The Amber Waves of Processed Cheese

Ok, I feel the time has come for me to attempt to tell you about my trip to the USA. The journeys both there and back were hellish, but you can read about them in the two posts below. 

Needless to say, the past three weeks have been the best of my life, and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to manage to fit this rant into an acceptable length. But let’s see how I go, it might be too long.. Before I go any further, here’s the deal: I was on tour with two bands from NZ, The Outsiders and Freddy Fudd Pucker. Both these bands include two of my big brothers and four of my favourite people in the world. We drove the entire way in a 1986 Chevy van, the “Good Time’s” model. I kid you not.  That is the official model name of the van. (UPDATE: Good Times has died a sad mechanical death as of 12/11/11 and the guys are stuck in Wyoming with no money and no way to get anywhere! If you want to help you can go here and buy their album!)

So, the delirium began in Manhattan, New York, with slices of pizza and then a show (as in a gig the bands were playing) just off Broadway at The Studio at Webster Hall, with two other bands, Cobra Skulls and Nothington, with whom we would cross paths several times in the coming weeks. I had been travelling for around 90 hours at this point so was a mere puddle of a person, but I managed to pull it together and drink a lot of coffee and beer. The night ended in Rosemary’s Bar in Brooklyn, drinking gigantic $4 beers and then me passing out asleep in the back of the van with one of my brothers, parked outside a friends’ apartment.

Three for the Wonderwheel

The next day it was time to eat New York bagels and go to Coney Island. Stu, Kitt and I set off on the subway. We immediately realised we were heading in the wrong direction and had to get off and pay to get back on again which was a bit of a bummer but ah well. Coney Island was awesome! The Wonderwheel was everything I had hoped it would be and more, and it was pretty cool to see the place The Warriors call home. I loved the people watching, so many Orthodox Jews everywhere, which, as most of you know, I’m pretty into. After a little nap on the boardwalk, all too soon it was time to head back to Brooklyn and pack into Gordie Good Times to head to Philadelphia. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the Fresh Prince theme song was sung relentlessly during this drive, but I just did so there you go. This show was good, but I was too tired to comprehend what was going on, so as soon as I could I fell asleep in the back of the van again. 

Richmond, Virginia

The next morning it was off to Richmond, Virginia, via Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. This was also an excellent show, and we got put up by the nicest guy ever (the millionth of many) who cooked us the most nutritious meal any of us had eaten in a long time. We struck up a conversation with a guy at the bar who’s daughters cousin is Terence Trent D'arby, that was a little bit awesome. There was also the most amazing Great Dane there named Louie. He was gigantic. I’d forgotten how fantastic it is to be able to pat dogs, because the ones here are all scody and flea and mange riddled.  Anyway, moving on. The next hazy day we went down to check out Occupy Richmond. It was really amazing seeing the movement in action. These people are serious about what they are doing and what is going on in the world. And they are totally right. It is time for change in this world. It was really inspiring seeing signs in shop windows all over the country saying “We Support Occupy (insert city here)”. Unfortunately we couldn’t hang around for too long as we had to drive to Norfolk, Virginia for the show that night.

In Norfolk, I unfortunately had a melt down and had to go sleep in the van again. The jet lag hit me so badly, it sucked. But from what I was told the show was great and everyone loved the guys. By the time we went back to the house we were staying at I had my second wind and was ready to drink some beers and talk some trash. Once again, the nicest people in the world were giving us their home to stink up.

The next day we went to Virginia Beach. It was a shithole. That’s all there is to it. Highly disappointing. By this time, there were several team members on the brink of a mental breakdown. Long drives, sleeping on floors, relentless drinking and low-grade food were taking their toll. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that the others had been on tour like this for 4 weeks already. So that night we made the big decision to splash out $50 on a dive motel in Emporia, North Carolina. We couldn’t afford for everyone to have somewhere to sleep, so we got a room with two double beds and snuck the extra three people in. With two to a bed, one on the floor and two in the van, we had a much needed semi-good nights’ sleep. We slept late and missed the free breakfast, so it was off to yet another Waffle House with us for yet another unhealthy stack of hash browns. Delicious. I love diners. This day we were headed to Durham, North Carolina to meet up with the two bands we’d played with in NYC. We had some time up our sleeves, so we took some really beautiful back roads. We ended up at Fall’s Lake, which was very pretty, if rather grubby. 

