How NOT to get a Chinese Visa

Step 1: Only find out you have to apply in person less than a week before you leave your home country.

2. Choose a country with horrendously unclear information about what you actually need for your application.

3. Try to apply around the holiday season (ie Chinese New Year).

4. Choose a city to apply in that has the worst traffic imaginable.

5. Where you don't speak the language.

6. Where everyone tries to be super helpful and tell you what to do/which way to go even if they have no idea.

7. Catch taxis that don't know the way and try to work it out as you go along.

8. Go within a block of the embassy, lose faith in your map-reading abilities, and head in the opposite direction.

9. Catch another taxi that doesn't know where it is meant to be going.

10. Get told to get out, not look properly, tip over a policeman on a motorbike, get escorted to police station and held there until the embassy is shut for the day.

The policeman was whingeing and moaning a whole bunch about his wrist (I don't think it was really hurt at all) and yelling at the poor taxi driver for ages and making him get in touch with his insurance company.. The people in the police station had a bit of a chuckle at him but they still took it seriously. The taxi man and I were both charged with traffic negligence or something, and charged 500 baht apiece (about $15).

The policeman tried to charge us 4,700 baht for damage to the bike. We insisted there was no damage (there wasn't, demanded to be shown the bike, and ended up talking the other policeman (who was handling the case) round. We didn't have to pay damages, but he suggested we pacify the man by giving him some money for the physio, which we did (although regretted it later! Wish I'd given it to the poor sad taxi driver instead, even tho he probably shouldn't have told us to get out in the middle of traffic :P).

The good news is, that after waiting for hours in a queue that stretched for more than a block this morning, I finally got my visa!! Yew!! Just in time.

Sunday morning in Bangkok

The streets are quieter, roads watersplashed.
People opening shops, putting out gifts for the gods. Flowers, food, water, incense. Even soft drink. Outside a big bank, two whole roast chickens.
People sweeping, making coffee, chatting as they hang against doorframes.
Bright line of cheap t-shirts, man flashing smile, hopeful look.
Smell smoke, noodles, gusting of petrol. Sleeping dog.
Day begun.

Fence-building and River Fun!

We spent most of the past week at Dee's main children's home. It's situated near the border with Myanmar, 3 lovely buildings that Dee designed herself on a little block of land just outside town (there's another home in town, with more of her family, where 20 other kids live). About 30 kids live there, cared for by Dee's sister and her husband, and one of Dee's brothers. Dee's sister, Pola, loves to cook, and makes amazing meals for the entire community every single day! They also have a bunch of pigs (Dee loves pork), lots of banana trees, flowers and herbs, and a little soccer field.

Being waved off by Pola and the 3 youngest there - nicknamed Cocoa, Milo & Chocolate!

We were helping to build a new fence - cement poles, wire strung between, and then bamboo sticks woven in the wire to make it animal-proof. They were even making the cement poles from scratch! Tying together a wire frame for each one, then filling it with concrete mixed in a pile on the ground.

We also helped load and unload 4 ute-trays of gravel and rock from the river to the house one morning. We'd just filled the first ute up to the brim, only to hear the engine roll over and die! On the wrong side of the river, no less. Thankfully they soon got it going again.

We went swimming in the river every day to cool off, and played games with the kids every evening (they LOVE duck duck goose - generally pronounced duh duh goo!). They have a time for devotions every night (so beautiful seeing the kids singing their little hearts out!) which we got involved with, telling stories, clapping along as best we could.. and sometimes singing the english words if it was a tune we knew (that copped some strange looks!)

One day at the river, we'd all got out of the ute already when all of a sudden, Cusay drives it right in, obviously intending to cross (no one has any idea why he decided to try it, but there you go!) and he got stuck in the pebbles just past half-way. Another ute turned up as well (apparently we were collecting more rocks?). It was much more of an off-road vehicle, and purred away quite happily in the river there as we filled it with rocks and waited for someone with a rope to come and rescue the first car! No one seemed perturbed in the slightest (I was all like - ahh! What if the motor drowns?!) but they pottered along, some of the kids even taking advantage of the opportunity to give the cars a bit of a wash!

