The Thai Adventure Begins!

Hello all!

Well, it’s been an interesting past two and a half weeks here in Thailand. We arrived at about 9:30 in the morning, local time Thailand. Of course it was 9:30 P.M. back home, but that’s neither here nor there. We all made our way through customs, which was a two minute process for me. After that, we wheeled our luggage through the airport, and then onto the buses waiting for us outside. We drove for about twelve hours from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, which is in the north of Thailand. We arrived at a Buddhist temple, where we’d be staying at for the night. We couldn’t really see much of the place then, but there were hints of Thai all around us. The trees – more tropical. The wall decorations, too. When we awoke the next morning, we got a rude awakening to Thailand – squatty-potties. Yes. I’m sure you can use your imagination to decipher what I mean. Needless to say, this Buddhist temple did NOT have a Western toilet or shower. Your show was a bucket to fill with water and pour over your head. The same bucket that you used to flush the squatty-potty with. Yes. Fun times. But what’s more cultural than a bathroom experience? We gathered together for morning meeting, a welcoming ceremony, and then broke into our CI groups so that we could prepare for the week. The people selected to go into hill tribes left in the afternoon, set to enjoy the “rustic” experience for a week away from the cast. The rest of us worked on our own CI projects to be sure we’d be ready for the five days of CI. For most of the days, we would be only meeting with our groups and not with the cast as a whole, which was a change for us since we’d pretty much been inseparable since staging. Good practice for the end of the semester. Finally, host family pick-up time came and I met my wonderful host family. I was also roomed with Leo Martinez from Venezuela again (my roommate from both Brenham and The Woodlands). We went to a restaurant and ate what seemed to be traditional Thai food – rice, fish, vegetables, and such. The first phrase that I learned quickly was “mai ped,” which means “no spicy”. Came in handy :) After dinner, we went to their home and settled in for the night. I quickly learned that hard sleeping surfaces is prevalent in Thailand, not something just limited to our Buddhist temple experience. My bed for the next week and a half was, basically, a wooden table with a thin mattress (half-inch thick) on top. This wasn’t something thrown together for me – this was what Thai people slept on normally. Hmmmmmm. Cultural experience #2.

I woke up the next morning, Friday, quite early (about 5:45) so that we could leave and eat breakfast before going to our first CI site – World Vision. Leo, my roommate, really enjoys coffee in the morning, and adds quite a bit of sugar to his cup. Like, dump sugar in for five seconds. The look on my host mother’s face every time he did that over the next week and a half was enough to brighten my day. She would give him this genuinely aghast look, surprised that ANYONE could have that much sugar in their coffee, and then shudder at the thought of tasting that herself. We all laughed about it before too long. Her son, Peal (pronounced pee-el), speaks amazing English, which made all the meal experiences and general communication a lot easier. I was very grateful for that. He also is a BIG fan of Friends, the T.V. show, and so we ended up watching that every night, since it was a routine of his. Pretty sure he has all the seasons. It was quite strange, though, to find myself watching Friends in Thailand. Anyway. Back to Friday. After breakfast, Leo and I went to our CI site, World Vision, which is a Christian organization that, I believe, works all over the world providing social services to those who need it. They set up an English camp for Thai hill tribe children to attend since we, Up with People, were going to be in Chiang Rai. I was crew leader for this CI site, which meant that I was the liaison between our crew and World Vision, and I was also in charge of our crew managerially. Our job was to decide on subjects to teach three classes of Thai children, figure out a lesson plan that would work for the different times allotted, and then put into action these plans, teaching children who don’t speak any English something that will be useful for them. We decided on a few different subjects. My group (myself, Tyler from California, and Veronica from Norway) taught body parts, clothes, and if we needed it animals. Another group (Mitch from Ohio, Linn from Sweden, and Mira from Bulgaria) taught numbers, the alphabet, colors, and shapes. The final group (Leo from Venezuela, Rachel from the U.S., and Jessica K. from the U.S.) taught simple verbs, nouns, and directions. Our class schedule on Friday wasn’t too bad: six, 45 minute classes starting at about 9 and ending at 3:30 with lunch in the middle. The three groups would rotate around to the three different classrooms so that they could all each get our different lesson plans. We rotated around twice, so we ended up teaching each class for about an hour and a half. At the end of the day, the nine of us walked to a ice cream shop nearby and had some amazing ice cream while we did a wrap-up of the day and also began a discussion of the stages of loss, led by our staff member Mitch. For future reference, there are five stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We were discussing this, of course, because we were three and half weeks from the end of the semester – a semester where we’ve slept, ate, danced, sang, hugged, cried, and experienced the world together as a cast and now we’ll be soon going our separate ways. An appropriate discussion. We discussed denial, and then walked back to World Vision to be picked up by our host family. I and Leo’s host family picked us up and took us to the White Temple – a beautiful temple in Chiang Rai. See attached pictures. Wow. After that, we had dinner and I called it a night. I was exhausted from the culture shift, the culture experiences, and from teaching English to people who couldn’t speak a word.

