Well just to clarify, while i did go up to Thailand, i did not step a single foot into Bangkok, a place that despite my more than two months in total spent in Thailand i have yet to really visit apart from Don Muang, and which i'm really in no hurry to visit either cos i'm not really a shopping person (or at least not there) and i'm not a fan of crowds or traffic too. And since those are the three things i immediately associate with Bangkok, there's no real reason for me to go there is there...
I also did not go to Phuket - while my flight did land there, upon landing Clement and i immediately went up to Khao Lak in Phang Nga province, about a 90 minute ride north of Phuket. Now, Khao Lak is far less of a tourist trap than Phuket will (hopefully) ever be, especially so in July, which is smack dab in the middle of the tourist off-season in Khao Lak; this suiting me and my aversion to huge crowds just fine.
Well, as you can see from the above picture, Khao Lak now has some form of a Tsunami evacuation system in place, and for good reason too. It was one of the worst-affected areas of the Thai Andaman coast during the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, with tourists and locals alike numbering in the thousands being killed, and is still in the process of recovery from that devastation really. As i was strolling along the beautiful expanse of beach, i came across several simple memorials to those whose lives were lost that day. And there are still several places in the area which have obviously not even been touched since the Tsunami hit - and hence they lie abandoned and overgrown with creepers.
Observe those waves (which look far tamer than they actually were). Now imagine wave upon wave countless times more powerful than those you see relentlessly pounding the coastline and all in its path. Can you? Well i could barely imagine it myself. But basically in considering that, i was reminded of the awesomeness of nature, and yet in fact that our God is the Lord and Master over it all. My room was facing the beach on the third floor, and Jeremy tells me that in fact the waves actually swept through the second floor, which is a good (but my estimation is bad) twenty meters above the sea level as i observed it. That's just mind-blowing man...
Well up till now recovery work has been steadily going on, and it appears as though within a year or two things should be back to the way that they were before. The human side of this tragedy did present itself to me, albeit in a truncated manner, during church on Sunday, which Jeremy brought us to. The female pastor was thanking a visiting mission team from NJ for coming and then she broke into tears, clearly deeply thankful for all the help that has poured in from abroad to the devastated Phang Nga area in the wake of the tsunami. That, i thought was part of the essence of being a Christian - to help out those in need, sharing the love of Christ as He once did and still does, be the recipients believers or otherwise, and all to His eternal glory...
Hmm now on to less weighty matters - i remember first tasting Thai-style ice cream during MEET last year, and i was hungry for more... Well, the perfect opportunity afforded itself on the first afternoon there when the ice cream man came by in his motorcycle. The beauty about this is that it's so simple - just Thai coconut/pandan/chocolate ice cream topping glutinous rice, peanuts and jelly - yet oh so delicious... And all that for just 10 Baht =)I was also somewhat pleased with myself that my less-than-rudimentary command of Thai, almost totally acquired during MEET, did come in quite useful, especially when it came to ordering food (mee nam prik mai?). I always try not to draw too much attention to myself whenever i'm abroad, and speaking even a bit of Thai sure helps along that vein. It helped even more that i look more Thai than i ever did before for obvious reasons (or maybe not so much Thai as Muslim - that's what the immigration officer asked me...) so i could blend in a fair bit...
My (almost) life-long trepidation towards being bitten a leech, which has manifested itself ever since i watched Stand By Me, and which i had somehow escaped through two years of basically being at least knee-deep in water during NS, finally reached a head when we went to explore a local waterfall, which was a fairly long trek in to. By the time we made it back to the car, i had found a total of four leeches on my feet, with one of them (the one above) biting me for good measure. Um but obviously i wasn't too alarmed since i took the time to take a picture of it before it was plucked off. Heh well at least i can cross off getting bitten by a leech from my to-do list =p
So i've barely scratched the surface of what actually went on during this trip, and hence i've barely done it justice... But anyways i'm thankful for this trip for so many reasons - the friends, the sights (that's James Bond Island from The Man with the Golden Gun behind us btw), the food (phet mak mak) etc... And one other thing is that this trip was not of the usual touristy variety, but i got to see the social aspect of things there, for lack of a better term. The post-tsunami setting of the place somehow provided for me the perfect backdrop for a fruitful time spent with God, and i really dunno how to say more about it than that =)...
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