Hi Everyone! Thanks
for all of the comments on my previous posts, keep them coming!
Needless to say the resort was beautiful. It was a few hours southwest of Bangkok out
in a mountainous region. The mornings and nights were much cooler and the
temperature probably dropped down to the high 60s which is colder than I ever
thought I would see it get in Thailand. The purpose of spending the weekend at
the resort was for team building/ orientation. As soon as we got on the busses
we were thrown in to a countless number of get-to-know-you games and I
immediately met many of the Thai students. It can be difficult to remember
names because their full names are on their name tags and almost all Thai people
have nicknames because there given names are so long. For example, my group
members names are Orachitr Bijaisoradat
(who goes by Ju), Nachnicha Kongkatigumjorn (Fang), and Kunathon Wattanavit (Non). They say that sometimes even their really
close friends can’t remember their full names. So all of the WPI students would look at the
BSAC student nametags which didn’t help at all because it didn’t say the names
that they actually go by. But besides that detail most of the activities were
pretty fun. One of the coolest things we
did was a friendship/good luck type of candle-lit ceremony where all of the
students lined up in rows in front of the ajarns (professors) and they tied a
white rope bracelet around our wrists to symbolize the friendships we will
develop here and to wish us good luck on our projects.
Not only did we do a
lot of team building with all of the BSAC students as a whole, but we also got the
chance to meet our group members for the first time, as I said their names are
Ju, Fang, and Non. Here is a picture of all of us and one of the advisors at
the resort:
At the resort it was
pretty much a full time schedule of team building activities and breakfast,
lunch and dinner buffets. The food was great and there was a large
selection. At night there were
activities like karaoke. The hotel rooms at the resort were much nicer than our
rooms at the Reno Hotel where we are living for two months. There were huge
bathtubs, balconies, rain showers etc. However, I am getting use to living at
the Reno and the rooms really aren’t that bad (although I just had to buy a
mattress pad, a disadvantage of having nice mattresses all my life). At least now I know how to take a hot shower
(I was turning the faucet in the normal direction which I didn’t know was actually
making it colder). Also at the resort,
during our very limited hours of “free time”, I was able to go zip-lining (what
they call “flying fox”). It cost 200 baht, roughly $6.50. We didn’t know before hand but in order to get
to the zip-line platform we had to go on a short high ropes course the involved
climbing on a suspended rope net and a ladder bridge, both pretty high up in
the air. Our harnesses were hooked on to
a line above incase we fell. Once we completed this we got to the zip-line
platform and had about a 30 second zip-line ride that was completely across
water. I had never gone before so even though it was a relatively short and
simple zip-line it was still fun. Here is a picture of us on the "bus" to go zip-line.
After we left the resort around 11am Sunday morning
we made two stops, one at a fishing village to have lunch and one at a famous
floating market. At the fishing village we ate at a family style restaurant
that mainly had locals eating at it. When we got there they had everything
ready to go for us. Two large bowls of white rice (a staple of every meal
here), a large whole fish (I don’t know what kind), boiled squid, small whole
fish (their version of tuna), whole large shrimp, and some unidentifiable
seafood dish that looked like worms kind of that they told us was some sort of
shellfish. There was also a soup that
contained pretty much all of the stuff I mentioned but in a broth. All of the
food was interesting to say the least. I
ate mainly white rice and a simple vegetable dish that came with it along with
apples for dessert. I did try a piece of the large fish though that was pretty
good. I think I would have been braver if all of the food wasn’t in whole form
and it was just served in small pieces, but maybe next time. A lot of the WPI
kids at my table actually really liked a lot of it. This was really our first “authentic”
Thai seafood meal. (I will add a picture to this post once I find one).
After we finished
lunch we got back on the bus and headed to the Amphawa Floating Market. This is
a very popular destination for both tourists and Bangkok locals. It was a very
unique place with things to buy for what seemed like miles along a canal. Not
only were there stores and vendors on the side of the canal but also people in
boats who pull up to where people walk and try to sell their food. Here is a link to the market so you can check
it out before I am able to post pictures (which I will do when I find some
later).
Thank you all for
reading my blog and posting! I will try to post as much as possible but project
work has already started and we are supposed to keep 50 hour work weeks (we’ll
see about that haha). In the next post I
will tell you more about what I did Monday and Tuesday and how my project is
coming along.
Until then….
Sawatdii kha
<3 Kaily
