You may notice that this post looks startelingly similiar to ones I have done over the course of our stay in Bangkok. You may even have an even more starteling revelation if you have been going to THIS website.

But if you havent thats ok. But for those of you who want a little more I have added a bit more personal stuff that I couldn’t add to the more public version. And I promised a story of a guy giving me language advice and that is what Im going to do.

Im getting some printing done at this place near the Uni. and the elderly Thai gentleman serving me picks up a conversation with me when he finds out im from NZ etc. He speaks pretty good english. I apologise that I can’t speak as good thai. He then goes “Find Thai girlfriend, best way to learn language… Of course it depends on mans ability to find girlfriend. Some aren’t very good.” I laugh and tell him Ill seriously take it under consideration. Me and Jay leave the place laughing to ourselves. How forward of him.

The other Day it was raining hard out, and flooding in the streets just appeared out of nowhere. I was inside for this extraviganza but the others were wadding along the street to get to McDonalds at the time. In NZ we have such pussy rain compared to here in Thailand. In NZ it cant make up its mind, and its sorta sprinkles us with water. In Thailand the clouds are like “Alright, Im busting to take a leak.” BOOM! Lightning,thunder, torential rain. You get soaked in Seconds.

The Crocodile poking is after the paragraph about the ancient city.

Hi everyone *puts hands together and bows slightly* Sawadi Khap from Izak Flash Man and Jay.

A lot has happened here in the past 2 weeks (?) wow time flies. We’ve been teaching English at the hostels we have been staying at in Bangkok. It’s been a learning curve for all of us. Trying to teach something that’s challenging, understandable and at the same time answering all the tricky questions they have been firing at us. “WE DON’T KNOW WHY ENGLISH BREAKS ITS OWN RULES. Sorry.”

There have been a few unfortunate misunderstandings within the groups. Which is a staple diet when the two parties come from separate cultures that can’t speak each others language very well. It seems as though if you pronounce someone’s name in a slightly different pitch or tone it becomes a completely different word, words that generally don’t bear repeating. Much to their amusement, and much to our embarrassment, and they never tell us what we said until one of them quietly takes us aside.

Church over here puts all us westerners to shame. 6 Hours of church. It starts about 9 in the morning with a bible study. Then jumping into a regular type service which we all know and love. Glory church (One of the few churches in Bangkok) has a very multicultural group with Thai, Korean, Americans, and the Occasional Oceanian. So during the sermon you will hear the whispering of translators all over the room. After the main service they have lunch together and then go hard for a few more hours with a sharing time. Their passion is revitalizing to see. Continue to pray that this energy will continue to flow out of the little hall and out into the community.

Josh and John turned up at the Beginning of the week. Josh is a gapper from last year who’s now a missionary in China. The group he works with can’t meet in groups in China, so they had to jump the border and do the conference in Thailand. Johns his mate who’s on a holiday. They were a good temporary addition to the team.

When we find the time in-between preparing classes Emma treats us with giant ice cream. Hah. I wish. But her, Mark, and Emma-lee do take us to some pretty rad places. For example the ancient city.It’s a park in the shape of Thailand. With real and replica buildings from around Thailand, placed in relation with where they would be in the real deal. So its as if Thailand was shrunk and the buildings stayed the same size. It still takes a bike to get around the whole place, and a couple of days to fully appreciate everything. Bikes are half the fun of the place. They have racks and racks of the run down little things. Hazards include, rust, wobbly wheels, seats designed for aliens and brakes (If your lucky enough to even have breaks) which slip. Jess and Beth, being the special children they are, decided to take a tandem. I was rather impressed with their actual skill in riding it. I’m not so sure about Josh’s skills though. He talked his way into riding shotgun with Jess on the back. They churned off ahead in what appeared to be an attempt at breaking the land speed record on a tandem bicycle. It was going good until they went over a bridge.. Half way over the bridge. From our point of view it looked as though they just disappeared. When I got close enough the bike and Jess were sprawled out over the ground. Josh was already on his feet, asking why no one was asking him whether HE was ok.

After that we traveled in our nice air conditioned Van to the Crocodile farm. They have a lot of crocs. Its more like a petting zoo than a farm. They have camels and leopards and tigers that you can sit on and take pictures with. The girls were inraptured with the baby monkey though. It had a nappy on and you could hold it. I have to say it was uber cute. While it was getting its picture taken with Jess it took a bit of a widdle though. The show with the crocodiles was rather stressful to watch. Girls screaming on either side of you every time the guy whipping his head out of a quickly decending pair of jaws can really get to you. People would throw money down for them. I don’t know how the notes survived floating around in the water though. Some people thought they were funny by throwing the money amongst a huge pile of crocs so the man had to attempt to get it out of all of em.

Another treat was taking us to the red light district. Well, when I say treat, I don’t mean.. Digging myself a hole. We went and visited the Rahab missions house. They’re a group which work right at the gates of hell it seems. This is made immediately apparent by the directions we are given. ‘Just the place under the sign “Super Pussy” ’ Paul and Margaret MacGregor, Two awesome New Zealanders from Tauranga run the show. They help the woman that work in the area get out of the situation they are forced into. It’s an unfortunate epidemic in Thailand and it’s good to see that there are people with a heart to change things. They teach the girls alternate ways of earning money, making jewelry and such. Rahab also provides free education to the girls. Afterwards the girls (and us guys) chipped in by getting a bunch of the jewelry to take back home as gifts. Woops, maybe I shouldn’t have typed that.

We also helped Paul and Margaret with the New Zealand night they had planned for their English class. Now this is an amazing coincidence. They didn’t know we would be coming to Thailand, and they had no control over the date of when the night would be held. Now what were the chances of us coming at a time which was so convenient for all of us? And on top of that, how could we have ever planned that was the same night Josh and John came. That’s an answer to prayer. Pauls prayer that Kiwis would come and help the program along and then our prayer that God would have full control over our program. Who needs to PLAN stuff when you got God on your side. I mean apart from the fact we wouldn’t know what’s going to happen next but oh well.

The girls have been connecting really well with the Thai girls in their dorms. Many a time have we heard stories of them staying up to the wee hours of the morning having a blasty blast. Or going to the night markets and “eye” shopping. Since there aren’t windows to look through. They have also done a lot of singing together, swapping lyrics with each other, so now our girls can sing the songs in both Thai and English.

Us guys on the other hand valued sleep a bit more. It was fun going to the stadium and playing soccer though. The guys are really into their soccer. I actually think it’s a national thing. When you head down to the stadium it’s full of make shift Soccer fields. There is little to no grass, but what they do have is a wide concrete expanse. It didn’t feel weird at all, playing soccer on the landing of the huge steps up to the stadium, with a few chunks of concrete (Taken from the side of the road and used as goal posts) with no shirt on. You can just stand there and excrete water like a sieve… a sieve full of water. It’s amazing to see how hard out they get into their soccer.

One thing you learn about the Thai’s, “No half measures*”
Everythings an extreme. Luxurious condominiums stand looming over squatty brown shacks. People with pristine hair and unwrinkled brand labeled clothing push past small children begging on the side of the road. Temples are gilt with gold and intricate designs while the average wage is about 70baht a day. (about a $1.80)

In a few hours we will be getting onto the overnight train and chuff our way to Chaing Mai. So we now have a choice on whether or not we should do spelling corrections or we should go out and have fun…. WOOHOO! *Jumps away from the keyboard and runs down the road pretending to be in the music video.*

*No half measures is a sentence copyrighted by the CocaCola company. Don’t worry they wont sue us because I copyrighted the letter ‘A’ in both upper and lower case.