Week nr 6-7 Bence in Da house !

So first of all sorry for the late update just been quite busy with having Bence here around :)
So first lets have a quick review what kind of adventures did my old pale have here during his 10 day long stay

Thanks God his plane was sharply on time, so to my greatest surprise he arrived even a bit before than i expected so we still had some time to hang out during the night, but of course didn’t wanna push too hard since jet lag still had its effect on him so we just chilled. The day after however we woke up together and Bence decided to sit with me for my classes (hehe probably he didn’t have enough of them at Bocconi... ah yea there it is not compalsury :) ... Right after that we rushed to my tailor to order him a suite so that it will be ready in time (later on actually we had a bit of problem with this guy since he had some quarrel with his landlord so had to shut down his shop and now he is on freeride... quite inconvenient to find him this way... but fortunately Ben has now his suite at the end)

Same day in the evening Oillie organized us some “free time activity” which probably was one of my sweetest experience in Bangkok... The reason for that is really simple: we went to chocolate bar : ) Interestingly it was a place that was supposed to be a club as well, so live hip-hop was on all the time which made the place quite weird cause due to the music it was not a cafeteria and due to the chocolate it was not a club either : ) somewhere between the 2 ...

Saturday turned out to be a bit more relaxing day. Having done my classes i rushed back home to pick up Bence and go to MBK (shopping Mall) just to make him have some idea about what he can buy here and for how much (i don’t think i should say that he was really satisfied with the prices, especially when he realised he can bargain a lot with the merchants : ). Tough we became really tired in the middle of day so we went home again to take a nap (which became quite loooooong) But of course the whole day cant consist of only sleeping so i decided to take him to that nice Indian place where Matt and me went together few weeks before. Well, i guess looking at the picture you can tell we had fun, Sisha + Indian food = having great time (yes Goshia that is another general rule of life :). After that we walked down a bit in China Town however did not find it too interesting since only thing you can do there is eating and by this time we were way too much full..

Previously Oillie already arranged a field trip for Sunday for which i signed up ourselves so at the end basically whole Sivalai Place went out together to Ayutthaya, the formal Capital of Thailand. I wont start listing all the exciting places we have visited cause it would take too much time (by the way you can check out the pictures on Facebook if you are really interested) We really had a great time and i think by visiting all these historical important places we managed to understand a bit better the history of the country and also Buddhist religion, which is unbelievably respected here.

Monday, this could be basically the typical tourist day in Bangkok. First we started up at the Grand Palace, which i was really happy about cause till that time i did not manage to throw a visit there personally. I must say that if you ever come here (maybe even to visit me – haaa??? Not a bad idea right...) this place is something that you must not forget to check out ! Its unbelievably beautiful. However its highly recommended to watch out for the all the local merchants and other interesting people in the area who try to sell you basically everything ! Quite annoying at the beginning but you learn by time to simply ignore them !Unfortunately this was an extremely hot day in the city so basically during the Palace visit we were just trying to run from one shadow to another cause it was unbearable staying on the sun for longer time ! That’s why we took right after this a Channel trip around Bangkok for one hour during which we managed to discover some deeply hidden part of the city (well for some of them it’s really better to be hidden...). It was also a unique experience however next time i will surely pay for 2 hours cause i think i will see even more details that case.

We had a nice surprise when we were about to go back home. Wang Lang (the place where we take the ferry from) was completely empty when we arrived back from the trip which was really strange cause usually you can hardly even more there... well this time it seemed there was something going and later it turned out we were right. It was his majesty, the King who appeared in the Hospital for whatever reason so finally i could have a look at him personally, even tough i could just see him for a sec in his golden Rolls Royce (haven’t seen a car like that before either...)

So basically that’s the first part of the story. In the evening we bought our tickets to Cambodia so we were getting ready for our departure at Tuesday afternoon. More details of this fantastic trip is coming up soon, so make sure you come back to the site often !

