Moving

It was a busy December for us (as it probably was for most of you) and I'm way behind in my blogging. Here's something from November: Most of you probably think that we had our major move to Cambodia in August, but it wasn't until November that we could go back to Thailand and get many of things we needed for our house. When we left Thailand, we put many of our things in storage. Not big things of course; big items are just too difficult to store. We also got rid of a huge amount of our stuff in garage sales and giveaways. Even so, we still had at least 3 cubic meteres of stuff that we wanted to save. That probably doesn't seem like much to those of you who have moved house, but it's very difficult to move that much stuff between countries in this part of the world. We planned to return for our stuff as soon as we got to Cambodia, but visa problems stood in our way. In November, all the teachers were told to leave Cambodia for new visas and that was our opportunity to go and retrieve our stuff.

We decided to travel over land to Chiang Mai. It would have been nicer to travel by plane, but the bus is cheaper and also, we thought it would help us figure out how to get our stuff back, since the plane would not be an option with so much stuff. We left Phnom Penh at 6:30 in the morning and here is a picture of Eric & Gabe trying to stay awake after getting up at 5:00.

Within a short time of being on the bus, Eric texted me that we should have brought face masks. Everyone on the bus seemed to be sick. Looking around, I realized that many people were just motion sick. It isn't uncommon, in Cambodia, for people to be completely unused to traveling in an enclosed vehicle. Quite a few people were vomiting throughout the trip and at one point, we had to stop for more trash bags. Unfortunately, the bus company provides everyone with an opportunity to eat every two hours. Here's us at one of the rest stops. They have food ready to eat. In one case, Gabe found the available snacks very unpalatable. Here he's looking at a pan of fried whole baby birds.

By the time we'd been on the bus 4 hours, I decided we had to find another way back. After another 4 hours, we made it into Thailand. For reasons we never understood, we were put into a taxi for the remaining 4 hours to Bangkok. We shared the taxi with a very nice French couple. We were just glad they weren't car sick. We spent the night in Bangkok and took a train 12 hours to Chiang Mai. In all, it took us 24 hours to get to Chiang Mai.

Once we got to Chiang Mai, we had to sort through our stuff. Inevitably, we find ourselves wondering what madness prompted us to save some of the things that we saved. Thankfully, Grace was having a yard sale that week-end and we were able to donate about one cubic meter of our stuff. Another cubic meter went back into storage and we thought we could take a cubic meter back with us. Now we had to get it to Phnom Penh. We wanted to rent a van, but this is expensive. Thankfully, collegues from Phnom Penh agreed to share the van and expense with us.

The trip through Thailand was really nice and we arrived at the border in 12 hours. We found a seedy little hotel and stayed the night.

In order to avoid the bus ride in Cambodia, we had agreed to bring chemicals for the school lab across the border. The school would then send a van for us. It was slightly risky, as we did not really have permission to do this, but we hoped that the one box of chemicals would be hidden by all of our other stuff. First we had to find the chemicals. Eric wandered around on the initial directions given for an hour and a half and was unable to find the shipping company where we were supposed to pick up the chemicals. He came back hot and tired from walking around the dusty town and I decided to ask some people about this shipping company. No one knew the company, but we were able to figure out the neighborhood that it was in, and it seemed to be very close to the border. After some discussion, we decided to pick up the chemicals on our way to the border. The van, by this time, was returned to Chiang Mai, so we had to find a truck. In Chiang Mai, as in many other Thai cities there are numerous truck taxis driving around looking for customers. Unfortunately, in the border town of Aranya Prathet there are only little tuk-tuks. So I decided to ask anyone who stopped if they had a truck we could rent.

Many tuk-tuk drivers stopped and insisted that they could carry our very heavy 20 boxes on their canvas roofs and could squeeze six of us into on small bench seat. Finally, one many said his cousin had a truck and could take us to the border. For $10 we go the perfect truck. Once we were loaded up, we headed to the neighborhood of the shipping company. Unfortunately, we didn't really have an address or clear directions to the shipping company, so we were relying on talking to them on our cell phones once we got to the neighborhood. Within two minutes of talking to them, our cell phone minutes ran out. We stopped at a shop to get more minutes, but it just so happened that our phone company could not add new minutes that morning. Here is Eric waiting behind the truck near the shop for me to get new minutes.

So without a cell phone, we had no choice but to wander the streets of the neighborhood looking for shipping company. After about 10 minutes, one of our friends says, "I think I saw a cardboard box on the porch of that house back there." With nothing else to go on, we checked it out. The house looked nothing like a shipping company and the people at the house watched nonchalantly while we tried to get past their attack dogs. Once we actually made it up to the porch, we saw that the box had "Hope International School" written across it. Hallelujah! It was miraculous that we found it.

So, now we were on our way to the border. Another unfortunate fact of the traversing the Thai-Cambodian border is that nothing can be taken across on a motorized vehicle without a special permit. So we had to hire a woman and her daughter to take it across on her giant wheelbarrow. We had to go via a separate route and it took us two hours to get through all of the official channels. Once we were on the other side, an employee of the school was waiting as was some sort of busing union. They told our co-worker that we were not allowed to leave immigration without taking a special bus to a special bus station. Our co-worker, tired of the delays, signalled to his driving partner who squealed around the corner, shoved us in the bus and drove off before the union could report us. I guess it wasn't that big a deal. Though we were stopped by police all the way back to Phnom Penh, no one seemed to be on the look-out for us.

So that's our saga of moving. Now we have to do it again in a few days.