Just Another Weekend

This weekend took me from Bangkok across the border to Vientiane, Laos, and back again. I had to make a standard practice “visa run” across the border, but more on that later. Saturday morning began at the local foreigner favorite, Bantoon Coffee, where I enjoyed my American Breakfast and made a skype call back home to ma and pa. It’s always so good to see their smiling, loving faces!!! Having started my day off right, I then caught a bus to Bangkok for lunch with my friend, Kym, at our favorite vegetarian restaurant called Ethos. I greedily devoured a mango and banana pancake with coconut cream and honey on top, then went on to eat a healthy serving of falafel and hummus in pita bread. Delicious! After our foodfest, we caught a bus to the weekend market. It was there that I bought my first pair of sunglasses in Thailand. This was a milestone moment because my mother and two sisters have nagged me about getting sunshades since…well, ever since I left ;-) I also drank down some of my new favorite tea: chrysanthemum. It’s very floral in taste.

On Sunday we explored a mall in the northern part of Bangkok, had some delicious mango, and then went to the mall theater. On the big screen: Hangover 2. This was a significant movie because it was filmed in Bangkok, so we just had to see it! We definitely recognized some of the locations, buildings, and of course, all things Thailand. The movie was entirely in English, and though not as funny as the first one, it was worth the $4.75 to get in. An interesting thing at Thai movie theaters—after the previews and before the movie begins, every theater plays the King’s song to a short video clip featuring pictures of the King. The music and the Thai lyrics are pretty, and the video is interesting. Everyone stands during this, then sits down again for the movie to play. Also- Asian movie theaters have assigned seats; when you purchase your ticket, you get to pick out where in the theater you would like to sit from the chart of remaining available seats. Can you imagine assigned seating movie theaters in America?!?

Sunday night I met up with my other friend, Kate, also from teacher training, who also needed to make a Visa run. Both of us were in the process of getting our tourist visa switched over to a business visa, which unfortunately sometimes involves the added expense and process of leaving the country. And even though Malaysia is closer geographically, it’s much more expensive than Laos and is not as easy a process. So we signed up for a visa run service by what we were told was a reputable company which our placement companies (the companies that arranged our jobs) had referred people to in the past. We loaded into a van full of other “farang” (Thai for foreigners) and left Bangkok at 9pm. The ride would be approximately 9 hours. We made three stops total, all for the purpose of getting out, stretching, bathroom and smoke breaks for the smokers. Not once did the van need to re-fuel. It was a diesel engine, and apparently got great mileage! I nabbed a few hours of sleep, but only as much as you can get in a noisy van on a bumpy road. At one point, I woke up to the van’s engine shutting down unexpectedly. As the driver fought the key to turn the engine, I couldn’t help but notice that we were in the middle of nowhere! After a few more tries, and killing the A/C and music power, the van roared back to life and we continued on. Thank goodness!

We arrived on the border of Laos at about 5:30am and began the process of clearing customs to leave Thailand, clearing immigration to enter Laos, and then visiting the Thai embassy to submit our passports for visa approval. Passports can be dropped off in the morning, but not picked up until the following afternoon. The vans took us to the hotels (part of the visa run package) and we were fed breakfast. I ordered an American breakfast, again.

For the rest of the day, Kate and I teamed up with a brother/sister combo from Arkansas who are doing Christian missionary work in Thailand. They were an interesting duo and nice people. We hired a van from the hotel to take us to the nearby tourist destinations. We saw a couple of wats (temples), a reclining Buddha, an archway, and did some shopping.

I bought what I will from now on call the ultimate “Laos Army Knife” which will be an incredible tool for ongoing home maintenance. Uncle John will be so proud!

We returned to the hotel and were entreated to a lovely buffet dinner, featuring Asian dishes from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. We sat with a group from the Philippines who were all doing the same thing we were doing: living in Thailand and teaching English—their English is good enough to teach. They asked us questions about America and then one of them got our email address so we could stay in touch through facebook.

The next morning, Kate and I took a final walk along the streets of Laos. One thing we noticed was a strong presence of Veterinary facilities, something we had not really seen in Thailand. We went into one and found the place busy as a beaver! The people of Laos really love their animals!

Then we performed the ‘immigration hustle’ in reverse of yesterday: cleared Laos customs to leave, cleared Thai immigration to enter, and moments later I was officially legal to work in Thailand. We loaded our bus at about 2pm, ready to go home. That’s when things got a bit uncomfortable.

You know, when everyone on the bus speaks English fluently, and when all of us are living in country where few others speak our language and we don’t speak theirs, you would think that such a gathering would be full of chit chat and general English conversation at the joy of sharing something in common with a stranger, yes, but someone who is familiar in language. You would think so, but that is not the case! I felt like I was on a nightmare episode of Survivor! Two guys almost got in a fight over who would get the front seat. This wasn’t really resolved; one of them just took to the back of the van but promised the other “he’d steal the seat at our first stop.” Then two women who had sat together on the ride up to Laos found their seats had also been taken; when they asked some of the guys to shift around so they could sit together, no one was nice enough to do so. No one else on the bus came with a buddy either, and they weren’t friends sitting next to one another. In the words of one of the Americans who responded to the Europeans request, “it ain’t my problem!” I was sitting next to Kate, but even if I did the gentlemanly thing to give up my seat, the girls still would not have seats next to each other. So they were split up and had to sit next to the guys who didn’t want to cooperate. The two guys who almost fought had both mellowed out by the first stop, and the rest of the van slept soundly for our ride back to Bangkok. I listened to podcasts on my iPod and watched the Thai countryside roll along. I saw plenty of Asian cattle and saw several small bungalow villages where the farmers must live.

We arrived back in Bangkok at about 11pm. Too late for me to catch a bus back to my town—they stop running much earlier. So I stayed with Kate, hopped on an early bus at 6:30am, and made it to school in good form at 7:15am Wednesday morning. What a weekend!