I am once again travelling, and I am therefore once more sending collective e-mails... I mainly included here those of you who asked me to be included, and those who are usually interested in my travel reports :P If you do not wish to read about my wanderings in South East Asia please let me know.
For those of you who do not even know what I am talking about, well, I am in Thailand (finally), and I am going to be spending the next 3 months here in South-East Asia.
The plan goes as follows: for the first month I will be volunteering in a little rural village teaching English to Thai kids. I know, many of you are probably wandering how could I possibly teach English? Well, I guess they do not speak English well enough to realize I am not qualified :) After that I will cross the border into Laos, travel around, then make my way into Cambodia to visit Ankor, fly to Bali, back to Thailand and the beaches of the south, and finally finish my trip doing a Vipassana Retreat ( 11 days meditating) in Chiang Mai. This is the plan, which does not necessarily mean I will stick to it ;)
I obviously have almost nothing to tell so far as I have just arrived a couple hours ago. It was however already an interesting trip. I flew via UAE and got to be in a bathroom full of older muslim ladies dressed exactly alike doing "ablutions" ( not sure how to spell tat). They were from Indonesia and had quite flowery dresses. It was so surreal the scene. Tones of oler women all wet, throwing water all over, the bathroom lilke a pool, a lot of noise... I wish I could have taken a picture but I guess that would be quite strange and maybe offensive. There was also an western blond lady quite angry with the commotion in the bathroom. Seriously the woman is in MUSLIM airport and was acting like she was above it all....
Another highlight was being screened through UAE customs. It was a kind of XRay to see if you have the swine Flu ??? everybody had to go through while some employees wearing masks wacthed the video. I was greeted by a UAE officer who looked like Sayid ( from Lost) and actually said " Hello Love!!" . It is my second time in this airport, I stopped there when I went to India last year. The airport is entirely different. I could not figure out whether I was in a new place or whether they are just addicted to renewing. Probably the latter. It is a great place though you get to see those Saudi in full white "djelabas?", and women in all kind of different muslim attire, as well, as westerns in mini skirt. To add to the surrealism of it all, the ablutions, the prayer room, the westerns, the police, I had to also fill in a form stating whether i had been or not in contact with mexicans :( americans or canadians in the past month!
At the airport in Bangkok, in fact it was not that different.. there were tones of Asians wearing those hospital masks, and all the staff as well, just us the threat were unmasked :) It is incredibly hot here, and at 7 am I was already burning. I am exhausted, so i guess I ll try to nap during the hottest hours, and then I have to go actually buy appropriate clothes to volunteer.....
