7/14 - Vive La France!

Happy Bastille Day!!!

In honor of Bastille Day, I decided to try to answer, "What am I doing here?" People ask me this a lot. Here's my answer. I'm tired, so it's long. Sorry it works out like that.

Pretty much, it's figuring out how to give people access to quality health care under the context of political instability. And then making it happen and then monitoring to see if it's working. Because there are so many rural areas with no clinics, this is usually done by way of community-based interventions. This means training people to train motivated lay-people to give simple and basic health education, diagnosis and treatment in areas where facility-based options may be a more than a week's walk away. There are several different programs each with a different structure. I work on the malaria control program (MCP) and the village health worker program (VHW) both with the Karen Department of Health and Welfare (KDHW).

MCP is one of the oldest and most established programs with about six years of really exciting data that shows that what's happening is really working. Simply put, since this program started, fewer people are dying of malaria. There are more treated nets, more education, more rapid tests for early diagnosis and more treatments being taken correctly. And because of all of these things, fewer people are dying. Awesome, huh? The VHW program is really new and a huge step in community-based interventions. It's using VHWs to branch out on a scale that has never been done before. To do this well, there's a tiered system. Level 1 focuses on gathering data about the villages, and having VHWs give information about diarrhea, dehydration, breastfeeding, proper hand washing (and installing hand washing facilities, as in a plastic bottle turned faucet), how to make ORS (oral rehydration salts) and also distributing zinc to households with children with diarrhea. These are simple, yet really important and really effective. The zinc, in addition to being really helpful to reduce the duration of diarrhea, also kind of helps builds street-cred in that he/she looks more like a medic if they have something to hand out. If data shows that the VHW was effective, and the village is ready (in terms of security, transportation, etc), then the VHW can become a Level 2 VHW, where they get training on how to educate about prevention, make diagnoses and give treatment for malaria and acute respiratory infections which are the two most common reasons for death of children under 5 (I think this is right, not 100% positive). With these VHWs, people who have never before received any health education can learn really basic skills to prevent and treat the diseases that are causing ridiculously high rates of morbidity and mortality in Eastern Burma.

Imagine there are 20 medics. Let's say each medic is generally responsible for a clinic that serves the 10 surrounding villages. That's about 120 villages who have access to health care. With the VHW program, a medic attends a training through KDHW, and then heads back to Burma and trains 20 VHWs from that area. That's 400 VHWs. At even just 3 villages per VHW, that's 1200 villages that have access to basic health care, including diagnosis and treatment for the most common illnesses. Also, with only a couple of villages per person, health education and prevention is actually feasible. Finally, the medic can now focus on the more complex cases that require more medical expertise. Cool, huh????

What do I do? As I said before, all of these programs are run by local health departments and organizations in Mae Sot that run things in Burma. For almost each program, there are bi-annual week-long meetings for supervisors and/or medics. The supervisors/medics hand over the data from the last 6 months, then talk about the good, bad and ugly from the previous 6 months, attend trainings on new and old protocol, including training-of-trainers, and finally receive more supplies (medicine, data forms, etc) to go back and distribute to the VHWs. The supervisors/medics then return to their areas, train their VHWs, send them on their way and keep tabs on them for the next 6 months.

Everything is run by the local groups. The programs are theirs, the implementation is theirs, the trainings that are held are theirs, the data collected is theirs. We serve as the 'technical assistance' for these programs. This means the we work directly with the coordinators of the programs in their office and we help get stuff done. Sometimes it's brainstorming new ideas for a new intervention or figuring out how to monitor the treatment of anti-malarial patients after an attack which has caused everyone to flee and relocate and sometimes it's double checking data and making photocopies. It changes day-to-day.

