Airport, Internet Access, and Flying

This will probably be my last opportunity to blog before I return to the states.  I’m sitting in a little airport with free WiFi.  Free WiFi!  Can you believe it?!  In the US, I would be paying about $10 for this access.

Anyway, we are going to fly the national airlines from here to a well-known city down south.  From there, we’ll take a short tour of that city and then fly back to Bangkok for our flight home to New York.

After 16+ hours we are here

Well, after a 16 hour bus ride, we finally arrvied in our 2nd country and destination.  I’ll blog more with pictures when I get home; however, the trip was a trip.  Here is a teaser:  about 1/2 the bus was full of “stuff” crossing the border.  About 1/2 the people on the bus had to sit on the floor.  We stopped in the middle of the night until the border crossing opened.  The bus stopped about every hour to offload “stuff.”  Although, the actual crossing was easy (even though it took 2 hours).

Country #2

I said I was going to be going into several other countries while I was gone.  Well, I’m in #2 at the moment.  When I get home, I’ll write more.

Kids

It wasn’t on the schedule but all of us over here watching the kids for the people at the conference voluntered to watch their kids tonight so they could go out, if they wanted to.  Not everyone took advantage of the opportunity, but the ones that did really appreciated the time together.  If you ever go anywhere to watch kids, this is certainly something you should think about doing.

Feeling Better

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m feeling better.  I took some Sudafed, went to bed earlier, and ran some saline solution through my nose.  Thanks for the prayers.

More Travel

I just wanted to take a few minutes to update everyone.  Tomorrow (Wednesday) I leave Chaing Mai to travel to Bangkok.  From there, I’ll be traveling up to Ubon Ratheni (sp) and on to several other places before returning to Bangkok.  I don’t know how internet access will be while I’m gone, so I may be out of touch for a few days.  I’ll try and update the blog with some more pictures and texst before I leave; however, I may or may not get time.

Sick

Several of us are sick (I think I have the beginnings of a cold or something small).  Pray for us that we would continue to be effective.

Wat Prathat Doi Suthep

Several days ago (I don’t remember when right now) we went to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep (a Bhudist Temple).  I’m in the process of uploading some pictures as I’m typing.  I won’t get them all up, but I’ll do a few.

This was my first visit to a Bhudist place…as I was there, I was struck by the sadness of it all.  These people praying to these idols (statues or Budda).  I’m not real sure what they believe; however, they are following a false religion.  The temple, in general, reminded me of a Catholic church.  There were all sorts of boxes around asking for donations for this and that.  There were all sorts of insense sticks, candles, etc… for sale.  And nothing these people do matters…they are deceived by Satan.

I’ll post some more about our visit (and more pictures) later. 

Laundry

I didn’t have room for 2 weeks worth of clothes, so I decided in advance that I would get them washed here.  I figured it would be cheap; however, I didn’t know what the situation would be.  The hotel we are staying in charges something like 40 baht to wash a tshirt.  Outrageous.  Across the street from the hotel, there is a place that charges 40 baht per kilogram.

I took my laundry over tonight, I’ll get it back tomorrow night, and the whole weeks worth of dirties cost me 148 baht (a tad over $5).  I’m sure I could have found it cheaper; however, this was convienient and not too bad.  I’ll let you know how it comes out tomorrow.

Calling the US

I had a friend here loan me a spare cell phone while I’m here.  I decided to see how much a call to the US was.  Turns out, it is 10 baht per minute (at the current exchange rates, that is about 30 cents per minute).  That is almost better (if not better than) what Cyndi can call me for.  So, I talked to her tonight…that was great.

For those that don’t know, you can call an international number by dialing <Int’l Access Code> + <Country Code> + <number>.  On a cell phone, you can replace <Int’l Access Code> with a + character.  And the US country code is simply 1.  So, to dial a US number from here, it looks like +1xxxxxxxxxx (where xxxxxxxxxx is the normal phone number for the person).  It is super easy to call internationally on a cell.