Kents Guide

A GOURMET’S GUIDE TO THAILAND – Course Four

By Kent Whitaker

“Cheque, Please!”

(Where we bid a fond adieu to our friends on the other side of the world and return to the joys of Galleria traffic, freeway construction and friendly Houston drivers)

^{(Click hyperlinks to view associated pictures,
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The next morning, Norman and I took the dirty truck to get washed, Thai style. Three people took turns working on it by hand and with power wands, then dry and wax. All for $5.00, plus tip; it took about an hour. So while we waited in the warm sun, he and I visited and solved many of the world’s problems; but I guess we missed a few because most of the world still hates us and the Astros still don’t look like legitimate World Series contenders.

We loaded up and went into town for lunch, and then stopped off at "The Foreigner's Cemetery" where many missionaries including Norman’s mom is buried. She and Norman’s dad were missionaries in Thailand for over 40 years, and this is where she wanted to be buried. As we walked around the beautifully maintained cemetery, looking at Christians who had died in Thailand, it became very emotional for me. Suddenly, I felt the whole weight of my wife and son’s deaths fall on me, and I had to walk off, crying to myself. It wasn’t long before everyone in our group realized what was happening, and came to comfort me, but I felt awful for a while.

That evening we did the town: eating at La Gondola, a fabulous outdoor Italian restaurant with carpets of grass, situated near the walls of the old city next to a picturesque river. The owner, Stephan, has known the Rideouts for years, and came by to visit for about 15 minutes, making sure our order was just right. I chose a pineapple and bell pepper pizza; Stephan had told us that they had the best pizza in Thailand and it was cooked the New York way in a very hot wood burning brick oven, so Norman and I strolled into the kitchen to watch them work; it only took about two minutes, with a turn half way through. Delicious! And faster than microwave!!!

During these last days, we also had long discussions on what Norman could do to better finance and coordinate the fund raising and organization of the ministry; as is so often true when missionaries are on fire to reach lost souls, Norman prefers to be in the villages rather than coming to America to raise funds. Paul worked for hours on Norman’s computer, writing articles on “The Ministry” and "The Team” (see the web page, near the “News” section where you found these letters), as well as detailed business models and organization charts. It was awesome to watch him work – he was bubbling over with ideas and important insights on how Norman could streamline the organization from a business management perspective – I think it was the equivalent of a graduate level textbook before it was finished. He literally was working on it up until the minute we left for the airport.

Watching Paul work, getting input from Norman and John over the last two days of our trip, I was struck again by how God orchestrates our lives when we make ourselves available to Him. It was as clear as a spring day in Colorado what God had done with this trip, and in arranging who would go and what we would do. Norman and the team showed us their mission field; we saw the villages, the schools, the hostel, and the land needed for expansion. We witnessed the amazing and unselfish ways that these warriors for Christ are giving their lives and assets to reach a people that most of the world neither knows of nor cares about – but who are as important and as loved by God as were Paul, John or David. And all of this was shown to the very man who had the business skills and experience to help the ministry in these other vital areas. Awesome.

The next morning we visited a tourist attraction about 20 miles out of town: a working elephant facility. What used to be a logging operation now was a place to show off the elephants’ training and strength. Very nice facility: you walked through a jungle area from the parking lot, and across a very picturesque stream into the camp proper. We saw park employees walking around with big sling-shots in their pockets, and were to find out later what they were for – but for now, all we saw were the lines of salespeople hawking bunches of bananas and sugar cane. Naturally we all bought some (maybe 20cents) and fed the elephants. Then it was off to the observation areas by the river to watch the employees wash the elephants. Lots of “ooohhs” and “aaahhhs” and shutter clicking as the cute little elephants rolled around and the workers rubbed them with big brushes. It evidentially felt so good that the elephants to a man used the opportunity to relieve themselves of big chunks of elephant dung, which floated down river to be snagged by two or three luckless people with big plastic baskets. At first we thought that the park was just being hygienic, but then we found out that they processed the green stuff into expensive stationary – yep, they figured that plant cellulose was plant cellulose, regardless of where it came from, and that paper was nothing more than processed cellulose; hence, a never ending revenue stream. So to speak. I have some of the paper, if you don’t believe me.

After the luxury of a bath, the elephants went to work at the amphitheatre, first playing soccer (no lie – complete with attacker and goalie and big goal net, etc.), and then stacking logs as a team, and then dancing and playing harmonicas (what a hoot, pardon the pun), and finally painting pictures. The artists would stand in front of a piece of white paper (which had been snagged from the river earlier in its pre-processed form) and handlers would put paint brushes in their trunks. The pachyderm Picassos would then paint – usually pictures that were described as flowers, but one did modern art (you might even call it really primitive pointillism). When it was time to change colors, the handler would put a different brush in their noses. Check out my pictures. Later, you could buy originals in the gift shop if they were worth $200 to you, or prints for about $25.