Team Gordie Good Times

Then it was on to Durham. This was a particularly good night. The show was at a really cool venue, and we were got to see our friends’ bands play again. This night involved some good shenanigans, but as this is somewhat of a PG 13 version of events, I can’t really go into detail. Let’s just say there was a significant amount of beers and cheap malt liquor. So many, in fact, that the next day I was still drunk and this was when I got my perm. 

Ah the perm. The biggest waste of money to date. This thing is the mid-90’s love / bane of my life. It was ok when I was still in the USA, but now that I’m back in humidity-land. Well, I’m sure you can imagine. The motivation for the perm was peer pressure from Sarah, who has had one for about the past 9 months. Hers is great. And so is mine, we just have very different hair. Oh the perm. 

Great Smokey Mountains

So, it was with a head smelling of farty perm solution that we headed down the road to Creedsmore, North Carolina, as we had been invited to play at a party being held by friends of the people we’d crashed with the night before. This was a particularly good night. The hosts were the most welcoming and wonderful people in the world (yet again), and plied us with booze, delicious food and a cornucopia of good times, including the sacrificial burning of a wedding dress from the previous marriage of a woman that had just married into the family. The burning was going on while Tom and Sarah (Freddy Fudd Pucker) were playing songs to us all around the camp / wedding dress fire. It was a very good time indeed. The next day after a big delicious breakfast from our delightful hosts, and a lot of huffing of their helium balloons and singing of Roy Orbison songs, we headed into the Great Smokey Mountains, which are part of the Appalachian Mountains. Wow. This was an incredible drive. It’s Autumn in the US at the moment, so the colours were breathtaking. We stopped off for a picnic lunch at some beautiful falls, there were signs everywhere warning us to look out for bears, but alas, we didn’t get to see any. I was sad about it. This drive took us to Newport, Tennessee, and as we had no show and therefore nowhere to stay that night, we forked out another $50 for a truckers Best Western. This one had a semen-tank of a hot tub in its pool area which was both a treat and terrifying all at the same time.

Permtastic Waffle House

The next day we were keen to go to Dollywood on our way to Knoxville, Tennessee, but as no one had any money, Dolly Parton-land will just have to wait until next time I’m in the area. Knoxville was a bit of a crappy place. A total college town with cheerleaders and douchey looking guys strutting around. But the show was awesome, it was in a Saloon and when the guy behind the bar ran out of .75c beers for us, he let us go to the liquor store and buy our own to sneakily drink as he didn’t want to rip us off with full priced beers. Oh the hospitality. It was unfortunate that this show ended with the most horrible display of American culture we’d yet to come across: some dickhead that started laughing at us because the NZ police don’t carry guns. He then went on to rant about how he has 12 guns at home. When we asked why he just started yelling about the fact that it’s his constitutional right, that’s why. Then he started throwing the N-word around and it was time to get the hell out of there. So it was back to a new friend’s place for a wild Taco Bell party and passing out on yet another floor. 

Heavy Petty!

The next day we headed to Atlanta, Georgia. This was a strange show, as there was two other completely awesome bands playing across town, so we didn’t get many of the type of people that would usually come to one of our shows. It was still a great night though, made all the better by the fact that the bar tender was hilariously drunk, and they had a ping pong table, one of the only games I’m good at. The next day we were in Jacksonville, Florida. On the way we had a tire blow-out, which Tom managed to deal with like an expert, avoiding certain death by rolling had it been me driving. After a tyre-change as quick as some kind of race car pit stop crew, we were in Jacksonville. This was a good show, and a really fun night that ended with me and Dave drinking free Four Loco and being very messy drunks. A good time was had by all I would say. We decided not to stay in Jacksonville that night, but to push on to Gainesville, only 1 ½ hours away as that’s where we were going to be based for the next 5 days or so due to the greatest music festival of all time....

