Alrighty, I'm gunna cheat a bit on this one...
Instead of writing a whole brand new post, I figure I might as well just put up the report I have to do every month for my club, a general overview of my April here, so voila! Read away...
Itʼs coming down to the last few months of my exchange now, however I'm trying to not letting them slip away wasted. April was on of the busiest months of my trip so far with a weekend trip to Bangkok, Thai new year, and my Southern trip. It was one heck of a month, and a pretty good way to end off my summer vacation here.
First came my trip to Bangkok. Now, I have been to Bangkok before with my second host family, and again with Rotary on the Central Trip. This time however was a little different. I got to go with just a few friends and myself! My host father is really good about understanding that as exchanges students, we want to see as much of Thailand as possible while we're here, and was therefore okay with me taking this trip on my own. I went with an American AFS student as well as one of our good Thai friends. What was super cool though, was that during the long, hot bus ride, I sat next to a monk the whole time who spoke pretty decent english. We chatted most of the way there, and holy moly, this guy has had a crazy life! He has worked in all parts of Thailand, in Burma, Japan, Vietnam, Pakistan and even Israel. He did loads of odd jobs here and there, but generally ended up working as a cook in most of those countries, which he received a certificate for while in Thailand. He's been all over the place! He certainly had a lot to say about life. So we fiiiinally got there and navigated our way through an absolute maze of a bus terminal, but managed to make our way out and meet another Thai friend of ours who was letting us stay at his place for the weekend. He is an old rebound who went to America 4 years ago, and now lives in a Bangkok condo with his sister. We met up with 4 other people while we were there from all over the world (I Love exchange!!) and started our weekend. It was full of markets, malls and exploring the city. Totally by luck, at one of the malls we went to, there was a huge Cosplay festival going on, and hundreds of Thai kids and young adults walking around in their favourite Manga, Anime and cartoon characters. It was really a cool thing to see, and something I wasn't expecting at all. We also hit up Khaosan road, which I heard was a must for tourists. It wasn't really at all what I was expecting, and kinda disappointing, but still glad I went and saw it. 60 Baht for a plate of Paht Thai is just outrageous!!!! At the end of the weekend, my Thai friend and I got some seats in a passenger van to head back to my city, as the rest of my friends were going to continue with their travels over Songkran, something I wasn't about to do, as we received and email from the our Chairman threatening to send anybody found in another city for Songkran home immediately. Not quite worth it.
Next up came Songkran. That was incredible. It was the most anticipated holidays of the year here, and it didn't disappoint. The three day new year celebrations were crazy, and had way more people come out for it than I thought. People from all over the province came into my city to celebrate, so the whole place was completely jam packed for the whole thing. People in the backs of trucks, people on the street, in their homes, hanging from balconies and everywhere in between. I spent the majority of it at my friend's Aunt's house in the city (since I live outside of the city). We had our barrels set up on the side of the road, our water guns holstered, and buckets filled to the brim. Every car, motorcycle, truck, cyclist and pedestrian that walked by, they got drenched. It was impossible to go even a single block in the city without somebody bombarding you with water. One of the days, my host dad took my brothers and I and few friends in the back of his truck to drive through the hoards of people and join in some more of the festivities. That was a blast. It was kinda weird, but I got an odd Christmas feeling over Songkran, more that when Christmas was actually here. Just the very apparent sense of community and family, and everybody just in their holiday cheeriness and all that good stuff. It was a super strange sensation.
The next big event was our Southern Trip!!! I friggen LOVED it. It was the first time I had been to the south, and it was stunning. Over the 10 day trip, we went to Krabi, Phuket, Koh Lipe, Trang and Pang Nga. Everyday we had something to do, and a decent amount of free time to go and walk around the cities. From snorkelling, to rock climbing, and speed boat rides to sight seeing, we got a really fun taste of the south. My favourite place had to be Krabi though. It was settled right on the ocean, with mountains and islands all around. It had enough tourist business to bring a good amount of tourism companies, but not so much that is was just farangs everywhere (Phuket...) and a sizeable area to walk and explore for the 4 days we spent there. It would certainly be a place I would want to return to if/when I end up coming back here. It was really interesting to see the difference in cultures between the very Conservative north, and the (relatively) liberal south. Things like bikinis and hand holding in public is a very rare sight in the north, even in touristy places, but down south, it is a lot more commonplace. Much to my own surprise, I was actually able to distinguish a fairly noticeable accent difference as well, and could even see slight physical differences in people from the south. It was one of the trips I was looking forward to since I knew I was coming here, and would go back in an instant if I had the opportunity. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far.
As far as my day to day life and how all the learning is going… meh. Being out of school and spending so much time with other exchange students during April, my Thai didn't progress a heck of a lot. It's also kind of a crappy situation at home for that as well. I live with my mom, dad and two brothers, and my dad really wants his sons to learn english… That really doesn't work to my benefit, because nobody in my family really speaks Thai to me, and they want me to speak english back to them. I was pretty bummed about that, because I was really hoping to learn a lot from this family because they are much more sociable that my other families, but then I got here and only speak in english. Luckily school starts up again soon, and I'll have 8 hours a day to practice the language. My relationship with my mother also isn't really that hot. I don't exactly know why, but she just has not taken a liking to me. It's not that we fight or anything, it's more of just her not acknowledging that I live there… She communicates to me through her sons, and very rarely speaks to me directly. It can be kinda awkward with her sometimes. My brothers are great though, and my host dad has a better idea of what we want as exchange students than most of host families that any of us have had. It's going fine overall, but just from time to time, I kinda run into some lonely situations here.
Life is still great, and I'm Loving it all. Home is ever more on my mind, and that crazy jumble of emotions is really starting to sink in. I'm gonna be in for an interesting next couple months! Talk to you again soon.
Much Love,
William Cole
