“Pastor Humboldt? How long is the flight?”
A broad smile. “Well, now, let’s ease up on one thing right away. Just to save energy, why don’t we all agree that for the next two weeks, you all call me Gordon? OK?”
The girl smiled.
“Anyway, we’re in the air a good twenty hours. But it’s a big plane, and you can move around all you want.” He glanced at his watch. “They’ll be announcing it any minute, so let’s gather around and have a prayer first.”
The enthusiastic group joined hands as Gordon led them in a brief session of prayer. “Lord, help us to do more than just build a dormitory,” he entreated. “Anybody could do that. But help us to share with these precious people our love for you – our belief that even though we come from different countries and cultures, we’re all brothers and sisters in you.”
“Amen.” The students murmured the closing together.
“That’s us!” The staccato announcement began just as the prayer finished. “Grab your carry-ons, and let’s get in line.”
Ten minutes later the student group walked aboard the huge DC-10 with its endless rows of seats. Only the gentle hiss of air from the air vents broke the elegant silence of its interior. “All right!” Bucky grinned. “This is great!”
“Didn’t you ever fly before?” One of the mission group members, a pretty Asian girl, slid into the seat next to him.
“Boy, not a big widebody like this.” Bucky had turned to gaze at the expanse of plane behind him, but the girl captured his attention. He fumbled for words. “How about you?”
Even her laugh seemed to have a little bit of Asian accent. “Several times. I was born in Thailand, and we lived there for many years. So I am, I guess you say, going home again.”
Bucky’s eyes widened with interest. “Wow! That’s really something. What’s your name?”
“Vasana.” With slim fingers she fastened her belt. “I guess we’re next to each other the whole way.”
Chapter Five: Journey Into Night
The steady hum of the DC-10’s engines powered the small Christian group over the scenic mountains surrounding Anchorage. “Man, that is some view!” Bucky whistled as he finished off the last bites of his meal. “Can you see all right?”
“Yes.” The Thai girl cocked her head, peering past him at the sunset as it spilled over the snowy mountain ranges.
“I should let you sit here.”
“No, your legs are too long to sit in the middle,” she protested.
The sun had just settled behind the craggy mountains when the huge plane took off again, bound for Seoul. Bucky listened, fascinated, as the flight crew repeated the pre-flight announcements in several Asian languages. “Which one’s Thai?”
“Right now,” Vasana smiled. “You keep hearing that word, ‘kah’? That is a Thai politeness ending most of our sentences.” A buzz of foreign conversation filled the airplane as the craft taxied down the runway.
“Tell me your name again.”
“Vasana.” She pronounced the first consonant with a “w” sound.
“How do you spell that?”
An expectant little smile. “V-A-S-A-N-A.”
He wrinkled his nose. “How come you say it like it’s a ‘w’ instead of a ‘v’?”
She gave a little laugh. “That is the Thai way. ‘V’ sounds like ‘w’ and ‘w’ sounds like ‘v’.”
Bucky filed the interesting fact away for later. “I guess it’ll be dark the rest of the way now,” he mused, “since we’re going east to west. That’s what my dad said.”
“Yeah, but wait till you see this.” Gordon poked his head over the back of the seats.
“What do you mean?”
“Just watch.”
The airline climbed higher and higher in the Alaskan sky. “Now right there on the horizon.”
Bucky stared through the window where the sun had disappeared moments before. “Here it comes,” the man murmured in a low voice.
Slowly, almost eerily, the setting sun began to climb up above the horizon, just barely clearing the distant line of snowy peaks.
“Awesome!” Bucky couldn’t believe his eyes. “The sun went down, and now it’s coming up again!”
“We’re so far north that when the plane gets high enough you can see past where the sun just went down. I saw it once before.” The youth director spoke almost reverently.
“That’s unreal.” Bucky looked over at Vasana, who was transfixed by the sight. Slowly the sun sank – for the second time – as the Delta jet climbed to 35,000 feet.