 

  

The best pool party

FEST 10! This was hands down the best weekend of my life to date. A very big call, I know. But true none the less. Imagine if you had a town that emptied out its college frat boys and sorority girls for one weekend a year to make way for 5000 fun-loving, beer-swigging, peace-promoting punks to overrun it. Throw in over 200 bands and 10 venues, dozens of tents in several people’s backyards, all your new best friends and all the $1 PBR’s you can drink, and that’s Fest. The greatest time and place on earth. Highlights of the weekend for me were most definitely the pool party at the Holiday Inn after registration that started off the weekend, Against Me!, and dancing more or less topless with my brothers to Heavy Petty, the Tom Petty tribute band that closed the festival. Oh Fest. How I miss you so. For those of you that care, here are just some of the incredible bands I saw: Smoke or Fire, Dead to Me, Cobra Skulls, The Dopamines, Teenage Bottlerocket (who played Ramones, Lillingtons and Bad Religion covers!), Off With Their Heads, Samiam, Against Me!, Nothington, Lemuria, Spanish Gamble, Dillinger Four, A Wilhelm Scream, The Flatliners, Mikey Erg and Banner Pilot. And that’s just some of them. It was like 20 years worth of awesome bands coming to NZ in just one weekend. There are a lot of very good stories about Fest that unfortunately cannot be told in this PG 13 space, but when we next see each other, boy have I got some treats for you.

The best photo ever taken. Without question.

Who's legs?

So it was with a heavy and very hungover and scragged out heart that on Monday morning we tried to pull ourselves together to get back on the road as we had another show in Atlanta, Georgia that night. But, Gordie Good Times did not want us to leave either, so he was towed to the auto-shop and us to the liquor store. It was Halloween today. Or, as I like to call it now, Clownoween. Sarah had been carrying around a bag of clown make up for nearly a month waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise. And what better time than in some guys back yard, on Halloween, with a bunch of new best friends that also didn’t want the party to be over. Within about 4 hours we were all very drunk and there were about 25 terrifying clowns kicking about in the backyard playing frisbee with Louis the dog, singing badly around a campfire, carving festive gourds, letting off fireworks and being fed by the manager of the Ramones Museum in Berlin (who had Kiss clown make-up on), who was there with an official photographer to document the festival, the bands (us?) and the general good times for one of Germany's biggest music magazines. Hmm. This random and unplanned night turned into one of the highlights of the whole three weeks away. I think the fact that Sarah, a new friend, and I found a secret and incredibly plush secret bed to sleep in topped the night off. After 4 nights sleeping on the hard Florida ground in a tent with no bed rolls, this was a huge treat. 

The Gulf!

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Gainesville. Today we were off to Hattiesburg , Mississippi, via Pensacola Beach, Florida and Alabama. I can now tick “swim in the Gulf of Mexico” off my bucket list. It was awesome. 

Hattiesburg was a house party, and I hate to say it, but I was partied out. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The 12 nights or so in a row of heavy drinking were catching up on me, so it was back in the van for some sleep for me. The next day I was told it was a wild party and I totally missed out. Oh well. Next, onto Houma, Louisiana, via New Orleans. New Orleans is a very cool place. And driving in and out of there is insane. All swampy, with drippy trees everywhere. Unfortunately we only had a couple of hours to look around New Orleans, but they were a good couple of hours that’s for sure. We went down to the French Quarter, it’s full of musicians, voodoo stores, palm readers, curly tall buildings, cobble stones and horses and carts. A whole different world.