My days consist of a lot of meetings with people, with a little bit of time for me to do my part before my next meeting. Right now, I meet with my supervisors, people running similar programs within my organization, but mostly the local coordinators for the MCP and VHW programs. In the future, I'll start meeting with other people working on similar issues in other ways, outside of my organization. This week, people from my organization met with people from International Rescue Committee, Medecins San Frontier, Shokl Malaria Research Unit, Mae Tao Clinic and a ton of other groups in Mae Sot, and then even more groups through Skype conference calls. Very cool!

The founder/director came and spent the week of orientation with us. He's so cool, I didn't even realize he was the director until the second day. I thought it was just another person within the organization who happened to have the same first name. Oops. He's an ER doctor in LA who lived on a boat for a a bunch of years, who started this group over 10 years ago to 'fill the gaps' of the local health departments and organizations. (Get it?) It's definitely not about making a big name for ourselves. Most big groups, like IRC and USAID stamp their name on everything and everything they're associated with. We don't. The data, the papers, everything is owned by the local partners. In fact, we're probably one of the few NGOs in Mae Sot without a nice sponsored pick-up truck cruising around town. We keep a low profile and really exist to help the partners. There wasn't even an office until last year because most of the work is done at the local partners' offices.

As cliche as it sounds, our goal is to work ourselves out of a job. One common problem is that a big NGOs comes in, does the work for other groups (probably much quicker and more efficiently) but then something comes up, they leave, which often leaves the groups they were helping worse off than when they came and they have to either start from scratch or wait for another NGO to come and rescue them. My organization really focuses on capacity building so that we're not doing the work for them, we're helping them do the work. I know it sounds cliche, but it's a huge difference. Yesterday I spent about an hour helping the local coordinator type out a really simple email to order supplies from a pharmaceutical company in Bangkok. He had never done it before, and was nervous about typing in English and not putting in the correct information in the email. I could have had it sent in about 2 minutes, but the idea is that maybe next time an order needs to be made, he'll be able to do it in 30 minutes, then 15, then 8, then 4, then maybe 2.

This is what I do.

I help people who run programs which help the people inside the jungles of Eastern Burma live longer and healthier lives.

I like it.

Here are some articles if you're not bored of this topic yet -

Johns Hopkins Article

Malaria Control Program in Eastern Burma. (This is a program I work on!)

Access to Essential Maternal Health Interventions

More reports

Here is the outside of a restaurant with Thai, English and Burmese. The second picture is the Thai/Burma Friendship Bridge. That means - the other side is Burma. I know it looks like grass, but there's actually a river behind the grass. And if you look closely, you can see the top of an inner tube that someone used to swim across. I know it's not a great picture, but it's Burma.

7/11/09 - One week in Mae Sot

Today on my bicycle there was a boy walking a water buffalo to my left and a pick up truck with cases of beer piled 30 feet in the air.

I couldn't get any photos, because I was focusing on not crashing into them, but the road looked a little bit like this... 

And... $5 to the first person who can name the lady standing with me in the picture below.

She's pretty much the Michael Jordan of offering a huge variety of free, high quality, health care for all Burmese people living at or around the Thai/Burma border.  

If no one gets it, I'll post the answer in my next entry.

12:34:56 7/8/9

Today we watched a bunch of videos about local health organizations we'll be working with.

Very interesting stuff, but all I could think about was the one second, just before 35 minute after 12:00 noon when the time/date stamp on something said 12:34:56 7/8/9.

Yes, I'm officially 2000 years too late, and it only works in America, but whatever - it's still freaking cool.

Coming up next, August 7th, the same thing, but for the rest of the world!

My job is great. I work with really cool people, from my organization's side and the local health organization side. I'm learning a lot and it takes up a lot of time. But luckily Mae Sot is boring, and internet is slow, so I don't feel like I'm missing much.

Mae Sot continues to be really rainy and/or hot.

Between showers, sweating from my bicycle helmet and rain, my hair has not been completely dry in days. Ewwww! Yeah. I know...

7/6 - A pleasant surprise

Spaceballs with Burmese subtitles.  

Huh.  

Wasn't expecting that one.

