Question of the day

[Betti]

ok, here is another one. one question a day. if you feel like answering, please do.

I will ask the first question now, and I would like to invite Marie to ask the second question tomorrow evening, and also invite somebody to post the next question, and so on. questions can be about anything related or unrelated to Thailand. also, feel free to chat and ask and talk.

ready?

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

I first set foot in Asia in 2001. I came for a conference initially, which was held in Nakhon Nayok. However, we spent the first couple of days in Bangkok. I arrived late in the evening, got scammed right away by the airport taxis, and only just managed to get into my hotel room before a downpour. the windows could not be opened, there was no balcony, and I was way too tired to go outside, so I watched my first ever monsoon rain from inside. (a couple of days later, in Nakhon Nayok, I really enjoyed getting soaked to the skin.) I found Bangkok exciting first - I still find it exciting for a couple of days. we got scammed by the tuktuk mafia outside the Royal palace. we roamed markets, walked miles and miles, and got hopelessly lost. I knew within a couple of days that I wanted to stay in Thailand much longer than 6 weeks.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

The first time I was 'in' Thailand was September 2002 on an Air France flight from Paris to Saigon, we set down in Don Muang for about 75 minutes and all the passengers were supposed to leave the aircraft whilst it was refuelled and the flight and cabin crews were changed. Most of the crew left the aircraft after all passengers had departed and the chief stewardess, a nice French lady, came and chatted with me as we waited for the assistance people to come and help me off.

I was on my way to Vietnam for a months scuba diving trip and as it happened this hostess was also a scuba diver and we talked for what seemed likke ages until the replacement crew arrived. This new crew arrived before the assistance people so I never actually got off the plane.

On the return journey I had become very sick in Vietnam the night before and didn't enjoy the stop in Bangkok at all. The guy that came to assist me pushed me v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y from the arrival gate to the end of the terminal building where we descended to the floor beneath and then returned to the departure gate again v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y by which time they were ready to return me to my seat for the onward flight to Paris.

I didn't get to experience Thailand properly for another two years when I came in 2004, again it was intended to be a month's long scuba diving trip out of Jomtien but the afternoon after arriving I met the waitress that was to become my wife and ended up doing one day of scuba diving (and haven't dived since so far) and my life was changed forever. On that trip I got to see Jomtien, Pattaya, Naklua, Sattahip, and Bangkok. I knew from when I first left the airport Thailand was a place I would return to many times.

David

[yeows]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

My first trip to Thailand was in 1998. I was a typical tourist arriving on a Bangkok/Pattaya package tour then. Most of those memories are now a blur but one thing stood out.

We were supposed to go to the rose garden in Pattaya after lunch but I was too tired and slept after the morning's activity. Apparently the bus had left the hotel with the other tourists and was half-way there when the tour guide realised something was amiss. Mr What's-His-Name was missing!! He ordered the driver to turn around and they broke the speed limit on the way back to the hotel. Meanwhile I was still enjoying my siesta until the tour guide called my room and told me to get my @ss down. When I boarded the bus, I was very embarrassed for the entire journey as I had kept everyone waiting. That was the first and only trip I went to Thailand with a tour group.

[Sparky]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

I first came in 1992 from Hong Kong with a girlfriend because we wanted to visit some beautiful tropical islands. We'd wanted to come a year earlier but there was a bloody coup so we put it off.
I couldn't believe how hot it was and trying to sleep in a stuffy Kao Sarn Road hostel was the pits.
We took a long bus ride to Surat Thani, also hell, then took a ferry to Koh Pangngan via Samui, which nearly overturned, then went to the full-moon party on Had Rin (don't remember much about that).
We then took another boat to Kao Tao and spent a few days relaxing and snorkling. I thought Koh Tao was a real paradise and when we got back to Bangkok after that, I hated it -- hot, crowdy, bad air and choked traffic. Can't believe I live here now and like the place.

[Pailin]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

I first came to Thailand in 1989 to study M. 5 as an exchange student. We arrived in Bangkok for orientation and stayed at a boarding high school. I wish I remembered the name. We stayed in the dormitories and had intensive Thai language courses as well as Thai manners. They taught us how to eat a rambutan and how to use a Thai toilet. We had to perform skits and sing songs in Thai. During the day we got to hang out with the high school students at the school and basically we pumped them for information and vocabulary, desperate to get our skills strong enough.

After a week, we all departed to our families. There were 5 of us that took the train south...with each student getting off at their respective province. I was the last one on the train and stepped off at Trang. Awaiting me at the train station. My entire M. 5/1 class and my teachers, my family, and much of our village. I was at the train station for about 2 hours taking pictures and accepting flowers. A big group of us then went to lunch before finally returning to the village.

I remember writing home that Thailand smelled like urine. I think that was a very naive girl's perspective... I don't think that anymore.

[DogoDon]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

My first trip to Thailand was not at all planned. It was April 1987. Earlier that spring, my Thai wife (whom I had married in 1985) made her first trip back to Thailand since coming to the U.S. in about 1974 (before I met her). Before she first came to the U.S., she was living near Korat, so rather than going to Bangkok to get her Thai passport, she paid someone to do it for her.

Imagine her shock when she landed at Don Muang and was detained by the immigration authorities because her Thai passport was forged!

She was jailed for one or two nights, and then was released but was not permitted to leave the country until she got the passport situation straightened out (which wound up taking 5 months). As part of the resolution of all that, and for reasons I still don't understand, the Thai authorities required that she be married to me in Thailand.

So, off I go to Thailand to marry my wife!

