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So we just got back from traveling to the Lamphun Province which is about 20-30 km south of CM. Since my first posting, much has happened. Yesterday, Tuesday June 3, us scholars had our first meeting with the faculty and mentors at Chiang Mai University (CMU) Faculty of Community Medicine. We took a tour of the campus which is amazing! They have a Faculty of Nursing, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Technical Medicine, and other Health Sciences/Medical departments. They call the departments out here "Faculty of..." The campus is relatively large, with a community hospital that has in-patient (IPD) and out-patient departments (OPD), as well as an ER. The food available is endless!!! It would put CSUF to major shame with the quantity and quality of the food offered to students. There was literally cafeteria after cafeteria and shop after shop of just food, food, food!
With all the articles and reading that we did prior to our arrival, we had thought that our research topic would be around air pollution. Rather, at the beginning of our meeting, we found out that the levels of particulate matter (PM) had lowered and the quality of the air was much better than last year,
so they changed our research topic to occupational medicine/health among small factory workers in the Lamphun province. So we went and visited the Banglank Municipality, which is the government agency that oversees and licenses factories according to the health law. We visited 5 field sites that, 4 of which will be used for our research. The four of us will choose which location we want to conduct our research at and then we will visit the locations later to collect data and observe. We visited 3 furniture factories, 1 carburator shop, and 1 metal shop. It was interesting to see how all the little parts and how furniture actually really gets made and assembled. Now I look at all the "Made in Thailand" products in a whole different perspective. It's not like the factories in the U.S., with bright white walls and lighting and huge robotic machines assembling, cutting, and polishing, but Thai villagers that are trying to make a little money and receive some type of health insurance benefits.
So yeah, there'll be plenty more stuff about my research later. So after our meeting yesterday, we went to the mall and we all got cell phones....new Thai cell
phones that have Thai lettering and numbering on the keypad and all the texts that we've gotten are all in Thai, lol!!
If you would like to call me, please send me a comment or message, and I will send you my Thai cell phone number and the information to use my international calling card. Afterwards, Jeff and I walked back to the Y to just rest up, while Jon, Leah, and Dr. D stayed and did a little shopping. I ended up meeting up with Leah and Jon at this bar/restaurant at the top of the mall called "O-Time" that had an outdoor patio that overlooked the city. They had a huge tower, very similar to the tower I had at my Bon Voyage party that was filled with Patron margarita, that was filled with Chang beer. There's like 3 main beers here--Tsingha, Chang, and Leo. So we ended up having two towers between the 3 of us. We hit up Jeff to see if he wanted to join us, cause he didn't feel like it when I left to meet them, and he decided to which was cool cuz now it was all 4 of us chillin' at
the bar. So Jon was talking to him on the phone trying to tell him the name of the restaurant and he kept saying "O-Time, O-Time". Well, he couldn't hear the "O" very well, hence the title of this blog. I guess you had to be there, lol...and then again, we were about 2 towers into it. Jeff doesn't drink too often, actually has never gotten drunk, so there was a little pressure for us to see how far we could get him to drink. With Leah being our mom, she didn't want to get him too f****d up, but he really didn't have a choice. You see, out here, at the bar, they just keep filling up your beer even if its like still 2/3 full!! So everytime Jeff took a few sips, the gorgeous waitress would swoop by and fill up his glass w/ more Chang from the tower. So we ended up closing out the bar, which was at 9pm. I guess because it was part of the mall, it closes kinda early. Well much to our surprise, we tried to leave the mall, and there was NO WAY OUT, LITERALLY!! It was totally like Shaun of
the Dead and Resident Evil, where the mall is completely shut down, and we were the only ones in there...of course stumbling a little and trying to find our freakin' way out!!! There were some cleaning personnel that couldn't help us for sh*t and after running around the mall aimlessly trying to find an exit, we finally found a security guard that didn't seem too happy that we were in there....well, it wasn't our fault, they shouldn't have shut down and locked all the doors until they saw that everyone was out! So yeah, that was pretty hilarious, lol!!!! We were all pretty hungry and needed to soak up the beer, so we took two tuk-tuks out to the Night Bazzar-me and Jeff on one and Leah and Jon on another. The Night Bazzar is like a part of the city that has vendors on the sidewalks selling arts and crafts, jewerly, watches, etc.. and a bunch of eating places, and the reason we went, Burger King!! HAHA, yup! BK and right across the way was a McDonald's!! Crazy comfort food! The ride was totally awesome, totally felt like we were gonna fly out of our seats. Before we could
get our food, Leah was all about bartering and getting a watch...well, she did fantastic and ended up getting like a Cartier watch for $25 and I ended up bartering and getting a nice Chanel watch for $30.We had our BK and MickeyD's then headed back to the Y. We got back to the Y and just watched some of The Office in my room. Jon, Leah, and I passed out and Jeff went to his room. So I wasn't sure if I wanted to add this to my blog so that everyone can see, but why not share a lil of my shame....WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT FOR THE FAINT AT HEART LOL...Well, I ended up waking up a little bit later, gagging and next thing I know, I have a handful of puke that sprayed all over one corner of my bed, and all over my desk. So I rushed over to the bathroom just in time for another load into the sink and then into the toilet....yeah, nice, right!!! I wasn't that f'ed up, at least I didn't think so, I think just after all that Chang and then the BK settling in my stomach, it just
didn't agree....so yeah, now I'm just waiting for the housekeepers to come bring me fresh linens for one of my beds.....ewww!! So yeah, I had a lil hangover this morning, but it's all good now....I think we're hittin' up the Night Bazzar again tonight.....let's see what's in store for tonight!! HA!
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L.T.
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Drinks
HEY jordan!!!