Our inbound orientation happened on September 11th-12th, a few weeks after the last exchange student landed in Thailand. It was located in Trang, Thailand. Trang is a city/province that is located South of where I live. It has a lot of beaches, and it was really nice there. For our orientation we had a full two days. The first day started out with my host mom, myself, and another Rotarian from our district driving at five in the morning, to Trang. It took us about 4 hours, and we made it in time for the 9:00 am start. Their idea of a Inbound Orientation was pretty awesome, I must admit. There are 9 exchange students in my district: 3 girls from New York-Anna, Courtney, and Emily, 1 boy from Germany-David, 1 girl from Germany-Kimberly, 1 girl from Japan-Emi, 1 girl from Finland-Emmi, 1 girl from Brazil-Fernanda, and 1 girl from Canada-me. It was pretty confusing because I would hear "Emily" so I would turn around, but they would be talking to the other Emily, or someone would say "Emi" and the four of us would turn around because either our real name was Emi, or we were nicknamed Emi. Eitherway it got slightly confusing, and we all decided to go by our nicknames.
You will probably notice when you look at these next pictures, that there are a lot of random island shots. It's because that was pretty much the main thing we saw. Sadly I don't know the names of all the islands, so you will have to bear with me on that one. This is one of the islands that we went by. Most of the islands had these characteristics-rocky and then trees. Lots and lots of trees.
Another island that is different from the first one. This one is more rocks, with the trees hanging onto the ledges, or where ever they could get a grip. I thought it was pretty cool how there were so many trees growing on pretty much a rock.
Our first stop was at this island, where we got out and snorkled for a bit. The snorkling was disappointing compared to other places that I have gone, but the others seemed to enjoy it, so it was okay. This area doesn't have "coral reefs" persay, more of a few coral pieces, and rocks. There were a few fish, but not much. I had a few pictures, but there wasn't much to see, and the water wasn't vvery clear, so the pictures turned out murkey. The boats that you can see in this picture are other groups. You could rent one of these to putter you out there, but the main people who use these types of boats are fishermen.
Another little rock island that we went by. I liked this picture because it shows how the trees just grow up the side of the "mountain" and where ever they can grow, they grow. I also thought I'd show you guys this picture because it shows the pretty blue color of the ocean, or sea. I'm not totally sure, but I think this is the Adaman Sea, but it could be the Gulf of Thailand. I will have to check about that.
This was our second stop, where we got to feed the fish. In the center of the picture, there is a little house (it's kind of hard to see because it kind of blends in, but its the green roof.) Some fisherman lives here, and just lives off the land pretty much.
A picture of the fish that we fed. What we would do is hold a piece of bread above the water, and all of the fish would swarm us to eat the bread. A few of the girls (Emmi from Finland) just about had a heart attack because the fish were going after her bread, and she got out pretty quick. This was really the only type of fish that we saw, there may have been one or two others, but for the most part this was it.
Another cool little island shot. This is the island that we stopped at (the second stop) but just a picture of the side of it, and the little islands just off the coast of the bigger island.
A close up shot of a few of the fish that we fed.
Our third stop had us going through a cave. This is the "congo line" that we had to form, and there was a man in front who pulled us through the cave. Lots of us tried to kick in order to help the guy get us through, but all that resulted in was the other people around us (the people ahead of you and behind you) getting kicked, and not totally happy. The first person is Emmi from Finland, then Kimberly from Germany, Myself, David from Germany, Anna from the Us, Fernanda from Brazil, Emily from the US, then you can't really see the last two, but it goes Courtney from the US and ending with Emi from Japan. There were lots of people at this location, and once we got in, it was clear to see about why there were so many of us.
Going through the cave to get into the lagoon where we would eventually end up. Peeboy (our YEO chaperone) was extremely excited that I had a waterproof camera, and took lots of pictures. Because it was dark, there ended up being a lot of head shots, and not much to see. So here is us going through the cave in our conga line
A group shot of everyone. There are some people in here that I don't know, but they were either chaperones, or family members. Starting from left to right we have: a chaperone (don't know his name), PeeBoy, Kimberly, David, Emily, Fernanda, Emmi, Anna, Courtney, Myself, a chaperone, Emi, another chaperone, and someones sister. The place was pretty spectacular- sandy beaches, warm water, trees galore. It was pretty cool.
A shot of the beach, the water, and the opening to the cave that we came through. As you can see, there were quite a few tourists here.
My friend Courtney and myself posing in front of the sign. This told us what made this area so special, and the name of it. We were pretty excited to learn about it, but then we realized it was in Thai. I made the exciting discovery, that the back of this had the English version, but because of time and weather, it had been worn down a bit, and was hard to read. From what we could gather, this area was originally used for pirates to bury their treasure. We all agreed that this was a pretty awesome place to bury your treasure because you had to go through a cave in order to find it.
There was a tree here that you could climb and get a cool picture. This is me attempting to climb the tree.
Gravity hates me, and I soon figured out that because of my height, I couldn't reach the next step up, so this is as far as I got. People offered to help me up, but I said that it wasn't worth it because I probably wouldn't be able to get down after anyways. Most people would stand on the tree that is going horizontal. But I couldn't do it.
This is just a picture of some of the scenery within the little lagoon area. I thought it was pretty.
One side of the lagoon area. The entrance to the cave is to the left, and you can kind of tell that it is decently steep, but there is a lot of life here. This is to the right of the cave entrance.
This is a picture of the scenery to the left of the cave. Totally diffferent from the stuff on the right side of the cave. It was impossible to get a picture with no other people in it.
So we ended up skipping the fourth island, because it waws getting late, and we had to get back in time for dinner. This is a picture of the beach, after the tide had gone out. There were lots of little crabs scuttling around on the beach. The rest of the evening consisted of us eating, and going over all of the rules and regulations. We stopped talking at 10:00pm and headed off to bed, because the next day (August 12th) we would have to get up early and go over the rest of the rules.
This was taken the next day, during our lunch break. We all wanted to go take pictures because 20 minutes before, the tide had been insanely far out, and we were going to walk along the beach. By the time we got to go down there, the tide was in, and there was nothing to see, so we took pictures of the islands around and this area.
Just another long shot of the area surrounding where we had our orientation.
After we learned all of the rules, we all headed off in different directions to head home. My trip home took 5 hours because my host moms friend drove, and she didn't drive very fast. I don't think we went over 80 once during the whole trip.
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