"okay, lady, you buy! okay? ten for one dollar, okaaaay, you buy!"

I heart Cambodia. So hard.

"okay, lady, you buy! okay? ten for one dollar, okaaaay, you buy!"

I heart Cambodia so hard.

Today we drove two hours north of Bangkok to visit an AIDS hospice in the Lopburi province. It was as sobering as I expected, but not as...voyeuristic as I feared. They clearly had the little campus set up for visitors: there were big displays with information about about AIDS in Thailand and a couple of one room museums displaying bodies and body parts were aimed at reminding visitors to be careful with their bodies and that the victims of AIDS are people like anyone else. Ihave to admit, I found the displays more gruesome than edifying, but I do apprecaite what they were going for.

Then we had a big change of pace and stopped by the monkey temple, where a group(tribe? whatever) of monkeys have taken up residence in the ruins of a Khmer Temple..seeing the ruins got me really excited for Angkor Wat, and the monkey swere pretty cool, although I was careful to keep my distance (no monkey diesases for me, thanks).

Tomorrow, a 12 hours bus ride to Siem Reap and Cambodia!

APSW/Koh Chang

After I wrote that last post about the frustration at my placement, we had a great, great day on Thursday. Orasa, one of the CCS staff, came with Dana and I and we spoke to one of the women (only 14, it's hard for me not to call her a girl, but with all she's been through it doesn't seem right) who stays at the Emergency Home. She had a very sad story, but I felt like (and Dana agreed) that it was really important for us to hear it because it brought everything we were doing into perspective. You can be told that the women who receive support from APSW are victims of rape and abuse and HIV, but to hear about one life and see how the organization has given her the tools to make a life after being raped and becoming pregnant at age 12 made appreciate working with the kids even more. So that was awesome, I hope every CCS volunteer who goes to APSW gets a chance to do that.

For the weekend I went with 9 other kids to Koh Chang, an island in the Gulf of Thailand close to Cambodia. It was so, so beautiful. I can't even articulate how amazing it was to wake up literally 30 feet from the ocean. We spent all day Saturday snorkeling, which I've never done before. That was great too (aside from the cockroach population on the boat that took us out, ewwww). I don't have the time right now to describe it, but if I can figure out my camera, I'll try to post pictures soooooooooon.

A week and half already?

I realized, thanks to Caitlin's comment, that I haven't actually written about volunteering yet, which is ostensibly the reason I'm here. I guess part of that is because it's been kind of a disappointment so far. I'm working at a women's organization that includes an emergency home for abused and abandoned women, many of them pregnant, and a clinic and training center, all very cool things. So far, however, I haven't had any contact with the women or gotten to observe pre-natal classes or help out in the clinic, which were all things I was hoping to do (and I've been trying to ask, but no luck so far). On the other hand, I do get to play with little Thai kids in the daycare in the morning and Thai babies (by far the best part of the day) most afternoons, although sometimes I end up practicing English with some of the staff. There's not a lot of structure, though, so it's sometimes hard to know what to do, and I occasionally wonder whether I'm not more of a distraction than a help, especially in the daycare.

In other news, we're going to the beach and to ride elephants this weekend! Tomorrow night we hop an over night bus for the coast and catch the first morning ferry to Ko Chang, an island that's part of a national park. There's a big elephant preserve and for something like $25 you get an elephant "experience" that includes feeding, riding, and bathing them. So pumped!

Winning the battle

Small victory of the day: taking a cab home from Chatuchak all by myself, with just my very basic Thai and my love of airconditioning guiding me

Small defeat of the day: I have a cold. It's 90 degrees out and I have a COLD? Boo.

wats and massages, hooray

Hard to believe I've been here a week already--it's flying by, probably because I'm so busy. I've already seen three of Fodor's Top 25 To Do/See in Bangkok, a book that Mark's parent's gave me. Yesterday we saw the Grand Palace where the King used to live, the wat that houses the most sacred Buddha image in Thailand, the Emerald Buddha, and another wat that houses the Reclining Buddha, which is 46 metters long and 20 meters high (to give you an idea of how big that is, one of his feet is bigger than my twin bed at home). I'm going to try and post some pictures, but I have a hard time with that so far, so we'll see.

Last night one of the guys in the house, Alex, and I went to the Thai massage parlor down teh street and got hour long massages for 150 baht (about 5 dollars). It was amazing--kind of like Western massage, but they also stretch your limbs out, which I loved. I'm sure I'll be back several times before I leave Bangkok. The women at the massage parlor were so cute. They speak enough English to have a little conversation with us, and they loved my hair cut. One said she wanted to follow me to America so she could get the same hair cut (so good work, Julia :)) We'd planned to go out for drinks or something after massages, but we were sooo relaxed that we ended up just coming back to the house to hangout in the air con and watch Babel. And I won't lie, it was great to have some down time.

Today it's off to the weekend market, and who knows what else the weekend holds!

Lists

Things I like about Thailand so far:
weird fruit like lychee, mangosteens, long gong, and dragonfruit
tuk-tuks!
cheapness of almost everything (fifty minute taxi ride = $5, then split that five ways...)
everyone smiles at me even when I have no idea what's going on
new friends

Things I don't like:
air pollution
traffic
pitting out every shirt I wear

Here I am

Going on 36 hours in this lovely and HOT country. The program is so well organized: after a delay in getting picked up from the airport (at least I didn't miss my flight like one girl did!) things have been very smooth. I'm bunking in a room with five other women and we have our own bathroom, then there are three other similar sized rooms. The house is beautiful and, even more importantly, has air con!

Yesterday morning we were sent out on what amounted to a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood, learning to navigate and negotiate with very little or no Thai. The neighborhood (part of the Bangsue district in north-central Bangkok) is very Thai--when we took the Skytrain downtown in the afternoon we realized how few tourists we saw in Bangsue compared with downtown. We spent the afternoon traveling by subway, skytrain (made me miss the El in Chicago, although it's WAY cleaner here) and river taxi, then saw Wat Arun (the Temple of Dawn) before a course after course dinner. Some people finished the night by going to a pingpong show....

My strongest Macalester-bred instincts had something serious to say about what is, in my opinion, dangerously close to sex tourism and I had to work pretty hard to keep my mouth shut and stay off my soap box re: women's rights, opression via exploitation, responsible tourism, etc. etc. etc. I think i managed not to come off as a huge prude, but obviously did not go. Instead I went out to a little bar near the house with a few other people and mostly chilled out and chatted. It's really an interesting group of people, but that's a topic for another entry.

Love from Thailand.

t-minus less than 24 hours!

Oh man. At this time tomorrow I'll be sitting at a gate in the SeaTac airport, hopefully post coffee/breakfast with Gesse (somehow I scheduled myself a SIX HOUR layover in Seattle, but luckily I have wonderful friends there to visit me at the airport) and also hopefully sleeping, with just an hour to go until my flight takes off for Tokyo!

Mark and I decided to try and stay up all night tonight to help me get adjusted to the time changed--my five-thirty am flight out of Spokane leaves at what would be eight-thirty pm Bangkok time, which means I get to Bangkok at 8:30 am Spokane time, right when I need to be going to sleep. Eeep! So if I stay up alllll night I can sleep on the flight to Tokyo which is sort of approximately night time in Bangkok. I think if I were doing this all over, I'd plan to arrive at least a day early, because getting up at 7:30 for a full day of orientation is not going to be easy.

I'm so excited to go! There's just no way I can know what it'll be like until I get there, and I'm ready to find out :)

Also, if you're lurking--leave a comment! I'll be happy to know I'm not just writing into empty space (or send me an email, I think it's hard to comment on blogger?)