The next nine hours were a marathon stretch of flying. An old movie danced across his miniature TV seat screen but Bucky couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Try to get some sleep.” Gordon made his way down the aisle of the plane, giving encouragement to each young person.
After what seemed an eternity in a plane that was starting to feel smaller and more claustrophobic by the minute, the captain announced the descent into Seoul. Stirring from his drowsy nap, Bucky felt a sense of excitement course through him. “I’m really looking forward to seeing what everything looks like over here.”
“At night from the sky it looks just like any other city,” Vasana pointed out, peering over his shoulder at the approaching lights.
The row of Christian students slowly filed out of the plane. Some of them were rubbing their eyes. “Man, I could not sleep!” Benny complained to one of the girls.
“Hey, back home it’s already Monday morning,” she retorted.
“And here’s it’s Monday night now.”
“Huh?” Bucky had a confused look.
“We just crossed the dateline,” Benny explained. ‘We just hopped from Sunday night to Monday night, you guys.”
The airline terminal was nearly deserted. Bucky wandered down the hallway, staring at the odd-looking Korean signs.
“What do you think?”
He looked up to see Pastor Humboldt approaching him.
“Boy, just like that, and you’re in Asia.”
The youth director grinned. “Yeah. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”
Moments later the loudspeaker burst forth with a Korean announcement. “Get used to the feeling, Bucky,” Gordon laughed. “We’re a long way from home.”
The next four hours of flying dragged by with more napping and an unwanted meal. “My body’s so messed up I can’t eat,” he complained to Vasana, who was picking delicately at her plate.
“Just three more hours,” Gordon announced to the students as the plane took off from Taiwan after another brief stop. “Is this the longest night you’ve ever been in?”
“Really!” One of the girls glanced at her watch. “I keep moving this back, but we’re just hanging in space here. It’s always midnight.”
The final miles slipped away underneath the DC-10. The huge aircraft was almost silent in the darkness. Most of the passengers dozed quietly.
At last Bucky felt the aircraft dip slightly. “Almost there,” he murmured to the Thai girl. “I keep forgetting that even though this seems like another universe to me, you’re almost home now.”
“Yes.” Vasana had a quietly precise way of speaking. Her dark eyes seemed to glimmer with emotion as she spotted the occasional lights on the ground far below.
“What are those?”
“Village lights, I think. Maybe boats.”
Bucky glanced down at his watch and pulled out the adjustment knob. “The way I figured it, it’s just about one in the morning now,” he groaned. “Is it . . . what? Tuesday morning? What?”
“Yep. Tuesday.” Gordon stood up and glanced around. “Ten in the morning back home. Still yesterday morning there.”
“Weird,” Bucky commented for the umpteenth time.
A quiet burst of applause filled the cabin as the plane touched down on Bangkok soil. The students crowded around the windows as they pulled up to the gate.
“OK, kids, let’s move out. Check for everything you brought on board.”
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br /> The weary group of student missionaries walked unsteadily toward the exit and into the empty terminal. “Man, there’s no one here,” Benny grunted as he lugged a huge knapsack with one arm.
“Well, let’s get our bags, everyone, and move through customs as quick as we can.”
It took a good forty-five minutes before the students finished with their legal paperwork. A short Thai official stamped passport after passport, beaming at each student. “Welcome to Thailand,” he repeated in broken English.
“Kop kuhn kah.” Vasana greeted the official, who immediately lit up. A long stream of Thai burst forth. Vasana smiled and responded in her native language. Bucky listened in fascination.
“Come on, guys, our bus is here.” The eighteen students straggled outside into the humid air.
“Can you believe it’s 1:00 in the morning?” Bucky mopped at his forehead. “It’s hot here!”
Despite his fatigue, he gazed out the window at the busy traffic as they headed toward the Christian-operated hospital in downtown Bangkok. The diminutive bus driver, perched on the right-hand side of the vehicle, expertly darted in and out of the still congested traffic. Raucous tuk tuks, little three-wheeled taxis, beeped their horns and cut in front of the bus at every corner. Boy, he thought, will I have lots to e-mail Lisa about.
