More adventures with my mom and brother

Wow!  So much going on that it's hard to even write about it!  Despite the food poisoning changing plans a little bit, we made the most of the time that Mom and Matt were here. We went and saw The Hobbit while we were recovering and got out and about once we felt well enough.  Mom and I went to the Grand Palace, Chatachuk market (one of the largest in the world), Jim Thompson House Museum, Wat Pho (a temple that I liked much more than the one at the Grand Palace), Thai cooking class, and the Museum of Floral Culture.  In between we snuck in iced coffee, rooftop cocktails at sunset, good food, and a 2 hour Thai massage.  Ahhhhh.  While she was in Singapore for a few days Matt and I got some work done, but also found time for naps, massage, Thai cooking class, and rooftop cocktails with some of my friends. 

It was wonderful having them here and showing them a bit of my world across the globe. 

Mom at the Grand Palace

Heading down from the rooftop

This sign was posted on a board that was literally a good 7 feet in the air. I'm sure people that tall are quite adept at being careful of head impacts. 

Colorful veggies at cooking school

Cooking yummy Thai food!

Beautiful afternoon on the river boat.

Quite the spread- ready to learn how to cook!

Everything cooked on high heat- it was hot!

Yes, I really made that Tom Yum Gung and it was delicious!

City view at sunset from the roof of Siam@Siam hotel

Tea and coffee on the veranda at the floral culture museum.

It All Went According to Plan, Until We Ate the Duck

For months, I planned these few weeks with my brother here, and then my mom too, then just my mom.  We booked flights and hotels and cooking classes, plotted itineraries and scheduled our days.  And then in mid December he showed up, and the wheels started rolling, everything falling into place.  I'd spent so long planning it that as the days passed it all felt oddly surreal. 

Then we came home from Koh Chang at 6pm, starving and ready for dinner.  We thought some Korean barbeque might be nice, but chose a nice Chinese restaurant at the last minute for Matt's last dinner in Bangkok before flying home the next night.  We ordered, among other things, their famous roast duck. And that's where the trouble started. The food seemed oddly lukewarm and the duck especially was not hot. 

By the time I woke up at 6am the next day, I was the only one who had slept and my brother had already started puking.  Mom wasn't far behind. For the next 5-6 hours I ran between them as they got worse and then laid down at the foot of my bed when I could, nauseated myself.  By late morning I was really worried and starting contacting friends to help and had a colleague's wife (who is a nurse) stop by.  As the dehydration got worse we got my doctor to come to the house to see them as they couldn't really go anywhere.  She was a lifesaver.  Without that we may have had to make an ER run.  

I called Lufthansa to find out the options for changing Matt's flight and getting a medical certificate, called the airline Mom and I were going to fly to Chiang Mai the next day and cancelled the cooking class we had scheduled for that day. 

By evening my nausea got much worse and I started getting sick.  I had been praying all day that I would just stay healthy enough to take care of them and that I would be able to summon the strength to do so.  I'll be honest. I had never cleaned up after sick people before, other than myself.  Normally, if I had felt how I did, I would not have gotten out of bed.  But somehow, when other people are counting on you, we find that place of super-strength, similar I am sure to the strength hidden inside of moms who take care of sick kids or keep the house going even when they are sick.  Food poisoning taught me a lot about service. 

Luckily by the time I was on the tile floor my mom was well enough to check on Matt from time to time and I was able to pop up in the better moments and help them.  By night I was feeling okay and laid down on the couch to keep watch through the night.  I crawled into bed at about 1:30 once Matt's fever had broken, I'd gotten some fluids in him, and everyone was sleeping as comfortably as possible. 

Needless to say, Matt didn't make it home that night nor did we make it to Chiang Mai the next day.  We didn't make it to Chiang Mai as it was going to be a short trip and by the time we could go it was only one night, plus, in order to change it I would have had to be on the phone with the airline in my worst moments to reschedule.  But we've had some relaxing days here and then were able to head out to the ginormous Chatachuk market on Saturday, the Jim Thompson House, and the yesterday the Grand Palace.

The soonest Lufthansa could get Matt on a flight was the 9th, so he booked another flight home the night of the 4th.  Except shortly after he left for the airport Mom looked at his itinerary and noticed a problem with the date: January 19th.  So I ran off behind him to the airport, though by the time I got there and had him paged he had already exchanged more money and was working on getting himself to my apartment in a taxi (quite a feat- sometimes it's hard for me to get the drivers to go the right place even when I know exactly where to go and speak a bit of the language).  Eventually my mom called me on the spare cell phone to tell me he was back and I returned home.  So he's back to the flight on the 9th.  We're make the best of the fact that he's stuck here with me awhile longer. 

So it has not gone according to plan, these last 5 days, but God has sustained me in the moments of worry.  When I've needed to serve, he's given me strength.  When I've needed to sleep, I've slept.  But I needed to hold my cookies, I've held them.  And in the midst of it all we've had some laughs and been able to poke a bit of fun at ourselves. And we have quite a mind to walk back into that Chinese restaurant and give them the bill for what it cost us to eat at their restaurant! 

Koh Chang New Year's

My mom arrived around midnight on the 28th and 11 hours later we were on our way to Koh Chang in the Gulf of Thailand for a few days of sun and relaxation and NYE fireworks.  We had a lovely time in the sun and sand and water.  Our second day we went to two different waterfalls in the interior of the island where we were able to swim in the amazing chilly pools below them.  We rung in the New Year watching fireworks on the beach and then headed back to Bangkok on the 1st.  Definitely a wonderful and memorable New Year! Happy 2013!

