A Short Letter Home

Change of plans (part one)

The highlight of our trip had nothing to do with the conference or even Chiang Mai. Instead it was a day trip out to the countryside to see Bang-On, a kid we've been sponsoring for years. In the days of my youth I fell for the "only $20 a month" pitch and signed up with Compassion International. We've actually sponsored a handful of kids over the years, as kids have come and gone through the program. We've tried to write the kids letters on a regular basis, but actually visiting a child seemed a bit too much. (Of course, that's just my own reticence to splurging for a vacation. If I'm not visiting family or adopting a daughter, I have a hard time justifying the expense of a big trip to myself.) So as we started on this China venture and suffered the attendant drop in income, the thought of visiting Bang-On was one of the last things on our mind.

Anyway, I forget when we first heard about the trip to Thailand, but I do recall thinking something like, "Hmmm, Thailand. That's where Bang-On lives." But I didn't pursue it. After all, Thailand's a big country and I had no clue where in the country we were going to be. Then late last year we got more details about the conference, including the location. I booted up the ol' World Book atlas and discovered that we were going to be less than 200 miles away. Heck, I've driven farther for Thanksgiving dinner! So the thought of traveling to see Bang-On suddenly became very real.

We contacted Compassion back in the States and they were very helpful as far as explaining the whole process. So we filled out the request and they did the rest. (Well we did have to read and sign a couple of forms. Basically a list of "thou shalt nots" when visiting the child.) Thankfully we had no responsibilities waiting here in China, so we could extend our trip to accomodate. It all came to gether beautifully. The local office for Compassion was also in Chiang Mai, so I figured it would be a simple matter to roll into town and find out when they were going to pick us up.

Heh. That's what I thought, anyway. Our trip began and we flew to Kunming. That afternoon--a Saturday--we stopped in the hotel business office to check our e-mail. Among the new messages was one from Compassion. It was just to confirm that we were really going to show up. Seems like the Thailand office had tried to e-mail us and the mail got lost in the ether. But the kicker was that the Thailand office wanted to confirm that we had made plans to get to the city nearest Bang-On's home.

I took that news rather well. I figured, "Oh, well, both the U.S. and Thailand offices are closed for the weekend. Guess it's Monday's problem." Unfortunately, Monday's problem wormed its way back to my conscious mind on Sunday afternoon, so by the time Monday morning arrived, I was quite anxious to get things straightened out. I managed to wait until 9:05 am before I called the Chiang Mai office. Nobody answered, so I gave them another ten minutes. Again, no answer, so I tried the cel number of the contact person. She answered the phone, thankfully. She wasn't in her office--it sounded more like a train station or something--but she said she'd get back to me when she was in a better position to talk. So I waited. I was scheduled to hook up with our colleague Rich, so we could take our respective children out to do something fun. I was ready to kiss his feet when he offered to take the whole gang by himself while I waited by the phone. (I was able to return the favor on Wednesday, when he had business to attend to.) A bit later I got a call from a second Compassion person--the one who usually handles such details. She was quite willing to help me secure transport to where we needed to go. She got some information from me and went forth to take care of business.

So for the next couple of days we played phone tag as plans were made and changed. (Actually, it was more like phone hide-and-go-seek, since I was the one who was never home.) Our first plan was to grab a train at 9:15 Wednesday night which would arrive at the destination city at 5:00 am. The project staff would then pick us up and we'd have breakfast and a morning meeting. A day later the plan changed. They couldn't get tickets for the 9:15, so they were going to try an earlier train that would get us in at 2:00 am. I was content to hang in the train station until a reasonable hour, but they offered to have a staff member pick us up and let us nap in their office. Anyway, that was the Tuesday morning plan. Tuesday afternoon I got another call. Somehow the earlier train wasn't suitable for a family of four, so they decided that we would rent a van and drive to the project. We needed to be ready at 6:00 am Thursday morning for a four hour ride. It was a much more appealing proposition, much as I love train rides. But it didn't end there. Wednesday the plan was finalized. We could sleep in an extra half hour, but the trip would take five and a half hours. Not a bad deal.

(Disclaimer: Lest my flippant recounting of the final preparations give the wrong impression, I think the Compassion Thailand folks did a great job of getting my incompetent butt over to where we needed to be. I'm embarrassed that I made them go through such hoops to make our visit possible.)

Anyway, more later....

posted by John @ 7:36 AM