Thailand ROCKS!
We got off plane #3 to find two young girls waiting for us at the Phuket aiport. Turns out they’re both experienced coordinators at HRE Grassroots, the Burmese partner NGO we’ll be working with for the next two days. We jumped in their friend’s suped-up pickup and one of them, whose name I should have written down, started telling us about the issues of Burmese refugee migrant workers as well as she could in English.
And then she put her arm on my leg and her hand on my knee while she was talking. Just, you know, like it was no big deal, like we were sisters. There was something delicate about this unquestioned intimacy which made me want to cry (yeah, I know, it’s a boring recurring theme now) but this time the sentiment stemmed from my sheer love of humanity. (BB, CR, you understand.) We sped along the beautifully-paved Thai backroads which left rural Indonesia literally in the dust, and arrived at this super cute hotel place with a simple wood-based aesthetic I can’t even begin to describe. In short: I love Thailand and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Ok, so I’ve only been here a few hours. I think it’ll continue to be great, though. Tomorrow morning we meet up with the girls again for a long day visiting day care centers and schools and other programs for Burmese migrant workers and their families. The Burmese are so incredibly in trouble in Burma and out of luck here, and there’s so many human rights violations going on I can’t even begin to explain it. Maybe tomorrow.
PS: Weird bugs in Thailand. Something that looks like a flying mini-scorpion! No, I’m not kidding!