Checking back in...

Well, it's been a while since I've checked in on this blog. At the moment, I'm in a coffee shop in the Bangkok airport. We've still got about 4 hours until we're even able to check-in for the flight home, so I thought I'd entertain you all with some reflections over here, before I get to some more team type business in a bit. I can tell you that it's likely that this blog will be fairly Thailand centric for the next several days after I return, as I share with you all more of my personal experiences, and also process them myself. I hope you will find something worthwhile.

Today I'm going to stay on the lighter side of things, however. If you've been checking in with the team blog, you saw me allude to us taking a 45 minute detour in order to avoid 20 yards of walking. Allow me to elaborate.

Public transportation in Ubon is provided by tuk-tuks, which are essentially open-air taxis, and "song thiews", (that's my best attempt at a phonetic spelling) which basically operate in a similar fashion to buses, in that they have a fixed route that they loop over and over again. Song thiews are basically pickup trucks with benchs along the sides of the truck bed, and a roof over the top. They are identified by number, and are also painted different colors. I'm guessing there's some rhyme or reason to the color choice as well (3's and 7's are pink, 2's are white, several are blue, etc), but I haven't figured it out yet. You flag one down along the side of the road, hop on, and then ride to wherever you are going, at which point you ring a bell and the driver pulls over and lets you off. There's a flat fee of 10 baht (roughly 30 cents) per person no matter how far you ride (well, that's only true to a point, as you'll soon see)

Anyhow, in the morning, we had taken the #3 on our way out to a church that we wanted to pray over, and noticed a market along the route. After we had finished our planned tasks for the day, it was about 1:30 and we didn't have to do anything else until 4:30, so we decided we'd catch the #3 again and go to the market. That we did quite successfully. On the way back, however, things got interesting. Our hotel is off the main street in Ubon, which is a 4 lane divided highway. They drive on the left in Thailand, and the street back to the hotel is on the right as you're coming back on the #3. Typically, we'd just get off across from the Lotus (basically the Ubon version of Wal-Mart), and walk across a bridge over the street. However, I was getting quite comfortable with these song thiews, and had noticed #3's coming back the other way, so I said "Let's just keep going, these things loop around here somewhere close." Well, they do loop around (sort of), but it was at no point that resembled "close".

We ended up heading out to the outskirts of Ubon, by the bus station, and any other number of places we didn't really want to go. Finally, the thing pulled a u-turn and I figured "Great, we're going back." That was, of course, until he took a left down a side street that was definitely NOT where we wanted to go. The whole time during this ride I kept seeing #3's going back the other way, and thinking that maybe we should just get off, walk across the street, and get one coming back the other way. But I kept balancing that thought with the thought that if we did that, we'd end up doing it right before the loop back point, and end up getting the same truck and driver coming back. So I held off on that thought.

Finally, we turned off this side street and wound up in a field/lot where there were... many other pink #3 song thiews. We had found the "loop back" point, or more accurately, the start and finish of the route. We had to hop off and pay our driver, and had another driver ready to leave on his route and eager to accomodate these silly "farang" (foreigners) who clearly didn't know what they were doing. As we went back out around the last corner, I looked back as we passed this restaurant where two Issan ladies were pointing and clearly having a good laugh at our expense. I hadn't noticed them the first time, but you know they had noticed this group of 4 white people and wondered what in the world we were going.

As it turns out, we were actually very, very close to where our friends Randy and Jodi live, but since I'd never been out to their house, I didn't know that. I wish I had, because we could have paid them an unplanned visit. As it was, we just wound up with a really fun story, and probably the moment of the trip that we'll all remember the longest.

So, the lesson for all of you in this: if you're ever in Ubon, get off on the other side of road and walk the 20 yards!