Travel time and a bit of history/facts

Our travel to Bangkok starts this afternoon, March 10th at 3:00 pm. We begin our journey with the flight to Japan, it is 12 hours. We have an hour and a half layover before leaving for Bangkok on another flight that will last an additional seven hours.  We will arrive in Bangkok at 12:40 am on March 12th.  Door to door it will take us about 24 hours to reach our destination.  Can you imagine how long it would have taken to get there before airplanes!  We would appreciate your prayers for us to get on our flights since both of us are flying space available.

Thailand is located between India and Vietnam.  It is about the only country in that area of the world that I know of that was never colonized by either the British or the French.  History tells us that two of the monarchs during the time of colonization performed a very delicate balancing act that kept their country free of colonial occupation while ushering their people into the modern world with roads, railways, schools and universities.  India was colonized by the British and Vietnam by the French.  Thailand is a monarchy, but like England it is not ruled by the King anymore.  

Nearly 70% of Thailand's population of 63 million people live in rural areas.  The latest United Nations report on world poverty level classes nearly 10 million Thai's as "poor"- that is, existing on less than the equivalent of US $1 per day and most of these are living on the land.  A further 5.8 million people are said to be living on less than 80 cents a day and therefore "ultra poor" while 19 million are listed as being on the poverty line.  Thailand is considered a "Third World Country" and I guess that I don't know what that really means besides the incredible poverty that people live day to day in and that you can't drink the water.  Definitely something americans can't really relate to.

Do you remember the movie "The King and I" with Yul Brenner?  I love old movies but I never knew that this really happened!   Anna a young governess hired to educate the King's children in 1862 wrote two books on her experiences there, but because of skepticism the movies and books have been banned in Thailand.