Saturday came, our Regional Learning Day for Chiang Rai. Unfortunately, we were not an entire cast for this regional learning day – the thirty-some people in the hill tribes would not be joining us. But, we were still sixty-some strong and we were going to represent! :) We started off the day with an hour boat ride down the Kok river, the main river through Chiang Rai. It provided us with some great scenery and just a relaxing beginning to what would become a long and amazing day. We arrived at the shores of a hill tribe market along the river where we disembarked from the boats and got a chance to mill around. There were animal displays, too, where you could pay 100 bat, for example, and have a huge python wrapped around your neck to take pictures. I elected to not, but there were those who paid the 100 bat (about $3 in the U.S.) to do it. After that, we all paired up and climbed some stairs to ride ELEPHANTS! Woo hoo!! It was a crazy and different experience. We rode atop them for about forty-five minutes and traveled up into some hill tribes and then waded through the river to arrive back where we started. I rode with Mira from Bulgaria, who was freaking out for the first five minutes, but was then able to control herself for the rest of the ride if I could provide some distracting discussion. It was a fun experience that really made a lot of people’s day – many had been hoping to ride elephants in Thailand and this had been a surprise the staff had kept from us. After the elephant rides and lunch, we boarded the boats again for a short ride upriver to a landing site and sort-of hill tribe area. It was there that we set out on a road to lead us up into the hills to a beautiful waterfall where we would be able to swim and relax and enjoy ourselves. We were told that the trek would be about 900 meters – about half a mile. I, myself, never really thought about the walking there. For the first forty-five minutes, I spent the time talking to different people as I walked, just enjoying the chance to have social time while we were going to the waterfall. But soon the paved road turned into a dirt road, and then that dirt road got steeper. And then that dirt road disappeared into a walking trail. At different points, all sixty of us found ourselves stopping in the shade to rest for a moment and catch our breath and just step out of the sun. The water we were carrying turned hot quickly, but it soon didn’t matter as the sweat rolled off us in currents. Many of us were exhausted. Some of us nearly collapsed. A couple of us puked. Not a pretty sight. But we pressed on. This waterfall was going to be amazing, we kept telling ourselves. A hour elapsed since we left. Then an hour and a half. All the while, the sun wasn’t getting any more merciful, though our water was getting lighter – comes from drinking a bunch of it! :) Finally, we reached a point in the thick, lush trees where the entire cast stopped there to let everyone catch up who had fallen behind and give the group a collective break. We had figured out by then that this was no mere half mile, but we still didn’t know how far we had to go yet. But, after about 20 minutes of rest, we picked up again and kept climbing what had turned into a rough trail. We passed through several hill tribe villages, and after the rest I was better able to appreciate them. After about a half hour, we arrive and the beautifully majestic waterfall that cascaded down about 50-70 feet over rough rocks and trees into a glorious pool below. We all cheered with a relief and joy I thought none of us could summon at that point. It was truly an amazing experience and ordeal to have gone through. What was supposed to be a mild half mile walk turned into a 2 km climb through hot and rough terrain. I cannot hardly describe the immense feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction we all had when we reached the waterfall. We all celebrated by switching into bathing suits and jumping into the waterfall pool, enjoying the crisp and cool water. A-MAZING! :) We were able to swim and lounge around for about forty minutes, and then we continued on the path downhill to a clearing where vehicles picked us up and brought us back to the hill tribe we started at. By that point, we had already dubbed the day as the best Regional Learning Day ever, which is a lot to say after days like the pyramids in Mexico and the Alamo in San Antonio. We drove for about an hour back into Chiang Rai to a restaurant that served us all dinner and had a two person band playing music for us. The singer must have known we speak English because most of the songs he sang were covers of U.S. songs. He did a great acoustic rendition of Linkin Park’s “Numb” and “What I’ve Done.” We all relaxed, enjoyed dinner and each other’s company, taking in what all we had done that day. I and Leo’s host family picked us up that evening, and as soon as we got back home I went straight to bed. I surprised I was able to stay awake for the ride home :)

