The First Letter

It’s been five days now, since I first entered Thailand.

I haven’t yet written much about the trip or the five days here yet, either because of culture shock or jet lag or my typically delayed response to life. I’ve had plenty of time to write, but there’s just so much…

So much to write, but it’s all about the most commonplace things that it almost seems silly to waste time describing them.

Anyway, I guess I’ll pretend like I’m living a long time ago, when kids who left home would write detailed letters to their parents about their new living situation.

ahem.

Dear Mom and Dad (and you, Reader),

            I guess it’s been an awful long time since I last wrote you all. I won’t make any excuses about not having any time to write, so I’ll just apologize for not doing it sooner. How is everything back home? I sure miss everyone there. Give them all my love.

Thailand is a much different place than Arkansas, as you might expect, but before I go on, let me mention the trip here. You all know that after leaving Monday afternoon, we drove to Dallas to spend the night. On the way there, Dr. Liu insisted that we stop and purchase some water bottles with filters, which ended up coming in handy. At least, I attribute my not being sick yet to being able to drink purified water. Anyway, that night in Dallas, we didn’t get to bed until midnight or so.  Knowing that we needed to leave the hotel for the airport at 3:30 am to be ready for our 6:00 am flight, and also determined to make the 12-hour time zone switch as soon as possible, I decided to stay up the whole time. The night before that I had been up until late also, so that worked in my favor. The idea was for me to stay awake during the night in the States, so that I would tired enough to sleep during the daytime, which would be night here in Thailand.

The plan worked fairly well, I think, I slept a little on the first flight, but it was a small jet, and therefore the seats were a little closer together than gave me enough room to lean forwards and sleep well.

Anyway, the lack of sleep made it a little bit less fun to navigate the huge Los Angeles airport, but I’m glad Hannah was there with me. She had more sleep than I did, so she was able to think more clearly.

Well, we waited for about an hour before we could go to our gate, but we eventually got there and waited again for four more hours. As we looked out the huge glass windows, a huge jet pulled up to the gate next to ours. We both gasped and ran over to look at it. This jet was the biggest I had ever seen, a double-decker with two jet engines on each wing. I tried to count all the windows and guestimate how many people could fit on board, but gave up and decided to look it up online. Hannah wasn’t quite as interested in the details, but I read all about the jet and found out everything I wanted to know. Later, when we went to board our own airplane, we discovered to our amazement that it was the exact same model! It was an Airbus 380, if you want to learn about it too. Pretty amazing piece of 21^st-century accomplishment. 

I almost expected to be nervous about flying across the ocean. However, when we started on this trip, I was completely at peace. I didn’t even cry about leaving all of you, even though I did feel the loss. When we got on the plane, the only question I had was, what will I do for the next thirteen hours, if I can’t sleep?

Thankfully, I did sleep quite a bit, and the time that I wasn’t sleeping I spent watching an interesting documentary on the Arabian desert, a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (amazing piece, brilliant performance…but the pianist was not very thrilling to watch), and –what else did I watch?- oh! an animation of our slow progress across the ocean.  Not that you really wanted to know all that. I had a hard time not watching the movies playing on other people’s screens, not because I wanted to watch them, but because I literally had nearly nothing else to look at.

            Anyway, we finally touched down at the Incheon airport in South Korea. It was early evening there, but you were all just about ready to wake up at home. We had a layover of about an hour, enough time to notice all the make-up and beauty airport stores fully stocked with skin-bleaching products. (the Korean, especially of most Asians, are very keen on having pale faces. It’s quite the opposite of most Americans’ preference.)

            The last flight, from Incheon to Bangkok International Airport was the roughest. I knew it would be from my previous trip to Malaysia. Storms seem to be common over the China Sea or the Philippine Sea (or whatever sea that is that had storms before when I flew over it).  Our route originally showed us going over the mainland China and Laos and then Thailand, but we ended up taking a very crooked path over the ocean and around Taiwan. After we got blustered around in the dark for a while, we passed through the clouds and I was able to look down and see the whole island of Taiwan. Of course, it was dark, and I could only see the lights from the cities. Anyway, I was very glad to land in Bangkok. Turbulence is scary to me, especially in the dark, and that flight was a very good opportunity for me to be calm while others were crying out in alarm. Thankfully, Hannah is quite imperturbable; she thought the whole experience was fun.

            When we reached Bangkok, it was near midnight. Brian Atwell, a missionary to the city, met us there, and took us back to the building where his family lives. We stayed in the hotel underneath his apartment building.

            From that time on till today, I’ll have to write about later. I know I’m cutting things short, but that way you’ll pay attention better. This is a blog anyway, and not an actual ten-page letter.

I’ll see you in my next post!

Missing you all,

Raquel