this new adventure

I realize it's been a long while since I've blogged. Sorry about that. Here's a run down of my time up until Koh Jum. I've been writing this as I go, just haven't posted it due to lack of wireless and such.

THURSDAY - November 25th
Wow. It's been a crazy few days. So good, but so full. I am worrrn out.
Left home on the night train to Delhi on Tuesday. I left 1 day before the Murrays because my ticket is multi-destination and so it was quite a bit cheaper to fly on the 24th, rather then the 25th. Go figure. I was in a bunker room with a really nice little family and one other business man. The couple was so sweet. They had a little 2 year old girl. She was a cutie. She also had a mind of her own. And that mind of hers was n.o.t. going to sleep if she had anything to do about it. She screamed and screamed. And then screamed some more. Eventually the mom got up, turned on the light, whipped her shirt up, and gave her a "snack". Hmm…ok. Whatever works I guess :) The mama was super kind and we became friends pretty quickly. She spoke quite a bit of english, as well as her husband, so we talked quite a bit. They insisted I share the dinner that they brought with them. They pulled it out about 9:30, which is around when Indians would generally eat dinner. I, of course, had already eaten but they insisted. It was delicious, but gave me horrible diarrhea...not so fun when traveling. Guess it was worth it for the friendship though. Made it Delhi about 8:00am Wednesday morning. God is so good, and it turned out that Amanda Wherry was going to be in Delhi the same day that I was. (how crazy is that??) And so we had planned a couple weeks before to hang out during the day. It was SOO good to see her! We had lots of fun. Amanda, Katie, Asan, (2 of her friends) Will, and I hung out all day. Will showed us around Delhi and took us to some of his favorite places. My flight to Bangkok wasn't until 1:10am…so it was a very full and long day, but really great. Will graciously dropped me at the airport around 11:00. I made it to my gate and eventually on my flight pretty smoothly.

I thought that I would HATE traveling alone…honestly I was not real excited about it at all. I've gone back and forth to Delhi on the train and stuff, but I've never really liked the idea of flying alone. I don't know why, I just don't. In the end though, I really didn't mind it all. You definitely meet some interesting people. Interesting in good ways and also a few, ya know, just interesting. While I was sitting at my gate waiting to board, I struck up a conversation with the people sitting across from me. I came to find out that they are originally from Germany and had just spent a week in India, and now were on their way to Thailand. I asked them how they liked India. This lady's response was so quick and so harsh I don't think I'll ever forget it- "Hated it! Every second of it. The food, the people, the cities, everything. I will never go back. Not ever again."
Well, ok then. She then proceeded to ask me how long I had been there and what I thought about it. My response- "well, I've been here 5 ½ months and love it. The food, the people, the city I live in, all of it. It's going to be hard to leave." She just sat there and stared at me in shock.
Guess everyone has their own opinions.

Me and my exhausted self, got to Bangkok about 7:00am this morning. Uncle Tim had graciously hooked us up with some friends of his that are living in Bangkok, who so kindly agreed to help me with my China Visa that day. They offered to have their friend pick me up from the airport and go with me to the embassy. It was a huge blessing all the way around. The couple that I had connected with here, are actually missionaries from Singapore. Their friend that picked me up from the airport is originally from China. He has been in Bangkok about a year and a half. He's in the process of getting his Masters. Stanley and Linda live on the AIT campus, and that is how they met each other. Their friend, Qi, was extremely helpful, and so sweet to take time out of his day to help me out. He met me at the airport, and we headed straight to the Chinese embassy. It was a blessing to have him with me, as they all spoke Mandarin. I clearly don't. But Qi does! He was great, and it was all so simple. I handed them 2 copies of the visa application and my passport, she looked them over, stamped them, and said to be back by 3:00pm. According to Qi and Stanley, that never happens. Thank you, Jesus for being in the details! I went back with Qi to the AIT campus, had lunch with Stanley and Linda, got a tour of the campus, and headed back with Qi to pick up the visa. We barely made it back in time! The embassy closes at 4:30, and due to horrible traffic, we cut it pretty darn close. In the end we jumped out of the taxi and ran the rest of the way there because traffic was so bad. Got the Visa, found our taxi again,(that was interesting) and headed to the hotel where I was supposed to meet up with the rest of the gang. Got to the hotel, checked in…surprised and thankful that they let me….and waited for everybody else. They all showed up around 10:00pm, we all had some dinner and everyone else headed to bed. I will be in to join them very shortly. :)

FRIDAY - November 26th
Mel and I had planned to spend most of the afternoon shopping. We had to find appropriate clothing for us all to wear to the wedding, since none us had anything nice enough to bring with. Not on this side of the ocean anyway. We figured it would be pretty simple. Sounded simple anyway. It was a h.u.g.e mall and we just needed to find, dresses, shoes, pants and shoes for the boys, and shoes for Dave. Fairly easy when you have the entire afternoon and evening right? Wrong. It proved to actually be a very hard task. We also needed to figure out phone service for the next month and get all the Visa paperwork sent somehow. We thought those would be the harder things, and the clothes would be easy. It was actually the complete opposite. We got those two things knocked out fairly quickly and easily. Then came the clothes.

