So today is my last day in Thailand. Its been filled with new friendships, encouraging words, small disasters, struggles, stressful times, laughter, corruption, and beauty. I have mixed feelings returning, which makes me think about the word "home", and what it really means. Jon, jokingly, said "Home is where the heart is", but in fact, spoke for the first time truth. Home is where our passion is, it is what we live for, a life hopefully worthy dying for, and vice versa. My heart is in the love of Christ, so my home is there also, and what an amazing place to rest my head. So all in all, my home is where God will place me next, the passion that he places on my heart and location I eventually am sent to go, whether thats back in Norman, Thailand, Uganda, or even Switzerland. I dont know just yet. So here I am, sitting at a computer at a pastor friend of Jon's house sipping some coffee, awaiting another 4 hours till we take a taxi to the airport, get through long lines for international flights, get my seat number with Jon and fly back to LA, the city of Angels, hopping, of course, in-between in Taipei, Taiwan. So here is a rundown of the last 10 days.
Day 13 and 14 were spent heading to the village, and that sunday Jon preached a short sermon using 2 translators from English to Thai to the local dialect on the difference between a Christian and a Disciple of Christ. It was very interesting. we got back to Scott's house in Chiang Mai that evening after some bumpy rides in the mountains and rested with some dinner on the side.
Day 15 was our last day in Shiang Mai, and it was actually kinda sad and boring. We loved our stay here. While Jon made some final arrangements with Sangla and some others, I stayed home and read, watched a few movies, and got packed for our bus ride. Sangla and her nieces came and we said goodbye to Scott and Ike, thanking them for letting us stay for the last week with them, then had a last meal with the ladies, which turned out to be the same place we ate at when we got to Shiang Mai a few weeks ago. Kinda circular. Anyways, we got on an overnight bus to head to the border of Thailand and Cambodia.
Day 16 was Cambodia day, which turned from excitement to discouragement due to the corruption at the border. In legitimate exchange places, they give you less than they say, and steal half your money. Then the whole getting a visa thing and booking a taxi ride through a "service" (ironic word in this case), and booking a hotel tainted the whole experience for me. We had spent nearly $100 before we even crossed the border. Anyways, we finally got a taxi with a Holland guy, and made our way to Siam Reap with very little air conditioning and room to move. Siam Reap is a highly traveled tourist area that people go to see the ancient city/temples of Angkor Wat, a place that was made completely out of hand carved stone carried from about 30 miles away, taking 200 ish years to carve. Crazy. It was magnificent! I remembered seeing at least one of the temples in Indiana Jones. Anyways, we went back to our "mirage hotel" (we thought it didn't exist at first, due to the untrustworthiness of the people at the border, so we nicknamed it this) completely exhausted and booked our ticket out for tomorrow. We were going to stay another day, but the above mentioned tainted-ness I got from the border made me want to leave asap. Jon just told me to laugh about it, its all we could do. I didn't, but we would switch places in this laughing activity soon.
Day 17 was another travel day, this time out of the hot hell-hole of a country Cambodia (I nearly kissed the ground after going again over the border to Thailand) and we took a "bus" (this is what they told us, but it was actually a full sized van that carried way too many people without any A/C) with some strangers, and headed to Koh Chang, which holds the resort island of Trat. We couldn't wait. Literally. Every dumb stop that we stopped at was agitating to me, a waste of time, but we became good friends with a couple of Swiss girls we sat next to in the bus, whom were awesome and also were great to keep our minds off how slow it was to get to our destination and how hot it was in the van. We got on the ferry around 7pm and headed to our "amazing" resort hotel, which we immediately planned to look for something better the next day.
Day 18 was fun in the sun, Jon rented a bike, taught one of the girls how to drive it in the mountainous island, while I read and went out into the nice blue ocean. It was pretty hot, so sunscreen was a great idea. We found another place to stay, got a taxi over, and had dinner later that evening. We basically did everything with these girls, and it was fun learning some German/Swiss-German and hearing stories back home and imagining how good the chocolate tastes.
Day 19 was the "small disaster" as I mentioned before, Haha! Which is also the day I switched places with Jon in laughing about bad things because its all we can do. It was a rainy day, which kept us from snorkeling, and so we chilled out and read a lot. Random - oh how cheap and amazing those fruit shakes were... mmm. Okay so we thought hey, lets go on a joy ride to the villages on the south side of the island. Sounded good. About a half mile down the road, going about 30 down a hill our motorbike decided it didn't like people riding on it anymore, and so tapping the hand break to slow down sent all sliding (even the bike) about 20 yards from our side of the road into the ditch on the other side, mostly on our backs, in front of a truck that thankfully stopped, otherwise we probably wouldn't be alive to tell our story. We got cut up a bit, but a lot less than we should have, and got back to our resort to clean up... pictures soon to follow our our beaten bodies. Thank God we were alive and no broken bones. All I could do was laugh about how this really did JUST happen, how it felt like it was slow motion, not a thought of "Im gonna die" going through my head, but mostly "now, should I stay on my stomach? No, I should flip on my back" and "I wonder when and how Im going to stop sliding..." We got cleaned up, hydrogen peroxided up, bandaged up, and showed up to show the girls. They were pretty surprised, and thankful we weren't any worse than we were. Good stuff.
Well Day 20 was a bit of a sad day to see the girl's go, even on a sunny day which was supposed to be rain. Due to our injuries, we wouldn't dare touch the salty water of that ocean, so all we could do was lay around in a bit of pain and read, maybe get a bit of sun too. It was a long day of relaxing, happy we didn't feel like we were actually lazy, but that we didn't have anything to actually get done that day. A day of beginning to heal.
Day 21 was our day to head back to Bangkok, which we got a taxi out of the resort, met another girl-to-be-friend named Kari and headed back to the mainland. Got an actual bus, and took our 6 hour ride to Bangkok, our last stop before heading back "home". It was on that bus we met two more girls, English teachers in Korea, one from England and the other from Canada, and we hung out with them till we left to Jon's pastor friend's, Mai, house to stay the night. It was great fun hanging out with them.
As you may have noticed, this last week was focused more on a vacation-like time after completing what we had set out to accomplish. So Day 22 we got up early to go golfing with Mai, and then filmed Jon later in the afternoon for his voiceover in the video Im making for him. Lastly, we went at night to the huge prostitution area of Bangkok, made up mostly "massage parlors" and bars. We were sneaky to get a few video shots, being told to be very careful because we could get it taken away, but I wished we got more. But we got enough, I think and we are finished with filming for the trip. Yay.
Today, Day 23, we leave here at 5pm on a jetplane, don't know when I'll be back again. But I sure do want to. We actually get a taxi ride out around 1:30pm. We leave March 30th, and due to time change, we get to LA on the 30th, just 3 hours later! Its crazy how a 16 hour of flying turns into 3 due to flying against the sun. Going back... to the future. Haha. Technically Day 24 will be me flying to Denver in the morning and then to OKC, arriving at 4pm-ish, if all goes according to schedule.
So I will miss Thailand for all its beauty and the relationships we have formed, but I'm excited to get back to the States for the same reason. I miss all you guys, and know that I love you and hope to see you all very soon.
Over and out,
Matt
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