Thailand

Hello Everybody!

I apologize if I duplicate some of Jen's last entry but it has been awhile since we got to this. We have safely arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday enroute to Hanoi via Bangkok over the next few days. It marks the end of what was a beautiful and moving experience.

We have spent the last week and a half working with the Global Neighbors group from Prince Albert to build a school in a migrant village, supply 90 desks for children, teach and play with the migrant kids in some of the schools and get to know some of the most wonderful people in the world. The main orphanage and school (Hsa Thoo Lei) in Mae Sot is comprised of mostly illegal Karen refugees from Burma. There are many Burmese, Mon, Kachin, and other groups at the school and other villages in the Mae Sot area. The hardship that the children endure is not limited to only Karen people.

The kids and people there are such great hosts. They took our group through their school and spent alot of time looking after aall of us. Some were very brave to stand up in front of their peers and canadian guests and tell stories of losing their parents, homes, or siblings in the their journey to get to where they are know. They also hosted a beautiful barbecue on Monday night as a farewell, where the many excellent singers and performers got up and delivered excellent performances. The most moving moments were the ones where Jen and I spent visiting and playing with Eh Tah Tow, Look Htee Kheh, and her younger brother Hsa Law Tae Htoo. After visiting with them, each of them ran up to their room and gave us some of their favorite toys and pictures as gifts. It was an example of their incredible generosity. We are honored that kids with so little would offer so much to us, for the little work and time we were able to spend with them. It was wonderful. I also liked them because they appeared to enjoy my pretty rough magic tricks I tried on them.

We were also able to meet up with some of the administators and teachers in the school who were able to act as translators, guides, and friends to the group. We have photos of a few of them.

Hayso, an excellent guide through the Mae La Refugee camp and I believe is an excellent soccer player, and Karen language teacher.

Hong Sar, shown here with an australian volunteer Meghan, is an administrator at Hsa Htoo Lei and was able to spend some time with us showing us Mae Sot on bicycle, and correcting my faulty Burmese. He has a great sense of humor and is an amazing photographer. He showed us some of his work and it was very moving.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Mae Sot and will probably add some more experiences to the blog in the next few days of getting back to normal after our busy 2 weeks.

Jen is also not feeling well today. This is day 3 of some kind of stomach flu that comes and goes and got worse yesterday by the rough and windy road between Mae Sot and Chiang Mai.

Another incident of note is that yesterday, after Dave, our tour leader, checked us all out of the hotel after paying in cash (typical in Thailand more than Credit Cards) got a phone call from the hotel saying that they had not fully paid the bill. Dave gave them his credit card number for the balance outstanding and offered to pay the remainder when he returns in another week with another group of 17 to stay there for 2 weeks. We drove for a about half an hour and then were pulled over at a check stop by the military. Apprently, the hotel put an APB out on the vans and couldn't leave until the front desk clerk from the hotel drove out to meet us at the check stop and pick up the diffence in cash. Apprently cards weren't good enough. It was a misunderstanding and Dave paid the fellow but it was an unexpected delay for all of us in the group.

Stay warm to those back home and stay cool to everyone else in warmer climes.

Ted

The Internet access at our hotel is a bit out of our league ($3/hour)...way too much! so we've waited until we can find a cheaper one to update everyone on our trip!

We are in Mae Sot and everytime we get farther away from touristy spots we see more live animals in the markets!! It really is amazing...i have even gotten used to seeing dead chickens and pig heads everywhere!

We are volunteering with Dave and his Global Neighours crew in Mae Sot - a border town between Thailand and Burma. This town is interesting because it really is a hub for Burmese, Karen and other ethnic people from Burma. They leave Burma as illegal migrants and as refugees. Dave is a great leader...he has been coming to Mae Sot to help build schools and bring supplies for the last several years. He brings volunteers to help build schools, desks, teach and deliver supplies. Ted and I joined up with 11 other people in Chiang Mai and we travelled to Mae Sot on Sunday Jan. 27th. It has been an eye-opening experience that has really been hard and fun all at the same time. We have been working in many different places - Hsa Thoo Lei Orphanage and other schools around Mae Sot. The children are very impoverished and many times are not with their families because of the situation when they had to leave. Burmese and Karen people are very positive and have been very welcoming to us. When we arrived on Sunday we got to work building a puppet show stand for our teaching lessons. We have split into 3 groups (teaching, building desks and building a new school at Thoo mwe khee - a school very close to the border - where there has been recent fighting). I have been teaching (i escaped from Crafts and helped to run Games! - "What Time is it Mr. Wolf?" is hilarious in Karen!). Ted has been mostly building desks in Mae Sot. We both got to help out in the other areas for a bit which was fun - Ted was really tired of sanding! The teaching and work was cut short on Tuesday as it was World Children's Day... over 2000 children came on bikes, trucks and any way possible to Hsa Thoo Lei for an amazing day of partys and games. We helped out where possible giving out fruit and playing with the kids.

My favourite day so far was playing games with the little kids (3-11) at Good Morning School....they were so sweet and they have an Aussie English teacher there right now so they are really picking up English!

We have also delivered food, clothes and medical supplies. Unfortunately we just didn't have enough so many times we had to turn people away. The places we have been have been very sad, yet the people have been so kind and welcoming.

We have several amazing translators working with us (they can speak 4-7 languages). They are really fun and all have very interesting stories of leaving Burma...many of them are not easily able to return.