After watching this, Paul and I were all fired up and agreed that no trip to Thailand would be complete without riding one of the mighty beasts through the wild jungles, so we signed up for the 30 minute excursion on ‘ol No. 3 (he had a name, like maybe Pdooka II or something, but I don’t remember what it was –maybe Paul remembers). It was great. Our guide spoke no English, but he got the idea that we wanted our picture taken when I handed him my camera, so he jumped off, and ran ahead, shooting one pic after the another, and left us to worry about ‘ol No. 3 ourselves; fortunately, 3 knew where to go, since he probably did this a dozen times a day, so we didn’t end up in Burma or anything. We crossed a hill, which was somewhat of a thrill since we were about 10 feet in the air and felt really off balance, rolling back and forth, on the 45 degree slope, and then we forged a raging river (well, a stream anyway) and finished off the expedition by cruising the back lot where the workers lived and left their laundry out to dry.

From there it was off to the commissary for a frozen coffee beverage, or some noodles and nameless veggies (we passed on those) and then to the gift shop, where we spent about $50 on dung paper and other valuable elephant trinkets, including a cool wooden xylophone shaped like an oriental boat that we got for Steve Beck, Sugar Creek’s drummer and a member of our men’s’ group who rents practice marimba units to schools. We spent about an hour in and out of the shops, going back and forth to buy just one more item, but finally we left and headed back over the river to the cars.

On our way, just as we got to the other side of the bridge, we saw this huge black snake (no lie, about 8’ long and bigger around than a man’s arm) sitting there on the edge of the jungle, about 3 or 4 feet away – we heard later that he had just dropped out of the trees. I was going to take a picture of him when suddenly he started to slither away towards the river, and we hear ching!! as one of the staff whipped out his sling-shot and fired an iron pellet, hitting the snake. It boiled around, writhing, and disappeared into the river, whether dead or alive, we didn’t know. The attendant told us that it was a really big black cobra. Wish I had been faster with the camera, but then it might have struck in response to the flash, so it is probably better that I didn’t; you’ll just have to believe me.

After that little bit of excitement, we headed out of town for another half hour or so to visit Pracha and his wife La Da for lunch. They have a nice little place in the country (probably more snakes hiding everywhere, but we didn’t see any), where he grows vegetables and chickens. The guys hiked up the hill to review his big garden with the modern PVC watering system while the ladies finished lunch preparation – as usual, it was very good: spicy vegetables, broth, rice and fruit, washed down with bottled water. Really neat couple.

After a nice visit we headed back to Chaing Mai, but on our way we passed another tourist attraction that Norman and Debbie had been gushing about ever since we had arrived. It was a butterfly ranch, with literally millions of beautiful butterflies flitting about the enclosed area, supposedly so thick that it was hard to breathe. So we eagerly paid our $4, walked through the turnstiles and prepared to be astonished. Which we were: we were astonished that there were no butterflies. We only saw about one butterfly, and it was dead, so we didn’t think it qualified. Evidently, all the millions of butterflies had already punched their little butterfly time clocks, called it a day, and gone home to their little butterfly condos in the shrubbery to make more little butterflies. Or whatever butterflies do when the working day is over. So it became a game to try to find the little buggers, which you could do if you looked close enough, but it wasn’t exactly the heart throbbing experience we had paid for.

Fortunately, the Butterfly Ranch was right next door to the World’s Largest Orchid Nursery, and since John was absolutely bonkers over orchids and tons of other plants, we scooted over there. The place was huge. We would wander from one area to the next, with John explaining what we were seeing, which was fortunate since most of them weren’t in bloom and looked like something that I would pull up by the roots, but he was in Heaven, and it was interesting to hear him wax eloquent about the little things. But whenever we did come upon a variety that was in bloom, they were beautiful. It was here that I took the last pictures of the trip, because my three Lithium Ion batteries had finally played out. I wish I had been able to take a few more.

