One of the many beautiful temples in Chiang Dao (close to Chiang Mai)
18/03/12 –29/03/12
Philosophy
“When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is PHILOSOPHY”. One of my favourite subjects! However important, having to teach it to 25 students with different backgrounds presents quite a challenge! Michael Rasmussen our teacher tried his best to make philosophy accessible to all by incorporating modern series, movies and songs into the lessons such as Monty Python, My Little pony (his personal favourite!) and Southpark. The lessons were all superbly organized but maybe a greater inclusion/activation of the students would have made the awesome lessons even more awesome. Such as more debates. We had a few fierce debates and everybody always had a lot to say! We haven’t had any homework at all so far but this would change dramatically. As a supplement to Michaels PowerPoint shows we had to read 2-3 articles per day. Christian (our team building and project management teacher –see below) taught us a fantastic expression: death by PowerPoint. Death by PowerPoint is real!
Besides the“lectures”, we had a lot of time to work on a philosophical project of our choice with a connection to Thailand. My group worked on the working conditions of people in Thailand and how it should be for man in general. There were prizes to be won for the most successful project; but taking into account that we were only one quarter of the group (8/25students) left on the last day, we chose to all share the prizes together. Most people had departed for their respective holiday destinations during the “friuge” (week off). Apparently, some people found it to be of paramount importance to leave one day (or a whole week !!) earlier. Anyway, we had lots of fun on the last day watching Monty Python before Kenneth, Andreas and I left for Bangkok!
29/03/12 –04/04/12
The trip to Bangkok took about 14 hours. It was a super comfortable journey by VIP bus with seats similar to those of the business/1st class on the airplanes followed by a 2 hour ferry trip on which we could enjoy the beautiful sunset. After the peaceful boat trip we could sleep all the way from Surathani to Bangkok (around 10hours). We arrived a little earlier than expected around 6 O’clock in the morning, took a taxi to Khao San Road – the backpacker’s area. We went to 10 different hostels/hotels/guest houses and found a great one in the very heart of Khao San Road with private restrooms, free access to Wifi from the rooms – in short a hotel which highly exceeded my expectations to a fair price (of course ! ^_^ ).
The guy’s trip had begun! Full speed already from day 1 including culture at the Grand Palace, picking up my new suit from my last short visit to the capital, a break at the cafe “Le bon Pain” and shopping on Khao San. The Grand Palace was truly magnificent with its architectural fusion of traditional Thai and European classicism. Still, it was nothing compared to Wat Pho just next to it that we were to discover a couple of days later: a 45 meters long lying Buddha in even more bedazzling architectural beauties.
In Bangkok, you can get excessively cheap TukTuks (motorcycle bicycles whit space for 3 people) if you let them take you to shops which pays for their gas. How smart! Or is it?... We might have saved some money on transport but we definitely blew our budgets as far as tailor made clothes and jewelry (for the loved ones back home!!) are concerned. ^_^ Pictures coming up ! Including my birthday gift from Mor : a tailor made suit in her favourite colour (:
One morning (≈2.00 pm), Kenneth tells me that it’s April the 1st. FANTASTIC !!! Only 3 days to my birthday but more importantly, the one day of the year where you can make pranks with good conscience. The victim: Andreas/Brendan (nickname which originates from an exchange student in Kenneth’s high school that nobody ever came to fully understand). Get ready for 3 crazy stories!
Firstly, we had to provide a padlock ourselves for the safety box at the hotel. Brendan managed to throw away his key on the second day – and we were living on 6 square meters! Anyhow, he goes down to the salesperson and asks if any of his keys matches the padlock he had just bought from him. The salesperson tells him that all his keys match. Unfortunately for Brendan, this was not the case so he returns to the salesperson. This time he comes back with 3 key holders with a hundred keys each (let me do the math for you: 3x100=300 keys!). He tries out the different keys until he finally finds a matching one: bansai! A happy Andreas enters our hotel rooms and immediately makes us laugh with his entertaining experience. He had been in the safety room with 300 keys without any reactions from the staff whatsoever. Surely, it doesn’t look suspicious when a guy comes in with that many keys and unlocks a safety box.