Today was my first day of orientation for the new job.  The organization seems really well put together, unique in the field of public health, and really effective in what they do.  The other fellows are all coming from really strong public health educational and professional backgrounds.  Everyone else in the room has an MPH, a majority from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, widely recognized as the best in the country.  I decided I balance it out by having knowledge about Burmese and Karen people, history and culture.

I hope?

Lastly, I bicycled a lot today and my bottom is super sore. 

7/5 - Mae Sot

I rented a nice little one-speed bicycle, biked around, got lost, almost ended up in Burma, but turned around before that happened, met my new team for 'brunch', stayed inside most of the day because it was so rainy, but then met up with my friend from the US Campaign for Burma conference.  She came me a tour of Mae Sot in the rain on her motorbike.  I learned that Mae Sot rains a lot and even if you wear a poncho, you'll still get wet.  Also,  Tesco is open until 10pm and they sell more brands of soap than any other store I've ever seen.  I'll get a picture next time.  Learning learning learning!

7/4 - Chiang Mai --> Tak --> Mae Sot

I spent American Independence Day being completely independent of all Americans. This wasn't by choice. A hot dog and speaking English would have been nice. But instead, I just sat on buses and in bus stations all day. After leaving the Chiang Mai bus station, I didn't see any westerners for the rest of the day. I'm not sure if that's ever happened before. Also, I was too exhausted to speak or think in Thai. So I pretty much didn't speak to anyone the whole day except for three or four words of Thai. You know how most people talk about how nice Thai people are? They are. But not at bus stations. Today was tough.

I got the bus station and waited in line for the nice, spacious, air-conditioned, direct bus from Chiang Mai to Mae Sot. Failed. There are only two of those buses and they were all booked for the entire day. I forgot that it was a holiday weekend, so I'll take the blame. I ended up on a lovely bright pink government bus for the 5 hours to Tak. At the Tak bus station there are minivans to Mae Sot that leave every 30 minutes. Sounded simple enough.

The bus was slightly air conditioned, and came with a really

cheesy bright pink neck pillow to use (<----), but no toilet, no leg

room and played non-stop Thai country music karaoke music videos.

At Tak, the bus pulled over to the side of the highway for a total of 39 seconds. Eek! Luckily I was able to jump off and grab my bag within the designated time frame. Phew. I thought about what would have happened if I had been sleeping. The bus was heading to Bangkok. Hmm...

I'm not sure if I've ever been dropped off on a highway before. Following a sign for the bus station, I walked down the street, made a left, crossed another highway, and got to the bus station where I was told that all those minivans every 30 minutes were all full for the day. Huh.

After a while, a songtaew lady decided to rescue all the stranded Mae Sot-ians in exchange for twice the price of the minivan, while also taking twice the time. Thanks! The songtaew was packed and I could tell the people already inside didn't want me, but the driver wanted the money, so she told everyone to move over and let the foreigner in.

She threw my luggage on top of the truck and I sat on an extension seat that's not really even in the truck. The picture isn't of the truck I was in, just a similar one. To imagine the truck I was in, remove the back panels and extend the bench out one more seat, but also add additional bars around so that you're not hanging out of the truck completely.

Besides the smell and sound of the exhaust pipe, which was right below me and was shooting out black exhaust for the better half of two hours, it was surprisingly comfortable and relaxing. I had a little cage to feel safe in, more legroom than on the bus, and was surrounded by beautiful sights, smells and sounds of at least 10 national parks. And given the pathetic ability of songtaews to climb up mountains, I had plenty of time to soak it all in.

I was dropped off at the Mae Sot bus station, I think. Not really sure. I had been told that there would be tuk tuks around and that the tuk tuk drivers would know the all the guesthouses in town. Wrong and wrong. No tuk tuks, only moto-drivers. And none of them knew the guesthouse. I called the guesthouse, but no one answered the phone.

Argh!

