Derailed

Stine was actually not sleeping most of the time, probably since there where no fire.

I'm now sitting on my bed on the night train from monte negro. I'm trying to publish my first blog from my new mobile, and it looks like its working.

But anyway, the train was supposed to arrive in belgrade 4 hours ago but it seems we had a little accident. During the night the train supposedly derailed and where stuck for some hours before we could move on. An interesting experience, even though i was sleeping all the time. Rumor has it that the track broke and they needed a technician with some machine to fix it. By the way, since there was no fire Stine managed to stay awake during the entire event.

Igniting Kosovo!

During our time in Kosovo, we got to experience some real action. We arrived in Pristina Saturday evening. One of the local churches connected us to a cheap guest house where we decided to stay.

It was cold and windy and our taxi crawled its way up the narrow streets of the hills surrounding Pristina. After checking in and being shown to our quarters, we found our self in a reasonably sized tree bed room, but it was freezing cold. We immediately fired up the heater before we continued to get settled. There was no place to hang our jackets, so I placed my bag in an upright position and pulled out the handle and put my jacket over it.

Me and Stine was travelling together with Kristian, a Norwegian journalist (very mature 36 year old man), and to save money we decided to share one room. It so happens, that one of us is a fairly big fellow with a measure of about two meters from top to bottom. That person, who rather wants to stay anonymous, managed to knock over my bag with the jacket on top.

A little while later the same night, I started feeling a little sick. My throat felt awful and I started coiffing pretty bad. I tried to fall asleep again but I kept waking up. In the end I decided to go to the bathroom to get some fresh water, thinking that it might help.

When I opened my eyes I immediately realized something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. I couldn’t see the room properly, not because it was dark, but all I saw was this vague grey color. I could also hear a kind of crackling sound, similar to that you can hear from your fireplace on your eastern holiday. I tried to look around, but I couldn’t see a lot, not before I looked down towards the end of my bed. An ice cold, chilly feeling ran down my spine (something that normally would have been described as fear), and I could barely believe what I saw. It was all like a liquid mix of dreams and reality.

A tall flame with a length close to a meter was licking at my feet, which I quickly redrew. My jacket had felt over the oven and ignited, and the flames were huge. There was no means of fire alarms or firefighting equipment that I could think of, and I started shouting out “Fire! Fire!”, at a reasonable volume. Kristian woke up pretty fast, but I had already decided to take matters into my own hands, literally. I leant forward and reached for my burning (synthetic) jacket. Without really being able to know, remember or see what I was doing, I managed to put my burning jacket together like a ball, and extinguish the flames.

During all this chaos, Kristian had also tried to wake up Stine. After giving her a rather hard shake, Stine raised herself up a little bit and asked, in her own half sleeping way, “What’s going on?”. “There’s a fire! Get up!” yelled Kristian, on which Stine reacted with a yawn before she laid down again and continued sleeping. This will not be easily forgotten, me and Kristian is joking that all you need to say is “Fire!” and Stine will fall asleep no matter where she is.

But back to the main topic, I was just putting out the last flames with my bare hands when the Germans entered, sneaking slowly in to the room while speaking German (or English with a German accent). The Germans who turned out to be Austrians was our neighbors who had seen a lot of smoke in the hall and decided to enter to see what was going on.

People rarely wake up because of smoke. Most people would just have died. But at the same time as all of this was happening EUS (Christian student fellowship of Serbia, my organization in Serbia) was having a prayer night in Belgrade. I’ve gotten confirmation that EUS students was praying for our safety, at the same time or nearly at the same time, that the fire was burning in Kosovo. So I just want to thank God for still being alive, because it’s nothing less than a miracle! Be careful with old heaters, and fire security is not a joke. Be thankful for every day you get!

By the way I also plan to write a blog post about the rest of our Kosovo journey when I have some time.

This is the oven in the hotelroom, after the fire.

This is the way I put my bag.

And this is how I put my jacket on top of it.

All the pictures in this article are reconstructed.

Infield course in Thailand

Two Thai girls. The one on the left is in a official school uniform.

A lot of skyscrapers in Bangkok

During our Hald practice period abroad we have a infield course. This usually takes place in the middle of the practice period, which would mean around Christmas. Because Hald students go to a lot of different places, its hard to get all the infield courses in at the perfect time, so the courses are spread out in December and Januar. We ended up having our course in the end of Januar. Since we are only two people in Serbia, it would be quite expensive and tiering to arrange a separate infield course for us. To save some money, we end up with having our infield course in Thailand together with the Hald students in Thailand and Laos.

