Thursday, May 17, 2007
May 18, 2007 1:54 AM

Today, Greg and I got up early to take a taxi to our CI site. The traffic was so bad that it took us well over an hour to get there. Taxis are actually very very cheap here. One Canadian Dollar is worth about 31 Baht. The base fair is 35 but they charge so little its crazy, you can get just about anywhere in the city for 3$ which is amazing considering the size. You can’t even get into a cab for that price back in Canada. Anyhow, the place that we were headed to was a school for kids with mental disabilities. We handed the driver our little card that has the address in Thai on it and hoped for the best. We did eventually arrive somewhere that kind of looked like a school, since we were late, no one from our group was to be found, no one spoke any english but the office staff kind of figured where we were supposed to go because we obviously weren’t Thai. We eventually did meet up with everyone upstairs where all the students were gathered for their morning meeting. I was scared, I had no idea what to expect since I had never really dealt with anything like this before in my life. In the morning we met our contact person and she gave us a tour of the facility. Its actually a very diverse facility, they have so many different activities for the students. I even met a world gold medallist for table tennis in the Special Olympics. We ate lunch with some of the other people who were volunteering at the facility, Thai food is quite spicy, but I’m actually a big fan. In the afternoon, I was in their computer lab where the kids were learning to type in Thai, I found it very confusing, probably because their character set is so different from ours. Since Thai is a tonal language and one “word” can have many meanings. There are 5 tones and I don’t think I will be able to master them all anytime soon. After we had wrapped up at the school, we all jumped into taxis and headed to the Thailand International School where we had supper and a guest speaker on Thai Culture. We finished up around 8:30 and Greg and I jumped into a cab and headed for home, it was a bit of a drive and we both took turns falling asleep. Bangkok at night is just like you May have seen any large Asian city at night. There were a few thundershowers in the evening that wreaked a little havoc with the wireless internet, but we made it work. Tomorrow is the 18th, Miranda and I’s 8 month anniversary; its going to be our longest celebrated anniversary because of the time difference. Its comforting knowing that I’ll be home again in less than a month. Oh and Nickleback is playing in Halifax for Canada Day; so we’re planning to go to that concert; I’m excited.


Lecture Notes
May 17, 2007 11:16 AM
Thai Culture Prep.
The head - Majority of the population of Thailand is Buddhist and therefore believe in reincarnation. The top of the head is referred to as the Kwan, Thai People kiss with the nose, kissing on the lips is not done and is completely impolite.
In the Thai Culture, there is no such thing as a secret, gossip is king.
Reasons to Smile - Thai People smile when they are uncomfortable, are unable to understand your questions or simply do no know the answer.
Use a low voice, loud voices mean you are angry.

Vocab words
Females end the sentence with “Ka”
Males end the sentence with “Cup”

Don’t throw things because its considered very impolite.
Why = Bow with hands together.
To Why or Not to Why?
Who Why’s who? Younger person Why’s younger people first. So basically Why Whoever Why’s you first. Why not?

If for some reason you can’t “Why” just a quick bow of the head should suffice.
So, you take a Krap in a temple, especially when monks are present; but not for the king. Its all Good™
Chai Dee = Good (Hearted Person)
Chai Dum = bad
Chai Ron = hot hearted, aka you want to get things done now; the doer.

Feet are considered completely not good at all. Never use your feet to gesture or point to anything. Feet should never be placed on a desk; and you should never step over your food. Also considered bad to step on the threshold of a doorway.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007
May 17, 2007 11:23 AM

Yesterday was a pretty easy kind of day. Getting up around 8am, I took my shower and went downstairs where there was a breakfast already waiting for me. We had cheese and butter on bread with some salami. There was also an assortment of fresh cut fruits. My host family has a hired driver as well as a house maid 3 days a week. Today, the driver took us to our location for the day. My first impressions of the area were pretty much as I suppose I would have expected; Lots of things are rather sketchy. We were at some kind of church for the day where we continued our Thailand orientation with some Thai Lessons “Sawa Dee Krab!” accompanied with a bow called a “Why” is the formal greeting to be given. There are 3 different levels of the bow to be used in accordance with whom you are speaking. The Higher the position of the hands with the bow, the more important the person. In the afternoon we started out “Re-Entry” Curriculum to help us all readjust to life outside Up With People when we get home. One of the activities was covering the 5 stages of loss; I am decidedly already in the last stage, acceptance. I know this trip is going to end and I know exactly what I am doing when I go home so I’m not in the same position as too many other people. At Home that evening, Greg and I spent some time with our host brother playing twister, and NHL 2007 on his playstation. Thinking back over the day; I realize now that I should never complain about any job that I get in Canada, because some of the people here do jobs that are under far worse conditions. Construction workers for example, who work outside in the 35°C+ weather doing hard manual labour.

