Arrival

Everyone I know who's studying abroad writes on a blog, so I guess I'll give it a try.

I left out of LAX on the first of January and arrived in Bangkok on the third. The first flight was 14 hours long, so I watched four movies. The layover in Taipei was two hours so I walked around at the airport, noticing the "no drugs or you'll get capital punishment or life imprisonment" signs. Upon arriving in Bangkok, there was supposed to be someone there to pick me up, but I couldn't find him. It was early in the morning, like 3 am, and I was really tired so I just looked for a taxi instead. For a 35 minute drive (Bangkok is so big, I don't even know how long it would take to drive across it), I saw close to 30 7-Elevens on the way. You can pretty much see at least two at a time. Anyway, at the end of the taxi drive, the driver turned down a dark narrow ally. (At orientation, they warned students to make sure that the taxis they got into are legit with some kind of decal. I was too tired to even know what was going on though.) So while we were driving down the ally, I knew I was going to get robbed and lose all my luggage. I was just thinking to myself, "Damn, I'm screwed. Now what? What can I do? Can I bargain with the guy to allow me to keep my passport and a little bit of cash?" But as it turns out, he didn't jump me or steal anything of mine, except maybe that he ripped me off on the cab fare. I was very happy.

So I checked into the guest house, where I stayed three nights. (I needed to stay at a hotel while I was looking for an apartment. Finding housing is real easy though, nothing like Berkeley.) I stayed in a room with another EAP student so the cost of the hotel was only 500 Baht per night. I think the exchange rate is close to 33 Baht per dollar. So it comes out to about $15 a night. This hotel was pretty nice, so I'm sure there are other places that are cheaper.

I found an apartment, but I'll talk about that later.