Sky Train Success

Thursday: Here I sit at Siam Paragon waiting for time to head to Bekah and Josh's house for dinner. The Barbees left this morning for Roi Et leaving me to navigate Bangkok on my own. I am happy to say, I have done excellent! I went to the mall we ate at yesterday for lunch and had mango sticky rice with a mixed berry banana smoothie. This is a cool mall because each floor is decorated as a different location. I think one floor is Greece, one is Istanbul, Japan, and San Francisco. Pretty interesting and unique. After looking around there, I got back on the sky train and went to Lumphini Park. This is a beautiful park with monitor lizards all around! Pretty cool. I walked around there for a while and then took the sky train to the fanciest of all malls, Siam Paragon. Well, I don't really know if it's the fanciest, but I do know it is way out of my league! It is a beautiful mall though. In ten minutes I'm going to board the sky train again to head over to meet the Hilts.

My first day in Bangkok started with arriving at 8:35am, meeting Chris, heading to the church where I'm currently staying, and meeting the rest of the Barbee family. Then started my very busy day! We've been on and off the sky train all week. It is the fastest mode of transportation across Bangkok. We took that to the river where we continued on in a boat. We went to a couple of different temples (Wat Pho, the Grand Palace, and the temple of the Emerald Buddha) and saw lots of Buddhas. They were beautiful temples! Our goal was to stop by the Lumphini park on the way home, but unfortunately I had hit my max and was about to fall asleep. I went hard that first day after not having slept for more than 3 hours on the one and a half day plane journey! We got home around 4 and I took an hour nap before going out for dinner with the Barbees. What was my first dinner in Thailand you ask? Pizza! Hahaha. That's what they really wanted that day and that was more than fine with me. Besides, I had a Thai lunch on the river, some type of rice with sweet fried chicken pieces I think. It was yummy.

Tuesday brought on another very busy day! I started out babysitting little baby John while the rest of the family ran an errand for paperwork. Once they were finished, we went to the Terminal 21 mall, that I mentioned in the first paragraph, for lunch. After lunch I got off the sky train at Siam Paragon to explore while the rest went home for kid naps. Chris met me back in front of this mall and we journeyed on to another mall where we bought a Sim card for my phone and got it working with like a prepaid 200 minutes and 5 GB data plan! All for less than $10!! From there we headed over to the Jim Thompson House & Museum for a tour. He was an American who was sent to Thailand as a military officer after World War II and fell in love with Thailand. He combined 6 teak buildings to make his home. The tour takes you through these buildings and shows you his huge art collection. There was also a silk making demonstration to see! It was a pretty cool tour! After the tour we rushed off to a park to meet and hang out with Bekah and Josh. Since it was so hot outside, they took us inside a mall with an outdoorsy garden-type floor! It was beautiful! After chatting with them for a while we had to get moving again for dinner at another American family's place. Oddly enough, they were Texas as well! They were super nice and it was phenomenal getting to sit in on the very authentic conversation about the good, the bad, and the ugly of life as we experience it. Wonderful night for sure.

Wednesday... Man, I feel like I've written a book so far and I've only covered three days?! I HAVE been super busy! Well, we were originally planning to take the whole family out to the zoo, but due to our very busy Tuesday and late night out, the kids were wiped out. Chris and I decided to go to the Crocodile Farm. Very cool place. Well, besides the fact that it was a little rundown and smelly in places. They had monkeys, birds, tigers, bears, reptiles, elephants, and crocs there. The croc show was CRAZY! Those guys would go around the tank poking crocs to see which one they would harass. The crocs snapped and moved away, but the men would grab one by the tail and drag him to the center. They threw money it's mouth, picked it all back out, picked at his tongue, and his throat flap. They put their heads in the croc's mouth and everything! All while being hilarious about it all! They ended the show by each picking one to wrestle into submission to be held by them! It was very entertaining! After that show we went to watch the elephant show. The elephants were so cute! They danced, sat on their rumps, walked a tightrope, and one even painted a picture! I saw a video like that on Youtube once, but never imagined I'd see it in real life! Plus, I even bought the painting to bring home with me for next to nothing! I love it! We also got to take a short elephant ride too! So much fun! After that, we grabbed some lunch- chicken fried rice with an egg on the side. It hit the spot. Before leaving, we went to see the large area of crocs and I even got to drop a big chunk of raw chicken down to feed them. It was pretty cool! After leaving there, we were going to go one more place, but it ended up being too expensive for our limited amount of time to be there. Maybe next time Bangkok. It had been a hot day, so once I got back I took a short cat nap before my evening activities started. Dora and I went to a huge culture play called Siam Niramit. We started out exploring the grounds which are set up to illustrate the cultures of different regions within Thailand. Then we got to eat at this huge buffet with foods from different regions. That was pretty yummy. We caught some of the preshow dancing out in the courtyard and then headed in for the main show. It was amazing! Such beautiful props and scenery! The first half depicted music, scenery, and dancing from the different regions of Thailand. The second half really gave you an idea of Thai beliefs. It was very interesting. It contained three scenes: hell, the in between mystical forest, and the heavens. All around the music, scenes, colors, dances, all of it, was just such an amazing vibrant show. We left there to the subway to head home. It was a late night, but so fun! Stayed up even later enjoying conversation and laughter with visitors; friend of the Barbees they hadn't seen in a while.

