In Thailand, a bpai tiao is a trip of any length. I’ve written about some of my more significant bpai tiaos to tourist destinations here, to be used as travel ideas and tips.
Per Peace Corps policy, freshly minted PCVs are not allowed to leave their site at all for the first month in order to encourage integration. Vacation days are not to be used during the first three months of service. However, that still leaves weekends and holidays free for travel after the first month logged at site. In celebration of making it through the first month, Cinco de Mayo and Coronation Day (a national Thai holiday) all falling on the same long weekend members of Group 124, who have been here for a year, arranged a meet up in Khon Kaen.
Khon Kaen is known for dinosaurs, so there are lots of dinosaur statues around. There is also a very well respected university there with a gorgeous campus. There is a mall that shows movies in English and has Western food and bowling. I was totally in. And this would be my first bpai tiao where I had to figure out my transportation entirely on my own.
I left on Friday and spent the evening catching up with members of my cohort and doing some of the clunky introductions with the 124s. It wasn’t too long before a group of us headed out to go dancing, which was a lot of fun.
The next day we hit the mall for some pizza and to see Iron Man 3, which opened at the same time in Thailand as it did in the States. I really liked the movie and it was nice to have a kind of normal life experience. It was refreshing to watch people speaking English that I didn’t cringe at attempts to use clunky outdated phrases (such as “How do you do?”) and that was at a normal pace. It was also fun to glance down at the Thai subtitles and attempt to find words that I recognized. If you haven’t seen the first two movies and the Avengers, the story might lose you in places. But if you are just looking for some comic book action, I’d say it’s worth it. That evening, the 124s planned some getting to know each other fun and games, which really was a great way to break the ice and loosen up.
Sunday, a group of us went bowling at the mall, which again, was a nice reminder of home. Comparatively, I put up a couple respectable scores and fun was had all around. Which is what matters, really. And again that evening, one of the members from the previous group planned out a Thailand themed trivia night, which was really fun and I’m sad that the trivia I learned will probably not come up at any of the trivia nights that I go to, but you never know… (There are just under 7,000 7-11s in Thailand and Thailand is the top consumer of Ovaltine.)
Monday I headed home with some of my nearby volunteers. Before leaving we stopped and got some delicious breakfast: cheesy potato discs, blueberry yoghurt pancakes and a strawberry smoothie. Definitely worth the money.
Khon Kaen is definitely a neat city and I would certainly recommend checking it out. It’s pretty close and easy for me to get to and I’m pretty sure I will be making another trip or two in the next two years. The trip also got me excited to take some more substantial vacations in Thailand.