The 'Studying' Begins

G’day mate(s),

As you will remember from my previous blog, I had just enrolled and I was officially a UWA student – don’t worry Nottingham people this is only a loan deal, I’m still really a Nottingham student! If this is the first blog you’re reading I suggest you read the other two first (the Thailand one is the first entry).

The day after enrolling (16th July) I had another early start; I had to be at uni for 9 for an orientation day. The day consisted of a series of speeches from heads of the uni, departments, the student union (they call it the Guild) etc. After these speeches we were sent on an ‘O-quest’ which was built up as an epic orientation run around the uni but in reality it was just basically a treasure hunt with no treasure at the end. It was meant to help us get to know our way around campus better, however in reality, it was a waste of time. The O-quest only succeeded in confusing most of us even more about this small campus and I was sure that because of this O-quest I was going to end up walking round the campus in circles in a search for my lecture theatres! Following this treasure hunt, it was lunch which I was excited about considering the previous lunches that had been provided for us international students, however lunch was a major disappointment. It was a Barbeque where the only thing for vegetarians was some skewers with vegetables on them, how is that going to fill up a growing lad like me?! The rest of the day didn’t really improve the next task was to select our faculty that we felt belonged to. Being a Geographer, I chose the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Five minutes into our talk, I realised I had chosen the wrong faculty, apparently Geography is not a humanity or a social science, it’s a ‘natural science’. These Aussies don’t know what they are on about, even you Geography haters back in Nottingham will agree that Geography belongs in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences because you’ll all claim that “all geographers do is colour in so its surely an Art”!

So, I sat through two hours of irrelevant talks but still signed up to this faculty because I believe Geography is a humanity and/or a social science, not an Art though. Also the sports secretary said the faculty was in desperate need of ‘soccer’ and basketball players, so I had to sign up! After this waste of a day at uni, I headed home for some dinner, some beer and for the first day of the Second Ashes test, COME ON ENGLAND!

After staying up late to watch Strauss and Cook dominate the Aussie bowlers (I think I missed only two overs of the whole day), I had a bit of a lie in the next day, once I was up and ready I headed out to a shopping centre. I was going shopping in the hope of getting a pair of sunglasses which is absolutely essential here (yes, even in the winter) and picking up a cheapish MP3 player to help pass the time on my journeys to uni. The shopping mall was like a baby compared to the Harlequin or Brent Cross, probably about the size of the Broadwalk in Edgware. I walked in and out of the shops looking around for a bit and before I knew it I had been into more or less every shop and not picked up anything. The fashion here is very different to that of England, the Aussies love their surf and skater brands and don’t really have any un-branded cool cheap clothes. I discovered that sunglasses are extortionate here, you won’t find a pair of sunglasses for under $60 which is about £30, I refused to pay this much for a pair of sunglasses and thought I’ll just survive without them (this thought changed a week later after experiencing the suns glare). My mission to find a cheap MP3 player was a failure but I did end up buying a hoody which had the wrong price tag on it so I got it for half the price it was meant to be, bargain! So in typical Mihir fashion I went shopping with an aim to get two practical things and I come back with neither but a new and probably unnecessary hoody! After my shopping experience I again watched the Ashes all night!

The View from the bus on my journey home from uni

On the 18th July I was at home all day and Dilip uncle and Ina aunty reluctantly went to a wedding reception at night. This gave me an opportunity to cook for myself so boys (and Bix) in the flat next year, don’t worry I’ll try and cook regularly here so I’m not rusty when I get back to Notts because I know you’re expecting me to do the cooking for the flat! Something that may surprise those of you that know me well is that I’ve started adding chillies to my cooking and the food I eat, I think it’s the influence of living with Kenyans. After dinner I once again parked myself in front of the TV to watch the cricket and a classic Adam Sandler film, Happy Gilmore.