Sassy Pickles

Houma, Louisiana was an excellent time. We stayed with some good friends the guys made last year when they were there. I have to say that the Louisiana accents are basically the coolest in the world. So long and drawn out, and everything ends with “hun” or “baby” I loved it! That and the fact that out the back of the venue there was a 5ft gator living in the bayou. Many an hour was spent staring at the water in the dark convincing ourselves we’d seen him. We spent two nights in Houma, and during the day in the middle we all had the first shower and underpants change we’d had in between 4-9 days. There was also laundry done. It was a real treat, let me tell you. The second night there was Ladies Night at the bar we were playing at (the same one as the night before) so Sarah, Jo and I pulled out the red lipstick and fluffed our perms and got free drinks all night. The stroke of midnight marked Tom’s birthday. Sarah and I had concocted him a birthday bag full of trash from the gas station, trash we found in the van and some of his own belongings we stole from his bag, including an infamous pair of pool ball underpants. He was a very happy boy. 

After Houma we had a very long drive ahead of us to Austin, Texas, Sarah’s home town. This was a rough drive filled with birthday sassy pickles, incredibly urgent pee stops and me starting to get emotional and anxious as I was leaving in two days. We finally made it to Austin by about 9pm, and it was fantastic to finally get to meet Sarah’s family, who plied us with much needed beers and tacos. Stu, Tom, Sarah, Kitt and I then headed down the road to a real-life cowboy bar. It was amazing. They weren’t playing dress-ups, they were really wearing those hats and boots and belt buckles. Kitt and I danced a little to the live band, but I can’t two-step so we weren’t nearly as good as the locals. Then it was on to Tom and Sarah’s favourite bar in Austin for some pool and to wait for our friend that was going to stay with us that night, to finish his show with his band. We eventually scooped him up and went back to Sarah’s for more tacos and very many more beers. Finally at around 5am it was time for bed. This was the first time and of us had our own beds in a long time, and it was all too strange, so we all ended up furiously spooning in one bed. It gets lonely sleeping alone when you’re used to having at least two others crammed in there with you. 

A big 'ol bag of birthday trash

And finally, my last day with the team had arrived. I was pretty anxious and freaked out and emotional this day as I didn’t know whether the flooding in Thailand was going to let me get home or not. Plus, I just plain didn’t want to leave. Eventually, the time came, and you can read about that here if you want. It sucked and I cried like the little baby I am.

Being in the USA was a very strange experience. I’ve only skimmed the surface of what I want to tell you all. But this is already far too long. So here’s one more quick observation: remember Styrofoam? Yeah, I’d forgotten it existed too. Not so in the USA. Everywhere you go people are using it. It’s disgusting. You eat in a diner and they will serve you on disposable Styrofoam plates. Bizarre. 

Van Living

So these were the best three weeks of my life. All the above is interwoven with the best times ever. Stolen condiments from fast food outlets, borderline malnutrition due to being poor, near-miss nervous breakdowns, an inability to stay awake in the back seat of the van due to the stifling heat and the fact that only two windows up front open and there’s no a/c. Sleeping on floors night after night, not showering for days on end and wearing the same clothes during the day that you slept in the night before and the night before that. Zero personal space. My favourite people in the world and all the incredible new best friends I made along the way that I am devastated I’ll probably never see again.

My first day back here in Mae Sot was a bit of a mind warp. I experienced some pretty serious culture shock: I went into the Clinic to say hi and the first thing my friend said as she rushed out the door was “a baby just died in my arms I’m going to buy some smokes”. When I came back outside someone had spat all over my shoes and there was a baby peeing on my feet. Reality hit me pretty hard. As did the jetlag and borderline homesickness. I’m feeling much better now, but I’ve just realised that I only have six weeks left here now, and that doesn’t seem like long enough. So now I need to do some serious thinking about how the hell I am going to make it back here in February. Even though I’m struggling to figure out what the hell has just happened in the past three weeks and how that fits in with the completely weird life I live over here, I’m not ready to leave these people or this place and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.

There is so much more I can tell you, so if you want to know, just ask...you know how I like to talk.