We visited Mae La Refugee Camp yesterday - it was like watching a National Geographic special. Many people have lived there for years waitng to get out. Ted and I arrived last night (after he got to drive the truck - a huge thrill!) and picked up some bikes! We are excited to be able to be a bit independent and get around Mae Sot on our own. We hope to hook up with Hong Sar (the Administrar of Hsa Thoo Lei) for a beer later.

Ted and I are trying desperately to learn more Thai, Burmese and Karen but it is really hard as we don't know who speaks what...we have learned "sit down, stand up" and "lign up" in Karen - important as teachers! We are building up our cheat sheet of more words everyday!

We will try and send pictures tomorrow...and Ted will tell his side of the story! we would love to send some video of "What Time is it Mr. Wolf?" as i forgot to tell the kids that when the Wolf chases them they don't need to run home!! They were so cute....20 kids running away from me!

We are really sorry that it is so cold there....we are blowing some heat there as we speak!

We did it again, even after 14$ US on beer last night (it actually translates into a lot) we managed to get more photos to the blog. They are a bit late but offer some cool views of the resort at Koh Nangyuan. We had a short pub crawl late last night on the way home from the night bazaar. Lots of neat, and not so neat things to buy there. Sadly, none of the items we liked, would fit in our backpacks really well for the next few months.

I won't be as "wordy" as my husband was yesterday! We are back to our cheap internet place and finished mapping out our trip to Burma (very important as the Goverment requires that info for our visas). We are excited to spend 28 days in Burma - seeing Rangoon and many places around Inle Lake).

We are really enjoying the laid back vibe of this city. We have a nice little place that serves amazing yogurt and fruit each morning. We also found a great cheap restaurant to get our northern Thai food (Khao sawy) - a dish similar to that in Burma. That being said we decided on pizza (over the expensive falafels!) last night...this is truely a cosmopolitan city as we had great pizza!

There are a tonne of "whities" here...many appear to be expats. We still aren't that social- i guess we really are newlyweds! We are both engrossed in our books and so the desire to explore has been a bit hampered! However, we are planning on a big walk later to see the Night Market and check out a few other sights.

We are looking forward to meeting with the Global Neighbours Volunteers! The trip with them will be really fun! Ted will get to build stuff and i will be the team leader for "Arts and Crafts" (I hear many of you snickering!).

With that I will sign off from here!

Well, it's official the honeymoon in paradise with the girl of my dreams is over. We have come away from our island escape, tired, hot, sunburnt, overspent and spend most of our time not speaking to each other. Ah, who am I kidding, it was AMAZING!!! I highly recommend Koh Nangyuan for a holiday. If you are interested in treating yourself to a beautiful, quiet (away from the multitude of 18-22 year old all night beach partiers), delicious, and overall great place. The website is www.nangyuanisland.com

Our first few days down south were spent at Koh Tao. A beautiful, and somewhat busy dive resort mecca. It has long stretches of sandy beaches and bars, restaurants and hotels of all ranges. We stayed in Sairee Beach on the West side of the island and it gets great shelter from the wind and waves. The downside (for normally landlocked prairie folk like us) is that the heat can be quite stifling with the humidity and shade is the only respite. Koh Nangyuan is only about a 10-15 min slow boat towards the northern tip of Koh Tao. It is 3 islands connected by broken coral (much more comfortable and cleaner than sand) sandbars. It gets lots of sun, shade on various parts of the island, and almost always has at least a light breeze to keep things cool. The other advantage is that there are three bays you can snorkel in at the resort and there is always at least one that is teeming with fish feeding on the dying coral that washes into the various bays. They also have an on-site scuba dive shop and if you dive, they give you a discount on the room. The divemasters are top notch and take you in small groups (most of the time, it was just Jen and I with the divemaster) to the great dives sites around Koh Tao, only about 5 mins from Koh Nangyuan.

The snorkelling just off the beach was amzaing, thousands of fish come up to thinking that you will feed them and some even bite your back fat (in my case anyway) if they are hungry enough. We also saw, a small octupus, that disguised himself like a rock so I called him a rocktapus, 2 squids, a blus spotted ray, several triggerfish, and lots of colorful corals, anemones, clown fish, and so on and so on. In addition, we recommend stepping up to the higher rooms at the place.

We splurged and got a room that had a 171 steps to get up to it, a beautiful balcony overlooking the resort and beaches. It was great to get away from the sun, crowds (at times when day trippers come snorkelling and swarm the beach), and drink a an overpriced mini-bar (again who am i kidding, 3$) beer on the deck while the sun goes down before dinner. They have free DVD's to borrow to watch in the evenings as the island has a licenced restaurant but no bar. It is also good so you don't carried away before diving the next day. The movies were really funny as they were all common titles, but most had the english soundtrack removed as they were dubbed over and subtitled. We enjoyed reading our favorite films nonehtheless. The food was excellent with lots of fresh seafood, fruit and tofu. We did not eat many lunches at the restaurant as we went to 7-11 (I know it seems lame but even the 7-11 has a great selection of food here) and bought some excellent yogurt, granola and fresh fruit to smuggle into our mini-bar.

The time there was great and it is common to have only a token canadian couple staying at the resort while the rest are form SE Asia, Europe and Australia. More smoking than we are used to but Canadian rules are hard to let go of someitmes.

I have probably gone on long enough and I hope to fill in more (read shorter) entries in the future.