Just another Saturday in Thailand
We go home the day after tomorrow and that last minute need to get everything in has hit. I spent all morning in meetings that were actually interesting. I really don’t like being in a room full of strangers. I don’t think people realize how shy I actually am. I know there were people there I know but I did not know where they were sitting so I sat with someone I didn’t know. He did speak English however and that was nice. I don’t know if I feel extra blind when there is no one around me that I know or if it is just the shy thing but I wish I could get over it.
In the early afternoon we took the, now familiar train, to an amazing mall called Terminal 21. It is a cross between an airport shopping area and a collection of international city shopping streets. Although most of the stores are the usual big label ones there were a few interesting ones in the mix.
Neal spotted some T Shirts with braille on them. Of course both the print and braille were in Thai so neither of us could read them. As we were looking at them someone came up to us and told us the shirts said from our eyes to your heart. He explained that we had stumbled into an exhibit of photographs that were being exhibited to help people use all there senses to enjoy them. Each photo had a plaster representation that was sculpted to give a good representation of the picture. The person showing us around was actually an engineer from a local university. They had shown some of these pictures at the school for the blind but they had no idea that just a few blocks away was a conference with hundreds of blind people and people who work in the blindness field. I wish we had seen this sooner so we could spread the word. There was even a photo done by the princess, the very same princess who had been at the conference. When we finished looking at the pictures we picked out three T Shirts and when we went to pay for them, they gave us the shirts. We took a picture with the two people who were there and I think everyone had a great experience. Neal does such a great job of explaining things to me and the people working there really liked watching us like their pictures. It is a wonderful thing how the best experiences are never what you plan but what happens between the plans.
Then it was back to the hotel. Have I mentioned that every time we get the train we climb 84 steps in 90 degree weather, but then who is counting?
After a nap we went down to the lobby shops and did a little more shopping. We ended the night with a glass of scotch in the lobby bar and went to sleep thinking about what we would do with our last day.