So I set off on my journey on Thursday 10.20am from Heathrow and arrived on Friday 8th at Suvarnabhumi Bangkok airport. Evelyn (a friend from university) and I then got a taxi to our hostel which was actually really lovely seeing as it was only £12 a night, bargain! The rest of the day was pretty much a write off; we had a quick look around the area and of course fitted in some green curry but we were far too jetlagged to function properly!
The hostel in Bangkok Silom District - 'Take A Nap'
Saturday 13th July
We visited Lumphini Park which was right down the road from our hostel; it is said to be the Central Park of Bangkok. It was surreal that this lush area was in the middle of crazy, polluted Bangkok and it almost made you forget where you were. The park was full of lakes, terrapins, fountains, cat fish and elephant shaped trees!
After Lumphini Park, we made our way over to the Grand Palace. The three words I would use to describe the experience would be: hot, unbearable and amazing. It was such a hot day, reaching 40c, and walking to the palace was stressful to say the least. The amount of people who were trying to con us on the way saying 'palace is closed', 'come with me', 'feed the pigeons' (don't ask) was ridiculous. But we finally got inside and it was better than I remembered it from a few years ago.
In the evening we decided to go for a big night out on Khao San Road. It was brilliantly crazy. I can't count the number of times that someone tried to sell me a fried scorpion on a stick; i'm all up for immersing myself in Thai culture, but the Thai's don't even eat those, only the drunk tourists! We had an awesome time drinking vodka out of buckets and Chang.
Sunday 14th July
Hungover with major sunstroke, we moved to the Ambassador Hotel for the orientation which was fun as all the ETA's were staying there. We just chilled out, had naps and went to the rooftop pool - its a hard life in Thailand...
Monday 15th/ Tuesday16th July
This was the start of orientation. We had a big conference where we got to meet up with all of our mentors from our schools around Thailand, watch some Thai dance and have countless free buffets. We started our teacher training which was a serious crash course (learn how to be a teacher in a day and a half) but it wasn't too bad and we got to meet people who would be living in our area.
Tuesday was manic. We had another few sessions with our teacher trainer and then we were shipped off to our province at 2pm. I had a lovely 4 hour wait at Bangkok bus station, waiting for my 12 hour night bus to Nakhon Phanom. Actually leaving my friends to travel with a stranger to north east Thailand was scary and very overwhelming but the journey was fine and the rep from my school bought me food approximately every half an hour I was with him. I ended up with 6 drinks, a fish curry, two bags of pineapple, a bag of melon, two boxes of Thai cakes and some sticky rice... I wasn't even hungry.
There were many stressful times in Bangkok, to name a few...
- Being taken out of Bangkok by a taxi driver when we asked to go to Khao San Road
- Being on a road with no people only wild dogs looking at you like you are a steak
- Being harassed to go to a ping pong show (ew)
- Our hotel room door being wide open when we came back to our room in the evening
...but it was definitely an incredible experience, and I got to meet so many great people.
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