Finally after polling about 30 random people someone knew where it was. But there were still no tuk tuks. So... I got on a motorbike with a tiny man, no more than 100 pounds. He put the carry-on between his legs in front of him. I sat right behind him with my gigantic backpack joining us as a third passenger. Under my right arm was my bag, which was carrying my laptop, and in my left hand was my fragile little hat. I couldn't even hold on to anything. No worries - this man is a pro. We didn't fall over, but we did kind of wobble when I tried to adjust my backpack. Oops!

Tomorrow I'll meet some people I'll be working with and rent a bicycle to check out the city more.

Oh yeah, I was made to believe that Mae Sot was an tiny itsy bitsy town. I imagined dirt roads, 10 shops, everything in Burmese and everyone on bicycles. I was way off! It's a city. And while you can see the Burmese presence, as far as I could tell from a 8 minute motorbike ride, it's definitely still Thailand with restaurants, stores, shops and lots of motorbikes.

Happy 4th of July?!

7/3 - Chiang Mai

Today I tried to do more fun things that make me happy. 

I went to Tesco.  

I ate khao man gai, my favorite food court meal.  --->

I met up with my friend Max (co-AUA teacher) and ate some gai yang (grilled chicken), sticky rice and som tam.

I went to my friend Lisa's new cafe which supports Freedom House, a school she runs for refugee and hill tribe families. 

I got a banana oreo shake. (Not something I usually did, but Max suggested it, so I said alright).

I got another Thai massage. 

I got a body scrub at a nice place.

I fell asleep early. 

7/2 - Chiang Mai

After dinner with Nong Wednesday night, I was tired.  I was acting tired - sleepy eyes, yawning, etc., but after getting to bed around 9pm, and falling asleep happily, I woke up. 

This happens - falling asleep, waking up - but the problem was that when I woke up, it was about 11:00pm.  Hmm...  I tried again, because I knew I was tired.  And I woke up again, this time at 11:30pm. Booooo!!!!  I tried to keep myself busy doing boring things that I thought would put me to sleep, and nothing worked! At around 6am I realized I was almost late for my daily 7-11 trip. 

So I opened the curtains, decided sleep wasn't going to happen and I may as well make use of the beautiful, non-rainy, day.

I met up with my friend Zoe for lunch at Sailom Joy, a previous favorite lunch spot.  The family who works there remembered me, which was nice.  I ate my favorite pad thai gai and drank an iced coffee.  (While working at AUA, I had a daily ritual of getting to work, doing my prep work for class and celebrating with walk to and an iced coffe from Sailom Joy.)  It was heaven.

By talking with Zoe, a freelance writer in Chiang Mai, I realized, again, how connected Mae Sot, New York and Chiang Mai are.   Zoe has started working on an oral history project on Burma where they will be talking to people from Burma living in Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, America and maybe more.  And it turns out that of the 6-person team, I know half of them - Zoe, who I know from Chiang Mai and two people I met in the States through the US Campaign for Burma.  In addition to them, during our conversation, we probably realized we know 3 or 4 other people I know through New York who she knows through Mae Sot and Chiang Mai. 

 

I met up with another friend and then went for a Thai massage.

I forgot how amazing Thai massages are.  Afterward, you have this awesome loose, elongated, relaxed feeling, just like after a yoga class, but you have an old fat lady doing all the work for you, while you just lay down and let her climb all over you pulling and pushing whatever she deems necessary.  And it's so cheap!  Full body, one hour Thai massage for 120 baht, which works out to $3.52 (2.50 Euros, 28.69 Quetzals) according to the currency exchange widget on my computer.

When I finish this I'm going and getting another one.  Maybe a body scrub too.  I don't think there are any spas in Mae Sot, so I think it's okay to go for a little pampering before I head up there.  

The next exiting adventure of the day was renting a motorbike.  I had been feeling weird since getting to Chiang Mai, feeling like it wasn't my town anymore, I didn't know anything, I couldn't do anything.  Once I got sat on the bike I realized why - I needed a bike.  As soon as I got on the bike, I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, like Chiang Mai was telling me, via my motorbike, "Hey Beth, great to see you again!"  Ahh...  

