It’s my second full day in Thailand, and it’s been a wild ride so far. The sixteen hour flight from New York to Hong Kong was an exhausting test of will. Sandwiched between two Chinese women in the center section between two aisles on a Boeing 777, things were going fine for a while. I watched Charlie Wilson’s War, 27 Dresses, the E! True Hollywood Story: Amy Winehouse, Dan in Real Life… the best that Cathay Pacific had to offer, then I took a narcotic around 11pm to aid some sleeping since I’d been on the plane for 8 hours. I was able to sleep for about 4 or 5 hours, and then I was blessed with nausea for the remaining 7 hours. I threw up several times in the airplane toilet, so I was effectively out of commission for a long while. I’ve never been airsick before, so I think it was a combination of the narcotics and remembering how seasick I got last week in Key Largo.
Our assistants here that have been taking us around and are our only Thai friends thus far are Pai, Ngh, Aa, and Dee. They picked us up the airport, have eaten meals with us, and taken us around Thonburi and Bangkok. The biggest issue we’ve been having is that all of the restaurants, even at the bottom of our dorm, is that everything on the menu is written in Thai (which we cannot read). I ate kao paed jay for lunch yesterday which is vegetarian fried rice.
The classes I have signed up for: Life Cycle Assessment which meets 1:00 on Fridays, Energy and the Environment which meets 1:00 on Tuesdays, Environmental Chemistry which meets 1:00 on Wednesdays, and I will be doing a 6 hours Capstone Research assignment throughout the semester. Each class meets 1 day a week for 3 solid hours and I am looking into picking up another course (perhaps Climate Change and Ecosystems or Environmental Pollution Control). The website for my graduate school (JGSEE at KMUTT) is pretty sweet.
Yesterday we went to downtown Thonburi by bus to get dorm supplies as the Tesco. I bought a laundry hamper, shower caddy, 2 towels, detergent (a ton of stuff) that ended up being 608 baht that I put on the credit card. That was all my school stuff for about $19 US. I haven't been able to get my debit card to work yet, but I'm going to check it out at a bank. We have an all night snack store open 24 hours a day at the basement of our dorm. It's a 7-11 that sells only thai things.
As our first full day today, I got 12 hours of sleep last night (8pm to 8am) so we went into Bangkok today to get our cellphones. Everything works perfectly and is very cheap. The phone was 900 baht ($30 or so US). We saw a huge procession in Bangkok for the Prince's Ex-Wife which was hilarious. We are nothing without Pai leading us around. We are going into Bangkok tonight for the Som Tum Festival (papaya salads and things) and to go to a bar with our Thai assistants/helpers/friends.
Mom and Pop: I'm keeping track of all of my spendings. Pop: The google homepage is in Thai over here! Clay: tons of bikes but a lot of crusty stuff I've seen so far. Andrew: sometimes I feel like I'm just in a packed part of New York City and that I could turn a corner and see your apartment.
That's all for now...jetlag is over, its hot as hell, dresses every day. We don't show our shoulders or wear shorts but it's all good. I think we're going to take a Thai language class 5-7pm every day. A lot of questions will be answered when Ajarn Rich arrives this week and we get our Student ID's on Friday.