Breakfast, Thai Swedish Style
Its great to have a chauffeur
Definitely Tropical
Water Water everywhere, this street is always flooded.
Carpooling, Thai Style. Very Common



Its definitely an octopus, but it tasted like chicken pork.
Prepare for Re-Entry!!!!
A typical Thai market

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Somewhere Some Time Some Place

So we boarded our flight for Bankok on a huge British Airways 747. I was sitting near the front of the back section, there were lots of empty seats so I ended up moving around so I could get more leg room. There were a couple of movies playing including The Chronicles of Narnia, Casino Royal, and Children of Men. I took in the first two of them before I resigned myself to just closing my eyes and listening to some music. The food was actually pretty good I’ve got to say, they even served us some red wine ( ...but don’t tell anyone I had a sip ok?). We landed In Bangkok at around 3:30 in the afternoon. The humidity hit me immediately after I got off the plane. We grabbed our bags and headed out to catch our bus. We were immediately confronted with the reality of the aggressiveness of Thai Taxi drivers, all out to take us where we did or didn’t want to go. The heat hit me as soon as I stepped outside, and I was sweating profusely moments later (not helped by the fact that I was wearing long pants and a jacket and carrying extra baggage). It was about an hours drive into Bangkok. Its a Freaking Huge City, with over 11 Million people, thats like a third of the entire population of Canada in one city. From the looks of things, there are some insanely poor “slums” here, but just a bit further down, you’ve got the fanciest of the fancy 5 star hotels, so its quite diverse. A few other neat things that I noted were that, here they drive on the opposite side of the road and all of the steering wheels of the cars are on the right hand side and the toilets are really weird. We had our allocation meeting and later met my host family. I’m staying with a Swedish Family this week who’s son plays # 93 for the Detroit Red Wings; small world eh? They have a nice place inside a gated “compound” community. I’m staying with Greg again this week, they guy I stayed with in Leipzig. I have a 7 year old host brother name Hugo. Its going to be interesting.

Monday, May 14, 2007
2:57:07 PM (Copenhagen Airport)

Today has been crazy. I got less than 3 hours of sleep last night and today has been just crazy; in a bad way. I packed up my things this morning, needless to say, my host family is getting lots of stuff this week because I hadn’t the room to bring lots of things because of the luggage restrictions, only one piece of carry on luggage and one checked, although most of us had to check through an piece of UWP luggage as well, but they paid for that; I got one of the merchandise boxes full of t-shirts. In the morning, we had the final Thailand preparations and rehearsal for the Thai songs because we don’t have a show for two weeks now. Once again, sitting alone at the front of the bus, I ate my sac lunch and the plane tickets were handed out. I’m flying British Airways to London, Heathrow, and then a 12 hour long haul to Bangkok. I’m getting close to home every day, but now I am also going further away, it feels like UWP should have ended this week and we’d be on our way home. Right now I’m sitting in the Copenhagen airport, having gotten through security, and checked my bag, despite it being overweight by almost 3 kilos. They have yet to announce our departure gate, but I’ll be heading in that direction shortly because the flight is scheduled to leave in less than an hour. We’ll see how it goes, I hope I have internet in Thailand.

9:02:18 PM (London Heathrow Airport)
Well, Its all good. The flight from Copenhagen to London was not as bad as I thought, no one died, in fact I got a lot of things sorted out. I’m actually quite tired, so I took out some British Pounds and bought a few souvenirs, and some coffee at StarBucks. Ok, it wasn’t just any coffee, it was a Venti Caramel Macciano with extra caramel, hazelnut flavoring, and an extra shot of espresso, to make a total of 4. It was all good.



UWP gets on the plane!



They're not Chips, their Crisps in England...
Yay Finally some Real Coffee!




Yay for Airplane Food!











Driving on the Opposite side of the roads

Sesame Street Live in Bangkok!


Ok, this is actually a Thai Toilette, you kinda have to squat and then use the bucket of water and the scooper to "flush" it.