SUMMARY OF MAY 2001 TRIP TO THAILAND
Page 3
After leaving the hostel, we headed for the home of an old friend of mine.
In December, he was coughing up blood and having lots
of chest pain. He was taken into Dr. Cynthia's clinic where she discovered
he had old piece of shrapnel lodged near his heart and there was nothing she
could do for him. He lay around for a couple weeks and the bleeding was
brought under control. I was really disappointed when we got to his home
and found that both he and his wife were out in the jungle cutting bamboo.
I told the neighbors to tell him I was there and would try to come back next
week to see them. I then went to the home of the young girl who died of cancer
last year, but her parents were at the river bathing. Donnie, Ksha Ka Lu,
and I were both hot and tired and still had an hours ride on the decrepit
line bus, so we hiked out to the road to wait for one to come by. About
8 children followed us out, giggling and running off whenever I turned around
to talk to them.
When we arrived back at the hotel I called Winsleigh and he said he had
taken my things out to Isaac's house. All I had with me were my 2 sets of
dirty clothes I'd worn for 4 days. I took a warm shower and after putting
on my cleanest dirty clothes, Winsleigh took me on his motor bike out to pick
up a few things to wear. We would have to get a truck to haul the two big
duffel bags back to my room. When we got back to the hotel, I had a message
that we were expected at Dr. Po Thaw Da's home for dinner. I quickly changed
into clean clothes and Donnie and I walked over to his house. Donnie said
it was a "short walk" and in 15 minutes we were there. I was very glad that
"his short" and "my short" were the same this time! After a nice meal and
visit, we had to hustle to get back to the hotel before dark. Dr. PoThaw
Da rides a bicycle everywhere he can and had just ridden 2 hours one way
to conduct an HIV training for Karen Medics.
When we got back to the hotel I told Donnie I wanted to start taking the
stairs to the 5th floor to get my legs in better shape for all the climbing
ahead of us. I counted 100 steps from the 1st to 5th floor and figured if
doing this a few times a day wouldn't do it, nothing would! We were both
so tired we were both in bed and asleep by 8 PM. We had a long day ahead
of us tomorrow. Winsleigh was going to try to find a private truck we could
hire to take us to Mae Sariang, the next stop on our trip. It would take
3 hours by truck but if we had to take line bus, it would take 6 hours.
That was tomorrow's problem. I'd been awake since 4 AM and was ready to go
to sleep. At this point, all I cared about was getting to Mae Sariang so
we could go into Mae Rah Moo camp.
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