Sabai-dee-rue ka?
Welcome on our blog! As part of our study we are in Thailand to do the minor Community Based Tourism, first we study 4 weeks at Rangsit University in Bangkok and after that we will stay 5 weeks in Chiang Mai in a guest house and also with the local communities. We are sure we are going to enjoy our time here!
As you have noticed we already integrated quite well in the Thai community and we even learned a couple of words Thai. We have been in Thailand for almost a week now, and are just starting to get used to different climate and culture. The first day we were rather overwhelmed with the lifestyle of the Thai. It is warm every moment of the day, there are food stands wherever you look and street dogs are laying around all over the city. Even though it is such a completely different world, we have managed to get around quite well the last couple of days. During the weekend we have discovered our surroundings and the city centre of Bangkok by taxi, Tuk-Tuk, skytrain, foot and boat. In most occasions this went quite well, but there were already some moments in which we were tricked by our drivers, or where the taxi driver did not know the way home, and we are sure more of these moments will come in the future. Moreover we have enjoyed the Thai cuisine by going out to little restaurants every single night. We have not been to the Pizza hut once! A lot of different dishes have been tried, for example the fried skin of a salmon, which turned out to be not such a big success for our group. However since we will do research about culinary tourism later on in this minor, it is important for us to try new things.
Moreover we had our first week of school. When you are used to a school such as Stenden University in the Netherlands we could warn you that when you go to Rangsit University you will definitely get lost at least one time during your period there.
The campus consists of at least 12 buildings and offers you, besides educations, a medical centre, a pharmacy, several sporting centers, a shop and several spa centers. We certainly do not have all these facilities in the Netherlands!
The first day of classes we got some introduction lectures about the code of conduct of Thailand and Rangsit University, an introduction lecture about this minor and a lecture of a girl who did the same minor as us a couple of years ago. These lectures were all very interesting and nice to see. Because of these you know a little bit of what to expect during this module . In the evening we had a dinner at the Atrium, the restaurant of the school. This dinner was with the teachers and management board of this module and Stenden Rangsit University. It was nice to get to know those people and have a good dinner with them. Furthermore we had our first seminar about pro-poor and community based tourism and our first fieldwork workshop. During this workshop we worked on aspects that are important for our personal development report. These workshops are about us as an individual and as a group. Also, we had our first Thai class! Here we learned how to do a correct ‘Wai’ and learned our first words and expressions in Thai, which will be very handy. The last workshop we had until now was research. During this workshop we will focus more on the research we will conduct later on in Chiang Mai and the village.
Until now we have done almost everything with the group. Since we are not such a big group this is very easy. Everybody shows him or herself in the group and until now we like each other and we are sure this will remain the same. We have had a lot of fun nights already with a lot of laughter and chats. Last night we organized a movie night, we watched the documentary about cannibal tours. Even though we understood the message of the documentary we failed to see the connection of the movie title with the movie itself. It was kind of outdated and could have been more interesting.
We really enjoyed our first days in Thailand and this weekend we will go to Koh Chang to relax a little bit at the nice beaches over there, so that after this weekend we are ready to start our second week in Thailand!
La kon!
Nienke Marije, Marlon, Susan, Jonien, Martine & Reinier
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