One thing you should never bet against in Thailand during the rainy season is rain. When it rains, it doesn't pour, it floods. The rainy season is upon us. And while it has been the rainy season the duration of the my stay in Thailand, the past few days felt like the entire Pacific Ocean was being poured out onto Bangkok. Yesterday, I didn't even realize how wet my shorts were from standing in the rain for a minute at most until I felt my cell phone and saw a flashing screen. It's working now though.

Speaking of things running like clockwork in Thailand, besides the rain, I forgot to mention the Bat Caves last week at Khao Yai. I can't believe I omitted it, because it was one of the most fascinating events of the entire trip. At dusk, precisely when the sun descends from the horizon, bats emerge from caves by the thousands, maybe even on the order of hundreds of thousands. I have never seen so many bats. They all fly in a single line, and they are so densely packed that it looks like somebody took a black marker across the sky. Coming from all directions the bats stay together leaving military style from the cave, and then after fifteen minutes, all the bats have left the caves and they disperse throughout the night preying on all the annoying mosquitoes. It's a pretty good deal, and I just couldn't believe how exact the rangers were in discussing the bats' release time. Against the sunset, it makes for quite a sight.

I had my chemistry exam today and it was actually pretty easy, but I did end up studying quite a bit for it. Before the exam was the longest solar eclipse of the century across Asia, unfortunately it was at 7 am, I didn't know about it until 12 pm and apparently it was cloudy and rainy. I was asleep, but that's okay.


Over the weekend, I decided to stick around Bangkok, and I did some catching up on studying for my upcoming midterms but also our research project on building-integrated solar photovoltaics. But on Saturday night a group of us had a lot of fun going out to dinner, and then we saw a Thai jazz band, and experiencing the madness of Khao San road. I had the best Indian food I've ever had in my life, I couldn't believe it. We had mutton curry and chicken tandoori and roti and it was a great meal.


I am not sure why the picture was documented after the meal rather than before, but you can see the relics of animal bones and clean plates.



Since it is exam time around KMUTT, and most of my Thai peers are taking 6-7 classes, midterms are very intense. The Thai undergraduates seem to do schoolwork all the time, without much time to do anything else. They are in school from early in the morning until 5 pm nearly every day and then have homework. So when midterms roll around, it's crazy to witness all of the coffee shops and study areas packed with students. Yes, this happens at UNC, but I think the Thai students have much more difficulties considering they are taking about double the courseload of a UNC student and don't seem to ever take breaks. I don't think I would be able to be a regular college student in Thailand. Also, everyone is an engineer basically, and they barely even have opportunities for study in the humanities.

Speaking of school, I received a weird, and kind of funny email from the UNC Students' advisor in Thailand. I don't think it's a Thai thing, I'm hoping that maybe something was messed up in the translation...


Dear Christina and all UNC students,

Thank you for your message and sorry for late reply since I got a strong diarrhea these last few days and so I'm just back to work today. I asked P'Neung to get in touch with K. Parichart (P'Nok) of the International Relations office to arrange you the ID card 2 weeks ago to get them by mid-July as previously informed. I will contact her myself today again and will try to get them for all of you by* this Thursday** or at most next Thursday*, since normally they make the ID card every Thursday at the IT office. I'll keep you inform asap.

Thank you again for your kind assistance in keeping me update on the UNC students status. Please also provide me by e-mail the progress on your respective capstone, as I mentioned several times, the weekly progress report of the capstone should be quite short since it aims at providing information to Ajarn Rich and I.

With best regards,

Ajarn Savitri



Last night I watched Thailand play Liverpool in soccer to a draw, which was cool. It was pretty good for Thailand, perhaps somewhat embarrassing for Liverpool. But, the ridiculous part ended up being that on TV it looked like all the fans were wearing Liverpool jerseys (the game was played in Bangkok). They cheered when Thailand scored, but I guess Thais expend their national pride elsewhere.