Visa, the Saga Continues

The morning started with me calling Ruth at 6:20, as promised, to make sure she was up to go to the hospital. She had turned her phone on silent, so there was a little freak-out, but very minor as she called me five minutes later to say she was up. We headed out at about 6:45 and got to the hospital a little past 7. Here is where Ruth is a total angel sent from God.

She’s like “What are you going to say to them? You don’t speak Thai.” To which I replied “Dae said they speak English here.” Ruth looks at me skeptically and says “that means they can say hi, goodbye and how are you feeling. I better come with you.” Over my protestations, we abandoned poor Ben in the car and went inside the outpatient portion of the hospital. She talked to the receptionist about what I needed and we told her about the syphilis test. (They were VERY specific about the importance of this test for the work permit.) We went to sit in the waiting area and almost immediately, they took my blood pressure and weight (Hey! I lost 6 pounds in 2 weeks!) and showed me into a room with a doctor. Ruth spoke in Thai to the doctor and again explained that I needed it for a work permit. He asked me like 5 questions, including what medications I was allergic to, and when I gave him the list, he said “You need to make sure you tell doctors that you are allergic to this medicine, because amoxicillin is very common.” Gee, really? You don’t say. Wow, I’ve had these allergies for half my life, and it never occurred to me to tell doctors not to prescribe me medications that will make me SWELL UP AND POSSIBLY DIE. This guy is clearly new.

Ruth went with me to the blood draw area and waited for my blood to get taken. We found out that it would take an hour to process, so Ruth waited with me. No, I’m just kidding, I didn’t make her do that! She and Ben went to breakfast but she made me promise to call her if I needed any more help when I went to pick it up later. Ruth rocks.

I had to get money out from the ATM to pay the exorbitant admin fee of $500 for the work permit to get started, so I went to the 7-11 across the street. At this point, I was praying that the ATM would work. I have tried to use my debit card at several large stores and to purchase plane tickets and it has not worked! So, I was holding my breath at the ATM. It only allowed me to get out 10,000 baht, but thankfully, I had changed the rest of my cash earlier, so I had the extra 5,000 in my wallet.

Next, I tried to get some more visa pictures taken. Dae thought that I could just use the ones I got in Singapore, but I was short 5 pictures anyway, so I still needed more. I asked at the Holiday Inn if they knew of a place, but the photo shop across the street didn’t open til 8:30, and that was the time my medical form was meant to be done, so I just went to wait at the hospital.

Finally, at 8:45, they told me to pay at the cashier and get my form, so I did. Only $5! That’s one bill that was easy to deal with. J I tried to get pics at the photo shop, but they wouldn’t be done til noon, and I thought that was too late, since I was meeting D at 10:30. Well, by this point, it wasn’t even 9am, so I thought I could get all the stuff done with D and get over to TS to help with initial setup pretty quickly. Of course, when I got to the Kijkandee office, nobody was there. Great. I decided to just take a Song Thaew to TS and get a ride back with Rob who was coming for a meeting at 10:30 also.

When I went back for the meeting, everything seemed in order, and D told me about the timeline for the work permit and visa. It’s kind of weird that I’ll be working this whole time, way before I get the work permit, but I guess it’s just a formality so that I can have the longer visa. I was pretty frustrated because initially, I had asked if I should wait to go get my visa in Singapore and she had said to go right away. Today, she said “Oh, this is why I thought you should go after Song Kran festival to give you more time to get your long term visa.” I was so annoyed because I had specifically asked about this and she TOLD me to go right away!! But, I just smiled and said “yeah, too bad about that.” Sigh. Well, what are you gonna do?

And then! She looks at the medical form and says "Oh, this says VD is clean. You were supposed to get syphilis." I'm screaming internally "Syphilis IS VD!! What is WRONG with you?!" But I calmly told her that I told 4 different people at the hospital that I needed the syphilis test and this is what they gave me. It's just going to have to be good enough." I think in my entire life I have not used this word in conversation as much as I have in the past 2 days.  

Back at TS, I found Judy cleaning up a storm, and since I couldn’t help with the seminar, seeing as I don’t speak Thai, I joined right in. Now the place will be spick and span and organized when we come back from vacation! After we were pretty much done with the classrooms, I went down to ask P’Bua if she needed help in the kitchen. That day, we had ordered food special from a restaurant for the kids, so she was starting to clean out the kitchen. I started by cleaning the fridge and freezer and then turned and noticed the wall behind where the stove is was COVERED in grease spatters. So, using a super powerful Simple Green type spray, I scrubbed that wall til it shone. Those tiles have never BEEN so clean! P’Bua scrubbed the stove and countertops while I did the wall and window above it. We finished about the same time, so she did a quick mop of the floor and we left it shiny and clean!

