Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Whitewater rafting and a foiled attempt to donate blood

So it's already August! The summer is almost gone... We spent this past weekend on a trip planned by the Chulalongkorn Thai students. Left incredibly early on Saturday and began what became almost a 6 hr minivan ride replete with flat tire to our destination near Pitsanalok.

Once there we checked into our 'resort' which actually was pretty swanky - bungalows with ac/tv/fridge/showers - everything! Hannah picked that time to catch whatever fever has been going around and that Kirk and Doug already survived so she was out for most of the trip. The rest of us were walked over to eat lunch and then get ready for the whitewater rafting. We all expected it to be tame floating down the river - considering most of the Thai kids can't swim and tend to get afraid of things.. but we were pleasantly surprised!

The group split up into 2 rafts. With full helmet/life jacket ensemble we figured we'd have to try to get hurt. The 5 of us that hang out were all in one raft plus about 4 or 5 Thai students. Most of the Americans took up rowing positions as all of us had been rafting before. Despite commands being yelled to us in Thai (sometimes was confusing whether we were supposed to row faster or stop and hold on for example) we showed up the other raft. About 3 people sat in the middle at a time and whenever the Thai kids rowed they insisted whoever was in the middle hold on to their life jacket during the rapids! The current was strong and the water pretty fast from recent rains. Half the fun at the beginning was dodging trees and tree branches which tended to be in the middle of the river indicating you can probably only raft during the rainy season.

After a few 'warmup' rapids we got to a series of 'real' rapids were actually pretty impressive including a couple of meter drops and 200m long sections of rocky whitewater. Definitely a couple of times where we got knocked around but we never lost a crewmember. Only once, after hitting suddenly a rock that came out of no where, we lost one of the 2 river guides who totally flew out the front. The rest of us mostly managed to get jarred into the person in front of us or into the boat.

At any rate, towards the end we had the obigatory jump out of the boat for awhile section. The current was still impressively fast so we had a good time even though the river wasn't quite as nice as the one in Kanchanaburi. Had a few times where floating thai students (they all did jump in!) would request a 'rescue' and one of us would grab the back of their lifejacket and kick them in closer to the shore. Hilarious! Just as we got out of the river and were rinsing off, it started pouring and wouldn't stop until late saturday night.

Needless to say the rest of the evening was Thai style vacation (ie eat, take pictures, relax, play cards, relax more). Good thing that all of us like to read! The almost ludicrous thing was that the only thing we did was eat and sleep and then eat and then endure another 5 hr van ride... ah well. such is life.

Sunday one van left early and got back into Bangkok about 2pm. Kirk, Travis, Elliott and I requested a drop off at the weekend market to finally complete some of the dreaded shopping! Even with a light drizzle the place was as busy and claustrophobic as ever. Three hours later I emerged exhausted, probably dehydrated but victorious in finding presents for all the crazy couples getting married and most of my friends. That meant I was free to return to my room, shower, and crash.

So since then, not too much has been happening. Trying to increase the pace here at work to have something to present and write about. Thailand is just not the right place for successful LDA chemistry! Looks like this friday we might go check out Thai boxing at Limpini and hang around a bit for the weekend. Time to recover and save money for the Cambodia airfares...

And i forgot the blood donation bit! On Monday everyone came in all excited since apparently there was a blood drive that was going to occur over in the convention center. We all headed over around 10:30am to attempt to be nice and give blood. Doug and Elliott got in fine and had a race with all of the army guys giving blood - totally beating them of course. Unfortunately I couldn't give since I'm on antimalaria medicine! Dangit! Most of the girls were out either for not weighing enough (that would be under 45 kilos!! hence my feeling like a giantess half the time) or being on their periods, so we waited around for the guys. Met a lady from the 9th floor (cancer research) who was super friendly to us farangs and even tried to adopt us and have us call her 'mama.' Absolutely hilarious - especially when she gave me all the free snacks even though I didn't give blood and some vicks vapor rub-esque multipurpose salve. (reminds me of kidnapper in Plovdiv, Bulgaria!)

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