UniBreak Nursing Group Griffith University in Thailand!

Sawadeeka from Thailand!



Hello everyone,

Oh my goodness i am having THE best time over here, i think i could easily fall in love with this place. The people and the culture is absolutely amazing and very humbling.

We arrived in Bangkok on Saturday morning about 6am and pretty much as soon as you get off the plane, the smell that is instinctively Thailand hits you, a beautiful concoction of car fumes, beautiful food and lots of polution, but at the same time still bareable! Customs over here is a joke, very much a numbers game, our bags didnt even get as much as a scan, we all just got herded through these gates and anyone who looked sus had to put their bags through the xray machines.
We took a bus to the guesthouse, which was an eye opener as the slummy areas are on the sides of the road and if your going to get culture shock this is where we would have gotten it. We then spent the day in bangkok, we rode up the river in these long skinny boats that fly, to the floating markets which was up a sort of canal network that looked like a very poor area, houses with no windows and barely standing but all the locals sitting on the side of the river were all so happy, waving etc at us all. The floating markets were amazing, not so much floating though and the food... WOW!!! We grazed till the cows came home picking things from most stalls and tasting their delicasies, sipping on coconut milk straight from the coconut etc, oh what a life!!

Saturday night we caught the night train from bangkok to eastern thailand where we are based in a province called Surin. The train was an eye opener to alot of the girls, very basic with two bunks on either side of the train with a curtain that you pull across. I was on the top bunk and all that was holding me in were two small straps that you hung around a bar on the roof. If any of you know how i sleep, i was petrified that i was going to end up on the floor so needless to say i didnt get much sleep on the train!!!

We arrived in Surin at 4:30 am, got taken to our houses then enjoyed the morning adventuring around town. We rode the bikes around town and soon found out that the only road rules are that there are no rules!! Quiet daunting but you soon get over it!! We had breaky at a little road side stall, we dont know what we were eating but alot of locals were eating there so we figured it was safe!! We then spent the day getting shown around by the guides, all the important things like the good night spots etc!!

Monday and today we spent at a nursery out of town, its very much like a preschool but it is for very poor families. Monday we spent stripping all the paint off the building and giving it an undercoat and then today we painted it in bright colours and painted animals all over the walls. We did it all while the kids were inside having lessons and then sleeping so it was a fantastic suprise for them when they woke up and came outside. The look on their faces was just adorable, they were over the moon!! The kids are so well mannered and loved having us there, as we were leaving this afternoon one of the little boys yelled out in thai what we soon found out was "please come back". It was really emotional leaving cause we played ball with them all and taught them how to tickle each other, we couldnt believe that they didnt know what tickling was, it must not be something they do over here.

Last night my room mate Rachel and i went to do our washingso we could re use our dirty painting clothes. In our street there is a tiny little store and outside is a washign machine bolted to the wall, it costs 20 baht which is about $1 per load. When we got there, there were a group of young guys sitting outside the store drinking out of a bottle. So we thought we would talk to them, or at least try!! We ended up getting a beer each (cause they sell alcohol in the general stores and 7 elevens here!!) and sitting down with them. They offered us some of what they were drinking, about the size of a nip of alohol, in the plastic cup they were passing around. We had some and soon found out it was thai whiskey, which has to be the most disgusting form of alcohol i have ever had!! We had a great time trying to communicate with them, a few could speak a little english but one of the guys, who happened to be quite drunk only knew the words "i love you" and repeated it for about an hour, funny at first but got old pretty quickly!!

The next couple of days we are actually doing nursing things believe it or not!! So i will fill you all in on that in a couple of days!!


Love to all and i will see you all in a couple more weeks unless i fall head over heels in love with this place and dont come home!! hehe joking, i will at least come home and get my stuff!!!