Home again home again

Here’s some trash I wrote on my horrible journey home:

The mission begins after an exhausting and confusing sleep – of course tonight is the night Austin changes for daylight savings. My flight is at 6.35am. So what time do we need to be there? And how does daylight savings fit into all this? We are out drinking the night before, of course, and as was predicted, we misjudge the time and I arrive at the airport hurried, flustered and still very much asleep, an hour ahead of schedule. I say a not-wanting-to-leave goodbye and burst into tears. Emotions are running high for everyone, but there is no time to waste – the others have a 16 hour drive ahead of them today to Santa Fe, so with me asleep, crying and coughing, Gordie Good Times pulls away from the curb full of my loved ones and leaving me alone. I sit in Austin airport for two hours snuffling and crying (why is this all so emotional? I’ll see them all in less than two months), it doesn’t help that I have a terrible cold. Finally, my flight to Chicago boards and I immediately pass out. I arrive and wait two more hours and then repeat pass-out on the flight to New York. When I arrive at JFK I am exhausted beyond belief, ravenously hungry, sick, upset and broke. And I am facing a 10 hour wait. There seems to be no internet in this gigantic airport and I really need to check on the flooding situation in Thailand. 

I repeatedly fall in and out of consciousness in inappropriate places. I cough up horrible stuff. I cry again for no reason. Finally I can check in. The lady at check in takes pity on me due to my sorry looking appearance and the impressive coughing fit I have in front of her and reserves a whole row of seats for me. I think she thinks I am contagious. After another seemingly eternal wait we are allowed to board. But why is this taking so long? Oh, because there are plain clothed FBI agents at the plane door randomly pulling people out for interrogation. We are flying to the Middle East after all. Once on board I immediately fall asleep. I wake at one point being tucked in with a blanket by an air hostess. Sometime later the same hostess wakes me and tells me I should eat something, it’ll make me feel better. I think I ate, I’m not sure. I return to my passed out state. I am awoken again around 7 hours later by the same lovely hostess saying the same thing and handing me some food. As I chew on the undercooked rice and chewy paneer I mull over the fact that this is the most sleep I’ve had since Hattiesburg, Mississippi, nearly a week ago. I fall back into my now-natural state of pass-out and am awoken by the jolt of the wheels touching down. 

So here I am again in Kuwait airport, waiting another 10 hours. It’s freezing in here and people won’t stop staring at me. At least Kuwait Air is kind enough to give me a meal pass to their “transit lounge”. This sorry excuse for a lounge is a scungy cafeteria with an exceptionally low-grade selection of food on display. I eat an apple. What am I supposed to do for the next 8 hours? I am too tired to read, and soon I will be too tired to write. Oh no. My eyes are starting to wiggle again. I need to find somewhere to sleep asap.

I wake up at one point and think, “screw this, I’m going to sleep in the van”. Then I remember I am very far from the van. The team will probably be waking up in Santa Fe around about now. I finally find some internet and check out the flooding situation in Thailand, it’s not looking good. I mange to talk to Stu and Sarah, it makes me sad. Finally it’s time for my entirely uneventful flight to Bangkok.

Wow. The flooding is bad. I made it to the bus station with 3 minutes to spare until a bus left for a town kind of near where I live. If I want to go direct, I have to wait another 11 hours and that’s not happening. The bus creeps at a snail’s pace along the highway. There are cars parked on both sides of the highway to keep them on higher ground, as below us, there is only water. We pass the domestic airport and it is really bad – I see planes with water up to the cockpit windows. We pass around 20 parked armoured tanks; I suppose they need to stay dry too. I am instantly back in a totally foreign land. It is so hot, the a/c doesn’t work and it takes us 4 hours to get out of Bangkok. There are people setting up camps and stalls all over the highway. People are padding around in boats and other make-shift flotation devices. There are crudely constructed jetty’s everywhere to try and keep people away from the floating mountains of rubbish, no doubt teeming with disease. I wonder if the others have made it to Albuquerque. I think that all our complaining about being too hot in the van was for nothing. I am melting. It’s taken no more than 20 minutes for the perm to be relegated to a tight bun on the top of my head, and there I’m sure it will stay for the next two months. I think of how very different this traffic jam is in comparison to that of the one we were stuck in in Houston, Texas only a few days ago. We’re driving through pretty deep water right now, there seems to be no rules, traffic is just driving where and how it can, no matter what side of the highway it is on. I calculate that it’s been about 50 hours since I was dropped off in Austin. 

