One Adventure After Another

Once off the boat we walked a ways to catch a bus that someone had told us about. So we jumped on the bus where the daughter of the “conductor” was there with her. It was getting way late at night and yet there was an ~6 yr old running the bus lines with her mom and I’m sure she has school in the morning. I am also sure that this was totally normal for her. That is one thing that really broke my heart. Every night, all night the kids were out in the streets with their parents working. For example, every night - every single night - this family in Chang Mai had this stand at the night bazaar where they made and sold Roo Tiis. They had 4 young kids – one still on a bottle, one on a sippie cup and two a little bit older. They were all there every night until 12 to 12:30am and the two older kids had school in the mornings. Back behind the stand the kids all curled up with blankets and pillows trying to sleep through the chaos. The mom said they’d scoop up the kids and put them in the cart attached to their scooter and the kids would just try to sleep all the way home. And here in Bangkok there are the women that sit on the sidewalk with their babies and toddlers sleeping in their laps while they beg for money. It absolutely kills me. I worry about my kids missing an occasional nap and being uncomfortable!!! We are so lucky and blessed – but what about them? How are they expected to survive? Does this ever even out? . . .

Anyway, back to finish our first night in Bangkok – we rode the rickety bus for a while then arrived at our destination to find out that it was closed. We laughed pretty hard (despite our exhaustion) and geared up for the adventure of trying to get back to the hotel. Matt asked around for a while and found out that we could take a bus all the way home. They had said bus 41 so we saw a 41 bus and chased it down to get on and find out that it was the wrong bus, so we got off on the next stop and waited for another bus. Once on the right bus it wasn’t too long before we were caught in the famous Bangkok traffic. We decided to ditch the bus and jump on the sky train so we hard the bus driver open the doors in the middle of the stand still traffic and we got off and jumped a little fence and found our way to the sky train. Once by our hotel Matt grabbed some food from a street vendor and I got a roo tii.



Then we bought some movies and crashed in our hotel. I love that heavenly room! And I love the control box there by the bed. I could control all the lights, fans, a/c, the “do not disturb” sign, the alarm clock, and about everything else there at my finger tips. I had a lot of fun flicking the lights on and off.

The next day (yesterday and our last day in Thailand) I slept in a bit and soaked in the hotel room then we decided to go out and at least go see the grand palace and a temple or two. We ventured out and took the sky train and another boat. (This boat was much more touristic and in another part of town.)

Next to Matt in this picture is a friend that we made. He works at a bank and ended up paying our fare for the boat. There are so many amazingly nice people in this world!