For Spring Break, TBC organizes an optional trip to Sichuan, where the main focal point of the trip is to see huge Buddha sculptures and hold baby pandas (which you have to pay hundreds of dollars to do). However, seeing as we heard previous Sichuan trips weren't very fun compared to other TBC trips and I'm not much of an animal person (I can see a panda in almost any zoo), my friends and I decided to forgo the planned trip and spend our Spring Break on our own discovering THAILAND.
[Turns out this was a VERY good decision as the Sichuan trip was plagued with rainy weather, cold temperatures, and food poisoning contracted by 90% of the group.]
5 of my friends and I flew down to Bangkok where we stepped off the plane into hot and humid weather - something we haven't experienced since arriving in Beijing last August. We spent 1.5 days in Bangkok: staying in cheap hostels, eating cheap and delicious street food (pad thai and spring rolls being sold on the streets), and being asked constantly if we wanted to see a "Ping Pong" show (no thanks, I'll pass).
We stayed on "Backpackers Street," which was full of foreigners - including gross, old, white men with young Thai girls EVERYWHERE. We got over that scene really quick (too touristy and fake) and toured around the city in tuk-tuks. We were driven from temple to temple, getting ripped off each time because we were all too busy with midterms to do any research beforehand. But it all worked out and we found a travel agency that set up roundtrip transportation to Kochang Island off the southeast coast of Thailand.
Upon our arrival on Kochang, the owners of the hotel that the agency had booked for us (The Souk) picked us up at the dock and drove us a quick 5 minutes to their establishment: a group of several bungalows situated RIGHT on the beach on the quieter, less touristy, and more local side of the island. Besides one other guest, we were the only ones there, so we pretty much had our own private bungalows on our own private beach.
The owners were incredible and set up elephant trekking and snorkeling adventures for us, including providing transportation into the city areas so we didn't have to pay for cab fares (cabs were trucks where you sat in the bed and held on for dear life when speeding up the windy hills). We relaxed on the beaches, swam in the blue water, saw coral reefs, rode atop HUGE elephants (and swam with them too!), and enjoyed home-cooked Thai food - my favorite!
The vacation was a greatly needed break from school and homework. And after our return from Thailand, we were relaxed, rejuvenated, (TAN!), and ready to face the last five weeks of our study abroad experience at TBC.
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