The next day was a bit more exciting than my previous day of sitting at home all day. We went to Hilary’s marina with some of Ina aunty and Dilip uncle’s friends from here including mini-Mihir (read my last blog). We went to this marina, had lunch drank beer and played a lot of pool which no matter how often I play it, I never improve! I also had the most amazing ice cream at this Marina. There’s a place that claims to offer over 3000 (yes three thousand, that is not a mistake) different combinations of ice cream with sweets and chocolates. I chose to have a white chocolate and twirl ice cream. They have a selection of chocolates that they crush into the ice cream and I have to say the result was amazing, almost as good as Prina’s vanilla and crushed Oreo ice cream! After a day at the Marina, we came home for dinner and yet another exciting day of cricket. Some of Dilip uncle and Ina auntie’s friends joined us for dinner and they had two boys a little younger than me who had just come back from England. The older one was determined to study in London because you get to ‘party all the time in England where as you really don’t here’ his words, not mine!

The 20th of July saw my first real day at UWA. The morning journey was quite amusing for me. The weather had taken a turn for the worse the previous night and it was extremely cold, wet and windy. The Aussies on the bus the next morning were so excited because they saw hail stones and they were all talking about it on the bus the same way we get excited about snow! Before I went away, the Geography department at Nottingham said to me I have to do at least one Geography module and it has to have a field work element to it and I have to do one business module out here as well. Other than that I could do what I wanted so I thought I’d take a history module. I walked into the lecture theatre and it was set up like a classroom at Habs. To my amazement there was only about 30 people doing the module in comparison to about 150 in my Geography lectures and 400 in my business lectures at Nottingham. After my lecture I had a break and then a business lecture. What I didn’t know is that the business school was at the other end of campus and completely hidden away from everything else. However if you saw the business school building, you would understand why. UWA is the oldest university in Australia and this building is the most modern building you could imagine! If it was with the other old buildings it would look as out of place as if you placed Primark in Harrods or Selfridges! I came home exhausted after a two hour business lecture, so I had a few beers and watched England win the Second Test!

I had to go into uni for 9am the next morning, this journey again was interesting for me because not only did the talk about the bad weather continue, I chose to wear my England cricket shirt to uni which provoked a lot of comments from the Aussies and lead to a heated debate about Freddie Flintoff apparently being arrogant because of his celebrations after taking a 5-wickets in his last ever test a Lords. However, one out of maybe 12 Aussies who commented on my shirt did say that England deserved to win! I had a two hour Geography lecture (I’m not used to early starts and 2hours of lectures in a day let alone one lecture being 2hours!). I walked into the lecture hall and felt as if I was at a UN convention. I can’t really explain it but I shall try and get pictures of this to show you all! The lecture was actually quite interesting until I found out that this was a third year module and so was the other Geography module I had chosen! After the lecture I decided that two third year modules was far too much for me so I went to change my other Geography module to another history module which is a second year module about the history of Africa which should be interesting! Changing the module was pretty easy but the result was that I was now doing more history modules than Geography or Business modules and I now had a huge clash in my timetable which I didn’t notice until I got home! The rest of my day consisted of opening a bank account and watching neighbours!

Over the next two days I only had one lecture but had to sort out this clash of two lectures and a tutorial. The business school were so unhelpful and told me that I could just skip the lectures and watch them online and it would be fine as long as I turned up to the tutorials. As tempting as this sounded, i had mum’s voice in the back of my head and the conditions of my student visa making me feel guilty at the prospect of missing two hours of lectures a week so I dropped this business module and swapped it for a more interesting module that doesn’t clash! I’m hoping the clash is now sorted but I won’t know for sure until Monday! These two days involved me having to walk from one end of the campus to the other to get bits of paper signed by various people. The only advantage of this is that I got to see the true beauty of the UWA campus. In my last blog I made a reference to the UWA campus being more beautiful than that of Nottingham and Warwick. A follower of my blog and a Warwick student decided to defend her uni by saying that the Warwick campus is better than UWA because they have ducks on their campus! Well Anjali Dattani, not only do we have ducks on our campus at UWA, we have black swans and several peacocks including an Albino peacock, so if your ducks are the only thing that makes your Warwick uni good, then you may as well go to a pond than to Warwick! (No offense to other Warwick students past or present)

