Arrival in Thailand!

Sawaddee ka!!! (or Hello!!!)

I am in Thailand, and it has been a great experience so far. I arrived in Bangkok on Thursday around 12:30 and made my way to the hotel by 1:30. Our hotel was in an area of Bangkok far away from anything really neat to see or do, except for the fact that its in Bangkok really. So I spent some time exploring the surrounding neighborhoods and sleeping at weird times until I met up with the rest of the group the next morning. We ate breakfast at the hotel buffet and then did more exploring and relaxing until our flight to Chiang Mai at 4. I have to say, that I didn't like Bangkok all that much in the time I was there. It is an enormous city (over 7 million) with a lot of traffic and strange smells. I think that with more time to orient myself there and see the city, I might feel different though.

On the other hand, I LOVE Chiang Mai so far! It is much more like I had hoped Thailand would be. We arrived yesterday (Friday) around 5:30, and Dr. Sakda (who will be co-teaching our course with Lee) picked us up at the airport with a few of his students who have taken the course in past years. They brought us to check in to our hostel, which I will take pictures of soon. It is also the International Center for Chiang Mai University and so has more than just a hostel, plus it is very close to the campus. They then took us to the "foodcourt" on campus, which is not at all how I previously would have imagined a food court. It is an open air foodcourt with many vendors selling all sorts of thai foods. I will have to take pictures of that too. I had some amazing pad thai, mostly because I recognized it, and then got a little more adventurous and had a whole fried fish. I have been working on trying more new things today, not that I can name them, and have been happy with the all. The smell of so much fish sauce is the hardest for me to get used to, but I'm mostly doing fine with it now. It seems like everywhere you go here you can smell some kind of delicious food.

Today we got up and Kylie and I walked to a little shop for breakfast and then we all walked to campus for our first Thai culture and language lesson. We really needed it! It was great to learn some basic Thai. She taught us numbers at the end, which will be VERY helpful since prices are often not posted so you just ask, and also because we need to be able to do some haggling if we want to get anywhere near decent prices when shopping at markets, but not with food. After the lesson, we ate at the student center on campus, which again had great food. It involved a lot of pointing, but I did get to use a few Thai words that were actually understood by the server. After lunch, we climbed into the back of Dr. Sakda's truck and he drove us all over campus and Chiang Mai, while Lee pointed out stuff to us. It was fun to ride around all over the city in the back of the truck since I haven't done that since I was a kid. However, it started raining, like it does everyafternoon pretty much, so eventually we were soaked. It is so warm and humid all the time though, that the rain was nice. Dr. Sakda stopped at a supermarket so we could get out of the rain and pick up anything we needed. I love checking out foreign supermarkets and seeing all the foods, so it was great. We all got a few snacks for our rooms, like peanut butter, bread, and cheese, for when we need a break from Thai food, despite its deliciousness. Then we hopped back in the truck and he drove us by where the Night Bazaar is. It is huge! There are so many stands. We are going there in about half an hour. We met a student from Australia who is here doing his master's and he is going to take us to show us how to get there and everything for our first time.

Tom0rrow we are leaving early to go to the Elephant camp where we can ride elephants, see an elephant show, and play with baby elephants!! I am really excited, because as anyone who knows me can attest, I am crazy about almost all animals. Today our language teacher was telling us about a new place she went to right by the elephant camp where you can play with baby tigers!!! We were of course very excited to hear that and have talked Dr. Sakda into adding that to our plans for tomorrow. After all of that greatness, we are going to the Sunday night walking street, which is basically a generally busy street that is shut down for a huge market where you can do a lot of great shopping. I will be sure to take pictures and try to get good prices when buying lovely things for you all.

Well I better go, I need to shower (I feel like I should shower like 10 times a day!) and get ready to go to the night bazaar! You can click on this link to see mypictures so far.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kathryn.walker

I couldn't figure out how to embed them in here, as at least half the pages I go to are in Thai, which I can in no way read :)

I hope you are all doing well!

Much love,
Katie

I'm going to Thailand!!!!!!

San Francisco (SFO) to Taipei (TPE) 5/28/08 1:35 am-6:00 am

Taipei (TPE) to Bangkok (BKK) 5/29/08 9:40 am-12:20 pm

Bangkok (BKK) to Hong Kong (HKG) 7/16/08 2:45 pm-6:45 pm

Hong Kong (HKG) to Taipei (TPE) 7/16/08 8:05 pm-9:45 pm

Taipei (TPE) to San Francisco (SFO) 7/16/08 11:10 pm-7:50 pm

So in the next three weeks and counting, I've just go to finish up my papers and projects for the semester, get through finals, wrap up things at work, and move. Not to mention packing for the trip and trying to make all the calls and arrangements for being out of the country for a couple months.

Its all worth it though. I'm not really sure what lies ahead of me on this trip, but I am ready for it!