Goodbye warm showers, Hello Krabi!

Hellooooooo (or shall I say, Sa wa dee ka) family, friends, and facebook stalkers! I have officially made it to Krabi town and let me tell you, it's definitely a culture shock! It is 7:30 in the morning here, 14 hours ahead of all you west coast people, and I am currently using the internet at the Thai Hotel. I met everyone in my group last night in the lobby and we all went out to a real authentic Thai dinner--pizza! (So far I've eaten Burger King and Pizza while in Thailand haha, just trying to prepare my tummy for what's to come by coating it with as much American greese as I can.) Everyone was extremely nice and very funny, they all range in age from 22 (me being the youngest along with another girl) to probably somewhere over 40. I'd say the group is split between under 27 year olds and over 35 year olds. There are two other Americans (one man from Northern California, and a girl my age from DC), the majority of Europeans are from England but there is a woman from Stockholm and one from Budapest. We drank some really good Thai beer called Chang, probably like our version of Keystone Light or maybe Miller Light but hey, a beer for $1.25?! I don't care what it tastes like for that cheap!

The flights out here were not as big as a hassel as I had planned on them being. The 12 hour and 45 minute flight from LAX to South Korea really flew by...I'm thinking it had to do with that nice Ambien you gave me, Mom! I watched about four movies, one documentary, and slept the entire way. Sat around in the South Korea airport for about 2 hours (nicest airport, EVER) and then hopped on a 5 hour plane ride to Bangkok. I landed in Bangkok around 11pm their time and really had no idea where to find my ride to the hotel. I walked passed all the people with signs and noticed these two Australian kids eyeing me and then they started following me. All I kept thinking was "Broken down palace, broken down place" (the movie where these two girls get framed by good looking tourists in Thailand and are thrown in jail forever) so I just kept walking but they wouldn't stop following. Normally I would have said hello or excuse me? But I was so tired I just wanted to find my ride home so I went to the nearest guard who showed me where the hotel taxi was and right when I went to the guard the kids stopped following me..a little weird?

Queens Garden Hotel was the name of the place I stayed at in Bangkok--I wouldn't exactly say a queen is meant to stay there but it was the nice of the two hotels I stayed at here. Everyone there was extremely helpful--plus there was air conditioning and hot showers! I did do one thing you are never supposed to do in Thailand...The Thai consider the head the most sacred part of the body and your feet the dirtiest part, therefore you should never point at anything with your feet. Well, being a little jetlagged, when the hotel asked where my bags were I aimed at them with my feet and one of the workers let out a little shriek and I knew right there that I had offended him. Haha opps! I fell right asleep after that and then woke up the next morning and got ready for my flight to Krabi. And now, here I am in Krabi.

I am still getting used to the time difference, I have taken pretty long naps the past two afternoons and so when I try to go to bed around midnight, I wake up around 4am tossing and turning for a good 2 hours. But they have this one American channel constantly playing movies so I watched Mrs. Doubtfire in the wee hours of the morning and then passed out again. That being said, I wake up around 7 every day so far to shower and start my day. Ummm yeah....no more hot showers until I get back to America I guess? This morning was my first experience with a freezing shower and it really wasn't as bad as I had guessed. It's gonna do wonders for my hair anyway--which is not as big as a jerry curl as I thought it'd be in this humidity!

So yeah, we are shipping off to base camp in almost two hours and that is where my home will be for the next two and a half months! Sorry if this one was boring, once I make it to base camp and we actually start the training process I will have more exciting stories! Love and miss you all so much!