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 | A French Girl in Bangkok - A Lifetime Experience |
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am a French student and for my studies, I spent 5 months in Bangkok in Thailand in order to discover a new culture and a new way of life. I have not been disappointed at all! Everything is so different from Europe. Bangkok is an amazingly boundless city and it offers a large range of landscapes. It is composed of big and modern buildings, parks, traditional Thai houses, temples, rivers and canals called “Klong”. There is so much to see that you don’t know where to start. In 5 months, I had the time to visit a lot of splendid Buddhist temples (“Wat”) in Bangkok like the famous Emerald Buddha Temple which is located just next to the Royal Palace, the Arun Temple or the Wat Pho. All the temples are very shiny and always full of Thai Buddhist persons who come to pray and make offerings to Buddha. Thai people are very religious and adore Buddha. They also adore their king Bhumibol and their Queen Sirikit. His reign is the longest in the world; he will celebrate his 60 years of reign in 2006.
Thai people are very respectful with the king and Buddha, but also between them and with other people. When I arrived there, I had immediately noticed the behaviour of the Thai people because it is really different from the European one. They are welcoming and friendly, always pleased to help you. They are always cheerful and happy despite their conditions of living. In general, they like foreigners (“Farang”) and do everything to show them their country in the best way. The only inconvenience is that a lot of Thai people don’t speak or read English very well, except people who work in the tourist attractions or students. You should always have a map and a lexicon with you, where things are written in English and in Thai.
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My objective was to live like them in order to understand their way of living, their culture…. I had decided to eat like them, the same meals in the same places. Most of the time, they eat in the street. People prepare food in the streets; you can take it away or eat it on the tables that are placed on the sidewalk. You pay in general only 1 Euro for your meal. It is very strange at the beginning. Thai food is very very spicy; you should watch out what you order and should ask them to prepare it not spicy. It will still be spicy but not as much as if you didn’t say anything. At the beginning, it was very hard for me to eat spicy food but with the time I got used to it. For me, life was very easy because everything is really cheap. Even if you want to travel all around Thailand, Cambodia, Laos or Malaysia, it is very easy and cheap. For example, to go to the South of Thailand where the most beautiful islands are located, you pay only 20 Euros for a return by bus. There are lots of buses that go to any destination in Thailand at any time. Even in Bangkok, it is very cheap to move from one place to another. There are a lot of means of transport: the bus, 1 subway and 2 skytrains, the taxi meter and the moto-taxi. But if you want to move, you should forecast about 1 hour because there is a lot of traffic jam in Bangkok. Outside of Bangkok there are a lot of things to discover too. In the North you can visit the deep Thailand, meet the last ethnic groups with the traditional costume or make a trek in the jungle on the back of an elephant. In the South you can find really beautiful beaches of white sand and turquoise water run alongside with coconut palms. About1 hour away from Bangkok you can visit the traditional floating market where you can do shopping on a boat or the Tiger temple where you can approach and caress tigers or the Kwhae River Bridge. This travel was very amazing and enriching. I came back to Europe with a lot of souvenirs in my head and a new vision of life. This journey has made me want to travel all around the world to discover which other splendours it hides.
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