The weird situations continue to follow us in Khon Kaen. The first, and lesser of the two weird things that happened in the past day, began at 7-11.
7-11 Stamps in Thailand
This is the second time now that we have randomly received a stamp while checking out at 7-11. Brittany went into 7-11 to buy a Coke, Ice, and of course, her potato chips, and was given the added bonus of a postage stamp. About a week ago, I received the same thing, but I thought it was because I had an envelop in my hand. Neither time did we ask for a stamp, we were just provided with one. The mystery goes on as to why we keep getting postage stamps in Thailand.
UPDATE: We finally found out what these stamps are. They are part of a promotion that 7-11 runs which is what I would equate to the “Monopoly Game” at McDonalds back in America. The idea being collect enough stamps and trade them in for a discount/free stuff. The funny thing is, some times you get them, and some times you don’t. The deciding factor being….. the attitude of the 7-11 clerk, and if you bought the “promo items.” Mystery solved!
Now on to the the craziness of a Bomb Scare, or Bomb Explosion for that matter….
The Khon Kaen Bomb Scare Situation
While attempting to pick our laundry yesterday, we were met by police blocking the entrance into the road where we needed to go to get to the laundry lady. Being persistent, and needing clean underwear, I was determined to get to my laundry lady. I went the long way around to try and come in another way. Blocked again. By now we are starting to wonder, what in the world is going on in this area that is so damn important that we can’t get our laundry. Again, being persistent, I go all the way around the block, and come in an entrance far from where we normally would go. We got our laundry, had the weird 7-11 stamp encounter, and headed back to the condo.
As we pulled into the entrance of the condo, we were met by Bong, our Security Detail at the condo. So what was the police blockade all about? a BOMB!
Bong informs us that all this maddens including police, film crews, ambulances, the typical bystanders is due to a bomb threat. The video at the end of this post will spell out the events unfolding, as it seemed every two minutes we were given a new update. However, the quick and dirty of what happened was, a man searching through a trash can for bottles, cans, glass etc for recycle, spotted this bomb. The recycler, as I will call him, notified the police, which is what set off this frenzy of blockades.
As you can imagine, it was a pretty eventful afternoon for us, especially considering the Brittany Robbery Situation, we’re getting over from just a week ago. We stuck around the scene to see how it would play out, and we thought we were safe when Bong notified us that the bomb had been taken away to a field to be detonated. As the storm clouds rolled in, we decided it was time to roll out and back to the condo, but this wasn’t before we caught a tidbit of information across Bong’s radio. Now, instead of taking the bomb to a field, they were actually going to detonate it behind the currently under-construction hospital 250 yards from our condo complex. Oh, fantastic we thought to ourselves, a bomb a short distance away is about to explode. If the storm clouds weren’t enough of an influence to get off the streets, this information was.
Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as we crossed the door to enter the lobby of our condo complex…. KA BOOOOM!
Yes, that would have been the bomb going off just as we entered the condo. Ironically, sitting in the lobby was the condo cleaning lady who heard and felt the same explosion we just did, but her reaction was quite different than ours. Condo cleaning lady says, Mai Pen Lai, or in Thai, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about!?!?!? A freaking bomb just went off.
We rushed back up to our balcony to see if we saw a mushroom cloud or something of the sort that you see in movies. None of that, instead we find the school right behind our complex with children gallivanting in the stadium, and workers at the hospital continuing to work. This was a lot to wrap my head around as the Thai people, including Condo Cleaning Lady, really did think Mai Pen Lai, business as usual, even if there is a bomb. All in all, we weren’t hurt, but still we are unsure of what really went on at the scene.
We are Brittany and Charlie - we traded the 9 to 5 and the so-called "American dream" to live our own dream and see the world. We sold all of our belongings and left the US in August 2013. For 5 years, we lived primarily in Thailand and built our online business and location independent lifestyle while we traveled to over 30 countries. We’ve had house sitting gigs on 3 different continents and we’ve even appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters International.
What a scary incident to happen while you’re living in a new country. I’m glad you are safe! It definitely puts things into perspective since there are countries and citizens who have not experienced this kind of violence. My thoughts are with everyone involved in this incident.
How scary! I’m glad that you’re ok!
I smiled to myself when I was reading about the stamps. I collected it and got a pillow for free and some tapperware. it’s worth trying to collect a few of those 🙂
Get new posts with travel and budget tips delivered straight to your inbox!
Your information will never be shared or sold to a 3rd party.
Loading Comments...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
