Sah Wuh Dee Khrup! (Hello in Thai)

Salutations American fans! I write this second update from the public access computer room in the Rangsit University public computer center. I am safe, happy, and of course quite hung over from last night's drink too many glasses of Singha beer with rapidly melting ice cubes while Thais with ramones haircuts who don't speak english play really good Oasis covers party I attended at a local bar affectionatly referred to by the Thai as "around the back". No one seems to know what the name actually is in Thai, everyone calls it by its English nick name. Wild. Now: what have I been up to? I flew to thailand, moved into an apartment, and started college in Bangkok at Rangsit university.

If I were to describe the flight from LAX to Taipei in one word it would be…long. If my word allowance was expanded to 9, the description would be: why did they contract dwarves to design the seats? The entire traveling time was nearly two full days. Sitting in the seat my kneecap painfully extended a full two inches into the seat in front of me, causing my giant American femurs to continually trip the stunningly beautiful stewardesses. This could be remedied if my physique matched what they apparently expected in their clientell: 4’1” creatures with knees attached directly to their tiny pelvises. On a flight clearly designed to be slept on (taking off at 1:15am and landing sometime after the apocalypse) the seats have a maximum recline that matches the capital “L” character. Apparently the thighless dwarves at China Airlines R&D dept. find the maximum comfort zenith to be achieved when their knees and spine create a protractor worthy approved right angle. The only comfort I had on this flight was this lovely gentleman who spoke only a few words of English. He spent about 12.9 of the 13 hours asleep with his feet constantly crossing the borders of his chair and ending up awkwardly near my genitals.

The flight had a layover in Taipei of six hours that allowed for the meeting and greeting of all my fellow USAC group flight colleagues. After learning and instantly forgetting their names, pursuits, and credos it was time to mount the plane headed for Bangkok. We boarded the plane and then the plane boarded the clouds...anyway it was an easy flight without issue.

The flight landed in the extremely easy to pronounce Suvarnabhumi Airport which is the proud owner of the "world’s largest commercial airline hanger". Whether this is true or not I cannot verify with confidence, but I can definitely testify that it does look like a giant robotic space worm.





The airport was hot and humid, which is true for every sweaty inch of Thailand. Waiting for us terrified foreigners was this comforting statue, an ominous beginning indeed. We speculated while flying that passing through the Thai customs would be difficult; we were incorrect. A stern looking man with a gun merely nodded and waved us through. Immediately behind us was a middleastern fellow in with a turban, he was directed to a partitioned off area to be searched, tough break.


We were greeted by two American looking english speaking college students and two Thais. They ushered us abour a wildly colored bus with shag carpet and a broken window which would drive us to our new respective apartments.

The bus ride was long, at least an hour. We left the urban metropolis that is Bangkok and drove into a slightly more rural location where the college is located. The afternoon sunlight chased after us in the omnipresent pools of brown water covering the terrain as our rainbow bus cruised through the traffic passing backfiring mopeds with families of four, bicycles carrying swaying fish, and pickup trucks with benches in the back seating ten or more.

Thailand does not look like Reno. Reno is brown, dry, and clean, Thailand is green, wet, and dirty. Looking out the window, I noticed that the waste disposal was a bit different in the USA. Instead of rolling cans out on monday nights for a green truck to pick up, the Thai people just seem to take their refuse to the highway, mound it into a heap, and set it on fire. We passed at least 10 such smoldering rubbish heaps.

The apartment I am living in is a converted hotel, well I suppose its not really converted as it truly remains a hotel. It has a bit of an inner city look and the interior just feels desolate. The rooms are huge and empty except for the heavy wooden tables and beds about as soft as iron covered in diamonds. I was lucky enough to win the room on the corner directly next to the highway. 24 hours a day cars zoom, trucks roar, and two stroke mopeds put-put-put past my ears. Luckily there is really no need to open a window, the temperature doesn't really drop at all at night, merely ranging from hot as balls to still quite warm and humid.


The university is green and beautiful, looking quite a bit like a large beautiful American university. The campus is surrounded by a green hedge with occasional barbed gates and surrounding the hedge is a road and surrounding the road is the madness.

Across the street from the campus are hundreds and hundreds of street vendors selling cooked food, fresh fruit, and espresso. Yes, I wasn't expecting to see such an enthusiasm for the european caffeinated delight, but the coffee stands are everywhere. There is a bit of a different approach to coffee making here. No matter what you think you have orderred or tried to order, you get an espresso shot, mixed with two shots of sweetend condensed milk poured over a cup of ice with frothed milk product on top. It actually is pretty good though, but sickeningly sweet, which is another common trend here in Thailand. The food is somewhat similiar to the Thai food back in the USA, and I think I would seond the opinion that the Thai don't actually make the best Thai food. Unfortunately ordering is next to impossible due to the fact that I neither speak nor read thai, which looks like this: ฟหกสดาฟหกๆไพ๋๕฿๑ฟหกใฬ. That was a string a gibberish so don't bother decoding it.



I am getting tired of writing now, so Ill just leave you with two pictures that say a hell of a lot about what things are like here.