My timetable has worked out so that I have Fridays off so I think Fridays will be the day that I venture into Perth and see the sights of the most remote city in Australia. Yesterday was the first of these excursions. I went to Freemantle Harbour (known as Freeo by the Aussies) with some mates from uni. In my last blog I suggested that Freemantle was literally just a harbour, well 10days I’m retracting that statement because it’s actually a really cool place with a lot to do. It was initially an industrial town due to its proximity to the sea but in addition to that its home to the largest remaining prison in Australia where they used to send the British convicts. The prison was decommissioned in 1991 and is now open to the public to go and see.

<--Me being made an example of by the tour guide at the prison

So yesterday (24th July) we went to see the prison, cue the jokes from the Habs boys “Ghetto Mihir has finally gone to prison” etc. We went on a tour around the prison and from the very start the tour guide decided to pick on me. It’s probably my fault that she victimised me because she was complaining that she was cold despite it being 17degrees and very sunny and I just laughed at her for complaining at their mild winter. The prison is pretty big, housing 400 convicts at its peak and it was a prison where the death penalty existed until the late 1960s. The prison was really interesting and seemed to be just how you would imagine a prison to look, long rows of small cramped rooms and the yards surrounded by high walls. We also got to go into the chamber where the people were hung, although no one had been hung there in about 50 years, it had a really weird feeling about it!

The Hanging Chamber

After this slightly eerie experience, we all felt that a pint or two was required, so we headed to Little Creatures (described in the previous blog entry) for a few pints of the creatures brewed Pilsner! It was a good day; I got to know the Nottingham exchange students a lot better. We all went our separate ways and headed home, however I ended up going out for an Indian meal with Dilip uncle and Ina aunty before coming home. It was nice to get a fix of paneer and other Indian club style food.

Many of you have asked me what uni is like here and the truth is I can’t really answer that yet because I’ve only had a week of orientation and a week of introductory lectures. However from those two weeks, I think that the focus is less on the lectures here but more on the tutorials and workshops. Lectures are much smaller than they were in Nottingham and students don’t party as hard as we do back in England! I’ll try and give a more insightful description of uni life here in the next blog. As for Perth, I think it’s a great city to settle down in and lead a life of socialising with other families. However, it’s not really a student friendly city!

For the select few of you who are counting down the days until I come home, there is only 6months until that date, which also means there is plenty of time for you to book a holiday to Australia to come and see me!

Finally, in the last entry of my blog I advertised my older brother’s blog but realised I didn’t supply you with the link to the website, so if you are interested in reading about his experiences here is the link: http://www.nihalhariashah.blogspot.com/

Until next time, much love to you all!
Mihir

Welcome to Perth

G’day all,

Before I begin the blog, I would just like to thank all of you who commented on or facebooked or emailed me about the previous blog. The comments were much appreciated and I’m extremely happy that the feedback was pretty positive! Also to those who emailed or facebooked me with regards to the blog, there is a way to comment on the actual blog, so feel free to sign up for that if you wish, but keep it clean as there are young children and respectable adults also reading this blog! Quick thanks to Nihal for advertising for me in his blog. If you are not already followers of his blog, it’s a great read and very insightful into a travellers experience in South East Asia. And finally before I begin, thank you Kishen for pointing out my apparent ability to time travel in my previous blog! I can assure you that was a mistake due to my tiredness and illness!

