FS09 Part 1 - Song Khla

It has been some time since I blogged and I told myself it's time to blog about Field Studies, before all the good and wonderful memories fade away.... 42 days of maddness and fun is now 12.6GB of photos and videos on my hard disk.

Day 1-2 (17-18/5/09)

This is the day where it all began. After one whole week of thai lessons, we were all set to put our thai into use. Gathered at golden mile to board the bus all the way to Hat Yai. 18 hours journey. seems torturous but we realised there are much more worse trips that we had to do in thailand itself.

Us at golden mile before we start the long journey...

The bus that brought us to Thailand.

Reached Hat Yai and we transferred to their local bus for the short hop to Song Khla.

Checked into Viva Hotel, our home for the next 4 nights. Hotel was not the posh type, but still ok to stay in.

our room in a messy state.

We went down to Thaksin University where we met up with our Thai Buddies. I was paired up with this girl called Yu. They are english majors in Thaksin Uni and they are all very eager to practice their english with us. of course, we are also eager to speak to them in our 'chui' thai.

me and my thai buddy, Yu

After some ice-breaking games, we rushed back to the hotel to wash up and then it was off to a welcome dinner at a very nice resort. All of us were dressed up for the occasion (the only time in the whole trip where everyone wore so nice. the rest of the days were chui clothes)

Day 3-5 (19-21/5/09)

The next 3 days were spent in Song Khla, with thai lessons in the morning, some fields trip in the afternoon and then night market at night. Our thai buddies brought us around most of the time. Visited lots of night market where food is nice (aroy) and cheap! Ate freaking damm a lot in thailand cause food is so cheap.

Not forgetting the serious part of the trip, our thai oral exam. I was so damm unlucky to get the most difficult topic and once me and elaine finished the assigned topic, our teachers told us to continue speaking, so we just talked about everything under the sun in thai.

Our classroom...

Fooling around in between lessons....

class photo...

at the night market

at another night market (with more food!)

the canteen in school. we had to order our food in thai!

around thaksin university...

our main mode of transport - the tuk tuk....

us inside the tuk tuk. the tuk tuk was so short that most of us had to keep our heads down while inside.

Of course, we did some sight-seeing in Song Khla.

View of the whole city from a hill

temple on top of the hill. forgot the name....


us fooling around...



song khla museum.

with our thai buddies at KFC... we still can't get away from all the fastfood.....

beside Songkhla Lake.

Not forgetting the beautiful beaches in thailand!

Like every other long overseas trip, laundry is our top concern so we had to wash our own clothes (laundry services are expensive...) So this is how we wash clothes, using the sink!

That's all for Song Khla... Next Stop: Krabi!

This is ridiculous!

It costs cheaper to fly from Singapore to Shanghai then from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Now i guess i am gonna settle for the 20 hrs train ride to and fro all alone.... :(

I realised it has been a long time since i blogged. People probably knew more about what's happening to me through facebook. Seriously, the number of emails i receive from facebook on a daily basis is crazy....

And so I finally went to my virgin concert! 答案是The Answer Is.....孙燕姿2009世界巡回演唱会!! The concert didn't fall short of my expectations and the 5 of us were singing, jumping and going crazy at our seats! Who goes to a concert and sits down? I think we did piss those behind us. haha.. I am having a concert withdrawal syndrome and yanzi's song are on my playlist. I am trying hard to recall the order of the songs she sang yest night!

Went back to crash geog soc FIC as well as I am really damm bored at home. I really feel so damm old there ( I was the oldest guy in camp at one point). But seeing my freshies becoming organisers of the camp and bringing in a new batch of freshies, it really brought back lots of memories from previous years camp. Though i didn't spend a lot of them with them, I still managed to have some fun (last yr i didn't manage to play a lot... ) and got to know some other juniors. Today when we were looking for Lai Wa and we saw her car, i suddenly remembered her driving a few of us to engin canteen to collect food for GC and i realise, wow, it has been a year plus already....

Looks like it will be outings outings and more outings and then i am off to HK!

It has been 4 days since I came back from Thailand and i am still missing every moment of it. It really feels weird to have meals alone, sleep alone and wake up to nobody around you...

The FS09 gathering we had yesterday really brought me back into the Field Studies mood. It is really like FS all over again, the same group of people going from places to places, having meals together, cracking jokes and making lame comments, making lots of noise wherever we go, taking pictures, jumpshots, unglam pics... This whole field studies is something which i will never forget for the rest of my life and it is definitely the highlight of my student life! I will strongly encourage all geog majors (or even non geog major) to go for it if you have the chance!

And something to mention. I almost got a shock of my life when i collected my SEP acceptance package. The letter states that the dateline for the submission of documents for my application is 1st July!!! and i collected my stuff only on the 29th! so i had to rush around cck to get my hair cut (to take a decent looking photograph that is going to be on my student pass), rush to the bank to get a bank draft for payment, rush home to get more documents and finally rush to the post office to get my mail sent over to HK by express courier. costs me $18 (heart pain...) Haiz.. This is what i get for extending my stay in bangkok (which i blew another 10k baht)...

And i am so sad that they took George O'Malley out of Grey's Anatomy.... This season ended with a cliff hanger, both george and izzie in resuscitation. Apparently, T.R. Knight contract is not renewed so i guess o'malley is dead. izzie should survive since she is still a regular on the next season.. I kind of like his character on the show... He is this guy who isn't really the smartest and brightest and yet still tries his best at everything.. for season 5, he was given very little screen time and i guess his departure is evident... and now i got to wait till 24 sep for the new season and I hope i will be able to watch it somehow in HK..

off to KL tmr.. will definitely blog about Field studies as there are really so many good memories that i want to remember and share. Will need to do so before everything fades away...