Weather, Money and Scams

5/1/2014

Hi All,

I understand that this is a day late but last night for dinner we had extremely spicy Thai seafood Bolognese, so hot that our Thai chaperone, Chan, was unable to eat it at all. Due to this I spent the night in bed and was unable to write a blog.

I'm lucky that this was in the evening as my day was jam packed full of exciting adventures.

We started the morning off with breakfast at the College of Music. The place is so amazing, wall length glass windows all around over looking amazing green trees, we have come to a conclusion that the room reminds us of the Cullens house off Twilight. Having breakfast there the last two days and then a 'fancy' al e carte dinner there tonight is the best way to start and then finish a fantastic day.



After breakfast we had a very brief Thai language lesson. This was tricky sometimes as they pronounce their 'c' as a 'j' and their 'b' as a 'd'. I personally think I found it a little easier than others as I translated the words into Māori due to them having very similar pronunciation to each other and some words are actually the same just different meanings. Some sayings I learnt are Khor Tod = sorry or please depending on the situation and I learnt Hong Nam = Toilet, which is very useful. One added note about Thailand which I did not expect and not sure if I like it is that public toilets do not have toilet paper, you are to take your own, borrow or wait until your home. Even in the hostel I'm staying in the cleaners come around every second day and they give you one roll of toilet paper then, so it's 1 roll every 2 days, I'm learning to be conservative that's for sure.


With being in an air conditioned room all morning we were unable to get an understanding of the 33 degree Celsius heat that was occurring outside the room. This heat did hit us full on when we went to visit the Elephant Ground and Zoo. I have to be honest I did not like how the zoo keepers treated the crocodiles, kicking them, dragging them around by their tail and poking them with sticks. On top of that their show of 'crocodile wrestling' wasn't that good but I have to admit I was comparing it to Steve Irwins live show I saw a good couple of years ago.

Seeing the elephants were amazing, my friend Matt and I tried to get a photo with the elephants, we went through the ordeal of having the trunk wrapped around us and on our heads to finish with the Thai saying constantly "tip, tip, tip for the elephant" so Matt and I handed over 20baht each later to find no photos at all were taken.

We put the experience down to something we will always remember and 'you live and you learn'.

Talking about money it is so cheap here. To give you an understanding the other night we went out to what we were told was 'the best pad Thai in Bangkok', we got there and a full meal was 80baht each. $1NZD = 25baht so 80bath = $3.20.

Today 6/1/2014 was another amazing breakfast at the College of Music.

After breakfast we got straight onto a bus and headed to Mahasawat Canal. Here we went up and down the river stopping off at Orchid Farms, Lotus Farms, Rice Cracker Making and making our own traditional Thai lunch.

The Canal was not what I expected at all. I expected a nice quiet peaceful experience and though this canal trip was still amazing it wasn't like from the films where in Italy it's nice and quiet, we had an extremely loud motor going full speed at the back which you could hardly talk over and the water was so dirty there were bottles and plastic wrappers clearly littered throughout it but all in all it was still one of the best times of my life. While waiting for lunch we went on the craziest tractor ever where the man actually has to jump off and run beside it to turn sharp corners. Lunch was the best part of the day for me as I learnt so much from the Thai students with us. Aroy Mak = Very delicious, and Em Low Kha (not sure of spelling on that sorry) = I'm full.

It is currently 2.37pm and we have free time until 6pm when we have our 'Fancy Dinner'. Keep and eye on Facebook as I'll be posting photos constantly now.

See you Tomorrow
Anna xx