Thailand: The Land of Smiles

Hello all. I originally did not plan on creating a blog. When I sat down to email updates, however, I realized that 20 individual emails was a bit much, so here I sit.

For those who do not know, I am in Thailand for the summer on an internship. I arrived late Friday night, safe and sound. Saturday was my first real day. I woke up at nine (so far I'm beating Jet Lag) and got to see Nichida, the part of Bangkok where the Ridgways live. It is just beautiful. Everywhere is green. The plants are the tallest I have ever seen and are literally everywhere. We scooted around Nichida in a golf cart (it's burnt orange with a hook-em horns on the front...courtesy of Megan), going for groceries and a tour. You cannot imagine how beautiful everything is. All of the houses are massive, but very well designed. They fit well with the natural geography and are landscaped to remain rather hidden in shade.

In the afternoon, Megan and I went out on her scooter for massages. There is a little store near the school where I got an hourl ong Traditional Thai massage for 350 baht (about $10). Tradiational Thai massage uses some basic yoga combined with stretching and pressue point manipulation to basically work over all of your major muscle groups. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massage#Thai_massage

The massage was amazing and unkinkied all of my airplane tensed muscles. Then we went to a little outdoor bar and tried Thai beer. It's very light but rather good, though I was so relaxed I doubt anything would have bothered me. Also we had Thai food: some kind of fried pork with a spicy sauce. We came back to the house, changed (I really keep showering quite a bit...), and then went out to dinner: Italian food.

I have not yet left Nichida and the closely surrounding area, but everything seems here: the school, shopping, massage, restaurants, etc. We go everywhere either on the scooters or in the golf cart.

Tomorrow I begin work down at AMCHAM, the American Chamber of Commerce. I have not yet met any of the people from AMCHAM but have heard only good things. I'll write when I have a description of my job, as it will be the main part of my summer--though we also are already planning trips to Singapore and the islands in southern Thailand.