Sunday brought the first of two host family days in Chiang Rai. We got up early and left the house at about 5 a.m. to head to the farmer’s market (or something like that) where we picked up breakfast and took it to a friend of our host family’s house, who happened to be Scott and Ellen Enebo’s host family. We ate breakfast, which consisted of rice, eggs, and toast, and then Leo and I went into their T.V. room to wait for Ellen and Scott to join us. They turned on the T.V. for us, which was satellite, and I was able to flip through the channels to see if I could find anything worth watching. By happenstance, I stumbled onto the ESPN channel and the NBA Eastern Conference series between the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Pistons. I couldn’t believe it. And the game was live! It was 7:30 in the morning, I was sitting in Thailand, and I was watching the NBA live. Just weird. I was able to watch the first half of the game (which was Game 3, by the way) and see that the Celtics had taken a considerable led into the half. I can only imagine that they won, even though it was at Detroit. We all left soon enough and journeyed to the house of the King’s Mother – a beautiful home up in the high hills of Thailand. Gorgeous. After that, we toured the King’s Mother’s huge garden, which flowed around the foothills of her home – a beautifully huge area with hundreds of different kinds of flowers and plants that have been excellently maintained. So cool to see. After we looked at all of this, we all drove to another friend of our host families’ home – a beautiful house a good distance outside of Chiang Rai. There, we had lunch and played games with each other just enjoyed the beautiful afternoon. Leo and I caught a small nap, since the day before had been crazy-long and we’d gotten up so early. After a few hours, we all gathered back together and drove to Chiang Rai’s largest university, which was absolutely beautiful and provided for some great photo opps :) Soon enough, though, the day ended and we all parted. Leo and I went to bed, ready to start our four days in a row of CI.

In terms of CI, Monday through Thursday were basically the same. In the morning we had two, hour and a half classes with about 25 children, and we taught them English based on the areas we had chosen to focus on. After lunch, we had another hour and a half class, followed by a half hour, outdoor large-group activity, which we usually spent playing games like duck duck goose and red light/green light. We had the same kids on Monday and Tuesday, then a new set for Wednesday and Thursday, which meant we needed to have lesson plans ready for three hours of collective teaching. We basically used the first day as a introduction to our subjects, gauging how much they were absorbing to decide how much we should teach them in the first day. The second day was spent reviewing what we’d done the first day, adding on some new lessons should they be needed (which they always were). These were some bright kids. After each day, we walked to that ice cream shop down the street, spent 30 bat on some ice cream (which was about a dollar), and did a wrap-up of the day, prepared for tomorrow, and went of the stages of loss. Monday was anger. Tuesday was bargaining. Wednesday was depression. Thursday was acceptance. During the week, however, after CI, Leo and I were toured around to different places around Chiang Rai by our host family, seeing different sights, and getting opportunities for photo opps. Good times.

