Just Arrived

I arrived in Bangkok last night, Tuesday the 12th of October, around 8 pm.  The flights were very long but filled with a surprisingly large amount of available entertainment.  Various movies and TV shows were enough to get me through the boredom.

Bangkok is far bigger than I ever imagined it would be.  Even just in driving from the airport to the hotel that I will be staying at during orientation for the next week, I realized that the city is enormous.  That feeling was confirmed this morning when a few of us early arrivals decided to go explore the city.  It was a group of 22 and not one of us spoke any Thai.  We struggled trying to find the way into the heart of the city but eventually found a train heading in the right direction.  It turns out this was the least convenient method as it not only took us through some extremely poor areas but also dropped us in what seemed to be the warehouse district of the city.  After some intense map studying and many conversations in broken English, we managed to find our way to what can be considered the central section of Thailand.  It reminded me a lot of Times Square.  The whole area consists of giant shopping malls with every store you can imagine.  Because it is so hot here (around 90 degrees today), the malls provide a nice, air-conditioned, alternative to window shopping in the heat.  After exploring the central city for a bit we made our way home.  Fortunately, we realized that we could take the sky train (sort of like a raised subway system) home.  That was significantly more convenient than the train ride in.

Later this evening I had dinner with some people I met through the program.  There are 81 of us and most people arrived today so there were plenty of people to meet.  Tomorrow orientation begins at 8:30 am.  That should be the time that I meet most of the other participants in the program.  

I'll certainly post some pictures soon.