Adventure Time with Keri!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Today was a change of pace for me. Instead of going to the center, I joined Na Goi (Chadathip), Wanchai, and another [new] volunteer, Yoshi, who just arrived from Japan a few days ago. I had to take a different bus than I’m used to taking and I got off at the stop they told me to and couldn’t tell if I was in the right place or not. Thankfully I was and we hailed a taxi to take us to our destination instead of riding a bus since the traffic was horrible per usual. Remember how I said the driving is pretty crazy here? Yeah…it’s apparently semi-legal to drive on the emergency stopping lane and to pass cars in that lane as well. So much for having emergencies! Haha.

So this new volunteer, Yoshi, is quite interesting. He’ll be here for about 10 months teaching Japanese here. He’s supposed to be a monk but he’s taking time off or something of the sort to try something new out. He has also taught snowboarding and skiing (from what I gather, or wants to…one of the two) and is really good. He also went to LA a few years back and drove all the way from LA to NYC by himself…just for kicks. Lol. And people think I’m fascinating? You guys have no clue. 

The reason I took off today was to observe and sit in on informative lectures. We drove to the largest slum area of Bangkok, Khlong Toei. There are almost 160,000 people that live in this area and a total of 44 recognized communities within this area. We got to walk part of the slums and it actually wasn't as bad as some of them I've seen in other countries. The organizations (there are many here) have done a good job at keeping it within living standards. The two NGOs that we visited were the Duang Prateep Foundation (www.dpf.or.th) and Population and Community Development Association (www.pda.or.th) which is THE largest NGO in Thailand. The latter organization is quite astounding in how they run things. Quite fascinating, I must say and a pioneer in many areas. You should go check it out. Both organizations help not only the children, but the communities in general such as HIV/AIDS care, senior citizen care, drug abuse, sustainability, education, and other things. This is the kind of stuff I’d like to end up doing one day so I’m glad I came today.

The reason we went to visit these two places was because a freshman group from the University of Minnesota are on a tour (one of those int’l classes you get credit for) and their professor, Dr. Fry, came to Thailand with the Peace Corps and can speak the language fluently…along with like 10 or more other languages. I wish I could do that!! I also wish I could’ve gotten credit for all the traveling I did during my college years. Too late. 

After all of that was done we left the Minnesota group to have their lunch and we walked a few blocks to Terminal 21, which is a huge shopping mall and each level is themed after a big city, such as Tokyo, Paris, San Francisco, Istanbul, etc. It was super cool looking. We went to the 5^th floor where the food court is and it was a madhouse! Since there are a lot of office buildings in this area, it’s always busy for lunch. 

After lunch we hopped on the sky train (pretty much a metro that’s above the roads and highways, etc) and journeyed to Victory Monument, just so Na Goi could show us how to get a minibus if we ever wanted to. Lol. We hopped back on the sky train/BTS and headed back home where we had to change to the MTR line and she showed us where the night market is and how to get there. She’s so helpful. I wish I had one of her in every country I visited. Haha. I probably wouldn’t get lost so much if I did. 

Anyway, I stopped on my way home to get a pair of sandals that weren’t flip-flops and then came home and knocked out for 2 hours. I’ve been exhausted all week due to last weekend’s festivities. Haha, you’ll find out why this weekend when I finally get everything posted. =)