Ok, so as you remember from my previous entry, I wasn’t feeling too great when I left you. I’m glad to say that I am feeling much better and with a strong dose of antibiotics my infection has cleared up! That night in Bangkok (7th July) was also the night of the Michael Jackson tribute which due to the time difference was shown very late in Bangkok but i just had to stay up and watch this tribute to my childhood hero. I could write extensively about the tribute but I shall try and keep it as brief as possible! The tribute was the perfect send off for the King of Pop. I hadn’t really shown much emotion at his death, more appreciation and respect than anything but after watching the tribute, I can genuinely say that I was moved. To see stars such as Usher, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Mariah Carey and so many more break down and cry shows how well respected MJ was and always will be. The speech that gripped me the most was that of Al Shaparton who’s a close friend of the Jackson family. He said a line which reads something along the line of;

“Michael Jackson wasn’t a strange man, what was strange is what he had to deal with.”

Now, I posted this on my facebook page the next day and one of Nihal's friends popped up and said; “don’t you think it’s strange that he loved kids”. Well if MJ had had a childhood and not been beaten by his father every time he hit a wrong note in practice, then I would say yes, but the fact is MJ was a true genius who never had a childhood so he was trying to live it through other kids! I also managed to see one of the videos of MJs rehearsals for the tour which was meant to begin this week. The performance was of probably my favourite MJ song which I happen to be listening to now – they don’t really care about us. If you manage to see this rehearsal you can understand why the man was so ill. It was unbelievable; he put so much energy and passion into one performance that it is impossible to imagine the possibility of him doing this performance for 2 hours 50times over! I’ll leave the MJ talk with he was the greatest pop artist of all time, someone who we all love and have all tried to imitate at least once but the fact remains that there will never ever be anyone who comes close to achieving what he has achieved. R.I.P Michael Jackson.

So after watching the MJ tribute until 3am, I had to be up at 7am on July 8th to have some breakfast and check out of the hotel and then prepare for another day of travelling beginning at my favourite place (or not) Bangkok airport! The first part of my journey was a two and a half hour flight from BK to Singapore. I was planning to sleep on the flight until I saw that the entertainment system on board had four episodes of Entourage so I had to stay awake and watch despite having 3 seats to myself! I arrived in Singapore for a 5hour stop over and for anyone who has been to Singapore airport you will understand why I was so amazed at how clean the airport was. Everywhere you look there are people cleaning something! I passed the time by watching people clean and reading my fantastic book. Some of you may be astonished that Mihir was reading but in the past year I have discovered the joys of reading! For those of you who are interested in African history and why most of Africa is in such a bad way, I strongly recommend the book I’m currently reading set in the Congo by a guy called Tim Butcher called Blood River. After several hours of reading and watching cleaners, I boarded my flight to Perth. It was a pretty good flight and stupidly I decided to watch a film called Taken (which was pretty good) and a few episodes of Two and a Half Men instead of sleeping. They ran out of veggie meals on the flight so fortunately I got given a business class veggie meal which was the best aeroplane food I’ve ever had!

I landed in Perth about midnight Perth time and was hoping to get through Immigration and customs with no problems and just get to Ina aunty and Dilip uncles house (the family friends who I’m staying with) and just go to bed, this however was not the case! There was one woman in the airport who decided it was here mission to make my arrival in Perth as uncomfortable as possible. I got through immigration with no problems only for this woman to stop me and ask to look at my airport and then the stupid questions started; “Why are you studying in Australia? Why at UWA? Why are you studying Geography? Why were you in Thailand? Why is your brother there? Why is he not working? Etc” I felt like replying Why the hell not?! So she let me go and I thought that was the back of her until she popped up again at Customs and asked to scan my bag which no other passenger had done. She then asked to open my bag and have a look at the contents to find some Indian flour and she tried to claim I was smuggling it in until I showed her my customs form to show I had already declared it. I hope she felt like a right idiot!
After my airport experiences I got home at about 2am and had the most satisfying bowl full of dhal bhatt and dhai! I then went to bed and didn’t wake up until 11am (9th July) when Ina aunty came in to tell me I had a doctor’s appointment in an hour. I went to the doctors about my infection and was given antibiotics which have worked wonders and cleared it all up! The doctor was followed by.... Wait for it... A trip to the beach!!! Ok I know that made most of you jealous, but I only went to the beach to see it, it’s the middle of the winter so it’s far too cold to go into the sea there! We headed back home and once Dilip Uncle returned from work we went to the local Marina for a few drinks. I had a beer called ‘Pure Blonde’ which tastes very similar to Kronenburg Blanc. We returned home in time for Neighbours which is about four months ahead of the UK so I could spoil it for everyone (not that any of you watch neighbours) but I won’t. So on my first say in Australia, I went to the beach, had a beer called Pure Blonde and watched Neighbours, if that’s not playing the stereotype, I don’t know what is!

