3/22 Tuesday
6:15pm dep MSP
4 hour flight
8:10pm arr LAX (58 degrees, overcast)
4 hr layover
3/23 Wednesday
12:20am (10:20pm cst Wed) dep LAX
14 hr flight
3/24 Thursday
6:00am (6:00pm cst Wed) arr Taipei (55 degrees, rainy)
6 hr layover
12:20pm (12:20am cst Thu) dep Taipei
3:15 flight
3:30pm (3:30am cst Thu) arr Chiang Mai (93 degrees, overcast)
March 22, Duluth, MN
Scheduled to leave on the 1:30 shuttle, but the forecast was for worsening winter weather, turning to blizzard conditions in the later afternoon. I switched to the 11:30 shuttle, and got to the MSP terminal at 3pm.
Flights were on time and uneventful.
On my LAX-Taipei flight, I sat next to a large Bhuddist monk who was quite uncomfortable. I had the second seat in from the aisle, he was on the aisle, so he was up and down every hour or so to move about. PERFECT!! I planned my movement to coincide with his, so neither of us were too bothered. I watched 5 movies during the flights and got about 5 hours of sleep, an hour at a time.
China Airlines served 2 meals in flight, both were some kind of meat on rice with veggies. Not too bad.
I took ‘No Jet Lag’ homeopathic remedies every 2 hours… we’ll see how well it works! I DO credit chamomilla with my ability to sleep. I’m not sure I’d have slept as well as I did without it.
March 23, a day lost to flight and changing time zones
March 24, Thailand
JUNIPER TREE, Chiang Mai
This place is beautiful!! It is a resort-like place with several houses for visiting ‘servant workers’ from all over the world. It was built 12 years ago by an organization dedicated to giving M’s a place to rest, recover, rejuvenate and relax in comfort. There is a dining hall that provides 3 meals a day, a laundry area, pool, FOUR playgrounds (says Creed!!), and a stand-by taxi/van for hire. It is a tranquil, quiet place with beautifully tended gardens and grounds. The trees are in flower and birds are EVERYWHERE!
I arrived at 4pm, and got lots of hugs from Creed (6) and Chloe (4). It is SO good to be with them—they make me feel like the star of the show. A rare feeling, compared to my house, where I’m the wicked witch of the west. ;-)
It’s 90’s during the day, 75-85 at night. We sleep with fans and the AC on, but no mosquito nets.
We ate dinner at the Juniper Tree dining hall—turkey or pork with gravy, broccoli/asparagus/mushrooms, carrot/peapods, roasted/fried potatoes, ice cream. Delicious!
Monica and I left after dinner for a Dr. appt checkup (they have to pay cash for care… the appt was $13!). I’ll be checking around to see if I can find a dentist to fix my chipped front teeth while I’m here!!
After we returned home, I distributed some of the gifts that people sent with me for the kids and got ready for bed. Some things to remember:
- don’t swallow tap water (can use for washing, but don’t injest it!)
- how to work the AC in the night
- keep the door locked
- geckos talk (see next paragraph)
Who Knew!! Gecko’s chirp. All night long. After dark, they talk to each other in our rooms. They make a chirping sound that sounds like a cross between a sharp kissing sound and a stone banging on a piece of iron. Their call is a series of chirps, ascending then descending in pitch, rhythm and volume over 8 to 15 beats (it would look like this: ooooooooooo). It’s a cute noise, but I had no idea that they’d talk all night long! I’m sure I’d get used to it if I were here long enough. In the meantime, I’ll just keep reminding myself that no one is knocking on the door.
So, I crawled into bed at 8:45pm after taking half a lortab to help me relax and sleep deeply. At 8:55, I was almost asleep when I had the sensation of the bed moving. I figured it was a function of sleep-deprivation (I’d been seeing ‘phantom’ insects flying near the floor at dinner) and the lortab, but then I realized that I WAS feeling the bed move. Over the next few seconds, these thoughts ran through my head:
1. Is there a train track outside the window?
2. That rumbling isn’t loud enough to be a train that is causing this much movement of the house
3. Did it just get really, really windy?
4. This place is built MUCH to solidly for wind to move it this much
5. Am I feeling thunder rolling toward us?
6. It’s not raining, and thunder wouldn’t keep the house moving like this
7. This is an EARTHQUAKE
At this point, Monica came running into the kids’ room saying “GET UP AND GET OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW”. I jumped up, grabbed my skirt and glasses and ran out the front door into a field outside the building. We got out into the middle and watched the big trees sway for another half minute, then started to calm ourselves. The neighbor family was also out in the yard and we talked to them for a few minutes. They are from Tokyo and are VERY familiar with earthquakes. Monica, also, is quite familiar, as she grew up on the west coast and she and Jake lived in Southern California for a couple years. This was the longest in duration that she’s experienced, and quite strong.
All told, I think that the strongest tremors lasted between 15 and 25 seconds. I wasn’t scared till after I’d thought through all of the possibilities above, then I was spooked! When we were outside, we couldn’t feel the ground shaking, but the trees were swaying quite a bit. We went back inside, calmed ourselves and the kids and went back to bed.
After I calmed down (my new blood pressure medication is back in the states!!), I fell asleep pretty quickly, but woke up every few minutes thinking that someone was knocking on the doors (geckos…). At 11pm, a strong aftershock woke me up—I went from in bed to bolt upright and half way across the room before I realized that it was over. I’d kept my shorts on so I’d be dressed if we had to run out again.
The whole thing was surreal, bizarre and frightening. I laid in bed and prayed out loud till I went back to sleep. I can see how one’s brain could run away with them from the fear!! It was really scary, and the adrenaline rush was HUGE! I tend to avoid things that give me an adrenaline rush ;-)
It turns out that the epicenter was along the Myanmar/Burma border, about 150 miles north of us. The quake was a 6.8, so pretty big! Amazing that we could feel it so far away. It was all the talk at breakfast today, there were people at our table from Japan and Myanmar, so I got lots of good info on quakes. Google “earthquake in Thailand” if you want more info on it; I’m assuming that there won’t be much coverage in the US about it.
I was up several times in the night—bathroom, geckos, too hot—but overall, I got almost 10 hours of sleep. That’s the up-side of a LONG trip… too tired to HAVE jet lag at first!
Some observations about Thailand:
-Geckos are awesome, but hard to find during the day. I”ll try to get some photos and/or video one of these nights.
-Birds are EVERYWHERE! The sounds are like the soundtrack to a movie!
-Traffic rules: drivers on right side of car; left side of road; people ride in the backs of open trucks, often standing up; lanes are NARROW, sidewalks?? Nah, who needs all that room… the car’s just veer around pedestrians.
-Food… CAN”T WAIT FOR THAT!!!
Jake and Monica are out at a Dr. appt for Creed this morning, I’m expecting that we’ll get out and be a little touristy today… perhaps a massage for my aching body!!
Thanks for reading,
More later,
Julie
Shaky intro for sure! Glad it wasn't more serious....scary!
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