Goodbye Thailand

it has all come to an end so soon. the only way to describe coming back to LA is bittersweet. i am so so happy to see my friends and to be able to cook and watch tv, but at the same time, i still wake up in the morning so happy because i'm thinking i'll be walking to thammasat or going down to the alley to go to "poppy's" (fav pad thai place) or "the spot" (crepe place) to get a bite to eat. but, before i knew it, jimbo was on the plane, marney was in a taxi with her friends headed to the full moon party, and abby was on her way to israel. then it was our time to leave....warren, charity, brad and i were all scheduled to go on the same flight to japan, but it ended up just brad and me on the plane because warren needed a visa he didn't have and standby was full. anyway, long story short, warren made it to my apartment and is currently taking a nap in my extra bed, and charity made it to oregon after an 11-hour layover in SF.

the past few weeks have been surreal...we had so much fun just hanging out and cherishing every last minute as "locals" (as local as we could get), and trying not to think about leaving. we spent almost a month in bangkok after the trip to krabi and railay beach. we did the bangkok thing...went out at night to RCA or kao san road, hung out and watched a lot of "how i met your mother," had some home cooked dinners that consisted of pancakes and eggs, and we actually did some school work and studying. there is no such thing as a "stop week" for studying, so school ended, and the next week we were taking finals....this is the first semester that i have ever had 5 finals!!! some of them were harder than others, all i hope is that i passed all my classes ;)

other than school work and typical bangkok outings, we had an awesome christmas party in the penthouse, and even did a "white elephant" grab bag with the limitation that the gift must be purchased on kao san road and be less than 200 baht. we also sort of had a new year's celebration and i finally made it out to an after-hours club!!! andy, jimbo and i went to koi for dinner to give us luck for our IS exam, and it was definitely one of the most delicious meals i had in thailand, but i don't really think it gave me luck on the exam....go figure.

