I think I got a cell phone in Thailand

There are experiences when you travel that can frustrate you, but while in the midst of them you have to remember that this is why you chose to live overseas- to experience new things and to feel like a gumby.
On our first day here, Megan, Jeff and I went cell phone shopping. After asking around we figured the best place to buy them is at the mall. The mall is a masterpiece of American Culture plopped right down into the middle of Thai bedlam: Sizzler, KFC, McDonalds, Mr. Bun, and 65 cell phone stores. How do you choose which store to go to when the options abound? You go to the one place that looks like it might speak english, of course. We went to the DTAC store (DTAC is one of three telecommunications companies in Thailand), found a woman who spoke some english and spent the next 1 1/2 hours trying to figure out what we were buying. We chose some phones- that part was easy- but then had to pick out a SIM card and a plan. We had heard that there was a plan that allowed me and Megan to talk for free so we asked the woman if this is possible and in response we heard the word "buffet." Buffet? No we don't all you can eat, we just want to talk to each other and then pay whatever it costs for everyone else. "Promotion Buffet!" O.k.... so if we get promotion buffet, then we are good to go. We understood that we had to buy a 300 Baht (Baht is the thai currency) card to activate it. O.k.... I think we should do that? The phones came out of the wrappers, the SIM cards were inserted into the phones and then special numbers were called to activate Promotion Buffet. Great. We were all done. We were grabbing our bags to leave and then I thought to ask how we regenerate our 300 Baht. "No, you don't have 300 baht at all," was the response. " It costs you 300 Baht per month just to activate Promotion Buffet." So now I understood that we had to pay 300 baht per month to talk to megan for free and that I still had to put more money into the account in order to talk to anyone else. I just got a big smile from the sales person in response. Smiles are great, but they aren't too helpful when trying to figure things out. At this point I had to remind myself that I am the one who doesn't speak any Thai, that I am the one who can't make any sense out of the Thai Smile Happy Promotion cell phone programs and that this woman is doing better with me than I would do with her if the roles were reversed.
We left, understanding only that I can make a cell phone call, and I figure I will continue to make cell phone calls until my phone doesn't work anymore and then I will go to the DTAC office and ask how to make it work. It isn't really my style to not understand the subtleties of how something works, but I think I'm going to have to get used to it while I'm over here.

Obviously my life has changed quite a bit since the last post. I seem to remember that Smith was cold, then it got hot, then it rained and we climbed a lot. We traveled back up to Seattle for a few days, packed out lives up into a duffel bag and then jumped an airplane for Thailand. We sat on airplanes for about 30 hours total and arrived in Chaing Mai feeling tired and excited about what is to come. After eating some delicious thai food, we went and got one hour foot massages (for 5 dollars) and then fell fast asleep. The next day we got cell phones (I think) and started searching for apartments. I won't go into too much detail, but most "apartments" are 5 meter by 8 meter boxes with windows at one end and no kitchen. The good news: they cost around 125 dollars per month. The bad news: from what we can tell, this style apartment is pretty much all there is. We checked out a lot of apartments and seem to find the same wherever we go. I'm sure we haven't seen everything yet, but hopefully we can find something a little more livable then a box. On Tuesday, we are going apartment (or maybe house) hunting with Josh who speaks thai and understands how it all works. Perhaps I'll know more by then.

We also met a bunch of great climber/ ex- peace corp/ nice folks at a party last night. It seems like we will make some great friends here and have plenty of people to hang out with.

In short, I am super excited to be here, Thailand is hot, cell phone plans are confusing, don't ride bicycles in Thailand at night time on busy streets when you don't have a light on your bicycle (it took us literally 15 minutes to cross a street- and that was probably one of the most dangerous things I have ever done in my life), the people here are great, and life is good.

Marshall