i left phuket friday at 630 pm, arrived in bangkok saturday at 530 am. the bus was different than any other i had been on. it was two levels like the mega busses but the seats were much bigger. we had so much space to spread out that i couldnt even find anything to lean my feet against when sleeping to do so comfortably. also, it was freezing cold.they gave us blankets similar to those on an airplane, but they didnt do much since they were so small. also, the roads are very bumpy and windy, so being on the top deck was almost nauseating. we made a few stops along the way, which were apparently for a free buffet, but since we had no idea what they were saying or how long we would be stopping for, we didnt get off for fear that they would leave us.
so when beth and i arrived at the bangkok bus station, we knew we had to wait until at least 8 for anyone to meet us. we wandered around a bit until we found some seats inside in the air conditioning and after lugging all of our stuff up, decided to just wait to meet our people.
ya came to get me around 8 and we had to leave beth for the other person from the other group to come. even though we are both just to the west on the outside of the city, we are still a good distance away from each other. so i was suppose to leave with ya and another person from the chiang mai group, but we could not find him and decided to just leave to start apartment searching.
we drove up to my school, which is in a semi-small village and then started working backward to find me a place to live. we stopped at one spot and waited for about 10 minutes for someone to answer the office, but we had no luck there so we moved on.
it turned out that the next spot would be my new residence. its a 4 story orange and coral gated building. the landlady speaks absolutely no english, and so if she needs to communicate something, she calls ya who then calls me back. its a bit burdensome, but she is still really nice. the "apartments" here are really just a bedroom with a bathroom attached, so thats what i got, though i do have aircon and a king size bed, that is as hard as a table top. its rather plain, and i will need to get some things to make it feel more homey. the good thing is its only 2500 baht a month, which is only 1/2 of my allowance for housing, so i have enough to also cover the water and electric bills, which shouldnt be high since we dont have the option of hot water. also, its just a 15 minute walk to school. its not so bad because the other person from the ati program up north, steinar, ended up getting an apartment across the hall, so we can be farangs(foreigners, mostly a term applied to westerners) in the neighborhood together, and not have to walk to and from school alone.
beth lives the closest to me, in a city called pinklao, which is about 30-40 min by cab. its not expensive to get there and i even went to see her saturday night since we all wanted to go out to koh sang street for halloween. it is the area where all of the other farangs go on normal nights so we figured it would have the most halloween action. it did, and we met up with some other girls from the group who were already in bangkok, but after such a long day, we just had no energy for partying at all and headed in early. its a shame, because halloween is at the top as one of my favorite holidays, and i wish i had planned better and actually brought a costume so that i could properly enjoy it.
in actuality, i wasnt really in the city of bangkok at all, but stayed just on the outskirts. ill have to make a weekend trip to visit someone in one of the coming weekends to explore more.
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