Reading on the porch of our beachfront bungalow before heading to breakfast.

Sunset on the Gulf of Thailand

Swimming at the first waterfall.

The second waterfall.

With Mom before heading home.

Mom and Matt

A Cambodian Christmas

Well, Matt and I enjoyed a lovely 6 days in Cambodia.  We had a great time on our trip to the wildlife center outside of Phnom Penh, and were also able to visit the S-21 prison before we left town. It was sobering and disturbing, as any genocide museum should be.  We headed north to Siem Reap on a boat, which turned out to be a very interesting and windy journey, though not wholly unpleasant.  It offered great views into Cambodian life and a mild sunburn. 

In Siem Reap we took a cooking class that was very fun and delicious, and surprisingly inexpensive.  We also hoped on bikes one evening and rode south of town where a 14 year old boy rode up along side us, tried to chat with us in English, and invited himself along when we stopped along the river for a drink at a small "bar" which was really just a house on stilts that would give us a beverage to drink and a place to sit, watching the sun set over the rice fields.  It was beautiful, completely off the tourist track, and we loved it.  Our second day we rose early to catch Angkor Wat at sunrise (I was quite excited by the cool morning and chance to be COLD for a short bit) and then pedal around to a few other temples until we got tired and returned to town.  Matt got the World's Crappiest Bike which was tough to ride and his sandals broke part way through the morning, making for a less than ideal day, but I hope he enjoyed it anyway.

We got a great guesthouse recommendation from a friend and had a great pool to splash around in each evening after the hot days.  We also ate incredibly well the entire time we were in the country. We celebrated Christmas Eve with a nice Italian dinner and a bottle of wine before heading back to Phnom Penh on Christmas Day.  Being our last night in PP, we returned for my favorite Happy Hour $2 mojito as a predecessor to a Vietnamese Christmas dinner.  On our final day we headed to the Killing Fields, which was an extremely well done memorial to the victims of the genocide and highly recommended for anyone visiting Cambodia. 

We enjoyed great shopping and fantastic food and left the country with $8 between us :) 

S-21 prison- as a former school, is eerily like ICS

Life along the river

Making Lok Lak

Sunset at the rice fields

Bayon @ Angkor

Matt at Ta Prohm, bah, can't rotate here

Having a Wild Time

Oh man I wish I could post some pics for you from today!  I would right now, except that I'm actually at the hotel computer transferring today's pictures from the camera onto a USB drive so that we can keep taking pictures :) 

Matt and I had a smooth flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh yesterday afternoon and a great dinner of traditional Khmer food at a great restaurant by the riverfront.  Today hired a tuk-tuk for the day and headed out of town to a wildlife rescue center that is kind of like a zoo, except it's nothing like anything you've ever seen.  There weren't many visitors and we had free reign to walk right up to the animal habitats, a bit too close for comfort at a few of them (primarily the tigers, whom Matt seemed to think could just maul through the chain link fence at any moment, especially when the kind of half growled at me).  My favorite were some monkeys, one of whom had a very tiny baby with her, who looked a bit like a little alien Golum baby.  The monkeys were hilarious and amazing to watch.  Matt got to feed an elephant as well, which was really funny when he ran out of food! 

After the animals we went to S-21, the former Khmer Rouge prison (that was formerly a school) that was turned into a museum of the genocide.  It was quite sobering, though well worth the stop. 

Okay, pics just transferred, so here's a sneak peak:

Again for the first time.

Enjoying the time with my brother here greatly, though we've had a few "well, this is Thailand" moments.  Mostly it's been pretty smooth.  It's been fun to "see Thailand again for the first time" through his eyes.  And as I've been reflecting on Advent this week it has kind of made me with that I could "hear the Christmas story again for the first time" and really catch the wonder of it all.  I feel like in many ways I've heard it and seen it interpreted in so many ways for so many years that I don't fully catch its staggering wonder anymore. 

I am wrapping up the semester with some babysitting, I mean, class parties, this morning and then we head to Cambodia this afternoon.  We're taking lots of pictures that I will post eventually. 

December in Bangkok

The 'not-quite-as-hot' season has arrived in Bangkok, which means that I don't always have to run my air.  My mother recently sent me a picture of the fireplace at my Grampa's house, all cozy with a roaring fire, asking me if I missed winter.  Miss winter? No, not really.  Maybe by next year, with 24 straight months of summer.  Maybe.

My brother arrives in four days and if I were friends with me, I would want to punch me in the face and tell me to shut up about it already.  I can't help it- if I'm excited about something, I talk about it!  And just a little over two weeks until my mom is here too!  Having visitors is just a big excuse to eat great food and get lots of massages.

And the last greatest development in life recently, aside from the weather and family visiting, is something that I haven't managed to do in the last 13 months: I lost my ATM card. Again (see here for story). But this time I am ten thousand times smarter.  I found a different branch to go to, one without the same lady to lecture me, and one that is open on holidays and evenings.  So it was a lot less traumatic, though I must say, when I first discovered it I wanted to just sit down right there and cry.  I didn't. 

And with that, I have just 3.5 days of work left until break!  I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off after Matt gets here, and at lunch time next Thursday we are free!  3.5 days and 4 alarm clocks? I think I can handle that :)