Koh Samet and Ayutthaya

island of koh samet

After my orientation was over Jani and I decided to go to Koh Samet on Tuesday because it was only about a five-hour bus ride there from Bangkok. We went with the mini-bus from our place to Ekkamai which is the eastern bus terminal, as well as one of the stops of SkyTrain (BTS). Minibus is faster than a standard bus, and both of them are really inexpensive, mini-bus a little more than one euro and usual bus is little less. From Ekkamai we took bus which departured 18.30 towards Ban Phe - the name of a town (port),  from which we would take a boat to Koh Samet. The bus arrived about 23:00 and we were the only ones on the harbor at that time and in need of a ride. The boat ride would have costed 1 000 bth, or 23 euros for two person. We didn't want to pay that much so we got accommodation from Diamond (7 € / night) and in the morning we got the ride to Koh Samet for 4 euros. So it was easier to do like this, because searching for accommodation from the island was nicer in the morning that it would have been during the night, I think.  

On the way to Koh Samet.

There was monster waiting for us at the harbour.

Colorful bungalows.

Our bungalow in Koh Samet.

In the island there was a fire show every night. Skilled guys.

Bucket bucket! It was happy hour so one bucket was only 200 bth so 4,6 €.

Fresh coconut milk! That cost 50 bth so 1,2 €. 

Lions of the beach.

The island was quite a tourist trap, but just to get to the beach was now the main thing. The food was very good but of course more expensive than here in the suburbs of Bangkok. For example Pad Thai was 80 bth (2 €) when in our street it is 40 bth (1€). So yeah not expensive but still double the price! We paid 500 bth for bungalow on the island, so about 12 € / night. We almost got a bungalow with our own balcony but some couple was there two minutes before us! And they took the last one. The bungalows were pretty neat, but the beach was some distance away. Now it is high season, so that the side was pretty full. But I really enjoyed my first beach trip in Thailand. There's nice atmosphere and people are relaxing and the sun and warm water is the best! 

Pinacolada mm'm. 

View to the ocean.

The water was so wonderfully clear and warm!

I really liked the lights.

Those triangle pillows are great, you can just hang out and relax.

Banana Pancake tasted good at the beach!

Beach!

Jani!

I had my then buy that kind of "loincloth"

Those vendors walking the beach to the other throughout the day, and they seemed that heat didn't bother them at all.

In the beach there was a fire limbo. Limbo was probably about 30 cm height from the ground. And he got under it!

AYUTTHAYA

We came back to the island as early as Saturday evening, as the AIT had the welcome party for new students. I went there and met some new people. We agreed at a party with a small group of exchange students that next day we would go to Ayutthaya's a national park which is in the pictures below. We went there by taxi, the trip was about 30 miles to the north, and it really didn't cost much (1.4 €/person) when we divided the sum between the four of us. Ayutthaya was not my thing and I would say if you are really interested about temples and such, go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. If you still decide to go to Auytthaya, you should definitely take sightseeing tour. And not to do like us; just walk around the huge area under the hot sun and try to read the map by your self. It took so much time to walk from one attraction to another.

In the welcome party there was program number to mummify one member of the group.

In such a street kitchen they make a lot of food. There is a tasty banana pancake coming.

There was elephant safari.

Some ruins and Buddha in Ayutthaya.

Huge lying Buddha.

Monkey business.

Some sculptures.

More ruins. The view was quite beautiful.

Girls in Ayutthaya!

We wend to barbecue buffet with Jani. It was really cheap, about 4 euros all you can eat.

Jani also wanted to grill a crab. Eating (opening) of it was then another thing..

My favorite: all you can eat sushi-buffet! Sabushi by Oishi is the best. The cost for the whole buffet is about 10 euros, in Finland you can buy 10 pieces of sushi for 10 euros..

Susan and Jani in Sushi buffet.

My favorite dish were found from the restaurant just next to SkyView: laap kai and kao neo aka chicken "salad" and sticky rice, it cost about 50 bth so 1,2 €. 

Searching for an apartment and the first days of school

GETTING AN APARTMENT AND BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL

Well, I got a good baptism of fire as soon as we start our journey, Jani hit the same kind misery a couple of days before me. On Friday evening, I fell ill with food poisoning and it went 4 days, until I was able to eat properly. Strong food smells that floated on the street, not eased me feel better at all. We were supposed to look for an apartment these first few days and when the apartment would had been found we wanted to go to the beach. But as we got sick we had to reject our plans for now. It probably takes some time from the body to get used to foreign bacterial. I have foremost getting used to these local fiery dishes, chili more more!

The Thai people are smiling and friendly kind of people. While walking on the street all over the amount of new food smells is huge and the traffic noise is so much more stronger what used it to be in Finland. However, they sometimes stare when white westerner (falang) walks by, but it does not matter. Smiles back. 

Dude had lots of bass!  He introduced his car with excitement.

Contraries.  

I thought I had ordered a glass of strawberry cocktail but I got a pot of it. It cost only 3 €.

So we couldn't make it by the sea, but the apartment was found, which was of course the main thing. At first we were a couple of nights in J-park - called complex which was really neat; houses in the middle of the tastefully positioned swimming pool and a gym. This was, however, quite lifeless region, so we decided to go in search for SkyView housing from Rangsit Soi Pirom street. Because one friend of us from Lappeenranta who studied in AIT last year told us that this was supposed to be a lively student street. Then we got the Sky View apartment; 52 square meters, from the top of the eighth floor and the rent is 200-230 € per month, all costs included. And in the adjacent building in Sky Village there is a swimming pool on the roof, as well as a gym, which we were allowed to use. The first SkyView apartment that we visited, which was in different place just next to Thammasat University was named SkyView @TU. It would have been closer to my school than SkyView @BU (near Bangkok University) but they couldn't let opposite sexes to live in the same apartment. They would have made an exception with us but they couldn't let us have 2 keys for the apartment so we rejected that offer. 

