Don't know if i should laugh or cry...

What happened to me yesterday was something I'm not even going to try to explain, because i don't understand it. Me wearing a shirt that is in thai called 'colour gay' (btw it was red not pink!) drew more attention than another guy at the same place wearing a t-shirt with a swastika on it!? How to explain that, i don't know!

Timo Travel

Flooding in Bangkok - Nam tuam

For the last month or so there has been big problems in cities a little north of Bangkok. Cities like Lop Buri and Ayutthaya have had serious problems with high water levels. Everyone is waiting for the rainseason to be over so things could get back to normal. I won't go into details because for many people this has been a major tragedy.

The latest days some of the northern parts of Bangkok has experienced flooding and in other parts of the city the water has rised to levels way above the normal. Bangkok Post is updating with the latest news. For most travellers and tourists this will probably not affect them in a serious manner but keep yourself informed.

Timo Travel

Thailand vs. Oman (World cup qualifier) 5.9.2011 - part 1

It was tuesday evening and the premier league has been on a break for 1 1/2 weeks already. That's way too much for a freak like me. I couldn't handle it anymore so i've been trying to get any kind of football stimulus and i decided to go watch Thailand - Oman world cup qualifier. It was played not very far from my home at the Rajamangala national stadium. When i went there i still didn't know how to get the tickets and if there was any official sellers anywhere. There was loads of people around the area, most of them going to the match and others working, selling football related things and something edible. 

As i went closer to the stadium i saw many people selling tickets on the street. Also many people buying from them so i assumed it was a safe thing to do. I still continued closer to the stadium and gave it some thought. Drank a cup of coffee and watched the masses. Suddenly one guy came to me and asked if i was going to watch the match. I said yes and he handed me a ticket and said here you are welcome to Thailand. As in my country were always thought to be suspicious about nice people so i wondered a little but i didn't see any problem taking a free ticket. I asked him if he wanted one and he said he already has his, he just got a spare one. "Welcome to Thailand" he said again and i thanked him alot but i felt i couldn't really thank him well enough because i was left silent after such a display of being nice. So now i had a free ticket to the game, and also in the best stand, not bad! I still don't know where to officially buy them except from the internet and the sellers around the stadium but this ticket would have set you down 500 thb. A little bit more than 10€ and about 15$. The cheaper tickets cost anything inbetween that and 100 thb (about 3 dollars or 2,5€).

This is the end of part 1. To be continued....

Timo Travel

Does studying abroad feel like an impossible task?

                  photo: Oxyg

Have you ever thought of studying abroad? For the sake of learning a new culture, new language or just have a great time abroad while getting alot of new experience. It's not that hard, if i could be able to get away to Bangkok, Thailand to study, then can you. I come from a family that has an average salary in my own country, might even considered to be below average, that didn't stop me. I'm here right now, enjoying what bangkok has to offer. Meeting alot of new people, learning a new language and broadening my views on life. Even if feel like I'm not learning alot in school, i still feel like I'm learning everyday by just interacting with people from another culture.

So is it expensive to study abroad? Yes it might be, depending on your own background and for me it's not easy either. However the cost of living is much cheaper than in many western countries and i get along with about 20,000thb per month (as of 5.9.2011 that is about 500€ or 700 usd). I don't have any special luxury in my life right now, luxury as in material things. What i have though is the possibility to go out and eat great food everyday. And by "go out" i mean eat at a restaurant several dishes 2-3 times a day. A normal price for a dish in Bangkok is about 30-50 thb, that's local food and depending on where you eat. In the center it might be difficult to find a dish for 30 thb. But in the suburbs where i live and study you can even find it for 20 thb. That's about 0,7$ and about 0,5€!!! I don't have a TV but i go out watching football in a bar in the weekends. For good food and LITRES of beer i usually end up paying no more than 300 thb. That's not a bad deal if you still need to watch football without owning a television. There's is plenty of other entertainment that Bangkok has to offer, some cheaper and some more expensive. However i feel 500€ (incl. rent) gets me further here than for example 1500€ would do in europe. That amount is including tuiton fees that in my university is about 30-40,000 thb per semester. Some universities are cheaper and some more expensive but i feel this university is a relatively good one for an affordable price.

A cup of coffee costs about 0,25€ at a seven eleven and between 0,5€ to 1€ at other places. There heaps of good fruit available everywhere, smoothies and shakes for sometimes as little as 0,25€. Sometimes even i refrain to drink beer in favor of the delicious non-alcoholic fruit drinks available everywhere. Well THAT is something! I will post more on the economy issue later because with the huge crisis going on I'm fed up with talking about money. However feel free to ask me any questions you like about living expenses and overall living in Bangkok.