Friday brought cast rehearsal day, and the first day we’d all be together for a week, since the hill tribe people returned to Chiang Rai the night before, as did some of the other different allocations. All of us greeted each other with open arms in the morning, over-exuberantly happy to see one another. You would have thought it was a five year reunion :) Soon we all jumped right into a large CI overview, which gave us all an opportunity to see what everyone else had been doing all week long. After that, we all split into large groups of what we’d be doing after Up with People. My group was the “Returning to School” group, since I’m planning on attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the fall. It was cool to hear about some of the plans everyone had for after Up with People, and a keen reminder that the semester’s end was drawing near. After lunch, we jumped right into rehearsal, which was different since we weren’t doing it on the actual stage we’d be performing. Really, it was just an opportunity for us to work out show kinks before we arrived at the show facility the next day and had to work out all the technical kinks. It was obvious that the cast had missed doing the show for two weeks. The level of energy put into that rehearsal was huge! Our best rehearsal yet! I even got my hand in a solo opportunity, and practiced “It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child.” I thought I did a decent job, but in all honesty I couldn’t hear myself that well because of the poor speaker quality and sound meshing. In other words, it was very noisy in that room! :) After rehearsal, we got together for wrap-up and then broke for the day. Our host family was waiting for Leo and I, and took us straight after to a restaurant for dinner party in our honor. We had a special room all to ourselves, and our host family invited some of their friends, and we hung out while eating and laughing and even singing karaoke! I even had a pork chop for dinner – and it was amazing!!! By the end of the night, we’d been there for about five hours and we were all exhausted, but in a good way. We drove home, and Leo and I crashed.

Show day came we ran through the normal day routines. But since set up was done by a Thai crew, we had some presentations in the morning, followed by lunch. After lunch, rehearsal kicked in on our custom-built stage. We ran through the show, working out the technical kinks, and finally we were ready for our first Thai show. As we glanced out into the audience floor, we kept seeing the room fill and fill and fill. Finally, Martin came backstage and said we were going to start the show, and that they’ve been turning away people at the door! The room was packed – FAR more than would ever be legally allowed in the U.S.!! We the show started, a deafening scream raced through the room. Think of the most high-pitched, junior-high girl scream and then multiply it by fifty. That’s what it was like. Piercing. But, instead of being painful, it was only FUEL for us. All throughout the show, the screams and cheers spurred us on, and by the end of the night we felt like we’d put on an amazing show. Without needing to do strike, I was able to change and then go home right away with my host family. I turned in quickly, and fell quickly to sleep.

Sunday brought our last day in Chiang Rai, and our host family day as well. We were able to sleep in a bit (until about 7:30 – woo hoo!) and then we were off to join Scott and Ellen’s host family for a day of Thailand exploration and adventure! We all loaded onto a eleven-passenger bus and toured to the northernmost point of Thailand, what’s known as the Golden Triangle. If you don’t know the historical significance, I’ll explain it here in a bit. Basically, the Golden Triangle is where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar all meet. The first place we went to was a museum created by the King’s Mother (whose home we visited last host family day) called the Hall of Opium. It is a historical museum aimed at educating people about drugs, particularly opium, and then hopefully deterring people from becoming addicted to them. The tour, which was self-guided, began with us walking through a tunnel through the side of a mountain. In the tunnel, wispy and blissful-like music played, but the tunnel itself was dark and shadowy with artistic murals at points that depicted tortured and agonized faces seeming to “push” themselves out of the rock. In a pamphlet we got, this walk was explained to be a representation of opium addiction – the music representing the blissful, euphoric feeling one gets from the drug, while the murals represented the harsh, concrete reality of the addiction and its harmful results. Very interesting start. Once to the other side of the tunnel, we were given a very brief overview of the facility through a English video and then “set loose” in the museum, free to wander through its directed and interactive path. Along the way, it had signs and exhibits that detailed the history of opium and how opium got to be such a terrible addiction in Thailand. While I’m sure the story is MUCH more complex, the nuts and bolts of it is this: England had acquired a strong taste for tea in the 1600s, which could only be found and made in China. At the time, and because of China’s export tariffs, England could not afford the price it was costing to satisfy the huge demand for the product. They simply did not have enough precious metals to trade. But, since at this time they had colonized India, they had plenty of opium, and began trading it for tea. This ended up being a great trade for England since the Chinese quickly became addicted to the drug and soon demanded more of it, which England loved because then it could get more tea. The Chinese government, however, did not think opium was such a great idea. So they placed high tariffs on its import, and then finally outlawed it. England didn’t much like this, which led to the two Opium Wars, which both ended in England’s favor. This led to unfair treaty negotiations, placing opium as a nearly untaxed item in China. Opium’s influence later spread south into Thailand, which the northern hill tribes there and in Laos and Myanmar used as a cash crop to feed a huge demand worldwide. Whew.

