Adventures

Spending a few days on a tropical island was amazing. It was like the classic college spring break I never had (drinking on the beach, lying in the sun, etc), and the kids who came with us as our local guides and interpreters were awesome. Since there are only 3 of us on the program, and the program is short-staffed due to a maternity leave, we haven't spent much time with official types. Instead we went to Ko Samet (the island) with 3 Thai students from Mahidol University International College (where we will be taking classes starting on the 20th) and one French guy who went to MUIC a couple years ago, graduated, and is now living in Bangkok and dating one of the Thai girls. Anyway, the trip was basically a party, and it was fun to hang out with Thai people who are our age (and who speak really fluent English). Adventure on the island = awesome.

We came back from Samet on Saturday, and Nicki (a friend on my program) and I weren't feeling too good. We think maybe we got food poisioning or something, but we both spent Saturday night feeling miserable and expelling the contents of our stomachs. I was really glad I don't have a roommate that night, since I hardly slept at all and kept getting up to go to the bathroom. It was gross. Sunday morning I was feeling a little better, but still not great. However, there's a market in Bangkok that's only open on the weekends, and we'd been planning to go, so Nicki and I weren't going to let a little bit of residual yucky-feeling-ness stop us from going into town.

We got to JJ market easily, though it took forever since we had to take a cab in to the city, and then the skytrain to the market. Once we got there, we quickly discovered that we were in no way prepared for this type of shopping. The market takes up several blocks, and the stalls are covered with a celing-thing so it feels like you're indoors. This is fine for shade, but sucky for heat - too many bodies, not enough air circulation. Anyway, they were selling everything from t-shirts and sandals to bongs and bras, including pets, pashmina scarves, and food around every corner. The smells alone were overwhelming, never mind the maze of paths through the endless stalls. Not long after entering the market, Nicky and I got separated from Alyssa (the other girl on our program) but we figured we'd catch up with her later. This turned out to be a mistake.

We wandered around, bought some stuff (I got a very cute wrap-around skirt, and we found a stall selling school uniforms for way cheaper than the place we'd bought our first ones, so we both got another set) and then started feeling like we needed to get out of there. The heat and our stomach troubles were combining to make us feel rather faint, and we just wanted to get back on the skytrain where there was AC. But when we tried to call Alyssa, we got this weird message in Thai, and a prompt (once we pressed 3 for English) to press 1 to leave a number. Confused, we did, and went back out of the market to sit in the park and wait. About an hour and several calls and texts later, we got a text from Alyssa saying she had already left and she would meet us at Siam square, the next stop on our planned trip. We were a little peeved that she'd just gone without us, but we got on the skytrain and went to Siam. Once there, we ate some lunch and we still couldn't contact Alyssa, but she could contact us - turns out the number we had stored in our phones under her name was wrong (2 didgets switched) so we had been calling and texting a wrong number all day. Frustrating.

At that point, we just wanted to go home. Too bad none of the taxis wanted to take us there! We must have told our destination to about 30 cab drivers, and all of them were like, What? All the way out there? (it's a suburb) No way! Very annoying. We finally took the skytrain back to the stop where it connects with the bus line and started trying to find the bus that goes out to Salaya, where we live. By then it had started raining quite heavily (which it does a lot, even though it's not supposed to be the wet season yet). As we were waiting to cross a street, a cab pulled up and since he was there, we asked if he could take us to Salaya. He said he could! We were really excited, and we got in the cab and showed him the little card we have that says our address in Thai. This is where our adventure, already difficult enough, took a turn for the worse. He nodded and smiled and said he knew where it was, but then he got on the phone and the only words we understood of his conversation were words in our address. He was calling for directions! Not good. We finally just opened the door of the cab when he was stopped in traffic, because he would not get off the phone when we tried to get his attention, because it was clear that he was not going to be able to get us home.

Frustrated, we were standing there on the sidewalk wondering where the heck we were and how we were going to find our way back to the bus stop, when another cab pulled up. We were a bit more wary now, but this guy said he could go to Salaya, and to make it easier for him, we just asked him to take us to Mahidol University. I was nervous the whole ride, because I still wasn't sure if he was taking us where we wanted to go, but he did! And even though being dropped off at the school meant we had a 20 min walk to get home, we were right on the street where all the food is, so we stopped for dinner at a noodle stand before heading back. Adventure in the city = a bit much.

However, we're going on an even bigger adventure tomorrow. We're headed to Chang Mai, but in the typical fashion of our inscrutable program, we're not even sure how we're getting there. I think we're flying, but we don't know our flight number or what time it leaves. All I know is that the school van is picking us up at 9am, and supposedly there's a guide who will meet us in Chang Mai to show us around on the first day. Then we have another 3 days or so to hang out there before (somehow) coming back here. Unfortunately, we couldn't even call the program people today to find out these details, because it's a national holiday and they weren't at work. So who knows? Anything could happen.