Missive 5 October 2008

So much has been happening these last few weeks that I am getting behind in my blog and because so much is happening I have more to catch up. We have just returned from a wonderful few days in Bangkok with our Whun and her sister Why. We stayed in a hotel in the heart of Bangkok and visited several places with the goal of giving the girls a bit of Thai history and culture. Very educational and Colleen reckons I was itching to give out some worksheets for the girls to fill in. Not true, but I did make them read a fair bit of the information boards and tried get them to tell me in English what it was about!

We visited the aquarium, the planetarium, the science and technology centre, the national museum and the Grand Palace. Another volunteer couple, Alvin and Linda, had their sponsored child, along with big Whun the girls’ carer, in Bangkok so we did a lot of stuff together. We did a few fun things as well, like bowling, ice-cream at Swensons, a trip up the river and shopping. The girls were a delight and it was so good to walk down the streets hand in hand with them chatting away in improving English and trying to get some improving Thai out of us.

It’s an indication of how well Colleen is adjusting that each night we trawled the stalls and barrows in the streets to buy pork and chicken on a stick, bags of sticky rice, and barbecued sweetcorn for tea which we ate it in our room. Each night we played a game of Tantrix which Why picked up in a flash and thenceforth manipulated Whun to make moves that would enable her, Why, to win. And each night I told them a story in English like The 3 Little Pigs, and Goldilocks which they loved.

It was a bit of shock to the system to get back home and drag out the computer again and start work preparing for the next executive meeting and writing position descriptions and writing up reports for several projects for which I am responsible. Looking back over the last missives I realise that I have said very little about what I actually do. I also realise that it will be particularly boring to tell you so I won’t be offended if you skip the next paragraph or two.

I told everybody before I left that I would be responsible for financial management and asset management. That hasn’t been strictly true. I am also responsible for human resource management, information management, communications, marketing the organisation in Thailand, executive support, and finding a site manager for Ban Meata Phetchabun. As well as that I supervise the construction of our house, support Pawinee in some of her roles, do the disbursement of funds to the other sites, try not to get too involved in the agriculture project, preach occasionally on Sundays, and try to spend some time with the kids. Those who are praying for me may see fit to double their efforts!!

I’m fortunate to have Mark, the business management consultant volunteering his services to House of Mercy, to point me in the right direction. And hopefully, if I am successful, we will be able to employ people to run these projects when they are established. In the meantime it is position descriptions, project schedules, project reports, project scoping briefs, performance management policies, document translation and so on. But it’s all to make this a better place for the kids and it’s all worthwhile. We continue to be firm in the belief that God has put us here and we see daily evidence of the way He leads us.

Some of you have heard of our visa debacle. You will be aware that a 12 month visa requires you to leave the country every 90 days so most people travel to the nearest border, enter the country, do some shopping in the stalls and then re-enter Thailand, paying fees each step of the way.

As an aside, the stalls are a bargain hunter’s delight. Lots of cheap mobiles and the like, bottles of whiskey with unhappy looking cobras inside, untold mountains of clothes and pirate DVD’s. We were watching one of these the other night, a bit critical about the quality of the sound and picture, when on the screen somebody got up in front of the movie and walked across. A few minutes later, toilet break obviously concluded, the same shadow walked back to his seat. That’s how you can get a latest release movie for $4-5 in Burma before it appears in the theatres in Australia.

Anyway, we decided to go to the Laos border north of Khon Kaen because we had a meeting at KK the next day. Our timing was critical because we had just less than 90 days before we return to Australia for Christmas. So, with the warnings of another volunteer ringing in our ears to check every stamp in our passport, we ventured into the process. We even hired a lady to walk us through, do the paperwork, give us the right fees in the right currency, do our photographs and talk to the officials. We exited the Thai side all stamped up, crossed the Mekong River over the Aussie built Friendship Bridge (a real thrill), entered the Laos side all stamped up, walked around the building, exited the Laos side all stamped up, and checking all the way. We got back in the lady’s car (she drove all the way with her chest on the steering wheel, her elbows up, and never got out of second gear!), back over the bridge to the Thai side and to the entry point where we all got out to go to immigration. Then back into her car where she gave us our passports and with a sigh of relief we pocketed them. The whole process took 3 hours and lots of waiting in long queues and lots of poking our papers through small windows, and lots of handing over money – 5000 baht’s worth.

By now you’ve probably guessed it. When we arrived back at Ban Meata, our friend, the pessimistic volunteer asked to have a look at our passports. Pretty smug we handed them over. “You’ve been dudded!” he said, “They’ve only stamped you back in for one month!” And sure enough, the one step we didn’t check, the last one, was where the mistake was. Phone calls to government departments by Pawinee made no difference – no-one can do anything about an official stamp even if it’s wrong. There was nothing else to do except go to the border again.