I used my bike to head over to the mall and sing some amazing karaoke with my friend Nong and Liz Peckenham, of all people!  How cool! She studied abroad in Chiang Mai during college and moved back here just as I was leaving.  We ended up talking about people we know in common.  People know her, from when she was here the first time and this time and they know me from the in between time, but would never guess that we know each other from home.   Karaoke was a lot of fun.  Even though I kind of lost my ability to speak Thai, I definitely didn't lose my ability to sing Thai pop songs.  We had a lot of fun and by 11:00 I was tired and ready to go to sleep!

This was very exciting, considering the fact that I hadn't slept the whole day (with the possible exception of the Thai massage, but it's hard to tell.)

I got home, fell asleep and slept a beautiful, peaceful 8 hours.  Woo hoo!  Jet lag - consider yourself defeated!

7/1 - Chiang Mai

My first official day in Chiang Mai started at about 5am because after waking up at 2,3 and 4, I surrendered to jetlag and got out of bed and went for a walk.  I really like 5am walks.  First, it was cool out and not raining.  Second, at 5am there are only old people and monks on the street.  Third, most importantly, 7-11 is open for a first day shopping spree!  Yii-sip sii cha-mong! (24 hours!). 

Unfortunately, I bought my favorite drink from last time and it was sickeningly sweet. That made me really sad.  I'm going to give it the Dad treatment (dilute it with water) and see if that helps.  

In addition to my disappointing pomegranate green tea drink, my 7-11 shopping spree included shampoo, body wash, a toothbrush, toothpaste, face wash, mouthwash, deodorant, nail clippers, and a razor all for about $5.  Aaaamazing.  And 7-11s are actually an expensive place to buy that kind of stuff.  Tesco would have been even cheaper, but there aren't Tescos at every corner, so I went with a 7-11.

I met Josh Plotnick (clarinet buddy from OHS, in Thailand studying elephants) for some breakfast.  That was cool.  I'm not allowed to talk about his top-secret elephant studies, but all I can say is that elephants are way cooler (smarter, more human-like) that you could ever imagine.  Possibly more human than some actual humans. Maybe we should say that we are actually elephant-like.  Hmm... 

So after breakfast I got ready for my trip to Mae Rim School where my friend Phra (monk) Em works.  For those of you who may have forgotten, I went on a trip with a group of Monks I met in January 2008.  Phra Em was one of the leaders of the trip.  We became friends and kept in touch.  When I met him, he was a student at the monk university and now he's doing an apprenticeship at a local school.  He teaches Buddhism to students in a public school.  I don't know the specifics of it - if it's a required, if people of other religions don't have to take it, if it's an elective kids can choose if they want - no idea. 

But in the school, there's a little room that says "Moral Education" and students walk in and out. Wait, I need to back up a minute.  My friend Phra Em said that he could arrange for a friend of his to give me a ride to the school.  For some strange reason, I assumed that meant a car.  I don't know why.  Probably because it's been over a year since I've lived here.  Definitely not a car.  Definitely a motorbike with a tiny itsy bitsy girl driving it.  And I, trying to dress nice for the school, was wearing a dress, therefore making things even more complicated.  Girls in dresses and skirts are supposed to sit side-saddle on motorbikes. University girls wearing their micro-mini skirts seem to do this effortlessly, but I can't.  Especially if the driver is a fraction of my weight.  I sat normally and and showed way too much leg.  Awkward...  It also started raining.... 

When we got to the school the girl, Som, said she could drive me home too.  I said told her she was really nice, but I would get a red truck.  Eek.  No more being a motorbike passenger while wearing a dress in the rain. Mai ow ka! (No thank you!).  