We finally make it out of Bangkok and onto a dry highway. I instantly fall asleep. I wake up when we get to Tak, my destination. I am told that if I want a bus to Mae Sot I will need to wait another 9 hours and it will only be $4. It’s 10pm. Someone offers me a ride in their car straight to my front door, I’ll be there in 1 hour. It’ll cost me $60. I take it. This guy is a maniac driver and I think that it’d be a shame for me to die this close to my final destination. But eventually he gets me to my house. I’ve never been so happy to see my bed. I shower for the first time in 5 days and as I get into bed I realise that this is the first time I will have slept without at least 2 other people in the bed with me in over three weeks. It’s going to be a wee bit lonely. But I am finally home.

Getting There

Wow. What a drama this trip has turned into.

Firstly, I have thought for the past 7 weeks that I fly out of Thailand on Saturday night. On Wednesday night I realised that in actual fact, I fly out on Friday night. As you may or may not know, Thailand is currently experiencing its worst flooding in decades, thus, the usual bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok was not an option. I managed to battle a terrible internet connection to book the only flight out of Mae Sot on a 6-seater plane, to Chiang Mai, and then a flight from there to Bangkok. But, then I got a call on Thursday night saying that the engine of the little plane has malfunctioned and the flight is cancelled. Ok. So then I had to get up at 4am to get to the bus station in time to try and get a seat on the 6am bus to Chaing Mai instead. Ended up getting there ok, and finally got to Bangkok. At this stage my stress levels began to subside a little. After a 7 hour wait to check in at Bangkok international, I find that my first flight to Kuwait, with Kuwait Airways, has been delayed in Manila. So we are all sent to a hotel for the 8 hour wait. As I am going to miss my connecting flight from Kuwait – London, and therefore my London to New York flight, I am told I will be transferred to Lufthansa airlines in Kuwait, and will be flying to Frankfurt with them instead, and then on to New York. Hmm, ok. I can handle this. It means I won’t arrive in NYC until about 19 hours after I was meant to be there. But at least I am now in the care of Kuwait Airways now, so I am there problem to look after. After a pretty deep sleep (by this time I’ve been up for nearly 24 hours without any sleep at all) I get a wakeup call at 6am. In my bleary state I manage to shower and head downstairs for breakfast and my transfer back to the airport soon. The hotel allows me to use their internet free of charge as I need to get in touch with those meeting me in NYC. How kind. I’ve just finished breakfast and am about to go and wait for my pick-up when I am informed that, unfortunately, our pilot is not feeling well, and he cannot fly. So we are being delayed once more while they attempt to find a replacement pilot, and would I like to go back to my room to wait, as they have no idea at all how long we will be waiting for. Sheesh. The only slightly positive thing I can think of is that my connecting flight in Kuwait is around 10 hours after my arrival, so at this stage, I am hoping that this new delay won’t make me miss my connection. 

Tha brings me to now. Sitting in my room, in an incredibly fancy hotel, hoping against hope that I get a call soon letting me know that we will be in the air shortly.

At this point, I’m not entirely sure what else could hinder me getting to New York. So far I have faced the possibility of my own sheer stupidity and inability to read a flight itinirary me miss the flight entirely the wrath of nature, with her intense flooding. I’ve also dodged a bullet by having the engine of my tiny Cessna not fail on me mid-air

Kuwait City

This place is a desert indeed. Flying in, all I could see was dry, scorched earth. The men will not stop staring, and the women will not meet my gaze. They are so mysterious and alluring in their full veils, I strive to see their faces through the sheer fabric. The outdoor heat is dry and stifling. Much different to the wet, tropical heat of Thailand. There are “no smoking” signs everywhere, accompanied by ashtrays for your smoking convenience. The hotel is comfortable, but nowhere near as luxurious as the one in Bangkok. The food is a little rough. I detect two different goat curries, and opt for a giant bowl of the most delicious homemade Greek-style yogurt I’ve ever eaten. And an orange. I have the same meal for dinner.

