Village of the Long Necks

Hello Everyone,

It seems like it has been a long time since I emailed last. A lot has happened

Last Monday we were able to go to this village up is the mountains. It was pretty cool to see these people that choose to live away from society. Lots of crazy stuff. They had these people that wore brass rings around there necks.  We asked why they started doing that, and it turns out they used to put those on because tigers used to attack people and slash their necks.  So they started protecting necks because tigers won’t kill them unless they can slash the neck. It eventually just turned in to a fashion thing.

We had to go to Bangkok last week and it turned into a really interesting adventure. We took the train through the night. They have beds on the train so we could sleep through the night, the problem is I am a tall man in a short country so the beds there are not big enough.  We got to Bangkok early in the morning and we went to the Visa place to renew Elder Parish's visa.  We were there for a few hours then finished up and called the bus station to see if we could get a bus back so we could get back to Chiang Mai that night. We called them and they said they didn't have any buses for 4 days. We didn't have a phone number for the train station so we had to take a taxi for about an hour through Bangkok to get there. We talked to the people and they didn't have a train till like 6:30 which was about 8 hours away. Without any other options, we bought the tickets.  Elder Parish had the house wallet that we use to pay for travel and stuff and it was almost empty so I lent some money for us to get train tickets. When we walk away, we check our wallets and realize we only have about 80 baht  each ( about $2.50) and we still haven't had breakfast. We have tons of time but we can't really go anywhere. We think for a while and realize that food is cheaper at Universities so we ask where the nearest university is and start walking there. It wasn't too far away and we got there and ate a low priced meal, then walked around the University. We eventually just found this air conditioned room and camped out there for about 4 hours. Then ate another low priced meal. We then headed back to the station and used our remaining baht to get snacks for the 12 hour train ride. We made it back to Chiang Mai then had to Bike back to our house, shower, get money, and Bike back to get to General Conference in time.

 

General Conference was great, I really enjoyed all of it, the way they did it was they played it in Thai for everyone and had it running in English at the same time playing through the Headphones we translate to. It worked out pretty well, and I could sit there and listen to how they translated some things into Thai. It was pretty relaxing to sit back and to listen to the words of the Apostles. 

On Monday we had a zone conference which was also really good.  I had to Recite D&C 4 in Thai for everyone. That was fun, I think I did a good job; it was a lot of stuff to memorize in a different language though.

So our P-day was moved to today (Thursday) so we can play Songkran.  It is a three day festival all throughout Thailand. Today is the middle day and basically what songkran is, is a huge water fight. Yesterday we were out trying to do work and people would just be dumping huge buckets of water on us. We had to bike into town last night and in the main part of Chiang Mai it is really crazy everywhere. There was no way you can move anywhere here without getting soaked. We get to play today so that will be a lot of fun. I will probably have some fun experiences to share on Monday.

That’s all for this week.

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์