Week Nr 5

OK this is gonna be actually a bit longer than a just one week ... So on Tuesday we went out with Mat to an Indian restaurant to eat some native dishes and to smoke some shisa... it was a really nice place to chill out so if any of you may visit me here i definitely have a place to take out to ...

The real big fun started on Thursday tough. Sandra, Christophe, Jonas and me decided to go wakeboarding. Yes even me... Well just like many other things it was ridiculously cheap (7 euros for 2 hours...). We had tons of fun despite the fact that Sandra and me did not really manage to stand on the board more than hm... 5 seconds maybe (kk actually she was a bit better but it was already her second time !!! – cheater :P). So by the end of the day we got extremely exhausted (didn’t even imagine before this is so tiring...) Of course the day after i woke up with terrible pains in my entire body :D oh by the way i wanna congratulate to Johnas and Christophe for being able to stand on that god damn board ... :D wish i could do that one day too... well maybe another time (or rather in another life...)

Friday: Of course there can be no Friday without party... well this time actually it turned out to be the best party in Bangkok so far. It was a night poolparty in an extremely nice environment with basically all the exchange students around us, we really had a lot of fun, tough none of us were brave enough to carry our cameras there, so we kinda miss the pictures, but at least we have really nice memories from that night ! For me it was even more interesting cause i had a plane to catch at 10:50, so i had to wake up latest time by 6:30 next day... (telling you that i went to bed at 4 you can calculate how much i slept... little math :D)

OK so now comes to real interesting part: TRIP TO PHUKET !!!

We already planned this trip with my Italian friends for like 2 weeks, so i was really eager to finally go there. Everything was nice until we actually landed at the island... u can find out: of course it was RAINING !!! but not like in Europe, it was damn raining horizontally ! As we didn’t have any formal plans regarding the trip itself we just started inquiring about the place at the Airport so at the end a taxi driver drove to some place which was said to be the party centre of this island... Well it was more or less true but here party means something else for the locals... cause why do the Europeans come to this place ? so why ? of course to have sex with the local hookers.. so basically we ended up at the local red light district (which was more or less a size of a small town) and especially cause it was off season and due to the bad weather as well we were one of the few tourist so the local “ladies” really tried everything to convince us to use their “services”...


Well all in all this trip was way more different than i originally planned but still we had a lot of fun. We went out to some really nice restaurant, tried the local dishes (which were damn expensive...) and finally i managed to make an old dream of mine come true: Riding an Elephant !!!! it was a really unique experience even tough i would never try it again :P it wasn’t bad at all but lets say it was enough...

Unfortunately there was a huge tragedy that put us in a really bad mood right on the second day of our trip. As you may have heard about it, a plan crashed at Phuket Airport on Sunday and almost 90 people were killed in this fatal accident... Of course we were shocked when we saw in the television the first pictures so we tried to inform our families back home that we are fine. Actually previously we wanted to change our tickets for that night (because of the bad weather) but thanks God the system didn’t let us modify the ticket 24 before the take off... Anyway the airport was closed till next evening (when we actually had our rescheduled flight) so after like a 4-5 hour delay we managed to reach Bangkok again in one piece...

Breaking NEWs

Ok just a short post. At the moment I am at Phuket (writting from NET Cafe) as probably some of you have heard about it, a plane crashed here today... just to calm everybody, none of my friends or me personally were on that plane, however due to the terrible weather we go home earlier tomorrow night at 6:15 and hopefully reach Bangkok around 7:30 ! More details comin up soon !

