Day Trip To Ayutthaya

Last weekend the whole group took a day trip to Ayutthaya, a city about an hour and a half from Bangkok. I was excited about seeing some ancient temples but mostly I was looking forward to visiting my TA, P'Wit's house. His family has a farm there and they graciously welcomed 15 rambunctious UNC students for a day of cooking Thai food and hanging out. We took a bus to a another bus to a van and arrived in Ayutthaya. We walked around an outdoor food market and I followed P'Wit around "helping" him get supplies for the lunch that we would prepare at his house. Mostly I just smiled at the sellers and helped carry the fresh produce he bought!

 

We rode another 2 buses and arrived to P'Wit's house hungry! We immediately started making preparations for the feast. There were stations for cutting limes, peeling garlic, cutting up herbs, killing frogs, slicing mango and pineapple...oh wait, did I say killing frogs? Yep. You read that correctly. One of the main food items on P'Wit's farm are frogs. P'Wit's dad recruited some of the boys to go down and kill the frogs he had captured. They were in a sack and they were told to whack them with a wooden plank until they stopped hopping around. 

 

Cameron taking a whack. 

I have always loved crabbing off our dock at the beach and finding clams to disect on the beach so I was a little disappointed to have been left out of this activity, but have no fear! I got plenty of interaction with the frogs later on in the meal preparations...I helped P'Wit butcher them so they were in "good pieces for frying". It was much harder than I expected though and cut up about 2 in the time P'Wit did 5. Nevertheless, it was a good experience and I now can proudly say I know how to properly butcher a frog for frying.

 

P'Wit demonstrating how to butcher the frogs.

  

After a hard few hours of preparations we enjoyed a fantastic meal of Somtum (papaya salad), fried frog, muscles in pineapple curry, rat curry (yes...rats), and for dessert: sticky rice and mango. It was by far the best meal I've had in Thailand and I had so much fun visitng P'Wit's home. 

 

John, P'Tom, and I.

 

The group chowing down.

After the meal we said goodbye to P'Wit's family and headed to see some ancient temples.

 

A happy group after a great day in Ayutthaya. 

Limpini Park and Chinatown

Sunday was another full day of exploring. Ty, Christian, and I set out at 9:30am to check out a massive market called, Chatuchak Weekend Market before it got too crowded and hot outside!I've been to the market a few times before but keep returning because it is THE place to shop in Bangkok. Check out the link I attached and you will see that you really can find any and everything at this market.

After a few hours at the market we decided to take the sky train over to Liberty Monument in downtown Bangkok and then walk to Limpini Park from there.

The park is a 142 acre green area and we were pleasantly surprised by its beauty. Immediately upon entering we headed straight for the paddle boats and hopped in one with two duck heads on it!

Our calm paddle around the lake was interrupted by a monstrous monsoon and instead of heading for the shore to dock, we opted to wait the storm out under a little cement walking bridge. While it didn't provide perfect cover, it was an amazing place to watch the storm pass.

 

We soon found that we were not alone under the bridge though and kept a constant, sharp eye on the MASSIVE lizard/alligator creatures swimming and crawling 15 feet from us. Ty found an article later that quantified these beasts and you can read about them here. While our time at the park was not what we envisioned it was nonetheless memorable!

After that we headed over to Chinatown in Bangkok and got a delicious meal.

I haven't written much about the food here and that's just because I could go on for hours about it. Our meal last night was especially delicious though and we all splurged, coughing up a whopping $10 per person instead of the usual $1.

We went all out and ordered prawn cakes, a whole grilled snapper, crab meat curry, and blackpepper prawn stir fry. 

We made it back to our apartments at 8pm after a full 11 hours of exploring under our belts! I just want to absorb as much of Bangkok as possible in my time here and I definitely look forward to the weekends when we have time to spend the whole day out having small adventures and finding our way around this beautiful city.

KMUTT Field Trip

Friday August 10th was a jammed packed day full of activities our orientation leaders at KMUTT planned. The first stop on our "cultural tour of Bangkok" was the Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha. It is a big park-like area filled with elaborate temples and statues. It was very busy Friday and filled with thousands of tourists. There aren't many foreigners in our suburb so it's always a shock to go downtown and be surrounded by Westerners. We had a really nice tour guide but since there were 57 people in our group, it was hard to hear all that he was saying so mostly I just looked around and enjoyed the sites. We shuffled into and out of wats and admired the beautiful architecture.

Here is a view of the side of one of the buildings. I cropped it out but there are about 15 other people bending over on the left trying to get the same photo I took :) I guess the long line of intricately carved figures called to everyone's camera lense, not just mine! 

Another awesome Buddha that we saw. 

Emily, Mary-Katherine, and I at the Grand Palace.

P'Tom, P'Wit, and I hanging out. 

The second half of the day was spent at the Ancient City. It was a really neat area and we rented bikes and tried to explore as much as possible in just 2 and a half hours. It was a nice change of pace because instead of being pushed and shoved in huge crowds and out in the sweltering heat with no escape, we were able to breeze along peacefully and check out all the sights at our own leisure. 

Keith cruising along. 

Picture I snapped while riding along on our bikes!

Great view from the top of a mini Angkor Wat. 

The group being silly at the top. 

It was a great day and I'm glad the KMUTT orientation leaders organized it all for us!

A wonderful week in Koh Tao

Wow. I don't even know what to write about my trip to Koh Tao because it was all amazing!

We left last Saturday afternoon and after a few delayed trains, buses, and ferries we arrived on the beautiful island of Koh Tao Sunday at 4pm, just in time to start scuba class! Reade, Keith, Ty, and I got dive certified and had an amazing time together. Our instructors were Gordon, from Ireland, and Bodie, from Australia. They were both so nice and helpful. The first day of class we just watched some videos and got familiar with scuba lingo and how to use the equipment. That night we were somewhat baffled by the plethora of Western people and food choices. We opted for the "buy one pizza get one free" option at a restaurant nearby and all had a delightful meal. It had been months since we had the delicious Italian cuisine! On the second day of scuba class we went into really shallow water with all our gear and tested out breathing under water. It is one of the coolest sensations I've ever experienced! We all absolutely loved it. On the third and fourth day we did 2 dives and we were all giddy because it's amazing to be able to be so close to the coral and see everything down there for an extended period of time. Ty was my scuba buddy and every so often I would tap him under water and we would do an underwater happy dance because we couldn't believe our eyes. On Thursday I still hadn't had enough of diving so I signed up for 2 more dives! The whole group was supposed to go but a lot of my friends were actually quite sick because of a nasty virus that spread throughout the island. It only lasted 24 hours for most though, so it wasn't too horrible for anyone. On Saturday Ty, Mary-Katherine, Emily, Reade, Adam, Keith, and I all headed to another island, Koh Phangan, for a fun night. The trip home Sunday was quite grueling and once again took 24 hours but we were all good sports about it even though we were exhausted. We arrived home at 730am Monday morning and it has never felt so good to be back. We had an amazing week and I look forward to our next adventure!

The beach we lounged at for a whole week! Right in front of Sairee Cottages where we all stayed and did our dives.

 Keith and I lounging on the deck of the boat after a dive. 

The girls and I before the Full Moon Party!

The crew hanging out in Koh Phangan waiting for the sun to set.