Arrival

Sawasdee ka! I hope you are all doing well! Here's a lengthy update to fill you in on the past few days. It seem like I've been here for weeks already, but really all 12 of us landed at 1:00 am on Monday and we've only been trekking around for three days, just about to start our fourth.

SATURDAY, JULY 30:
Twelve of the 22 or so new teachers met at LAX and headed out for Tapei at 3:00 pm Pacific time. We arrived in Taiwan at 7:00 pm their-time on Sunday, losing a day as we crossed over the International Date Line. We finally arrived in Bangkok at 1am on Monday and were met by a few teachers from TCIS and Jinda, who has coordinated all of our work permit and visa paperwork, plane tickets, etc. The time is pretty easy to figure out here because you just switch the am/pm with Central Standard Time and go to the next day. So, when it's 6:30 am here on Thursday (like it is right now), it's 6:30 pm on Wednesday in Minnesota.

SUNDAY, JULY 31:
We spent today in the air. We flew on China Airlines and they had the coolest interactive screens where you could select from around six different movies, listen to music, or play games! Very cool! I watched about four movies, so the time went by pretty quick. The seats were only as big as on a regular domestic flight, so it was not at all comfortable for the 12.5 hour ride . I thought during my Northwest overseas flights, we had more room?? The doll-like flight attendants came around with hot towels before our meals, which were a bit strange...for breakfast I tried some sort of rice porridge, not eating very much, but I had to check out the "unusual" option. I could have had eggs and sausage, but it sounded a bit boring .

MONDAY, AUGUST 1:
We arrived in Bangkok, took a bunch of Thai baht out of the ATM (the exchange rate is 41 baht to $1), and loaded onto a huge bus supplied by TCIS heading to the Avana Hotel http://www.avanahotel.net/index.php We were all very excited to be able to lay flat on a bed and get a bit of sleep!

I woke up around 7:00 am, so I didn't get a lot of sleep, but at least some. A few of us went to the gym in the hotel and then had breakfast. They eat soup and vegetables for breakfast, but they also had toast and eggs. The school picked us up at 10:30 am and we headed to Thana City, an area just outside of Bangkok, to check out the apartment complex. Alot of TCIS teachers, especially the newbies, choose to live here. The apartments are very nice, but there is NOTHING to do in the area. You have to hop in a taxi to get to downtown Bangkok and that can be a bit of a pain, so Leah Fickell, a high school Math/Science teacher from Columbus, Ohio (I have an affinity toward people from OH :) and I decided to look in Bangkok and skip living in the quiet city of Thana. You can find info on the different areas by clicking on the following link and selecting "Upon Arriving". It will brief you on Thana City versus downtown http://www.tcis.ac.th/html/index.html.

While many people were moving into their Thana City apartments, the rest of us headed to Thong Lo, which we heard was an area where a lot of farang, or foreigners, live. Apparently, this term was originally used to refer to the French who were the first foreigners to arrive in Thailand. Now, it's a term used to refer to all foreigners. David, a teacher at TCIS who speaks excellent Thai, came with us and we stopped at two different buildings, both were full. It was a discouraging trip, too many people in the group, some who wanted to stop for lunch, others, like me, Leah, Rico, and Tyson, who were determined to find an apartment to no avail. We went back to the hotel, cleaned up, and headed to dinner with the whole group of newbies.

I enjoyed some FLAMING Tom Yum soup...when they say spicy here, they mean it even more than they do in Mexico, as Rico found out. I learned the word "mai" after that experience. It means NO and when they ask me about spicy in the future, I'll say "mai". Craig, who was sitting next to me and has lived here in the past, ordered a papaya salad made with red peppers and he, too, had a flaming mouth. It was tasty, I think...tough to taste when your mouth is numb, but like everything else in this country, it was quite affordable.

We all were very tired, so we hopped in cabs and headed back to the Avana where we crashed around 9:30 pm. Leah and I decided to share a room until we found apartments. We were looking for either a great 2 bedroom to share or a couple of singles in the same building, hoping tomorrow something would come up.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2:
Leah and woke up way early...around 4:30 am and we finally got up and headed to the gym at 5:30 am. The bus picked us up at 10am and brought us to Central Bangna mall to get photos taken for our work permits. The Kodak store wasn't open when we arrived, so we decided to meet back at noon and a group of us headed out with David to check out his apartment, which was in the area.

The neighborhood was not at all satisfactory to either Leah nor me, but a few girls chose three singles in his building. Leah and I decided that we wanted to go over our 10,000 baht/month school allowance to find something much nicer and in a much better location. A few other guys were on our page, as well, so after returning to the mall and completing our work permit portraits, taken with a navy suit-coat on provided by the Kodak store and WITHOUT smiling (it's tough not to smile when you're told, but I did my best ), the five of us headed toward downtown Bangkok with Cara, a returning teacher at TCIS, to check out her building and neighborhood. The building was nice, but the neighborhood wasn't, so the five of us hopped on the SkyTrain and headed to Thong Lo (the "h" is silent, so don't think of the underwear :) to set out on foot and see what was available.

Craig was told by one of the TCIS teachers to look around Sukhumvit Soi 59 (that's the street name), so we headed down that street. The buildings were very nice and we were afraid they were way over our budget, but we stopped to take a look anyway. Leah and I fell in love with a 3 bedroom (one could be an office, but we're making it a spare room for all of you visitors!) / 2 bath at the Top View apartment building!!! The door looks like it's made of teak, but I'm not a wood connoisseur . It's very modern and has an art-deco look to it with marble floors. It's fully furnished, of course, and located on the 27th floor with a patio and a southern view of a couple of different Bangkok skylines and the SkyTrain. I'm excited to see what the view looks like at night!! There are guards and a secured entrance with a gate, an amazing lobby, bellhops, and a parking garage. The building has an awesome pool, volleyball court, squash/racquetball courts, and a gym. We decided we were going to bargain with her and see how well we could do...we've been told that you bargain for just about EVERYTHING here.

Liza, the building manager (not the owner...the building has a ton of apartments and they all have different owners), quoted it at 40,000 baht, which is about $1000/month and twice our budget, so we said we'd do it for 30,000 baht. We ended up getting it for 35,000, so Leah and I each will have to pay around $180 over the allowance per month, but it's well worth it!! The neighborhood is fabulous with tons of cool restaurants, near the SkyTrain which means easy access to all of downtown Bangkok, and it's extremely safe and appealing to the eye :) We've been told that Bangkok is extremely safe, which was nice to hear and I thougth you'd all sleep better at night knowing this .

A few other teachers found an awesome and HUGE apartment right by ours, Rico is 39 and from San Diego, Tyson is 37 and from Brooklyn (he went from being a lawyer to a teacher and loves it!), and Craig is 28 and from Toronto. He taught at TCIS before and is returning after a stint in Australia. The five of us will take the BTS (aka SkyTrain) only three stops to On Nut (if you refer back to my pics from Thailand last year, you'll see the pic of the sign with the options of On Nut and Mo Chit - too funny that I'm now living near these stations!) and then the school bus will pick us up there free of charge and drive us to the outskirts of town where TCIS is located.