I just got back from my journey to Thailand.  What an amazing trip!! 

After spending a day at Bangkok (night market and floating market) we went flew north to Chiang Rai where we met with Rusty and Luca.  We visited Luca's village/church on Sunday and drove up to the hills to see the Akha coffee plantation and processing plant (Doi Chaang coffee).

We then drove to a remote Akha village in the hills north of Chiang Rai.  Grass huts, no electricy or plumbing,  but a previous team installed a water system for the village.  We built a church/school for the village and slept with host families (in huts on ground and bamboo raisers) and ate Akha food with them while there.

The Akha were very excited to have us there.  The men took the week off from working in the fields to help us build the church (and so that they learn how to do it themselves).  It was important to them to be able to repeat whatever we did after we left, so we used methods that they use for building.  Mario bought them a cement mixer and left for the Akha, which really made the floor go much faster.

We didn't quite finish (supply chain problems, etc) but they only had a fewe days more work to complete when we left.

After getting back to Chiang Rai, we took quick trip up to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), so I've actually been to Thailand twice now (at least according to my passport :), went to the monkey caves, and took a ride on elephants!!

It was a long trip to get there and back.  Funny that when we left Taipei at 4pm we arrived in Seattle at 12:30pm the same day.

See my photo album for some pictures of the trip.