Week Nr 4

I decided to make updates on a weekly base cause on Monday i have a lot of time anyway so i can do it easier than any other time. So about last week:
It started really interestingly, Judit, Martin, Johnas, Robert and me decided to go for the evening market close to the park we have been last Sunday with Johnas (ah yea, still haven’t made the summary of the week before this :P, probably will not be done at all sry :P) So having walked down the street we haven’t seen anything special but on the way back we realised that we missed a long street to the right... Well let’s check it out ! ! ! Interestingly everybody was offering some kinda ping pong show at the entire area... well living in Bangkok for already a month we knew that its probably not that ping pong we know back home... of course it wasn’t... later when we saw strippers and some really interesting banners of certain bars we realised that we ended up at Patpong, one of the red light districts of Bangkok J We haven’t done basically anything interesting except looking around a bit (how could have we when there was a girl with us J - hehehe joking)

On Tuesday I finally met a really old friend, Mr Russ or as everyone knows him Eugen J Haven’t seen him for over a year so we really had a lot to talk about... As always he could surprise me several times a day... this time by simply by just his shopping habits J since clothing is quite cheap in Thailand, my friend decided to buy 6 custom made suits and 30 shirts + a whole suitcase of jeans J I personally followed his idea however on a much lower scale: 1 suit with 2 trousers (still didn’t have black ones for my school uniform...) and 3 shirts... This Wednesday they are gonna be ready so i can finally pick them up ! After the first tryon it looked really nice so i have expectations !

On Wednesday as always i started school and this time it really drained my energy (maybe i paid attention during class or i don’t know why J ) so in the evening we didn’t really want to do anything great. So just went out a few of us to play bowling. Thanks God all of us were on more or less the same level so we really enjoyed the game ! (some nice pictures were made, still have to take them from Chris). Later this night we visited our Austrian friends’ apartment... there is a really amazing view to the city from the 38^th floor i must admit... The remaining part of the night was about the art of cinema: we managed to watch the very first movie of Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger, titled Hercules in New York !!!! i can only recommend to anybody, its truly a piece of art J

On Thursday i went back with Eugen to the tailor for the first try on ! This time i also took with me my German friends (ok Robert is from Switzerland but he speaks German, so i kinda forgot about this every time :P). This became a really chillin day later, closing it with a refreshing swim in the pool

Friday tough was much more about partying ! Chris had some of his friends visiting from Austria so we went out together to the Royal City Avenue (RCA), one of Bangkok’s party areas... Well this night surely had sort of “double face” it started actually pretty bad, terrible food in a restaurant and at the end in the disco quite bad music... then everything turned upside down, music became better so people started to feel the atmosphere and it turned into a fantastic party... too bad i reached home at almost 5 am and had to wake up at 7...

Ah yea... Saturday... after sleeping 2 hours i had to wake up for my IT class and moreover i had a quiz... well i don’t think i have to say too much about how i performed J (actually taking into consideration all the circumstances it was not that bad J ) So right after school i rushed home to get some sleep... But of course the weekend cannot start with only sleeping J so in the night we gathered up again and went to the red light district again without Austrian guests ... well this time we managed to experience personally Bangkok’s probably worst face: the ping pong show... lets say so its disgusting and very humiliating for the Women who are doing it... cannot offer to anybody ! Tough maybe we went to a wrong bar but i don’t think it could be that much different anywhere else... and pretty much the night was over with this (we drank after a beer in a normal bar ...)

Wouldn’t even mention Sunday cause there was nothing that really could interest you... unless next time any of u want to clean up my room for me ? :P

Monday - Tuesday

Since these are my off days i mostly don't do anything interesting, however these 2 days were not without experience. First Oillie, Matt, Johnas and me made a small trip to the Wat Phra Kaeo temple, where among many other things we managed to have a look at a giant Buddha statue... interesting question we had after the visit: did they build the temple or the statue first ? :)
The evening was also quite nice, finally decided with the guyz to go for a Thai massage (not the one everybody would think of, just a normal massage :D) it took 2 hours and must say was a unique experience !



Tuesday was basically without any great happenings, tough one interesting thing occurred at the night Johnas and me wanted to go for some Buddha meditation - conversation meeting so as always we took a cab (since due to the lack of reliable public transportation we always use cabs, which are ludicrously cheap). well just to be short, we were driving for 90 minutes, 33 kilometers towards the wrong direction !!!!! and we were still in the city centre :) all this coasted 300 baht which is approx 7 euros :) So at the end we missed the meditation and went to a shopping mall :P

and the Story Begins...

