Off to Cambodia!

Let me start off this story by saying that even though I knew God had a plan, I am still a weak, sinful human with weak, sinful human doubts. So it’s Tuesday morning at 6:00am and I just woke up to start cleaning and packing. My van to Bangkok leaves every hour starting at 4am, but I’ve chosen the noon van because check in at my hotel is at 2pm and that gives me just enough time to get to Bangkok! To my surprise, cleaning and packing only took about 45 minutes, so I spend the rest of the day driving around reminiscing on what could be my last day in Thailand. Also, since my previous motorbike wound had almost completely healed and had already completely closed up (meaning no scabs or anything), I was especially determined not to get in a wreck. Even more determined than I usually am, which is still pretty determined. To save you the suspense, I didn’t get in another wreck. I went to my favorite restaurant and got a good last chicken fried rice for the great low price of about $1.20.

So then I got all my bags down the stairs and across the rocky driveway of my previous apartment and walked the 200 yards to the van place. I paid my 360 baht and waited for the van. It didn’t get there til around 12:20, but that’s expected in Thailand. The van looked empty from the outside, but it was full on the inside! They put my huge bag in the first row and put me next to it. I thought, “Well this is great! My own row!” We stopped 30 minutes later and picked up two more people. So now I was sitting in the half a seat with my bag on one side and a rather large man on the other. I thought the van was full, but we picked up 6 more people on our way to Bangkok. It was like a clown car in there! I tried to sleep, but it was impossible.

Finally, we arrived at the bus station in Bangkok and I finally got to stretch. Not being able to straighten my legs for 3 and a half hours is like torture for me. Oh yeah, and it took 3 and a half hours to get there, not the simple, easy 2. So I got my bags together and found a taxi to take me to the hotel. The driver didn’t speak any English so I tried to call my agent and he called someone else to translate. He got there first so I hung up. I talked to this guy on the phone and told him where I needed to go. He said 800 baht. I was a little confused. All the taxis have meters and they told us in training to never agree upon a price with a taxi driver. So I asked, what about the meter? He said, “Ok 500.” I was still confused and I asked about the meter again. He replied, “Ok 350.” At this point something amazing happened, my brain moved faster than normal and I realized that the distance I was from the hotel was certainly much more than 350 baht. So I agreed. See how the tables were turned and I ripped off the taxi driver?? I felt so accomplished. Also, this way, if the driver got lost, I didn’t have to pay for that too.

So after driving for about 30 minutes we made it to the hotel. It was way off the main road and in a much more rural part of Bangkok. The taxi dropped me off and I looked for anyone. There was no one at reception and no one else anywhere else. So I waited. Finally a lady who spoke no English started talking to me in Thai and I had no idea what she was saying. She went and got the owner or manager or whatever. She was this old Thai lady who spoke perfect English. Now that’s something you don’t normally see in Thailand. But she got everything sorted out and took me to my room.

It was small, but I expected that. I sat on the bed. It was like it was sitting on a rock. The plus side of rock hard mattresses is that you can put drinks on it and they won’t fall over! But it took me forever to fall asleep on it. I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and there was a good sized brown recluse just sitting next to the toilet. I looked at the shower and it was pretty much falling apart. A hotel critic would have had a field day at this place! The blankets at the end of the bed were damp (gross) so I used my sheets I had in my bag. Thank goodness I brought those! Finally, 3:30 came and I woke up, packed, and went down to get in my taxi. We drove around what seemed like an airport maze to get to the departure gates. I thought the airport would be empty at 4am, but it wasn’t! It was packed!

I waited in the check-in line for 30 minutes and when I finally got there, my bag weighed too much. Of course. So I went off to the side to put some of the heavier things in my carry on. And after I had struggled for minutes in front of all these people to close my carry on, my checked bag still weighed 4 kilos over the limit. I had no choice but to pay the fee, which is a ridiculous 500 baht per kilo over. So I paid 2000 baht. That was great. I still had to pay for the Cambodian visa and the hotel I had booked in Cambodia until I found a more permanent place to live.

At immigration, the officer informed me that I had overstayed my visa. I told him that’s why I’m at the airport right now leaving. He told me there was a fee. Of course. 1000 baht. I’m pretty sure the fee is less than that, but I wasn’t really in a position to argue with an immigration officer. I moped over to my gate and waited for the plane.

