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| the life of a volunteer?!? |
So I live in Thailand and the first thing everyone asks is “Have you been to Bangkok yet?” Now I can finally say “Yes!” But… it will most likely be my last time visiting Bangkok except for the inevitable lay overs while traveling.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed our visit but big cities are just not my thing. To much traffic, to much pollution, to much noise, and to many people consumed by materialism. It’s the same reason why I never felt the urge to visit cities like NY, Chicago, LA, and Miami. Sure visiting for a few days can be fun and you can see a lot of cool things, but I would much rather spend my vacation time on top of a mountain or wading through a stream with my fly rod in hand.
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| from the left: Zack, Peter, Me |
Despite that feeling, I was surprising excited about going to Bangkok. I guess it was the fact that it was my first time to major city, my first time out of the Issan province, and it was only Peter, Zach, and I, so it was going to be a boys weekend.
Our trip started Wednesday evening on an overnight bus to the big city. This put us in BKK Thursday morning giving us 3 full days to tour around the city before we had to head back home on a night bus Saturday evening.
After a grueling 10 hour bus ride we arrived at the BKK bus terminal at 5 AM and were immediately welcomed by hundreds of taxi drivers competing for our business. But we were not interested in any of them because we were anxious to stretch our legs and so a 3k walk to the train station sounded great.
We hopped onto the skytrain, which was clean, fast, cheap, and most importantly it had AC, and headed to the hotel we were staying.
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this picture is about the only proof that Dan and i actually
got to hang out in Bangkok. i was very disappointed we
forgot to get a better picture |
Fortunately, my good buddy Dan Angster (from Benedictine) is temporarily living in BKK for a grad school program and he was generous enough to let us poor volunteers crash with him. He had work to do during the days but he and some of his classmates were able to join us in the evenings for some drinks. It was a bit crazy to get to see him so far away from home but I have a feeling it won’t be the last time we hang out together in foreign country because we both have international careers in mind.
We toured around all day for three days and we got to see some really cool stuff. Instead of trying to describe everything we did, I have loaded a bunch of the photos at the bottome
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| the view from Dan's hotel balcony |
The trip was great and it was just the right amount of time for all of us. We met some really great people along the way. Lek, one of our museum tour guides , was an amazing person and has over come so much in his lifetime to be where he is today. Arun, a guy who grew up in Zach’s village, was a very generous man as well as intelligent. He is going to Cambridge next year for his doctorate in Poly Sci. What most impressed me was how diverse Bangkok was. It truly is an international city with people from everywhere you could imagine. I heard so many languages that I had never heard before and I was fascinated by it all. I can’t wait to go live in all these different countries and cultures.
It is funny though, we always tended to migrate to where the blue colar working class people were and in Bangkok that means the Issan people. That’s just where we all felt comfortable. All the people that we talked to were from Issan and we always tended to eat at Issan food stalls (which they could not get over the fact that we wanted to eat their style of food).
The Issan people are all so friendly and happy. They are not caught up in all the shopping malls and materialism like the rest of Bangkok. It made me appreciate how lucky we are to be living where we live, in the friendliest part of a country that is called “the land of smiles.” It doesn’t get much friendlier than that.
I am glad that Bangkok was my first big international city but I am also glad that it’s over with. I can now say I’ve been there and done that and can check it off my list.
Mai pen rai
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| a porche made completely of carbon fiber (look closely) |
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| a Catholic Church with Thai architecture |
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| Lumphini Park |
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| some of the long boats that you can rent out for a trip |
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| taken on a water taxi that cost about 75 cents for a half hour ride |
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| Wat Arun |
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| the largest reclining Buddha |
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| on top of our hotel |
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| an infamous bar street |
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| one of the kings old boats that was at a museum |
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| muskrats do live in Thailand! |
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| a really cool aquarium |
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| on the eighth floor of a mall |
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| a red shirt demonstration |
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| a canal taxi |
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| trying to keep the peace, but it shouldn't be to hard because you have to remember that most red shirts are from Issan therefore... |
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| ... most red shirts would rather just sit around and eat sticky rice haha |
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed our visit but big cities are just not my thing. To much traffic, to much pollution, to much noise, and to many people consumed by materialism. It’s the same reason why I never felt the urge to visit cities like NY, Chicago, LA, and Miami. Sure visiting for a few days can be fun and you can see a lot of cool things, but I would much rather spend my vacation time on top of a mountain or wading through a stream with my fly rod in hand.
After a grueling 10 hour bus ride we arrived at the BKK bus terminal at 5 AM and were immediately welcomed by hundreds of taxi drivers competing for our business. But we were not interested in any of them because we were anxious to stretch our legs and so a 3k walk to the train station sounded great. We hopped onto the skytrain, which was clean, fast, cheap, and most importantly it had AC, and headed to the hotel we were staying. 
It is funny though, we always tended to migrate to where the blue colar working class people were and in Bangkok that means the Issan people. That’s just where we all felt comfortable. All the people that we talked to were from Issan and we always tended to eat at Issan food stalls (which they could not get over the fact that we wanted to eat their style of food). The Issan people are all so friendly and happy. They are not caught up in all the shopping malls and materialism like the rest of Bangkok. It made me appreciate how lucky we are to be living where we live, in the friendliest part of a country that is called “the land of smiles.” It doesn’t get much friendlier than that. 
