"We Need a Gecko Getter"

Bangkok Tuk-tuk

Visited Grand Palace & Temple

Gave girls camera for the afternoon. It's taken us a while to learn this little trick, but we highly recommend for visiting temples, palaces and museums with kids

Girls had surprising patience while touring, especially given the heat. They were genuinely interested in these murals, for a while

Mural restoration technique was intriguing to watch

Palace built just before French Revolution. There is some French influence in architecture here, though Thailand was never occupied by France

Allie had to cover up with sarong because she was wearing capri pants. Girls asked, "Who would wear a see-through shirt?" Thankfully there are still some sights in this big world they haven't seen.

Below are some things we have verbalized in the past 7 days.  I don't believe we've ever said a single one of them when living in Michigan:

"Mom... there are gecko droppings behind the globe again."

"I'm liking the January utility bills."

"There was a snake in the elementary school hall today, a poisonous one.  I saw the guy holding it after he killed it.  It was bigger than Riley, but probably not as big as me."

"This mango is SOOOOO good." - I may have said this in Michigan, but I didn't know what I was saying

"No problem... I'll send our driver."

"Don't step on the frog by the fridge! Quick, grab him!"

"What are you snacking on now?"  reply... "The meat from Singapore."

"Hon, there's a dead gecko on the deck.  Do you mind? Thanks." - Rob can be such a wimp

"Here's a thousand.  Put the change in the class Haiti fund." - FYI, a thousand is about $30

"Yay! You're home from work early." - I'd say this in the States, but never at 7:30pm

"Mom, can we have Thai tonight?"

"For family vacation this year, do you want to go to China or Japan?" - answer was a unanimous Japan

"First precipitation in 3 almost months!"

"We need a gecko-getter." - Ry, last night while trying to get the dining room bandit. Each of these gecko comments was on a different day

"I just love Thailand." - Ry, out of the blue when playing cards this weekend

Recent Days

Holiday bowling party with Rob's finance team. Yet again, girls were treated like rockstars

Probably because of adorable techniques like this....that ball is creeping ever so slowly, and just did not have momentum to produce the strike that appears could have been

Another day during time off, girls & I checked out one of the cooler zoos we've ever been to... picking parasites out of an unhappy snake

This man appeared to be using everything he had to hold the snake head for a good half hour. Girls were fascinated and asking gads of questions that somehow mostly got answered by teamwork & piecing together English tidbits from the super friendly staff. Walking around this zoo was a bit eeery at times, as it is very laid back & open in style. Don't know if Thailand has an OSHA officer inspecting cage locks for cobras or wall heights around tigers

Inside an elephant trunk, fed many bananas to get this shot

I love this pic from our week up in Khon Kaen, outside the landfill slum. When we leave here and reflect back on Thailand, I think one of the first images coming to mind will be all of the pick-up truck beds full of people arranged in creative ways, sometimes smiling, often appearing tired & heavy-hearted

Show offs

Saturday night at Jomtien Beach

The power of the Sea... they spent a chunk of day at home bickering with each other, then to our surprise, we found them hand in hand in the ocean. Much truth in the old parenting advice to put unhappy children in water

I just love this guy.

Helping Ry find her own sand dollar. She was getting so bummed cuz Al was finding all the goods & it was getting dark. Love the skies here

Finally found one... shhhh, don't tell her, but I do believe big sis helped plant it

Girls headed back to school this morning after 3 weeks off. Rob's in Singapore for the first half of this week.  I'm home catching up.

I just heard another cool call of a bird that I've been trying to spy.  I think it's a bird.  I hear it, but I've never seen it make its monkey-like sound.  

