Saturday, November 7, 2009
Loi Krathong -- the lantern festival, similar to the festival of lights. But actually I went in expecting a solemn respectful holiday where people put candles in the lake. It was more like the NC State Fair on campus, packed with people, food, games, booths, and students trying to sell things. Some pictures can be viewed here
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
pictures for the past couple posts
Some pictures to accompany --
Train to Malaysia
Penang by Ferry
Mosque
School Bus
Tea Plantation in Malaysia, terraced farming
Koh Phangan on a boat on the way to Hat Leung
My incredible sunburn because I didn't ask Matt to rub sunscreen on my back
Waterfall (lack thereof) on Phangan
Koh Tao
During the day lots of fishing boats come and kill the corals
At a small waterfall in Khao Sok wearing "leechsocks"
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Train to Malaysia
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| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Penang by Ferry
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| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Mosque
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| From Oct 14, 2009 |
School Bus
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Tea Plantation in Malaysia, terraced farming
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Koh Phangan on a boat on the way to Hat Leung
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
My incredible sunburn because I didn't ask Matt to rub sunscreen on my back
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Waterfall (lack thereof) on Phangan
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
Koh Tao
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
During the day lots of fishing boats come and kill the corals
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
At a small waterfall in Khao Sok wearing "leechsocks"
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
 |
| From Oct 14, 2009 |
After Koh Pangan, we headed to Koh Tao, which provided us with incredible snorkeling. Even after going to the US Virgin Islands for a week, the marine life there was indescribable with words. So, we stayed there for a couple days and then left to go to Khao Sok National Park. We took a ferry to Surat Thani and our friend Tom from JGSEE came to meet us. It happened to be some Buddhist Holiday so the normally tranquil town of Surat Thani was bustling with decorations and festive floats. Monks sprayed water for good luck and we ate some food by the river. One of our dishes was fried frog. It tasted like chicken, but a little chewier. If I wasn’t told it was frog, I wouldn’t have noticed a difference.
We went to Khao Sok, it was nice there were some waterfalls and we went on a short hike the first day. We made great friends with the bungalow owners and he took us on a tubing trip for a great discount. We ate all our meals at this restaurant outside the park entrance that was moderately priced compared to the exorbitant prices for food in the tourist area. The only catch was it took the lady about one hour to prepare our food each time, so by the second day we asked for her phone number and we called ahead and placed an order. It was pretty funny, but worth the savings. After Khao Sok we took a bus to Phuket Island, tourist capital of Thailand. The bus was good because only in Thailand can you get some fried chicken served right to you without leaving your seat. Street vendors come on the bus at random stops and sell all sorts of snacks, food, and drinks, which makes your bus ride that much more comfortable. But actually this bus took a long time and we blew a tire in the middle of the ride, which set our arrival back by two hours. I used the bathroom at this nice lady’s house and she gave me two huge pieces of papaya for free. It was delicious.
When we arrived at Phuket we were immediately accosted by all sorts of tourist agents clamoring for our hotel booking. We stayed the first night at a touristy beach, went to some bars for Tom’s birthday, and then the next day Tom and Christina left to go to Singapore. Ricker, Matt, and I went to a less touristy beach, Hat Kata and Ricker surfed while I relaxed and swam a bit. After two days there, I returned back to Bangkok with Matt and finished our travel session. Although JGSEE would pay for us to fly up north the next week.
We went to Khao Sok, it was nice there were some waterfalls and we went on a short hike the first day. We made great friends with the bungalow owners and he took us on a tubing trip for a great discount. We ate all our meals at this restaurant outside the park entrance that was moderately priced compared to the exorbitant prices for food in the tourist area. The only catch was it took the lady about one hour to prepare our food each time, so by the second day we asked for her phone number and we called ahead and placed an order. It was pretty funny, but worth the savings. After Khao Sok we took a bus to Phuket Island, tourist capital of Thailand. The bus was good because only in Thailand can you get some fried chicken served right to you without leaving your seat. Street vendors come on the bus at random stops and sell all sorts of snacks, food, and drinks, which makes your bus ride that much more comfortable. But actually this bus took a long time and we blew a tire in the middle of the ride, which set our arrival back by two hours. I used the bathroom at this nice lady’s house and she gave me two huge pieces of papaya for free. It was delicious.
