Thailand

Yikes, it's my first post for Thailand and we're already getting ready to cross into Cambodia! It's been a busy few weeks. Our first week here we met up with my mom in Bangkok and spent our time seeing the sights in Bangkok and around. We saw so many things and were a bit worn out, so we decided to spend our second week in Thailand relaxing on an island beach paradise. Without a doubt, it was the right thing to do! It's a shame we didn't have time to see more of Thailand, but we enjoyed every minute of our time here and sometimes it's okay to take some time to relax.

There's way too many experiences from the last two weeks to write about in detail, but there was one I wanted to be sure and get down here. It's about Libya. I'm certain that if you're reading this from the United States you've had more than your fill of news from Libya, but hear me out.

Islands are nice, but they're really expensive. On Ko Chang, transportation was particularly expensive. Since it's impossible to get lost (there's only one road around the island) and people here were quite friendly we decided to try and hitchhike. After a while some friendly guys picked us up and we got the standard question "Where you from?" People are always excited when we tell them we're from the United States and these Thais were no exception. Their English was very poor, but this was typical. What wasn't typical is what came next. "Oh....America. Libya.....Qaddafi, booooooooom!"

We only read about it on the internet a day earlier. All we could do was smile nervously and say, "yeah, that's us!" It really wasn't what we wanted to hear from someone that just picked us up by the said of the road. After a prolonged silence due to an almost impenetrable language barrier we were comforted when he said "America....good," to which we replied "Thailand good" and everyone was happy. Just in case, we topped it off with a "Long live the king!" I don't think he understood that bit, but if he did he would have appreciated it. Thais really love their king!

Sadly, since then whenever someone finds out we're American, Lybia is the first thing they bring up. We don't really know how people around here feel about the issue and we don't even know very much about it ourselves. It's hard to keep up to date on the news when you're in a foreign country (or several) and in a different city an average of every three days. I makes things kind of uncomfortable, especially when you throw in language barriers. Usually people can communicate enough to say they know what is happening between the US and Libya, but that's about the extent of it. Maybe we will have to start claiming to be from Ukraine, a fabrication we usually reserve for people we don't want to talk to or those who are persistently trying to sell us things. No English....only Ukrainian!