bangkok; perhaps they'll end this dispute in a THAI

we're here. thailand. bangkok. finally found internet access and got blogger to work. food is fantastic. blah blah blayaawn. yeah you don't care. what you obviously care about is the...

STATE OF EMERGENCY!

i've always thought that my wife and i have a bit of a destabilizing presence when we travel abroad. in fact, more accurately, she does. she's smoking hot, and when she walks down the street men tend to start spraying each other with tear gas. we've seen it everywhere. she was in nepal the day the king stepped down, ending like a million-year monarchy. we had plans to go to both darjeeling and rajasthan in india, but both were simultaneously shut down by separate anticipatory riots. we went north instead to himachal pradesh, leaving the earth there so shaky that a landslide crushed like a million people not long after our departure. (tasteless? whatever. my point is that she's hot.)

so we fly into bangkok at about 2 am on monday (two days after protesters had in anticipation disrupted flights at all three airports) and immediately our new thai friends start apologizing that their great nation had welcomed us with such familial strife. whatever. i think it's thrilling. we should all get to witness geopolitical history from the front lines at some point in our lives. and while im sure my presence (as proxy) started a fight somewhere in africa during my week-long stay in liberia last december, things in my first war-torn nation were alarmingly (actually, in reality, wonderfully/encouragingly/hope for humanity-ly) calm.

so when we awoke at 5 am today (jetlag) to the CNN news that riots had swept our new kingdom into a military-controlled sorta-tizzy while we slept, i was dismayed to learn that geopolitical history sometimes happens after 9 pm (jetlag). furthermore, beyond to the constant apologies from our friends, we haven't actually seen anything that suggests the country is in lockdown, even as we stay the week at a protest-fertile university. trains might not run tomorrow, but we spent yesterday at a mall which felt a lot like london, and tonight we'll dally around town in lonely planet bliss. thai strife is rarely that eventful anyway (the military's 2006 'silken coup' happened without firing a single shot).

regardless, i wore my best shirt today just in case i luck out and find myself walking down the soi with constance, locked into a tear gas clash on international tv.

anyway.. here's the best alternative explanation i've found. and a blog from someone who seems like he knows. and the best english newspaper in thailand.

meanwhile, we're here. thailand. living out the god-created desires of our heart abroad. learning to think, live and love in new ways best sparked when challenged by the delightfully unfamiliar.

here's our new house. our group here decided the last place (here) wasn't enough. now we have a yard. and three bedrooms. how frigging perfect is this place. come visit.