It’s now only an hour until we are to be returned to the airport to check back in with Lufthansa for the flight to Frankfurt. I can only hope that on this flight I will not be seated next to a Kuwaiti man that will not stop unashamedly staring at me. Even while I sleep (probably more so when I sleep actually). Having a rather large Arab man sitting a mere 7cm from you and having no shame in staring at you intently for 8 hours gets a little tiring. 

And then...

Well, all I can say is that Lufthansa is an exponentially better airline than Kuwait and even though it was the biggest mission ever, being transferred to them made my two flights with them so much more comfortable, plus, they are randomly hooked up with Air NZ and gave me a heap of free air points which was pretty good. Needless to say, however, I finally arrived in New York on the verge of falling apart at the seams, as by this point I had been travelling for approximately 90 hours. And of course, the boys were late to pick me up as they had to battle the force that is New York traffic. But boy oh boy is I happy to see their tired, hungover and ragged faces. I am bundled into the van (a Chevrolet “Good Times” model), and the amazing party begins right then with slices and a show just off Broadway.

My Impending Silence

Ok. This is going to be my last post for a while and here’s why:

This week I am attending a 4 live-in day training seminar run by the UNHCR on humanitarian negotiations, and then on Friday night I am off to Bangkok to catch a flight on Saturday to New York to meet 6 of my favourite people in the world and travel around with them for three weeks. 

So, as far as these magic postcards go, I might write some while I’m in the USA, but I’m not sure, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, like how many hours spent in the van each day, and whose floor we’re sleeping on on any given night. So check back here occasionally if you’re interested in shenanigans only possibly when you cram 6 New Zealanders, 1 Texan, several guitars and an accordion into a small van that will travel the east coast of the USA on a budget of $0 per day. Oh, the band's I'm touring with are The Outsiders (click here)and Freddy Fudd Pucker, in case you're interested. They're pretty great, but then again, I'm pretty biased.

I'm aware this is sideways, but I can't figure out how to rotate it

As promised, here is a picture of me trying to play golf last weekend. Do not be fooled, that sweet looking muscle is a mere illusion, and I am a very bad golfer, despite what this picture may or may not depict.

Right, I have a massive amount of work to get finished before I go away, and since this UN training thing has only just been offered to me in the last 12 hours, I need to try and cram 5 day worth of work into Sunday afternoon, and I’d also like to fit in a swim if possible because it is very very hot today. 

So ka kite ano, talk to you in a month!

Living in Reality

Helping teach drums to kids in the Child Recreation Centre

This past weekend was probably the best one I’ve had in Mae Sot to date. A friend of mine here is going home to the USA tomorrow (sob), so the weekend was basically just filled with whatever she wanted to do. Highlights include a Cowboy and Indian themed Thai restaurant, complete with a Saloon and horses, Bloody Mary’s, Margaritas and whacking balls at the driving range. I couldn’t deal with going to the sauna with the others, it was too hot, I needed it to have a/c, which would have defeated the purpose I suppose.

There are photos of aforementioned ball whacking, when I track them down I’ll post some here, so if me making a fool of myself is something that interests you, check back in a couple of days. As I usually assume when I try something new, I thought I’d be an instant natural at golf; but as per usual, it turns out I am very bad at it. And who knew how much physical exertion it takes to whack tiny golf balls? Today I have sore muscles in some places I didn’t even know existed. But don’t you worry, we are going to persevere with this new-found fun, and next time you see me, I’ll be a golfing pro.

Clucking over an abandoned baby

Right, it has come to my attention that some of you imagine me to be living in a grass hut in the middle of a paddy field, sharing a bed with refugees, with a war raging around me. So, it’s time to squash some of these images, as this is not at all what my life is like. 