Some people are more aware of the risk of theft than others and let me just say, that Kenneth and Andreas are very aware of that risk! Personally, I still don’t know how the safety box works at our Smile House hotel. Kenneth then tells Andreas that the staff is allowed to take whatever they like from the lockers at all times; reason being that‘farang’(western foreigners) are not allowed to own anything. Not at all startled, we keep on talking in a civilized tone about this peculiar rule. Kenneth then keeps on adding the one unlikely story after the other building up like a crescendo. I will omit most of the inappropriate details but to give you an idea of how insane these stories were, the last one was about how “shit” from any animal was sacred in Thailand and that was why the staff would not move any poo if you had put one next to the toilet or any other place of the room and that you could make prostitutes pay you for making a poo on her. Thank you so much for all these great stories Kenneth! It was impossible for me to withhold my laughter, so I laughed nonstop for a whole hour repeating “Thailand is so crazy” and “Thai people are so different from us”… The prank stops when Kenneth asks Brendan what day it is and he replies “Monday, Tuesday, I really don’t know”. “All right, but the date?”, “Hmm… The end of March, maybe March the 30th, the 31st…Yeah, it must be March 31”. (Buddy, there are only 30 days in March!) “Sure? Couldn’t it be the beginning of April?” “Yeah, it could but I’m gonna’ stick to March 31”. “How about this: April the 1st?” Silence. “Argh… April the 1st! Come on guys!!!”.
This was actually followed by another fun experience. When Andreas came back after the padlock episode, we asked the hotel staff to fix our toilet (Brendan: you are not supposed to flush toilet paper!!! Valuable lesson!). While a staff member is fixing the toilet, Andreas finds a pill under one of the mattresses. It was right in the center of the top square and Andreas gets possessed by the idea that it’s some drugs which, if anybody found out about it, would get the three of us in jail forever. Brendan totally freaks out. I ask him if I should just take it and see what happens (this is obviously a joke guys!) and he looks at me perplexedly: “of course you can’t do that!” Then I ask if we should ask the guy cleaning our toilet what he thinks about it and this simply takes the stress to a whole new level. Kenneth is a little annoyed with the confusion (Kenneth needs to concentrate when his is playing Pickles on his iPad!) so he keeps on saying that surely it’s just some headache pill left behind by a former guest. Kenneth seems to have been right, for after the toilet guy has left and we had flushed it out, we look up “Panamax”on the Internet only to find out that it is indeed a harmless anti-headache pill.
I have never laughed this much in my entire life and probably never will.
April 4: my birthday.
“Hip hurra, det er min fødselsdag,
Det var den dag I dag, jeg kom frem og sagde,
Jeg kommer langvejsfra, så sig nu pænt goddag til mig!”
ðMy birthday: 04/04/12 (4+4+12=20 or “ten ten” as they say in Thailand ^^)
My birthday started at midnight at a bar close to our hotel. We had just met some new exciting people as it is common to do on Khao San Road, and Andreas ordered some Champagne for us to celebrate. So kind! I cannot describe how grateful I was when I heard the champagne pop and we toasted. He then bought 2 more bottles that we shared with our new friends who also seemed very grateful! The spirits were high and among the events that night were a “rain party”. After drying up, Andreas and I went to check out one of the open clubs of Bangkok: The Spice. It was great to experience the capital’s nightlife. Unfortunately, the club closed as “early” as 6.00 am. No harm done! This only meant that we could still make it to our free yoga session in Q.House (a health centre –quite impressive actually) at 7.00 am.
In just 10 minutes we were already soaked in sweat and it was amazing how Yoga can give you so much energy in so little time. After the lesson, one of the other participants asked us if we came straight from a night club: BUSTED! This was sooo embarrassing – mostly because I thought we had succeeded in making everybody believe that we were just a little drowsy because it was early morning. Well, apparently not, but it was all worth it: a lot of fun and we had gotten our batteries recharged for the rest of the day. After yoga, we went to the beautiful and refreshing Lumpini park next to the health centre with fitness facilities and clean, breathable air – a nice haven in the, at times, suffocating pollution of the big city. At 9.30 we arrive back at the hotel, wake up Kenneth and prepare to check out before 11.00 am.
Before we can go to the bus terminal, we need to pick up all our new belongings at 2 different tailors. Our main tailor had to send most of our clothes because they weren’t ready just yet. He asked for 1600 baht to cover the expenses of sending the clothes (roughly 300 kr.). This seemed as an astronomical price compared to the 500 baht we pay per kilo that we ship home to DK. On the other hand, we didn’t really have a choice…Fortunately, I gained inner peace anyhow! I went back to the place and we agreed that, they would put the exceeding money in a pocket when sending the clothes (because you can see the price on the box when you receive it). However great a deal, we received the two boxes of clothes which only cost 270 baht to send (+1 to the intuition and gut’s feeling!) but found no money… They didn’t honour our arrangement but I will hold them to their word and ask them to put the exceeding 1330 on my account. I’m quite optimistic because the ultimatum is between paying a small amount of money (relative to the money we spent in the shop) and losing 3 customers (and lots of other potential customers via recommendations).
