natural linguist- ok maybe not

Our two thai phrases of the day:


sawadi-ka (hello- for women only)
kup-koo-ka (thank you)- more of a literal attempt so i can sort of make sense to the locals!

I'v decided to involve you guys in my attempts to learn the local languages. So far we're two phrases in. a great start. . too bad i haven't even hit Sri lanka yet! I'm expecting you guys to be practising so you're all set when you come to visit. so get going!

Well I made it to bangkok in one piece and surprisingly the long flights went by quite quickly. The last few days have been amazing, I've been exploring this crazy city and getting acquainted with a constant layer of sweat and dirt covering my entire body. Tom (my Sri Lanka partner), Jacob (a guy working here in Thailand) and I did some sightseeing today starting with a quick visit to the weekend market. It was your typical street market times 1000, it was so massive. There were hoards and hoards of sweaty people and thousands of little shops. We didn't stay too long there as we were pretty hot and neither of us have much room in our bags. We did buy some candles and a thai boxer painting for our new place in Matara.
We then attempted to visit the grand palace but got conned by this seemingly nice local that told us it was already closed for the day. Hmmm. . so he piled us into a passing tuk-tuk and we spent the next 3 hours touring from one suit shop to the next. The tuk-tuk ride itself was pretty frightening as our driver tended to drive into oncoming traffic and then quickly pulled out of the way. Fun but a little scary as well. Apparently the "the grand palace is closed" is a common scam here in Bangkok. We felt pretty stupid falling for it- but i tell you we jut couldn't believe how friendly this guy was- haha. We also visited a beautiful little temple and were quickly greeted by the roundest, happiest man I've ever met. The three of us sat on the floor on the temple and just chatted. He was a buddhist and was so excited because at 4:30pm there was a service with 10 monks where they would pray and meditate. He had this amazing smile on his face as he spoke about how happy he was to have the chance to meditate after a busy work week. It was really cool to see.

Anyway, it seems as though Tom and I will be staying in bangkok until Wednesday night and then spending some time in Columbo. I'm anxious to actually get to Sri Lanka and check out the place we'll be living in for the year. The rest of the Right to Play Asia team leave tomorrow to head to Nepo their project location. So it will just be Tom and I left to find our way through the rest of Bangkok.

Again our two thai words of the day:
sawadi-ka (hello)
kup-koo-ka (thank you)