Phra Em met Som and me at the entrance to the school and walked us in.  Not so surprisingly, he looked pretty much the same.  That's probably what happens when you're a 

monk and your wardrobe consists of an orange robe.  As we entered the classroom/temple I realized there were only chairs for the monks and everyone else has to sit on the ground. Ugh - dress.  So I had to do the (painful) Thai temple sitting.  This means leaning on your hip with you feet kind of swept underneath you.  It's a little uncomfortable, but easy to get used to.  The kicker comes when you try to move your bottom foot and realize it's totally numb.  Pins and needles. Ah! I dealt with this by trying to gracefully switch sides and balance out the pain and discomfort.

The next, "Oh, right, I'm in Thailand" moment came when I opened the bottle of water.  First, I had used lotion earlier that day and the combination of rain and lotion left me completely unable to open the bottle.  I had to ask Som to help me.  When she gave it back,  I brought it straight to my mouth and had a drank.  After about two seconds I saw Phra Em coming back to the table with some glasses.  Oops! Bottles of water are for sharing. Soda, juice - you

 drink by yourself.  Water - you share.  No drinking out of the bottle.  I quickly took it out of my mouth and offered Som and Phra Em some water.  Som said ok, Phra Em said no thanks.  I'm not sure who saw what.

Phra Em invited me to help teach his Buddhism class in English. Uh oh.  Although I frequented Monk Chat and had a bunch of monk friends, I realized I know surprisingly little about Buddhism.  Oops.  We started off easily enough.  Standard Thai first questions - age, marital status, income level, religion.

I figure the religion stuff would come up.  It was a Buddhism class.   

 

Here were my thoughts:  I feel kind of Jewish, but I didn't want to start explaining nursery school menorahs and coloring book hagaddahs, so I said that I didn't have a religion and that I believed in a higher power but it wasn't specifically God or Buddha or Allah or anything like that.  Phra Em had to help me out but even he couldn't find Thai words for "higher power" because, I assume, the word is just Buddha.  Or Jesus or God if you're Christian.  So that was weird.  They were asking me how I know the right thing to do and what happens when I die.  I said that most religions usually teach the same things and I also decided for myself what rules are important to live by.  And I don't know what is going to happen after I die but I am okay with that. They stared at me like I was telling them that grass is blue and the sky is green.  They asked what religions I like, I said all.  They asked which ones I liked the most, I said none.  I asked if I was the first person they had met who didn't  have a religion and every single student said yes.

  

They also asked me why Christians pray with the fingers intertwined instead of with their hands against each other like Buddhists.  Didn't know how to answer that one.  I said each religion has a way that they pray and that's just the way that Christians pray.  Any better answers? 

Phra Em was writing a lot of English words on the board as we were talking, and when t

he word 'religion' came up, we decided to take a minute and do a brief pronunciation lesson with R/L.   Fun!  I tried to talk about the position of your tongue and mouth and therefore I showed my tongue and my mouth and made everyone feel really uncomfortable, evident by lots of giggling and face hiding.  But they mostly said it correctly after I embarrassed them, so I don't care. 

They also taught me how to pray.  For Thais, different hand heights signify different levels of respect.  If you are praying to a monk or to the King, you put your thumbs between your eyebrows.  Parents, thumbs on your nose.  Teachers, thumbs on your lips.  Older people, thumbs on your chin and everyone else, thumbs on your chest.  That all ma

de sense, but they tested me with the Princess and grandparents and Phra Em.  Answers? Princess, between the eyes for all royalty.  Grandparents, nose because without your grandparents, you wouldn't have your parents.  Phra Em, between the eyebrows cause he's a monk before he's a teacher. Got it!

Even though they stared at me like I was a Martian and were creeped out by my pronunciation lesson, I think they generally liked me, given the requests for pictures with their camera

 phones and "You are beautiful"s I received.

Which brings me to some other things I almost forgot.  First, white skin is beautiful and therefore I am.  Second, I am fat.  These are by no means my thoughts.  Rather, these are statements which are often said by random Thai people, to me, on a daily basis.  