In the background, the kids were learning some important stuff. Since we are located basically in the red light district, statistically, 99% of the kids at the center have either been propositioned or assaulted already. This only gets worse during Song Kran because people get crazy and way more assaults can take place, so the Thai teachers were teaching the kids how to protect themselves. I was looking at the kids in the morning, thinking how easy it would be for them to get taken advantage of, especially the teenage girls. I was just praying for their safety and that no harm would come to them.

They also taught the kids about bad stuff and bad people on the Internet and to beware of people trying to meet them from the Internet. I think that is really important too, especially in this day and age of Internet predators. They seemed to really learn stuff and get something out of it, so that was good.

We said a final goodbye to Dtom and started to shut things off. As the kids were leaving and we were closing up for the week, Ning was waiting for the painters to come to tell them what to do while we are gone for the week. I decided to wait with her and walk to catch a Song Thaew later. Thank goodness I did! Just as we were leaving, Dae called and said I had to get new visa pictures RIGHT NOW. There is a photo shop just up the block from TS, so we stopped in there to get photos and they said to come back in an hour.

Ning was able to hang out for a while and wait with me, so we walked over to the mall and got some juice drinks. It was nice to get to hang out with Ning, because she’s so sweet and such an amazing person, and I only ever see her at work, so I really want to try to get to know her and Field outside of work too and be actual friends. I told her about my visa woes and what had happened that day, and she said the same thing happens to her, so she has started to only communicate via email so it’s less frustrating. Nice to know it’s not just me!

After I picked up the photos and said goodbye to Ning, D picked me up and drove me about halfway home before her turnoff, which was really nice of her. She didn’t need to do that, so it was a nice break from a long Song Thaew drive. Plus, it made my ride the rest of the way cheaper!

When I got back, there was beautiful piano tuning sounds coming from my neighbors house, so I dropped my bags and rushed across the courtyard to Ruth and Sacha’s house. I was so excited!! The guy was still working on the piano, even though it was 5:30 and he had arrived at 4pm. He was so precise! I left my door open so I could hear when he was done tuning and I could go play. J Ruth called while I was home and invited me out to dinner with her, Ben, and some other friends who were in town. I swear, every night I’m expanding my circle of friends here! I actually have a better social life in Thailand than I ever did in LA, because here everything is so cheap it’s easy to agree to go out for dinner.

Well, I went over to their house to play the piano and Ruth was playing but got off when I arrived. I was like “Dude, it’s your piano. Keep playing.” But she said “Hey, you paid for it!” so I couldn’t argue with that. J I played a few songs and then we headed out for dinner at a Burmese restaurant called D-Lo.

It was delicious! (Is there any other type of food here?) We got a lot of dishes to share. We met some food critic friends of Ruth’s (Robin and Chris) who were in town sampling the local cuisine. Some other people came to eat too: Chris, who works a lot in Burma as a newpaper photographer, Wan who does lots of stuff with lots of organizations and another woman whose name I have completely forgotten, but she works at YWAM with Jaz.

After dinner, it was on to jazz night at North Gate Club right next to, you guessed it, the North Gate of the old city. It’s situated right next to a fusal field. Fusal is soccer (or football) that is played in an arena style area, like the US arena football. I made some comment about how they must be playing shirts and skins since none of the jerseys matched and here is Ruth’s quote of the day: “You know, you have a very verbal ticker tape.” HA. So true. The problem is that I never realize when the ticker tape (aka your internal monologue) is in my head and when I’m really saying it out loud. Ruth assured me it’s not a bad thing, just a funny thing.

We headed into the bar and met Wan’s twin brother and his girlfriend, Beth. We all got drinks (so cheap!!) and listened to some cool Latin-infused jazz with 2 sax players, a bassist, electric guitarist, drummer and bongo player! We were there for about 2 hours, and Jaz joined us at some point. She started talking about our plan for rock climbing tomorrow (woo hoo!) and finally, we decided to leave at about 11pm so we could get some sleep and prepare for rock climbing.

I drove home on the back of Jaz’s motorcycle and noticed that the city is really beautiful at night.