Well, I'm back now. The last 2.5 weeks seemed to last a long time, lots happened. I am now back where the air is clean, the sky is blue, not hazy, the water is clean, my family is here, I sleep in my bed, I don't have to select a meal from interestingly translated menus, and rice isn't the staple food! And I don't have to pack any time soon. The streets are less crowded too. But the food costs more. And I shouldn't greet people by say 'Sa wai di krup'!

So what were the highlights of the trip?

Well, Alan and mine overlapped, but here are mine.

* Fixing 3 out of 4 computers for International Teams in Bangkok, when they hadn't had anything working for 5 months.

* Visiting a conference of 120-140 workers in a very large country. It was sobering to realise that all had given up a lot for this work, and many of them had young families. Being used by God to fix a dozen laptops in 2 hours while not feeling well was also good.

* Meeting an answer to prayer. An Aussie at another conference investigating moving to Chiang Mai to teach programming as part of a Computer Science course at the Unis there. Students need to learn how to be engineers, rather than working by rote. The Thai educational system doesn't do this well.

* Helping FEBC in Bangkok. There is no trustworth Christian IT support in the city. Some help is available from Chiang Mai, but they really need someone there. Visitors like us can only do so much. We also had an opportunity to work closer with Thais, rather than westerners or Filipinos. We also allowed one of them to sleep better at night by providing a means to backup the server.

Did we achieve what we set out to do?

Alan and I separated on Sunday morning. While he saw some of the sights of Singapore I moved into the OMF guesthouse. I then attended St George's Anglican Church with the Cooper family. We then travelled back to their condominium where Chinese New Year was to be celebrated.

<img src='tiki-view_blog_post_image.php?imgId=20' border='0' alt='Singapore at Night' />

I left my camera in the unit, so I don't have photos of the flag pole balancing (about 30 foot pole in a breeze, nor the lion dancing. It appears that everything about Chinese New Year relates to propsperity and fortune. They clean out their houses before hand to greet it, but then don't seep during new year to avoid sweeping out the good luck. The lion dancing is also realted. Those very keen paid for the dancers to visit their homes and visit each room. Similarly money is given to children and madarins are shared to bring good luck.

Well, both David and Alan are back home now.  David has only just arrived, and since I have been back a couple of days now, there's a good chance that I will make more sense than David today.  (:biggrin:)  I suspect he'll stop by here and add a few more comments in a day or two.

We did spend some time in Singapore en-route home.  Aside from time spent in debrief, my time there was spent as a tourist.  Singapore is a beautiful city.  In many respects, it is difficult to differentiate from my home town of Melbourne at first glance.  Tree-lined streets and green open spaces were something that I had missed in Thailand, and they were a striking feature of Singapore.

Turned out there were a couple of Computer Scientists at the conference in Pattaya. One was teaching at Grace Intl School, another is looking at teaching programming at one of the universities in Chiang Mai. That alone is an answer prayer for help developing engineering skills for Thais.

We bussed back to Bangkok, leaving the coast behind but not the humidity. This time, rather than staying in a hotel or guest house we stayed at Big John's Hostel in Bangkok. Lots of aussies and other westerners, pies, and sausages with mince meat!!!

Monday Jan 30 saw us flying back from Chinag Mai to Bangkok. We managed to find the FEBC office with a little difficulty! Once there we had a chance to understand their network setup. Since we had a couple of hours, we installed the RAM upgrades that we had for 4 computers, which they very much appreciated. When we return on Thursday we will mainly work
on the Win 2000 server that is 4 years or more old. If we were around a bit longer and could ensure support (which is possible) we would install SMEserver to reduce the demands on the server and licensing demands etc. However we can't do that, so we are going to focus on getting backups in place (probably DVD+RW), and get the server patched.

As Alan mentioned, we have been a little unwell, something common to travellers and workers in different cultures, so we are experiencing something common to many. I also am trying ot get over a cold virus from before Christmas.

We managed to get this 'experience' during a tour on our day off last Thursday. While seeing Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand and part of the Himalayan chain, we visited a Hmong village for lunch and ate something not so good!  We also saw waterfalls, some memorials for the King and Queen, one of which is supposed to contain relics of the Buddha, and a Karen village. Both the Hmong and Karen are Christian, compared to the Buddhist Thai.

During most of our week here in Chiang Mai, we have been provided office space and Internet access by our friends at IMG (Itapon Ministry Group).  Here's David working on a problem (while I stopped to take the photo).

<img src='tiki-view_blog_post_image.php?imgId=18' border='0' alt='image' />

During our time at Itapon we have valued the hospitatility, local knowledge and assistance offered to us.  It has enabled us to be more effective in our work, which in turn has been appreciated not only by us, by all who we have been privileged to

For anyone who's wondering, yes, we're a bit behind on the blog right now. A combination of many things to do and some minor illness has served to muck up our plans a bit. Thankfully, David and I weren't sick at the same time, so the work was able to continue! As a result, these next few entries may be delayed by a few days from reality - please hang in there while we catch up, as time and Internet access permits.

Chiang Mai is an unusual mix. It is somewhat a tourist town of course so many of the signs you see are bi-lingual - this decreases as you move out of town. Many of the people here speak English too, though for most it seems to be "a little". Of course, you can't always assume that a western-looking foreigner here speaks English either - many are from Europe. I suppose that's why our current hotel's laundry sheets are written in English and French (but not Thai!)

Here's that songtaew picture I promised earlier!

<img src='tiki-view_blog_post_image.php?imgId=16' border='0' alt='image' />

Songtaews actually function more like a bus than a taxi, though I note that when they're carrying faranags (foreigners, like us) they seem to not do additional pickups.  Honestly, we haven't figured it out beyond these important points:

1. Songtaews and tuk tuks cost about the same to hire
2. Songtaews easy fit two people AND luggage.  Tuk tuks do NOT.  (:biggrin:)
3. Taxis cost about the same as tuk tuks and songtaews, or even less - PROVIDING they have a meter AND it's turned on.  Not all taxis have meters, and not all drivers turn them on until you ask!

Well, in our rush at the airport yesterday, we neglected to include a photo of some of the PCs we worked on while in Bangkok.

<img src='tiki-view_blog_post_image.php?imgId=13' border='0' alt='image' />

David and I must have been a sight in the airport gate lounge yesterday.  We were both head down in our work.  While David wrote, I prepared the pictures for him to post!

Our flight to Chiang Mai arrived in the late afternoon, around 5 PM.  Some confusion over our accommodation led to our first songtaew ride.  A songtaew is basically a small pick-up truck with an enclosed tray.  It has seats down both sides for passengers, and they are quite common in Chiang Mai.  I'll post a picture later for anyone who hasn't seen one.