The next day was fairly un-eventful. I was settling in at home all day and watched some of The Ashes before we went to one of Ina aunty and Dilip uncle’s friends house for dinner. We got to eat Mexican food which was pretty exciting but more exciting or scary, I think I met what my son would be like if I was to have a kid now (don’t worry that’s at least 10years away still). I walked into this house to see a little 12year old boy wearing a Billionaire Boys Club hoody similar to one I have with a wrestling t-shirt underneath it. He also had his ears pierced and was cricket and football mad! It was like looking in a mirror even though he was smaller than me and had dodgy blonde highlights in his hair which I had once upon a time but never again!
Following the shocks of the previous evening the next day (11th July) was pretty quiet and chilled out. We went into town in the evening when I got my first glimpse of UWA from the car and it looked amazing! We had dinner at a pizza place with the unfortunate name of Chelsea Pizza. We saw the central business district of Perth, the Wacca cricket stadium, the Aussie rules footie stadium and Kings Park. Although quiet for a Saturday night (in comparison to London) Perth city centre seems like a great place to be. I returned home to watch some of The Ashes and then went to bed disappointed as I seemed to do every time I watched the cricket. England really need to improve in every department if they are to have any chance of winning the series.

On Sunday (12th July) we got up early and headed into town again. This time we went in using the public transport system so I could get familiar with it for my commute to uni. Their public transport isn’t as heavily relied on or used as much as the London system but it it’s much cleaner, more efficient and more comfortable! The journey from their house to UWA is about 40minutes so it’s not too bad really. We didn’t really go onto the uni campus so I would have to wait another day until I saw it properly but it looked beautiful from what I saw. We then went to a place called Freemantle Harbour which is what it says it is, a harbour! There was a Sunday afternoon market which was full of rubbish but the Aussies seemed to love it! We went to a brewery/bar/restaurant called Little Creatures which was really cool and served an amazing beer which is brewed there called Pilsner. They also serve Kangaroo meat for all you carnivores! We returned home and once again I watched some of the cricket before going to bed pretty confident that we were going to lose, but apparently we stalled (sorry to any Aussie fans, had to use that word) to a draw.

The next morning (13th July) I woke up at 6am and left the house at 6.40am to be at uni for 8 for an orientation day but what I didn’t know is that I would be out the house for 12hours! I got to uni early and immediately fell in love with the campus. I’ve obviously been to Nottingham and I’ve seen Warwick which are meant to be two of the most beautiful campuses in the UK but UWA puts these to shame. You really have to see it to understand what I’m on about but I hope the pictures do it some justice.

The main building on the UWA campus.

Naturally as I got there early, they were running late, so late to the point I could have had almost an extra hour of sleep! However, we were provided with a breakfast of croissants and fruit and we would later be provided with a lunch of Subway sandwiches and dinner of take-away pizza, UWA know how to treat their students! I was shocked by the number of exchange students, about 90 of us in total and the majority was made up of Americans and Norwegians. Other than the 5 of us from Nottingham there were 3other Brits from Bristol uni. The day was quite good, we were given lots of talks about; the uni, healthcare, visas, taxes if you work, our academic expectations, sports and a very funny talk by a British lecturer from UWA on Aussie culture. Some of the day was pointless but it allowed us to meet new people and to get to know the fellow Nottingham study abroad students better. I got home at about 7.30pm and didn’t do anything all evening, something that would carry onto the next day.

