goodbye bangkok, hello dubai

it's early, i'm all packed and things are in order. two medium suitcases, one roller carry-on and one backpack. i'm ready to hit the airport... in two hours. i wrote a list of things to do this morning, last minute, and did several of them last night in my effort to get some sleep. feeling lots of different emotions... sad, 'ready' to go, hopeful, excited to get home, excited to see dubai, anxious to get to the airport and check in... loads of feelings. it's early.

in the past month i've finished up school, traveled northern thailand and down through laos from north to south and back to bangkok, had an interview for an international school in bangkok for next year, hung out with friends, shopped (a little), visited a thai friend's family for songkran, said my goodbyes and now here i am. i'm ready to go. will i come back? definitely at some point. let's hope sooner than later.

i'm leaving with almost all great memories. the only thing i can think of that wasn't pleasant was being purse-snatched. the rest is all good times and glory. i learned a lot while i was here and continue to learn in the last hours before i leave. thai people are wonderful and thailand is a very unique place. it will be wonderful to see the united states with my new perspective. life is really all about perspective, isn't it? attitude, the way one approaches life and situations that arise and drift past. we are merely boats traveling on the waters of life. sometimes calm and peaceful, sometimes a bit wavy and fun, sometimes stormy and trecherous. it's how we control our boat that will get us through. it's early.

this past three days has been songkran festival (thai new year) and it has been NUTS! some friends and i had dinner out last night and were caught in the largest crowd of people throwing, spraying, chucking, shooting and dumping water or smearing a wet, powdery substance on each other. it was insane. it was like nothing i've ever seen before. i snapped a few photos from the skytrain station. what a sight.

i was invited by a friend from the gym to her family's house for songkran last weekend and it was fantastic! her family speaks little (no) english and i speak very limited bangkok thai. it was an interesting mix of nodding, gesturing, signing and sometimes giving up and just smiling. i had a great time learning about buddhist traditions and tasting lots of new thai food. the only western food i consumed last weekend was the food i brought as a gift. they are a very traditional thai family so i was able to watch and (sometimes) participate in some rituals.

my friend's family lives six hours straight north of bangkok, in petchabun province. it is a gorgeous area with mountains and farms all around. the farmers grow corn, tobacco and rice in cycles on their fields. corn and tobacco were just about finished with rice on it's way during the rainy season. we were able to visit a tobacco farmer and experience the drying process after the tobacco leaves have been shredded. it was fun and interesting. i can say i'm the LAST person i ever thought to be tending to some future person's smoking habit, but nonetheless it was fun.

each day we traveled by car into the very tops of some of the mountains to see sights and visit monuments. on our travels up the hill we passed a small hmong village and, later, their many cabbage plots on the mountainsides. the king sought to replace the poppy/opium fields with something better and cabbage is making them a fair amount of money. i can understand now why the hmong people in MN insist on farming, it's what they know and they know it well.

the final day at my friend's house was the first day of songkran festivities and we put on our brightly colored songkran shirts and geared up to douse people with water. we washed the cars, then put 'blessed' powerdy water all over the car, added the thai national (yellow) flowers to the front with string and then filled up a large barrel with water in the back of a caged truck and prepared for the worst. after spending the day sight-seeing in the mountains with cousins, aunts and uncles, we hopped in the truck and headed to town. there are either people driving around spraying water or people standing on the side of the road chucking water at the passers-by. we were nice, we had warm water. some people had ICE ice cold water. while it is really hot in thailand now, there is nothing like being smacked with icey cold water. we went around and around, re-filling the barrel twice (with a fire hose in the park) and having a great time. we were really cold by the time we actually made it back home. it was so much fun.

being that it's a small town well outside the city i was something of an oddity. people have no qualms about standing and staring at a white person. they love to use the english they know: "hello!" "where you come from?" "beautiful" (which comes out 'beauty-full') "i love you!" "what's your name?" ... it was fun but a bit strange. at one point my we were filling up the barrel and i was crouched down in the truck keeping warm and someone spotted me and a crowd surrounded the truck to 'see the farang! farang farang!' they were touching me and shouting english, then sprayed me (at close range) with the fire hose. ha ha. not full power... but close range! crazy thais!

we took an overnight bus back to bangkok and i've been packing and organizing ever since. it was a wonderful way to end my stay in thailand, with traditional thai people celebrating their new year. what a fabulous time i have had here!!!

it's time to get ready and run some last errands before i'm off to the airport. dubai, here i come!!!

can't wait to see everyone when i'm home on april 20th. thanks for supporting me through this adventure. i'm grateful for it all!