The travelling to Thailand wasn’t bad. Thanks to in airplane movies the time passed surprisingly quick. One negative was that I have a cold and my nose was running so I kept having to blow my nose which was obviously kinda sucky.
have arrived to Bangkok and it’s about 11pm when I land. Wide awake because 11pm in Thailand means it is 9am back home in Cali.
I get my stuff, just my gigantic and heavy back pack. It was swift getting passed security. I go down this long hallway where probably 200 people are standing with papers that have names on them. This is only at gate 5, I’m supposed to meet my sign holder at gate 3. I meet Win and he shows me the way to the train that will take me to my accommodation. Tomorrow morning I need to come back to the airport and fly out to Chiang Mai which is where the shelter is located.
I can barely sleep and I am wide awake. Eyes are closed but I’m wide awake. Do you ever do that? You try and try to sleep and then somewhere along that trying you doze off and then wake back up and are not sure if you really slept or not?
I sit around reading. The owner of the accommodation/front desk/morning call (knocking on the door) comes to tell me it’s 6am. I just looked at my phone and it’s 5:45, she lied to me.
She tells me I should take a taxi to airport, only 400 baht. (35 baht is about $1). I say no because as wonderful as that sounds… I’ll probably get ripped off and I don’t know the roads so I won’t know any better. Win my Bangkok guide/host gave me written instructions with pictures on where to go. I just to get on the rail/subway up the stairs next to 7-11, which is right outside the alley where I was staying. Then hop off after one stop, getting on the rail/subway heading north to Phaya Thai which I would then switch to take that straight to airport. All costing about $2-3 U.S. Dollars. I wouldn’t have to wory about being run around town or language barrier challenges.
As I check out to leave, she insists I at least cab to Phaya Thai. Ok ok…. I go. Total comes to 39 baht and I hand him 50 baht bill. He says “no change” and he is waving the money with his hands opening palm up like a casino table dealer. I know I’m getting ripped off. But what is the point? It was less than a dollar and at least I got here hassle free. Right???
Good thing I didn’t get just the soup. The wontons had shrimp in it (I detest shrimp). The soup was good though and I finished every bite (minus the shrimp). Got to Chiang Mai and more people with signs. I don’t see mine. I sit down and shortly after Mickey the founder of COSA walks up to me and asks if I’m me!!! Which I am. Yay!
Yesterday Win told me it was flooding badly in Chiang Mai. He said it would be up to your chest if you stood in it. On our drive to the shelter, I honestly saw no water. I think we are in higher elevation, but probably the main city was flooded. The driving is similar to South Africa. Drivers drive on the right side of car but left side of road. I kept wanting to tell him he was on the wrong side of the road.
In the car I was able to ask Mickey a bunch of questions about the area and rules at the shelter. COSA was founded about 2 years ago (October 2009), Mickey and Ann are the founders. They are married. Mickey is a photographer by trade and Ann has a background in permaculture and some other things. I didn’t get much info on Ann, she is currently on maternity leave in Australia. Mickey also grew up in Connecticut so his English is wonderful. COSA uses an “upstream” process of saving these girls. There are currently 13 girls living in the house. All go to school and COSA even supports 2 girls who are at the University. COSA’s approach to saving these ladies is by working with the hill tribes and communities to keep the girls safe in their home with their families. If the girls are at-risk then COSA might go in and ask girls to live at COSA shelter to finish their education so they can eventually work and help support the family. The problem is that the family cannot support all of their children. You may have judgments about that but don’t, unless you live in the hill tribe villages or wherever this goes on, otherwise, you don’t know first-hand. We shouldn’t judge, we can’t. It isn’t productive. We are not here to judge but to help.
School is free up to the age of 12, so most kids have education until that grade. The youngest girl at the shelter is 4, her name is Neu (“new”). She constantly follows Aying around. Neu has a sense of playfullness that I could easily jump into. Aying is very bright and while playing Uno, we were able to communicate the rules of the game with hand gestures and body language. The oldest girl is 17, and I don’t think I’ve gotten to know her yet. Thai is not an easy language and unless we can point at something, the conversation has a lot of missed meanings. Later, some of the older girls joined in on Uno. They asked me my age and ethnicity. I met Meeju who is 14 and she loves Korean music, movies and dramas. They rent Korean movies and music on vcd. I was teaching Meeju how to write her name in Korean and count to ten. She taught me how to count to 10 in Thai. Thai is quite difficult and I thought Spanish was hard.
There are 6 volunteers like me at the shelter. Rahel from Germany, Laura from Colorado, a couple from Ireland, another gal from Scotland and one from Holland. Everyone is very nice and everyone is different with different perspectives and level of playfulness. I am the only one staying for 2 weeks, everyone else stays for months or even up to a year. Laura from Colorado, is the director here. She’s been here before and is staying for 6 months. Here is a picture of our room.
At COSA, they have an organic farm and grow their own herbs and vegetables. They have a mushroom growing hut and the chicken coop. This is an amazing place. It is small, probably about an acre of land. Maybe not even. The kitchen and dining hall are outside.
This is the dining hall. My first day at the shelter, I just wanted to observe and not take too many pictures. It started to rain around dinner time. We had some homemade pad see ew!!! Yummm
It started to pour rain and I had already been feeling sticky from being in the humidity and it does cool down somewhat in the evenings so it was manageable. I took a shower and was resting but knocked out at 8pm. Now it’s 4am and I’ve been up since 2:30am. I’m going into Chiang Mai city today. Excited to see what the history is all about! Till tomorrow! Yoga & Sleep, goodnight!
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