Oh, my ticket said seat 2A and I hadn’t paid anything extra so I thought maybe I was bumped to first class for some reason! No, this plane didn’t have first class. It was coach all the way down. The only seats that were remotely similar to first class were the front row seats and the exit row seats. Oddly enough, they were also treated like first class—they got their snacks first. It was fine though since the flight was only an hour. I had the whole row to myself and I got a huge can of coke and took a nap.

We arrived at the Phnom Penh airport. I was anxious because I only had Thai baht in my wallet and I had left my passport sized photo that I needed for my visa in my checked bag. I literally had no idea what I would do because I was arriving with many other people who were also getting a visa at the airport and I always hate being that guy who’s unprepared and holding the line up. My face lit up when I saw an ATM. I thought maybe I could eliminate one of these visa problems by getting some good old USD. But that ATM didn’t understand me, nor I it. So I was back where I started. There were a few men standing around in their uniforms so I thought maybe they could somehow help me. I went up to the first one and told showed him all my application forms and explained that I only had Thai baht and that I didn’t have a photo. (I read online that they scam people without photos and make them pay a lot of money to get them taken at the airport, so I was a little nervous about that.) He looked at my applications and asked for my money. I have him 1000 baht, or $30, and my passport and he pointed at a bench in the corner and asked me to wait.

I waited for around 3 minutes and he came back with my passport and opened it up to a page that had a huge sticker that said CAMDOBIA on it. He said, “All good!” I looked at my passport and it was a visa! The man pointed me in the direction of the passport control counter and I excitedly went off to enter the Kingdom of Cambodia! Weird how turned what was supposed to be the most nerve racking and stressful part of the trip into an easy, easy transition. He is indeed good.

With $30 in hand, I found a tuk-tuk driver to take me to the hotel that I had booked earlier. It was the same hotel that we stayed in when I was here last June, so it felt comfortable. Even on the ride there, the cool morning air sparked my memory of this place, and I felt like I was at home—somewhere where I felt comfortable. I don’t know if it was the fact that there are gas stations at every corner or that USD is a regular form of currency here, but it felt like I was back home.

I got settled at the hotel and took a walk to our favorite coffee place down the street where I got a delicious mango passion smoothie for the very regular price of $3.75. I guess cheapness stays in Thailand. After that amazingness, I thanked God for guiding my trip like I knew he would, despite my doubts, and fell into a deep, relaxing sleep for the rest of the day.

Lord of the Flies of Thailand and Other Stories

This has, without a doubt, been the longest 13 days of my life. This was suppose to be easy! Quick! But it just turned out to be another challenge to overcome. It's been a while so let me catch you up...

Last month I had to make exams for my...450 students. Thankfully, the textbook I use has a website, and that website has a final exam! So I just send the link to my boss and she sent it to the copy guy. The final test is 3 pages, front and back, so that's technically 2700 pages of test. True to Thai form, I received these tests on the day I was planning on giving them. They weren't stapled, just put in a pile for each page. For the first class, I just made the three piles of pages on my desk at the front of the classroom and told the students to come pick up one of each sheet. Explaining to them how to put them order is another story.

First I help up my copy of their exam and pointed to the big words at the top of the page that read, "PAGE 1." Then I did the same thing for PAGE 3 and PAGE 5. I held them up in order so that one could clearly see that the order was 1, 3, 5. If that wasn't enough drew a picture of a piece of paper on the board and wrote PAGE 1 where it would appear on the actual test. Then I drew another piece of paper behind that one and wrote PAGE 3, and then another with PAGE 5. So now I had appealed to all the learning types to try to explain that you must put your test in order before you turn it in. Now you might be thinking, "how does he know who the test belongs to if they have Thai names?"

After everyone got their test I got everyone's attention and told them to write their NAME, NUMBER, and CLASS on the top of their paper. The only thing I really needed was their number, because that's what's in my grade book. Then, again, I wrote that on the board on the pieces of paper I had originally drawn to explain the page order. Simple enough, right?

To my great dismay, there were students who put page 4 on top and didn't write their number anywhere. Some even stapled their whole exam out of order with no name or number at all! Sometimes I worry about the well-being of some of these children.

After a week of doing this over and over and over, I finally had all the exams. So first things first, I went through and made sure all of them were stapled. I decided I would grade page by page, instead of test by test. So that's what I did. I put on some music without lyrics so I could pay attention, I got out my answer key if I needed to look up any answers, I lounged on my bed, and graded those bad boys. Grading is not as easy as it sounds. Especially when you're splashing red pen ink all over 2700 pages of tests. Let me break it down for you so you know how amazing I am. Each student had 6 pages of fill in the blank, matching, and short answer. You could probably take this test and make a 100 in less than 5 minutes. Each class has between 35 and 40 students. I teach grades 4-6 and each grade has 4 different classes. See, its really overwhelming when you look at it like that! Its also overwhelming when you look at a giant stack of papers on your desk knowing that you have to look at every single one of them. It is a horror I would not wish on anyone.

