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.

From Sep 18, 2009

kanchanaburi via photos

From Aug 28, 2009

We slept here on a rafthouse the first night in Kanchanaburi. The photo was taken at 5 am, because we had to wake up really early to catch the bus to Sai Yok National Park. If you've ever heard of "The Bridge Over the River Kwai," this is the River Kwai.

From Aug 28, 2009

hahaha. Welcome to Thailand.

From Aug 28, 2009

Somehow we found this really nice place to stay on the river in Sai Yok National Park for really cheap. This is probably the nicest it gets, and it was on a raft on the river (same one, just further north).

From Aug 28, 2009

We stumbled across a bat cave, but this one is not just an ordinary cave. The smallest mammals (smallest bats) in the world live in this cave, and here are some (maybe??). It's pretty difficult to take a picture in a cave.

From Aug 28, 2009

From Aug 29, 2009

From Aug 29, 2009

We went to the Tiger Temple. It's supposed to be a rehabilitation center for tigers, but there have been rumors of the charity's illegitimacy. I think it's more of a tourist money grabber than anything, and all the tigers are chained up. Maybe I am just not really a fan of animals in captivity, but it was fun to pet the tigers.

More to come later.