It's Def the Rainy Season

In my attempt to be productive today and get my camera fixed, get more baht, and put more baht on my phone, I got caught in the most epic monsoon.  I thought I could brave the rain and make it out alive but I had my computer in my backpack and no umbrella.  Essentially I went into the 7-11 bought three butter croissants, ate, them waited, tried to scurry to the bus stop, it was leaking then I suckered up and got a 1 dollar taxi back to my dorm.  I should be working out, but its so rainy that I don't want to move. I should be writing in my journal before we go out tonight because I haven't written in it for two weeks, but my handwriting is atrocious and I need to upload pictures.

Yesterday was great because we went to the snake farm.  They showed us how they caught snakes and got the venom out of them so they could create antivenom.  The snakes were moving pretty fast in the pits and the walls weren't high enough for my liking so when a particularly angry one tried to slither up the slide and snap at me, I ran away and stared at the young thai children instead. they were simply adorable. we then went to the aquarium.  its just like in the us but it was still fun i like looking at fish and sea creatures.  we then went to jim thompsons house.  he was a man born in the US, studied architecture at princeton, was stationed in thailand for the war and fell in love with it.  he moved back and would buy silk form his neighbors and sell it to fashion houses in europe.  he was the one to singly revive the silk trade.  he built a mansion from 6 old style thai houses on the river and thats what we saw.  it was simply gorgeous, he had all the traditional thai elements with a touch of european in it.  He had china and silk, and sculpture, pottery, and tapestries that were to die for.  unfortunately one day he took a walk in the woods alone and was never to return again.  no one knows what happened but many speculate that the thai government suspected that he was a cia informant and offed him. who knows, the house was tight.

we then went home to change and go out to our good friend nandini's 20th birthday party.  this is was the first real dose of culture shock that I got.  It was a bar called hyde and seek, of course me felicia, carla, and lucy were about an hour late because our cab driver got lost and we couldnt communicate to him that we wanted to go to the sky train that was closest to us.  So when we got there they had ordered mad drinks and let me tell you the drinks and food were not inexpensive.  we are talking 345-500 baht for drinks, thats around a good 12-15 dollars, which is hard to pay if you only pay for 3 dollar drinks.  so anyways me felicia and carla are looking at the menu like dang, but lucy wants in on a monster drink (little did we know it cost 2,900 baht). so carla ordered a caesar salad bc it was the cheapest food on the menu and felicia orders fries, which were equally as cheap.  Felicia ends up getting a salad and I cave and get a piece of chocolate cake but it was only 5 dollars so cool.  Nandini wants felicia and i to have a sip of the monster drink, so we do, but decide we can't have anymore because we can't put in. anyways the dinner was chill until the bill came.  Essentially nandini and them split the bill like 9 ways. and i was literally shocked, it came out that we each owed 845 baht, which in actuality is ridiculous because I owed 200 for the food.  I ended up putting in 600 baht because thats all I brought.  Felicia just puts in for her food and its essentially super awkward at the table. lucy ends up overpaying as well and puts in 900. carla put in around 500-600.  I just wanted to leave at that point because it sucked that I payed 3 times as much as I should have and it was awkward, but people insist we go to the club. we take an awk taxi ride with nandini and her boyfriend though they are being very nice, we end up finding out that they are very upper/high class and it makes sense they are ok on dropping that amount on food. she pays for the 39 baht taxi ride.  we get up to go in the club and even though they go there all the time, they are forcing them to do bottle service. (i mean its not the same in us its about 1,400 baht, around 50 dollars but again when I stress to you that a meal is like a dollar, this is a monsterous amount of money) nandini throws in a thousand and we just have to split the rest.  essentially no one wants to pay and the only reason that they are making them do this promotion is because we were foreigners and they really take advantage.  we also had a hard time because these kids though they grew up in thailand learned english first because they went to international school and thus couldn't hold us down in thai. It was a purely thai bar, with absolutely no foreigners by the way so carla wasn't feeling it anyways. we all just left because we were overwhelmed.

ok so long story short the night wasn't as crazy as we wanted it to be. it was also clouded by awkwardness because of the socioeconomic tensions and also a cultural misunderstanding.  essentially in america we split the bill.  as people who are tight on money/exchange students we just pay for what we bought because it isn't usually extravagant and we get what we can afford.  because she was rich, she just thought it would be cool to split the bill equally and then everyone could just pay.  i ended up putting in more because it must be annoying to feel like you have to take out foreigners.  she was doing us a favor by showing us thai nightlife and though I really didn't want to I just did, for the sake of it not being awkward anymore.  essentially i just remember having recruits and putting in for them, or when people visited me at school paying more for them, so i just thought I would ease the tension and just put in.  WE won't be making this mistake again, though it was a learning experience.

right now it really is torentially downpouring.  i actually thought I saw a cat fall out of the sky. like i said I got caught in it and it was awful because I hate the rain lol. it hasn't stopped which is weird because it usually rains for at most 15 minutes and the clears up.

anyways tonight we are going to an all thai bar that has a performance at 12 that is supposed to be super cool.  we are going with the americans in the program so I really won't have to worry about the awkwardness and there is a safety in numbers more than 4. i will def post about it and now i will post some pics for you!

ps. we tried to go to the red light district the other night, yet essentially the people who were all gung ho chickened out.  they were saying something about feminism, but they wanted to go to research for their project on sex tourism.  so it woul dhave jsut been me lucy and carla and dylon.  i didn't want to take a free taxi and see a p**** ping pong show for only 100 bht because i was afraid id become a human trafficking statistic because there just wasn't enough of us going.  also the guys wanting to take us dumb americans there could have easily just taken us somewhere else for 100bht. as much as i love dylon he isn't very intimidating so we didn't go.  we talked to our program director who is thai she said it would be safe to go in more numbers and just take a taxi straight there. i just think we aren't going to go, but it was interesting learning about this culture in thailand.

peace love and chicken pad thai(land)