To our luck, Kenneth wanted us to be at the bus terminal as early as possible. This led us to arriving 10 minutes before departure at a very big bus terminal. We managed to find the right bus which took off shortly after we got on it. Thank you Kenneth! (The traffic was much worse at 5.30 pm which was when we left for the bus home compared to the early morning when we had arrived in Bangkok.)
Believe it or not, when we boarded the ferry to Koh Samui we also got to see the sun rise over the sea! How lucky can one be? One sunrise and one sunset at sea in less than a week!
05/04/12 –08/04/12
Back on Koh Samui, I simply rested and prepared mentally for my 2nd Full Moon Party. This time so much more fun!
My roomie Laura has introduced me to one of the world’s most popular reality shows: Jersey Shore… This helped me broaden my vocabulary with new expressions such as GLT (Gym tanning Laundry); which are the main activities of the participants – and pretty much ours too. Nonetheless I would like to add that we also spend a lot of time doing S/M (school/movies) and we mustn’t forget a huge H for “hygge” J.
DSC in Thailand = GLTSMH.
Amongst the movies are: “The Last song” and “Inception”; 2 movies that I would highly recommend. It took me 4 times to finally fully understand Inception but who’s in a hurry?
To prepare for Japan, I have made it a goal to watch as many Japanese movies as possible and I started out with “Kiki’s delivery service” which tackles many important aspects of life such as being different, living in the big city, etc.
Lastly, I’m doing my best to see all 3 seasons of Glee, a series that I got recommended back home and favourite of Kenneth’s. That was a little bit about my spare time. Now let’s look closer at the serious stuff.
08/04/12 - 28/04/12
We just finished our first week of Project management and team building. In the short span of time that one week is, I can already state that this greatest and most inspiring of our 4 courses. Our teacher, Christian Ragus, is one of those people who instantly fill the whole room with his strong charisma. He immediately gained the respect of everybody in the classroom merely by being in the room. This was an impressive, drastic change in attitude in comparison to our philosophy lessons. I have never heard that much wisdom coming from one person in so little time (guldkorn på guldkorn!).
12/04/12
Song Kran is Thailand’s traditional New Year’s celebration. We started the festivities at 10 pm spraying all passersby with as much water as we could manage. Then, everybody slept for 4 hours before gathering to some laidback drinking. Once everybody had become a little tipsy and in great party moods, we headed off for Chaweng, our party city! I finally got a chance to experience the Viking bar, where they put on some Danish music for us, so that we could feel a little at home. The Viking bar was followed by dancing at the Green mango.
14/04/12
Today, our“festudvalg” (party committee) has organized a bungalow crawl (inspired by the popular pub crawl where you go from to pub). Each bungalow has a country as a theme. Fate made Japan our country!
Room 119 is ready for Bungalow crawl ! (me , Søren)
Danmarks bidrag til bungalow crawl: ølstaffet (Rusland løb af med sejren, men jeg er ret sikker på, at det var den øl, der gjorde at jeg pludselig lave min beslutning om ikke at drikke den aften om)
JAPAN
Søren
greeting our guests.
Me serving
some green tea shots in my tailor made kimono from Bangkok (:
(It’s
reversible meaning that I have a black and a dark blue kimono: it’s a 2 in 1
kimono!)
What they look like : Kenneth , Asger , Andreas
What happened to their room...
Last
Bungalow: France (last bungalow after Russia who served a LOT of white Russians and
vodka shots). To save you guys from further trauma, I purposely
did not post any pictures of the bathroom… So much fun though ! Gaan (the most
effective cleaning lady at smile house) managed to clean up the bungalow in
just 2 hours. Now, that’s impressive!
The room may look at little messy but the worst part was definitely the smell... I have no clue how they manage to fall asleep in there - neither do they ;b None of them can remember going to sleep: druuuunk!
29/04/12 –04/05/12
Shanghai
04/05/12 -12/06/12
Kyoto, Japan
12/06/12 –11/07/12
Bali, Indonesia
11/07/12 –01/08/12
Japan
01/08/12
COPENHAGEN !!!
