I decided to embark on a journey for two weeks with two strangers and a girl I have only met once in my life. It didn’t feel as crazy then as it sounds now actually. Jolene’s mom came to my place for a visit and invited me to go back with her to Penang last February; I had just finished my grade so I figured why not. We took the midnight bus and I arrived as a Valentine gift for Jolene. That was how we met.
Jo is an English teacher. She studies law but her passion she realized, is to teach. This trip to Thailand was her idea, and she planned and made arrangements for our entire journey. Her purpose for this trip was simply to bless; with her teaching, with our presence wherever we went. I kept a journal and here it is.
Day 1 – 3/8
We left Butterworth on the 2nd of August at 2.45pm. The day before we packed a huge bag of toys, stationary, reading cards, etc for the children we were going to visit. We had our backpacks on and at least another two or three bag on each hand. Thank God it wasn’t fully occupied in the train else we wouldn’t have had place to sit after unloading our load. The air conditioning wasn’t working that afternoon; you know when that happens anything public feels a lot dirtier and unpleasant. Maybe this had to do with my train ride to Perhentian two weeks before, the café wasn’t air conditioned and there were cockroaches on the floor, table, ceiling.. Anyway, Alex’s mom was very kind to prepare food for our 22 hours ride. It was delicious even when chilled (the aircond worked in the evening later), there were 4 dishes!
Jo and I were actually unwell before our journey started. She was having scabies and I was having very bad gastric pain from two days ago. So Jo covered herself and made sure no one touched her throughout the ride. My pains came and go every few minutes; it perplexed me so much because my gastric pain never lasts for more than a few hours. I couldn’t really sleep that night cause the pain was bad; all I wanted to do was to fart but it didn’t come! Oh, I informed the group beforehand don’t worry.
We had devotion the next morning in the train and arrived at Samsen at 12pm plus, 3rd Aug. It really set in then when every billboard and shop names I saw (can’t say ‘read’) were written in Thai. It still looked like home though, people had the same skin color and familiar features. We were welcomed by Aunty Chat and we took two taxis back to her place. We washed up and were told that we would be visiting an orphanage that evening. I then came across James 1:27 – “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”. But we didn’t end up going.
The plan was to leave for Chiang Mai the next morning but there was a bad flood and all train tickets were refunded. Everyone else opted to take the bus instead so tickets were sold out too. Nonetheless we were grateful. We later took a stroll out mainly to get some Eno for my silly gastric and were charged a little extra for it. When we found 7 11, it was like… somehow you could see a ray of light shining on it.. simply beautiful. They’ve got pork burgers, pork boxed rice, pork hot dogs, pork hot dogs wrapped with pork bacon, you name it. But that wasn’t the point. We took the bus to Victory Monument to get a sim card that night.
Aunty Chat was hosting a guy named Bince, pronounced ‘Bin’ who is an ex drug addict. He’s 19 and he was nice, he helped cleaned up our rooms which were used as storerooms. We slept on thin mattresses which were okay, but it wasn’t okay that the bind couldn’t be closed and the building opposite us looked haunted. Jo and I agreed that it would make a perfect bedroom scene for a scary Thai movie. The walls were stained with what I imagined to be struggling handprints. The boys on the other hand had a pleasant view of the King’s palace and his little garden AND their air conditioning was working. Yes, the King lived opposite us. That night I couldn’t sleep, I had a lot of disturbing images in my mind and felt really uncomfortable. I told Jo and she too, was having them. We took some time to pray and we later had a good rest.
