First Day

What one word could sum me up right now? Tired. In fact, three words do it better...very, very tired. 48 hours ago I left Portland for Chiang Mai. One layover in Japan lasting for about an hour and a half, then another layover in Bangkok for 6-7 hours. That one was really hard. I decided that the best way to get used to the time change was to stay awake as long as possible until I arrived in Bangkok at 12 pm local time and sleep in the airport until my flight sometime after 6 am. Well, a good idea in theory, but practice was more complicated. You see, it turns out I can't really sleep in strange airports on random benches with strangers all around while I clutch my bags to my chest and legs. Instead of sleeping I spent most of the time in a sleepy daze. Even sleeping pills couldn't put me out. Therefore, by the time I got onto my hopper flight to Chiang Mai I had slept a grand total of 3 hours when you add all the little 15-30 minute periods together. Luckily I was able to sleep for an hour on that flight.

I arrived in Chiang Mai, collected my bags, and went out to get a cab to BABSEA house. I got some great advice from a fellow traveler (this amazing fellow who I chatted with for a couple hours. He was SO smart. He was a physics college professor when he was younger, made a fortune on Wall Street, is currently getting his PhD in linguistics, studying Thai languages, and he installs operating codes, etc. for MRI machines around the world). Instead of relying on taxis that would randomly select a price to charge, I got a metered taxi that took me to BABSEA house for a metered fee of 110 Baht (rate of exchange is about 33 Baht/1 Dollar). When I arrived at BABSEA at a bit after 7:30 am, I was met with one of the coordinators who is a law student here in Chiang Mai, Muan, who showed me around the house and then took me to the apartment (about a 15 minute walk away). I dropped off my stuff, brushed my teeth, washed my face, changed my shirt and shoes, got a quick dish of chicken and rice from a little cafe below my apartment, and headed out to a building associated with Chiang Mai University where all our orientation activities are held.

I managed pretty well throughout the day. I was fairly pepped up by my arrival and didn't start to feel really tired until after lunch. For lunch we ate at this delicious restaurant down the road from our orientation location (I'm blanking on the name at the moment for some reason) where I had the most delicious pad thai I have ever eaten. It was phenomenal. I ordered pad thai and bottled water, all for 60 Baht! Amazing! After lunch though I started to feel really tired and even fell asleep for two whole minutes during a closed eye imagination exercise. We ended around orientation for the day around 4:30 pm and didn't have anything scheduled until 6:30 when we had thai language lessons. I came back to my apartment and showered, which rejuvenated me as nothing else could. I have to admit that our shower sucks more than you could imagine possible (think trickle with most of that water leaking out the sides), but after a long day in the heat and humidity here nothing can feel better. I felt so good! Thai language lessons were really fun and I've written out all the pronunciations phonetically, so I can study later and be ready to practice my Thai in the general public.

Some general comments of Thailand:

1. It is HOT. Not just hot, but HOTTTT! And not only that, but humid. It's really the humidity that gets me. I could stand hot weather of 90-100, but with such a high degree of humidity too it is a killer. Luckily, pretty much all the buildings here have A/C (including my apartment) and after one of the flash-flood rains it cools a bit.
2. My roommate is very cool. I think we're going to get along really well and this means I have a buddy to go around with. (I'm going to follow the travel with a buddy rule religiously! NO deviation!) By the way, her name is Zenia and she's Indian,but raised in Canada so when spelling her name says Z as "Zed," just as the French do. :)
3. Thailand is really beautiful. I know it's a third world country, but there's something about it that is completely appealing. It's not cosmopolitan at all and I found myself all day just looking around and thinking, "Wow, I'm in Thailand and it's pretty great." Although, we'll see how it goes later on...this is only the first day after all. :)
4. I ate the most AMAZING fruit today. It's a reddish color round fruit with green, spiky prickles (not sharp, more like fake grass texture) all over it. The fruit is white-clearish with a hard seed in the center. It tastes so fresh. I ate 6+ of them today and imagine 'll eat a whole lot more tomorrow!
5. I am extremely tired and it's time to go to bed finally! So this is it for now, until tomorrow.

Goodnight all! I'll be writing more tomorrow...I'm just too sleepy now. *Yawn...