For the first month we lived in this house, I thought we had a squeaky belt in our dining room air conditioner.  Heard it maybe a couple times a week, no big deal, had enough other problems with our house so it was least of worries.  Then we started opening up windows more & I was hearing it outside. Ah-ha, a bird. We must have one perched right outside that air conditioner, seemingly calling into our house, or so I thought for the next month.  Then we had Jeff & Lisa over.... that's not a bird, Tam, it's a gecko!  Still have a resident one in that dining room air con, and occasional ones skittering on walls or ceiling. I miss seeing squirrels.  No chipmunks, raccoons, or other little mammals scurrying here. Their equivalents are the geckos & frogs.

Still no neighborhood snake sightings, happy to report. When running this morning, I realized I wasn't on edge about snakes like our first few months.  I will now walk right across our lawn with hardly a thought about them, instead of tiptoeing wide-eyed as I did this fall. I'm still vigilant in terrain more than a few cm tall, but it's a step in the direction of living at peace in my new world.   

Friday Morning Haiku

at 13 degrees latitude

ice cream attracts ants
one drop summons quite the crowd
my kids love ice cream

*sigh*

Slums

New friends

Rose

Aerobic class

Then went a couple doors down to house of Palm & Aom for a simple supper that we didn't really care for, but none of us seemed to care

Beautiful Aom (8) & Palm (14)

Speaking the universal language of Barbies

After supper we walked a few doors further where this family was having Thai sukiyaki inside their front doorway.  We stopped & hung here for much of the evening with strangers offering us more food. 136 families in this slum

Al grabbed a pair of chopsticks and tried squid and cow stomach with vegetables. Didn't really enjoy it, but she was beaming all night as experience trumped taste

Dave left us after aerobics. Rob & Ry slept at Aom & Palm's house and Al & I slept 20 feet across alley in the bed below which belonged to a 72 year old woman. I thought she was going to sleep down the alley at a neighbor's, then an hour after we were tucked into mosquito netting, 72 came down from the loft above, laid out a futon on the floor next to our bed and went to sleep on the floor.  I felt horrible, but she had insisted on giving us her fresh bed... a little scary, but there's a point at which you just hang on for the ride

This pic was taken from the alley. The metal door is the "front door" and the main floor housed a bed, small toilet & bath room, kitchen corner, and rickety stairs to upstairs loft we didn't visit. I believe there were 3 people sleeping above us that night. Most Thai families appear to be 3 or 4 generational with grandmas raising the little ones. They brought motorbike in for the night, so it was me, Al, 72 & the bike that night in the space you see

Al was flabbergasted when Palm pulled out her own cell phone & asked for Al's number at the end of the night. Al didn't even have her own until Santa came a few days ago.  They began texting and I was excited for Al keeping in touch until I realized texting costs money Palm does not have

17 year old grandson lighting fire in the alley at 5:30am to make the morning rice. Extremely humbling, watching the slum awaken to a new day

6am. Dining tables & chairs sit outside doors in the alleys. Cannot imagine enduring rainy season here

We were pleased with how the girls navigated their time in the slums. They adapted quickly to accommodations, discussions, and even food. Our stay was short & bittersweet. We arrived around 5pm Monday and left shortly after Aom & Palm left for school at 7:30am Tuesday 

Resourceful 

Allie fell in love with this baby boy. He lived next door to the home where we stayed, and we heard him croupy coughing all night. These homes are literally on top of each other with shared walls and little privacy

Cradle for baby boy, a common style often in restaurants & shops where keepers can keep babes close

This slum has been sitting downtown for ages. When Rob visited 13 years ago, nobody had an address and they rigged electric by making friends with neighboring "real" homes & throwing cords over fences. Electric neighbors would come over monthly to charge slums by appliance found in the slum home... toaster = 20 baht, TV = 40 baht, etc. Slum "homeowners" have been fighting for recognition and it's slowly coming. This slum now has legitimate electrical service, though likely far from code compliant

We also visited a landfill slum during our week in Khon Kaen. The city's garbage comes here, and for 35 years the 60 families in this slum have filtered it, pulling out anything of worth. KK appreciates their work that reduces landfill size, yet these families still have no land recognition or property rights

Surprised by how clean it seemed, it did stink, but not as bad as we'd have thought. And saw no rats 

Beauty & beast

This women collected a 2 kg pile of copper wire worth about $9 total, a chunk of dough, as the average "wage" is about $4/day/scavenging person. But at a price, as she has to burn the plastic tubing off the wire & inhale toxic fumes

This woman is diabetic and just lost a toe to her disease. 