Welcome back to Thailand. =)

After getting a ride back to town in the monk van, I met up with my friend Nong and stupidly suggested walking to get coffee.  It's a bad idea to assume the weather will stay the same for more than 5 minutes.  When we started, it was beautiful.  After no more than 180 seconds, downpour.  My bad.  The Rainy Season is no joke.

6/29 & 6/30 - EWK -> LHR -> BKK -> CNX

My combination Monday/Tuesday was long, but happily uneventful for the most part.

After a night of packing, cleaning and crying, and no sleeping, we left the house at 5am to head to Newark.  We got to the airport around 6, checked in, got my right side window seat just like I like, at when that was all finished, around 6:20, I ate some breakfast.  Easy! Security was a breeze and I had some time to sit at the gate.

When I was going through the gate the guy who had taken the big part of the boarding pass told me to go talk to a man standing just inside the jetway, I'll call Second Guy. Second Guy looked at my boarding pass and passport for no longer than 3 seconds and then told me I could go. Then First Guy said, "Stop. Your boarding pass didn't go through. Wait there." So I stood next to Second Guy for about 10 minutes, watching everyone else got on the plane. Then a girl came out of nowhere, looked at my carry-on luggage (totally normal carry-on luggage sized), picked it up and said, "Um, this isn't going to fit. How many bags did you check. Can you check it?" I said, "What? It'll fit. Do I have to check it?" She said, "I don't think it's going to fit. You should check it." I quickly had a vision of that guy on the plane who is desperarely trying to get his bag that doesn't fit, to fit.  It's sad to watch.  I was a little nervous, but decided to stay strong even though I had no actual experience with this particular piece of luggage.  I said, "You know what? Everytime I go through Heathrow, my luggage gets lost and I would really prefer to keep this with me." This was a lie.  I don't know if I've even flown through Heathrow and I've never lost my luggage at any airport.  But thanks to all the stories that I had heard people tell me I decided lying was ok. 

"I don't think it's going to fit. But I guess you can see what the flight attendants say. You can go." I said thanks and walked toward the plane but then realized the guy had said there was something wrong with my boarding pass.  So then I wondered if "your boarding pass didn't go through" was really code for "that luggage is too big" or if the girl misinterpreted my standing there and if there was actually a problem with the boarding pass. Oh well. Whatever. My luggage was fine and fit perfectly in the overhead compartment on my first try.  

I sat next to a um, larger girl, who used 125% of the middle arm rest, but I was okay with it. I slept for most of the 7 hour flight to London but woke up in time to eat food and watch 1 hour and 40 minutes of Gran Torino before they shut off the inflight entertainment, which was a shame because the whole film is about 1 hour and 55 minutes. The connection to my Qantas flight was a pain. I took a bus from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4 but after telling the guy my flight was at 10 (mistake, again, should have lied) the guy refused to leave and kept coming on to the bus, pretending to sit down and then just grabbing a water bottle or something, just to taunt me I decided. I didn't have a boarding pass or a confirmed seat so as I was sitting on the shuttle bus I just kept envisioning all of the right side window seats being allocated to people who didn't even care. It was hard. Eventually after smiley blond hair Australian guy wearing pants that were waaaay too tight, my bus driver friend pulled off and the three of us had a very interesting 10 minute bus ride through London Heathrow. Once I got to Terminal 4 I figured it would be smooth sailing from there, but au contraire... The security line was reeeaaaaaly long, which I thought would be avoided because the shuttle bus was only for people coming from other flights. I was so scared about not getting a seat or missing the flight that I even forgot to grab my poor little hat which wasn't strong enough to make it out of the x-ray machine all by itself. Luckily, my shuttle-mate got it and brought it over to me. Thanks Australian guy! 

