04-01-04

 

March 27-29 Trip to Khon Khaen

 

      On Friday night (March 26) my dad took me out to dinner (I ate a Cheeseburger for the first time in 8 months 9 months!!) and we talked about me taking a trip to Khon Khaen with one other girl from Ubon (Thisie) and meeting Curtis there.  Curtis is a Rotary exchanger that lives in Khon Khaen.  We decided it was a good idea (with my mom’s permission of course) and then early Saturday morning I caught a bus to Khon Khaen.  It's a 5 1/2 hour bus trip to Khon Khaen. 

 

      Well, the good news was that the bus had ceiling fans and a bathroom….  The bad new was….  It’s Thai summer and the bus’s air conditioning was broken!!  Thisie took a different bus….  But we still thought we would end up at the same bus station in Khon Khaen… We looked for each other for 30 minutes until Curtis finally realized I was at the other bus station. 

 

      Thisie and I stayed at Curtis’s first host-family.  They were very lovely hosts.  On Saturday evening we went to the basketball courts and watched Curtis play basketball with his friends…Then one of his friends pulled up and said there was a concert that “Kala” and “Bodyslam” were playing at for 55 baht ($1.50)… so we decided to go with his friends to the concert… because we’re foreigners we got the best seats and we got to go in about 10 minutes earlier than the Thai people…

 

      After Bodyslam played, we went to see if we would meet them but they’d already left for their hotel..  Instead, the security guards let us watch Kala play from backstage and then we got to meet them. 

 

      Curtis was starving because none of us had eaten all day… We waited around for his friends, and then finally we decided to go without them and eat some gwai tio… It was the most expensive and most disgusting gwai tio ever… then Curtis decided that he was too lazy to make sure we got home alright… So he gave us “directions” and he walked home… Thisie and I got ridiculously lost (we didn’t even know the name of the store or family we were staying with so we couldn’t ask where it was…plus EVERY SINGLE direction Curtis gave us was WRONG… you’d think he’d remember how to get to his first host family… He said you pass the picture of the KING and it’s on Sri Jon Street across from the Star Mart… the third street on the right… when really you pass a picture of the QUEEN it’s sort of across from a SHELL STATION… it’s the SECOND SOY on the right… the most confusing part was that Curtis’s wrong directions did exist in  different end of the city… which is why it was so confusing.)... 

 

      In any case… God had mercy on us, and we got home--NINETY minutes late… so instead of getting home by midnight… we got home at 1:30 in the morning… NOT good… the next day we apologized and explained why we were late… But Curtis just made it sound like he gave us the right directions and we were too stupid to follow them, so we got confused… This is obviously not what happened…but I’m not bitter….  The next day we went out to eat with our hosts and then we went to their garden house on the river and ate really good bbq (but not as good as Wayne’s—NO bbq is as good as Wayne’s…)…

 

      Then we headed off to the FREE “Potato” concert… It was really good… we got to meet Potato after the concert….  They were mad chill… I think their concert was better than Kala and Bodyslam….Then on Monday afternoon I caught a bus back to Ubon… And that’s about it….  hope to hear from y’all soon!

 

Love,

Kati