Friday, May 25, 2007
May 26, 2007 12:29 PM

Greg and I were up at 5:30AM to finish packing for the trip to Chang Mai, about 9 hours north of Bangkok. Our family’s driver, Suraupan, drove us to the Holy Redeemer church where the 2 busses were already waiting for us. I made a quick pit stop at the 7/11 to pick up some snacks and )very important) deodorant. While on the way, I gave Mitch a long tutorial session about all the cool things he didn’t know about his black Macbook, there was my good deed for the day. We made several stops along the way; the lunch stop was at a “Thai Truck Stop” where you could go and order food buffet style, I had rice, fried egg, and some spicy chicken (very spicy, I was sweating even worse than fromthe outside temperature in the mid to upper 30’s). For the bulk of the rest of the trip I took the splendid, and few and far between opportunity to catch up on some sleep.
Its kind of ironic that today, travel day for me, is also travel day for Miranda, she’s going with her mom to Nova Scotia to work for the summer today. I hope all is well.
The drive to Chang mai was a little rough at times, the bus driver made sure to make full use of the horn. We did eventually arrive though. We unloaded the busses and picked up our allocation information. Our schedules are very decorative, with recycled paper covers, and bound with a traditional straw string. After our meeting and briefing, we went outside, there there was a baby Elephant! My host family was in a bit of a rush so we set straight away, there will be other elephants to get my picture taken with. My host mom and dad are both teachers at local schools, they have two children. Their daughter, 25, is married and lives in Belgium while their son, 17 lives with them and is finishing high school. They live about 20 minutes out of town. They have 2 houses, one is the one for their daughter and is located in the middle of a mango and banana orchard. My host brother Dew, and I walked there last night in the dark, There were fireflies everywhere. Thursday was my host dad’s birthday, but they decided to wait and celebrate it when I arrived. We went out to supper to a really nice kind of restaurant, It was open air, and on the second floor of a wooden building, there was a live band and they were playing english music, including some Red Hot Chili Peppers (Also Very Ironic). The food was very spicy as I have come to expect from the Thai culture. I also got to try some Thai beer, they explained to me that what I had was the darkest beer they served there, but to me it was the colour of watered down apple juice. Another interesting thing to note about Thai culture is that they always serve ice in their beer because otherwise it would get warm too easily. I’m trying to take it easy these next few days because I’m trying to fight off a throat infection. Anyhow, they gave me an awesome welcome to Chang Mai, I already know I like this place more than Bangkok.
Their main house is a simple one, I’ll take some pictures later so you can see what I mean. The construction is actually quite similar to what you might expect to find at the Choir Camp I work at each summer. They don’t themselves have internet, but if I go to the room closest to the street, I can just barely get a signal, which is awesome because I was completely not expecting to find any at all. Now I know I’ll have internet for the rest of the trip. Its all Good™.