Then the line for the airline to get the boarding pass. Ugh. Really long again.  There was a hippie family behind me speaking French.  Usually I wouldn't try to talk to a French family, but they were hippies so I felt like they would have to be nice.  I was 1/2 right.  They were nice and happy to talk to me in slow French, but they were Belgian who I've been told speak much slower than French people anyway.   When I finally got to the counter I was freaking out but trying to play it cool.  She took my passport and then said, "Here, bring this upstairs and they'll give you a seat upstairs." What???? It was a standby ticket!! My flight was at 10, I figured boarding started around 9:30 and it was about 9:25 already and I didn't have a seat. I knew my dreams of the right side window were long gone, so I started secretly hoping the flight would be so full they'd have to upgrade me to first class. You know they have to do that, right? 

That didn't happen. I got 40B. This is was the first B (middle) seat I can remember in a long long time. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I sat in a B (or it's middle seat letter friends in the center or on the right side) seat. As you probably know, I'm a 'online check in 24 hours in advance' kind of girl. Well, not this time. 40B was handed over to me at about 9:45pm.

Turns out 40B was not bad. It was right behind a wall so there was nobody in front of me to lean his or her chair back. But, possibly due to the lady behind me who kept kicking my seat, for the entire 11 hour flight, I couldn't fall asleep. I tried. Especially when they turned all the lights off and the entire plane was pitch black and silent (pretty impressive for a gigantic plane with hundreds of people). But no. I walked around the plane and sure enough at least 90% of the plane was sleeping. Or maybe just pretending to sleep, but doing a good job of it. I, along with my 10%, weren't that lucky. I know my seat was really far back (which is fair, the other people in the row had their seats back too) and I knew the lady was doing her best to comfortable in the tiny cramped area, so I felt bad saying something to her.  And I also knew if I asked her to stop moving around so much she might ask me to move my seat up.  Hmm... Usually I'm a good sleeper so I wasn't even sure if she was the reason I was having so little success.

Needless to say, crappy romantic comedies kept me company during the flight. Oh, and you know how I said I missed the last 15 minutes or so of Gran Torino? I got to see the last 15 minutes, which were really important, so I'm glad that Virgin and Qantas both agreed it was a film was worth showing. Qantas was nice. The accents were cute. (I bet they hate when people say that. Oh well.) I watched some Australian sitcoms and listened to lots of Australian music. No Cat Empire, but they did have Silverchair, Men at Work, Midnight Oil and a surprising number of songs I knew from 2003, the year I lived in Sydney. After the 11 hour flight I landed in Bangkok. Ahh, Bangkok. 

I have a tourist visa which entitles me to a stamp good for 60 days. There are a bunch of numbers on the visa and since I didn't know which was the exact visa number I thought I'd pass her my passport opened to the full-page, color visa for Thailand with my arrival card. She didn't notice. She stamped 30 days. I thought this might happen so I checked, saw the 30 days and went back. I got yelled at for not writing the visa number on the arrival card, but got it changed to 60 days.

I sat at the luggage carousel replaying all of the Heathrow lost luggage stories I heard from Mom, Dad and Erica and trying to stay cool. I did, after all, fight to keep my carry-on, so I was prepared. But alas, it showed up. Right as the "Last Bag" sign went on. Phew! I lugged my stuff up to the departures lobby and got my seat for my Thai Airways flight to Chiang Mai. 42C.  Aisle.  Ok.  I'll take it.  I made some phone calls, checked some email, ate some gai tot and kao nieow (it's just fried chicken and sticky rice, but qualifies as a meal here!), bought a SIM card, eavesdropped on a French family with a little kid and listened to a Thai university student who was just randomly practicing guitar on a bench. Nice!

I slept for most of the flight except when I woke up and jumped forward to catch the lady handing food out before she passed.  Close one!  When I got to Chiang Mai it was raining.  Like a lot.  I forgot how annoying the raining season can be.  But it's been raining a lot in New York too, so I guess I can't be too upset.  

From my parent's house Monday morning to my guesthouse in Chiang Mai Tuesday night, it was about 29 hours of travel/travel-related stuff. Needless to say, by the time I got to my bed, I was pretty much out.  I fell asleep listening to a French film.  French is pretty. Thai movies are a little too painful on the ears for night time.