New Years and Exploration

The past few days have been really good! Finding a gym was a day long affair. It took me 3 hours to find it! Then it took me 20 minutes to walk back get changed and then I spent an hour at the gym. Overall that little trip probably took 5 hours. I would have done so much better if I knew more Thai but I guess I'm learning. Recently, I made friends with a lot of the Chula university students staying in the same dorm as me. Most of them are masters students and around 23- 26 years old but I couldnt tell at all. I thought they were younger than me. On December 30th I went to a place called central world. Its a huge department store but really its the size of an entire mall. Outside of it is where they have the biggest new years eve celebration in Bangkok. All of the different beer companies had a part of the courtyard. They all set up a stage and have very popular Thai bands playing. They compete for customers basically. That was interesting and we walked around a bit. Then the two thai students that I was with wanted to take me to Koh San Road. Its the most western and touristy place in Bangkok. It was really kind of dirty though. There were bars all over the place and lots of restaurants. We walked though and basically watched all the western people making fools of themselves. Its bad enough when they come to Thailand and dont know the language or culture but then they are just really obnoxious. I saw western people yelling at the Thai cashiers because they cant sell alcohol after midnight. The western people couldnt understand them and were just getting really mad. It is seen as very immature to get mad in Thailand and thai people are often not very direct when they are upset. Bascially the westerners were embarrassing themselves but I am sure they didnt know it.

The next night was new years eve! One of the same thai students and others wanted to go out for new years. They didnt want to go to central world because it would be too crowded. So first we went to a park that was on the Chao Praya river. It was really suay ( beautiful in thai). We then took a tourist river boat and I got to see the Bangkok skyline. From there we went to a thai restaurant that was right on the river. They ordered the food and I am not even sure what I ate. The menu was all written in Thai.

They decided for the count down that we should go somewhere. They didnt want to go to Central World because it would be too crowded. So we went to Koh San road and sat in a bar. The bar was pretty nice. We sat upstairs and there was a porch overlooking the street. We sat there until it was about 11:50 and then walked down to the street where there was a countdown area. After the count down ( by the way ALL thai people know how to say happy new years in english) we went to a club. We ended up coming back to the dorm around 2:30 am. That day we rode in a bus, tuk-tuk, and taxi. I dont really have a great sense of direction in Bangkok yet but I will figure it out sooner or later.

There is a new student here from the Netherlands. His name is Stefan. Today I went to get lunch with him at MBK and we walked over to Central world where we got a pitcher of beer and sat and talked for a while. I am glad I have people to walk around Bangkok with.

All the other WPI students will be arriving in about 3 days! I know that they are going to ask me to show them around and I am excited to do it!