After about halfway through this long exhibit that was the Hall of Opium, we reached a point where it turned into an emotional appeal instead of a historical documentary. More stories of people’s lives, whole peoples, and countries being drastically affected by opium surfaced and were the main display. By the end, I found that this museum had been an amazing experience that both taught me something and touched me. It was very powerful.

After the Hall of Opium, we all packed back into the van and drove to a large market and tourist area where we had lunch and then toured around to see some great architecture and statues and the like. This was right on the border of Thailand and Laos. The restaurant we ate at overlooked a river that was the border between the two countries. Beyond this, there were a lot of photogenic places. And my host family LOVES taking pictures. So needless to say I have a LOT of pictures :) After we toured this, we drove further north to the border of Thailand and Myanmar where we took some more pictures, saw some cool temples and statues, and toured through some Thai marketplaces. Its amazing how much I DON’T blend in here in Asia :) After we toured around here for a bit, we all clamored back into the van and drove back to Chiang Ria – about an hour drive. We dropped of Scott and Ellen and their host family, and then went to eat dinner ourselves. After this, we drove back home and Leo and I started to pack and say our goodbyes, since tomorrow would be departure day from Chiang Rai. After packing for hours and handing out host family gifts, we said goodnight and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up early and drove to our drop off point. Leo and I said goodbye to our wonderful host family and then boarded the buses for Khon Kaen. My bus date for the trip was Erin from Indiana, but we didn’t really hang out until the end of the drive since we both slept for most of the drive. Our bus wasn’t equipped with a DVD player, but it did have a V-CD player. Yes, that’s right. A VIDEO COMPACT DISC player. Shooting it back to lost technology. So we couldn’t watch anything on the bus since no one had a V-CD movie. However, at a gas station stop, Nicole from California bought a copy of “Sweeny Todd” on V-CD for a cheap price, and we were able to watch it on our bus. Unfortunately for us, the dialogue was in Thai. BUT, the music (because it is a musical) was still in English with Thai subtitles. Since I’d seen it already, I was able to explain to those who hadn’t what was going on in the movie when the English cut out, and overall it was an amusing experience for all. We were also able to listen to a CD copy of Carolyn Lee’s speech she’d given us at the beginning of our year about the Up with People experience. I’m pretty sure I blogged about this back in January or early February. It was really cool to listen to it again and give ourselves perspective of how far we’ve come and where we are now. It was a good focuser for the last two weeks to come. We arrived at about 8-8:30 in the evening after about a 12 hour bus ride over and through the mountains of Thailand to Khon Kaen. At times, we were all afraid we were going to die because our bus drive was driving our bus like a Indy racer around the curves of the mountain hills, but we arrived safe and sound, albeit with a few more grey hairs. Allocation ensued and I was paired up in my last city with Mitch McVicker, one of the Education Team staff members. I was pretty excited since I had thought to myself that he’d been one of those people I hadn’t gotten to know that well these past five months, so I was excited for the next two weeks, even though they would be my last on the road. After some fun trying to find our right host family, we were off to their home in Khon Kaen for a good night’s rest.

