Return Trip: Bangkok to Taipei

We boarded the bus at our hotel and headed to the airport. It was about a 2.5 hour drive. Here is a video from inside our bus.  Thanks to our expert driver we made it on time! Our tour guide, Wassana cheerfully helped organize our departure and find our departure counters.

At the beautiful new Bangkok airport we waited for a little while for our flight. We also said goodbye to Cameron who is headed to Australia. And we started on our way to Taipei.

I took some shots of the terminal before we boarded our plane...

Finally, we arrived in Taipei where we passed immigration. Taipei has some interesting themed waiting areas, there was a "Hello Kitty" waiting area as well as the "Taiwan Music Waiting Lounge" which we were waiting in. Here is a picture of our lounge:

Here are some pictures of our group waiting and working on their final reflection papers.

A Thank You to Whitworth University, Asia Tour Advisor and Globo Tours and all the Universities we visited

Acknowledgements :

The Off Campus programs staff  of Whitworth University have been wonderful in their support of our trip. Thank You to them!

Also, for our time in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, I highly recommend our tour planner, Than Xuan of AsiaTourAdvisor.com She works for a top rated tour tour planning agency in Vietnam and were wonderful. Very Highly recommended.

Finally, Edwin Choy of Globo Tours is highly recommended for air travel to Asia and tours of China. We have used him for air travel on the last three trips, as well as for tours in China. He is very helpful and we can recommend his agency.

Thank your to every one else who helped with this trip! There are so many of you it would be difficult to list everyone.

Finally thank you to the students for their patience and for working hard to make this a good learning experience given the limited time we had in each country.

Thursday, January 24th - A Birthday and on our way home!

We started our bus trip to the airport by wishing happy birthday to one of our group (who will remain nameless).  She will have 2 April 24's this year because we will get back before we leave Thailand. Does this mean she is two years older or not?

Here we are on the bus, tired but happy and looking forward to home and family. One of use will leave us in Bangkok to travel home to Australia. It has been a fun trip and we look forward to having a reunion meal in Spring term.

On the bus headed to the airport...

Thursday, January 23 - Multiple Activities

Today several of us arranged to have a Thai cooking class, others went on a full day excursion to Ko Thalu island, others relaxed and worked on journals, while others visited a palace of King Rama IV.

Here are photos of the cooking class,  Cameron arranged the class and the others who attended reported that it was an amazing experience, they learned how to select  the correct ingredients from the marketplace, how to prepare the ingredients (which includes having children prepare the coconut for coconut paste) they also learned how to cook the meal correctly.  They all reported that it was absolutely the very best Thai food they had ever had. They made Green Curry, Pad Thai and a Coconut dessert.  

Excursion to Ko Thalu

Vicki was very interested in doing some scuba diving while on the trip and invited those interested to tag along. Nathaniel also had his scuba certification so he signed up for a scuba class too.The other 6 of us decide to go snorkeling. It turned out that our excursion, which we arranged directly through the concierge and our tour guide, involved a 2.5 hour van ride (each way), a 20 minute boat ride ( each way )  but also  a full lunch  buffet and beautiful fish, coral, and soft sand beaches.

The island had a turtle hatchery to protect sea turtles that lay eggs on the beach om this island. The baby turtles were very cute, and Alexa actually got to hold one!

Finally, some of our group relaxed on the beach making sand castles, writing in their journals, sleeping, and shopping. All in all it was a great end to our time in Thailand.

Wednesday January 22, Bangkok to Cha-am, Golden Bhudda and Salt Farm

Our trip to investigate Culture and Technology has taken us to many interesting places.  On Wednesday morning we visited the Golden Bhudda which is 5.5 tons of gold! This Bhudda had been covered in cement, but when it was being moved an arm fell off exposing an inner Bhudda of gold! The technology required to make this is amazing, and it is believed it was made in the 13th or 14th century.