Hello Everyone !

The reason why i created this blog is mainly YOU !!! thx God i receive a lot of emails from you asking how my life is goin on in Thailand. Sometimes it takes me loooooong time to answer to all of you so i decided rather to write this "online diary", this way keeping you updated about my adventures.

As i am writting this post, it is 3rd of september 2007. I have been in Bangkok since 16th of august, so approx 3 weeks. Lets review what happened during this period shortly:

Well, as an old quote says "Even the longest journey begins with the first step" - i would add: and this step is often difficult and hard. So was my arrival to Bangkok, my flight was 12 hours late which really made my nicely planned arrival afternoon impossible to carry out :( so at the end in stead of 3 pm i arrived at next day 3 am... quite a difference... So i had to take a cab from the Airport to the my appartment, which i reached around 5 am. Well this was another shock cause the place did not really match with my expectations... tough it was 5 mins away from the Uni, it was located in the middle of a market (in thailand basically people are selling food at every single meter of the marketstreet, so you can imagine the stink around that place...). Moreover my room was not more than 10 square meter and most importantly i did not have internet, which you all know is cruical for me ! So i decided that despite having already paid online one month deposit i am gonna switch from this place... For 2 days i was suffering from the Jat lag, so i couldnt really do to much.

Then on Sunday i had basically my last chance to find something because the landlord was trying to force me to sign the rental contract on Monday... So i headed into a NetCaffé and started browsing the exchange Forum at Facebook and thx god after just a short time i found Amber's post in which she was writting about an excellent place: "Sivalai". I googled it up and i immediately liked it, so headed fast and checked it out. To my greatest suprise i met with the nicest landlady of all times, Oillie. She and her entire family was really helpful from the first second, explained me everything and showed me around the place, which was way more than i expected: giant 54 square meter room, airco, giant TV, internet, kitchen, balcony (thats only my place...) and in the common areas: Restaurant, Gym, Swimming Pool, Tennis Courts and many other facilites... So i knew that i am gonna end up here sooner or later (actually i turned out to be already tomorrow :D )


This day i finally met some of the other exchanges, including Mat, Johnas, Amber and Sandra... they were also a really good reason to switch to Sivalai.

So on the following day, Monday i moved in to my new room so my mood really changed to absolutely more positive !

On Tuesday, we had the first orientation meeting at Thammasat University, where we had the first, sometimes funny experince... for example: i really couldnt imagine before that guyz would ever participate in cheer-leading... well here they do :) they look really funny must say :)

On Wednesday i had my first courses, which were suprisingly good (kk except the Financial Markets class where the prof. is trying to be so funny that is already annyoing :P) but the other 2 classes with an american prof. are really interesting and kinda motivating too... tough i will have to do a lot of group work which i dont really like ... continous studying sucks, as we know from Italy :)
Oh yea... and class attendace is compalsory, i can miss max 30% otherwise i cant take the exam... well we will see :)


At last weekend we were about to go for a "Team Building" weekend somewhere outside Bangkok... I personally expected that we were goin to some kinda Hostel and we gonna foul around and get wasted (hm... i couldnt never deny that i am hungarian) well i must say i probably was never more wrong in my life than this time... Against my expectations we arrived to a 5 star hotel on that was located right next to the seaside... i must say it was amazing... every luxury u could just ask for... (oh yea, and everything for free... kk the drinks were not :D) in the afternoon we had some sort of team competition which at the beginning seemed a bit childish and annoying but by the end i personally started to like it really much, too bad my team ended up as the last one ! :) but at least we lost in battle :) !!!!

So after this beautfiul weekend we headed back to Bangkok to finally start our "normal" exchange life... Well mine only started on Wednesday since i attend school just on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (yea... these poor people have to work 6 days / week... so do the "poor" uni students")

I am planning to write a bit more detailed about the last week, so stay tooned ! :)