All in a day's work.


p.s. FYI I'm getting used to the rough sleeping, but my bum's still sore.. haha

Seven uses of a Sarong

-towel
-provider of modesty in communal bathing and/or changing situations
-skirt
-bag
-sunshield
-sheet
-headscarf

Baby-sling is also possible, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to attempt that as yet!

I feel that a South-east Asian amendment to the Hitchhiker's Guide recommendations is in order:
"Always carry your sarong with you..."

Have Boat will Travel

Wednesday

We made a quick getaway this morning (sad to leave these kids so fast!), off to a village on the river where we ate a hearty ricey breakfast and hired a boat (sort of like a long flatbottomed canoe, with a roof rigged up and a motor on the back) to take us to another little hamlet which is only accessible by water! Beautiful ride through the knobbly jungled blue hills. Just a little mist wreathing the shores.

The day passed in meeting some official people (town leader, police officers), eating (of course), a river bathe, a noisy meeting at the church filled with rambunctious children and a few adults. We sang and I helped in a skit (Dee nearly fell off her seat laughing). She had to pull herself together then to speak ('I must remember I'm not in my own home!').

We taught Dee, Pon, Pipi and Pakwali how to play Spoons and Warlords and Scumbags. Dee (this is beginning to sound repetitive) found it hilarious fun, even though she lost most times. :)

Plank floor for a bed again - how long does it take for these weak western hips to toughen up?!

Sore Bum Chronicles Day #2

Tuesday

Waking this morning to the sounds of a couple of chirpy toddlers, bucket showers in action, traffic outside, bustling in the kitchen.. We take stock of the situation over breakfast (which, incidentally, is eaten on the floor, with the hands, like most meals. Also, like most meals, it is based on rice, helped along by most members with lashings of chilli paste.)

About 10 or 12 people live here - I'm still not sure exactly how many! - but there's Dee, of course, the bubbly leader/older sister/surrogate mother, two toddlers who Dee has rescued from abandonment and are not yet big enough for any of her children's homes; there's a bunch of guys, a few girls, and of course blessed old Timu, who takes care of everyone, champion of the kitchen, cleanliness management etc.

After getting ourselves together we pack our bags and pile into their old ute - 5 in the cab, 6 or 7 in the tray. 7hrs driving, here we go!! Agh, you're beginning to get a feel for this sore bum business? We're off to one of Dee's children's homes - primarily for taking care of a whole bunch of orphaned Karen refugee kids (Karen people lived in Myanmar until the Burmese decided to try and exterminate them a bunch of years ago. Dee is also Karen, and everything she does is centered on caring for her scattered people).

After a couple of hours we've finally beaten Bangkok and are out in the towns. We stop now and then for fuel, or drinks, or food (the last is easily the most important to all concerned). The ground begins to rise, the air freshens, we pass some lakes or rivers, and arrive at a cluster of little bamboo huts on stilts. One of them is ours! We meet the kids, and as it's the hour for showering Belle and I head down to the shower hut where we wrestle with soap and sarongs and tip buckets of water over eachother (which one of the girls is pulling up from the well there).

Back for dinner which we share on the rickety but clean bamboo floor; we have fun teaching the kids a little english, drawing pictures, saying and repeating.. We sing some songs and they copy our actions with suprising speed and accuracy. I tell a story, we sing some more, unroll our beds and sleep (the bamboo has a little more spring than the solid wood floors at Dee's, which is nice.) The cocks start crowing around 4:30...

I'm struggling to think quite how to approach telling the story of this past week away, so I'm going to attempt some daily logs and see how far I get!

Monday

Sydney farewelled us with a friendly Lebanese taxi driver and a gorgeous dusky red 5am moon-set; the Gold Coast farewelled us with glimpses of rich green hills; Kuala Lumpur farewelled us with a bellyful of laksa (the special penang kind, Koiter) and assorted weird dried fruit samples; and finally we are welcomed into the delectable spread of sparkling lights that is Bangkok! Combined total=sore bum.

Dee came to pick us up - little, round, laughing, laughing merrily away without end. Two guys came too, and took possession of the first of our bags that came to hand. Being too shy to ask to help with another, they shared it and bounced away, swinging it between them, cracking flashes of smiles all the way to the car.

Falling onto our lightly padded grass mats just before midnight (but 3:30am back home); our epic day was finally at an end.