in chatting.
After the Lahu tribe we visited the Longneck Karen tribe. This felt just like walking into a National Geographic magazine. The women of the tribe wear rings on their necks that elongate them so much so that they have nearly 30 extra pounds on their bodies from all the brass. This happens to be the tribe that Polle is from so he took off for quite some time, nowhere to be found. We had such a fantastic time playing with the beautiful little girls and blowing bubbles. The mom got a kick out of photos Dallas had on his camera from the snake show. They were a gracious and kind people to spend the afternoon with. When we were about ready to head out we looked around for Polle, and finally we realized that it was bath time. We didn't spot Polle, but we spotted his red striped sweater hanging on the bathing area wall. Apparently, our trusty guide had to take a break from his tour leading activities to allow his mom to bathe him. We waited patiently and tried not to stare, then followed Polle back to the entrance where we bid him farewell.
We decided
to grab some mexican food for dinner because it is very rare that you run across a burrito in Thailand and as we were sitting at dinner we noticed that the girls behind us sounded a lot like Christians. We asked if they were, and it turns out that one of them graduated with Dallas' sister in law in FL! So strange how these things happen. One of the girls is working at an orphange in Chaing Rai that happens to be ran by the family of one of the new Joshua students...a guy who Dallas knows. They invited us to hang out with them at the orphanage yesterday. It was so great to hear about the ministry that they are doing and to see the facilities that the Lord has provided. They started the orphange about seven years ago and they cater mainly to children with HIV or with parents who have HIV. Spending the afternoon with them was such an encouragement.
Today we left Chiang Rai and headed back to Chiang Mai where we patiently await our Indian visas. Tomorrow we will head out to this huge flower show in the area that's supposed to be very
Looks Alive
use the fuzz to stop bleeding. no thanks. interesting. Once we get our visas, we head off to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. We plan to buy three day passes and tour the area by bicycle. Then off to Bombay on January 17. I really can't wait!
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Meagan
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Pics
Pictures!! i want Pictures!!!!