Along a channel in Bangkok

Mr. McDonald saying hey the Thai way.

The view from my Hotel room

Some Thai food on the street. Thai food is really delicious.

Stray dogs are crawling in the streets in Thailand.

We figured out that when we went to Asia anyway, we might as well do an extra week of vacation, so we decided to go for two weeks. We came to Bangkok in the evening Tuesday 22.January after a long flight and some hours in Zürich (we even had enough time to visit the city for a little bit). We spent two and a half days in Bangkok, visiting the Hald girls working there and visiting their place of work, eating brilliant Thai food and trying out Thai massage.

At Home of Praise, one of the places the Thai girls work.

Emmanuel school, another place of work for the Thai team.

Me watching some kids

A dramatic mood at Home of Praise (place of work of the Thai team) when the building was sprayed with bug repellent spray.

Thursday late evening, the journey went on. We were planning to go to Laos to pay a visit to our friends there and spend some time with them. But this would all prove not to be without some complications. The plan was to take the night train from Bangkok to Nong Khai, a city close to the Lao border.

45 minutes before the train left the platform, we arrived at the station. I was a little bit worried about this journey, Thai people are very short and I'm pretty tall and my guess was that most beds on the train would be very short. Because of this reason the plan was to get some 1-class coupe tickets with decent sized beds. Anyway, at the station we were told buy a tourist assistant that 2nd class with bed and air condition would be most suitable, but when he was helping us to buy tickets he suddenly told us:
- Too bad! No more beds left! Only 2nd class with chairs and fan! Too bad, no air condition! Do you still want to go?
We decided to go for the tickets that was left. We had a very interesting journey, a Buddhist monk was sitting on the seat in front of us and the atmosphere was amazing. And I actually managed to sleep a little bit during the 12 hour journey. Our only problem was that during the night our wagon became really freezing. We left our jackets in Bangkok, thinking that we wouldn't need them for a while. But we survived even though we were really cold the next morning.

A kid Stine was playing with on the train

The train doors were open during the trip

In the middle of the night on the train. We were very awake, especially Stine who has a heart for sleeping everywhere at anytime and situation (more info in next blog post).

Monks crossing the Lao border

Stine on a Lao Tuk Tuk with Bjarte in the background.

And me on the same Tuk Tuk

Ingvild riding here el-scooter

Some rice fields in Laos.

Salom, trying to digest a frog.

A classic Vientiane Tuk Tuk.

How many people can go on one small scooter?

From a service in the Evangelical church of Laos

One of the girls attending the service.

We got to visit some well projects funded by NMS and Norad. These are some of the kids, which now have clean water.

A monk-kid living in a Buddhist monastery close to the well.

This guy was sitting next to the well

New fresh water

Me and Salom (last years Hald student from Laos) at a well.

1.000 000 Kip. Lao money, equals about 450 kr or 50 Euro

A monk peeking true a keyhole in a monastery.

We had four brilliant days in Laos and Monday midday we traveled back to Thailand, but this time most of the journey went by airplane.

The next four days we spend in Hua Hin (a tourist city along the coast). Here we had some classes and different activities at our infield course.

Karin riding an elephant

Monika and Inger Johanne, two teachers at Hald.

Miriam and Bjarte, two fellow Hald students

The city of Hua Hin.

You might recognize this guy, his name is Buddha and his very tall.

Some monkeys we got to see.

Don't put your head out the window warning at the train station.

Fresh fruit at the marked in Hua Hin

Before we left back to Bangkok Friday night, me and Karin rented to motorbikes and went for a little bit of sightseeing on our own. Karin was very brave who dared to drive motorbike for the first time ever, and that was in the crazy streets of Thailand!Karin on her scooter.

And me on mine.

Smoking monk

We found a pineapple field! With farmer included! And he gave us two fresh pineapples which I gave to Karin.

We spent the last three days in Bangkok. We got to do some shopping and tourist activities, including Grand Palace, boat trip, China Town and more. I noticed three things which are all over Bangkok; stray dogs, food and seven eleven. No matter where you go in Bangkok you will always find these three things.

Monk buying pirate movies in China Town.

Sign on public toilet.

Thai candy at the marked.

Floating marked in Bangkok

Nationalistic people. How many flags can you see?

From the boat trip at the river.

Guards at the Grand Palace

Gold covered buildings at the Grand Palace.

Our guide at the Palace was using my Thai name Chang (Elephant) all the time. And usually really loud when I was stuck taking some picture.

Bangkok by night (view from the Thai teams room)

All together I had two great weeks in Asia. It was great meeting friends there and the food was just fantastic! Its some of the best food I've ever eaten.