Weekend in Kho Samet

So on the dinner cruise, a group of us decided to spontaneously use the weekend to go to Kho Samet, which is the closest beach to Bangkok. If we had a car, we could just drive there in 1.5 hours probably, but by our means it took much longer. 13 of us decided to go: the 6 UNC kids (Malhar, Madiha, Grace, Trang, Ratchany and me) and Pooyang (German), Alex and Kelly (New Jersey), Beth (Hawaii/ Miami for college), Julia and Tiffany (San Francisco) and Ivan (Virginia). We don’t all live together so we took the 45 minute taxi to a metro station and met up there, and then took a 20 minutes skytrain ride to a bus station, where we took a 3.5 hour trip to the mainland (all of this only costing $8 max). It took us a while to figure things out since we did it as we went, so we got there about 5pm and decided to stay on the mainland at the place we booked that morning. We got in this taxi that pretty much turned it’s truck bed into two benches, so we could all fit, and went to the hotel which was right on the beach! We got there just in time from sunset, went for a swim, and then walked a bit up the road to a restaurant that advertised German-Thai food. The group is smart and intellectually curious and there was so much to talk about, especially since most of us had just met the day before. We slept 3 to a bed to save money (making it $6 per person) but were glad that we didn’t notice the ants in the sheets until we woke up! We woke up early, got back to the pier, and took a speed boat to the middle of the island, where we easily found housing right on the beach, although we did stick 9 people in my room with just 2 double beds… The island is green, but the sand is soft and white and the water bright blue and about 80 degrees! The whole day was spent eating great food at restaurants right on the sand, swimming, laying out, drinking beers, going to local markets, talking with each other, and chatting with Americans and Europeans who moved to Thailand for many different reasons. That night we ate at some restaurant that had several low tables on the beach with pillows as seats and lanterns adorning all the trees- it was a very enchanting setting. Fire dancers came up the beach- its not a super developed area (all dirt roads around us) but definitely tourists around- and there were throwing flamed batons to each other and making pyramids. We then went to a great bar across our hotel with lots of friendly people and great music. The trip was a great way to start my time here and to get to know a lot of people quickly- we spent about 3 days just chatting together- and I’m excited about the friendships to come. 

 

Arriving in Bangkok

I left Arizona for Thailand in the early morning of New Year's Eve and flew through LA, where I had a 5 hour lay over, then took a 12 hours flight to Tokyo, and after a brief layover took a 7 hours flight to Bangkok, where I landed around midnight. A driver from the school was there to pick up myself and two other girls (one from Connecticut and one from Raleigh!) and took us to our respective dorms. I live in Green Park, about 30 minutes without traffic from Bangkok, which consists of a girl dorm and a boy dorm, each with their own guards. Each dorm has a kitchen and common room on the bottom with computers, a couch and tv, dinner table and basic cooking gear. The 75 international students pretty much live in one of 4 dorms (none of which are walking distance from each other). Green Park is awesome because not all the dorms have common areas, so the group of us, like 40-50, hang all the time and plan activities together. 


On the first day I woke up early even though I went to bed after 3 and went downstairs to make some oatmeal. There were a couple of girls there and one of them, Juliana, offered to take me to Tesco so I could get the stuff I need (phone, towel, soap, some food etc). Tesco is an English version of walmart and it even carries soymilk and my choice of cereal I usually buy at Trader Joe's (pumpkin flax granola)!!! Juliana, who's from NY, and another girl, Michelle, from Boston, went into Bangkok (bkkBKK) for the afternoon. We intended to go see the Royal Grand Palace, but it closes at 3:30 so instead we walked through some markets till we hit the river (which goes through all of BKK) and met up with a friend of Michelle who grew up in bkk but went to boarding school and goes to college in the US to show us around. There are street vendors everywhere and the city is loud, constantly crowded, and dirty. Its hot- not terrible at about 85-90 degrees and 50% humidity, but its winter. We took a tuktuk, which is like an open air taxi to a metro station. Tuktuks are nuts- open-air cars, like a golf cart, and they drive so crazy. Driving anyway in Thailand is scary- lanes are more like suggestions and people are non-stop cutting each other off and traffic is absurd and there aren’t any seatbelts, even in taxis. We took the skytrain, a metro above ground, to Siam Square. We went to Siam Paragon, which is this huge high-end mall with movie theaters (and they are showing the Hobbit!) and an aquarium and stores like YSL, Marc Jacobs, D&G, and Versace. The prices in those stores are comparable to those stores anywhere else so I can’t figure out how they make money here. Thailand is very inexpensive- a 45 minute taxi ride is about $6 total and street food meals about $1, sit down places about $3, so the cost of living is very low compared to the US but salaries are also low. We hung around there and checked out the surrounding markets and found a thai place for a wonderful dinner.

 
The second day we had orientation all day at the university, Mahidol. Since I’m writing this a few days later, I’ll talk more about the school later. That night Mahidol set up a dinner cruise on the river that goes through all of Bangkok. We had such great food- two kinds of soup served on this dish with a flame in the middle with seafood, sea bass with the head still on it, squid and octopus stir fried vegetables, fried chicken (haha), pork skewers, rice, a fruit platter with exotics fruits plus mango and papaya. There was a band that mostly covered American pop songs (in thick thai accents) and we danced and watched them which was a lot of fun. Meeting people and making friends is so easy- the whole group is outgoing and excited. The far majority are the only ones from their school to come here and in many cases, they are the first to go to Thailand in years or ever. For a lot of the kids here, they had to find a 3^rd party program and figure out a way to get here, which I admire a lot because UNC makes it so easy.