Goodbye Singapore, Hello Thailand!

Sawatdee Kah from Thailand! We arrived a little over week ago (I've been slacking on the blog posting, I know) and so far, it has been a totally different experience. Of course the language barrier was apparent from the beginning. But other than that we also noticed a clear difference in personalities of the people in general. Thailand is known as "The Land of Smiles," and for good reason. Nearly everyone is smiling here, even when they are upset. Right from the start, we noticed that the students here at Mahidol University were very welcoming. They even had a ceremony for us on our first night here. Outside of the college atmosphere, life in and around Bangkok is generally much more humble than Singapore was. Last weekend we went on a canal tour, and got to see firsthand how the lives of the lower classes here are so much different from what we are used to. There were many shack-style houses with people bathing in the river. But as we saw in Malaysia as well, these people were so happy and beaming with excitement as werode by on our long-tailed boats.

A view of the canal from a bridge. You can see smaller patches of those scary green plants we charged through all across the water.

Speaking of the canal tour, that was an interesting and terrifying experience all around. The boats seemed pretty rickety, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be surviving that trip. I was already scared of the boat in general, and then we came across a thick patch of water weeds reaching up to about my shoulders (you can probably see them in the picture). Of course I figured we would be going around them, when all of a sudden the boat driver just hit the gas and sped straight through the plants. Naturally, this did not help to ease my fear, but I finally got over it and began to really enjoy the tour. We took multiple stops along the way in different places, including a lotus farm, a nice place where they make delicious rice snacks, a beautiful orchid farm, and my personal favorite- an orchard. All of the stops were very nice, but the orchard was especially cool because they had fresh fruit waiting for us when we got there, and I discovered two new amazing fruits: pomello and jackfruit. They were so fantastic, and naturally I proceeded to buy exhorbitant amounts the next time I found myself at a market. Also at the orchard we got on the back of a tractor that was even more horrifying and fascinating than the boats, and took it to go see a rice field. The tractor was different from anything I've ever seen in that the driver had to lunge to either side in order to turn it. He especially loved to make incredibly sharp turns at high speeds, and make us think we were about to be thrown off the cart and into the river. But despite how scary it was, it was also a lot of fun.

Some of my friends passing us on their boat. Clearly they weren't as scared as I was, because I was wearing a life vest and holding on for dear life.

I think I should probably go now, but I have so many other exciting adventures to talk about from Thailand, so hopefully I will be able to give another update soon.