It's been a while since the last post, but don't think that Thailand has subdued me. This past weekend we headed out for a beach adventure with our UNC professor, a trip that my skin was dreading. Luckily I had the Beach Boys to get me through.
Departing from the university at 7:30 we traveled by songtaew (a pickup truck with two rows facing each other in the back), city bus, SkyTrain (an above ground metro), then bus again to get to Bang Saen. Along the way I found a vendor selling 6 inch waffles that I couldn't pass up. Of course as I'm eating them on the platform for the SkyTrain a security guard yells at me (in Thai) and my guess was that I shouldn't have been eating there. I quickly packed them away.
Bang Saen is a beach that isn't frequented by many Westerners so we stuck out even more than usual, as if that was possible. We rented 12 chairs and umbrellas for about $10 total for the day then just relaxed eating food, reading, playing Frisbee, and swimming.
A quick note on the "swimming": the water felt hotter than the air, giving the impression of floating in a pool of urine. There were oil buoys about 400 meters off the beach, protecting us swimmers from. . . well, everything. Despite these minor drawbacks the beach was a blast. Dan and I were sneak attacked by some Thai kids who for some reason believed they could get away with splashing us. Put me up against someone my age and sure, I'll run away. But if you're half my age and don't speak my language, you're in for a world of hurt. It was really fun though and I'm pretty sure I had just as much fun playing around with them as they did with us. We even taught a few how to play Frisbee.
After a perfect game of Ultimate Frisbee played on the beach exposed at low tide we headed for dinner and walked the town. The next day we visited a Thai Buddhist temple, a fish market, and a Chinese Buddhist temple, all of which were impressive in their own way. Not to take anything away from the temples, but there was something about just walking around such a local market where everyone seemed to know everyone else (no, not just because they were all Thai) and the products seemed so fresh. Maybe this is just a result of me being landlocked for 18 years of my life.
All in all, the weekend turned out great. I'll try to post some pictures on the blog.
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1 comment:
i can't believe you guys got bumped to business class.... amazing!! keep up the writing, i love blogs! just one more unneeded distraction for me in internet world... ha :)
-ashley
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