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!