Golden Triangle

Today a lot of the people here at the DNA conference and I took an all day trip to the Golden Triangle and Mae Sai. The Golden Triangle is where the borders of Myanmar (Burma) and Laos meet. Mae Sai is the border of Laos and Thailand. The day overall was a blast. We all got crowded into four song taews ( Thai baht buses) and headed to a lookout spot over the river where all the borders meet, forming a triangle. We then went down to the river and all got onto two boats and got to take a tour of the river and go up to the borders. When we got to Laos we got to get out and take pictures and stuff. That is when something that I really don't like happened. When you first step onto the ground in Laos there is a little market that you need to pay 20 baht to go into. We didn't go in, we just stood outside and took pictures and prayed for the people and stuff. But the officer in charge of the boarder told us that since we had all stepped onto Laos land that we should all pay. The guy in charge of bringing us refused to pay and told us to all hurry and get on the boats. That really upset me because for one thing it is their land and we were on it. We need to respect what they want, even if we don't think it is right or it might be corrupt. Secondly, we are a Christian group and even though they may not have known that we are Christians, we still should be representing Christ in everything that we do. I paid the charge and so did four of my friends. But I am still really bothered and upset at the way we represented not just the places that we are from and our organization, but also how we were misrepresenting Christ to those people. That was the only downer to the day though. After that we went to a big market in Mae Sai and got a bunch of pictures and a few souvenirs.
I really enjoy traveling with this group because everywhere we go we pray for the city/town/country and the people in it. It has already become a habit to me and I think it is really good to pray for people everywhere you go. I had never really even thought of doing that before I came to Thailand and we visited a big temple and everyone started praying and it just hit me. It was like "Oh! I shouldn't just feel sorry that these people are so lost and don't know the truth, and I can do something about it even by just praying!" And it is really like that everywhere you go. Even just to the grocery store, you can pay for the people who show you where stuff is and the person that checks out your groceries.
I will be putting a bunch of pictures on facebook later tonight. And I really love hearing from you guys, so please feel free to email me or message me on facebook!:)