It’s OVER and BEGINNING all at ONCE...: Project Thailand: Day Two & Three

Project Thailand – Day Two:

Sawadeeka whānau,

So, that was an intense sleep because I kept waking up and weird hours because New Zealand is a whole 5 hours ahead of Thailand and so at 2am it’s 7am back home (the time I would wake up to get ready for work), then at 3am, and so forth – CRAZY! So, I woke up finally at 6.30am and worked on my presentation because I was getting some idea on how to make things flow and work for the presentation as a whole and because I wasn’t too sure when I would be presenting I thought it would be wise to make sure I go ready – well, at least with a direction of my beginning, middle and end! Turns out I was the 3^rd presenter – LUCKY!! The bed was pretty comfortable aye, really nice – somewhere between soft and hard – a nice medium between the two and it was nice!

So, I get ready and off I go down to see what breakfast looked like at the Sourire motel, Bangkok – and it was lovely. There was a waiter and I sat down and he brought me some fruit, some I could identify and others I could not – but that was the exhilarating part of the experience – relinquishing control and trusting the natives. So, after over-thinking the fruit experience he came over and with a picture of 4 or 5 different ways I could have my eggs.. LoL! Poached it is.. and off he went to get it done for me. Lovely people here in Thailand. So, after my breakfast I went to check out and she asked where I was going, I replied to Nana Station and so she asked ‘Do you wanna go by boat?’ and while I contemplated it I knew the answer was a resounding ‘Yes’ took the familiar walk to the boat and this time I was a little more clued up on how things were going to go… When I got to my stop I jumped on a taxi and got a cheap ride to the Aetas: http://www.aetashotels.com I definitely went from rags to riches! Funny…

After meeting everyone we went to Le Isaan for the beginning of our hui and lunch – it was really cool meeting everyone. Such an amazing group of young leaders, and after talking to a few of us we were all amazed at the calibre of the participants as well as feeling inadequate in ourselves we soon became friends and let that all go – my reflection of this hui is the next blog – it’s pretty deep & personal, so if you don’t want to read it kei te pai J

The hui was really awesome and inspiring - I was in the first group to present (after lunch) we had this introduction session at Le Isaan, I was in a group with Paul, Kaya & Angela - it was a lot of fun! We were asked to send through 3 pictures with different themes relating to leadership, we had mostly forgotten which pictures we had sent through and so had to re-aquaint ourselves with them - LoL! The presentations were so amazing, when we got back that of course I was getting nervous, but managed to pull it off & forgot to record it for mum… Opps! :(

After them all, we had a cocktail function at the New Zealand Ambassador to Thailands whare - WHAT?! Just casually hanging out at his whare and meeting him - surreal… Mr Reuben Levermore - it was funny coz he ‘favourited’ one of my tweets reading: 'Self-reflection is deep, revealing, painful but leads to a new beautiful peaceful location #asianzhui’ And I was buzzing out until on his page it says - 'Retweets not necessarily endorsements’ HAHAHA - all good, I wasn’t looking for an endorsement - just buzzy anyway… The reflection I wrote kind of covers the next few days so, here are some pics and I’ll post my reflections..