Timo Travel

Parking in Bangkok

Sometimes it will feel impossible to get your car parked in Bangkok. As you probably heard the traffic here can be horrendous and it most often is. What to do when panic strikes and you really need to get you car parked? In the picture below you will see the solution some people will make. And yes it stood still and it was also not the only one parked on that road. The road is Rachadamnoen Nok avenue and host's a fair amount of traffic in daytime.

I will post later about how to get a drivers license in Thailand! ;)

/ Timo Travel

Disorganized school!

There hasn't been really much happening lately. I can say that the school's here are a little bit funny, or actually it's not going to be fun at all if any of the following things will happen to you.
There's cases of the office:

- Loosing your grades. One, two or maybe ten of them. Not cool!
- Loosing your payment receipts, so suddenly you have taken shitloads of classes but never paid the THOUSANDS of dollars you were supposed to pay.

Another funny thing is that we pay an additional fee to every course for the course material. This course material sometimes will never be and at other times you will get it the last lesson of your class.

Man it can be irritating sometimes, but I'm keeping my head up. :)

Lack of information

I often see a mix of superstition and 'knowledge' that has not been properly thought about. It happens everywhere, i can say that for sure it happens also in Europe. But still in someway it feels so typically Thai.
Talking about fastfood now again. Yesterday i talked with two people who had different opinions on Mc'Donalds. One guy i met he was so surprised that i said Mc'Donalds is not healthy food, and he wondered 'how come'? He never thought it could be unhealthy in any way at all. Never even heard about such a notion. The other person again, she refused to eat Mc'Donalds at all. She said it will give her breast-cancer. Where the heck that came from?

Back to Bangkok

I'm back in Bangkok as i wrote earlier on my twitter. Which you can by the way find on twitter.com/Bangkokstudent 

It has been taking me awhile to get rid of the jetlag, climate change, new enviroment and all the accompanying things but i already remember why i moved here in the first place. The first day i was out for a walk on my own soi i saw two kids playing. And obviously the thai-way of having fun as kids is throwing sand in each others eyes and also rocks in every size and form. Seems like a good fun to me, anyone up for some sandwar? I admit that in my country we also throw snowballs in wintertime and they can be damn evil if they're made at right time. They can be very cuddly and soft but at certain weather it will be alot of pain if u get hit by one. Some people even but their snowballs under the water for awhile to make it freeze and u understand that it means u will be throwing iceballs after awhile.

But my people are pagan caveman and i actually don't think anyone even expect's us to come up with any actual mindshaking inventions. Interesting topic though, u could tell u more of that sometime. But for now it's sleeping time, see you again.
/Timo Travel

Greetings from the land where people wait for green light even though there's no cars in sight

Bangkok is famous for it's crazy traffic and heaps of people everywhere. Somehow i still felt more stressed being at the Stockholm central station where the commuter trains and metro etc. leaves from. There should be only something like 1 million people in that city but it was damn crowded. In that matter there's no bigger differences between the two cities, but what's with the stress and running guys?

At the Stockholm station people were literally RUNNING around. Looked like chickens in a chicken farm or a kid running after buffalos with an ak-47. You really had to look to every direction to avoid getting hit. No "excuse me" or "pardon". Just "get out of the way, I'm coming and I'm an very important and busy person".

I'm not sure if it was just the reaction because I've just arrived from a country where everything goes with half-speed from scandinavia, but that was crazy! Are people really that busy? Are they really in such a hurry? In Thailand you would be sweaty after a minute of such 10km/h running-walk.

To me it's incredible how such a small city can feel so much more crowded and congested than a city 10 times the size. Maybe it's just peoples attitudes that differs. I cannot recall even once that i would have had a Thai running into me like a cannonball. Then again I'm usually 20cm taller and 20kg heavier than most Thais also. :)

Cheers readers!

Following message might upset some readers, but myself I'm very excited about the idea. As now I'm away from Bangkok for awhile, i can't update with stuff about Bangkok as frequent i would like to. However when i came back to Scandinavia i experienced shocks. Maybe culture-shocks? But at least in the two first days i experienced as many shocks as i did in one month in Thailand. So i guess one week in Scandinavia equals 3 months of shocks in Thailand.

So until I'm back to Thailand i will examine the things I've experienced here and try to tell you why I get shocked. What's weird about our countries and how it differs from the SE-Asian way of living.
I'm excited!!! :D

Culture Shock!

Back to Scandinavia for awhile. And i hadn't even come trough the passport control at the Arlanda airport before i remembered exactly why i moved away.

There's about 5 lines of people waiting to get to different counters with different immigration officials. However there was some airplane staff from our flight that came on the right side of us. Actually from another entrance, and they told us to excuse them for getting trough. No problem, because they took a couple from our line and then a couple from their line.