I arrived at Don Muang, and was greeted by my wife, my wife's niece and her husband, and various other relatives. They drove me back to the niece's house in Bangkok. This was a surreal experience. Once we parked the pick-up truck just off an obscure soi, we started walking down a path. Before I knew it, we were in a jungle-like area. Who would have thought there would be jungle in Bangkok?!

It was pitch black on this path. I think somebody had a flashlight (a torch, for you Brits), but it didn't help much. We finally arrived at the house, such as it was. It was a traditional Thai house, meaning it really didn't have walls as such. This was quite a shock for a wet-behind-the-ears kid like me. I was pretty disoriented. Of course, they fed me when I arrived at the house, even though by this time it was 2 a.m.

Then my wife and I retired to our "room" and we crawled under the mosquito net.

When I awoke in the morning, the heat of Bangkok first hit me. It was hot like I had not quite experienced before. Yet it was exciting being there. I can still recall the feeling--exotic and exhilirating. This place was nothing like anywhere I had ever been before.

I soon learned to keep a cloth in my hand and constantly swat it across my back as I sat at the house, to keep the mosquitos at bay.

One of the relatives at the house had a little baby boy, and she would let him lie around (under a tiny mosquito net) without any diaper or clothes except a T-shirt. I was surprised the first time he peed, and a long arc of pee pee went spraying up!

Yes, it was all very different from the U.S.! But I truly enjoyed my first trip to Thailand. I also got to visit my wife's father near Korat, and we went to some island (don't recall which one) one day. I hated to leave when my two weeks of "vacation" were up.

DogoDon

[khunlungphudhu]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

I first arrived in 1963, and, to be honest, my first impressions are rather vague, not because it was so long ago, nor through dementia! LOL!
I came on duty with the army, attached to SEATO HQ., and was met by a movements NCO whose first words to me were "Fancy a beer?" (A friend for life!)
I do recall it took only 15 minutes from Don Muang to the Grand Hotel, opposite the National Stadium.
After checking in and a quick shower and change into civvies we were off on the town. That was Friday lunchtime, I next saw my room on Monday!
I do know I had the time of my life, but falling in love with Thailand crept up on me over the following months, and I have been in love ever since!

[Khun Don]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

My first visit was in 1983 as a very late (mature student) undergraduate replacement for a post graduate research assistant.( road accident incapacitated the original candidate)
I fell down the last few steps of the aircraft when disembarking at Don Muang, damaging my knee and spent the rest of the journey to Chiang Rai in some pain . An inauspicious start. My first impressions of the little I saw of Bangkok were not good-I expected more traditional buildings than were evident and the roads we travelled on to the railway station were not good-which did not do my knee a lot of good.
I loved the North at first sight-especially when I had got something from the Pharmacist to stop the pain in my knee-a torn cartilage as it later transpired. It was like home with jungle and sunshine.Spent best part of 6 months up in the hills and swore I would return to experience more than hilltribe villages, biting insects and muddy tracks. Finally managed a second visit in 1996.

[billk]

1. When and how did you first come/go to Thailand and what were your first impressions?

I first came five months after the tsunami to go and labour at Khao Lak and Ko Phi Phi.

I arrived at Phuket airport and immediately thought I was going to drop dead from the heat/ humidity. I was sitting there in a pool of my own sweat, waiting for ever for the shuttle bus, wondering what I'd let myself in for and how much use I was going to be to anyone.

Then I got on the bus up north. It was only a fan bus but I cooled down enough to be comfortable and then everything started to seem quite magical. From that moment on I have always expected to be having a great time or, if things are getting a little bumpy, for the next great time to be just around the corner.

[Marie]

My first time in Thailand was in the nineties. I had an all-expenses paid return ticket from Manila-Singapore-Jakarta-Bali, and my Singapore-based sponsor worked it out with Singapore airlines in such a way that if I wanted to I could arrange my way back to Manila from Singapore via Bangkok for a minimal fee. That was entirely optional. I grabbed the opportunity. I could not believe it--I only had to pay USD 20 for that 'detour'! I had Thai foster siblings who had been inviting me to visit.

While in Bali, I caught a terrible cold and a cough. And so on my way back from Bali, the multiple take offs and touch downs ( Bali-Jakarta-Singapore-Bangkok) had given me diminished hearing. My eardrums seemed to have burst. By the time I landed in Bangkok I was virtually deaf.

My foster brother came to the airport to fetch me. But I could hardly hear him speak. While we were talking from the departure area to the parking lot, I noticed that people were looking at us in a strange way. For some reason my brother also looked embarassed. Then I knew it--I was talking too loud!

From then on I refrained from talking, not only to lessen my embarassment but also his. I explained to him what's wrong with me and he promised to take me to an English-speaking ear doctor the following day. However, the next day he couldn't drive to Bangkok from Chonburee where he lived, because of heavy rains that had caused some floods. (He was wise to call the front desk and leave a message for me.) I thought of phoning my foster sister, but that would create some difficulties, too--I wouldn't be able to hear her!

For two days I had played hermit in my hotel just nursing a bad cough and a diminished hearing. That was not exactly my idea of fun. I did not have any remarkable impression also about Thailand--good or bad, maybe because I was too self-absorbed with my problem. I saw no point in staying. I started to plan to leave Thailand.

Then a miracle of a sort happened. I yawned and I heard some popping sounds in my ears. I forced another big yawn and a passageway seemed to have cleared up in my ear drums. My hearing had started to normalize! In the next few hours it was back to normal.

My next days were fun-filled. I stayed for a month for that particular trip.