When we arrived at Phuket we were immediately accosted by all sorts of tourist agents clamoring for our hotel booking. We stayed the first night at a touristy beach, went to some bars for Tom’s birthday, and then the next day Tom and Christina left to go to Singapore. Ricker, Matt, and I went to a less touristy beach, Hat Kata and Ricker surfed while I relaxed and swam a bit. After two days there, I returned back to Bangkok with Matt and finished our travel session. Although JGSEE would pay for us to fly up north the next week.
In Ipoh, the Malaysian businessmen gave us a lot of beer before our Thai-bound overnight journey. The VIP bus did not, however, contain a bathroom. Much to our dismay, the bus driver refused to stop for the first hour, whereupon our kidneys were screaming in pain like five-year-olds on a road trip. Fidgeting nonstop, it only took but a second for us to jump off the bus, semi-coherent, and relieve ourselves at the first bathroom break.
We proceeded to get swindled in Hat Yai, when buying our tickets to Koh Phangan. I left my ATM card in the machine following the ride, took a shower at the travel agency, and then we paid for an express ferry ticket that didn’t exist. Some other travel company shuttled us off to another location and put us on a four-hour long ferry that sucked the vivacity out of our tropical island destination. We were unaware of the ferry’s duration until I asked the lady selling snacks for 1000% markups. I lost about $10 for all that it was worth.
Upon arrival at “party island,” we actually managed to find a decent, cheap bungalow in under 20 minutes, record breaking time. Considering the overwhelming anxiety spewing from the mouths of fellow passengers on the ferry of getting a room, we soon realized it was all talk. Exhausted from transportation, I ate a large portion of chicken fried rice and fell asleep. The morning provided some interesting surprises.
Our bungalow, situated on Haad Rin West (Sunset Beach), lay in the heart of mini-Tel Aviv. Every single passerby was chatting away in Hebrew. This baffled me. Signs for restaurants, shops, and advertisements were written in Thai, Hebrew, then English. Eventually, some Israeli asking me a question simply mistook us for fellow countrymen. Embarrassed, he quickly realized his mistake, but I spurted back some Hebrew. This was great and we started hanging out for a little while. When he found out we were from America, he became ecstatic. And then he asked if we had ever been to North Carolina. Shocked, I struggled to explain that I was from Raleigh. He loves North Carolina, especially I-40, and he even knew some local radio stations. I don’t really like I-40 or the radio stations, but this was incredible. He worked as a driver for the Dead Sea Scrolls when they came last year, and knew the area perfectly. When I told him I went to UNC, he knew exit 273A. Small world.
We took off from the developed part of the island in the morning, arriving at Koh Ma, apparently the spot to snorkel. A bit skeptical at first simply because we wanted to go to Bottle Beach, which I had read was the best beach, we compromised on Koh Ma because it was about half the distance. Taking the advice of the cab driver turned out to be a fantastic decision. The beach was really nice, but there was good food, cheap snorkeling gear, and an incredible reef just a five-minute swim offshore. The contrast between the reefs on St. John in the US Virgin Islands and in Thailand was sharp. Spilling with life, my mind experienced a visual overload. Remarkable.
The Full Moon Party is basically this place where thousands of inebriated people dance on the beach.
After recovering from the party, we went to see the waterfalls of Koh Phangan. At the first waterfall, there was no water. We expected to find water at the larger, more prominent waterfall only to be greeted by a ranger smiling and confirming, mai mee nam, (there is no water). Using our imaginations of the steep sloped rock formations bursting at the seams with water, the waterfalls were fantastic.
Koh Phangan provided all sorts of entertainment, besides the island’s drunken stupor, only in Thailand could you wake up hearing Thai, Hebrew, get breakfast and get offered two menus: The Thai menu and Israeli menu.
We proceeded to get swindled in Hat Yai, when buying our tickets to Koh Phangan. I left my ATM card in the machine following the ride, took a shower at the travel agency, and then we paid for an express ferry ticket that didn’t exist. Some other travel company shuttled us off to another location and put us on a four-hour long ferry that sucked the vivacity out of our tropical island destination. We were unaware of the ferry’s duration until I asked the lady selling snacks for 1000% markups. I lost about $10 for all that it was worth.
Upon arrival at “party island,” we actually managed to find a decent, cheap bungalow in under 20 minutes, record breaking time. Considering the overwhelming anxiety spewing from the mouths of fellow passengers on the ferry of getting a room, we soon realized it was all talk. Exhausted from transportation, I ate a large portion of chicken fried rice and fell asleep. The morning provided some interesting surprises.