for my last blog, i thought i would make a long list of tips i discovered in the past five months...for anyone who might travel to thailand in the near future:
uniforms: don't bring anything, just go buy them at MBK. i got two skirts and two tops for like $20 US and that's all you really need for the semester
cord converters: don't need them. girls, just buy hair dryers there...they are super cheap and work fine, and since this is the only thing that would need a converter, you can eliminate bringing both the dryer and the converter!
suits: get suits tailored in bangkok....total time with all fittings is about 1-2 weeks. go to barrons on sukumvit between soi 6 & 7, or cotton house in the oriental hotel...a whole suit will be about $200 US
towels, sheets: i brought them, but you don't need to...easy and cheap to find there
medicine/pharmacy/hospital: it is really easy to get any type of medicine you might need. all of the pharmacies and hospitals have employees that speak english to get you whatever you need, and actually, you can even have dental work done that is good quality and inexpensive.
classes/review of classes: i took ACC-422 (hardest final i took, but the class wasn't that bad, kind of an intense final project, but if you have a good group it's not bad), MK 312 (lots of presentations and sort of a lot of work), MK 421 (pretty easy, prof is really nice, learned a lot about CSR and being "green"), IS 201 (great class, learned a lot of stuff that will be very useful in the future on MS excel and access) and IB 311 (not hard, had some interesting lectures because we could totally relate to what the prof was talking about, sometimes repetitive). in general, we did not need to study, except a little for midterms and finals. they take attendance, but you can miss up to 5 days of each class (or, 15 hours); they meet once a week for 3 hours, but you get a long break in the middle, and they don't usually start on time
shopping: my favorite places to go shopping were MBK (indoor market type mall), Siam square (outdoor market with a TON of clothes and purses and good shopping for girls) and siam paragon. there is a gourmet import market in siam paragon where you can find almost anything you might be craving from home. out of all the "markets" i think the best one is suan lum night market (there is also muay thai there on friday nights), which stays open until about midnight...go here at the end of your trip because you'll know what you want and how much you should pay for everything, as opposed to going in the beginning where you think EVERYTHING is cool and you'll end up paying way too much and buying a lot of dumb things. plus, if you go at the end, your bargaining abilities will be much improved ;)
where to live: we lived at the ratanakosin island condo, across the street from "pata pinklao". Justin is the most awesome landlord ever! contact me if you want his number or email address. supposedly, it is the not-so-nice part of town, but i thought it was just fantastic and saw nothing wrong with it! there is a TON of street food, grocery store across the street, good restaurants. it is only about a 20-30 minute walk away from school, or a 10-minute 50 baht taxi ride. we walked to school until april when it got too hot to walk. also, it is so near to kao san road where you can buy anything you want, a very convenient place to go out at night, and fun too! we went there so often it was kind of scary. oh, it is also walking distance from "central pinklao" where there is a gym and movie theater and bowling alley and mall and night market. so, pretty much, it was a great place to live. the only bad thing about it is that it is far from sukumvit or thong lor or silom where most of the nice clubs are so it was hard to get a taxi home at night after the clubs, but not that bad. and it's not near the sky train, but that was ok too.
trips: this was probably the best part about studying in thailand. we were able to travel whenever we wanted because our living expenses were so low that we had extra money to travel, and on top of that, it is very cheap to travel if you want it to be. for example, you can catch overnight buses anywhere, but these are sort of hard on your body and i would only recommend doing them if you have at least 3 days at your destination before you have to go back. and, if you do go on overnight buses, make sure you hold your money on you (like, in your pockets or in a money belt or something like that). however, an alternative to overnight buses is air asia. we got pretty cheap tickets on air asia and it is much more pleasant. overnight buses are usually $15-$20 depending on where you are going and tickets are around $60-$100 round trip. also, you can catch buses to koh samet, or other places that only take 4 hours or less. over the months, i went to: chiang mai (2 times), hong kong, malaysia (kuala lumpur), koh samui, koh phangan (full moon party), krabi/railay beach, hua hin, prachuap khirikhan, and kanchanaburi (tiger temple). i think my favorites in thailand were krabi/railay beach, chiang mai and koh phangan for the full moon party.
phone: easy to get a cheap nokia cell phone...costs about $30 and just buy refillable sim cards at 7-11 or basically any convenience store. i went through about 300 baht every 2-3 weeks, if you call home with it, 300 baht lasts about one week.
skype: i used skype to call home because it got expensive to call home on my cell phone. it's good to set it up and have credit on it before you leave because some people had trouble adding skype credit for some reason or another, so set it up before you go to thailand. it comes in handy just in case you have to call your bank or whatever.
internet: our condos had wireless internet that was fast. it's kind of on and off, but all you have to do is restart your computer and it fixes itself.
street food: all i can say is try everything. street food is the best and cheapest, and everyone thinks you get sick from it, but i think it is the best because everything is always fresh and you can see them making it and what they put into it. noodles on the street are awesome and so is corn on the cob and even sushi! i didn't get sick from street food the whole time, and i at a ton of it. i was afraid to eat street food, especially like fruit and raw veggies, but the fruit is the best thing ever-eat as much of it as you can get, and i was still a little careful with raw veggies, but cucumbers are ok for sure.
water: sounds obvious, but drink bottled or boiled water only. the water they serve at restaurants with ice in it is ok too, i'd wait a few weeks before you drink a lot of it so that your tummy has time to adjust. one guy thought he would drink tap water and ended up with some bad problem in the hospital. however, you can brush your teeth and wash dishes with it and you'll be fine. we even made ice cubes out of tap water and that was ok too. just drink your drink fast before it all melts ;) i used bottled water to brush my teeth for the first month, and i think that was good but not necessary...everyone is going to get irregular poops, just accept it and you'll be fine
exchanging money: the best thing to do is bring some cash to exchange at the airport to get you to your destination, then exchange the rest at an exchange booth, and then when you run out of the cash you brought, just use your debit card to get money out. you get the best exchange rate, and the banks at home charge about $2.50-$5 per transaction. try to avoid bank of america because they charge a ton of different random fees that add up to quite a lot, and the very best thing is to have a credit union because some of them don't even charge a fee for ATM transactions and if they do, its the smallest one of them all. all but one of the ATM machines in thailand don't charge a fee (use the green one with a K on it or the purple siam one, i know for sure these don't charge a fee)

that's all i can think of for now...kind of a lot to take in, but those are the things i would have wanted to know before going to thailand....random helpful hints!

i already miss thailand, it was the most amazing 5 months of my life :) so sad it's over, and now back to the real world with responsibilities and things of that sort!!! now, it's officially the beginning of a whole new journey!

to all of you who made my experience the wonderful experience it was, i love you and i'll miss you dearly. keep in touch and call me if you are ever in san francisco!! xoxo, meris