The porch that looked over the city

mimi — Thu, 5 Jan 2012 22:11:00 GMT

Second day in Bangkok and it's 30C again but even more humid since it rained last night. That temperature will need some getting used to that's for sure! This morning I had breakfast at my hotel and it was delicious! I had some rice with spicy chili chicken and veggies, some rice noodles and lots of fruit like watermelon, cantaloupe and pineapple. It was kind of odd eating something so spicy for breakfast but it was delicious! Then I went to visit the Amarin Mansion which is where I have decided to stay for the next 5 months. It is a gorgeous apartment building with modern decor and very clean and nice looking rooms for a very cheap price, PERFECT! It has a nice decor, an amazing view from my porch; I can see buildings from far and up close I am surrounded by trees which is so peaceful, other than the fact that they are hiding lots of garbage bags on the ground. Ohhh just another perck of Bangkok. It is so funny here you don't need to pay right away for housing, well atleast to my experience. At the hotel I paid when I checked out and here at my apartment I am settling in I have my key and everything and I haven't paid yet and it doesn't seem too urgent either. Cool deal! The people working at my apartment are really friendly and there's this guy name Kiit right beside us who has a mini restaurant who is super nice and offers a great variety of food for cheap price. Tonight I had really good basil in a chili based sauce chicken with rice and he even came to bring it at my door. All this for a tiny weeny 40 baht or $1.33!!!!!

I also went uniform shopping today, EGH!!! First of all it seems as though for our classes the profs aren't too strict on us having to wear them except during exam time such as midterms and final exams which is pretty cool. They consist of a white blouse with a Thammasat University pin, a black skirt (pleated) that goes to our knees, a belt, buckle with university logo, and finally black closed shoe. I had expected this to be painful, and it was! Thai people are in general very small and short, I am not small and not so short. Let me put it in perspective for you: my friends here that usually wear a small at home had to get a large here, yeah that's right! And of course I had to get an even bigger size to fit that specific part of my body that is slightly larger than the rest of the female population. Then since I had to get a slightly bigger size they wanted to charge me more and didn't understand a word of English so it was pretty much hell. I just hope as hell we don't have to wear these stupid uniforms too often!

Tomorrow is a big day, we have to of course wear our beautiful uniforms for orientation, ew! It will be a long day of mixed emotions between excitement for meeting more international students and feeling a bit more tired for the whole logistics, blah blah, signing up crap. Hopefully everything works out well and I am not too exhausted tomorrow. It is now 6:35pm and I am ready for bed!!!!

One more thing, I had heard that the Thai massage were super popular and cheap and I thought that was really cool, well I found out the hard way that it's because their beds are like ROCK HARD!!!! Hopefully the bed in my apartment will be better. I have 2 single beds so I pretty much made a king size bed, that is hopefully not too hard. Life is good!

First impressions

mimi — Wed, 4 Jan 2012 21:57:00 GMT

Can you say culture shock? My ride from the airport to my hotel for the first few nights allowed me to see a lot of things that we aren't too familiar with in Canada. First off the speedometer in my taxi driver's car didn't work, that's always good! Then I see people riding in the tailgate of trucks, normal enough you might say? Yes but maybe not on the highway going 120+km/h. Then as we get into town people on motorcycles are just like they describe them, dangerous and fearless! They are zigzagging between cars to get through as quickly as possible and never stay in a lane. The passenger never has a helmet and the women never sit on properly straddling the bike. No no, she'll sit with her two legs dangling on the same side, threatening to make her dangling flip flops fly away into the windshield of the driver behind them. Then we almost hit two stray dogs while trying to navigate through crazy traffic. The drivers don't seem to pay much attention which is weird because I think I saw more expensive and pimped out cars here than I do in Ottawa... hmmmm! And then there's the police, there's like 5-6 at the same corner but they don't do much, and if they do have something to say all they do is blow their whistle, yes I just said whistle and they point at whoever is doing something wrong. Quite efficient? doubt it! I'm just glad I decided to not bring my whistle, that would have been ironic, instead of people coming to help me since I blew my whistle, they would run away thinking it was the police...

Other than these little quirks that make Bangkok so much more fun, the people here are very nice and always trying to please you. My airport pickup was late so upgrade to deluxe superior room from my hotel, yes thank you! When I didn't have a phone to call my airport pickup, a nice lady offered for me to use her cellphone! The people here are very genuine and I can't wait to debute my journey... but first diner; my first pad thai in Thailand! It was very good but I didn't get the chance to eat an authentic one that they recommend you get at the street food market because they had all closed shop already for the day, weird considering it's supper time.

I am also very happy that I already met some people that are going to be studying in Thammasat and that makes things less stressful! So far so good :)

Live the life you have imagined

The porch that looked over the city

First impressions