So to wrap up my first week: Wed was another relatively non-eventful day at work except that I finally met my advisor and had a short talk with him. Apparently I'm synthesizing this natural product that hasn't even been biologically tested. Ah well, we can't all do exciting chemistry I suppose. At least things are laid back around here.
Thursday was our day long language and culture class held here at CRI. We led all 8 of us here and even got off at the right bus stop. It was defintely intense learning everything from the basic hello/thank you to counting and asking directions. I've absorbed enough to be polite and order things like chicken fried rice with water. haha.. After that we even got a mini-presentation from some of our advisors about our weekend trip to Ko Samet - they've been absolutely incredibly helpful in planning even looking up sites for bus and ferry times for us. Thurs night a bunch of us went to see Batman Begins at MBK. Before all movies here they play the national anthem and everybody stands while they show a bunch of pictures of the king. Very interesting. They have an incredible amount of respect for their monarchy system. I've only run across it once or twice but at around 8am and 6pm, public places will play the anthem and everybody stops what they're doing for a bit to stand. Other then that, a decent movie that caused our group at least to laugh a lot.
Friday was a hectic day as I actually did a reaction at work! Plus there was a seminar (boring!) then around 3:30 a camera crew showed up and we had to go to lab and pretend to work. Apparently they were filming for the news due to the fact that the princess' birthday is next month... Then we had to run out at around 4pm to head to the eastern bus station. From there it was pretty easy to get our tickets, connect with the other 4 students and get going to Ban Phe. Arrived around 9:30pm and with our large group were just about enough to justify a boat out to Ko Samet. A gorgeous night on the water with some lightening to the east. So nice just to get out of Bangkok! Wendy was sick so her and Matt kindof slowed the group down and it's likely that they won't be going on too many more trips with us. Walked from the pier about 20 min to the 2nd largest beach Ao Phai and luckily one of the bungalow places was still open with 3 bungalows. I shared with Hannah, Matt and Wendy had one as did Travis and Kirk. Doug and Elliott walked further down and pitched tents on the beach. Hannah, Travis, Kirk and I headed back out and just hung around on the beach for a few hours taking a night swim and just enjoying the water. To bed too late - mosquito netting and a fan saving the day in our bungalow! The thunderstorm started around 3 or 4am and it was a huge downpour. Doug got pretty soaked as he didn't put the rain tarp on his tent. Rained a little on Sat morning but slowed down by 8:30am
I wandered down the beaches with Travis and we found the boys' campsite. Scrambed on the rocks between beaches and were dripping sweat by the time we got to the 4th beach. Headed back up towards the bungalows and took time to swim out to a floating pier for awhile. The water was gorgeously blue and clear with white sand beaches that you could walk out from. The whole group met up again at 10am and headed south on our mission to find more secluded beaches. Took a taxi (pickup with seats in the back) all the way down to Ao Kai which was recommended. Turned out however that there was no longer affordable accomadation there - only 15,000b a night bungalows!! ridiculous. So Matt and Wendy took off back to the more toursity part of the island while the rest of us walked further south - basically rock climbing our way to the most southern beach. Not too much of a beach but the only reef on the island was there so lots of snorklers. Some bungalows but still over our cheap price range. However a restaurant and hammocks on the beach convinced us it would be a decent place to spend the night. We stashed our bags up in some bushes and took off swimming for awhile. Doug had decided to walk from our original beach and eventually we saw him get to Ao Kai so we decided to swim over there. Distances are deceiving sometime and it was definitely a good swim. Got there and all of us just chilled out for an hour or two under this great tree. Ao Kai was beautiful and no one was there since no sane person would pay so much for a bungalow (even one with a pool !) Then we had to swim back - against the tide. Kirk managed to step on a sea urchin and get spines in his foot and I managed to get pretty impressively sunburned despite the spf 45 sunscreen. So somewhat injured and pretty tired we hung about on the southern beach and had several meals at the outdoor restaurant. The people there were great - awesome food and they even helped Kirk's foot when we showed them what happened. The plan was to sleep in the hammocks which I attempted until about 1:30am when it started to rain. Luckily we had Doug's one person tent and Elliott's two person tent. So we managed to squeeze 2 people into Doug's, 3 people into Elliott's and Travis who was still up reading saught shelter underneath the restaurant roof until the rain stopped. Nothing like being sweaty/covered in salt/most of us sunburned... Means it was a good weekend!
Sunday we ate again before catching a boat from the beach all the way back up to the main pier. Doug and Elliott had to show the rest of us up by hiking all the way back (took them almost 3 hrs). The rest of us were injured by sun and just wanted to hang in the shade. Went to the main beach and found some chairs. Set up camp and timed our forays back into the sun carefully. Ran into Matt and Wendy who decided to go back a bit earlier then us. We caught a 3pm ferry back to the mainland and managed to get on the 3:30 bus! Back in Bangkok we stopped at MBK and put away some serious amounts of Swenson's ice cream before heading home for showers and recovery.
So overall awesome intro weekend! Can't believe I'm back at work again. Ran another rxn today. It's hard in lab sometimes with Oi as our conversations are somewhat limited and most of the time I can't quite understand when she's talking about lab stuff. She's so sweet though, wish I spoke thai! All the students and our Thai partners are taking a trip together this weekend to a homestay and firefly watching. Goodtimes all around
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