Build Project Week Completed. Please watch for recaps.

What an amazing week. I'm at the Bangkok airport right now on the way to Kamalaya. Internet access was very difficult at the hotel in Chaing Mai so I wasn't able to update as frequently as I wanted.

After several very hot days of building we got the house mostly built. The local Habitat organization has crews who will be finishing the building up and will move the families in by the 18th of Dec.

I never would have guessed that traveling half way around the world I would run into people I knew. It was a very pleasant surprise to find Dave Thompson and Rob Short coming to help us out when our roof construction went badly due to some miss-set roof truss brackets. It turns out the block corner our house was on also included a couple of homes from East King County. I had the pleasure of working with both of these great people several years ago while working at Microsoft. They both were fantastic and really helped us get things resolved.

Last night we were privileged to visit Pathit's current home. Pathit is the new owner of the home we built (see my last post). We took a cab to his home which is in the city of Chaing Mai. You get to his home by walking down a long dark series of very narrow allies. Along the side is the canal flowing with a stenchful afluent breading disease and mosquitos. I'll have to fill you in more when I arrive in Kamalaya.

Bye for now...
Ron

Arrived in Thailand!

We made it to Chaing Mai about 9:00pm after about 36 hours of travel. Our Horizon air flight was to leave Spokane for Seattle at 6:30 but was delayed due to a mechanical failure on the plane while it was in Seattle on the way to Spokane. The agent was very kind and moved us to an Alaska flight at 7:30 and bumped us to 1st class. After boarding and getting settled, the captain reported the Alaska flight had a mechanical error and we had to deplane J They rebooked us and we ended back on the original Horizon Q400 prop plane leaving at just after 8:00pm. I’m sure glad we had about 5 hours of layover time.

Our Eva Air flight went from Seattle to Taipai to Bangkok. The airline was quite nice and the Elite Class seats were very comfortable. We’re really happy we booked early as we got the upgraded seats at the price of coach. Once in Bangkok we took Bangkok Air to Chaing Mai and a 10 minute cab ride to Le Meridian Hotel (very nice).

After a great breakfast at the hotel, we just had a 40 minute Skype call with AT&T to try and resolve some international roaming issues on our phones. Now that is out of the way we are about to go out and tour the city for the day before transferring to the Habitat sponsored hotel (The Lotus).