Our bungalow, situated on Haad Rin West (Sunset Beach), lay in the heart of mini-Tel Aviv. Every single passerby was chatting away in Hebrew. This baffled me. Signs for restaurants, shops, and advertisements were written in Thai, Hebrew, then English. Eventually, some Israeli asking me a question simply mistook us for fellow countrymen. Embarrassed, he quickly realized his mistake, but I spurted back some Hebrew. This was great and we started hanging out for a little while. When he found out we were from America, he became ecstatic. And then he asked if we had ever been to North Carolina. Shocked, I struggled to explain that I was from Raleigh. He loves North Carolina, especially I-40, and he even knew some local radio stations. I don’t really like I-40 or the radio stations, but this was incredible. He worked as a driver for the Dead Sea Scrolls when they came last year, and knew the area perfectly. When I told him I went to UNC, he knew exit 273A. Small world.
We took off from the developed part of the island in the morning, arriving at Koh Ma, apparently the spot to snorkel. A bit skeptical at first simply because we wanted to go to Bottle Beach, which I had read was the best beach, we compromised on Koh Ma because it was about half the distance. Taking the advice of the cab driver turned out to be a fantastic decision. The beach was really nice, but there was good food, cheap snorkeling gear, and an incredible reef just a five-minute swim offshore. The contrast between the reefs on St. John in the US Virgin Islands and in Thailand was sharp. Spilling with life, my mind experienced a visual overload. Remarkable.
The Full Moon Party is basically this place where thousands of inebriated people dance on the beach.
After recovering from the party, we went to see the waterfalls of Koh Phangan. At the first waterfall, there was no water. We expected to find water at the larger, more prominent waterfall only to be greeted by a ranger smiling and confirming, mai mee nam, (there is no water). Using our imaginations of the steep sloped rock formations bursting at the seams with water, the waterfalls were fantastic.
Koh Phangan provided all sorts of entertainment, besides the island’s drunken stupor, only in Thailand could you wake up hearing Thai, Hebrew, get breakfast and get offered two menus: The Thai menu and Israeli menu.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
a brief time in malaysia
Going to Malaysia was a mostly impromptu idea and all the better reason to go. After a marathon session of finishing a final 20 page report, Matt and I set out on the overnight sleeper train to Butterworth, the land-side destination port for Penang island. Really, we sort of just aimed south and took the train as far as possible, without much clue as to what we might do or much background knowledge. I had only heard of Penang really as a place in Malaysia, I didn't realize it was an island, nor that it housed Georgetown, the second largest city in Malaysia, or really anything. But, we had several extra days before Matt and I planned to meet up with our other UNC friends who were still working and would meet us at Ko Phangan on October 4.
The train trip lasted a little over 24 hours due to some "brake" troubles. We bought a lot of snacks in preparation and enjoyed the first 6 hours. The first step of the train process was ordering food for dinner and breakfast. That was tougher than it sounds because I had to decide what I wanted for breakfast the next day, and like many english menus in Thailand contain hardly detectable subtleties in the language. For instance, fried noodle chicken versus fried small noodle chicken versus stir fried chicken with noodle, or curry chicken. These are all, of course, different dishes in Thai, but I can't read Thai, so I have to inquire the actual names of the dishes due to poor translations. I made friends with the attendant, who knew about the university I am attending in Bangkok, and we talked for a little bit until I ran out of Thai words and it got awkward. Unfortunately, we didn't book tickets in advance (poor planning) so our first choice of the second class sleeper in the lower berth (there's a window) was already filled.
On an aside, Thai people often use the word already in english to denote the past tense. For instance when something is sold out, it's "over already."
Therefore, we had upper berth tickets so just after dinner the attendants came around and set up the beds for the evening. Around midnight and Irish couple filled the vacant seats under our berths and were pretty quirky people, they talked obnoxiously for a long time, but it didn't bother me too much seeing as I had plenty of time to sleep, even if it was disturbed. At 6 am promptly I was fast asleep only to be awaken by the attendants shouting "Bangkok wake up, wake up!" and then they gave me my breakfast. I don't understand why we had to wake up at 6 am, but while living on a train you are subjected to the wills of random odd occurences. I realized why we had to wake up so early when 45 minutes later we arrived at the border between Malaysia and Thailand and I had to cross through immigration.
