First Views of Thailand

I left for Thailand on January 7th, 2015 at 8:48am. I met my group at the airport, we said our goodbyes to our families, and we went on our way. We arrived in Thailand about 30 hours later and we arrived in our home city (Phichit) about 5 hours after that, it ended up being a total of about 35 hours of traveling time.

There were three flights total, the first flight was from Salt Lake City, Utah to San Francisco, California. This flight was only two hours long! Our next flight was San Francisco, California to Tokyo, Japan. This flight was a total of 10 hours long, on the planes they feed you a lot more then someone expects, they fed us two meals and a snack that was almost as big as a meal with lots of beverages, but the plane food tasted awful and fills you up. Our third flight was from Tokyo, Japan to Bangkok, Thailand! This whole plane flight I was motion sick and dehydrated, so I didn't eat anything for hours. We arrived in the airport and I still wasn't feeling good, so while my group grabbed my luggage I was sitting against the wall of the airport. While I was sitting there a group of Thai's were passing me and giving me a weird look because I was sitting on the ground and I am American...

After we finally arrived in our city it was January 9th at 5:30 in the morning so all of us haven't gotten very much sleep in awhile. We then needed to adjust to Thailand time which is 14 hours ahead of Utah!

We got settled in our rooms which are next to the school; we decided our rooms are Hagrid's hut because we teach at a school that was designed off of Hogwarts. That day we met the main coordinators of the school, Tang and Ake!

Right outside most places we put our shoes by the door when we go inside, but some stores and restaurants we do wear our shoes inside. This is where our rooms, kitchen, and bathroom are.

The city we live in is small compared to other cities in Thailand so there are not very many Americans. Close to none, other than us, actually. People here are very nice, so when we drive or bike around the city they love seeing us! Thailand is known as the land of smiles :D :), everyone is always smiling and waving to us! When we do see them we say "sa-wad-dee-ka," put are hands together, and bow our heads, that means hello or sometimes they know some English and they think it is so funny to say hello to us in English! :)

When we bike around the city we see a ton of stray dogs, every block there is at least two dogs laying on the ground or walking around the area. A lot of the dogs are also the same breed, which is weird. Quote from another person in my group, we were talking about how many people were in the city of Phichit and we thought Ake said "There are 500 people in Phichit," and then someone said "500 people, more like 500 dogs!" He made a mistake and corrected himself that there are actually 500,000 people in this city, there is quite a difference. :P

Street food is everywhere! The first street food we had were spring rolls and roti. The spring rolls we had were spicy, but when we were eating them the first two I had I could tell they were spicy, but not to bad. The third spring roll I had was really spicy because it was at the bottom of the bag and it got covered in a lot of sauce, it burnt my mouth and that is when I realized how spicy some Thai food was going to be. The other food we had was roti, so far we have described roti as a thicker crunchy crepe, they are so good! :D

Thai drivers are courteous bad drivers, someone told us there are driving rules here in Thailand but no one follows them, when Gop (A driver in Thailand that picked us up from the airport) or Ake was driving us it was scary, but they are such nice drivers. Thai's don't stay in the lines, they drive all different speed limits, pull off in random places, etc. They have no road rage, if they were to get in a car crash they would never get mad at each other.

When Ake was driving us back to our school everyone needed to use the bathroom, so when he went fast going over bumps he heard us all say "awhhh" then we hear him in the front say "awhahaha, sorry, haha" in a quiet English Thai accent voice

I have enjoyed it here in Thailand so far! :D