But that finally finished and then I just had to record them and give my records to my boss. So easy and so simple. It really was. And do you know what I did after that? I threw all those tests away. Because there is no recycling in Thailand. Just garbage. As I walked to the nearest trash can with a giant handful of papers, I thought to myself that I could probably make a good sized tree with all the paper I was about to throw away. And when I looked down at it from the rim of the trash can, it looked smaller, so I felt better.

So then the school year was over!! I got to sleep in and it was magnificent! But there arose a new problem: the flies. Now my apartment is clean, for a guy's place. There aren't piles of trash lining the walls or anything. Just my pile of plastic bags from 7/11 and FamilyMart and my tiny trash can that I lined with a garbage bag. It started out with just one little fly. And I killed it because I'm a pretty great fly-killer. But then two more arose in it's place! And when I killed those two, four more appeared! It was become a problem. To myself, I blamed it on the people who live next door. Here's the story with that.

Each couple of rooms share a drainage system. Meaning our two shower and sink and toilet drains converge somewhere in between our bathrooms and flow down into oblivion. This setup means that either side can smell whatever is happening on the other side. So these smells range from Listerine to vomit to number 2, with a mixture sometimes. Air fresheners here are extremely over priced, so I reluctantly bought some incense in hopes that it would mask these questionable bathroom smells. It did, but now my apartment smells like incense. Funny how that works.

Anyway, I was at the big store the other day and I was walking down the aisle, quickly, as I always do in a store. And out of the corner of my eye I caught a row of repellants and the likes. I perused and found one that said in English, "Kill Mosquitoes and Housefly." I thought this was perfect because my house in infected with housefly. So I bought it. It smells like a lotion my mom used to wear so that was a nice surprise. (Don't worry, mom, its a flower scented spray. Your lotion doesn't smell like housefly killer spray.) This spray doesn't have great distance, so I have to get right up in their face with it. This is not an easy task because they fly around so fast! So I lay in wait until I can see them and then PPPSSSSHHHHHH!!!! I spray them! But unlike the saying on the bottle, it does not kill housefly, only shoots them down. So then I have to kill them with my hand. Which makes their deaths all the more satisfying.

Recently I have had the opportunity to consider a number of changes over here in the land of smiles. Schools in China have been contacting me for interviews and the impending doom of another visa trip was fast approaching. I'm not sure how much money I'll be making for the one week I worked in March, and I wouldn't have a job here until May. So there was a lot to think about. Should I take these jobs in China? Should I do my visa trip and come back here and try to find a summer job? Should I go to Cambodia and see my friends from World Relief?

As an introvert, I am always thinking, and sometimes I just want the thinking to stop! So I went on a drive; that usually puts my thoughts in order. (I wish I could say it clears my head, but my head never stops working.) On this drive I took a moment to be thankful. God has blessed me immensely over the past 5 months (wow!). I can't even begin to describe how vividly He has shown himself to me since I've been in Thailand. Then I thought about how little money I have and how much I needed. But as I've said before, God isn't about to stop taking care of me. In my whole life up to now, I had never been in a situation where I had to put ALL my trust in God. There's always been a backup plan or a safety net of some kind. I couldn't put my faith in my job, because my job was over. I couldn't put my faith in my money, because it was fading away. I couldn't put my faith in my stuff, because my stuff was sold months ago! There was literally only one thing I had to put my faith in.

It made me think, how much differently would we live our lives if we put all our faith in Jesus? The thing is, Jesus is the only one who can save you from an eternity separated from God. But how much do we believe that? We put so much time and energy into these other things like work or school or money, but they can't save us! It's almost foolish of us. Actually, its totally foolish of us. When we are on the brink of death, we will not be saying to ourselves, "Wow, good thing I have all that money or I don't know if I'd be going to heaven!" or "Thank goodness I made all A's in high school!" Silly things like that. In the end, it's not our mortal "stuff" that saves us, it's our faith in God.

In situations like mine, it's easy to put my faith in God because I have no other choice. But the question is, will we choose to do it even when we think we have other options? Shouldn't it be easy to trust the Creator of the Universe with anything? It's harder than you think, but the outcome is always so much better than you think. Remember, if God is for us, who (or what) can be against us?