Ok, I've officially caught up to the day I started typing this blog so I will just finish up where I left off there. I took the sky train down to meet my friends Bekah and Josh for dinner. I met them them last summer while I was in India so it's been cool getting to see and catch up with them! Josh picked me up on his motorbike and brought me to their house. God has definitely blessed them with a beautiful space! They took me to their market to eat and look around. They introduced me to Thai iced tea, which is actually pretty dang good for a non tea drinker like me. Josh ordered something Thai for me for dinner and I'll admit, I was a little worried about what was to come. But it was actually pretty stinking good!! It had a different type of noodle than I have had before. It was a wide, flat, rice noodle. I couldn't tell you what the dish is called, but it was delicious. I really wanted to clean my plate even though I was stuffed! I caught a motorbike taxi back to the sky train and headed home for the night. My sky train prepaid card ran out on this trip and oh my goodness, I had no idea what the lady was telling me!! Finally, I recognized 100 baht in there so I gave her that which apparently paid off my debt and gave me another couple of uses! Made it back to the right stop to walk home, but then couldn't figure out which way home was! Everything looked the same at night, but not quite familiar! Turns out, I walked down the stairs on the wrong side of the street. I realized this and crossed back over and found home right away! If this scares or worries you, don't let it. Even if I couldn't figure it out, I have phone numbers of those who could help and phone service here. I wasn't worried! Slept hard all night long and didn't wake up at all until around 5:30am! In case your wondering about my sleeping, I have been sleeping very well and hard up until the early morning hours. At that point, I wake up every hour or so until in just done sleeping and ready to get up. That time is usually around 6ish! This is the only place in the world that I'm actually awake and ready to be up by 6am! I normally am a terrible morning person and dislike early mornings with a fiery passion. But not here. Around 6ish in ready to get up, shower, and eat some breakfast!

Now, I've finally caught to where I am right now. It's Friday. I have had a very low key day. I went to a new fancy mall for lunch before meeting Josh and Bekah. I went all American today. Hit up KFC and Krispy Kreme! That donut was delicious! Met Josh and Bekah and we walked to the coffee shop they will help with once there finished with language school and they introduced me to the leader of their foundation. She told me about their outreach and ministry to the transgender and prostitutes and the different training and opportunities they offer them. It sounds like an amazing outreach! I am excited for Josh and Bekah and can't wait to hear their stories once they are fully active in it! Unfortunately, Josh and Bekah were not feeling well, so we parted ways after that. I wandered the fancy mall a little more before jumping on the sky train and heading home. I was feeling a little weary so I crawled in bed for a nap. I've done some reading, some typing, and working on this blog today so it was nice to slow down. Headed out to the Big C to grab some dinner, had some pizza, wandered the store a bit, and am now back home trying to finish this post! I'm so close!

I enjoy sharing my journey with you. I know I haven't done a lot of exploring ministry stuff yet and it sounds like I'm  just on vacation, but I am really learning a lot. I am learning about Thai culture, figuring out how to get around on my own, experiencing the difficulties of not speaking the language, and so much more. I'm learning through observation, through trying new things, through meeting new people, and figuring things out on my own. It has been a great learning experience!

Tomorrow I am going to go with some Thai girls. I think we're going to the huge weekend market which will be a lot of fun, I think. Probably a bit overwhelming, too, but lots of fun! Tai also wants me to go to church with her tomorrow evening. Sounds great to me! Here's to another day of adventure and new experiences! Can't wait!!