That brings me to today (15th July); I was up early to be at uni for 9.30am for enrolment. This meant another commute into uni which was fine except I’m beginning to regret the decision to say no to an Ipod for my birthday although it means I get to read on the train. I got to uni a bit early again and thought this would be good as there would be less waiting, I was so wrong! They had attempted to stagger people’s enrolment times but this had failed dismally. We were put in a queue to have our passports checked just like at an airport. This queue took about an hour and we were then placed in another queue for 40mins just to hand in on piece of paper. Once this was done we were placed in yet another queue to have our photo taken for our student card and we then had to queue to receive our card. However, due to the efficiency of the University of Nottingham or my efficiency I skipped the biggest wait of having to enrole in each module because all my module choices had been approved before I even knew I was definitely studying at UWA! The queuing wasn’t all bad, I discovered that Australians and American (girls in particular) love the British accent and some of the people asked me to speak just so they could hear my accent. Now as flattering as this was, what do you say in a conversation where someone has no interest in what you’re saying just in what it sounds like?! The rest of the day was just registering for tutorials and workshops etc and I should have my complete timetable on Friday – lets hope it’s not more than my 8hours a week at Nottingham! I’m back at uni tomorrow for a campus tour and various other ‘activities’!

Just some of the plants on campus.

Now I know many of you have questions such as; what’s Perth like? What’s the weather like? What’s happening with your accommodation? How much are you drinking (mum)? – I’ll try and answer them now.

For those of you that have never been to Perth I would say that it is very much like Vancouver. To those of you who have never been to Vancouver, that is of no use to you what so ever but what I mean by that is, it’s a very laid back chilled out city. It is very clean and has extremely friendly people, there also seems to be a lot of space everywhere and everything is really spread out. In terms of the weather, it’s the middle of their winter here but all that means is that it is cold first thing in the morning but it hits about 17degrees during the day which is great considering it’s their winter! In terms of my accommodation, I’m at the top of the waiting list for Uni halls but it’s unlikely that anyone is going to drop out. No one else has even been put on the waiting list so I’m fortunate to even be on that. Many other international students are looking for houses but so many have given up and just ended up living with Aussie families instead because it’s too expensive or hard to find a house. If that’s the case then I’m quite happy to live in a comfortable house with people I know, but I still would love to live with students if possible so I shall continue to pester the uni halls until they give me a straight answer either way!

In answer to how much I’m drinking the answer is every day. I’ve had at least one beer a day but when you’ve been travelling with Nihal and when you’re living with Dilip uncle, it’s hard not to! However, although the Aussies love a beer and the odd glass of wine we found that they (including students) don’t like clubbing at all, they would rather just have a few beers and chill out so I doubt there are going to be many nights of clubbing and excessive drinking. That will make mum happy!

I hope you enjoyed the second instalment and once again sorry if it dragged on for a bit, this is as long as courseworks that I did this year at uni! I hope all is well back home.

Thinking of you all,
Mihir

p.s. Sorry about the lack of pictures, they take forever to load up and keep deleting themselves! For facebook users, I've posted some on facebook!

Let The Adventure Begin

Hello all,

I’m glad you have tuned in for the first instalment of my blog. For followers of my brothers’ blog, you know what this is all about, but please don’t compare mine to his because my English is far worse than his and I’m not sure if mine will be as exciting! To all you newcomers, welcome to the world of blogging and in particular welcome to my blog. The purpose of my blog is just to give you all a small insight into what I’m doing on the other side of the world...