Do you think it was okay for everyone? OFCOURSE NOT! This guy infront of me start screaming about how he's a paying customer and he think this is bullshit. Employees shouldn't have those kind of benefits. He yelled for awhile. And then he forced himself trought to the immigration officer, yelled something similar to her. She just told him get back in line, she's in charge. :)

What did he really thing he could affect with his behaviour?

Funny pictures from Bangkok

In the following link you will find an explanation and some mockery of the most common pictures you will see tourist's taking in Bangkok. Including eating insects and ladyboys. To this list i would probably add photos of the heavy traffic.

http://www.cnngo.com/bangkok/play/6-most-cliched-bangkok-tourist-photo-ops-784503

Enjoy your reading.
//Timo Travel

KFC home-delivery

Living in a country where there is a totally different foodculture i can say that people
are extremely judgmental about expats eating western food. By this i mean other expats,
the local people usually don't give a damn about what you are eating.

I have a confession to make... today i ate KFC! And i don't feel even a little bit ashamed of that. It's totally normal to sometimes crave for something else. You have been brought up in a country where possibly everything is different considering food. For example in Thailand their main staple is rice while in the western countries we mostly eat potato. In Finland we eat bread every day while the Thais almost never. So i feel it is totally okay for me to eat something different sometimes. I mean there is maybe 100's of different cuisines to
choose from in Bangkok. It's the same everywhere nowadays. Doesn't matter in which part of
the world you are you can get food in a totally different style.

Then again i have western classmates who doesn't eat thai food AT ALL. Which in my opinion is maybe a little weird, but who am i to judge. I just happen to love food and eating is a big part of my life. And
if i wouldn't like the food here there is plenty of other countries with an interesting
cuisine where i'd rather live if that's the case.
Btw
KFC can be incredibly tasty at
times. ;)

Furthermore it was home-delivery!

A cheap day in Bangkok!

Don't get me wrong. There are millions of ways to spend money on food in Bangkok. However i will tell you about how little you can spend in a day if you want to. For western people it might be very difficult to keep up with the following for a very long time. But myself i eat like this a big portion of the days in Bangkok.

Breakfast - A youghurt and a Banana - about 20 baht total.
Lunch - At the cantine, rice and some sort of meat, chicken/pork - 20-25 baht total.
Dinner - Usually you eat them with some friends and mostly u share what's on the table - Price is usually about 40 to 60 baht.

You do the math, but i can give you some help. That's about 80 to 105 baht per day. in U.S dollars that is around 3$ for food FOR A WHOLE DAY.  Not bad ey?

However as i said there are millions of ways to eat in Bangkok and it can be very expensive. I will later tell you about the 1200 baht (40$) fish i ate yesterday. ;) Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

Timo Travel

Average Salary in Thailand

Yes there is alot of discussion from people that don't believe the average salary for workers in Bangkok to be at about 8000-10,000 baht. Even if the real mean might not be like that. It's a fact that many workers earn about that amount. It's the same in many countries where the richer people is pushing up the average salary but if you are talking about normal workers hey will earn alot less than the average.

Useless information #1 - potato chips

The standard potato chip bag in Thailand is 20 gram. Yes you heard right TWENTY gram only. The cost between 0.25-0.50€ or 10-20 in thai baht. It's a huge difference from the 300gram potato chip bags we're having at home. I still remember when i was very young the bags where about 150 grams in my homecountry. That is STILL 7 1/2 times bigger! ;) Nowadays 250-300 grams over there. I don't know if you can call that development?

I really gotta earn some money also

A couple of days left now in Bangkok only. But don't be afraid I will be back after working a couple of months. And I still have a lot of material that is already written and I will publish the time after time. Today gonna do some some shopping for a friend. She's crazy about all kind of stuff she can get in Bangkok but obviously for her three times per year in this lovely city is not enough to stock up with the necessary body butters etc. ;)

familiarization

I forgot one of the more important things of sharing my life with you. So that you will feel a little bit more like you know me, here you have a pic!

Introduction - Finally i'm taking myself the time

Finally i'm taking myself time to sit down and write a couple of lines about my current life in Bangkok. It has been a stressful three months but i seem to have settled down very well so far. I'm a Finnish guy aged something like 20+, who likes to travel. I'm studying economics in one of the universities over here and i'm really enjoying life with good food, nice people and a totally new enviroment. This blog will be about everyday occurances from my life here. Also things i observe and my favourite part all the bizarre things that will happen to you while being in a country. Because there are alot of them, in reality they might not be bizarre but coming from a totally different background they can be, and alot so.

So hope everyone will enjoy their reading and i will try to update the blog as much as i have time to.