Emily's year in Thailand with Project Trust: Bangkok

My first day in Thailand was certainly eventful.

To get to our hotel we all got onto a couple of minibuses and drove through Bangkok.
Which.
Was.
Terrifying.
Seriously, people drove on motorbikes with no helmets, people switched lanes whenever they felt like it, people drove on the hard shoulder, no indicators, and motorbikes were everywhere, weaving in and out of the traffic!

So after that heartstopping journey we got to the Malaysia Hotel at 10am. To help combat jetlag we were told not to go to sleep, even though many of us didn't sleep on the plane. Instead we went out to our local shopping centre (MBK). To get there we had to get taxi's and ensure that they took us there using the metre and not a fixed price. MBK was soooo big and amazing! There was an entire floor dedicated to mobile phones. Of course, the first stop for most of us was trying to find a sim for our phones. This was easier said than done as none of us were 100% what we were looking for. Nevertheless, after a lot of searching I found one. After that, I was whisked away to the food court by the other volunteers for a meal of tofu and rice.

In the evening our reps took us all out for dinner at a delicious restaurant. During the meal we all had to stand up and say something about ourselves so the reps could remember our names better, I stood up and said that I dance hip hop which of course led to calls for me to start dancing - which of course I didn't do.

After this we all went to a rooftop bar which was absolutely amazing. There was a balcony and the views from it were stunning.

The next day, after breakfast (which included very sweet toast), everyone got in taxis to go and see the Grand Palace - which was spectacular! There were so many statues and so much gold and colour! Although after only about 20 minutes inside everyone was exhausted from the heat - I felt like melting!

After the Grand Palace about 15 of us went to the local market - which was a bit scary. There were so many vendors trying to get our attention!

Forgetting the market we eventually found a cafe where we bought some drinks. We then decided that the safest bet was to go back to MBK and get food there - unfortunately this resulted in one of the volunteers finding a maggot in her food!!

That evening we all went to the park with our reps for a Q&A session. During which time the national anthem played and everyone stopped what they were doing (including us) and stood in silence. Apparently everyone across Bangkok would've done the same, and the anthem is played twice a day.

For dinner we got street food, one of our reps managed to find a street cafe that agreed to seat all 24 of us! One of the dishes that I ate that night was glass noodles and fried vegetables - which tasted soooo good!

The next day Alex and I made our way to uthai thani - which I will write about soon!