In the beginning . . .

I'll start with the flight. I got up once during my 13.5 hour flight from the states to Tokyo due to the excessive sleeping habits of the elderly gentleman sitting next to me who is in a curious relationship with a young Filipino woman . . . I was out cold for 5 hours or so on the way to Bangkok from there, which was much needed--I venture to say I got up twice during that 7 hour flight. As the plane was landing the clock struck 12 midnight, ringing in a new year, and I could see fireworks from the air strip, some of which I was forced to assume were to welcome me, of course.

I ended up getting to the dormitory, Green Park, sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning after going through customs and a somewhat awkward ride with a driver who spoke virtually no English--our conversations consisted mostly of me or him saying something, the other not understanding, some attempt at clarification, then just laughter upon coming to a shared understanding of not understanding. After a much needed shower I ended up meeting several of the other international students as they were returning from the festivities of the city. They told me about their plans to travel to Kanchanaburi the next day and invited me, I had no idea where it was or why they were going, but suddenly I was too.

Leaving early the next day didn't exactly work out, at around 5 in the afternoon the 15 of us had arranged travel and were on our way, luckily I was riding in the car of handy, amazing companion Wil, who is Thai and attended high school in the US, speaking perfect English and Thai, a Godsend if ever there was one. Two hours or so after driving south we arrived in Kanchanaburi at a place called Sugar Cane that is quite literally on the water, sitting on pontoons. After those who'd ridden the bus got in we roamed the streets a bit and found a Thai place that could house us all. Most of the restaurants are more like glorified roadside stands in a sense, they are in buildings with kitchens, seating areas and bathrooms but often times the former two are one in the same, as was the case here, and they are open air. Because there were so many of us and all of the food is prepared fresh (we saw it) it took quite a while for us to finish, but it was worth the wait--very good and very cheap. Most of the other students went out on the town thereafter but my jetlagged self was about to pass out at dinner, so I went straight to bed.
The next morning we got up fairly early and grabbed a fast breakfast at a 7-11 on the way to rent motorbikes (there are 7-11 stores everywhere, it's amazing). After a crash course in how to drive the things (literally for one of us, he has battle scars to prove it) we headed out, two to a bike, to the Bridge over the River Kway. The bridge itself was pretty cool and at the end of it I encountered the first of several elephants I've seen thus far. After the bridge we went into the WWII museum just around the corner from it, which was interesting though not well maintained. It was here that we saw a man carving flowers out of bars of soap, the level of detail was incredible. We ate and checked out the surrounding street markets after the museum, I tried haggling for the first time and I didn't succeed, exactly, but I didn't fail either. After that we went on a 45 minute bike ride through the countryside to a waterfall where there were tons of locals swimming and climbing around. We rode back to Kancahanburi and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant that was a little more expensive than the Thai one from the night before but equally good and a little more closed off from the street. Again, I almost fell asleep in my food so I just went back to Sugar Cane when everyone else went out.
Our last day in Kanchanaburi we returned the bikes and ate breakfast at a restaurant called the Jolly Frog which was pretty good. We checked out of the guest house and over half our group decided to just take the bus back to the dorms, the rest of us went to Tiger Temple. This was more or less like a free roaming zoo, with the exception of the tigers who are chained and presumably drugged up. When we first walked in we passed a group of water buffalo and goats as we made our way up to the first temple, which was closed for dharma lessons at 1, so we fell in line with another group of tourists who were following a monk leading a tiger. As we followed Thai people who worked at the place kept running up to people and saying eagerly 'camera?!?' and taking their cameras and running up to the front of the line with them. Before I knew it I was handing my camera to a small Thai woman who grabbed my wrist and led me to the front of the heard of people, put my hand on the back of the tiger, ran in front of me, took my picture, grabbed me away from the tiger and gave me back my camera before running away to do it all over again. It was quite bizarre.
