Journey to Thailand!

Wow, I am FINALLY getting to writing about Thailand. I can't believe its been a week and a half since I got back. I am sorry it has taken me so long (if you have been checking), I unfortunately had some papers that took priority over this blog. Now that those are all finished, we are good to go! On to my Thai adventure! :)

We met up with each other in the lobby of my hall (Hall VII) at 7pm. I hadn't met a bunch of the people that were going on this trip and I barely knew one of the other ones so it was nice to get to meet more exchange students and go on a fabulous adventure with them. I met Lisa (Chinese, raised in Canada and goes to school at NYU), Steve (Vietnamese but now lives goes to UC), and Justin (UPenn)for the first time. They seemed pretty cool. I caught up with Tim (Georgia) and he asked me if I had everything planned out for this trip. He asked me what we were doing and after I told him a couple of the ideas that came up online he said "well do you mind going to the beach and all? Watersports? Not like all museums, right?" and in my head I was thinking "is that really your perception of me?" but I disregarded it and moved on, got in the taxi and headed off to the airport.

It took about 45-50 minutes to get to the airport because its on a completely different Island, on the complete other side of the city. I had never been to the Hong Kong Aiport, other than when I landed (and I definitely wasn't paying attention to anything beyond "Gotta find my buddy" to notice how beautiful it is). We checked into our flight (Emirates!) and headed off through passport control and eventually to the gate!

It was absolutely packed flight and I loved everything about the Emirates plane. They have TVs on the back of every seat with about a bazillion movie, tv, and game options. Their staff was very friendly and SO MULTICULTURAL! It was a bit unreal. At one point the first officer came on the PA system and said that on our flight (going from HK to Dubai via Bangkok), they had German, Spanish, Italian, Thai, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Dutch language speakers in order to cater to everyone on board! Absolutely unreal. I don't think I have ever been on a flight where they have attempted to cater to so many people. I bet people appreciate that so much, I know that I do!

I, of course, was planning on doing homework on the flight but as usual, it just didn't happen. Instead, Evan and I synced our tvs so that we were watching a movie together! It was so fun and we got the timing almost perfect. The movie, entitled "Julia and Julia" was an okay movie until the very end. I don't really recommend it.

We arrived in Bangkok after a short 2 hours and 40 minutes and a lot of people got off the plane. The boys decided that they wanted to go into the duty free shop and instead of waiting, Lisa and I decided to go through immigration and to the baggage claim so that she could get her bag. I was went up to the immigration counter and said "Sawadee" which is how you say "hello" in Thai and the man said hello and then he proceeded to say that I was beautiful. I said "thanks?" and then has asked me "did you come with anyone else?" Even if I hadn't come with anyone else, I think I would have said that I had anyway. I couldn't tell if this was normal immigration nonsense but I know for a fact that the "you're beautiful" comment was definitely not immigration appropriate. EIther way....

It was probably not a good idea to leave the guys behind. I only say that because we went through security and then down to baggage claim, immediately picked up her bag and then waited for the guys to get here. We didn't see them so we decided to go to the other immigration check point to see if they had gone out that way. We spent about an hour looking for one another and in the end, the guys were sitting in the arrivals hall. We finally gathered together and then found a taxi and then went to the hostel. We got into two taxis and we told our taxi driver to follow the other taxi. We kept asking about why the meter wasn't running and the driver kept saying "same meter as other taxi. Same meter as other taxi."

Now I was really, really hesitant about just going with the flow with a taxi without the meter running but at that point there wasn't really much that we could do. I have heard so many horror stories about how people have gotten into taxis and then the driver says one price, takes the people somewhere and then demands a different price. When the people don't agree, the driver threatens to call the Police (which tourists never want to deal with while in a foreign country. Who knows what rights you do or don't have). That didn't happen to us, though. And we paid the driver the same amount that our other taxi had to pay. Awesome.

We went into hostel "Soi 1 Guesthouse" and it was definitely more than a little bit sketchy. We had the entire 8-person room to ourselves though which was definitely a plus but we did get complaints that we were loud at around 4 in the morning. After we checked in, we left again to go explore the area around. The guys wanted to go to get some sort of street food or atleast walk around for a while. It was around 2 in the morning and the city was definitely still awake. There were food stalls open, tiny retaurant type things that were open and soo many people out on the streets. The traffic was still bad and there were people that were selling all sorts of different things like clothes and shoes and so much more, right on the side of the street. It was so fun to see. We walked around until around 4 and then headed back to the hostel where we talked and around 6, we went to sleep.

My alarm went off at 8 and I hit snooze and I got up to go get ready for our day. We were planning on catching a bus to Pattaya so that the guys could get in their watersports and we could maybe go to the Beach, ride some elephants etc. We all got ready and headed downstairs to check out where we met the owner of the hostel. We were asking him about how to get to the bus terminal so that we could go to Pattaya and he said "why do you want to go there?" He proceeded to tell us that Pattaya is the sleaze capital of the world. Full of prostitutes, strip clubs, dirty beaches, and old men. He told us that this wasn't the best place to see the amazing beaches of Thailand that we had heard rave reviews about or anything. He recommended that we go to Kanchanaburi, Thailand where we could go to see Tigers and Elephants and waterfalls etc. He seemed to convince Ray and the other guys enough so we decided to go there instead.

We went outside and hailed a couple taxis and tried to talk to the drivers. I think the owner of the guesthouse thought that we were having trouble and he came outside to talk to the drivers (he knew Thai) and he told the driver where to go and after the drivers asked where we were going the taxi drivers tried to get us to take their taxi all the way to Kanchanaburi (2.5 hours away). I pretty much thought that was a scam so we said no and we started to go on our way to the station. The driver tried to talk me into it all the way to the station but I kept saying no (especially because we had no way of communicating with our friends in the other taxi). We got to the station and looked around and Justin, Lisa and I waited around for the rest of our group to get there. It took them a while but they finally made it.

While we were waiting a lady came up to us and asked us where we were going. We were a little confused about why she was asking but we told her and she was like okay, I can take you to the bus. We told her we had to wait. Once our group got there, she led us over to the AC Bus and told us that it would take us to Kanchanaburi. The guys stocked up on some Dunkin Donuts and we got on the bus, paid for our ticket (84 Baht= 2.5 USD) and everyone (minus me) pretty much passed out from lack of sleep from the previous night.

I attempted to stay up 1)to guard our bags and 2) to see the scenery between Bangkok and Kanchanaburi! I made it about an hour and a half and then passed out for a while. It wasn't a sound sleep by any means because the bus would stop at random points to let people on or off and I would wake up abruptly to make sure that our stuff was safe and sound.

After about 3 hours, we made it to Kanchanaburi and we had to get everyone up and off the bus.

I'll end this one here and move on to adventures in Kanchanaburi!