After visiting the Golden Bhudda, we continued on our way to Cha-am. We stopped on the way to visit a salt farm. The salt farm is made in fields that are close to the sea. Salt farms make a flat field, fill the field with salt water from the ocean, and then let it evaporate, leaving the salt behind. Farmers then scrape the salt up by hand and transport it in wheel barrow to bagging stations and onto trucks. We were told it takes about 2-3 hours to load one field of salt, but it is very challenging work.  Here are some pictures of the process:

I was very impressed by the hard-working, Thai salt farmers. Many of them covered their faces and arms with cloth to protect themselves from the corrosive salt. Farm laborers ( according to http://www.livingthai.org/how-much-is-the-average-thai-salary-per-month.html ) make about 6000-8000 baht per month, which is about $200 to $600 per month.  

After visiting the salt farm we continued on to a rest area where they had palm tree sugar and other desserts made from palm sugar available.  Our tour guide, Wassana, bought us some of the different treats to eat. We had tapioca pudding, palm tree fruit candy and more. 

In the afternoon we arrived at our beach resort, the "Long Beach Hotel". This was a very pleasant hotel a short ways from the beach and the warm water of the Gulf of Thailand. 

In the evening, many of us went to see 10,000,00 bats fly out of a mountain. In the video below you will see the bats forming a sinuous line of flying foxes. It was very impressive! 

All  in all it was a very interesting day.

January 13th - University and Orphanage Visit

Hey Hey, this is Amariah coming at you from Asia with another quick blog entry. I’ve got a couple updates for you on all the events which occurred during our first full day in Vietnam. For starters, we managed to make our way to the Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City. We were greeted by a welcoming group of students there. They gave us a viewing of a couple of their school’s promotional videos, to help kick off our visit I with them. Following shortly afterwards was a live performance presented to us by their dance club. In order to entertain further, they decided on a couple of choice games as well. The first game consisted of us passing rubber bands to our peers only using tooth picks held in our mouths. Up next, they had materials set aside to do an egg-drop contest. We were split up into groups and giving the following materials: straws, skewer sticks, and An few rubber bands. Upon completing our masterpieces, we then continued to send our creations plummeting off the top floor and towards the cement. Public notice: A couple eggs were harmed in the making of this blog. The third game we played was a crossword where we had to walk around the campus to find and take pictures of various building names. To wrap up the University shenanigans, we were given a vocal performance of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” by a couple students on campus and one of our own managed to send us off with the familiar melody of “Country Roads”.

We managed to snag some grub at a restaurant near by, where we had the opportunity to experience more Vietmanese dishes. This time, the delivery of the food had a bit more variety in presentation. Some of the students even took it upon themselves to rearrange the various food arrangements into their own creations.

Following another quick bus ride, we made our next stop at a local orphanage. Here we devoted our time towards loving on all the kiddos we possibly could. This orphanage in particular was full of kiddos who were abandoned by their families at the very doorsteps of the building. The best thing we knew how to do was give them as much attention as possible. This consisted of plenty of piggy-back rides and a couple of cuddles too. It was such a fulfilling moment to see them as happy as they were. I mean just look at their precious lil faces!

Also here’s a pic of us all dripping in sweat after we finished playing at the orphanage. We be lookin cute though.

Jan 10 - Free Day/ Disney Land

Jan 10, Didney Worl.

This was a free day for us to do whatever we wanted and most of us visited the most magical place on earth, Disney Land. Although this one is much smaller than its California counterpart, many of us believe this park to be better due to the short lines and cheaper prices. No wait was more than 10 minutes and merchandise such as shirts averaged only $20 USD (based on what I saw).

The park itself is very similar to Disney in the US but with minor changes to account for cultural differences. For instance, everything is in Chinese and English. The rides often have two characters conversing with each other, one speaks English and the other speaks Chinese making the stories one sided but still understandable. Another difference is that there seems to be little focus on the Christmas season, rather, the park is decorated for Lunar new year which will occur Jan 25-27.