So after we completed our tour, we bought a few items at the ever-present gift shop (they had some beautiful gold and enamel covered actual plant petals as pins, drops, and so on) we turned towards Chaing Mai, and supper at Pizza Hut, and another visit to the Midnight Market. This time I loaded up on souvenirs, including some $2 DVD’s – which (surprise!) turned out to be pirates. When we got home, we popped the first one (The Princess Diaries II) into Norman’s TV and it was hilarious. It was a copy made from a hand held camera in a crowded theatre: No lie, there were even people walking in front blocking the view, and there was a tear on the screen that showed up every time something white was in the picture. Bugs flying around, people talking and coughing, etc., and about 40% of the screen in view. Norman said he was going to go get my money back but Paul told him it was worth $2 just for laughs, and I agreed.

The next morning was our last day in Thailand, so those of us who still had cash to burn went back to the silver factory, since we had such little time the first go around. Paul said he was so busy on his formal funding plan for Norman that he couldn’t go, but I think he was just being cheap since he had bought Cammi several beautiful items, including a beautiful alligator purse the night before and didn’t want to go back to the bank to get more bhats. We told him we would be gone about an hour, but by now you know how Norman and Debbie live in oriental time and not western time, so with lunch and the trip to the silver factory, and then a stop in to their equivalent of Super Wal-Mart, and filling up the truck with diesel, it was nearly four hours before we got back home. We spent a couple of hours going over Paul’s work, and then it was time to pack.

We got to the airport about 5:30 for our evening flight out, and had time for some supper, and then it was sad good-bye time. We changed planes at Bangkok and took off for our all-night flight to Tokyo.

We had been warned that there had been bad weather there, but when we touched down at Tokyo’s new and modern Narita airport it was very nice: very cool and crisp with a bright sun. We had all realized that this was our last chance to get really lost before we got home, and being the daring devil may care buckaroos that we are, we threw caution to the wind and took the high speed train from Narita to Tokyo for some quality tourist time. The train was a very modern job, but there were no directions in English, and we figured out that our tickets (which were only good for one car) required us to be at one spot when the automatic doors opened; there were actually arrows and numbers painted on the concrete so you would stand in the right place until the automatic doors swooshed open. However, what we thought was the car number was really the aisle number, so as the train arrived we realized that our car was about a zillion yards down the platform. We ran as fast as we could and all squeaked in as the door was closing, just like the bad guy in the French Connection. So we sat there laughing and talking for the hour’s ride, thinking to ourselves, hope we don’t mess up and miss the return train! As we neared the station, Paul noticed a big building that was labeled the Tokyo History Museum, so we decided that it might be something we ought to see, if we could ever figure out how to get there. Then it was out of the train station into one of the highest density, heavily populated concentrations of humanity on the planet.

I had expected that we would be able to find somebody that spoke English, but no luck. Finally I remembered seeing a hotel a block or two from the station, and we went in there to see if the concierge could help, and Lord have mercy, they did. All we had to do was find the right light rail and make one train transfer, but it wasn’t hard (they said) so with a pioneer spirit in our hearts, off we went.

Amazingly enough, we found it with no problems. Unfortunately, my camera was now out of batteries. I had taken a total of three batteries and three 256k memory cards, and I almost guessed right, but I did not have any more juice to record our visit to Tokyo. The tour was interesting (self-guided with English speaking headphones) but we started to get silly, so after about an hour we hit the streets before we were thrown out or arrested for causing some sort of International Incident, and wound up down the street in a Japanese MacDonald’s for lunch. Had a Big Mac and fries that weren’t too different from the ones you can get on Highway 6 in good old Sugar Land. We made the right connections again with the Metro trains, and wound up on the high speed train back to the airport without any problems. On the train we met a young lady who spoke English and was a Christian, and was going to visit relatives in the States over the holidays. She was a music major in college in Japan. We made it back to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so we cruised the shopping areas and ate something at the airport Burger King. When I visited the restrooms at this new, state-of-the-art international airport, along with the usual facilities in the men’s room was a porcelain squatter like the ones we saw in the hills of Thailand.

I would just as soon forget the flight back – it went on forever, with the same stupid movies that were shown two weeks earlier on our flight over; and, no, they had not improved with age. To give you some idea, Volleyball was the pick of the litter. And to make matters worse, the herniated discs in my neck had started giving me trouble and the flight really aggravated that problem; I am just now about over it. But after eons of discomfort, we finally touched down in Houston, we got through customs without being detained, and Hicks dropped John and me off at my place, where we showered and changed. It wasn’t long before John’s friend arrived, and when they left, I crashed for a while, and then started the washing machine. Next day, it was back to the ‘ol grind.

Here are a few other things that somehow didn’t make it into the earlier missives.

The Thai gas stations are like a trip back in time. They have uniformed employees that pump the gas for you, check the tires, and oil, and wash your windows (or anything else you need). There were usually two working on each car.