Tuesday was orientation day for the cast, and it was filled with welcoming ceremonies done by both dignitaries in Khon Kaen, and Khon Kaen University students. We also had some internal time that was used by Martin, our cast manager, to talk to us about how to use Up with People on your résumé and in interviews effectively, and by Dave, our Admissions Coordinator, on how to spread the word to people about Up with People when we get back. Overall, it was a great cast day.

Wednesday brought our first day of CI in Khon Kaen. I was placed at a Christian mission school for special needs children. There we were going to be working with the children, as well as working on weeding their gardens and painting their playground equipment. Seven of us were allocated to the place: Tucker from Denver, Mitch from Ohio, Molly from Ohio/California, Anna from Denmark, myself, Katy from Denver, and Nina from Finland. Mitch, Anna, Nina, and Katy worked with the children in the morning and then gardened in the afternoon, while Molly, Tucker, and I began painting all of the playground equipment the mission had, which became the routine for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The two head sisters at the mission are Philippine women who can speak Philippine, Thai, and English – all very well! Amazing. They’ve been working at the mission for about 30 years, helping the children there. It’s difficult work since in Thailand there is a traditional thought that if your child is born with an sort of disorder or handicap, it is because of a sin of the grandfather of that child – a punishment. The children have traditionally been seen as outcasts of society, and even though it is 2008 the sisters still must work against this stigma.

Saturday brought our only regional learning day in Khon Kaen, and our last of the tour. We started off by visited a huge Buddhist temple, which was absolutely beautiful! After that, we drove and visited a museum of Khon Kaen, which laid out some historical points of the region and also some modern and local attractions to see in the area. We then all loaded some trucks and drove to a neighboring town, Nam Phong, which Cast C 2007 visited on their tour last year. We were welcome by people there and had some great lunch provided by the local Rotary Club. After lunch, we all gathered up again and drove to Boystown in Nam Phong, where we would be spending the rest of the afternoon. The boys who lived there performed for us with some traditional musical instruments, and then we were given free reign of the facility, for which we the cast had some plans. Lucas, one of our Field Managers for the city, took the entire staff aside for a moment to tell them some harsh news – our show facility was currently under three feet of water and the power was completely out. There was no way we could have our final shows there next week. Immediately the staff began to brainstorm to find some last minute places, but it was looking pretty bleak. There were some anxious and, frankly, angry people in that meeting. Lucas then led the staff back over to the cast, who then surprised them with STAFF APPRECIATION!! Haha – so our show facility is not under water, and everything is okay for our final shows, but I’m told that it was an amazingly tense moment in that circle of staff members and some great acting by Lucas, who was in on the trick. We led the staff to front row seats, were personal attendants were waiting to get them water and massages while they enjoyed a mock awards show for their benefit. One by one, awards were given out to all the staff members with great appreciation notes attached to them. To receive them were members of the cast playing the respective staff members. Some of the imitations were HILARIOUS! Brandon had an amazing mimicking of Scott Enebo – I wish I’d video taped it! After all the awards were handed out, the staff got a chance to bid on some cast members who were willing to be their “slaves” for a day. It was quite amusing. Kristen Ditges was easily the most sought after “slave,” with multiple staff members bidding on her with money they didn’t really have (each staff member was given 100 fake dollars – Kristen was getting bids of about $120-$130!) After this, the entire cast handed out appreciate letters to the staff members, and then had the move to the center of a large circle we created. Once we surrounded them all, we sang “We’ll Be There” to them, one of the most powerful songs in show. While yes it was cliché, we could tell it meant a lot to staff. Many of them were quite misty-eyed by the end.