Ok, 1st of all, you have the exact opposite of India, and not only is it culturally acceptable to wear shorts, apparently the only shorts females wear are barely even there. When you hold em up, they're about 2in long all together. Apparently this carries over into dresses as well. EVERY dress was sooo short. If we were going clubbing that night we would have been all set, with any color and style to choose from, however, it seemed almost impossible to find one acceptable to wear to a wedding. Long story short (after trying on what felt like the entire mall) we finally decided to just wear black leggings underneath. This opened up a whole new world of options and we found a couple of dresses. Not the cutest thing I've ever worn, but it worked. And I was just glad to be done. And have something that actually covered my booty :) Dave's shoes were pretty funny to find. Long story short, we ended up walking into countless shoe stores and had many a conversation that went something like this- "Will you please show me the biggest size shoe you have in brown? No, I don't really care what it looks like, I just want the biggest one you have." I guess his foot is significantly bigger then most Thai men's. It was pretty funny. The boys pants proved to be much, much harder then expected as well. Oh well. We got it done eventually, and in there somewhere at various times, we had a doughnut, a BEEF cheeseburger, and Cold Stone ice cream. 3 things we haven't had since we left home. In my opinion that made it alllll worth it. We made it back to the hotel about 8:00pm, Mel and Dave went and had dinner and hangout time with everyone, and the boys and I hung out back at the room. All in all, it turned out to be quite the day.

SATURDAY
Today was the wedding!! It was neat to experience a traditional Thai ceremony and then see how they blended the two cultures for the reception. It was a beautiful wedding! So happy for Isaac and Ravi as they start their new life together.

SUNDAY
Mel and the boys and I hung out at the shopping center while Dave made a trip to the train station to try and figure out how we were going to make the 12+ hour trip to Koh Jum, where we would be staying for the next few weeks.
In this shopping center there was a huge supermarket…lets just say it had been a while since any of us had stepped foot inside anything even remotely close. It was a Big C supermarket which is comparable to a Walmart. We were all in wonder at the huge deli, large selection of veggies, real milk, many choices of cereal…and well, just about the whole store. For about an hour we sort of felt like we were at home. We decided life in India would simply just be too easy with a supermarket. Ha. What would we do without the 3 hour grocery runs where you may, or may not, actually find what you were looking for at the various 3-4 little shops you go to? :)

Dave met us back at the store with the news that he had purchased overnight tickets on the train. So we went back to the hotel, packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed to the train station. Getting to the station, finding our train, loading up, etc. turned out to be much easier and simpler then we had imagined. I guess we were all picturing the Indian railway stations…let's just say they're a little bit crazy.
The Bangkok station was very nice, clean, and not too crowded. We loaded up and got situated for the next 12 or so hours.

The train proved to be fairly simple, but it was the getting off, and the next 6-7 hours that we did't really anticipate to be so hard. And long.
1st of all, the train stops for a total of 2 minutes at every small platform along it's route. Tarat Thani is where we needed to get off, and it is indeed, a very small platform. They also do not feel the need to let passengers on board the train know which platform we happened to be stopping at. So you just guess. Or maybe they do let people know, but we don't speak Thai and so we wouldn't know even if they did. Very possible. Anyway, so we decided to just go by the time. We were supposed to arrive at 4:35am. So at 4:30 we were very quickly trying to get all our luggage through the small isles and to the door by 4:35. We failed. Thankfully that was not our stop. We didn't really know that at the time though. Thinking we most likely missed it, we decided to just sit by the doors with our luggage and get off at the next stop. About 20 min later the train stopped. I jumped off, Dave started throwing me luggage, Mel jumped off with the boys, and Dave followed up the rear. It was quite a sight I'm sure. Have I mentioned its 5:00am? We were all a little bit out of it.
Where we got off was a little platform in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere…but it was in fact Tarat Thani. We went and found the "bus station", aka the little shack in the middle of nowhere close to the little train platform in the middle of nowhere. We purchased tickets there, and then loaded up in a van that took us to the bus station. We had about an hour at the station before our bus was scheduled to leave. 1st of all, this bus station was seriously sketchy. 2nd, it was very early in the morning. 3rd, while waiting for ours, we watched about 4 buses arrive and unload. Almost every individual getting of the bus was completely and totally drunk. Apparently the bus ride had been hard on them or something…I don't know. Still trying to figure that one out. Made for an interesting hour at the bus station though, I can tell you that.

We took a 2 ½ hour bus ride, unloaded at another station, took yet another van to some other place, then loaded up into the back of a pickup truck who took us to the pier. After about an hour at the pier we loaded up onto the ferry. Took a 45 min ride on the ferry and then transferred from the ferry to a local long tail fishing boat when we got close to the Island, and they brought us in. All in all let's just say it was a very l.o.n.g. process to get from Bangkok to the Island.

It all seemed worth it when we got there though. I have never seen anything so pretty. Beautiful in every sense of the word. I was on the Island for 2 weeks and was constantly in awe of our Maker's creation. The beauty in His creation is like a reflection of His face to me. And I loved being surrounded by it.

We stayed in little bungalows right on the beach. I guess you could compare it to camping in a lot of ways, although we did have a bed. Mel and Dave slept in one bungalow, and the boys and I in another. Every bungalow had one room (that was literally almost entirely filled up with the bed), a bathroom(that was half outside) with running water (most of the time), and electricity (some of the time). Kind of the bare essentials, but it worked. I liked it. You hardly spent any time other then sleeping in the bungalow anyway since you spent most of your time at the beach, so it didn't really matter.

It was a great 2 weeks filled with the beach, the mountains, kayaking, delicious food, beach volleyball, motorbikes into town (THERE'S a story for ya. Ha.), Joe's little snack shack, super friendly people, fishing, a couple trips into Krabi, and just enjoying God's creation.

I didn't have internet, but I did journal a little bit every day. I'll let that two weeks be in the next post since this one's already a mile long. :)