Bangkok

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So its been almost a week since arriving in Bangkok. Orientation is coming to an end and we are all getting ready to head out to our respective schools to begin our adventures. This past week has been a blast, here are a few highlights to really sum it up:

Our hotel is about a 45 minute taxi ride from city center Bangkok. The hotel itself seems semi decent upon arrival, although we quickly learn that we are going to have to get comfortable with bugs. I am assigned a room with a girl Katie. We created two signature moves, the cockroach crawl and the spider shake. The cockroach crawl is required when coming back to you room at night. You turn on the lights and then respectfully wait a second or two before entering the room to allow all the cockroaches to go back to their hideouts. I found its a lot easier to deal with them if I just pretend they aren't there, which is impossible if you barge into the room right away and see 20 of them scatter. The spider shake is that little flick of the wrist shake you give your clothes before putting them on to make sure there aren't any spiders in them. If you guys could see me now, you'd be so proud of how I'm handling the spiders here...although to be fair I've really only found high body to leg length ratio spiders for those who are familiar with my sliding scale of fear.

Orientation itself was filled with language classes, I seemed to be absorbing less than my classmates although I've nailed 0 - 10 which should be useful in my math classes.

Tuesday I was able to meet an old coworker of mine downtown for dinner, Pim, and she gave us lots of local tips on how to get around...now if only I can convince her to move to Phuket with me I'd be set! After dinner we went down to Khao San Road...a street filled with drunk tourists and tacky vendors. It makes for great people watching. We somehow found ourselves explaining the American 3-branches of government to a guy selling cell phone dangles on a street corner at one point.

Wednesday we decided to treat ourselves with a night out on the town. After a good bit of searching the depths of the internet, we settled on a new rooftop bar called Cloud 47 in downtown Bangkok. We took a taxi to the BTS stations, and the BTS into downtown Bangkok. We got off on a crowded street and headed off in the direction I thought the bar was in based off a tiny internet map.

While navigating our way through street vendors and ping pong show offers we made our way to the “united” building where the supposed roof top bar was located. After about 30 minutes of walking up a flight of stairs, down two flights of stairs, up an elevator and the kind help from strangers, a security guard eventually chased us down and sent us THROUGH the united building, across a street and into the secret second united building where the roof top bar was located. We rode the elevator up to the 47^th floor which opened up to a fog machined entrance giving the illusion of clouds (clever). The bar was AMAZING. Super modern and right in the middle of a busy section of high rises. The bar was known for its western food, so after a couple bottles of wine, a chicken cordon bleu and some amazing views of the city we were very much content.

Thursday we headed to Kanchanaburi for a little day trip. We visited the River Kwai, which was much more successful than my first visit to the bridge 3 years ago...I swear the bridge was higher then. Our coordinators surprised us with a boat cruise dinner, which eventually lead to a huge dance party on a floating barge in the middle of a monsoon, so many sober white people awkwardly dancing to dubstep...love it.

The next day we went bamboo rafting and visited an elephant farm. We rode elephants through the woods. A girl, Liz, and I ended up on the elephant together...every time we'd laugh our elephant driver would turn around and glare at us...we couldn't figure out what was going on and the harder we tried to not laugh the more we found ourselves laughing. After about 20 minutes of stifled laughing, the elephant guide turned around and said "I love you", grabbed my camera, jumped off the elephant and started what was probably a 15 minute photoshoot of us on the elephant. He had us doing all sorts of weird poses. This was obviously a very surprising turn of events...I'm still not sure I understand what was going on.

Friday afternoon we returned to our hotel in Bangkok to meet with our school coordinators to begin our trek to our schools. Our school surprised us plane tickets that night...which did not make us very popular since now 216 out of 220 teachers had to take long bus rides, and the 4 people at my school got to fly.

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Photos

Downtown Bangkok
View from Cloud47

Downtown Bangkok
View from Cloud47