Toilet room

While we visited, health dept came for a visit. There had been a bad fire in the landfill a couple days prior with several people sick from smoke inhalation. The health dept was following up. Small step in the right direction and villagers were pleased that we were there during the visit because it shows the health dept there are others interested in their plight. Perhaps the health dept will stay involved. Water quality is huge concern and nobody really knows the state of nearby wells, but run-off from a landfill can't be good. Many in this slum have enlarged hearts and respiratory problems

Our driver, Khun Muk, adores babies. This little guy and the one that followed Ry wore no diapers, and during our 2 hour visit, each went through 3 pairs of clean shorts. A woman (not their mom, she was working) grabbed clean shorts when she noticed soiled ones & threw dirty into a large pile

Love this face

And these. While talking with this guy's family, they asked if we wanted to take him home with us. He was a very active 3 year old. Couldn't tell if they were joking, but it really seemed they were not

May our souls unite, indeed

I will call her "Rose."  When Rob was last here 13 years ago he met Rose's beautiful daughter. Back in Holland we have a striking photo of her that I can still picture in my mind. Rose's daughter had HIV. She worked in a restaurant and was pressured by the owner to "service" customers. Finally she did and contracted the disease. That was all I had known of her story.

On Monday night we visited the slum where Rob had previously met Rose's daughter. Rose was the first person we saw and she greeted Dave with a huge hug. She invited us into her home, offered bottles of soda, and started talking about her daughter.  Dave translated. Her daughter passed away at home a couple years prior. She'd been in the hospital for a while, but was miserable there. They drilled holes in her head to relieve pressure from meningitis.  She wanted to try herbal medicine and die at home.  She lasted a year at home, then one day asked for a beer and told her Mom she was going to drink it & die that night.  She did just that, passing at 8pm.

The family was shunned by much of the slum early in the daughter's illness. Amazingly, no one else in the slum at that time had HIV. Rob's group from KKU was the first to befriend Rose's sick daughter and a girl on Rob's program stayed overnight at their home. Rose reports that neighbors witnessing KKU students spending time with her sick daughter opened fearful minds to once again accepting the family. When her daughter died a few years later, the slum mourned.  There are now 4 or 5 people living with HIV in the slum and they are not shunned like Rose was in her early days.  They are also getting newer medicine and doing very well.

While we met, a guy in the room was watching a TV magazine show about David & Victoria Beckham. 

It was quite surreal.  Never dreamed I'd be sitting in that living room, listening to Rose talk about the beautiful girl from our picture back home. I couldn't help but tear up. Rose seemed at peace telling the story. She has 2 more daughters who both work in Pattaya. I didn't ask what they do, but Rose shared that they are both HIV-free.

Rose reports that the biggest problem today in the slum is drunkenness, followed by debt.  It was surprising how many larger screen TVs, cell phones, motorbikes & other tech toys were present. Rob doesn't remember such things 13 years ago.  Loan sharks are now rampant as most here can't get bank loans.  And as they watch more & more of the Beckhams, I fear their interest in the latest & greatest goods will only grow. I'd like Allie to keep in touch with Palm, but doing so could drive Palm to less financial peace.  After a couple hours with Palm translating for us all, I encouraged her father that Palm could do well in university with her terrific language ability.  She really was impressive. He was sitting next to another guy and I believe they understood what I said, as he shook his head and rolled his eyes at his friend like, "yeah, right." I pray her English ability isn't wasted on luring western men for cash. 

Our girls began to see some of the beauty that exists in this poor place with tragic stories to overcome and the potential that lies in their young people. I think they glimpsed some of their own potential as well.  Now, what to do with it...