To Burma.... and Beyond!

After the boys left last week, things were pretty quiet, as usual I went to the Preschool in the mornings, took Thai lessons in the afternoons, and taught English in the evenings. Kim Quinley, one of the founders of Step Ahead and a close friend of my family's, came up for a quick visit on Thursday and we went out for pizza and beer and had a delightful conversation.

Saturday morning, however, brought a very interesting string of events. I was informed, much to my surprise, that we would be leaving for a camping trip for the weekend. So I loaded up my purse with water, my ipod, my camera, my bible, and my sunscreen, and we were off. I rode in the back of the truck to make sure our precariously stacked camping supplies didn't fly out the back, and we drove to Thaptawan village to pick up a group of teenage girls Meaw has been working with for the last five years. They all hopped in the back with me and we drove to a national park about an hour and a half away. It was gorgeous up there, we had gone from beach to rainforest in a short distance. The first order of business was setting up the tents. I set up ours, only later, much to my chagrin, to realize too late that I'd put it right on top of an anthill, and halfway through the night we were under full attack!

The next morning, we took the climb up to a famous waterfall. On the way, as Gai (one of the girls here) and I were passing a shallow river, I looked in the water and saw that it was literally teeming with fish. There were so many it seemed like I could actually just reach in and grab one, so I decided to try it. I asked Gai if it was safe to get in the water, and she said yes. So I stepped off the riverbank and into the water, only to suddenly have my leg sucked under water! I lost my footing and my other leg started sinking too, and, suddenly terrified, I realized I was in sinking sand. As I started to sink, I noticed a root sticking out of the river bank, and thankfully, after a big struggle, was able to pull myself out of the sand. I reached back into the sand to find my sandal, and miraculously, I did. After I'd collected myself a little, we continued on up to the waterfall... a gorgeous place that, for me, was very reminiscent of Glacier Park (with much nicer weather). While we were camping we ate white rice and tuna with tomato sauce (I had just white rice!) and tried to ration out our water, as we only had one 5 gallon jug for 13 people. While camping has never been a personal favorite of mine (at home, for me, camping means a bonfire and a tent in the backyard... and when the mosquitoes get bad you can go sleep in the house), but there were some really cool moments with the girls. Raised Buddhist, they are shockingly open to Christianity... thanks, likely, in large part to Maew's amazing influence over the last five years. A few of the girls even asked me to pray for them and share with them about Love, so that was a really neat opportunity for me.

Sunday evening we finally packed up the truck and headed home. I'd gotten a little too much sun over the weekend so I wrapped myself up in a sheet and looked quite ridiculous sitting in the back of the truck with all the girls. It was a fun ride, and I was very happy to get home, take a shower, and see the ocean again.

Monday brought another week at the preschool and my final week of English lessons-- or so I thought, until Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning, Maew was mysteriously absent from our morning prayer meetings, until I heard a raucous coming down the stairs and saw her with a big suitcase (Maew is getting married on the 18th and has been preparing to move to Holland with her husband after the wedding). Curious, I asked her what she was doing, and she replied with "I'm moving all my stuff back to my hometown. Did you want to go to Burma today? I'm leaving in 15 minutes." A bit flabbergasted, I told her I would need to think and pray about it a bit before I gave her an answer, so I went upstairs, got out my passport and started to pray. Feeling very certain I should go, I put some clothes, my sunscreen, my ipod and my bible in my backpack and we left. It's a long and windy road in the back of the truck, but I wasn't going to complain because I was grateful for a big block of time to read, as I was almost finished reading my bible. Two weeks ago I felt it very impressed upon my heart that I needed to read the bible cover to cover. It seemed like a very big task at the time, but as I continued to read, I became more and more fascinated, and the book truly came alive to me.

Just as I started reading Revelations, we arrived in Ranong, Meaw's hometown and border to Burma. As we entered the city limits, I felt like I was hit in the head by an 80lb brick. The spiritual atmosphere in the city was crazy... I felt so much oppression and immediately felt this inexplicable sense of depression and, something I've never really felt before, actual and immediate terror. Being pretty adventurous, and having travelled a lot by myself, I don't really get very scared when I have to do things by myself, but all of a sudden, the thought of being in this place and going into Burma completely terrified me. The girls decided to get lunch together before they dropped me off on the border, where I'd have to get on a boat and go down the river. As they said goodbye, I prayed hard as a man lead me down to a huge cluster of extremely questionable boats, handed me an umbrella to protect me from the sun and started the long process of untangling his boat from all the others. Soon enough, we were off, floating down the river to Burma.

I decided that there would be no better place to finish reading my Bible than right there, so I started reading. At 4:39 on February 23, 2010, at 21 years old, I finished reading my bible cover to cover in eleven days. Never really having been a reader, I can't really describe the feeling of accomplishment I felt... partly because it was by far the fattest book I'd ever read, and also because the Bible had always seemed so boring, old, and tired to me. I thought it was something for old people, or pastors, or whatever, but not for me. I was shocked, amazed, and fascinated though that I found something that spoke right to me in almost every book. When I got to Proverbs, then Galatians, then 1 and 2 Peter I felt like it was talking right to me, and I loved what it had to say.

After stopping several times along the way and praying that this random person taking my passport would, indeed, bring it back, I finally made it to the Burmese border. As I got off the boat, I was met by a hoard of men who could say "I love you, will you marry me," "America" and "Obama" in English... and had no problem practicing it on me. They were all reaching out and touching me, crowding around me, and I was just praying for protection the whole time I tried to dodge and swerve my way through them. I walked to the border office, gave them a crisp ten dollar bill, had my photo taken, then walked out of the office with a stamp and a 10 day Burmese visa. Having no desire whatsoever to stay in Burma, however, I wove my way through the "I love you's" back to the boat and jumped on, this time with several other men on board... their motives being somewhat questionable. We stopped along the river several times to drop people and packages off along the way and, in retrospect, I'm pretty positive that they were drug dealers. When we finally pulled back up to the dock at Ranong, I was so happy that I had arrived safely. After just one more marriage proposal, I had my renewed Thai visa and we were on our way.

That night, we stayed in Maew's parents' house in the village where she grew up. When we got there, I was instantly reminded of the village in Hunan province of China that I'd stayed at two winters before at about the same time. Conditions were almost exactly the same, minus the freezing cold, for which I was very grateful. Though my Thai isn't very good and none of them spoke English, I made quite a few friends, the grandma doted on me much like any grandparent, cracking my crab legs for me, feeding me until I about burst, the whole works. She also had a precious niece, she was about three and we were joined at the hip until we returned to Khao Lak. While we were in the village we made wedding preparations, picked out photo op spots, and went to an awesome morning market to have breakfast. Maew's niece rode in the back of the truck on my lap and then took me on a tour of the market... it was totally cute. The next day we finally packed up and decided to head back to Khao Lak. After a very long and hot trip back, we arrived just in time for me to teach my last English class and say goodbye to my students.

Since then I've been eating, drinking, and making merry... going to the beach as much as possible, and trying to soak up Thailand as best as I can in the next few days, as I just purchased my plane ticket for China, and will be leaving here on Friday morning. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more later!