whirlwind of thailand

few more of these pics...http://www.flickr.com/photos/55907373@N00/

UNC THAI TALK

soooo i am seeing the value of UNC more everyday-- it can give you friends all over the world. my awesome friend ja invited me to have dinner with her and the people she studied abroad at UNC with last semester. they were so welcoming and excited that im going to be here for year...i still cant believe that myself.

i had my first dinner in a nice thai restaurant called, good evening..heehee.. we ordered tons of different dishes and all picked off of them to mix with our rice, just like you do at a chinese place. i really like the thai omelet, shrimp in tamarind sauce, and red curry. so goood! it sort of freaked me out a little to see the fish they ordered look like they had just plucked it from the ocean and placed on the plate. but i tried some! im trying to try everything. i always feel bad if i dont like it though. im trying to be more honest about saying, hm...im not a big fan of that, instead of saying, yeah it's ok...and my friends reading my feelings on my face and saying, just say you dont like it sherri..heehee..

TOUR THE LAND

i then got to spend the night at ja's. it was my first time meeting a thai family. her mom is the cutest thing ever created, and sat on the couch smiling at me quietly the whole time. she speaks english, but apparently is very shy around farangs. her dad was sweet and chatted with me about how much thai's enjoy keeping their kids at home with them even when they have grown up. ja sort of half smiled at that comment. heehee..

the next day we had green curry with chicken and rice for breakfast. apparently in thailand they eat the same things for most meals. ja thought it was weird when she was in the states and had only toast for breakfast. its not enough to fill you up until noon, she said. i didnt mind the curry for bfast, it was really good, but i perfer my yogurt and granola..

ja was my tour guide the whole day, i was so blessed! she took me first to her university. we had to take the river boat there, which is a common form of public transport. we went on the tourist boat full of europeans. she said she takes sometimes if she is running late, so she was already telling me about every site before the tour guide with a muffled accented voice could try to talk about it.

her school, tamasat university, was our first stop. it was sweet cuz it was right next to the river. they had all these announcements painted on boards, like we had at UNC, and one of them was announcing stage play auditions. ja told me that she did a stage play a few semeters ago. i asked her if it took a lot of her time, and she said it did. i thought she would say because she had to practice her lines and such. but instead she said it was because she had to run all these laps everyday, do push-ups and sit-ups and get in really good shape. i was like, what? for a play? she said that it was important for them to get their energy up so that the audience sitting in the back could feel the same amount of energy coming from them as the people in the front. wow, i dont think we do that in the states do we? high-energy performance?

then we meandered to the grand palace! sadly, my camera ran out of battery, so i couldnt take any pics. but ja was generous enough to take lots of pics for me which she said she will send soon...it was sooooo HOT when we were there. so we tried to go quickly before the sun sapped us of all our energy.

the grand palace is where the king lives sometimes, and used to live all the time. so the first thing i thought, to be honest, was gaudy. there was gold everywhere and shiny gems plastered all over that. they also had a temple there where there were some young buddhist monks doing a ceremony so we couldnt go in. ja told me to stay away from them because they arent allowed to touch women. i kept wondering what would happen if i tripped and fell into one accidently. could be interesting.

then we went to another temple called wat po where they have the largest reclining buddha in thailand. it was sort of intimidating because it was so big and its half slanted eyes would just stare at you. then at the temple ja did her buddhist rituals of bowing, and i sat and watched. then when we were leaving she gave money for them to make renovations to the roof. she wrote her name on a roof tile and added it to the stack already there. she said they do that so in their next life they will live in a nice house.

then we shopped and shopped in the markets. ja helped me baragain with people for my things, or i guess she baragained for me really. im pretty bad at it. i even got a king shirt! its a yellow polo shirt with the king's emblem on it. everyone wears them on monday. so i wanted to be prepared. im excited to wear it..

6 BUCKS FOR A MASSAGE...

two days ago i got my first thai massage! thailand is famous for their massage skills, so i wanted to test it out. i was headed to a higher class place i found online, but then as i was walking to the skytrain i saw one right next to the station advertising massages for 200 baht, which is only 6 dollars. my friend Praew had told me earlier that was a good price to pay. so even though it didn't look very classy, i decided to go for it.

i was led to a room upstairs and given a huge button-up shirt to change into in this curtained off area with two mattresses on the ground. i put it on and was just standing there with only the shirt on feeling awkward. then the masseuse came up and she was like, "oh!" and grabbed these gigantic brown pants that were lying on the bed and gestured for me to put them on. i think they could have fit a sumo wrestler, but i felt better after i tied the drawstring and had them on.

my masseuse was a little lady who probably knew five complete sentences of English plus a few random words. the first part of the hour though all she did was try to speak in English to me. i would try to speak back and ask questions, but she would just respond in thai and look confused. so i kept laughing while she massaged cuz she didnt understand me, and i didnt understand her, but we kept trying to understand each other.

i had never had a real massage before, so i cant compare it to anything, but this one was pretty sweet. im not sure how the thai massage is really different, but it was weird cuz she was so small, but still could make me feel so relaxed. so it was a fun time, i think i might try out different places too. ja told me that people get addicted to massages though, so i shall have to watch myself...

tonight im going to a church service here in bangkok. i hope i dont get lost! im leaving an hour early just to make sure i find it. my sense of direction still hasnt improved over the past week. oh well, always makes things an adventure...