We chose Puerto Rico as our Honeymoon location because it was a cheap airfare and it held a fascination for both of us. The lure of Old San Juan, the Taino culture, the potential for amazing beaches to lay out on, and most definitely food! Oh… and apparently P.R. is the Hawaii of the Atlantic, boasting legendary surf spots (just not while I was there).

Perhaps Heather and I are spoiled from the unique, warm and inviting nature of the people in Thailand. We had a lovely time, but Puerto Rico didn’t quite live up to all we were expecting.

I suppose the trip can be divided into two. The first half was truly amazing. We stayed at the Gallery Inn. The picture to the left is taken there. The Gallery Inn is this old building in San Juan that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and both of San Juan’s forts. We had an incredible room. We also had an incredible rainstorm that woke us up suddenly when our old shuttered doors were blown open. Earlier that evening we were introduced to one of the worlds most delicious uses of garlic, plantains and butter; Mofongo! I am a huge fan of anything Cuban and Plantains, and this was truly amazing and we both highly recommend it.

The next day we went to one of the forts and explored and played and photographed. Then we headed out of San Juan in the direction of Luquillo on the Northeast tip of P.R. I was quite excited because I heard it had decent surf, and we were going to stay in an apartment in the El Yunque Rainforest.

Some of the highlights were:

• The waterfalls, they were everwhere.
• Sue’s Place. Our apartment, a twenty minute drive up a jungle mountain through small villages and chickens and dogs in the street, when you finally get there you walk on your deck that is surrounded by super dense green jungle and millions of tree frogs, called koqui, that sing to you at night.
• On a whim, Heather and I climbed through the jungle to the very most highest point of Puerto Rico.
• Surfing at La Selva. It was sloppy, mushy and small, but it had been almost two years since I’ve caught a wave. Plus, it was a cool mile long hike through the jungle to get there. (On the hike back I got stung by some kind of flying insect that made my arm swell up and turn red! Cool!)

We stayed in El Yunque for two days and loved it. When we left Luquillo is when our trip turned to the somewhat unpleasant second half. I think it was a combination of wanting to explore a lot of the island in a short time colliding with the slow island life pace of life. The best example was when we went to the Camuy Caves. I was told that it would only take a few hours to do, but it ended up being a four hour wait in line for a 45 minute guided tour. The caves were quite remarkable though, and I’m glad we went.

The restaurant we went to after though was a different story entirely. I won’t say much, other than it took an hour just for us to order.

One thing that shocked both of us is that while the plane flight was somewhat inexpensive, the hotels were at least one hundred dollars. Regardless of where you went, you were looking at dropping a Benjamen.

Our last night, tired from driving, tired from paying exorbitantly for meals, we ended up at a small South Beach style hotel. We figured it was going to be expensive no matter where we went in San Juan so we booked it. Talk about swank! We were offered complimentary room service drinks, and to top off our night we found our way out to the beach deck area the ultra comfy canopy beds in the sand. We cuddled up with each other and looked out to the lights dancing on the San Juan Harbor, drinking our Puerto Rican rum filled drinks and listening to the DJ spin some mellow house tracks and thinking about everything from the past few days and the long plane ride home the next day.

I’m sitting in one of my most favorite restaurants, Lamuan Seafood, where for 10 months I’ve come to many times over and have been adopted into the hearts of the owner and the staff as part of their family. It’s been 10 months here in Khao Lak, and it’s about to end. Sitting here in Lamuan’s drinking my Chang beer there are a number of thoughts running through my head. It’s not being out of work – I’ll easily land a job with my background. Nor is it finding a place to live – that’s actually sorted out already in Austin and I’m really looking forward to that new adventure of a new city and new relationship. No… What I fear isn’t that stuff. It’s more along the lines of coming back to a culture I’ve grown so far away from while I’ve been here. And it doesn’t live in my heart that I made the impact I set out to…

The U.S. Failure

God! My journey away from the U.S. has led me to see the overwhelming arrogance of a nation, the uselessness of it’s government, and the complacency of the majority of it’s citizens. It’s not that I detest the country, I truly love the United States of America, I love what it stands for, I love the opportunities I’ve had. For those things and more I’m grateful to the ends of earth and back.
However what it stands for now means nothing to the harm it’s done. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty says:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

That promise hasn’t been kept. To it’s own people let alone the “Free World” the government says it protects. The “Free World” is now the most skeptical and guarded of all in relations to the U.S.

Bush has pulled out of so many pacts and treaties that I’m sure Fijians are shaking in their loincloths with fear of upsetting Junior into a possible war.

What is disturbing is that the people of America are OK with it!
The people of America don’t give a damn.

They were too busy watching Seinfeld when Clinton authorized weapons to be sold to the Indonesian government which went on to massacre 200,000 East Timorese people. They were too busy sucked into American Idol when Bush defied the U.N. and went to war with Iraq.