Crossing into Malaysia was only a bit intimidating. There were some funny signs about strict no admittance to "those who looked like hippies" wearing "khaki sandals, messy and unkempt hair, dreadlocks, torn clothing, or tie-dye shirts." It was pretty funny, especially considering there were many backpackers on the train that probably would fall into some of those cateogries. Although, I didn't notice anyone have any trouble at the border. Once we made it to Malaysia we hopped on a ferry to Penang island. It was late afternoon by this time, we ate some food, and found a hostel. A t the sound of the call for prayer, the streets instantly cleared and it was eerily quiet except the chanting through a loudspeaker heard throughout the entire city. The hostel was very inexpensive (~$2). We walked around town and went to "Fort Cornwallis," an old British fort.
Penang balanced was one of the most contrasting places, especially for Southeast Asia. First, it reminded me of Charleston, South Carolina. Apparently, before Singapore came into the British's hands, Penang was slated to become Singapore, and was the bustling trade hub of the region. But, once Singapore came around, the Brits neglected Penang and moved on to more strategic locations.
Regardless of Britain's economic intentions with Penang, the island contained a mix of England colonial architecture, Islamic influence, and Chinese everything. This was really weird. We walked through the city and if it wasn't Chinatown, then it was India town. The best part of all things in Malaysia was the food though. It wasn't Malaysian food that made it great, we had one meal of satay and it wasn't anything special. The Indian food there was outstanding and it was all really cheap for really large portions of deliciousness. We read up on some things to do for the next couple days in Malaysia before we were headed to Ko Phangan back in Thailand and decided we wanted to check out peninsular Malaysia so the next day we headed to the Cameron Highlands, a scenic agricultural area containing many large hills or mini-mountains known for among all things you would expect, tea and strawberries. This caused much confusion. We were in a tropical country, just about 5 degrees north of the equator, yet it was really cold outside and they were growing strawberries and tea. The series of small towns that comprised the Cameron Highlands were walkable and hitchhikable. We found ourselves among a surplus of Indian food options, all of which were delicious. One day we decided to go on a hike through the "jungle" which was also odd, because of the varying climate. Our map suggested the top of the "mountain" was only several kilometers, but it failed to mention the steepness of the trail. Doubtless, we were in a rainforest considering our bodies after 4 minutes were drenched in mud. The trail was steep and difficult, many times a rope was tied to a branch and a broken slippery rock face was all there was between us and the 80 degree incline. We found some British travelers along the way who were shocked about the trail and we hiked up to the top, to find it completely foggy and cloudy and we could barely see 50 feet, no less a nice view. The Brits thought the trail was hilarious and on the way back we hiked together and they made fun of an oncoming group of Indonesian tourists. The Indonesians began the hike an hour before sundown and were asking how much longer, the Brits were telling them "oh just five-ten minutes easy you'll be up at the top!" The Indonesians definitely had an hour or two left. At least they brought pots and cooking supplies.
After our hike we got in a cab back to our hostel, took a shower, did laundry and watched a movie. The next day we walked around the countryside, met some people, walked through one of the tea plantations, and saw some cool scenery at least. All the farming in the area is terraced along the hills, which was cool to see. It must be incredibly difficult to harvest though. Also, we found a tea factory, and had a free tour to see how their tea was made.
Malaysia was fun and nice, but for some reason, every meal was the best meal. It was mostly Indian food, but so good. I can't imagine what Indian food must be like in India, even though most of the Malaysians we encountered were Indian or Chinese. In transit we took an overnight VIP bus back to Thailand and we had three hours in Ipoh, Malaysia's third largest city. We went to a bar and met some friendly Malaysian businessmen, all Chinese, because I think the only people that would go to a bar in Malaysia are Chinese. They worked for Proctor and Gamble in Malaysia. They were extremely dissappointed to find out we had a bus to catch at midnight and we only spent 3 hours in their incredible town of Ipoh. I would've liked to stay longer, but we were going to meet our other UNC friends back in Thailand.
The train trip lasted a little over 24 hours due to some "brake" troubles. We bought a lot of snacks in preparation and enjoyed the first 6 hours. The first step of the train process was ordering food for dinner and breakfast. That was tougher than it sounds because I had to decide what I wanted for breakfast the next day, and like many english menus in Thailand contain hardly detectable subtleties in the language. For instance, fried noodle chicken versus fried small noodle chicken versus stir fried chicken with noodle, or curry chicken. These are all, of course, different dishes in Thai, but I can't read Thai, so I have to inquire the actual names of the dishes due to poor translations. I made friends with the attendant, who knew about the university I am attending in Bangkok, and we talked for a little bit until I ran out of Thai words and it got awkward. Unfortunately, we didn't book tickets in advance (poor planning) so our first choice of the second class sleeper in the lower berth (there's a window) was already filled.