“Everything’s backward here, isn’t it?” Gordon grinned, trying to buoy up the group. “Driver’s on the right and the bus goes on the left.”
Finally the vehicle pulled into a darkened mission compound. MISSION HOSPITAL flickered in neon above the entrance.
“Well, it’s a hospital. They must have beds,” Bucky joked, nearly exhausted.
A tall man wearing a short-sleeved shirt and slippers walked up to the van and poked his head inside. “Are these our newest missionaries?” There was a murmur of response.
“Well, we’ve got places for everybody,” the administrator smiled. “The girls will be staying in the west wing of the hospital, and you fellows, we’ve got plenty of floor space with one of our missionaries.”
It seemed like just minutes later that sunlight streamed through an open window and nudged Bucky into consciousness. “Where . . . where am I?”
Benny gave him a nudge. “Get up, my man.” He stretched. “You are away out here in pratedt thai.” Then he grinned broadly at Bucky’s groggy expression.
Trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, Bucky asked, “Where’d you learn that?”
The tall student motioned with his head. “Dr. Geltje’s servant taught me.”
A friendly woman poked her head into the living room. “Good morning, boys,” she beamed in a strong European accent. “Anyone for some breakfast?”
“I could do with a shower,” Bucky muttered.
“Well, we can find you a bath after we eat,” the doctor smiled. “Radree has your breakfast ready.”
Bucky waited until the physician had left and then slipped into his jeans. “What’s there to eat?”
A huge bowl of sweetened “sticky rice” and mango slices soon altered the students’ mood. “I guess I won’t starve after all,” Brandon, one of the boys traveling from Los Angeles, laughed. “But two weeks with no Dodger scores – man, I don’t know.”
“Hey, Dodgers got whupped yesterday,” Benny asserted.
“How do you know that?”
“The doctor gets the paper here. Printed in English and everything. Giants beat the Dodgers eight to two.”
“Wow.” Bucky had to laugh. “Here you think you’re way out in the mission field, and they’ve got all the ball scores.”
“Well, come on, you guys, get ready. We got a train to catch tonight, and I want to do some sightseeing.” Benny scooted his chair back. “Radree, honey, that was good food! Aroy mahk!”
“How’d you learn that so fast?” Bucky groaned again, impressed.
Another huge grin. “I have a flair for languages,” the tall student replied with a cosmopolitan smirk.
“Oh, boy!” Bucky headed for the shower.
“Now, you guys, we can’t go out in shorts if we want to visit the Buddhist temples,” Gordon warned. “So keep that in mind.”
Having to wear long pants added to the blistering impact of Bangkok’s overwhelming humidity. Bucky tried his hand at souvenir - hunting as the students trekked from one tourist site to another. Having exchanged just a little bit of money at the hospital cashier’s office, he carefully bought a little trinket for Rachel Marie.
“Now stay together!” Gordon emphasized as they walked through a crowded alley. “You get lost here, and I don’t know how we’d ever find you again.”
“How’s this money work again?” one of the girls wanted to know as they paused at a long row of tiny shops.
“Just figure about thirty baht to one dollar,” Bucky told her. “A baht’s about three cents at the moment.”
“So we can ride the bus for just fifteen cents?”
“Yeah. Not bad, huh?”
The noon sun beat down on the students as they gawked at a huge golden Buddha lying on its side. “That’s called the Reclining Buddha,” Gordon told the group. “You always read about idols in the Second Commandment? Well, here’s one of the biggies of all time.”
“Hey, look! McDonald’s!” Terrie, one of the Portland girls, chirped in delight. “They’ve got McDonald’s here.”
“Come on,” Bucky laughed. “We didn’t fly clear over here to go to McDonald’s.”
The group did stop in for hot fudge sundaes after sampling some local concoctions at a nearby Thai restaurant. “Ah, a little taste of home,” Benny grinned. “‘Cept they have hot mango pies instead of apple!”
Bucky looked over at Vasana. “What do you like better? Thai food or this ice cream.”