I live in a little two bedroom apartment with an Australian woman. It’s a really nice house – I have a proper bed, we have hot water, wireless internet, a TV and even a cleaning lady! Incidently, I do live right next door to a large rice paddy. As far as the conflict situation goes, well, there is not fighting going on around me. There is a lot of fighting going on inside Burma, up and down the border. Since I’ve been here, the closest it’s gotten to me is 15kms from Myawaddy, which is the Burmese town on the other side of the river to Mae Sot; Myawaddy is around 5kms from my house. Occasionally some of the thunder is so epic that I do a double take and have momentary thoughts of it being shelling. 

In November last year, after the “elections” held by the Burmese “government”, there was a lot of fighting in the actual township of Myawaddy, and there were a couple of stray shells that landed on the Thai side, around Mae Sot. Approximately 20,000 Burmese people fled across the border into Thailand during the fighting, with the majority coming to Mae Sot. The Clinic and our schools turned into make-shift refugee camps. Most of those people have been able to return home to Burma, but there are still around 7000 refugees from November in hiding up and down the border, that we are supporting with rice etc. It is anticipated that there will be more fighting at the end of the rainy season, which is just ending now (yay!), so who knows what the next few months will bring. 

As for the refugee situation in town, well, the closest refugee camps are about an hour out of town, and technically, all the registered refugees are meant to be in them at all times. But in reality, this is not the case, although there is a bit of a crackdown going on at the moment, so some people are finding it harder to get in and out. There are Burmese people all over town, living, working and just going about their daily business. Some of them are here legally; they might have a Burmese passport and a legitimate Thai visa, some have no passport but have a work permit to allow them to work in one of the many factories in town. Then there are others who are just straight up illegal – they have crossed the border illegally and may be working here or whatever, these people are particularly prone to mistreatment by the police on a regular basis. There are also refugees registered with the UN or IRC that are kicking about town, not living in a camp at the moment, although they will be registered at one. Short of asking people directly, however, there is no way of knowing anyone’s status in town. And clearly, asking people is neither appropriate nor necessary. 

There are checkpoints at on all the roads to and from Mae Sot, with armed guards that check the people going through them. They don’t care so much about people coming into Mae Sot, but whenever I leave, the bus stops at about 4 checkpoints, particularly on the road to Bangkok. Obviously, they are looking for illegal Burmese people. Often one or two people are taken off the bus on a trip to Bangkok, it’s pretty sad. They will generally be forced to pay a big bribe, or be imprisoned until someone can pay for them to get out, and if they have no money whatsoever, they will probably be sent back to Burma.

Swimming at the reservoir

And finally, who are the people that come into the clinic each day? Well, about 40-60% of them cross the border illegally each day to get here. So they come from inside Burma. Often people travel very long distances to get here, with the entire family in tow, in case they cannot return home, or their village is attacked etc. and they get separated. So they are not all from the Karen State, but from all over Burma. Each refugee camp has its own basic medical facilities, so we don’t get that many registered refugees, although we do still get quite a few. Many of our patients are Internally Displaced People in Burma, which more or less means they are refugees, except you cannot officially be a refugee if you still live inside your country. The other half of the people that make up the caseload at the Clinic are the Burmese workers that live in the Mae Sot area. They either cannot afford or cannot access the Thai healthcare system due to their legal status in Thailand. If you want to learn more about the Clinic, check this out.

So there we have it. I don’t live in the middle of a rice paddy in a hut, and there is not constant conflict going on around me. Though I’ve yet to witness any conflict, and I hope for the sake of everyone around me that I never do, it is quite strange to be living in a place in which particularly loud thunder can be misconstrued as a bomb blast. Occasionally I can hear gunshots at night, so it’s hard to know what’s going on sometimes, but don’t worry about me! Even though the prospect of conflict is real, I’ll be fine; the fighting doesn’t really come across the border!

PS: I got my enrolment confirmation in the mail on Friday. I hope you took heed of my rant the other day and enrolled! The election is next month!