I’m currently sitting in my Bangkok hotel room wasting my only day in Bangkok but I’ll get to that later. My adventure started on June 29th with a journey to Heathrow airport with mum and dad and the usual check-in chaos of Terminal 3. Now, this may not sound exciting at all and I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t until I looked to my left to see Adam Gilchrist (former Australian Wicket-keeper) standing in the queue next to us (because he was obviously in the business class queue). I asked him why he wasn’t staying in England to watch the Aussies lose the Ashes and he simply replied; “No chance you guys are winning it mate”. After meeting one of the greatest wicket-keepers ever, I said my good-byes to mum and dad and boarded the plane. Once again, I don’t find talking about aeroplane journeys very exciting but everyone seems to ask; “how was the flight?” and/or “did you watch any films?” so to save me having to answer these questions several times, yes I did watch a film called 12 Rounds starring WWE’s John Cena – the film is a load of unrealistic rubbish, don’t bother with it! The rest of the flight was great because I slept for pretty much all of it, only to be woken up by the large German man next to me elbowing me in the head so that the air-stewardess could give me a goody-bag. I was initially annoyed until I saw the contents of this ‘snack-pack’ and it had a Dairy-milk, a bag of peanuts and some soft-mints!

My flight arrived in Bangkok and I was meant to have a four hour wait until my connecting flight to Chiang Mai (North Thailand) but that wait was doubled to 8hours due to delays and as you can imagine I was sick of the sight of BK airport by the end of it! I sat on the plane expecting to go to sleep for the hour journey but was tapped on the shoulder by someone who I hadn’t seen in 3years! It was a fellow Habs Boy who I would later bump into on my visit to Thailand. I reached Chiang Mai exhausted from my marathon journey to be greeted by an Asian guy a bit smaller than me, unshaven, wearing green linen trousers and a brown t-shirt with a Buddha around his neck and dread-locked hair. Yes this Asian guy is my brother who has become a bit of a hippy in his 5months of travelling; God only knows what is going to happen to me!

The next day, 1st July (yes I had spent almost two days travelling) Nihal informed me that I had to be up and ready by 8am to go on a Thai cooking course. Now I had mixed emotions about this because in a year at uni I think I must have woken up that early about 5 times, and so waking up that early after two days of travelling I thought would be impossible! However I was also excited to learn how to cook Thai due to my new found love for cooking. I managed to wake up and the cooking course was awesome! We were picked up and then taken to a local market and told about all the ingredients we would be using and we got to see some of the most disgusting meat I’ve ever seen! From the market we went onto the organic farm where we would be taught how to cook Thai food. We initially cooked three dishes each and then ate them for lunch before making two more dishes which would make our dinner! The first three dishes that I chose to made were; a Thai green curry, a Thai vegetable soup and the best dish although it doesn’t sound very interesting was a cashew-nut and vegetable dish that you have with rice. Nihal made a Thai red curry and we were disappointed to find out that the only difference to a red and green curry is the chillies that go into them! After lunch I learnt how to make Pad Thai which has become one of my favourite dishes in my week in Thailand and a dessert of banana in coconut milk which really does “exactly what it says on the tin”!

The Dishes I made.

After the cooking course, we went for an hour long Thai massage which cost just £2 and was pretty damn good! They seem to relieve tension in your body that you never knew you had! We had our dinner after the massage and then went to watch a night of Thai boxing. This was really quite amazing, the atmosphere wasn’t great probably because it was mainly tourists there but the skills these fighters have is extremely impressive! Before the fight begins the fighters have to perform some sort of ritual for about 3minutes which is almost like a dance routine. On the line-up was 7 fights with some of the fighters only 10years old! The fights begin and there is music playing in the background which sounds like people have just recorded themselves playing instruments wrong! The music is actually quite hypnotizing despite how weird it is and when you watch the fight, you notice that the fighters actually fight to the music (the timings of their kicks and punches and the way they move around the ring). Even after watching the fight its quite hard to tell who won until they announce it and we were pretty confused by the scoring system with the fighters who we thought should have won ending up losing!

