chau in vietnam!: Adventuring

After four months, my journey in Hanoi and throughout all of Vietnam has ended (despite the fact that I'll be returning to Vietnam in a couple of days, but this time as a tourist!). To recap the last three months to my best and truest ability would be difficult, and I wish I had a legitimate excuse for not keeping this blog updated (do shitty internet and constant power outages at my dorm count?). Looking back on my drafts, I had begun to write an entry to try and commence a daily habit out of blogging:

The half-way point of the program has already passed and I’m left with just a little over four weeks in Ha Noi. When I first arrived here in August I thought December seemed so far away and that I had so much time, and here I am at the brink of November, frantically trying to fill up my daily schedules and take advantage of anything and everything I can do here. In a sense, I feel like I have done a considerable amount. It’s difficult for me to quantify all of the experiences and the lessons that I have learned from this trip so far, on one hand because I haven’t been continually updating this blog (sorry, again!) and on another because I feel that I cannot accurately capture the dynamics of Vietnam through just words and pictures. I have a difficult time expressing my emotions to a larger audience, and I guess that’s just the journalist in me, always trying to relay a story as truthfully and as objectively as possible to the public eye and to not encroach upon it with my nagging opinions and thoughts. A couple of weeks ago in class Thay Gerard reprimanded us students for not updating our blogs, reminding us that it was only in our best interest that we document, in any form whatsoever, our experiences and travels in Vietnam. I guess I’m around two months late, but better late than never right?

HAHAHA. well here I am 4 months later. Better late than never?? I can't apologize enough, and I guess the only person I really cheated out of not documenting my adventures was me. For now, I'll be posting about the present as it unfolds (my journeys throughout SE Asia w/ the big sister and mom!), and I promise to write about Hanoi in the near future.

Bangkok, Thailand

Thai Buddhist Monks roaming through the airport.

I arrived at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport, quite possibly the largest airport I have ever been to. The facilities are vast with awe inspiring modern architecture, and international tourists from all corners of the world scurry in and out through the terminals.

Bangkok embraced me warmly. Literally. The scorching heat and the suffocating humidity almost made me pass out from dehydration, even though I've been through worse (Hanoi summers are exponentially hotter in my opinion!). In my taxi from the airport to my hotel I could see rows and rows of skyscrapers lining the horizon, and, consequently from the expansion and development I presume, layers of thick muggy smog blocking out the sun. And 7-11's are as ubiquitous here as scam artists, hiding out on every street corner waiting for an opportunity to capitalize on an unsuspecting tourist. Bangkok is lively and bustling though, its streets filled with foreigners and locals mingling and its sidewalks lined with dozens of stalls frying up flat rice noodles. Yum!