Prostitution is big in Thailand. Several times we passed through what Norman said was the red light district, but it looked more like a string of bars to me. It looked seedy during the day, but a little better at night because of all the Christmas lights strung up. One afternoon as we passed through the many blocks long area, we saw a young man sitting in his car, and Norman pointed out that he was probably trying to work his courage up to go in; and well he might, for as Norman pointed out many of the girls have AIDS. The government tries to regulate things with medical checks and everything, but the epidemic is horrible. Norman said that about 2% of the Thai population were prostitutes, and if we can assume that most of these are women, and most of those are between the ages of 15 and 35, then whenever you see a girl in that age range, wherever she is, you have about a one in 8 chance that she makes at least some of her living that way.

The people of Thailand love their King; all the currency has his picture on it – none of this ancient founding fathers stuff, lets put our own picture on everything. Although the government is run by a Parliament (the Prime Minister is the son of the founder of the silk factory we saw in our first course), the King and Queen are still very popular. I understand the crown prince is not as well admired due to his personal persuasions, so I wonder what is going to happen when the King finally dies (I believe he is in his 70’s by now).

Bizarre Image No. One: Several times as we drove through the mountains on the clay pathways, we would see small yellow signs about 30 feet in the air, with all the tree limbs cut off below them. Norman told us that some Christians had put those up 20 years or so ago and cut the limbs so the Buddhists couldn’t climb up and tear them down. I believe this one says “Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life”.

Bizarre Image No. Two: On the train ride into Tokyo, as we passed mile after mile of densely packed homes, buildings and shops, suddenly there was a big two-story house whose square windowless side was beautifully painted like the Beatles’ album Let It Be, with the Fab Four in perfect lifelike 10 foot square portraits. Probably won Best Decorated House or something from the Homeowners’ Association.

Many people have asked me if Norman or any of the team were affected by the tidal wave that devastated the whole Indian Ocean basin. Directly, they were not. Chaing Mai and the villages that we visited are in the northwestern corner of Thailand, about 350 or 400 miles from the coast. However, Norman and Debbie lived in Phuket (the coastal resort town severely devastated by the disaster) for several years before moving to Chaing Mai, and knew many people there, some who died or are still missing, and some who survived. They went there after the disaster and diverted a substantial amount of their personal and ministry funds to the relief efforts in the area.

After every meal, comes the tab, and this little four course sojourn is no different. I know that many of you on this mailing list are single moms, or people facing medical problems, and most of us already have important charities that we support. But for those of us who are able, let me please ask that you consider making a donation to this worthy and faithful ministry. Please prayerfully consider whether or not this is something that would be worth your support. If God leads you to do so, please send your checks to John Collings, who handles all of the State-side donations for Norman. Make the checks out to:

Apostolos

P. O. Box 53481

Lubbock, TX 79453

Please indicate in a note that the check is for Norman Rideout and Thailand.

Well, I guess that just about wraps it up for now. Hope you enjoyed reading this because I really enjoyed writing it. I apologize for any lapses in memory or events recorded in incorrect sequence, but then, how would you know if any were? Tell you what: you go yourself, let Norman and the Team show you a good time, and come back and write about the adventure – we’ll see how well you remember when you did stuff! Anyway, thanks for walking this road with us. Lets all keep each other in our prayers.

Till we meet again,

Kent Whitaker, completed March 6, 2005

COURSE FOUR PICTURE RECIPIES

2 and 3 – Norman, Debbie, and his Mom’s headstone

4 – La Gondola, the first restaurant I’ve eaten at where they don’t care if you spill your tea on the floor

5 – Pizza Magic

8 – Scenic entrance to Elephant Paradise

15 – Feeding time

16 – “Oh, Look! He’s so cute!!! AHHHHH!!! Harold!! It just squirted that dirty river water all over my new Guccis!”

17 – Raw product production which fuels the exotic paper processing factory

20 – Bath time at the ‘ol Swimmin’ Hole

22 – Hey! Watch me bend it like Beckham!

24 – A Modern Master (or is that Mastadon??) at work

25 – Beautiful art for sale on beautiful paper

26 - Buckling up those Thailand seatbelts

29 – “Umgawa! Simba, samba wanna! Unnatonna Bebe!!!” (No wait, Tarzan was in Africa, not Thailand!)

33 – Lunch @ Pracha & La Da’s

35 – Pracha’s garden

38 – Pracha & La Da

40 and 41 – In the Orchid Gardens – don’t let his expression fool you. John loved those beautiful plants so much, I think he had started to breathe heavy