Khoa Yai National Park

My friends and I went camping in Thailand! As you can tell by the pictures, camping is a little different in Thailand. We weren't able to make a campfire, but we did burn the candels the park gave us! Khoa Yai National Park is only 2 hours northeast of Bangkok, but the change in temperature was drastic! Instead of being around 38 degrees celsius like it is in Bangkok (100 degrees farenheit), it was only 22.2 degrees celsius (72 degrees farenheit) at the park! The temperature dropped a lot during the night as well and we were all freezing when we were sleeping in the tents. We were not prepared for cold weather! We did however get blankets that helped during the cold night. The park was beautiful and we hiked to a waterfall. The air was so fresh and crisp and it reminded me a lot of Wisconsin's beautiful valleys.

The most interesting part of the trip was our adventure back to Bangkok. A nice Thai couple gave us a ride back to a town right outside of the National Park, but then they offered to give us a ride all the way back to Bangkok! So we ended up riding in the back of the truck all way back on a main highway! We even took a small detour to a Buddha temple that the couple wanted to stop and pray at! It was a very windy ride, but quite the experience. I wrapped myself in my sleep sack to protect myself against the wind and sun. We also bought corn on the side of the road which was really tasty!

Joe Louis Traditional Thai Puppet Theatre

I had the opportunity to attend a Puppet Theatre show along with another exchange student from Madison named Paul. The MBA program from UW-Madison took a trip to Bangkok and they invited us to join them for dinner and the traditional thai puppet show. It was really interesting because the people who coordinated the event was the Thai UW-Alumni. It was a lot of fun because Thai's who attended Madison 40 years ago still knew the "Varsity" song and "Bright Shining Light of the Moon" song commonly played at badger football games! They for sure still had some badger spirit! The puppet show was the tale of the birth of Ganesha, where the father accidently cut off his son's head but revived him by giving him an elephant head. (very short version of the play). It was very fascinating to watch the performers move with such delicacy with the puppets. I really enjoyed the show!

Tiger Temple

My friend Jocelyn and I traveled back to Kanchanaburi to visit the Tiger Temple where we played with baby tigers and fed them! It is a program set up where all the profits go towards increasing the population of the Indo-Chinese tigers which are endangered species and then releasing them back into the wild in 20 years. There are currently only 1000 left in the world! It was such an amazing experience and relatively safe! The baby tigers reminded me alot of playful puppies. I also saw a few holstein cows wandering around which are definitely a lot smaller and thinner than the cows in Wisconsin. Happy cows are in Wisconsin!

temples and friends in Bangkok...

These are a few of the temples in Bangkok and some Thai friends that go to Chula University with me.

My friend Alix and I at the floating market.

Having dinner with my friends Bird and Becca. It was Bird's birthday so we went to eat at his favorite restaurant in Thailand. It was so delicious! Bird and Becca are some friends that are from Madison who are living and going to school in Thailand for a few years.