Some picture of the Skyvillage@BU apartment.

One more picture of the apartment.

Street Grill was full of delicious looking bugs, please note! living ones..

View from the apartment when the street was blocked when one driver was driving wrong.

From here a trip to the school is something about four miles which is fast to drive with the taxi and it costs only (50 bth) 1,3 €. Here we use taxi for most of the distances, because the distances are quite long and you don't want to start walking on busy highways, and as previously mentioned taxis are very inexpensive compared to the prices in Finland. Today I tried to go to Bangkok by bus, the trip is about 30 km and the journey took more than an hour in a traffic jam to the center.  If you go the same distance with taxi it costs about 5 euros. Traveling by taxi, you should always ask for the billing by meter that the drivers will not ask for too high price at the end of the trip.

Easy and fast means of transport are also moped taxis that are convenient for short journeys. From our place there is a distance of a few miles to the main road, which can be reached by taxi moped fast with 0,2 €, if you are in a hurry or lazy (or don't want to sweat like hell while walking in the sun). 

Today was, therefore, orientation week of AIT or should I say orientation day. European exchange students are quite a minority, or in any way a large number of exchange students was not, at least yet arrived. Some of which I had time to meet, seemed nice. Mostly I talked with Susan from Germany and with Sebastian from France/Finland. In Orientation the school principal and the various heads of departments were talking to us about goals and manners of AIT and welcomed new students. The most interesting thing was to find out the schedule of the lectures aka timetable. I got 3 courses which have lectures on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday so end of the week would have time for travelling. Two of my courses are from energy field of studies and one is from environmental department. For forthcoming weekend we are going to Koh Samet, which is going to the first island of Thailand or whole Asia that I will see. I am so excited!! 

AIT's dormit were a little dreary looking. But there is nice atmosphere in AIT. 

Asian Institute of Technology is going to be my home university for the next 5 months.

Swimming pool of the school looked inviting! Usually during midday there is no one, so there is definitely plenty of space for swimming! 

After first day at AIT ! AIT was a bit smaller than I thought and there were less new students than I expected. It turned out that the intake of January is always way smaller than intake of August. 

In the Food Court. The best dessert is fried banana! This food court was in MBK which is large shopping mall near Siam. There you can find almost anything that you need.

Traffic of Bangkok. There is always a traffic jam in Bangkok no matter in which direction you are going and what time of day or week. There are way too many cars. 

The soft-colored sunset,  at J-park.

One street cuisine dishes, it might seem strange, but is tasty!

First impression of Bangkok and beginning of my exchange

Excitement and first impressions

New Years Eve

I feel like I would have been talking about this Thailand trip for more than a year, and now the moment has arrived it really to become real. I was now in front of my becoming five-month trip to Thailand, during which I will study in the Asian Institute of Technology - Energy technology courses at the University. The goal would be to see Asia as much as possible and study only what is required. I'm going to hit the road with Jani, who is experienced Asian traveler. In fact, I head to Thailand for the first time, so I am naturally a bit nervous. We booked a round trip tickets to Bangkok in October, so we got them preferably about EUR 660 from Turkish Airlines. This airline company turned out to be really a high-quality again. Turkish Airlines flies from Helsinki to Bangkoko via Istanbul.

The year changed this time on an airplane. 

The flight departed from Helsinki at 13.10 and arrived the next day in Bangkok at 9:40 local time. In fact, we couldn't quite sleep on the plane, so we arrived very tired in Bangkok. We had booked accommodation in advance for the first two nights in a hotel called iSanook. It was good that we didn't have to look for accommodation because we were so tired. The intention was to leave the next day to look for apartments that would be nearby of my exchange university. Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), therefore, is located about 30 km north of the center of Bangkok. It is easy and cheap to travel with a taxi in Bangkok. The initial payment is around 35 thb, which is thus less than one euro.  Thai bath rate at the time: 1 € = 43 thb. 

There was a great disco- Christmas tree!

In the first day

The first day felt just like two different days, because we were in a hotel room about two in the afternoon, we took a couple of hours of sleep, and after that we went to take a taxi into a tourist area of Khao San Road. The food was really good and inexpensive, fresh fruits can be bought pre-peeled and chopped, for example, 20 thb: (0.5 €) received a bag of fresh and sweet pineapple chunks. Street Kitchens seem to be very popular, and they were selling a variety of barbeque meat. When I tasted the first barbequed chicken skewer I was pretty surprised how tasty it was, one skewer cost about € 0.5. And this is apparently was not even the most profitable region, in cheaper places skewers were 0,2 euros. 

Definitely worth mentioning is one thing that I experienced, a massage. Neck-back and shoulder massage, which lasted half an hour, and EUR 3.5. It felt really really relaxing, my masseur was a little older the woman, and he used the strength and not just a little touching. And we also tasted a bit of cheap drinks rum coke - bucket among others in Kim's restaurant: "Drinks & Drunks, very strong cocktail!"

Street Grill was full of the chicken intestine (right) and liver that Jani bought .

In Khao San Road respectively; pants cost 250 thb (5 e), the flip-flops and a bag 120 thb (3 e).

We reached our hotel about two at night time. It had been a really nice and tasty evening. So my first evening in Bangkok gave really good first impression of Bangkok, although I had seen couple of cockroaches.. Orientation begins in AIT on January 7th, so here's a couple of days time to look around!

This is my first blog writing in English and I am going to write all of my texts in English at least for my exchange friends. 

Thanks!