On an aside, Thai people often use the word already in english to denote the past tense. For instance when something is sold out, it's "over already."
Therefore, we had upper berth tickets so just after dinner the attendants came around and set up the beds for the evening. Around midnight and Irish couple filled the vacant seats under our berths and were pretty quirky people, they talked obnoxiously for a long time, but it didn't bother me too much seeing as I had plenty of time to sleep, even if it was disturbed. At 6 am promptly I was fast asleep only to be awaken by the attendants shouting "Bangkok wake up, wake up!" and then they gave me my breakfast. I don't understand why we had to wake up at 6 am, but while living on a train you are subjected to the wills of random odd occurences. I realized why we had to wake up so early when 45 minutes later we arrived at the border between Malaysia and Thailand and I had to cross through immigration.
Crossing into Malaysia was only a bit intimidating. There were some funny signs about strict no admittance to "those who looked like hippies" wearing "khaki sandals, messy and unkempt hair, dreadlocks, torn clothing, or tie-dye shirts." It was pretty funny, especially considering there were many backpackers on the train that probably would fall into some of those cateogries. Although, I didn't notice anyone have any trouble at the border. Once we made it to Malaysia we hopped on a ferry to Penang island. It was late afternoon by this time, we ate some food, and found a hostel. A t the sound of the call for prayer, the streets instantly cleared and it was eerily quiet except the chanting through a loudspeaker heard throughout the entire city. The hostel was very inexpensive (~$2). We walked around town and went to "Fort Cornwallis," an old British fort.
Penang balanced was one of the most contrasting places, especially for Southeast Asia. First, it reminded me of Charleston, South Carolina. Apparently, before Singapore came into the British's hands, Penang was slated to become Singapore, and was the bustling trade hub of the region. But, once Singapore came around, the Brits neglected Penang and moved on to more strategic locations.
Regardless of Britain's economic intentions with Penang, the island contained a mix of England colonial architecture, Islamic influence, and Chinese everything. This was really weird. We walked through the city and if it wasn't Chinatown, then it was India town. The best part of all things in Malaysia was the food though. It wasn't Malaysian food that made it great, we had one meal of satay and it wasn't anything special. The Indian food there was outstanding and it was all really cheap for really large portions of deliciousness. We read up on some things to do for the next couple days in Malaysia before we were headed to Ko Phangan back in Thailand and decided we wanted to check out peninsular Malaysia so the next day we headed to the Cameron Highlands, a scenic agricultural area containing many large hills or mini-mountains known for among all things you would expect, tea and strawberries. This caused much confusion. We were in a tropical country, just about 5 degrees north of the equator, yet it was really cold outside and they were growing strawberries and tea. The series of small towns that comprised the Cameron Highlands were walkable and hitchhikable. We found ourselves among a surplus of Indian food options, all of which were delicious. One day we decided to go on a hike through the "jungle" which was also odd, because of the varying climate. Our map suggested the top of the "mountain" was only several kilometers, but it failed to mention the steepness of the trail. Doubtless, we were in a rainforest considering our bodies after 4 minutes were drenched in mud. The trail was steep and difficult, many times a rope was tied to a branch and a broken slippery rock face was all there was between us and the 80 degree incline. We found some British travelers along the way who were shocked about the trail and we hiked up to the top, to find it completely foggy and cloudy and we could barely see 50 feet, no less a nice view. The Brits thought the trail was hilarious and on the way back we hiked together and they made fun of an oncoming group of Indonesian tourists. The Indonesians began the hike an hour before sundown and were asking how much longer, the Brits were telling them "oh just five-ten minutes easy you'll be up at the top!" The Indonesians definitely had an hour or two left. At least they brought pots and cooking supplies.
After our hike we got in a cab back to our hostel, took a shower, did laundry and watched a movie. The next day we walked around the countryside, met some people, walked through one of the tea plantations, and saw some cool scenery at least. All the farming in the area is terraced along the hills, which was cool to see. It must be incredibly difficult to harvest though. Also, we found a tea factory, and had a free tour to see how their tea was made.
