Searching for Karma!

It was a long, good day today.

I started out by going to Lumpini Park located in the center of Bangkok to run this morning. The park was a 7 minute taxi ride from the hotel. Since the program started at 10:00 I thought I would give myself plenty of time to get to the park, run, come back, shower, and of course get coffee without feeling rushed. So, I thought I was being clever to avoid the crowds (the Internet mentioned that it gets crowded early) by leaving my hotel at 5:00 am. Well, when I got there it was packed-at 5:10 am! One would have thought it was noon! There were sweaty runners, jumping aerobic classes, Tai Chi, sword fighting, and tons of walkers. I couldn't believe how many people were out there exercising that early in the morning. The street markets were even open and bustling! It was unbelievable! I really thought I was on a movie set-something like the Truman Show where everyone was acting around me.

There was a gigantic aerobics class, maybe 150 people, dancing to funny music that was being blasted from a stage with a 2007 Thai version of Richard Simmons leading the participants. It was really funny! Many different classes of Tai Chi were all over the place. A lot of senior citizens were participating in the Tai Chi. At about the 1 mile mark of my run I hooked up with a fellow runner who was Thai. He was probably around my age and we ran together for about 3 miles-step by step, next to each other without saying a word until until I asked him if he runs here often and he looked at me with confusion. Finally, through the strategically placed hand motions I was able to determine that he was running 4 miles. I almost tripped when I bowed back to him in full stride when he quit running.

The rest of the day was just as amusing as I met everyone at 10 with our first meeting of the program. We spent about 1.5 hours with personal introductions and going over the itinerary before we broke into groups of 4 and were assigned a university student tour guide. Our tour guides were "New" and her cousin "B." New convinced B to come along because she wasn't confident that she was familiar with the city. That got me a little nervous when she made that confession. But it turned out they were awesome tour guides. New is working on her Masters in SE Asian Studies and B is running the family business of supplying machine parts to factories that manufacture shoes, such as Nike and Ecco.

With New and B we embarked on a six hour scavenger hunt of Bangkok. It was a great way to see parts of the city that we would not have seen on our own. Each group was given a list of items to bring back at 6:30 pm when we reconvened at the hotel for dinner. Each item was worth any amount of points. The directions also sent each group to different areas of the city to experience various buildings, palaces, and places. Some of the items that we needed to bring back for point value were an amulet, a diet coke can with Thai writing, a group picture with a snake, a group picture with the king, a mango, a flower wreath used as an offering for Buddha, tiger balm, a picture of a family riding on a motorcycle, and a tuk tuk (a three wheeled taxi).

The whole excursion was really fun. My group included Chris from CA, Denise from Nebraska, and Phyllis from Scarsdale, NY. We worked well together in trampling through the city. My favorite part of the whole day was when I had to help this very old (85?) Buddhist Monk into the rest room at the Grand Palace. New said that I performed a merit and would receive good Karma for this deed. I'm all about the good Karma!

Today (it's actually 5:oo am here) is King's Day in Thailand. Everyone will be wearing yellow throughout the Kingdom to honor the King. I'm borrowing a shirt from my roommate Matt to wear as I did not bring anything yellow. The royal family in Thailand is very revered. In fact, it is a HUGE disrespectful act to talk bad about the royal family. Evidently, he is really involved in social issues and is viewed as an advocate for his people. Today, we will learn more about this as a scholar is joining us in the morning to talk about the role of the royal family in Thailand. In the afternoon we are visiting the Thailand Stock Market and discussing how globalization is affecting Thailand's economics.



It should be another good day!