Bangkok
It's been an eventful time since I left Sydney. I had an overnight flight to Bangkok with stops at Melbourne and Phuket, and he fun started from Melbourne. Two young guys were sitting with me on the plane so we had a good time talking all the time. This was especially useful because there was only one movie for the whole 14.5 hour trip and that was definitely not worth watching, even just to pass the time. There was a drunk Aussie who kept on wandering into the galley to try and find more beer, and after messing around for a while a hostess would find him, give him more beer, and send him back to his seat. Eventually I decided I should try to get a little sleep.
Getting to sleep isn't easy sitting upright in a plane with drunk Aussie's nearby, but after 45 minutes I was just starting to drop off. Then all of a sudden I heard one of the guys next to me shout out, something hit my feet and there was a big bang. I opened my eyes to see an old guy on his side right in front of me with his head against the wall. Naturally I freaked out thinking I'd tripped up this old guy and he'd broken something and knocked himself out etc etc... Well apparently it wasn't that bad, he'd passed out and hit my feet on the way down. While the hostesses were attending to him his wife was stressing and trying to make sure everything was ok, but the stress was too much and she was about to pass out when a hostess noticed and lay her down on the ground. Of course all that excitement ruined my chances of getting much sleep for the next few hours, so when I finally arrived in Bangkok I was quite tired.
So finally I got to "The Ambassador", quite a nice hotel in Bangkok. There I was dropped off and left to my own devices. After waiting a few hours for them to get my room ready, it was about 8:30am on Monday morning, I finally dropped my stuff of in my room and went exploring. There was only 2 brothels nearby, one about 50m one way down the main road and one about 300m in the other direction. When they said we weren't in a particularly good area I thought there would be a lot more than that. There's random stalls all over the sides of the streets (as is usual most places in Bangkok). I've done quite a bit of shopping here, but I only bought some tie's and a belt since my luggage is already overweight.
It was the queen's birthday shortly before I arrived in Thailand, so instead on seeing the customary pictures of the king everywhere, there has been pictures of the queen everywhere.
There were quite a few people here as this orientation was for all the people volunteering in south-east Asia. Most people were going to Korea with the next largest group being Japan. We all bonded quite well and had quite a good time, we had evenings free go go out shopping so we were always forming small groups and wandering the streets. One night we went off to a big night market which was not too busy because of the monsoon rains. That wasn't too bad because it was easy to stay under cover most of the time. Much better than when Rachel and I went to the World Trade Plaza. Walking through the monsoon for 10 minutes leaves you quite soaked, and even in the tropics I was running a race against time to get my shoes dry by the time I have to pack them when I fly to Japan. Tip for anyone thinking of taking a trip to Thailand to see the sights and do shopping, go during the dry season!
Official activities other than the orientation meetings were an afternoon at an elephant and crocodile zoo and a trip to see the grand palace and the emerald Buddha. At the zoo there was a baby elephant less than a fortnight old. There were lots of elephants that you could get photos with and we were allowed to pat the baby. The crocodile show had some guys doing stupid things like putting their heads inside the croc's mouth.
The grand palace was very impressive. There was heaps of gold everywhere and you could just imagine how much more impressive it would have been back when it was in constant use by the royal family. Unfortunately someone important was there that day so they had the emerald Buddha locked away and we would barely see it, and definitely couldn't photograph it. We were almost finished the tour when the monsoon rains hit. The next hour or so was spent making our way out of the palace grounds whilst trying to keep the all important cameras and other perishables dry. We made our way to a shop where we all congregated to wait for the bus. Anybody sick of hearing about the problems the monsoon season causes yet?
One evening I came in from shopping with a group of girls and there was a singer in the cocktail lounge. Being too early to go to sleep we went to listen for a while. We requested some songs and when the singer finished for the night we chatted for a while. The next morning when the news got out there was a bunch of people who were sad they missed out, so we went again the next night. We ended up with at least a few people going to the cocktail lounge every night.
On Sabbath we went about 2 hours north of Bangkok to Muk Lek where Mission College is situated. We had a pot luck lunch there and I saw a face I remembered from 2.5 years ago at Jared and Peempahn's wedding. As it turns out Uyen is a good friend of Peempahn. Not a bad chance meeting there. After lunch we got taken on a tour of the college. There wasn't much there that wasn't there last time I was there, but the trees were a lot bigger and everything was slightly more presentable.
Joy, the cocktail lounge singer, invited us to go out with her and her friends to Chinatown on Saturday night. As generally happened with so many people here running around doing stuff people always got left behind, and Saturday was my night to miss out. That was ok because Joy was working so although the volunteer group went out with Joy's friends I could go and meet up with them all when she finished work. Then we hit another snag. When Joy and I got to Chinatown the volunteer group had decided to go off to a market. So I hung out with Joy and her friends all night. They were all very nice and we went to a few places and ate a whole pile of food from various street vendors.
Two of Joy's friends were Finnish students. For those who care they're Swiss speaking Fins. Why is that so important? Because that's a minority in Finland, the same minority that Linus Torvalds is. Therefore I got lessons on the correct way to pronounce his name, I also got a short video just in case I forget ;-)
It seemed like we all kept on breaking most of the rules laid out for us at orientation, most of them were unintentional such as having trouble getting back to the hotel on time. One of the rules was about not eating or drinking anything off the street, but can we really be expected to eat the boring old hotel food all week when there's great stuff on offer very cheaply so close to the hotel?. Well here's a bunch of us eating getting some durian from a guy on the street. For those who haven't heard yet, it's that fruit which has an awful stench, but tastes very nice. Unfortunately ours wasn't quite ripe yet, so it didn't stink too much and the flavor wasn't as strong as it should have been.
Why have I not said anything about the meetings we were in most of the time you may ask. The answer would be because nothing much happened there which you would be bothered to read through, even if I was studious enough to write it.