Week 1 - Jesicah

Dear friends and family,

Day two of our Thailand adventure begins with a snail spotting that was literally bigger than my fist. Let me backtrack a bit…David and I have arrived in Khao Lak for a month of volunteering. He will be building playgrounds while I teach English to the locals. We left Los Angeles Thursday night, arrived in Bangkok Saturday morning, spent 10 hours sightseeing, jumped on another plan to Phuket, caught a taxi to take us an hour and a half north to Khao Lak. When we finally arrived, it was Saturday evening. We quickly found a room and collapsed. At 7:30 the next morning (Sunday), we ran down to the beach and took a morning swim. David begged and pleaded that we change our room so that we could be down by the beach. Although it was a little over our planned budget for rent, I agreed knowing inside that I secretly would also love to have the beach and pool minutes outside our room. As such, David and I are staying a resort right on the beach. It’s absolute bliss but more expensive than we planned to spend…guess we’ll just live off of rice and more rice for awhile.

We’ve met up with both our volunteer coordinators and have orientation in an hour; we start work tomorrow. And now for a few of my observations:

• The heat here is unimaginable…I think it’s worse than when I was in Kenya but I may have just forgotten how hot it was there. I’m in a constant sweat. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to teach in a shirt with sleeves tomorrow. Pit stains are inevitable I guess.
• Bangkok was enjoyable but we were both glad to leave. We saw the grand palace and then took a canal trip around to see the sites. It always strikes me how povety and wealth and so closely bundled together in big metropolitan cities. For example, a big mansion nestled right next to a trash dump with children looking for loot. An impressive yacht tied next to a boat made out of a log. Although the juxtaposition is no different than in Los Angeles , seeing if from a different lense makes stop and consider. Oh, anyone hear about the swine flu outbreak in Bangkok ? We kept seeing people with face masks on and assumed people were overly cautious in Bangkok . We later found out that over a 1,000 cases of swine flu had broken out recently in Bangkok . Luckily we both feel fine….guess we should have read a newspapers before getting there!
• The town we are staying in is defninitely in the middle of low season. This is great because it means our room is about half the price it would normally be. Unfortunately, we are realizing that there are few people who speak English proficiently. I think David and I are both silently wondering when we will get sick of each other!

The rest of the day seems pretty relax. We have orientation in a few minutes, then we’re heading to the store to stock up on breakfast foods (oh, mom, you’ve taught us well), then we’ll probably head back to the beach for some more body surfing. The locals continually warn us against swimming in the ocean because the spirits from the tsunami are still there and will pull you in from your feet (anyone ever heard of under tow?). We politely thank them for their wisdom and then go back to swimming. Between the two of us, I’m not too worried about the “tsunami spirits.”