She gave him a quiet smile. “Both.”
The blazing heat did subside a bit as the afternoon wore on. Bucky found a store with exquisite postcards for sale. He dickered in good humor with the clerk and managed to get two for what the man had originally announced as the price for one.
“Way to hang tough, Stone!” Benny laughed.
“Just saved myself four baht!”
“Hey, these guys want you to bargain with ‘em,” the other teenage boy laughed. “They’re disappointed if you just cave in. You just tell them, ‘pang mahk.’ That means ‘too expensive!’”
Bucky scribbled messages to Rachel Marie and Lisa and dropped the cards in the mail at the hospital’s main office, admiring the colorful Thai stamps as he did so. “You’ll probably get home before those cards do,” Gordon grinned. “But it’s the thought that counts.”
That evening the bus took the students and Pastor Humboldt over to the train station for the overnight ride to Chiang Mai. Luggage cart handlers and food vendors pestered travelers as they made their way down the long platform looking for their railroad cars.
“Here we are!” Gordon examined the green ticket slips. “Everybody hop on.”
Bucky helped Vasana hoist her suitcase into the sleeping car, then climbed aboard. Rows of blue seats facing each other ran down both sides of the long compartment.
“Do we sit up all night on these?” one of the girls asked. She was a short, stocky junior from Phoenix.
Gordon grinned. “No, Ricki, they make these up into beds later on.”
“Good,” she sighed. “After that plane ride, I can’t afford to kiss another night of sleep goodbye.”
The train started with a lurch and slowly pulled out of the Bangkok suburbs. The student missionaries lined the windows and watched the crowded traffic slip by.
“Look, there’s the hospital!” Bucky pointed. “Man, we could have just hopped on right here.”
“We’re goin’ slow enough we almost could.” Benny gawked at the crowded street scene. “Look at that bus there. Those guys are hanging right off the end.”
As the long train crawled north, Gordon pulled a guitar out of its case. “Let’s have worship,” he announced. “What shall we sing
?”
The next half hour was a marathon music fest as the eighteen students belted out their favorites. Benny, in particular, seemed to know every praise song ever invented, including one or two the rest hadn’t heard before.
“I can’t believe you guys,” he complained with a big grin. “Where ya been all your lives? You guys are stuck on ‘Do Lord’ and ‘Pass It On.’”
“Well, some of these oddball verses you come up with, I admit I’ve never heard before either.” Gordon set down his guitar with a laugh. “I guess we’ve tormented the other passengers enough.”
Bucky looked around. Sure enough, a number of the Thais on board had pressed close to listen. One, catching Bucky’s eye, gave a nod and broad smile of appreciation. “Very good,” the man said, proud of his English.
“Anybody have anything they want to share before we have prayer?” Gordon scanned the group of kids. There was a long silence.
“Yeah.” Everyone looked over at Carl, one of the quieter members of the group.
“Go ahead.”
Slowly the student shared an experience from summer camp, where one of the primary campers had told him about physical abuse at home.
One of the girls shook her head sympathetically as Carl related the painful story, concluding, “So I hope you guys will pray for Stevie. He’s really in a messed-up situation.”
“We sure will.” Gordon nodded soberly. “Anybody else?”
Two or three others made prayer requests before everybody separated into small bands of three. The quiet ding - ding - ding of a railroad crossing bell punctuated the silence as Bucky and two girls prayed for the success of the mission trip and for the various requests.
After the prayers, Benny glanced at his watch. “I ain’t goin’ to bed until I whip somebody in this train in a game of Rook.” He dug in his duffel bag for the little orange cards. “Who’s going to take me on?”
Several students eagerly gathered around to play. Bucky crowded close, watching the spirited action. Benny, despite his easygoing nature, had a fantastic memory, seeming to know just what cards were left to be played. He and his partner won three games in a row.
“Ahhhh, that feels great,” Benny sighed as one of the girls standing behind him began to massage his broad shoulders. “Baby, I am in love!”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 46