It took leaving the country and seeing these things happen from outside in to realize what I didn’t when I was there. What will it take for the rest of the country that silently cares but for which it hasn’t spawned yet? I don’t know, but I hope it happens soon – a revolution is necessary now!

This is one of the things that scare me – the complacency, the resignation and the beat down demeanor of the people that is supposed to be lifted and inspired by it’s government, but ultimately is just that: beat down by it’s own government. Oppressed by the Autocracy with no balls to do anything about it but enjoy the little sanctity they possess in their televisions.

My Failure

This doesn’t so much scare me but, it definitely weighs on me, as I prepare to go home, is that I really don’t think I’ve accomplished what I should have in the time I’ve been here. I came to Thailand with a strong vision to use my background with buildings to help others.

I don’t know if it was my stubbornness or the lack of competent management with the organizations I’ve worked with that was the hindrance, but there have been many breakdowns and I just have not been able to deal with them. I can forgive the lack of efficiency with the Thai people, it’s just a hot environment and the ordinary Thai or Moken villager doesn’t build 50 homes at a time. I believe the breakdown comes from not having a focused project manager with construction experience that has direct interaction with the village superior. Any other attempt is pointless and leads to misdirection, misinformation and misunderstanding amongst the people we’ve come to help.

It’s possible the misunderstanding is on my end. We are here to help, but with my experience and background I expect my “help” to be on a different level. Maybe make things a little easier or go a little faster. Maybe I’m just frustrated over my own ineptitude. I look back and here’s what I’ve accomplished in ten months:

April through July: Helped build 42 houses for a Moken Village. Quit working at the village because of the lack of experience of the volunteer manager and the reluctance to which my opinions and thoughts were accepted.

July: Created a database for which to track donations and contributions to an Adopt-A-Child program which offered aid to orphans and disadvantaged children. After this was completed I do not actually know how much this database was used and I now question the integrity in which the program was run.

August: I ran off to be an extra in what I though was to be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Patrick Stewart, but ended up being a double for Angus MacFadyen in a Hallmark mini-series.

September: Spent an entire month and all the money I had from the Blackbeard mini-series on an island cut off from the world and enjoyed the isolation.

October/November: Designed a new website for the Tsunami Volunteer Center.

December: Helped a local Tsunami Craft Centre with their promotional print material and then took off on a two and a half weekend with Heather for Christmas.

January/February : Started another construction project only to walk off the site again for similar reasons cited from the first foray.

My last job: creating a website for a homestay volun-tourism project that will bring volunteers into the homes of villagers that survived through the tsunami.

It sounds good and all, but walking off the job sites has probably been the hardest part for me to accept and one of the hardest aspects of my persona to confront. I quit on ninety-some households because I couldn’t get along with the people running the projects.

I want to say that I have values and wouldn’t let something slip through my fingers that wasn’t satisfactory, but I have to question those very values when I would quit on something I specifically came here to do because I didn’t believe in the leadership.

The Houses? Yeah they got built. They were gonna be built with or without me. But to recognize this failure is not something I’ve really enjoy seeing and really wish things were different.

How much have I really changed? I can’t quite say. Have I grown at least? I think in ways I’ve advanced more than any other year in my past, and in others I’ve regressed to stages I’ve far grown from. I’m positive this has been a life changing event for me and I will never forget my time here, yet I’m certain I’m not prepared to rejoin the culture I’ve left a year ago or move on from this beautiful place and the failure I’ll be leaving here.

Christmas here in Thailand was really amazing. 85 degrees on a tropical beach with a special person, a former volunteer that came back on her holiday break to spend Christmas with me. Last night in low light, our last sunset we said good bye before she walked to her plane. The prior two and a half weeks were spent bouncing around Southern Thailand’s beaches and cruising from one island to the next.

The One Year Anniversary was the day after Christmas. Attended by thousands the ceremony was an amazing sight of diversity, emotion and light. Held right next to the beach where over three thousand Thai and Foreign people were killed, the Prime Minister gave his emotionless and banal speech and the Princess of Thailand, who’s son died in the tsunami, gave her engaging speech in Thai and thanked the volunteers and foreigners that helped in English.

The highlight: 5,000 floating lanterns of light made from rice-paper were lit and released into the air creating a manmade constellation hundreds of feet in the air. While below on the ground every person at the ceremony lifted there burning candles in remembrance. A beautiful and highly emotional evening to mark a years time.

New Years will be celebrated with my Arrogant Bastard Ale that was brought from home, and maybe some homemade tacos for the Feliz Ano Nuevo.

Some say you should never play a player. Well one of Khao Lak’s best didn’t listen and tried it on me… Well, it backfired on him.

The Back Story:
Paddy was one of the first people I met when I got here in April. He went away for a bit to travel through Nepal and climb to the base camp at Everest. When he got back he proceeded to bombard everyone in town with unique pranks.
A couple of my favorites were…

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