After staff appreciation, we moved into Hometeam Olympics, part 2. The first round of Hometeam Olympics took place in Puebla while I was on advanced work in New Braunfels (just like Cast Appreciation happened in San Luis Potosi). In the first Hometeam Olympics, Hometeam #5 – the Huggies – won, and were definitely being rooted against during the entire competition. My hometeam – Hometeam #2 – had placed last in the last Olympics, so we something to prove. Unfortunately, we didn’t get very far. We placed last again, and the Huggies won again, which in my mind seriously draws into question the refereeing of the event ;) haha, just kidding. We all had a good time. After the Olympics, we had wrap-up and the cast boarded trucks to head to Khon Kaen. Our host family, who also has a home in Nam Phong, had Mitch and I stay there with them. We joined Imm, who’s from Thailand and part of our cast, and her family for dinner, and got to hang out with all of her roommates as well: Sofie from Sweden, Gift from Thailand, Miwa from Japan, and Natalya from Uzbekistan. It was an Asian household :) After dinner, Mitch and I settled into a cabin-like room our host family prepared for us that had AC – woo hoo! We slept well, almost a bit COLD for once :)

Sunday brought our only host family day in Khon Kaen, and our LAST host family day on tour. We woke up at about 6:45 a.m. and quickly got dressed, had breakfast, and then drove out to meet a friend of our host family – a man named Martin, who is originally from England, but moved to Thailand, found his wife in Bangkok, and has since moved to the northeast of Thailand to raise rice and other crops while raising his three children. I have to admit that it was great to speak in full-out English again. Our host family only speaks limited English, even though the work very hard to communicate. So English, even British English, was great to hear. He had some interesting things to talk about, and Mitch and I did a lot of listening. He picked up two languages while he was here: Thai and another local language of the area. He showed us around his farm, which he plants and maintains himself. Coming from a farm myself, it was interesting to see the amount of work he has to do to prepare the fields for planting. He doesn’t use any chemicals to get rid of weeds and such – only a two-wheeled tractor that the Thai call a “Japanese Buffalo.” Think of it as a very large push, self-propelled lawn mower that you can hook things up to, like plows and discs and such. You can also jimmy-rig it to pump water into rice sections so that they’re control-irrigated, and I’m sure there are other uses for the tractor engine. Much like farmers use to do years ago in the U.S., these tractors are multi-purpose tools that last decades with good maintenance. And also like how it use to be in the U.S., neighbors come round to help each other out when harvest season comes around, since they know none of them can harvest all their crop by themselves. Rice, while it can be planted anytime with the even weather in Thailand, has a short amount of time in can be harvested. Too late, and the rice stems will droop over and the rice seeds will begin to trickle our and onto the ground, ruining the harvest and cutting yields. Basically, there is a two-week window to harvest. After that, yield starts to drop off. Overall, we spent about an hour or two at Martin’s place, and it was well worth it. He was definitely one of those people you remember meeting.

After leaving Martin’s place, we drove to the nearby damn that is also a hydro-electric plant for the Khon Kaen Province. There, we had lunch and got to take some pictures. Afterward, we drove to a nearby Thai massage place and received a Thai massage for about two hours. It. Was. Amazing. After that, we gathered all of our things that we still had in Nam Phong and then drove back to Khon Kaen where Mitch and I could do some clothes shopping for our final banquet coming up in a week. The theme, we were told, was strictly white and red. Unfortunately this meant we had buy a completely new outfit. A couple hours later, we each had one, but it wasn’t easy or cheap, sadly. We drove back to the home we were staying at in Khon Kaen, ate dinner, and then rounded out the evening with the movie “The Great Debaters,” starring Denzel Washington. It was very good.

As I sit now, there are seven days left of my tour in Up with People. It’s sort of hard to imagine where the past five months have gone. In fact, it is almost five months exactly since this adventure started back in Denver. Doesn’t seem that long ago that I put my first entry into this blog. But never fear – I’ve got a few more to come. Right after Up with People concludes, I’m spending a few days in L.A. followed by a week and a half in Hawaii – woo hoo! Can’t complain about celebrating your 23rd birthday on a sandy beach in Hawaii. And then, of course, it’s back home to prepare for life after Up with People. So like any good story, there will need to be an “epilogue” chapter this Up with People tale.

Until my next post!

Dan