Malaysia was fun and nice, but for some reason, every meal was the best meal. It was mostly Indian food, but so good. I can't imagine what Indian food must be like in India, even though most of the Malaysians we encountered were Indian or Chinese. In transit we took an overnight VIP bus back to Thailand and we had three hours in Ipoh, Malaysia's third largest city. We went to a bar and met some friendly Malaysian businessmen, all Chinese, because I think the only people that would go to a bar in Malaysia are Chinese. They worked for Proctor and Gamble in Malaysia. They were extremely dissappointed to find out we had a bus to catch at midnight and we only spent 3 hours in their incredible town of Ipoh. I would've liked to stay longer, but we were going to meet our other UNC friends back in Thailand.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
brief note
i will write about this later but for now this is where i have been/going since i finished my classes
just returned from 3 days in malaysia (penang and the cameron highlands), now at koh pangan, tomorrow i am going to snorkel in ko tao for several days, then we will go to surat thani.
afterward probably going to khao sok national forest, then phuket and then perhaps singapore.
just returned from 3 days in malaysia (penang and the cameron highlands), now at koh pangan, tomorrow i am going to snorkel in ko tao for several days, then we will go to surat thani.
afterward probably going to khao sok national forest, then phuket and then perhaps singapore.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
I haven't updated for awhile, but I have actually been doing schoolwork, as opposed to the past couple months, haha. Starting the 26 of September I am going to be traveling around until the third week of October, so there is a final push to finish my classes and get everything in my project together.
Siam Ocean World.
One of my good friends at JGSEE works part-time at Siam Ocean World (the biggest aquarium in Southeast Asia) haha. Somehow he got all of the UNC students in for free and we got special treatment and had an exclusive tour and got to participate in some of the extra things for free (including the fish-eating-your-foot massage). It was a pretty awesome time, and incredible that he got us all in for free, we calculated all the random stuff we had to do and to bring 8 people would be about 80 dollars a person. He had been talking about bringing us for a long time, so that was really nice of him.
After actually doing some work for a week, on Friday I was asked to go to Burapha University in Chonburi province with some of the Thai students in the Student Association of JGSEE to recruit people to come to JGSEE. It was pretty hilarious, bringing a random white guy to tell a bunch of people to come to this school, considering none of the students at Burapha could speak English. JGSEE hired a van and 4 of us embarked on this quest, and I figured we would be going to some kind of career fair, but we get to the university and I am told we are just going to walk around and find random students. So we went to the engineering building, the likeliest place for people to be interested in this grad school, and started handing out fliers. Unfortunately, many of the students we kept talking to were majoring in Hotel Management or something completely unrelated to Environmental or Energy fields. It was pretty ridiculous and poorly planned considering JGSEE paid for us to go on this trip. After only about 45 minutes of approaching people, the organizing guy from the academic office was hungry, so we quit and ate lunch. Then we went to the beach for 3 hours and came back to Bangkok. I doubt anyone we talked to actually will apply to this school, but it was a fun trip. JGSEE also paid for us to ride on one of the banana boats in the ocean, which is sort of like tubing but with four people in a line. I have two exams left, and then my semester is pretty much complete.
Siam Ocean World.
One of my good friends at JGSEE works part-time at Siam Ocean World (the biggest aquarium in Southeast Asia) haha. Somehow he got all of the UNC students in for free and we got special treatment and had an exclusive tour and got to participate in some of the extra things for free (including the fish-eating-your-foot massage). It was a pretty awesome time, and incredible that he got us all in for free, we calculated all the random stuff we had to do and to bring 8 people would be about 80 dollars a person. He had been talking about bringing us for a long time, so that was really nice of him.
After actually doing some work for a week, on Friday I was asked to go to Burapha University in Chonburi province with some of the Thai students in the Student Association of JGSEE to recruit people to come to JGSEE. It was pretty hilarious, bringing a random white guy to tell a bunch of people to come to this school, considering none of the students at Burapha could speak English. JGSEE hired a van and 4 of us embarked on this quest, and I figured we would be going to some kind of career fair, but we get to the university and I am told we are just going to walk around and find random students. So we went to the engineering building, the likeliest place for people to be interested in this grad school, and started handing out fliers. Unfortunately, many of the students we kept talking to were majoring in Hotel Management or something completely unrelated to Environmental or Energy fields. It was pretty ridiculous and poorly planned considering JGSEE paid for us to go on this trip. After only about 45 minutes of approaching people, the organizing guy from the academic office was hungry, so we quit and ate lunch. Then we went to the beach for 3 hours and came back to Bangkok. I doubt anyone we talked to actually will apply to this school, but it was a fun trip. JGSEE also paid for us to ride on one of the banana boats in the ocean, which is sort of like tubing but with four people in a line. I have two exams left, and then my semester is pretty much complete.
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| From Sep 18, 2009 |
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