Wow, what an amazing adventure!
I can’t believe it’s over. I feel like we were away a long time.
After 36 hours of travelling we arrived in Emma’s city of Nakhon Phanom. It didn’t look just like I imagined. How could it really? The heat was hotter than I imagined as well!
And so, combining three VERY tired women with high heat and humidity, coming from Canadian winter, in a place not like home, made for some grumpy moments the first day or so. Culture shock, I guess they call it. As the week went on and we met Emma’s friends and families, and saw how happy and relaxed she was there, we got used to the city and the heat.
In Thailand, those who can speak some Englsih know the word “same” and so when they talk about something that is the same they say “same same”. Emma has found herself a Tshirt that says “same same” on the front and “but different” on the back. Thinking about Emma I have decided she is “same same, but different”. She is still our Emma, cute, funny, smart, independent, compassionate, and adventurous. She is “same same”.
She is “but different” because she has gained twenty pounds, her hair is brown (a wash out thing), she wears baggier clothing (helps with the heat), she is more grown up, more confident, more relaxed and she speaks Thai so well that she sounds like all the other Thai people to me ! It was so good to be with her for eleven days. At the airport when we arrived she told me she is proud to be Canadian, she misses Canada, and she is excited to come home, but she doesn’t want to leave Thailand. After spending eleven days with her, I know why.
It amazes me how much we saw and how much we did while we were in Thailand.
We ate Thai and Vietnamese food and I fell in love with sticky rice with mangoes. We shopped at fresh markets in the north and huge modern malls in Bangkok. We visited a small village in the middle of nowhere, and stayed at the ritzy Holiday Inn in Bangkok. We swam in the Gulf of Thailand, stayed at a resort on an island, and watched an elephant show and Thai dancing. We road elephants, petted tigers, and went to a floating market. We went to war memorials and the Bridge over the River Kwai. We spent time with Emma’s families and friends at their homes. We rode in sam laws and on the back of motorcycles. We were family. We laughed and we cried.
I would like to thank Rotary District 7080 in Canada and District 3340 in Thailand for giving Emma the opportunity to do this exchange. I would like to thank Emma for being brave enough to grasp the opportunity with all of her being. If it weren’t for her, we never would have had the opportunity to experience Thailand the way that we did.
The first couple days were a little difficult while adjusting to the culture and the heat, but as time went on we all came to love Thailand and enjoy ourselves.
Thailand is another world, but it is part of the same world we live in.
It is “same same”, “but different”.