After a busy day the day before I was hoping for a bit more of a relaxing day the following day with a later start, but this wasn’t the case! We woke up early to go on a one day treck outside Chiang Mai. Our day started with a visit to an orchid farm which after two days of travelling followed by a busy day and little sleep wasn’t the best way to start off the day for me but looking back at the pictures I took, some of the orchids are really quite beautiful! From here on, the day only got better! We were taken by a mini bus up the hills and to get back down we white water rafted down the stream which was awesome! It’s extremely hard work and if your thinking u just sit on a raft and let the rapids take you down the stream, good luck to you if you ever decide to do it! The white water rafting was followed by something a lot less work but equally exciting. We went on an elephant ride which is something I had never done before. I realised how amazing elephants are and not just because their poos are the size of footballs! After the excitement of the elephant rides, we were taken to a beautiful waterfall where we just chilled out for an hour. It had been raining pretty much all day but the hour we were there, the sun was shining! However, this sunshine tricked our guide into deciding to ‘treck’ back to the base camp! We had been walking for about 5minutes when the heavens opened and we were absolutely drenched! The final adventure of the day was a chilled out bamboo rafting experience. If the weather had been good, this would have been great. You literally just sit on a bamboo raft down the stream while the locals raft you down the stream.

Another hectic day was followed by you guessed it, another early start the next morning (3rd July)! Again we were up at what I call silly o’ clock to catch a bus to a small town further north of Chiang Mai called Pai. We got to Pai and just walked around the town for a few hours before heading to what Nihal soon became obsessed with, “The Pub”. This place was some British guy’s house who went to Pai on a 1 week holiday 3 years ago and ended up staying there all this time! The town is so chilled out and small enough so that you would know the majority of the locals if you lived there long enough and you can’t really blame this guy for staying there (although I think I would get bored of doing nothing all day everyday). We watched the Wimbledon men’s semi-finals before heading out to some bars and ending up at another one of Nihal's favourites, an outdoor bar called Ting Tong. It was here that I bumped into the Habs mate who I had met a few days earlier on the aeroplane! The night was extremely random and full of alcohol largely due to the workers at the bar taking an immediate loving to the Nihal, Khilna and I!
The following day we got to have a small but much needed lie in before going tubing on the river in Pai (the suspected reason that I’m wasting today in my Bangkok hotel room). Tubing is the most relaxing activity you could imagine. You literally sit on a large rubber ring and let the gentle current of the river take you downstream. However, I think we may have gone a month too early with parts of the river very shallow so you would occasionally get stuck on rocks. Although relaxed by the end of it, I had one of the worst head-aches ever due to sun stroke and a sun-burnt neck. In the evening we once again went barring and inevitably ended up at Ting Tong again! The owner of Ting Tong seemed to love Nihal because of the many free shots of whisky he gave Nihal!

On Sunday (5th June) we headed to some hot springs just outside Pai. By hot springs, they mean RIDICULOUSLY HOT. In some of the springs temperatures were above 80degrees C, obviously you couldn’t go into these ones but the ones that you could go into were still about 40degrees which becomes unbearable after a few minutes in the springs! From the springs we headed home for showers and then got trapped in our guest house because of monsoon like rain! Eventually the rain slowed down (a little) and we went to the Pub to go and watch the epic Wimbledon final! Commiserations to Andy Roddick but Roger Federer fully deserves the title of the greatest tennis player ever!

On he 6th June we headed back to Chiang Mai on the most uncomfortable bus journey ever! We were given seats where there was not room to move at all and we had to deal with this for about 3hours! We arrived back in Chiang Mai and didn’t really do much all day. I got a much needed early night because I was pretty ill and had to get up at 5:45am to get my flight to BK!
I woke up early today (7th June) exhausted and feeling awful. I got a horrible skin infection on my arm, probably from the tubing in the river which had also given me a really bad temperature. I arrived in Bangkok found the hotel nearest to the airport and I’ve been in bed more or less ever since writing this blog and watching CNN news for so long that I can tell you the order of the days headline news without having to watch it!

I’m flying to Perth tomorrow to my home for the next four months before I travel around Australia and New Zealand for two months.

Apologies if I rambled on a bit but it’s the only way I could kill time in this boring hotel room!

Until next time,
Much love,
Mihir