Kanchanaburi and Royal Palaces

So I havent written in quite a while. For some reason my internet stopped working and I had to wait until they had all the user names and passwords for WPI students. Previously I had just been using one of the thai students user name. All the students from WPI are here and we have begun our project work. The first week everyone was here we had orientations and time for sight seeing. I spend the time helping people get around bangkok at first but now everyone is very good at it! I visited this place named "Jim Thompsons house" (eerily familiar anyone?) who is a dead american. He was a silk trader that fell in love with Thailand and built a mansion out of traditional thai houses. It was really interesting.

My group had to begin project work a lot earlier than any other group. Its was kind of frustrating at points because we had to do work when everyone else was still relaxing but then again its life. Oh well. We had our first meeting on thursday the 8th with ajaarn (professor in english) Siripastr. She is a very nice lady who was educated in the United States and is part of the Royal family. We basically just identified things in our project that we needed to work on and got prepared for our presentation at the royal palace. ( Which was today but Ill get to that later).

Then for the weekend from the 9th to the 11th we went to Kanchanaburi. On the way we stopped at a Coconut sugar processing place, a floating market, and then a national park. I will post all my pictures on photo bucket. The floating market was a lot of fun. We took a canal boat ride for about 5 files. It was a high speed boat and a lot of fun. Then we got to the floating market. It was really overpriced so I did not buy too many things, just food. I decided I would bargain for a traditional thai looking mask. The man originally said "best price for you is 1200 baht". I decided I would start speaking some thai and get him down to around 500 baht. I sucessful did after much bargaining. I got him to 600 baht at one point and then pretended like I was going to walk away. He said out of desperation "okay okay 500 baht". I really didnt realize the economoic downturn was hitting people all over the world until he agreed to 500. I felt bad afterwards but even when he went to 500 baht I said no and walked away. I know I can get it cheaper for somewhere else so I guess it was just a smart buisness move?

Then we went to a national park where there were 7 different waterfalls. I have many many pictures of them as well as a video of some monkeys fighting. They were only about 5 feet away from me. We got to swim in the waterfalls and slide down some of the rocks. We also got to jump from the top of one of the waterfalls which was a lot of fun.

We also ate lunch at a resteraunt that was directly infront of the famous bridge on the river kwai. We were supposed to take a historical tour of the bridge on the way back but couldnt due to time constraints. It is dissappointing because I didnt have my camera at that lunch so I didnt even get to take any pictures.

After that we went to the resort we were staying at for the weekend. The resort was only acessible by boat and the boat was basically powered by car's diesel engine which was just attached to a propeller. The resort was beautiful and we stayed in things that looked like tiki huts. We ate lots of thai food, explored a cave, visited a mon hill tribe village, and floated down the kwai river in life jackets.

On the way back we visited an elephant conservatory where we could ride elephants and watch an elephant show. I have many picture from that including a picture of elephant dung that the guide thought would be very funny to take a picture of with my camera.

We arrived back in bangkok at about 7 pm. I had to get some western food because my stomach was upset after the bus ride back. I was ready to try any thai food at that point so I got a pepperoni pizza. Most expensive pizza every by the way because the wheat, cheese, and pepperoni all have to be imported. It cost $17 usd for a large.

We then worked on our presentation for the officer of her royal highness princess maha chakri sirinihorn's projects until about midnight. I woke up this morning and got my clothes ironed and then we were picked up by a van driven by a palace guard. There was a sign in the window that said "official wpi delegation". I felt like it was a huge deal. I am sure to my Thai group partners it was even more important because the royal family here is so highly regarded. Our meeting went very well although I wish the presentation was a bit more rehearsed. We found out that on our first night in Sakon Nakhon (the NE province we will be going to) we are going to be staying in the princess's palace! I thought that was amazing. How many people get to say that they have slept in a palace before? Again no matter how excited I am, my thai group parters are so much more excited and their families are very very proud of them.

So on a not exciting side not I had bed bugs. They are terrible. I did some internet research on tropical bed bugs and now I am pretty much terrified to sleep in my bed. I had welts all over my leg but then they went away while I was in Kanchanburi. I slept last night in my friend Stefan's room from the netherlands. He has a single and I am going to sleep in that room again tonight. I had my thai group partner explain to the dorm staff about my bed bugs today and all they did was change the sheets and told me they would give me some lotion tomorrow. Not really the response I was hoping for. Although they would have to basically exterminate the whole room to actually get rid of the problem. I called my professors and they are going to have their contact at the school call the dorm staff tomorrow and ask them to get me a new mattress. I dont know if it will help though because those little suckers can even hide in the walls. Which my room has terrible ripped wall paper and I am guessing thats where they live. Apparently they jump out and have heat sensing antenas and hop around until they find someone to eat. Its pretty gross so hopefully something can be done about it.

Tomorrow we will keep working on our project and maybe things can finally slow down to a managable pace.