Our trip back from KK was marred by another incident which really frightened Colleen. We were travelling on the 4 lane freeway when we overtook a police car – very carefully I might add. A few minutes later he drove up alongside and waved me over. I was wondering what I could possibly have done wrong. He appeared at the window, very aggro and told me what I had done wrong in Thai – which wasn’t all that informative. Fortunately we had Pawinee in the back who translated. I had overtaken but had not returned to the left hand lane. On Pawinee’s instructions (and Colleen’s and I still have the bruises on my leg to prove it) I apologised profusely for such a heinous crime, and after giving Pawinee a lecture about not reminding this particular ferengue of Thai road rules, he left with very poor grace indeed. If Pawinee were not there I would have been up for an on the spot fine that would not have been recorded in any official documentation. He was not even close to your friendly neighbourhood cop and Colleen took days to get over the incident.

The visa saga was concluded a week or so ago when we went down to Sisiket in the south-east of Thailand again. From there it is only an hour’s drive to the Cambodian border so this time we went with our friend, the “human warning system”, Peter Hooper who teaches at Mercy’s English school there. The experience couldn’t have been more different. Rather than the huge buildings and queues at Nong Khai, we travelled down an ever-worsening road until the bitumen stopped and we bumped along a sand track to the border. There were numerous bamboo shelters with a few police sleeping or smoking, a couple of dilapidated transportables, and a lift up barrier that might have lifted up but everyone walked or drove around it anyway. It was reminiscent of a spot in the scrub near Pinnaroo or similar. We left Thailand, duly stamped, walked 30 metres into Cambodia and paid 1000 baht each to say we wanted to visit. I wanted to walk to the nearby village, but after our last experience Colleen put on her form that she was visiting for 1 hour and would have put 15 minutes if she thought she could! We then crossed the track to the “out” side, refused to pay the 300 baht bribe the official asked for, and Peter warned us about, got stamped again and walked back in to Thailand. The Thai official scratched his head for ages over our one month stamp, thinking perhaps that we were undesirable aliens (must have been talking to that policeman!) but stamped it correctly (under Peter’s watchful eye) and we were on our way.

One of my reasons for wanting to see the village is that Pol Pot is buried in a graveyard there. He had asylum in Thailand (goodness knows why they gave it to him) in a village near Sisiket during the years before he died. I guess they just took him to the nearest border and gave him back. We couldn’t work out why if everyone else knew where he was, the CIA didn’t!!

Another thing I would like to have seen was the view into Cambodia from the escarpment. The entire border between the 2 countries is defined by this escarpment and by walking a few hundred metres you can look out over Cambodia stretching to the south as far as the eye can see. You may have read that Thailand is in bitter dispute (sometimes armed) with Cambodia about a few square kilometres where the border inexplicably goes up the escarpment, into Thailand, around a temple and out again. Somebody apparently signed something a few years ago and quite a few baht may have changed hands. The argument continues and has spoilt it as a tourist spot.





I had my first experience of a full Thai massage (not as full as you can get I hasten to add!) the other night. Wolfgang, the volunteer here with his wife Diane to work on the agricultural projects, had a bad back so Pawinee was going to take him in and go to a massage shop (notice how I avoided using the word “parlour”?). Pawinee needed her back done too so I decided to go along as well, as did Neepar, one of the carers. We were ushered upstairs to a row of mattresses on the floor in a room, asked to put on some pyjama things and a girl got to work on each of us.

My girl started by dislocating all my toes and then set about stretching and pummelling every muscle in my legs for the first half an hour. She seemed to think that my joints worked in different directions to the way God made them. She leant on me, sat on me, stuck her feet into me, elbows into me and thumbs into me. She put her hands on my hips (very carefully and I was a bit nervous!!) and then leant on me to see if my pelvis would collapse. The last half hour was spent on my back, arms, fingers (dislocated them all and then tried the Mafia thing to see if they would break!), shoulders, neck and face. I have played footy matches with less body contact than that.

I have exaggerated just a smidgin and I felt pretty good afterwards so she did her job well. It cost me 100baht and you give the girl a tip. Pawinee said afterwards that if you ask for VIP massage it’s a bit fuller than what we got, costs a lot more (as it would) and you get a private room (as you would). I might have another massage sometime but meanwhile I think I’ll give my fingers and toes a break (before she does!!).

I’ll stop or that book I was always going to write will be written.

God bless till next time.
Ron