We finally got to the tiger den so to speak, an area at the bottom of some kind of canyon where there were nearly 15 or 20 more tigers laying around, chained to the ground or to various rocks or trees. I'm still not sure how much they may or may not have drugged up these animals, because though I'm sure that they would sleep a great deal on their own I have no idea how they'd react to the dozens upon dozens of people being led around them, petting them and having their pictures taken with them. It was sad in a way, but I was right there reaping the benefits of their potential sedation. We got in line again here, where we were instructed to take off any sunglasses, bags or dangling items and to turn off the flash on our cameras so as not to disturb the tigers in the event that one would happen to ever wake up, which didn't happen. More Thai workers again take your camera and lead you around the ring, taking your picture essentially with every tiger on the grounds. The woman leading me around asked me if I spoke Thai, I laughed and said 'hello' and 'thank you' in my very poor Thai, she laughed a little and nodded. After a few of my pictures the woman would remark how pretty it was and show the workers around her, it was amusing to me because I'd been hiking around and not showering well for the last few days, not the most gorgeous look.
We finished up at Tiger Temple with some pony and peacock chasing along with a few last minute pictures with the baby tigers that had just finished feeding. Then it was off to the National Park to see the waterfalls. Wil was able to get the car load of us into the park at half price even though none of us had our student id's yet, just another perk of speaking the language. We got there just 20 minutes before the higher, apparently better parts of the falls were closing for the evening, so we speed hiked up the side of the mountain. The views were amazing and the falls were bigger than the ones we'd seen the day before, I considered jumping into the fairly clear water, especially after speed hiking and all it would have felt very good, but then I'd be wet for the ride back and I'd read that it's generally not a good idea to swim in fresh water in Thailand, so I refrained. The guards started kicking us out pretty soon, so we hiked back down and looked at some of the lower falls on the way out. We ate dinner at a small open-air restaurant that was part of a chain of shops and other eateries in the parking lot, again, very good food and my first sticky rice of the trip, always an excellent choice.
The ride back to Green Park was extraordinarily long, with no small part due to the fact that there were 8 of us crammed into the car with all of our backpacks. Not long after we got back to the dorms most of us decided to go into Bangkok to go to Gazebo, a bar/disco just off Kawasan Road with hundreds of night markets and thousands of tourists. Gazebo is on the 3rd floor with an open roof over the perimeter of it and it had a live cover band singing mostly 90's US hits, and they were actually pretty good. We hung out and danced for a while before I personally had had enough and was starting to get tired again. I was upset to find that this club and presumably many others in Thailand are exactly the same as they are in the US--same music, same dancing, neither of which I am much of a fan.
The next day I went back into the city to get my uniform and to do some exploring. Our friend Muheeb from Bangladesh who has lived in Thailand for several years showed us around one of the malls, MBK. We spent forever in there just looking around, I wish I knew better what would be a fair price for certain things because I really want to haggle more effectively . . . I've been laughed at by multiple vendors already. Awesome.
We ate at a Mexican restaurant in the city that night, which was surprisingly good, but far from the best Mexican I've had, but what do you expect on the other side of the world? Plus our waitress was a transvestite, they're quite common in the city because they have many plastic surgeons who are very good at the kinds of operations they like to have done, fun times. Muheeb joined back up with us here and took us on a brief walk through the red light district where I saw nothing but scantily clad, underage Thai girls and old white men--it was both funny and disturbing. The city is exhausting.
Today was my orientation day and my first day of class. Naturally I missed the bus to take me to the University along with my roommate, Shayanne. Thankfully, all we needed to do was call Wil and he willingly came and brought us to where we needed to be. Orientation was fairly brief and uninformative. Thought the people directing it spoke English well it was difficult for them to understand our questions and respond effectively. I'm signed up for four, four hour classes: Introduction to Thai Language and Culture, Southeast Asian Studies, Introduction to Human Rights and Physical Anthropology. Today I only attended one because the other was canceled due to orientation, and that was Introduction to Human Rights. The professor is Australian and there are about 9 of us in the class, including one of the girls who went to Kanchanaburi with us, Julie. We basically had a full day of class today after some brief introductions and going over the syllabus, I guess some things never change. The material is very interesting thus far and my classmates all seem very nice and interested as well.
I caught a taxi for the first time by myself after class to meet up with a few of my friends at Tesco Lotus, the Thai version of Wal-Mart or maybe Target, to pick up some basic food and water in bulk. Let's hope I catch the shuttle bus tomorrow, geez.