Exchange 2015

In the past few weeks, I spent most of my time in Bangkok. The workload from the university increased a little bit due to the mid-term exams. After finishing those, I had some time to do a few trips and get a tailored suit.

Ayutthaya

One of the greatest day trips from Bangkok is definitely the visit of the temples in Ayutthaya. It was a beautiful day and the weather appeared to be great.

Ayutthaya is an ancient capital of Thailand and situated just 85 kilometres outside of Bangkok. Therefore, it is easy to reach by taking a mini van from the Victory Monument. There is no timetable and the mini vans just leave as soon as the van is full with people.

At first we wanted to rent bicycleses in order to get to all the temples situated in and arround the city. However, it was so hot so we decided to go for scooters instead of bicycles which was definitely the right choice.

We spent the whole day riding arround town and visting the different temples and ruins. It was a great day and these ruins look truely amazing, but I believe the following pictures speak for themselves.

The stone head entwined in tree roots at Wat Mahathat was one of the highlights.

Of all those temples Wat Chaiwatthanar was probably my favorite (see pictures below).

However, the giant lying buddha (37 metres long and 8 metres high) was also very impressive.

For only 20 Baht (about 60 cents) we took the train back to bangkok in order to avoid the heavy traffic in the evening. It sounds like a smart decision, but spending about 2 hours (instead of one in the mini van) in the third class without AC is not that much better than being stuck in traffic.

Suits

The two Michaels (my roommate and my sort of room mate from the other side of the hall) and I decided to get some tailored suits since it is pretty cheap here in comparison with european prices. There are so many tailors and it is hard to choose the best one. We checked out a tailor who used to make suits for celebrities like George W. Bush (he said that he even made suits for President Obama, but I don't think so). Afterwards we went to 'Jim's Collection' and Jim was really friendly and helpful. He is a real business man and travels twice a year to Germany and Switzerland and makes tailored suits for different bank branches. He offered us a good price and convinced us. So the process started...

Picking the right fabric and color...

...getting meassured...

... and a few days later, we went back for our first fitting..

... another week later for the 2nd fitting...

And now it needs just some small adjustments, but should be ready soon to pick up. :)

Khao Yai National Park

A few days ago, there was a big celebration/ceremony at our university and even the princess went there. This means great honour for our university and a few days off for us. The weather seemed to be good and we decided to go to Khao Yai National Park (about a 2-3 hour drive from Bangkok by mini van). Then we got picked up by a driver from the hostel...

... and after lunch we joined a tour outside the park. We got in touch with some animals and I was happy that the guide did not put any of those creatures on me.

I felt way more compfortable taking pictures.

We went to a cave with a lot of bats...

and a terrifiying tarantula...

Liked this little guy much better.

In the evening, we were supposed to watch another cave and observe how thousands (according to the tour guide more than 2 million) of bats are leaving the cave. Unfortunately, it started raining hard...

very hard...

and even though the guides provided rain capes, we were completely wet after less than 15 minutes. We saw some of the bats, but shortly after leaving the shelter we were back in/on the car.

The next day we booked a full day tour in the national park and chances were even better to discover and observe a lot of animals after the heavy rain.